This is from 2016 election cycle but still relevant. Money quote: "Trump_vs_deep_state will outlive Trump and the people's
faith in economists will only be restored after the next financial collapse if all of the financial sector is liquidated, all
the universities and think tanks go bankrupt and the know-nothing free traders disappear from our public discourse. "
Despicable neoliberal MSM do not like to discuss real issue that facing people in 220 elections. They like to discuss personalities.
Propagandists of Vichy left like Madcow spend hours discussing Ukrainegate instead of real issues facing the nation.
Notable quotes:
"... Donald Trump has promised to make deregulation one of the focal points of his presidency. If Trump is elected, the trend toward rising market concentration and all of the problems that come with it are likely to continue. ..."
"... If Clinton is elected, it's unlikely that her administration would be active enough in antitrust enforcement for my taste. But at least she acknowledges that something needs to be done about this growing problem, and any movement toward more aggressive enforcement of antitrust regulation would be more than welcome. ..."
"... Once again we have a stark 'choice' in this election...one party who won't enforce existing laws and another who will just get rid of them. Like flipping a coin: heads, the predator class wins; tails, we lose. ..."
"... "Vote third party to register your disgust..." and waste the opportunity, at least in a few states, to affect the national outcome (in many states the outcome is not in doubt, so, thanks to our stupid electoral college system, millions of voters could equally well stay home, vote third party, or write in their dog). ..."
"... But then it dawned on me: antitrust enforcement is largely up to the president and his picked advisers. If Democrats really think it is so damned important, why has Clinton's old boss Barack Obama done so very, very little with it? ..."
"... Josh Mason thinks a Clinton administration may push on corporate short-termism if not on anti-trust. We'll see, but seeing as the Obama administration didn't do much I wouldn't be surprised if Hillary doesn't either. ..."
"... They ignored the housing bubble, don't seem to understand the connection between manufacturing and wealth (close your eyes and imagine your life with no manufactured goods, because they are all imported and your economy only produces a few low value-added raw materials such as timber or exotic animals) then you will see that allowing the US to deindustrialize was a really, world-historic mistake. ..."
"... Trump_vs_deep_state will outlive Trump and the people's faith in economists will only be restored after the next financial collapse if all of the financial sector is liquidated, all the universities and think tanks go bankrupt and the know-nothing free traders disappear from our public discourse. ..."
Donald Trump has promised to make deregulation one of the focal points of his presidency. If Trump is elected, the trend
toward rising market concentration and all of the problems that come with it are likely to continue.
We'll hear the usual arguments about ineffective government and the magic of markets to justify ignoring the problem.
If Clinton is elected, it's unlikely that her administration would be active enough in antitrust enforcement for my taste.
But at least she acknowledges that something needs to be done about this growing problem, and any movement toward more aggressive
enforcement of antitrust regulation would be more than welcome.
"We'll hear the usual arguments about ineffective government" which has been amply demonstrated during the last 7 years by negligible
enforcement of anti-trust laws.
Once again we have a stark 'choice' in this election...one party who won't enforce existing laws and another who will just
get rid of them. Like flipping a coin: heads, the predator class wins; tails, we lose.
Vote third party to register your disgust and to open the process to people who don't just represent the predator class.
"Vote third party to register your disgust..." and waste the opportunity, at least in a few states, to affect the national
outcome (in many states the outcome is not in doubt, so, thanks to our stupid electoral college system, millions of voters could
equally well stay home, vote third party, or write in their dog).
Thomas Frank: "I was pleased to learn, for example, that this year's Democratic platform includes strong language on antitrust
enforcement, and that Hillary Clinton has hinted she intends to take the matter up as president. Hooray! Taking on too-powerful
corporations would be healthy, I thought when I first learned that, and also enormously popular. But then it dawned on me:
antitrust enforcement is largely up to the president and his picked advisers. If Democrats really think it is so damned important,
why has Clinton's old boss Barack Obama done so very, very little with it?"
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/10/07/some-clintons-pledges-sound-great-until-you-remember-whos-president
One party who won't enforce existing laws and another who will just get rid of them...a distinction without a difference.
Who do you prefer to have guarding the chicken house...a fox or a coyote? Sane people would say, 'neither.'
Yes and Clinton supporters attacked Sanders over this during the primaries.
Josh Mason thinks a Clinton administration may push on corporate short-termism if not on anti-trust. We'll see, but seeing
as the Obama administration didn't do much I wouldn't be surprised if Hillary doesn't either.
"At Vox,* Rachelle Sampson has a piece on corporate short-termism. Supports my sense that this is an area where there may be
space to move left in a Clinton administration."
Economists have said for thirty years that free trade will benefit the US. Increasingly the country looks like a poor non-industrialized
third world country. Why should anyone trust US economists?
They ignored the housing bubble, don't seem to understand the connection between manufacturing and wealth (close your eyes
and imagine your life with no manufactured goods, because they are all imported and your economy only produces a few low value-added
raw materials such as timber or exotic animals) then you will see that allowing the US to deindustrialize was a really, world-historic
mistake.
Trust in experts is what has transformed the US from a world leader in 1969 with the moon landing to a country with no high
speed rail, no modern infrastructure, incapable of producing a computer or ipad or ship.
Trump_vs_deep_state will outlive Trump and the people's faith in economists will only be restored after the next financial
collapse if all of the financial sector is liquidated, all the universities and think tanks go bankrupt and the know-nothing free
traders disappear from our public discourse.
An interesting article on John McCain. I disagree with the contention that McCain hid knowledge that many American POWs were left
behind (undoubtedly some voluntarily choose to remain behind but not hundreds ). However, the article touched on some ideas that
rang true:
Today when we consider the major countries of the world we see that in many cases the official leaders are also the leaders
in actuality: Vladimir Putin calls the shots in Russia, Xi Jinping and his top Politburo colleagues do the same in China, and
so forth. However, in America and in some other Western countries, this seems to be less and less the case, with top national
figures merely being attractive front-men selected for their popular appeal and their political malleability, a development that
may eventually have dire consequences for the nations they lead. As an extreme example, a drunken Boris Yeltsin freely allowed
the looting of Russia's entire national wealth by the handful of oligarchs who pulled his strings, and the result was the total
impoverishment of the Russian people and a demographic collapse almost unprecedented in modern peacetime history.
An obvious problem with installing puppet rulers is the risk that they will attempt to cut their strings, much like Putin
soon outmaneuvered and exiled his oligarch patron Boris Berezovsky.
One means of minimizing such risk is to select puppets who
are so deeply compromised that they can never break free, knowing that the political self-destruct charges buried deep within
their pasts could easily be triggered if they sought independence. I have sometimes joked with my friends that perhaps the best
career move for an ambitious young politician would be to secretly commit some monstrous crime and then make sure that the hard
evidence of his guilt ended up in the hands of certain powerful people, thereby assuring his rapid political rise.
The gist is that elite need a kill switch on their front men (and women).
Seems to be a series of pieces dealing with Vietnam POWs: the following linked item was interesting and provided a plausible explanation:
that the US failed to pay up agreed on reparations…
Remarkable and shocking. Wheels within wheels – this is the first time I have ever seen McCain's father connected with the infamous
Board of Inquiry which cleared Israel in that state's attack on USS LIBERTY during Israel's seizure of the Golan Heights.
Another stunning article in which the author makes reference to his recent acquisition of what he considers to be a reliably authentic
audio file of POW McCain's broadcasts from captivity. Dynamite stuff. The conclusion regarding aspiring untenured historians is
quite downbeat:
Also remarkable; fantastic. It's hard to believe, and a testament to the boldness of Washington dog-and-pony shows, because this
must have been well-known in insider circles in Washington – anything so damning which was not ruthlessly and professionally suppressed
and simply never allowed to become part of a national discussion would surely have been stumbled upon before now. Land of the
Cover-Up.
If such attempts were really registered, the question is were those attempts to hack US sites from
Russian IP space a false flag operation, probably with participation of Ukrainian secret services?
'
As one commenter noted: "The Ukrainian government have been trying to drive a wedge between the West
and Russia for years for their own political advantage."
If so what is the agenda outside obvious attempt to poison Us-Russian relations just before
Trump assumes presidency. Neocon in Washington are really afraid losing this plush positions.
And there is the whole colony of such "national security professionals" in Washington DC. For
example Robert Kagan can't do anything useful outside his favorite Russophobic agenda and would be an
unemployed along with his wife, who brought us Ukrainian disaster.
Notable quotes:
"... President Obama issued a terse statement seeming to blame Russia for the hack of the Democratic National Committee emails. "These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government," he wrote. ..."
"... The problem with this story is that, like the Iraq-WMD mess, it takes place in the middle of a highly politicized environment during which the motives of all the relevant actors are suspect. Nothing quite adds up. ..."
"... Now we have this sanctions story, which presents a new conundrum. It appears that a large segment of the press is biting hard on the core allegations of electoral interference emanating from the Obama administration. ..."
"... Did the Russians do it? Very possibly, in which case it should be reported to the max. But the press right now is flying blind. ..."
"... Maybe the Russians did hack the DNC, but the WikiLeaks material actually came from someone else? There is even a published report to that effect, with a former British ambassador as a source, not that it's any more believable than anything else here. ..."
"... We ought to have learned from the Judith Miller episode. Not only do governments lie, they won't hesitate to burn news agencies. In a desperate moment, they'll use any sucker they can find to get a point across. ..."
"... The Joint Analysis Report from the FBI contains an appendix that lists hundreds of IP addresses that were supposedly "used by Russian civilian and military intelligence services." While some of those IP addresses are from Russia, the majority are from all over the world, which means that the hackers constantly faked their location. ..."
"... "If I was the Chinese and I wanted to make it look like the Russians did it, I would use Russian language within the code, I would use Russian techniques of breaking into the organization," McAfee said, adding that, in the end, "there simply is no way to assign a source for any attack." ..."
"... I have a problem understanding why the powers that be can't understand the widening gap between their on podium statements and the average persons view. Are they hoping to brainwash, or really believe it, or just leaving a video record for posterity that might sway historical interpretation of the current time? ..."
"... A little OT, but how many people realize that Israel (less than half the population of the former Palestine) has taken complete control of ALL water and has decreed that 3% of that water may be directed to the Palestinians! ..."
"... It's been said that on average Americans are like mushrooms – "Keep 'em in the dark and feed 'em shit!" ..."
"... And THAT, from what I've read in OPEN literature (obviously) about what is known by our cyber threat intel community, read on tech sites, and seen on the outstanding documentary program CyberWar about the Eastern European hacking community, is a OUTRIGHT BLATANT LIE. ..."
"... NOTE that he may actually believe that because that is what he may have been TOLD, just as Bush was told there were WMDs in Iraq, but as I've pointed out, the clumsy errors allowing the malware to be so very EASILY traced back to "supposedly" Russia are beyond belief for any state-sponsored outfit, especially a Russian effort. ..."
"... Note that the user info for TWO BILLION Yahoo email accounts was stolen and they left no traces which then led the FBI to conclude that it must have been "state sponsored." ..."
"... We are left with two basic options. Either they are simply stupid or their is a larger agenda at hand. I don't believe they are stupid. They have been setting fires all around this election for months, none of them effective by themselves, but ALL reinforcing the general notion that Trump is unfit and illegitimate. ..."
"... I do not believe this is just random panic and hyperbole. They are "building" something. ..."
"... This is what is must have been like being a Soviet Citizen in 1989 or so. The official media was openly laughed at because its lies were so preposterous. ..."
"... Sadly, the JAR, as the Joint Analysis Report is called, does little to end the debate. Instead of providing smoking guns that the Russian government was behind specific hacks, it largely restates previous private-sector claims without providing any support for their validity. Even worse, it provides an effective bait and switch by promising newly declassified intelligence into Russian hackers' "tradecraft and techniques" and instead delivering generic methods carried out by just about all state-sponsored hacking groups." ..."
"... WORSE than "delivering generic methods carried out by just about all state-sponsored hacking groups." It should have said "by just about anyone using 'in the wild' malware tools." ..."
"... The Russians probably have a lot of information about USG employees, contractors, etc, via hacking, recording, etc than Wikileaks. But, as a general rule, intelligence agencies do not dump it into the public domain because you don't want a potential adversary know what you know about him lest he investigate and close off the means of obtaining that information. The leaks came from elsewhere. ..."
"... Smells like a "false flag" operation, like the USA/NATO Operation Gladio in Europe. ..."
"... McCain and the War Hawks have had it out for Russia for a long time, and the Neo-cons have been closing in on the borders of Russia for some time. What will be interesting is when Trump meets with the CIA/NSA et al. for intel briefings on the alleged hacking. Hopefully, Trump will bring along VP Pence, Mad Dog and the other Marine generals (appointees) for advice. I suspect that the "false flag" nature of the hacking excuse will be evident and revealed as the pretext for the Neo-con anti-Russia agenda moving forward. ..."
"... McCain is the real thug, and an interferer in foreign elections (Kiev) and seems to have no real scruples. ..."
"... After Victoria Nuland brags about the USA spending $5 billion to overthrow the elected Ukraine government, how these Russia-phobes have any credibility is beyond me. Just shows that the consolidation of the media into a few main propaganda outlets under Bill Clinton (who also brought the Neo-cons into foreign policy dominance) has reached its logical apex. The Swamp is indeed a stinking, Corrupt miasma. ..."
"... Russia a country of 170 million surrounded by NATO military bases and 800 million people in the EU and USA is the threat? The US alone spends 12 times as much on its military annually than Russia. It's not Russia invading and overthrowing secular governments in the Muslim world. ..."
"... If I remember correctly the CIA claimed their intelligence sources came from unspecified 'allies'. It seems rather crucial to establish who these allies actually are. If it were Germany that would be one thing, however it is more than likely to be the Ukraine. ..."
"... So if Obama had actually produced evidence that the Russians had hacked Hilary's illegal, unprotected email setup in her Chapaqua basement/closet how would that change the ***content*** of the emails? It wouldn't. ..."
"... Obama is failing to convince the world that Russia is a bunch of whistle blowers on his corrupt regime. All of the emails detailing corruption and fraud are true (unchallenged), however Obama wants to suggest they were obtained illegally from an illegal email server? That is Obama's bullshit defense for the corrupt behavior? ..."
Is there any evidence those expelled are "intelligence operatives"? Any hard evidence Russia was
behind the Hillary hacks? Any credible evidence that Putin himself is to blame?
The answers are No, No, and No. Yet, once again the American press is again asked to co-sign a
dubious intelligence assessment.
In an extraordinary development Thursday, the Obama administration announced a series of sanctions
against Russia. Thirty-five Russian nationals will be expelled from the country. President
Obama issued a terse statement seeming to blame Russia for the hack of the Democratic National
Committee emails. "These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by
the highest levels of the Russian government," he wrote.
The problem with this story is that, like the Iraq-WMD mess, it takes place in the middle
of a highly politicized environment during which the motives of all the relevant actors are suspect.
Nothing quite adds up.
If the American security agencies had smoking-gun evidence that the Russians had an organized
campaign to derail the U.S. presidential election and deliver the White House to Trump, then expelling
a few dozen diplomats after the election seems like an oddly weak and ill-timed response. Voices
in both parties are saying this now.
Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham
noted the "small price" Russia paid for its "brazen attack." The Democratic National Committee,
meanwhile, said Thursday that taken alone, the Obama response is "
insufficient " as a response to "attacks on the United States by a foreign power."
The "small price" is an eyebrow-raiser.
Adding to the problem is that in the last months of the campaign, and also in the time since
the election, we've seen an epidemic of factually loose, clearly politically motivated reporting
about Russia. Democrat-leaning pundits have been unnervingly quick to use phrases like "Russia
hacked the election."
This has led to widespread confusion among news audiences over whether the Russians hacked
the DNC emails (a story that has at least been backed by some evidence, even if it
hasn't always been great evidence ), or whether Russians hacked vote tallies in critical states
(a far more outlandish tale backed by
no credible evidence ).
As noted in The Intercept and other outlets, an Economist/YouGov poll conducted this month
shows that 50 percent of all Clinton voters believe the Russians hacked vote tallies.
And reports by some Democrat-friendly reporters – like Kurt Eichenwald, who has birthed some
real head-scratchers this year, including what he admitted was a
baseless claim that Trump spent time in an institution in 1990 – have attempted to argue that
Trump surrogates may have been liaising with the Russians because they either visited Russia
or appeared on the RT network. Similar reporting about Russian scheming has been based entirely
on unnamed security sources.
Now we have this sanctions story, which presents a new conundrum. It appears that a large
segment of the press is biting hard on the core allegations of electoral interference emanating
from the Obama administration.
Did the Russians do it? Very possibly, in which case it should be reported to the max.
But the press right now is flying blind.
Maybe the Russians did hack the DNC, but the WikiLeaks material actually came from someone
else? There is even a
published report to that effect, with a former British ambassador as a source, not that it's
any more believable than anything else here.
We just don't know, which is the problem.
We ought to have learned from the Judith Miller episode. Not only do governments lie, they
won't hesitate to burn news agencies. In a desperate moment, they'll use any sucker they can find
to get a point across.
The Joint Analysis Report from the FBI contains an appendix that lists hundreds of IP addresses
that were supposedly "used by Russian civilian and military intelligence services." While some
of those IP addresses are from Russia, the majority are from all over the world, which means that
the hackers constantly faked their location.
McAfee argues that the report is a "fallacy," explaining that hackers can fake their location,
their language, and any markers that could lead back to them. Any hacker who had the skills to
hack into the DNC would also be able to hide their tracks, he said
"If I was the Chinese and I wanted to make it look like the Russians did it, I would use
Russian language within the code, I would use Russian techniques of breaking into the organization,"
McAfee said, adding that, in the end, "there simply is no way to assign a source for any attack."
Question of Patriotism
It's not patriotic to accept accusations as facts, given US history of lies, deceit, meddling,
and wars.
The gullibility and ignorance of the typical media lapdog is appalling, and whores like McCain
and Graham will use them shamelessly to promote their twisted, warmongering agenda. The same old
story, over and over again.
I have a problem understanding why the powers that be can't understand the widening gap between
their on podium statements and the average persons view. Are they hoping to brainwash, or really
believe it, or just leaving a video record for posterity that might sway historical interpretation
of the current time?
Net control very likely in Europe soon with public administration of the web/content. Might at
least help reduce the unemployment rate. Looked over the 2016 Bilderberg attendees too. MSM attendees
interesting vs political bias they exhibit.
Whoever thinks there aren't people behind the scenes with a plan is naive and woe betide anyone
upsetting that plan.
Unemployment rate read last refuge from the official economy. Not the alt. web that takes away
motivation, it is a pressure valve for people who find the official direction nothing short of
insulting. The majority of social media users won't be distracted.
Noticed zh on Italy for you if you had not picked it up
A little OT, but how many people realize that Israel (less than half the population of the
former Palestine) has taken complete control of ALL water and has decreed that 3% of that water
may be directed to the Palestinians!
Over ten million get running water for 12 hrs a week, while in Israel (borders move
every day as the world says nothing) there are no water restrictions zero!
So, while Palestinians
struggle to live in hot barren desert conditions (food and medicine is also denied children die
of treatable cancer often as medication is blocked), a 5 min drive away millions of gallons are
used to create a green, lush paradise for the Jewish Masters!
Did you know US laws were changed in 1968 to allow "Dual Citizens" to be elected and appointed
to government positions and today many of the top posts are citizens of Israel and America WTF?
Trump needs to make a daily dose of Red Pills the law
Oops the 10M fig is a bit high but it's at least double the Jewish population, yet they get 97%
this is slow moving genocide yet it's never even acknowledged
Syria is about gas pipelines. Corporations want to profit from the gas pipeline through the region
and wr the people are supposed to send our children to war over it and pay taxes tpbsupport the
effort. Rissia wants pipelines from their country under the Black sea and Irans pipelines to the
north. The US is supporting Qatar pipeline and LNG from our own shores to the EU.
"These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels
of the Russian government," (Obama) wrote.
And THAT, from what I've read in OPEN literature (obviously) about what is known by our
cyber threat intel community, read on tech sites, and seen on the outstanding documentary program
CyberWar about the Eastern European hacking community, is a OUTRIGHT BLATANT LIE.
NOTE that he may actually believe that because that is what he may have been TOLD, just as
Bush was told there were WMDs in Iraq, but as I've pointed out, the clumsy errors allowing the
malware to be so very EASILY traced back to "supposedly" Russia are beyond belief for any state-sponsored
outfit, especially a Russian effort.
Note that the user info for TWO BILLION Yahoo email accounts was stolen and they left no
traces which then led the FBI to conclude that it must have been "state sponsored."
We are left with two basic options. Either they are simply stupid or their is a larger agenda
at hand. I don't believe they are stupid. They have been setting fires all around this election
for months, none of them effective by themselves, but ALL reinforcing the general notion that
Trump is unfit and illegitimate.
I do not believe this is just random panic and hyperbole. They are "building" something.
Well, it is an established and accepted fact that Richard Nixon was a very intelligent guy. None
of Nixon's detractors ever claimed he was stupid, and Nixon won reelection easily.
Tricky Dick was just a tad "honesty challenged", and so is Obama. They were/are both neo-keynesians,
both took their sweet time ending stupid wars started by their predecessors even after it was
clear the wars were pointless.
Then again, I doubt Obozo is as smart as Nixon. Soros is clearly the puppeteer controlling
what Obama does. Soros is now freaking out that his fascist agenda has been exposed.
This is what is must have been like being a Soviet Citizen in 1989 or so. The official media
was openly laughed at because its lies were so preposterous.
"While security companies in the private sector have said for months the hacking campaign was
the work of people working for the Russian government, anonymous people tied to the leaks have
claimed they are lone wolves. Many independent security experts said there was little way to know
the true origins of the attacks.
Sadly, the JAR, as the Joint Analysis Report is called, does little to end the debate.
Instead of providing smoking guns that the Russian government was behind specific hacks, it largely
restates previous private-sector claims without providing any support for their validity. Even
worse, it provides an effective bait and switch by promising newly declassified intelligence into
Russian hackers' "tradecraft and techniques" and instead delivering generic methods carried out
by just about all state-sponsored hacking groups."
WORSE than "delivering generic methods carried out by just about all state-sponsored hacking
groups." It should have said "by just about anyone using 'in the wild' malware tools."
2015 Bilderberg. Looking down the attendees and subjects covered. Interesting some of the main
anti-Brexit groups had representatives there, suggests HC picked for 2016 US election, Cyber-security
and etc. Look at the key topics. How they all helped define 2016. So many current intertwined
themes.
The Russians probably have a lot of information about USG employees, contractors, etc,
via hacking, recording, etc than Wikileaks. But, as a general rule, intelligence agencies do not
dump it into the public domain because you don't want a potential adversary know what you know
about him lest he investigate and close off the means of obtaining that information. The leaks
came from elsewhere.
Smells like a "false flag" operation, like the USA/NATO Operation Gladio in Europe.
McCain and the War Hawks have had it out for Russia for a long time, and the Neo-cons have
been closing in on the borders of Russia for some time. What will be interesting is when Trump
meets with the CIA/NSA et al. for intel briefings on the alleged hacking. Hopefully, Trump will
bring along VP Pence, Mad Dog and the other Marine generals (appointees) for advice. I suspect
that the "false flag" nature of the hacking excuse will be evident and revealed as the pretext
for the Neo-con anti-Russia agenda moving forward.
The CIA it is now widely believed was part of the Deep State behind the JFK assassination when
JFK took an independent view, so Trump will need the USA Marines on his side. McCain is the
real thug, and an interferer in foreign elections (Kiev) and seems to have no real scruples.
After Victoria Nuland brags about the USA spending $5 billion to overthrow the elected
Ukraine government, how these Russia-phobes have any credibility is beyond me. Just shows that
the consolidation of the media into a few main propaganda outlets under Bill Clinton (who also
brought the Neo-cons into foreign policy dominance) has reached its logical apex. The Swamp is
indeed a stinking, Corrupt miasma.
Perhaps the Clinton Foundation and nascent Obama foundation feel it in their financial
interests to nurture the misma.
Cha-ching, cha-ching. Money to be made in demonizing Russia.
"The CIA it is now widely believed was part of the Deep State behind the JFK assassination when
JFK took an independent view "
All the circumstantial evidence pointed to Oswald. No one has ever proven otherwise, in over
50 years.
After 50 years of being propagandized by conspiracy book writers, it isn't surprising that
anything is widely believed at this point. The former curator of the 6th Floor Museum, Gary Mack,
believed there was a conspiracy, but over time came to realize that it was Oswald, alone.
When liberal Rolling Stone questions the Obama/DNC propaganda, you know for certain that they
have lost even their base supporters (the ones that can still think). The BS has just gotten too
stupid.
Why is the WSJ strongly supporting Obama here but also saying he waited way to long to make this
move? I don't always agree with them nor do I with you.
Ok I haven't read the comments but would only say that when Vladimir Putin the once leader
of the KGB becomes a preacher and starts criticizing the West for abandoning its Christian roots,
it's moral dignity, that for me doesn't just stink, it raises red flags all over the place. I
think Trump and some of the rest of u r being set up here-like lambs to the slaughter. Mish your
naďveté here surprises me!
Russia a country of 170 million surrounded by NATO military bases and 800 million people
in the EU and USA is the threat? The US alone spends 12 times as much on its military annually
than Russia. It's not Russia invading and overthrowing secular governments in the Muslim world.
If I remember correctly the CIA claimed their intelligence sources came from unspecified 'allies'.
It seems rather crucial to establish who these allies actually are. If it were Germany that would
be one thing, however it is more than likely to be the Ukraine.
The Ukranian government have been trying to drive a wedge between the West and Russia for years
for their own political advantage. If I was Trump then when I took office I would want an extremely
thorough investigation into the activities of the CIA by a third reliable party.
Excerpt: But was it really Russian meddling? After all, how does one prove not only intent
but source in a world of cyberespionage, where planting false flag clues and other Indicators
of Compromise (IOCs) meant to frame a specific entity, is as important as the actual hack.
Robert M. Lee, CEO and founder of cybersecurity company Dragos, which specializes in threats
facing critical infrastructure, also noted that the IOCs included "commodity malware," or hacking
tools that are widely available for purchase.
He said:
1. No they did not penetrate the grid.
2. The IOCs contained *commodity malware* – can't attribute based off that alone.
So if Obama had actually produced evidence that the Russians had hacked Hilary's illegal,
unprotected email setup in her Chapaqua basement/closet how would that change the ***content***
of the emails? It wouldn't.
Obama is failing to convince the world that Russia is a bunch of whistle blowers on his
corrupt regime. All of the emails detailing corruption and fraud are true (unchallenged), however
Obama wants to suggest they were obtained illegally from an illegal email server? That is Obama's
bullshit defense for the corrupt behavior?
And as "proportional retaliation" for this Russian whistle blowing, Obozo is evicting 35 entertainment
staff from the Russian embassy summer camp?
I doubt Hollywood or San Francisco has the integrity to admit they backed the wrong loser when
they supported Obozo but they should think about their own credibility after January 20th. Anyone
who is still backing Obozo is just too stupid to tie their own shoes much less vote
If such attempts were really registered, the question is were those attempts to hack US sites from
Russian IP space a false flag operation, probably with participation of Ukrainian secret services?
'
As one commenter noted: "The Ukrainian government have been trying to drive a wedge between the West
and Russia for years for their own political advantage."
If so what is the agenda outside obvious attempt to poison Us-Russian relations just before
Trump assumes presidency. Neocon in Washington are really afraid losing this plush positions.
And there is the whole colony of such "national security professionals" in Washington DC. For
example Robert Kagan can't do anything useful outside his favorite Russophobic agenda and would be an
unemployed along with his wife, who brought us Ukrainian disaster.
Notable quotes:
"... President Obama issued a terse statement seeming to blame Russia for the hack of the Democratic National Committee emails. "These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government," he wrote. ..."
"... The problem with this story is that, like the Iraq-WMD mess, it takes place in the middle of a highly politicized environment during which the motives of all the relevant actors are suspect. Nothing quite adds up. ..."
"... Now we have this sanctions story, which presents a new conundrum. It appears that a large segment of the press is biting hard on the core allegations of electoral interference emanating from the Obama administration. ..."
"... Did the Russians do it? Very possibly, in which case it should be reported to the max. But the press right now is flying blind. ..."
"... Maybe the Russians did hack the DNC, but the WikiLeaks material actually came from someone else? There is even a published report to that effect, with a former British ambassador as a source, not that it's any more believable than anything else here. ..."
"... We ought to have learned from the Judith Miller episode. Not only do governments lie, they won't hesitate to burn news agencies. In a desperate moment, they'll use any sucker they can find to get a point across. ..."
"... The Joint Analysis Report from the FBI contains an appendix that lists hundreds of IP addresses that were supposedly "used by Russian civilian and military intelligence services." While some of those IP addresses are from Russia, the majority are from all over the world, which means that the hackers constantly faked their location. ..."
"... "If I was the Chinese and I wanted to make it look like the Russians did it, I would use Russian language within the code, I would use Russian techniques of breaking into the organization," McAfee said, adding that, in the end, "there simply is no way to assign a source for any attack." ..."
"... I have a problem understanding why the powers that be can't understand the widening gap between their on podium statements and the average persons view. Are they hoping to brainwash, or really believe it, or just leaving a video record for posterity that might sway historical interpretation of the current time? ..."
"... A little OT, but how many people realize that Israel (less than half the population of the former Palestine) has taken complete control of ALL water and has decreed that 3% of that water may be directed to the Palestinians! ..."
"... It's been said that on average Americans are like mushrooms – "Keep 'em in the dark and feed 'em shit!" ..."
"... And THAT, from what I've read in OPEN literature (obviously) about what is known by our cyber threat intel community, read on tech sites, and seen on the outstanding documentary program CyberWar about the Eastern European hacking community, is a OUTRIGHT BLATANT LIE. ..."
"... NOTE that he may actually believe that because that is what he may have been TOLD, just as Bush was told there were WMDs in Iraq, but as I've pointed out, the clumsy errors allowing the malware to be so very EASILY traced back to "supposedly" Russia are beyond belief for any state-sponsored outfit, especially a Russian effort. ..."
"... Note that the user info for TWO BILLION Yahoo email accounts was stolen and they left no traces which then led the FBI to conclude that it must have been "state sponsored." ..."
"... We are left with two basic options. Either they are simply stupid or their is a larger agenda at hand. I don't believe they are stupid. They have been setting fires all around this election for months, none of them effective by themselves, but ALL reinforcing the general notion that Trump is unfit and illegitimate. ..."
"... I do not believe this is just random panic and hyperbole. They are "building" something. ..."
"... This is what is must have been like being a Soviet Citizen in 1989 or so. The official media was openly laughed at because its lies were so preposterous. ..."
"... Sadly, the JAR, as the Joint Analysis Report is called, does little to end the debate. Instead of providing smoking guns that the Russian government was behind specific hacks, it largely restates previous private-sector claims without providing any support for their validity. Even worse, it provides an effective bait and switch by promising newly declassified intelligence into Russian hackers' "tradecraft and techniques" and instead delivering generic methods carried out by just about all state-sponsored hacking groups." ..."
"... WORSE than "delivering generic methods carried out by just about all state-sponsored hacking groups." It should have said "by just about anyone using 'in the wild' malware tools." ..."
"... The Russians probably have a lot of information about USG employees, contractors, etc, via hacking, recording, etc than Wikileaks. But, as a general rule, intelligence agencies do not dump it into the public domain because you don't want a potential adversary know what you know about him lest he investigate and close off the means of obtaining that information. The leaks came from elsewhere. ..."
"... Smells like a "false flag" operation, like the USA/NATO Operation Gladio in Europe. ..."
"... McCain and the War Hawks have had it out for Russia for a long time, and the Neo-cons have been closing in on the borders of Russia for some time. What will be interesting is when Trump meets with the CIA/NSA et al. for intel briefings on the alleged hacking. Hopefully, Trump will bring along VP Pence, Mad Dog and the other Marine generals (appointees) for advice. I suspect that the "false flag" nature of the hacking excuse will be evident and revealed as the pretext for the Neo-con anti-Russia agenda moving forward. ..."
"... McCain is the real thug, and an interferer in foreign elections (Kiev) and seems to have no real scruples. ..."
"... After Victoria Nuland brags about the USA spending $5 billion to overthrow the elected Ukraine government, how these Russia-phobes have any credibility is beyond me. Just shows that the consolidation of the media into a few main propaganda outlets under Bill Clinton (who also brought the Neo-cons into foreign policy dominance) has reached its logical apex. The Swamp is indeed a stinking, Corrupt miasma. ..."
"... Russia a country of 170 million surrounded by NATO military bases and 800 million people in the EU and USA is the threat? The US alone spends 12 times as much on its military annually than Russia. It's not Russia invading and overthrowing secular governments in the Muslim world. ..."
"... If I remember correctly the CIA claimed their intelligence sources came from unspecified 'allies'. It seems rather crucial to establish who these allies actually are. If it were Germany that would be one thing, however it is more than likely to be the Ukraine. ..."
"... So if Obama had actually produced evidence that the Russians had hacked Hilary's illegal, unprotected email setup in her Chapaqua basement/closet how would that change the ***content*** of the emails? It wouldn't. ..."
"... Obama is failing to convince the world that Russia is a bunch of whistle blowers on his corrupt regime. All of the emails detailing corruption and fraud are true (unchallenged), however Obama wants to suggest they were obtained illegally from an illegal email server? That is Obama's bullshit defense for the corrupt behavior? ..."
Is there any evidence those expelled are "intelligence operatives"? Any hard evidence Russia was
behind the Hillary hacks? Any credible evidence that Putin himself is to blame?
The answers are No, No, and No. Yet, once again the American press is again asked to co-sign a
dubious intelligence assessment.
In an extraordinary development Thursday, the Obama administration announced a series of sanctions
against Russia. Thirty-five Russian nationals will be expelled from the country. President
Obama issued a terse statement seeming to blame Russia for the hack of the Democratic National
Committee emails. "These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by
the highest levels of the Russian government," he wrote.
The problem with this story is that, like the Iraq-WMD mess, it takes place in the middle
of a highly politicized environment during which the motives of all the relevant actors are suspect.
Nothing quite adds up.
If the American security agencies had smoking-gun evidence that the Russians had an organized
campaign to derail the U.S. presidential election and deliver the White House to Trump, then expelling
a few dozen diplomats after the election seems like an oddly weak and ill-timed response. Voices
in both parties are saying this now.
Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham
noted the "small price" Russia paid for its "brazen attack." The Democratic National Committee,
meanwhile, said Thursday that taken alone, the Obama response is "
insufficient " as a response to "attacks on the United States by a foreign power."
The "small price" is an eyebrow-raiser.
Adding to the problem is that in the last months of the campaign, and also in the time since
the election, we've seen an epidemic of factually loose, clearly politically motivated reporting
about Russia. Democrat-leaning pundits have been unnervingly quick to use phrases like "Russia
hacked the election."
This has led to widespread confusion among news audiences over whether the Russians hacked
the DNC emails (a story that has at least been backed by some evidence, even if it
hasn't always been great evidence ), or whether Russians hacked vote tallies in critical states
(a far more outlandish tale backed by
no credible evidence ).
As noted in The Intercept and other outlets, an Economist/YouGov poll conducted this month
shows that 50 percent of all Clinton voters believe the Russians hacked vote tallies.
And reports by some Democrat-friendly reporters – like Kurt Eichenwald, who has birthed some
real head-scratchers this year, including what he admitted was a
baseless claim that Trump spent time in an institution in 1990 – have attempted to argue that
Trump surrogates may have been liaising with the Russians because they either visited Russia
or appeared on the RT network. Similar reporting about Russian scheming has been based entirely
on unnamed security sources.
Now we have this sanctions story, which presents a new conundrum. It appears that a large
segment of the press is biting hard on the core allegations of electoral interference emanating
from the Obama administration.
Did the Russians do it? Very possibly, in which case it should be reported to the max.
But the press right now is flying blind.
Maybe the Russians did hack the DNC, but the WikiLeaks material actually came from someone
else? There is even a
published report to that effect, with a former British ambassador as a source, not that it's
any more believable than anything else here.
We just don't know, which is the problem.
We ought to have learned from the Judith Miller episode. Not only do governments lie, they
won't hesitate to burn news agencies. In a desperate moment, they'll use any sucker they can find
to get a point across.
The Joint Analysis Report from the FBI contains an appendix that lists hundreds of IP addresses
that were supposedly "used by Russian civilian and military intelligence services." While some
of those IP addresses are from Russia, the majority are from all over the world, which means that
the hackers constantly faked their location.
McAfee argues that the report is a "fallacy," explaining that hackers can fake their location,
their language, and any markers that could lead back to them. Any hacker who had the skills to
hack into the DNC would also be able to hide their tracks, he said
"If I was the Chinese and I wanted to make it look like the Russians did it, I would use
Russian language within the code, I would use Russian techniques of breaking into the organization,"
McAfee said, adding that, in the end, "there simply is no way to assign a source for any attack."
Question of Patriotism
It's not patriotic to accept accusations as facts, given US history of lies, deceit, meddling,
and wars.
The gullibility and ignorance of the typical media lapdog is appalling, and whores like McCain
and Graham will use them shamelessly to promote their twisted, warmongering agenda. The same old
story, over and over again.
I have a problem understanding why the powers that be can't understand the widening gap between
their on podium statements and the average persons view. Are they hoping to brainwash, or really
believe it, or just leaving a video record for posterity that might sway historical interpretation
of the current time?
Net control very likely in Europe soon with public administration of the web/content. Might at
least help reduce the unemployment rate. Looked over the 2016 Bilderberg attendees too. MSM attendees
interesting vs political bias they exhibit.
Whoever thinks there aren't people behind the scenes with a plan is naive and woe betide anyone
upsetting that plan.
Unemployment rate read last refuge from the official economy. Not the alt. web that takes away
motivation, it is a pressure valve for people who find the official direction nothing short of
insulting. The majority of social media users won't be distracted.
Noticed zh on Italy for you if you had not picked it up
A little OT, but how many people realize that Israel (less than half the population of the
former Palestine) has taken complete control of ALL water and has decreed that 3% of that water
may be directed to the Palestinians!
Over ten million get running water for 12 hrs a week, while in Israel (borders move
every day as the world says nothing) there are no water restrictions zero!
So, while Palestinians
struggle to live in hot barren desert conditions (food and medicine is also denied children die
of treatable cancer often as medication is blocked), a 5 min drive away millions of gallons are
used to create a green, lush paradise for the Jewish Masters!
Did you know US laws were changed in 1968 to allow "Dual Citizens" to be elected and appointed
to government positions and today many of the top posts are citizens of Israel and America WTF?
Trump needs to make a daily dose of Red Pills the law
Oops the 10M fig is a bit high but it's at least double the Jewish population, yet they get 97%
this is slow moving genocide yet it's never even acknowledged
Syria is about gas pipelines. Corporations want to profit from the gas pipeline through the region
and wr the people are supposed to send our children to war over it and pay taxes tpbsupport the
effort. Rissia wants pipelines from their country under the Black sea and Irans pipelines to the
north. The US is supporting Qatar pipeline and LNG from our own shores to the EU.
"These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels
of the Russian government," (Obama) wrote.
And THAT, from what I've read in OPEN literature (obviously) about what is known by our
cyber threat intel community, read on tech sites, and seen on the outstanding documentary program
CyberWar about the Eastern European hacking community, is a OUTRIGHT BLATANT LIE.
NOTE that he may actually believe that because that is what he may have been TOLD, just as
Bush was told there were WMDs in Iraq, but as I've pointed out, the clumsy errors allowing the
malware to be so very EASILY traced back to "supposedly" Russia are beyond belief for any state-sponsored
outfit, especially a Russian effort.
Note that the user info for TWO BILLION Yahoo email accounts was stolen and they left no
traces which then led the FBI to conclude that it must have been "state sponsored."
We are left with two basic options. Either they are simply stupid or their is a larger agenda
at hand. I don't believe they are stupid. They have been setting fires all around this election
for months, none of them effective by themselves, but ALL reinforcing the general notion that
Trump is unfit and illegitimate.
I do not believe this is just random panic and hyperbole. They are "building" something.
Well, it is an established and accepted fact that Richard Nixon was a very intelligent guy. None
of Nixon's detractors ever claimed he was stupid, and Nixon won reelection easily.
Tricky Dick was just a tad "honesty challenged", and so is Obama. They were/are both neo-keynesians,
both took their sweet time ending stupid wars started by their predecessors even after it was
clear the wars were pointless.
Then again, I doubt Obozo is as smart as Nixon. Soros is clearly the puppeteer controlling
what Obama does. Soros is now freaking out that his fascist agenda has been exposed.
This is what is must have been like being a Soviet Citizen in 1989 or so. The official media
was openly laughed at because its lies were so preposterous.
"While security companies in the private sector have said for months the hacking campaign was
the work of people working for the Russian government, anonymous people tied to the leaks have
claimed they are lone wolves. Many independent security experts said there was little way to know
the true origins of the attacks.
Sadly, the JAR, as the Joint Analysis Report is called, does little to end the debate.
Instead of providing smoking guns that the Russian government was behind specific hacks, it largely
restates previous private-sector claims without providing any support for their validity. Even
worse, it provides an effective bait and switch by promising newly declassified intelligence into
Russian hackers' "tradecraft and techniques" and instead delivering generic methods carried out
by just about all state-sponsored hacking groups."
WORSE than "delivering generic methods carried out by just about all state-sponsored hacking
groups." It should have said "by just about anyone using 'in the wild' malware tools."
2015 Bilderberg. Looking down the attendees and subjects covered. Interesting some of the main
anti-Brexit groups had representatives there, suggests HC picked for 2016 US election, Cyber-security
and etc. Look at the key topics. How they all helped define 2016. So many current intertwined
themes.
The Russians probably have a lot of information about USG employees, contractors, etc,
via hacking, recording, etc than Wikileaks. But, as a general rule, intelligence agencies do not
dump it into the public domain because you don't want a potential adversary know what you know
about him lest he investigate and close off the means of obtaining that information. The leaks
came from elsewhere.
Smells like a "false flag" operation, like the USA/NATO Operation Gladio in Europe.
McCain and the War Hawks have had it out for Russia for a long time, and the Neo-cons have
been closing in on the borders of Russia for some time. What will be interesting is when Trump
meets with the CIA/NSA et al. for intel briefings on the alleged hacking. Hopefully, Trump will
bring along VP Pence, Mad Dog and the other Marine generals (appointees) for advice. I suspect
that the "false flag" nature of the hacking excuse will be evident and revealed as the pretext
for the Neo-con anti-Russia agenda moving forward.
The CIA it is now widely believed was part of the Deep State behind the JFK assassination when
JFK took an independent view, so Trump will need the USA Marines on his side. McCain is the
real thug, and an interferer in foreign elections (Kiev) and seems to have no real scruples.
After Victoria Nuland brags about the USA spending $5 billion to overthrow the elected
Ukraine government, how these Russia-phobes have any credibility is beyond me. Just shows that
the consolidation of the media into a few main propaganda outlets under Bill Clinton (who also
brought the Neo-cons into foreign policy dominance) has reached its logical apex. The Swamp is
indeed a stinking, Corrupt miasma.
Perhaps the Clinton Foundation and nascent Obama foundation feel it in their financial
interests to nurture the misma.
Cha-ching, cha-ching. Money to be made in demonizing Russia.
"The CIA it is now widely believed was part of the Deep State behind the JFK assassination when
JFK took an independent view "
All the circumstantial evidence pointed to Oswald. No one has ever proven otherwise, in over
50 years.
After 50 years of being propagandized by conspiracy book writers, it isn't surprising that
anything is widely believed at this point. The former curator of the 6th Floor Museum, Gary Mack,
believed there was a conspiracy, but over time came to realize that it was Oswald, alone.
When liberal Rolling Stone questions the Obama/DNC propaganda, you know for certain that they
have lost even their base supporters (the ones that can still think). The BS has just gotten too
stupid.
Why is the WSJ strongly supporting Obama here but also saying he waited way to long to make this
move? I don't always agree with them nor do I with you.
Ok I haven't read the comments but would only say that when Vladimir Putin the once leader
of the KGB becomes a preacher and starts criticizing the West for abandoning its Christian roots,
it's moral dignity, that for me doesn't just stink, it raises red flags all over the place. I
think Trump and some of the rest of u r being set up here-like lambs to the slaughter. Mish your
naďveté here surprises me!
Russia a country of 170 million surrounded by NATO military bases and 800 million people
in the EU and USA is the threat? The US alone spends 12 times as much on its military annually
than Russia. It's not Russia invading and overthrowing secular governments in the Muslim world.
If I remember correctly the CIA claimed their intelligence sources came from unspecified 'allies'.
It seems rather crucial to establish who these allies actually are. If it were Germany that would
be one thing, however it is more than likely to be the Ukraine.
The Ukranian government have been trying to drive a wedge between the West and Russia for years
for their own political advantage. If I was Trump then when I took office I would want an extremely
thorough investigation into the activities of the CIA by a third reliable party.
Excerpt: But was it really Russian meddling? After all, how does one prove not only intent
but source in a world of cyberespionage, where planting false flag clues and other Indicators
of Compromise (IOCs) meant to frame a specific entity, is as important as the actual hack.
Robert M. Lee, CEO and founder of cybersecurity company Dragos, which specializes in threats
facing critical infrastructure, also noted that the IOCs included "commodity malware," or hacking
tools that are widely available for purchase.
He said:
1. No they did not penetrate the grid.
2. The IOCs contained *commodity malware* – can't attribute based off that alone.
So if Obama had actually produced evidence that the Russians had hacked Hilary's illegal,
unprotected email setup in her Chapaqua basement/closet how would that change the ***content***
of the emails? It wouldn't.
Obama is failing to convince the world that Russia is a bunch of whistle blowers on his
corrupt regime. All of the emails detailing corruption and fraud are true (unchallenged), however
Obama wants to suggest they were obtained illegally from an illegal email server? That is Obama's
bullshit defense for the corrupt behavior?
And as "proportional retaliation" for this Russian whistle blowing, Obozo is evicting 35 entertainment
staff from the Russian embassy summer camp?
I doubt Hollywood or San Francisco has the integrity to admit they backed the wrong loser when
they supported Obozo but they should think about their own credibility after January 20th. Anyone
who is still backing Obozo is just too stupid to tie their own shoes much less vote
"... White House/StateDep press release on sanctions is ORWELLIAN: corruption within the DNC/Clinton's
manager Podesta undermines the democracy, not its exposure as claimed (let alone the fact that there
is still no evidence that the Russian government has anything to do with the hacks). ..."
"... The press release also talks about how the security of the USA and its interests were compromised,
so Obama in effects says that national security interest of the country is to have corrupt political
system, which is insane. ..."
"... You may be sure that the Americans will commit all the stupidities they can think of, plus
some that are beyond imagination." ~Charles de Gaulle. ..."
"... United States are not united I guess. Guess, that Merkel is the next on the list... ..."
"... Obama will be making to many paid speeches to be doing anything of the sort. And frankly I
suspect he be silent, because Trump is soon going to know where all the bodies were buried under Obama,
just like Obama knows where all the bodies are buried from the Bush area. ..."
On Friday, the Kremlin responded to the moves, including the expulsion of 35 suspected intelligence
operatives and the closing of two Russian facilities in the US, with a shrug. Putin, it seems,
is willing simply to wait until Trump moves into the Oval Office. Trump's tweet suggested he is
too.
But such provocative words could not distract the media and public from another domestic concern
for Trump – the growing perception that his predecessor has acted to
his disadvantage .
"The sanctions were clearly an attempt by the Obama administration to throw a wrench into –
or [to] box in – the next administration's relationship with Russia," said Boris Zilberman, a
Russia expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
"Putin, in part, saw through that and sidestepped it by playing good cop to [Russian foreign
minister Sergey] Lavrov and the [state] Duma, who were calling for a reciprocal response."
vgnych 8h ago
All Obama does with his clumsy movements is just attempting to blame Russians for Democrat's
loss of elections. Also he is obscuring peaceful power transition while at it.
All what Trump needs to do is to just call the looser a loser a move on.
White House/StateDep press release on sanctions is ORWELLIAN: corruption within the DNC/Clinton's
manager Podesta undermines the democracy, not its exposure as claimed (let alone the fact that
there is still no evidence that the Russian government has anything to do with the hacks).
The press release also talks about how the security of the USA and its interests were
compromised, so Obama in effects says that national security interest of the country is to
have corrupt political system, which is insane.
This argumentation means that even if Russian government has done the hacking, it was a
good deed, there is nothing to sanction Russia for even in such case.
'Fraid both Putin and Trump are a lot smarter than Barry. Putin's move in not retaliating and
inviting US kids to the Kremlin New Year party was an astute judo throw. And Barry is sitting
on his backside wondering how it happened.
Reply
.. Probably Obama's "exceptionalism" made him so clumsy on international affairs stage..
.. just recently.. snubbed by Fidel.. he refused to meet him..
.. humiliated by Raul Castro, he declined to hug president of USA..
.. Duterte described.. hmm.. his provenance..
.. Bibi told him off in most vulgar way.. several times..
.. and now this..
..pathetic..
P.S. You may be sure that the Americans will commit all the stupidities they can think of, plus
some that are beyond imagination." ~Charles de Gaulle.
Obama knew about Russian involvement in July. Look it up. He ignored it because it was seen
as having no effect, and they didn't want the appearance of the government favoring Hillary,
because they thought she was in line for a landslide victory.
After the election, "RUSSIA" has become a fund raising buzz word for Democrats.
The election should have taught our "betters" that people do think for themselves, albeit occasionally.
I've been frustrated enough with Obama since he pardoned Bush and Cheney... now he wants
to sacrifice whatever shreds of reputation the Democratic party has... to be a white knight
for miserable candidate, warmonger, and incompetent Hillary Clinton.
He figured the republicans would love him when he took Bush et al. off the hook and (clumsily)
implemented Romney's health plan. They didn't.
Now he thinks leftists will love him because he's going "all in" on Hillary didn't lose
this all on her own. They won't.
The guy doesn't have a fraction of the insight he credits himself with.
Simple solution, publish the commenter geolocation and ban proxy, clean the comment section
from putinbots. Putin like ASBO's must stop to do more harm against democracy.
Reply Share
Yes, the so-called liberals are losing all over. They blame everyone but themselves. The problem
is that they have been found out. They were not real liberals at all. They had little bits
of liberal policies like "Gay rights" and "bathrooms for Transgenders" and, of course, "Anti-Anti-Semitism
Laws" and a few other bits and pieces with which they constructed a sort of camoflage coat,
but the core of their policies was Corpratism. Prize exhibits: Tony Blair and Barak Obama.
The extreme Left and extreme Right ("Populists") are benefiting by being able to say what
they mean, loud and apparently clear. People are not, on the whole, politically sophisticated
but they do realise that they have been lied to for a very long time and they are fed up. That
is why "Populists are making such a showing in the polls. People don't believe in the centre's
"Liberalism" any more.
You just know these people, like Johnny boy, who are pointing fingers at Russia are doing so
based upon long laid plans to bind up Trump from building a healthy relationship with Russia
which would put an end to terrorism and likely all of these petty little wars that are tearing
the world to pieces. These people want war because division keeps them in power and war makes
them lots of money. I hope that Trump and Putin can work together and build a trust and foundation
as allies in that together we can stamp out terrorism and stabilize the worlds conflicts. Everything
these people do in the next 20 days has a single agenda and that is to cause instability and
roadblocks for Trump and his team. Hope is just around the corner people so let's help usher
it in.
First... let's see some actual evidence/proof. Oh, that's right, none has been offered up.
Second... everyone is upset that the DNC turd was exposed, but no one upset about the existence
of the turd. ?
Obama acting like a petulant child that has to leave the game and go home now, so he's kicking
the game board and forcing everyone else to clean up his mess. Irresponsible.
Hundred times repeated lie will become the truth... that's the US officials policy for decades
now. In 8 years, they did nothing, so they are trying to do "something" in the last minute.
For someone, who's using his own brain is all of this just laughable.
United States are not united I guess. Guess, that Merkel is the next on the list...
Hopefully now this will enable senate and congress republicans to prevent these crazy ideas
of russian appeasement take hold and prusue a hardline against Russia, Hamas, Iran and Cuba.
They'll probably do that. Business as usual. To pursue a hard line against Isis enablers like
Saudi and Qatar, now that would be a surprise.
Reply Share
Obama will be making to many paid speeches to be doing anything of the sort. And frankly
I suspect he be silent, because Trump is soon going to know where all the bodies were buried
under Obama, just like Obama knows where all the bodies are buried from the Bush area.
You are a wishful thinker, if you think Obama is going anything after he leaves office.
The foreign power did the American people a favor when it exposed the corruption within the
Democratic Party; something the establishment media was apparently unable or unwilling to do.
Rather than sanctioning Putin, Americans should be thanking him!
Seems a no brainer, reverse Obama's ridiculous posturing gesture. As if the US doesn't have
a long track record of interfering in the affairs of other countries.
Personally I think the US should do as it wishes but it's extremely hypocritical to act shocked
when the same meddling is returned by others. Obama is acting foolishly as if the final weeks
of his presidency have any genuine traction on future events.
Firstly, this coup is not against a standing President, but targets an elected president set to
take office on January 20, 2017. Secondly, the attempted coup has polarized leading sectors of the
political and economic elite. It even exposes a seamy rivalry within the intelligence-security apparatus,
with the political appointees heading the CIA involved in the coup and the FBI supporting the incoming
President Trump and the constitutional process. Thirdly, the evolving coup is a sequential process,
which will build momentum and then escalate very rapidly.
Notable quotes:
"... In the past few years Latin America has experienced several examples of the seizure of Presidential power by unconstitutional means, which may help illustrate some of the current moves underway in Washington. These are especially interesting since the Obama Administration served as the 'midwife' for these 'regime changes'. ..."
"... Firstly, this coup is not against a standing President, but targets an elected president set to take office on January 20, 2017. Secondly, the attempted coup has polarized leading sectors of the political and economic elite. It even exposes a seamy rivalry within the intelligence-security apparatus, with the political appointees heading the CIA involved in the coup and the FBI supporting the incoming President Trump and the constitutional process. Thirdly, the evolving coup is a sequential process, which will build momentum and then escalate very rapidly. ..."
"... In the wake of her resounding defeat, Candidate Stein usurped authority from the national Green Party and rapidly raked in $8 million dollars in donations from Democratic Party operatives and George Soros-linked NGO's (many times the amount raised during her Presidential campaign). This dodgy money financed her demand for ballot recounts in selective states in order to challenge Trump's victory. The recounts failed to change the outcome, but it was a 'first shot across the bow', to stop Trump. It became a propaganda focus for the neo-conservative mass media to mobilize several thousand Clintonite and liberal activists. ..."
"... The 'Big Lie' was repeated and embellished at every opportunity by the print and broadcast media. The 'experts' were trotted out voicing vitriolic accusations, but they never presented any facts and documentation of a 'rigged election'. Everyday, every hour, the 'Russian Plot' was breathlessly described in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Financial Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, BBC, NPR and their overseas followers in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Oceana and Africa. The great American Empire looked increasingly like a 'banana republic'. ..."
"... The coup intensified as Trump-Putin became synonymous for "betrayal" and "election fraud". As this approached a crescendo of media hysteria, President Barack Obama stepped in and called on the CIA to seize domestic control of the investigation of Russian manipulation of the US election – essentially accusing President-Elect Trump of conspiring with the Russian government. Obama refused to reveal any proof of such a broad plot, citing 'national security'. ..."
"... Obama's last-ditch effort will not change the outcome of the election. Clearly this is designed to poison the diplomatic well and present Trump's incoming administration as dangerous. Trump's promise to improve relations with Russia will face enormous resistance in this frothy, breathless hysteria of Russophobia. ..."
"... Ultimately, President Obama is desperate to secure his legacy, which has consisted of disastrous and criminal imperial wars and military confrontations. He wants to force a continuation of his grotesque policies onto the incoming Trump Administration. ..."
"... Trump's success at thwarting the current 'Russian ploy' requires his forming counter alliances with Washington plutocrats, many of whom will oppose any diplomatic agreement with Putin. Trump's appointment of hardline economic plutocrats who are deeply committed to shredding social programs (public education, Medicare, Social Security) could ignite the anger of his mass supporters by savaging their jobs, health care, pensions and their children's future. ..."
"... If Trump defeats the avalanching media, CIA and elite-instigated coup (which interestingly lack support from the military and judiciary), he will have to thank, not only his generals and billionaire-buddies, but also his downwardly mobile mass supporters (Hillary Clinton's detested 'basket of deplorables'). ..."
"... He embarked on a major series of 'victory tours' around the country to thank his supporters among the military, workers, women and small business people and call on them to defend his election to the presidency. He will have to fulfill some of his promises to the masses or face 'the real fire', not from Clintonite shills and war-mongers, but from the very people who voted for him. ..."
"... It is true there is breaking news today but you certainly won't hear it from the mainstream media. While everyone was enjoying the holidays president Obama signed the NDAA for fiscal year 2017 into law which includes the "Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act" and in this video Dan Dicks of Press For Truth shows how this new law is tantamount to "The Records Department of the Ministry of Truth" in George Orwell's book 1984. ..."
"... What we have to do is prove that there is an organization that includes George Soros, but is not limited to him personally–you know, a kosher nostra! ..."
"... I would dearly like to know what Moscow and Tel Aviv know about 9-11. I suspect they both know more than almost anyone else. ..."
"... Those dastardly Russkies have informed and enlightened the American public for long enough! This shall not stand! ..."
"... What I have against Obama is his regime-change war in Syria, his State Department enabled coup in Ukraine, his support of Saudi war/genocide against Yemen, his destruction of Libya, his demonization of Putin, and his bringing us to a status near war in our relations with Russia. ..."
"... Obama has been providing weapons, training, air support and propaganda for Terrorists via their affiliates in Syria, and now directly. This is a felony, if not treason. ..."
A coup has been underway to prevent President-Elect Donald Trump from
taking office and fulfilling his campaign promise to improve US-Russia relations. This 'palace coup'
is not a secret conspiracy, but an open, loud attack on the election.
The coup involves important US elites, who openly intervene on many levels from the street to
the current President, from sectors of the intelligence community, billionaire financiers out to
the more marginal 'leftist' shills of the Democratic Party.
The build-up for the coup is gaining momentum, threatening to eliminate normal constitutional
and democratic constraints. This essay describes the brazen, overt coup and the public operatives,
mostly members of the outgoing Obama regime.
The second section describes the Trump's cabinet appointments and the political measures that
the President-Elect has adopted to counter the coup. We conclude with an evaluation of the potential
political consequences of the attempted coup and Trump's moves to defend his electoral victory and
legitimacy.
The Coup as 'Process'
In the past few years Latin America has experienced several examples of the seizure of Presidential
power by unconstitutional means, which may help illustrate some of the current moves underway in
Washington. These are especially interesting since the Obama Administration served as the 'midwife'
for these 'regime changes'.
Brazil, Paraguay, Honduras and Haiti experienced coups, in which the elected Presidents were ousted
through a series of political interventions orchestrated by economic elites and their political allies
in Congress and the Judiciary.
President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton were deeply involved in these operations as part
of their established foreign policy of 'regime change'. Indeed, the 'success' of the Latin American
coups has encouraged sectors of the US elite to attempt to prevent President-elect Trump from taking
office in January.
While similarities abound, the on-going coup against Trump in the United States occurs within
a very different power configuration of proponents and antagonists.
Firstly, this coup is not against a standing President, but targets an elected president set to
take office on January 20, 2017. Secondly, the attempted coup has polarized leading sectors of the
political and economic elite. It even exposes a seamy rivalry within the intelligence-security apparatus,
with the political appointees heading the CIA involved in the coup and the FBI supporting the incoming
President Trump and the constitutional process. Thirdly, the evolving coup is a sequential process,
which will build momentum and then escalate very rapidly.
Coup-makers depend on the 'Big Lie' as their point of departure – accusing President-Elect Trump
of
being a Kremlin stooge, attributing his electoral victory to Russian intervention against his
Democratic Party opponent, Hillary Clinton and
blatant voter fraud in which the Republican Party
prevented minority voters from casting their ballot for Secretary Clinton.
The first operatives to emerge in the early stages of the coup included the marginal-left Green
Party Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein, who won less than 1% of the vote, as well as the mass
media.
In the wake of her resounding defeat, Candidate Stein usurped authority from the national Green
Party and rapidly raked in $8 million dollars in donations from Democratic Party operatives and George
Soros-linked NGO's (many times the amount raised during her Presidential campaign). This dodgy money
financed her demand for ballot recounts in selective states in order to challenge Trump's victory.
The recounts failed to change the outcome, but it was a 'first shot across the bow', to stop Trump.
It became a propaganda focus for the neo-conservative mass media to mobilize several thousand Clintonite
and liberal activists.
The purpose was to undermine the legitimacy of Trump's electoral victory. However, Jill Stein's
$8 million dollar shilling for Secretary Clinton paled before the oncoming avalanche of mass media
and NGO propaganda against Trump. Their main claim was that anonymous 'Russian hackers' and not the
American voters had decided the US Presidential election of November 2016!
The 'Big Lie' was repeated and embellished at every opportunity by the print and broadcast media.
The 'experts' were trotted out voicing vitriolic accusations, but they never presented any facts
and documentation of a 'rigged election'. Everyday, every hour, the 'Russian Plot' was breathlessly
described in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Financial Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, BBC,
NPR and their overseas followers in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Oceana and Africa. The great American
Empire looked increasingly like a 'banana republic'.
Like the Billionaire Soros-funded 'Color Revolutions', from Ukraine, to Georgia and Yugoslavia,
the 'Rainbow Revolt' against Trump, featured grass-roots NGO activists and 'serious leftists', like
Jill Stein.
The more polished political operatives from the upscale media used their editorial pages to question
Trump's illegitimacy. This established the ground work for even higher level political intervention:
The current US Administration, including President Obama, members of the US Congress from both parties,
and current and former heads of the CIA jumped into the fray. As the vote recount ploy flopped, they
all decided that 'Vladimir Putin swung the US election!' It wasn't just lunatic neo-conservative
warmongers who sought to oust Trump and impose Hillary Clinton on the American people, liberals and
social democrats were screaming 'Russian Plot!' They demanded a formal Congressional investigation
of the 'Russian cyber hacking' of Hillary's personal e-mails (where she plotted to cheat her rival
'Bernie Sanders' in the primaries). They demanded even tighter economic sanctions against Russia
and increased military provocations. The outgoing Democratic Senator and Minority Leader 'Harry'
Reid wildly accused the FBI of acting as 'Russian agents' and hinted at a purge.
ORDER IT NOW
The coup intensified as Trump-Putin became synonymous for "betrayal" and "election fraud". As this approached a crescendo of media hysteria, President Barack Obama stepped in and called
on the CIA to seize domestic control of the investigation of Russian manipulation of the US election
– essentially accusing President-Elect Trump of conspiring with the Russian government. Obama refused
to reveal any proof of such a broad plot, citing 'national security'.
President Obama solemnly declared the Trump-Putin conspiracy was a grave threat to American democracy
and Western security and freedom. He darkly promised to retaliate against Russia, " at a time and
place of our choosing".
Obama also pledged to send more US troops to the Middle East and increase arms shipments to the
jihadi terrorists in Syria, as well as the Gulf State and Saudi 'allies'. Coincidentally, the Syrian
Government and their Russian allies were poised to drive the US-backed terrorists out of Aleppo –
and defeat Obama's campaign of 'regime change' in Syria.
Trump Strikes Back: The Wall Street-Military Alliance
Meanwhile, President-Elect Donald Trump did not crumple under the Clintonite-coup in progress.
He prepared a diverse counter-attack to defend his election, relying on elite allies and mass supporters.
Trump denounced the political elements in the CIA, pointing out their previous role in manufacturing
the justifications (he used the term 'lies') for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He appointed three
retired generals to key Defense and Security positions – indicating a power struggle between the
highly politicized CIA and the military. Active and retired members of the US Armed Forces have been
key Trump supporters. He announced that he would bring his own security teams and integrate them
with the Presidential Secret Service during his administration.
Although Clinton-Obama had the major mass media and a sector of the financial elite who supported
the coup, Trump countered by appointing several key Wall Street and corporate billionaires into his
cabinet who had their own allied business associations.
One propaganda line for the coup, which relied on certain Zionist organizations and leaders (ADL,
George Soros et al), was the bizarre claim that Trump and his supporters were 'anti-Semites'. This
was were countered by Trump's appointment of powerful Wall Street Zionists like Steven Mnuchin as
Treasury Secretary and Gary Cohn (both of Goldman Sachs) to head the National Economic Council. Faced
with the Obama-CIA plot to paint Trump as a Russian agent for Vladimir Putin, the President-Elect
named security hardliners including past and present military leaders and FBI officials, to key security
and intelligence positions.
The Coup: Can it succeed?
In early December, President Obama issued an order for the CIA to 'complete its investigation'
on the Russian plot and manipulation of the US Presidential election in six weeks – right up to the
very day of Trump's inauguration on January 20, 2017! A concoction of pre-cooked 'findings' is already
oozing out of secret clandestine CIA archives with the President's approval. Obama's last-ditch effort
will not change the outcome of the election. Clearly this is designed to poison the diplomatic well
and present Trump's incoming administration as dangerous. Trump's promise to improve relations with
Russia will face enormous resistance in this frothy, breathless hysteria of Russophobia.
Ultimately, President Obama is desperate to secure his legacy, which has consisted of disastrous
and criminal imperial wars and military confrontations. He wants to force a continuation of his grotesque
policies onto the incoming Trump Administration. Will Trump succumb? The legitimacy of his election
and his freedom to make policy will depend on overcoming the Clinton-Obama-neo-con-leftist coup with
his own bloc of US military and the powerful Wall Street allies, as well as his mass support among
the 'angry' American electorate. Trump's success at thwarting the current 'Russian ploy' requires
his forming counter alliances with Washington plutocrats, many of whom will oppose any diplomatic
agreement with Putin. Trump's appointment of hardline economic plutocrats who are deeply committed
to shredding social programs (public education, Medicare, Social Security) could ignite the anger
of his mass supporters by savaging their jobs, health care, pensions and their children's future.
If Trump defeats the avalanching media, CIA and elite-instigated coup (which interestingly lack
support from the military and judiciary), he will have to thank, not only his generals and billionaire-buddies,
but also his downwardly mobile mass supporters (Hillary Clinton's detested 'basket of deplorables').
He embarked on a major series of 'victory tours' around the country to thank his supporters among
the military, workers, women and small business people and call on them to defend his election to
the presidency. He will have to fulfill some of his promises to the masses or face 'the real fire',
not from Clintonite shills and war-mongers, but from the very people who voted for him.
A very insightful analysis. The golpistas will not be able to prevent Trump from taking power.
But will they make the country ungovernable to the extent of bringing down not just Trump but the
whole system?
If the coup forces President Trump to abandon his America First campaign promises by appointing globalists
eager to invade-the-world/invite-the-world, then the coup is a success and the Trump campaign was a
failure.
Ultimately, President Obama is desperate to secure his legacy, which has consisted of disastrous
and criminal imperial wars and military confrontations
The current wave of icon polishing we constantly are being asked to indulge seems a bit over the
top. Why is our president more devoted to legacy than Jackie Kennedy was to the care and maintenance
of the Camelot image?
Have we ever seen as fine a behind-the-curtain, Wizard of Oz act, as performed by Barrack Obama for
the past eight years? Do we know anything at all about this man aside from the fact that he loves his
wife and kids?
Replies:
@Skeptikal I expect Obama loves his kids.
Great analysis from Petras.
So many people have reacted with "first=level" thinking only as Trump's appointments have been announced:
"This guy is terrible!" Yes, but . . . look at the appointment in the "swamp" context, in the "veiled
threat" context. Harpers mag actually put a picture on its cover of Trump behind bars. That is one of
those veiled invitations like Henry II's "Will no one rid me of this man?"
I think Trump understands quite well what he is up against.
I agree completely with Petras that the compromises he must make to take office on Jan. 20 may in the
end compromise his agenda (whatever it actually is). I would expect Trump to play things by ear and
tack as necessary, as he senses changes in the wind. According to the precepts of triage, his no. 1
challenge/task now is to be sworn in on Jan. 20. All else is secondary.
Once he is in the White House he will have incomparably greater powers to flush out those who are trying
to sideline his presidency now. The latter must know this. He will be in charge of the whole Executive
Branch bureaucracy (which includes the Justice Department). ,
@animalogic Oh, yes, Robert -- To read the words "Obama" & "legacy" in the same sentence is to LOL.
What a god-awful president.
An 8 year adventure in failure, stupidity & ruthlessness.
The Trump-coup business: what a (near treasonous) disgrace. The "Russians done it" meme: "let's show
the world just how stupid, embarrassing & plain MEAN we can be". A trillion words -- & not one shred
of supporting evidence.... ?! And I thought that the old "Obama was not born in the US" trope was shameless
stupidity --
If there is any bright side here, I hope it has convinced EVERY American conservative that the neo-con's
& their identical economic twin the neoliberals are treasonous dreck who would flush the US down the
drain if they thought it to their political advantage.
Excellent analysis! Mr. Petras, you delved right into the crux of the matter of the balance of forces
in the U.S.A. at this very unusual political moment. I have only a very minor correction to make, and
it is only a language-related one: you don't really want to say that Trump's "illegitimacy" is being
questioned, but rather his legitimacy, right?
Another thing, but this time of a perhaps idiosyncratic nature: I am a teeny-weeny bit more optimistic
than you about the events to come in your country. (Too bad I cannot say this about my own poor country
Brazil, which is going faster and faster down the drain.)
@John Gruskos If the coup forces President Trump to abandon his America First campaign promises
by appointing globalists eager to invade-the-world/invite-the-world, then the coup is a success and
the Trump campaign was a failure.
The recounts failed to change the outcome, but it was a 'first shot across the bow', to stop Trump.
It became a propaganda focus for the neo-conservative mass media to mobilize several thousand Clintonite
and liberal activists.
On the contrary, this first salvo from the anti-American forces resulted in more friendly fire hits
on the attackers than it did on its intended targets. Result: a strengthening of Trump's position. It
also serve to sap morale and energy from the anti-American forces, helping dissipate their momentum.
The purpose was to undermine the legitimacy of Trump's electoral victory.
And it backfired, literally strengthening it (Trump gained votes), while undermining the anti-American
forces' legitimacy.
The purpose was to undermine the legitimacy of Trump's electoral victory. However, Jill Stein's
$8 million dollar shilling for Secretary Clinton paled before the oncoming avalanche of mass media
and NGO propaganda against Trump. Their main claim was that anonymous 'Russian hackers' and not the
American voters had decided the US Presidential election of November 2016!
This was simply a continuation of Big Media's Full Capacity Hate Machine (thanks to Whis for the
term; this is the only time I will acknowledge the debt) from the campaign. It has been running since
before Trump clinched the nomination. It will be no more effective now, than it was then. Americans
are fed up with Big Media propaganda in sufficient numbers to openly thwart its authors' will.
The big lie, as you refer to it, hasn't even produced the alleged "report" in question. The CIA supposedly
in lockstep against Trump (I don't buy that), and they can't find one hack willing to leak this "devastating"
"report"? It must suck. Probably a nothing burger.
This is all much ado about nothing. Big Media HATES Trump. They want to make sure Trump and the American
people don't forget that they HATE Trump. It's a broken strategy, doomed to failure (it will only cause
Trump to dig in and go about his agenda without their help; it certainly will not break him, or endear
him to their demands). Trump's voters all voted for him in spite of it, so it won't win them
over, either. Personally, I think Trump's low water mark of support is well behind him. Obviously subject
to future events.
Trump denounced the political elements in the CIA, pointing out their previous role in manufacturing
the justifications (he used the term 'lies') for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
CIA mouthpieces have been pointing and sputtering in response that it was not they who cooked the
books, but parallel neoconservative chickenhawk groups in the Bush administration. The trouble with
this is that the CIA did precious little to counter the chickenhawks' narrative, instead choosing to
assent by way of silence.
Personally, I sort of doubt this imagined comity between Hussein and the CIA Ever seen Zero Dark
Thirty ? How much harder did Hussein make the CIA's job? I doubt it was Kathryn Bigelow who chose
to go out of her way to make that movie hostile to Hussein; it's far more likely that this is simply
where the material led her. I similarly doubt that the intelligence community difficulties owed to Hussein
were in any way limited to the hunt for UBL.
The trouble with this is that the CIA did precious little to counter the chickenhawks' narrative,
instead choosing to assent by way of silence.
That's not entirely accurate. CIA people like Michael Scheuer and Valery Plame were trying to undermine
the neocon narrative about Iraq and WMD, not bolster it. At that time, the neocons controlled the ranking
civilian positions at the Pentagon, but did not yet fully control the CIA This changed after Bush's
re-election, when Porter Goss was made DCI to purge all the remaining 'realists' and 'arabists' from
the agency. Now the situation in the opposite: the CIA is totally neocon, while the Pentagon is a bit
less so.
So even if what Trump is saying is technically inaccurate, it's still true at a deeper level: it was
the neocons who lied to us about WMD, just as it is now the neocons who are lying to us about
Russia.
I think Obama's right-in-the-open [a week or so ago] authorization for the sale and shipping [?]
of "man pads" to various Syrian rebel and terrorist forces is insane, and may be contrary to law.
Yes, I have no trouble calling it TREASON. It is certainly felony support for terrorists.
Man pads are shoulder held missile launchers that can destroy high and fast aircraft .such as commercial
passenger airlines [to be blamed on Russia?] and also any nations' fighter/bombers .such as Russia's
Air Force planes operating in Syria still–that were invited to do so by the elected government of Syria
which is still under attack by US proxy [terrorist] forces. Syria is a member in good standing of the
UN.
Given this I think we are all in very great danger today–now– AND I think we have to press hard
to reverse the insane Obama move vis a vis these man pads.
This truly is an emergency.
TULSI GABBARD'S BILL MAY BE TOO LITTLE TOO LATE. It may even be just window dressing or PR. [That
could be the reason Peter Welch has agreed to co-sponsor it.... The man never does anything that is
real and substantive and decent or courageous.]
IN ANY EVENT both Gabbard and Welch via this bill have now acknowledged
that Obama and the US are supporting terrorists in Syria [and elsewhere]–a felony under existing laws.
–Quite possibly an impeachable offense.
"Misprision" of treason or misprision of a felony IS ITSELF A FELONY.
If Gabbard and Welch KNOW that the man-pad authorization and other US support
for terrorists in Syria and elsewhere is presently occurring, I THINK THEY NEED TO FORCE PROSECUTION
UNDER EXISTING LAWS NOW, rather than just sponsoring a sure-to-fail NEW LAW that will prevent such things
in the far fuzzy future–or NOT.
Respectfully,
Dennis Morrisseau
US Army Officer [Vietnam era] ANTI-WAR
–FOR TRUMP–
Lieutenant Morrisseau's Rebellion
FIRECONGRESS.org
Second Vermont Republic
POB 177, W. Pawlet, VT USA 05775 [email protected]
802 645 9727
Yes finally someone has the guts to say it: Obama is a traitor and terrorist.
Said by a true antiwar hero, Lt. Morrisseau who said no to Vietnam, while in uniform, as an officer
in the U.S. Army. The New York Times and CBS Evening News picked it up back in the day. It was big,
and this is bigger, same war though, just a different name: Its called World War III, smouldering as
we speak.
Again I do urge Unz to contact Denny and get this letter up as a feature. Note that it has been sent
to Rep. Gabbard and Rep. Welch. so it is a vital, historic action, may it be recognized.
BTW Rep. Tulsi Gabbards Bill is the Stop Arming Terrorist Act.
I think Obama's right-in-the-open [a week or so ago] authorization for the sale and shipping [?] of
"man pads" to various Syrian rebel and terrorist forces is insane, and may be contrary to law.
Yes, I have no trouble calling it TREASON. It is certainly felony support for terrorists.
Man pads are shoulder held missile launchers that can destroy high and fast aircraft ....such as commercial
passenger airlines [to be blamed on Russia?] and also any nations' fighter/bombers....such as Russia's
Air Force planes operating in Syria still--that were invited to do so by the elected government of Syria
which is still under attack by US proxy [terrorist] forces. Syria is a member in good standing of the
UN.
Given this......I think we are all in very great danger today--now-- AND I think we have to press hard
to reverse the insane Obama move vis a vis these man pads.
This truly is an emergency.
TULSI GABBARD'S BILL MAY BE TOO LITTLE TOO LATE. It may even be just window dressing or PR. [That could
be the reason Peter Welch has agreed to co-sponsor it.... The man never does anything that is real and
substantive and decent or courageous.]
IN ANY EVENT both Gabbard and Welch via this bill have now acknowledged
that Obama and the US are supporting terrorists in Syria [and elsewhere]--a felony under existing laws.
--Quite possibly an impeachable offense.
"Misprision" of treason or misprision of a felony IS ITSELF A FELONY.
If Gabbard and Welch KNOW that the man-pad authorization and other US support
for terrorists in Syria and elsewhere is presently occurring, I THINK THEY NEED TO FORCE PROSECUTION
UNDER EXISTING LAWS NOW, rather than just sponsoring a sure-to-fail NEW LAW that will prevent such things
in the far fuzzy future--or NOT.
Respectfully,
Dennis Morrisseau
US Army Officer [Vietnam era] ANTI-WAR
--FOR TRUMP--
Lieutenant Morrisseau's Rebellion
FIRECONGRESS.org
Second Vermont Republic
POB 177, W. Pawlet, VT USA 05775 [email protected]
802 645 9727
The Man Pad Letter is brilliant!
It needs to be published as a feature story.
Yes finally someone has the guts to say it: Obama is a traitor and terrorist.
Said by a true antiwar hero, Lt. Morrisseau who said no to Vietnam, while in uniform, as an officer
in the U.S. Army. The New York Times and CBS Evening News picked it up back in the day. It was big,
and this is bigger, same war though, just a different name: Its called World War III, smouldering as
we speak.
Again I do urge Unz to contact Denny and get this letter up as a feature. Note that it has been sent
to Rep. Gabbard and Rep. Welch. so it is a vital, historic action, may it be recognized.
BTW Rep. Tulsi Gabbards Bill is the Stop Arming Terrorist Act.
• Replies:
@El Dato Hmmm.... If I were GRU I would offer Uber services to the recipients of the manpads all
the way up to West European airports (not that this is needed, just take a truck, any truck).
What will the EU say if smouldering wreckage happens?
Especially as Obama won't be there to set the overall tone.
This is a good article but there's been a sudden shift. Incredibly, Obama has finally gotten some
balls in his dealings with Israel. And Trump is starting to sound like a neocon!
Maybe Trump is worried enough about a potential coup to dump his 'America First' platform (at least
for now) to shore up vital Jewish support for his teetering inauguration. This ploy will require a lot
of pro-Zionist noise and gesturing. Consequently, Trump is starting to play a familiar political role.
And the Zio-friendly media is holding his feet to the fire.
Has the smell of fear pushed Trump over the edge and into the lap of the Zionist establishment? It's
beginning to look that way.
Or is Trump just being a fox?
Let's face it: nobody can pull out all the stops better than Israel's Fifth Column. They've got the
money, the organization skills, the media leverage, and the raw intellectual moxie to make political
miracles/disasters happen. Trump wants them on his side. So he's is tacitly cutting a last-minute deal
with the Israelis. Trump's Zionized rhetoric (and political appointments) prove it.
This explains the apparent reversal that's now underway. Obama's pushing back while Trump is accommodating.
And, as usual, the Zions are dictating the Narrative.
As Israel Shamir reminds us: there's nothing as liberating to a politician as leaving office. Therefore,
Obama is finally free to do what's right. Trump however is facing no such luxury. And Bibi is more defiant
than ever. This is high drama. And Trump is feeling the heat.
Indeed, outgoing Sec. John Kerry just delivered a major speech where he reiterated strongly US support
for a real 'Two State' solution in Israel/Palestine.
And I thought the Two State Solution was dead.
Didn't you?
Kerry also criticized Israel's ongoing confiscation of the Occupied Territories. It was a brilliant
analysis that Kerry gave without the aid of a teleprompter. Hugely impressive. Even so, Kerry did not
throw Israel under the bus, as claimed. His speech was extremely fair.
This renewed, steadfast American position, coupled with the UNSC's unanimous vote against Israel
(which Obama permitted by not casting the usual US veto) has set the stage for a monumental showdown.
Israel has never been more isolated. But it's Trump–not Obama–that's looking weak in the face of Israeli
pressure.
Indeed, the international Jewish establishment remains uniquely powerful. They may be hated (and
appropriately so) but they get things accomplished in the political arena. Trump understands this all-too-well.
Will Trump–out of fear and necessity–run with the mega-powerful Jews who tried to sabotage his campaign?–Or
will he stay strong with America First and avoid "any more disasterous wars". It's impossible to say.
Trump is speaking out of both sides of his mouth.
I get the feeling that even Trump is unsure of where all this is going. But the situation is fast
approaching critical mass. Something's gotta give. The entire world is fed up with Israel.
Will Trump blink and take the easy road with the Zions?–Or will he summon Putin's independent, nationalistic
spirit and stay the course of 'America First'?
Unfortunately, having scrutinized the Zions in action for decades, I'm fearful that Trump will go
Pure Washington and run with the Israeli-Firsters. This will fortify his shaky political foundation.
I hope that I'm wrong about this but the Zions are brilliantly equipped to play both sides of America's
political divide. No politician is immune to their machinations.
In general, I agree with a good portion of your analysis. A few minor quibbles and
qualifications, though:
Incredibly, Obama has finally gotten some balls in his dealings with Israel.
Not really. Since he's a lame-duck president and the election is over, he's not really risking anything
here. After all, opposition to settlements in the occupied territories has been official US policy for
nearly 50 years, and when has that ever stopped Israel from founding/expanding them? No, this is just
more empty symbolism.
And I thought the Two State Solution was dead.
It's been dead foreever. The One State solution will replace it, and that will really freak out all
the Zios.
They may be hated (and appropriately so) but they get things accomplished in the political arena.
Trump understands this all-too-well.
Oderint dum metuant ("Let them hate, so long as they fear.") - Caligula ,
Trump will go Pure Washington and run with the Israeli-Firsters. This will fortify his shaky political
foundation. I hope that I'm wrong about this but the Zions are brilliantly equipped to play both
sides of America's political divide. No politician is immune to their machinations.
I'm hoping that Trump is running with the neocons just as far as is necessary to pressure congress to
confirm his cabinet appointments and make sure he isn't JFK'd before he gets into office and can set
about putting security in place to protect his own and his family's lives.
For John McBloodstain to vote for a SoS that will make nice with his nemesis; Putin, will require massive
amounts of Zio-pressure. The only way that pressure will come is if the Zio-cons are convinced that
Trump is their man.
Once his cabinet appointments are secured, then perhaps we might see some independence of action. Not
until. At least that is my hope, however naďve.
It isn't just the Zio-cons that want to poke the Russian bear, it's also the MIC. Trump has to navigate
a very dangerous mine field if he's going to end the Endless Wars and return sanity and peace to the
world. He's going to have to wrangle with the devil himself (the Fiend), and outplay him at his own
game. , @map
I wish people would stop making a big deal out of John Kerry's and Barack Obama's recent stance
on Israel. Neither of them are concerned about whatever injustice happened to the Palestinians.
What they are concerned with is Israeli actions discrediting the anti-white, anti-national globalism
program before it has successfully destroyed all of the white nations. That is the real reason why they
want a two-state solution or a right of return. If nationalists can look at the Israeli example as a
model for how to proceed then that will cause a civil war among leftists and discredit the entire left-wing
project.
Trump, therefore, pushing support for Israel's national concerns is not him bending to AIPAC. It is
a shrewd move that forces an internecine conflict between left-wing diaspora Jews and Israeli Jews.
It is a conflict Bibi is willing to have because the pet project of leftism would necessarily result
in Israel either being unlivable or largely extinct for its Jewish population. This NWO being pushed
by the diaspora is not something that will be enjoyed by Israeli Jews.
Consider the problem. The problem is that Palestinians have revanchist claims against Israel. Those
revanchist claims do not go away just because they get their own country or they get a right of return.
Either "solution" actually strengthens the Palestinian claim against Israel and results in a vastly
reduced security stance and quality of life for Israelis. The diaspora left is ok with that because
they want to continue importing revanchist groups into Europe and America to break down white countries.
So, Israel makes a small sacrifice for the greater good of anti-whitism, a deal that most Israelis do
not consider very good for themselves. Trump's support for Israeli nationalism short-circuits this project.
Of course, one could ask: why don't the Israeli Jews just move to America? What's the big deal if Israel
remains in the middle east? The big deal is the kind of jobs and activities available for Israelis to
do. A real nation requires a lot of scut work. Someone has to do the plumbing, unplug the sewers, drive
the nails, throw out the trash. Everyone can't be a doctor, a lawyer or a banker. Tradesmen, technicians,
workers are all required to get a project like Israel off the ground and maintained.
How many of these
Israelis doing scut work in Israel for a greater good want to do the same scut work in America just
to get by? The problem operates in reverse for American Jews. A Jew with an American law degree is of
no use to Israelis outside of the money he brings and whether he can throw out the trash. Diaspora Jews,
therefore, have no reason to try and live and work in Israel.
So, again, we see that Trump's move is a masterstroke. Even his appointment to counter the coup with
Zionists is brilliant, since these Zionists are rich enough to both live anywhere and indulge their
pride in nationalist endeavors. ,
As Israel Shamir reminds us: there's nothing as liberating to a politician as leaving office.
Therefore, Obama is finally free to do what's right . "
THEN WHY DOESN'T HE DO WHAT'S RIGHT? As Seamus Padraig pointed out, the UN abstention is "just more
empty symbolism." Meanwhile... The Christmas Eve attack on the First Amendment The approval of arming terrorists in Syria
The fake news about Russian hacking throwing Killary's election
Aid to terrorists is a felony. Obama should be indicted.
Most of the Western world is much sicker of the head-choppers in charge of our 'human rights'
at the UN (thanks to Obama and the UK) than it is of Israel. It is they, not we, who have funded ISIS
directly.
The real issue at stake is that Presidential control of the system is non existent, and although
Trump understands this and has intimated he is going to deal with it, it is clear his hands will now
be tied by all the traitors that run the US.
You need a Nuremburg type show trial to deal with all the (((usual suspects))) that have usurped
the constitution. (((They))) arrived with the Pilgrim Fathers and established the slave trade buying
slaves from their age old Muslim accomplices, and selling them by auction to the goyim.
(((They))) established absolute influence by having the Fed issue your currency in 1913 and forcing
the US in to three wars: WWI, WWII and Vietnam from which (((they))) made enormous profits.
You have to decide whether you want these (((professional parasitical traitors))) in your country
or not. It is probably too late to just ask them to leave, thus you are faced with the ultimate reality:
are you willing to fight a civil war to free your nation from (((their))) oppression of you?
This is the elephant in the room that none of you will address. All the rest of this subject matter
is just window dressing. Do you wish to remain economic slaves to (((these people))) or do you want
to be free [like the Syrians] and live without (((these traitor's))) usurious, inflationary and dishonest
policies based upon hate of Christ and Christianity?
My guess: the outgoing Obama administration is in a last ditch killing frenzy, to revenge Aleppo
loss!
The Berlin bus blowup, The Russian ambassador in Turkey killed and the Red army's most eminent Alexandrov's
choir send to the bottom of the black sea.
Typical CIA ops to threaten world leaders to comply with the incumbent US elite.
Watch Mike Morell (CIA) threaten world leaders:
• Replies:
@annamaria The prominence of the "perfumed prince" Morell is the most telling indictment of the
so-called "elites" in the US. The arrogant, irresponsible (and untouchable) imbeciles among the real
"deciders" in the US have brought the country down to a sub-civilization status when the US does not
do diplomacy, does not follow international law, and does not keep with even marginal aspects of democracy
home and abroad. The proliferation of the incompetent and opportunists in the highest echelons of the
US government is the consequence of the lack of responsibility on the top. Morell - who has never been
in combat and never demonstrated any intellectual vigor - is a prime example of a sycophantic and poorly
educated opportunist that is endangering the US big time.
Correct me if I am wrong . plain ole citizens can start RICO suits against the likes of Soros.
It seems you may be on to something:
RICO also permits a private individual "damaged in his business or property" by a "racketeer" to
file a civil suit. The plaintiff must prove the existence of an "enterprise". The defendant(s) are
not the enterprise; in other words, the defendant(s) and the enterprise are not one and the same.[3]
There must be one of four specified relationships between the defendant(s) and the enterprise: either
the defendant(s) invested the proceeds of the pattern of racketeering activity into the enterprise
(18 U.S.C. § 1962(a)); or the defendant(s) acquired or maintained an interest in, or control of,
the enterprise through the pattern of racketeering activity (subsection (b)); or the defendant(s)
conducted or participated in the affairs of the enterprise "through" the pattern of racketeering
activity (subsection (c)); or the defendant(s) conspired to do one of the above (subsection (d)).[4]
In essence, the enterprise is either the 'prize,' 'instrument,' 'victim,' or 'perpetrator' of the
racketeers.[5] A civil RICO action can be filed in state or federal court.[6]
In the past few years Latin America has experienced several examples of the seizure of Presidential
power by unconstitutional means Brazil, Paraguay, Honduras and Haiti experienced coups
The US is not at the stage of these countries yet. To compare them to us, politically, is moronic.
In another several generations it likely will be different. But by then there won't be any "need" for
a coup.
If things keep up, the US "electorate" will be majority Third World. Then, these people will
just vote as a bloc for whomever promises them the most gibs me dat. That candidate will of course be
from the oligarchical elite. Trump is likely the last white man (or white man with even marginally white
interests at heart) to be President. Unless things drastically change, demographically.
Yes finally someone has the guts to say it: Obama is a traitor and terrorist.
Said by a true antiwar hero, Lt. Morrisseau who said no to Vietnam, while in uniform, as an officer
in the U.S. Army. The New York Times and CBS Evening News picked it up back in the day. It was big,
and this is bigger, same war though, just a different name: Its called World War III, smouldering as
we speak.
Again I do urge Unz to contact Denny and get this letter up as a feature. Note that it has been sent
to Rep. Gabbard and Rep. Welch. so it is a vital, historic action, may it be recognized.
BTW Rep. Tulsi Gabbards Bill is the Stop Arming Terrorist Act.
Hmmm . If I were GRU I would offer Uber services to the recipients of the manpads all the way up
to West European airports (not that this is needed, just take a truck, any truck).
What will the EU say if smouldering wreckage happens?
Especially as Obama won't be there to set the overall tone.
@Mark Green This is a good article but there's been a sudden shift. Incredibly, Obama has finally
gotten some balls in his dealings with Israel. And Trump is starting to sound like a neocon!
Maybe Trump is worried enough about a potential coup to dump his 'America First' platform (at least
for now) to shore up vital Jewish support for his teetering inauguration. This ploy will require a lot
of pro-Zionist noise and gesturing. Consequently, Trump is starting to play a familiar political role.
And the Zio-friendly media is holding his feet to the fire.
Has the smell of fear pushed Trump over the edge and into the lap of the Zionist establishment? It's
beginning to look that way.
Or is Trump just being a fox?
Let's face it: nobody can pull out all the stops better than Israel's Fifth Column. They've got the
money, the organization skills, the media leverage, and the raw intellectual moxie to make political
miracles/disasters happen. Trump wants them on his side. So he's is tacitly cutting a last-minute deal
with the Israelis. Trump's Zionized rhetoric (and political appointments) prove it.
This explains the apparent reversal that's now underway. Obama's pushing back while Trump is accommodating.
And, as usual, the Zions are dictating the Narrative.
As Israel Shamir reminds us: there's nothing as liberating to a politician as leaving office. Therefore,
Obama is finally free to do what's right. Trump however is facing no such luxury. And Bibi is more defiant
than ever. This is high drama. And Trump is feeling the heat.
Indeed, outgoing Sec. John Kerry just delivered a major speech where he reiterated strongly US support
for a real 'Two State' solution in Israel/Palestine.
And I thought the Two State Solution was dead.
Didn't you?
Kerry also criticized Israel's ongoing confiscation of the Occupied Territories. It was a brilliant
analysis that Kerry gave without the aid of a teleprompter. Hugely impressive. Even so, Kerry did not
throw Israel under the bus, as claimed. His speech was extremely fair.
This renewed, steadfast American position, coupled with the UNSC's unanimous vote against Israel
(which Obama permitted by not casting the usual US veto) has set the stage for a monumental showdown.
Israel has never been more isolated. But it's Trump--not Obama--that's looking weak in the face of Israeli
pressure.
Indeed, the international Jewish establishment remains uniquely powerful. They may be hated (and
appropriately so) but they get things accomplished in the political arena. Trump understands this all-too-well.
Will Trump--out of fear and necessity--run with the mega-powerful Jews who tried to sabotage his
campaign?--Or will he stay strong with America First and avoid "any more disasterous wars". It's impossible
to say. Trump is speaking out of both sides of his mouth.
I get the feeling that even Trump is unsure of where all this is going. But the situation is fast
approaching critical mass. Something's gotta give. The entire world is fed up with Israel.
Will Trump blink and take the easy road with the Zions?--Or will he summon Putin's independent, nationalistic
spirit and stay the course of 'America First'?
Unfortunately, having scrutinized the Zions in action for decades, I'm fearful that Trump will go
Pure Washington and run with the Israeli-Firsters. This will fortify his shaky political foundation.
I hope that I'm wrong about this but the Zions are brilliantly equipped to play both sides of America's
political divide. No politician is immune to their machinations.
Okay so you voted twice for BO, and now for HC, so what else is new.
Authenticjazzman, "Mensa" society member of forty-plus years and pro jazz artist.
D.C. has passed their propaganda bill so I am not shocked.
Dec 27, 2016 "Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act" Signed Into Law! (NDAA 2017)
It is true there is breaking news today but you certainly won't hear it from the mainstream media.
While everyone was enjoying the holidays president Obama signed the NDAA for fiscal year 2017 into law
which includes the "Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act" and in this video Dan Dicks of Press
For Truth shows how this new law is tantamount to "The Records Department of the Ministry of Truth"
in George Orwell's book 1984.
Ultimately, President Obama is desperate to secure his legacy, which has consisted of disastrous
and criminal imperial wars and military confrontations
The current wave of icon polishing we constantly are being asked to indulge seems a bit over the top.
Why is our president more devoted to legacy than Jackie Kennedy was to the care and maintenance of the
Camelot image?
Have we ever seen as fine a behind-the-curtain, Wizard of Oz act, as performed by Barrack Obama for
the past eight years? Do we know anything at all about this man aside from the fact that he loves his
wife and kids? https://robertmagill.wordpress.com/2016/12/09/barry-we-hardly-knew-ye/
I expect Obama loves his kids.
Great analysis from Petras.
So many people have reacted with "first level" thinking only as Trump's appointments have been announced:
"This guy is terrible!" Yes, but . . . look at the appointment in the "swamp" context, in the "veiled
threat" context. Harpers mag actually put a picture on its cover of Trump behind bars. That is one of
those veiled invitations like Henry II's "Will no one rid me of this man?"
I think Trump understands quite well what he is up against.
I agree completely with Petras that the compromises he must make to take office on Jan. 20 may in the
end compromise his agenda (whatever it actually is). I would expect Trump to play things by ear and
tack as necessary, as he senses changes in the wind. According to the precepts of triage, his no. 1
challenge/task now is to be sworn in on Jan. 20. All else is secondary.
Once he is in the White House he will have incomparably greater powers to flush out those who are trying
to sideline his presidency now. The latter must know this. He will be in charge of the whole Executive
Branch bureaucracy (which includes the Justice Department).
Ultimately, President Obama is desperate to secure his legacy, which has consisted of disastrous
and criminal imperial wars and military confrontations
The current wave of icon polishing we constantly are being asked to indulge seems a bit over the top.
Why is our president more devoted to legacy than Jackie Kennedy was to the care and maintenance of the
Camelot image?
Have we ever seen as fine a behind-the-curtain, Wizard of Oz act, as performed by Barrack Obama for
the past eight years? Do we know anything at all about this man aside from the fact that he loves his
wife and kids? https://robertmagill.wordpress.com/2016/12/09/barry-we-hardly-knew-ye/
Oh, yes, Robert -- To read the words "Obama" & "legacy" in the same sentence is to LOL.
What a god-awful president. An 8 year adventure in failure, stupidity & ruthlessness.
The Trump-coup business: what a (near treasonous) disgrace. The "Russians done it" meme: "let's show
the world just how stupid, embarrassing & plain MEAN we can be". A trillion words - & not one shred
of supporting evidence . ?! And I thought that the old "Obama was not born in the US" trope was shameless
stupidity -- If there is any bright side here, I hope it has convinced EVERY American conservative that the neo-con's
& their identical economic twin the neoliberals are treasonous dreck who would flush the US down the
drain if they thought it to their political advantage.
The recounts failed to change the outcome, but it was a 'first shot across the bow', to stop Trump.
It became a propaganda focus for the neo-conservative mass media to mobilize several thousand Clintonite
and liberal activists.
On the contrary, this first salvo from the anti-American forces resulted in more friendly fire hits
on the attackers than it did on its intended targets. Result: a strengthening of Trump's position. It
also serve to sap morale and energy from the anti-American forces, helping dissipate their momentum.
The purpose was to undermine the legitimacy of Trump's electoral victory.
And it backfired, literally strengthening it (Trump gained votes), while undermining the anti-American
forces' legitimacy.
The purpose was to undermine the legitimacy of Trump's electoral victory. However, Jill Stein's $8
million dollar shilling for Secretary Clinton paled before the oncoming avalanche of mass media and
NGO propaganda against Trump. Their main claim was that anonymous 'Russian hackers' and not the American
voters had decided the US Presidential election of November 2016!
This was simply a continuation of Big Media's Full Capacity Hate Machine (thanks to Whis for the term;
this is the only time I will acknowledge the debt) from the campaign. It has been running since before
Trump clinched the nomination. It will be no more effective now, than it was then. Americans are fed
up with Big Media propaganda in sufficient numbers to openly thwart its authors' will.
The big lie, as you refer to it, hasn't even produced the alleged "report" in question. The CIA supposedly
in lockstep against Trump (I don't buy that), and they can't find one hack willing to leak this "devastating"
"report"? It must suck. Probably a nothing burger.
This is all much ado about nothing. Big Media HATES Trump. They want to make sure Trump and the American
people don't forget that they HATE Trump. It's a broken strategy, doomed to failure (it will only cause
Trump to dig in and go about his agenda without their help; it certainly will not break him, or endear
him to their demands). Trump's voters all voted for him in spite of it, so it won't win them
over, either. Personally, I think Trump's low water mark of support is well behind him. Obviously subject
to future events.
Trump denounced the political elements in the CIA, pointing out their previous role in manufacturing
the justifications (he used the term 'lies') for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
CIA mouthpieces have been pointing and sputtering in response that it was not they who cooked the books,
but parallel neoconservative chickenhawk groups in the Bush administration. The trouble with this is
that the CIA did precious little to counter the chickenhawks' narrative, instead choosing to assent
by way of silence.
Personally, I sort of doubt this imagined comity between Hussein and the CIA Ever seen Zero Dark
Thirty ? How much harder did Hussein make the CIA's job? I doubt it was Kathryn Bigelow who chose
to go out of her way to make that movie hostile to Hussein; it's far more likely that this is simply
where the material led her. I similarly doubt that the intelligence community difficulties owed to Hussein
were in any way limited to the hunt for UBL.
The trouble with this is that the CIA did precious little to counter the chickenhawks' narrative,
instead choosing to assent by way of silence.
That's not entirely accurate. CIA people like Michael Scheuer and Valery Plame were trying to undermine
the neocon narrative about Iraq and WMD, not bolster it. At that time, the neocons controlled the ranking
civilian positions at the Pentagon, but did not yet fully control the CIA This changed after Bush's
re-election, when Porter Goss was made DCI to purge all the remaining 'realists' and 'arabists' from
the agency. Now the situation in the opposite: the CIA is totally neocon, while the Pentagon is a bit
less so.
So even if what Trump is saying is technically inaccurate, it's still true at a deeper level: it
was the neocons who lied to us about WMD, just as it is now the neocons who are lying to us about
Russia.
@Mark Green
This is a good article but there's been a sudden shift. Incredibly, Obama has finally
gotten some balls in his dealings with Israel. And Trump is starting to sound like a neocon!
Maybe Trump is worried enough about a potential coup to dump his 'America First' platform (at least
for now) to shore up vital Jewish support for his teetering inauguration. This ploy will require a lot
of pro-Zionist noise and gesturing. Consequently, Trump is starting to play a familiar political role.
And the Zio-friendly media is holding his feet to the fire.
Has the smell of fear pushed Trump over the edge and into the lap of the Zionist establishment? It's
beginning to look that way.
Or is Trump just being a fox?
Let's face it: nobody can pull out all the stops better than Israel's Fifth Column. They've got the
money, the organization skills, the media leverage, and the raw intellectual moxie to make political
miracles/disasters happen. Trump wants them on his side. So he's is tacitly cutting a last-minute deal
with the Israelis. Trump's Zionized rhetoric (and political appointments) prove it.
This explains the apparent reversal that's now underway. Obama's pushing back while Trump is accommodating.
And, as usual, the Zions are dictating the Narrative.
As Israel Shamir reminds us: there's nothing as liberating to a politician as leaving office. Therefore,
Obama is finally free to do what's right. Trump however is facing no such luxury. And Bibi is more defiant
than ever. This is high drama. And Trump is feeling the heat.
Indeed, outgoing Sec. John Kerry just delivered a major speech where he reiterated strongly US support
for a real 'Two State' solution in Israel/Palestine.
And I thought the Two State Solution was dead.
Didn't you?
Kerry also criticized Israel's ongoing confiscation of the Occupied Territories. It was a brilliant
analysis that Kerry gave without the aid of a teleprompter. Hugely impressive. Even so, Kerry did not
throw Israel under the bus, as claimed. His speech was extremely fair.
This renewed, steadfast American position, coupled with the UNSC's unanimous vote against Israel
(which Obama permitted by not casting the usual US veto) has set the stage for a monumental showdown.
Israel has never been more isolated. But it's Trump--not Obama--that's looking weak in the face of Israeli
pressure.
Indeed, the international Jewish establishment remains uniquely powerful. They may be hated (and
appropriately so) but they get things accomplished in the political arena. Trump understands this all-too-well.
Will Trump--out of fear and necessity--run with the mega-powerful Jews who tried to sabotage his
campaign?--Or will he stay strong with America First and avoid "any more disasterous wars". It's impossible
to say. Trump is speaking out of both sides of his mouth.
I get the feeling that even Trump is unsure of where all this is going. But the situation is fast
approaching critical mass. Something's gotta give. The entire world is fed up with Israel.
Will Trump blink and take the easy road with the Zions?--Or will he summon Putin's independent, nationalistic
spirit and stay the course of 'America First'?
Unfortunately, having scrutinized the Zions in action for decades, I'm fearful that Trump will go
Pure Washington and run with the Israeli-Firsters. This will fortify his shaky political foundation.
I hope that I'm wrong about this but the Zions are brilliantly equipped to play both sides of America's
political divide. No politician is immune to their machinations.
In general, I agree with a good portion of your analysis. A few minor quibbles and qualifications,
though:
Incredibly, Obama has finally gotten some balls in his dealings with Israel.
Not really. Since he's a lame-duck president and the election is over, he's not really risking anything
here. After all, opposition to settlements in the occupied territories has been official US policy for
nearly 50 years, and when has that ever stopped Israel from founding/expanding them? No, this is just
more empty symbolism.
And I thought the Two State Solution was dead.
It's been dead for ever. The One State solution will replace it, and that will really freak out all
the Zios.
They may be hated (and appropriately so) but they get things accomplished in the political arena.
Trump understands this all-too-well.
Oderint dum metuant ("Let them hate, so long as they fear.") – Caligula
@Karl
the "shot across the bow" was the "Not My President!" demonstrations, which were long before
Dr Stein's recount circuses.
They spent a lot of money on buses and box lunches - it wouldn't fly.
Nothing else they try will fly.
Correct me if I am wrong.... plain ole citizens can start RICO suits against the likes of Soros.
Correct me if I am wrong . plain ole citizens can start RICO suits against the likes of Soros.
It seems you may be on to something:
RICO also permits a private individual "damaged in his business or property" by a "racketeer"
to file a civil suit. The plaintiff must prove the existence of an "enterprise". The defendant(s)
are not the enterprise; in other words, the defendant(s) and the enterprise are not one and the same.[3]
There must be one of four specified relationships between the defendant(s) and the enterprise: either
the defendant(s) invested the proceeds of the pattern of racketeering activity into the enterprise
(18 U.S.C. § 1962(a)); or the defendant(s) acquired or maintained an interest in, or control of,
the enterprise through the pattern of racketeering activity (subsection (b)); or the defendant(s)
conducted or participated in the affairs of the enterprise "through" the pattern of racketeering
activity (subsection (c)); or the defendant(s) conspired to do one of the above (subsection (d)).[4]
In essence, the enterprise is either the 'prize,' 'instrument,' 'victim,' or 'perpetrator' of the
racketeers.[5] A civil RICO action can be filed in state or federal court.[6]
@Max Havelaar
My guess: the outgoing Obama administration is in a last ditch killing frenzy, to
revenge Aleppo loss!
The Berlin bus blowup, The Russian ambassador in Turkey killed and the Red army's most eminent Alexandrov's
choir send to the bottom of the black sea.
Typical CIA ops to threaten world leaders to comply with the incumbent US elite.
Watch Mike Morell (CIA) threaten world leaders:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZK2FZGKAd0
The prominence of the "perfumed prince" Morell is the most telling indictment of the so-called "elites"
in the US. The arrogant, irresponsible (and untouchable) imbeciles among the real "deciders" in the
US have brought the country down to a sub-civilization status when the US does not do diplomacy, does
not follow international law, and does not keep with even marginal aspects of democracy home and abroad.
The proliferation of the incompetent and opportunists in the highest echelons of the US government is
the consequence of the lack of responsibility on the top. Morell – who has never been in combat and
never demonstrated any intellectual vigor – is a prime example of a sycophantic and poorly educated
opportunist that is endangering the US big time.
The arrogant, irresponsible (and untouchable) imbeciles among the real "deciders" in the US have
brought the country down to a sub-civilization status when the US does not do diplomacy, does not
follow international law, and does not keep with even marginal aspects of democracy home and abroad.
It is corrupt, annamaria, corrupt to the very core, corrupt throughout. Any talk of elections, honest
candidates, devoted elected representatives, etc., is sappy naivete. They're crooks; the sprinkling
of decent reps is minuscule and ineffective.
So, what to do? ,
@Max Havelaar
A serial killer, paid by US taxpayers. By universal human rights laws he would hang.
I agree with some, mostly the pro-Constitutionalist and moral spirit of the essay, but differ as
to when the Coup D'etat is going to – or has already taken place .
The coup D'etat that destroyed our American Republic, and its last Constitutional President, John
F. Kennedy, took place 53 years ago on November 22, 1963. The coup was consolidated at the cost of 2
million Vietnamese and 1 million Indonesians (1965). The assassinations of JF Kennedy's brother, Robert
Kennedy, R. Kennedy's ally, Martin L. King, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, John Lennon, and many others, followed.
Mr. Petras, the Coup D'etat has already happened.
Our mission must be the Restore our American Republic! This is The Only Road for us. There
are no shortcuts. The choice we were given (for Hollywood President), in 2016, between a psychotic Mass
Murderer, and a mid level Mafioso Casino Owner displayed the lack of respect the Oligarchs have for
the American Sheeple. Until we rise, we will never regain our self-respect, our Honor.
I enclose a copy of our Flier, our Declaration, For The Restoration of the Republic below,
for your perusal. We (of the Anarchist Collective), have distributed it as best we can.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal governments are instituted
among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government
becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute
new government, laying its foundation on such principles "
The above is a portion of the Declaration of Independence , written by Thomas Jefferson.
We submit the following facts to the citizens of the United States.
The government of the United States has been a Totalitarian Oligarchy since the military financial aristocracy
destroyed the Democratic Republic on November 22, 1963, when they assassinated the last democratically
elected president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy , and overthrew his government. All following governments
have been unconstitutional frauds. Attempts by Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King to restore the
Republic were interrupted by their murder.
A subsequent 12 year colonial war against Vietnam , conducted by the murderers of Kennedy,
left 2 million dead in a wake of napalm and burning villages.
In 1965 , the U.S. government orchestrated the slaughter of 1 million unarmed Indonesian civilians.
In the decade that followed the CIA murdered 100,000 Native Americans in Guatemala.
In the 1970s , the Oligarchy began the destruction and looting of America's middle class,
by encouraging the export of industry and jobs to parts of the world where workers were paid bare subsistence
wages. The 2008, Bailout of the Nation's Oligarchs cost American taxpayers $13trillion. The long
decline of the local economy has led to the political decline of our hard working citizens, as well
as the decay of cities, towns, and infrastructure, such as education.
The impoverishment of America's middle class has undermined the nation's financial stability. Without
a productive foundation, the government has accumulated a huge debt in excess of $19trillion . This debt will have to be paid, or suffered by future generations. Concurrently, the top 1% of the
nation's population has benefited enormously from the discomfiture of the rest. The interest rate has
been reduced to 0, thereby slowly robbing millions of depositors of their savings, as their savings
cannot stay even with the inflation rate.
The government spends the declining national wealth on bloody and never ending military adventures,
and is or has recently conducted unconstitutional wars against 9 nations. The Oligarchs maintain 700
military bases in 131 countries; they spend as much on military weapons of terror as the rest of the
nations of the world combined. Tellingly, more than half the government budget is spent on the military
and 16 associated secret agencies.
The nightmare of a powerful centralized government crushing the rights of the people, so feared by the
Founders of the United States, has become a reality. The government of Obama/Biden, as with previous
administrations such as Bush/Cheney, and whoever is chosen in November 2016, operates a Gulag of dozens
of concentration camps, where prisoners are denied trials, and routinely tortured. The Patriot Act
and The National Defense Authorizations Act , enacted by both Democratic and Republican factions
of the oligarchy, serve to establish a legal cover for their terror.
The nation's media is controlled , and, with the school systems, serve to brainwash the population;
the people are intimidated and treated with contempt.
The United States is No longer Sovereign
The United States is no longer a sovereign nation. Its government, The Executive, and Congress, is
bought, utterly owned and controlled by foreign and domestic wealthy Oligarchs, such as the Rothschilds,
Rockefellers, and Duponts , to name only a few of the best known.
The 2016 Electoral Circus will anoint new actors to occupy the same Unconstitutional Government,
with its controlling International Oligarchs. Clinton, Trump, whomever, are willing accomplices for
imperialist international murder, and destruction of nations, including ours.
For Love of Country
The Restoration of the Republic will be a Revolutionary Act, that will cancel all previous debts
owed to that unconstitutional regime and its business supporters. All debts, including Student Debts,
will be canceled. Our citizens will begin, anew, with a clean slate.
As American Founder, Thomas Jefferson wrote, in a letter to James Madison:
"I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, 'that the earth belongs in usufruct
to the living':"
"Then I say the earth belongs to each of these generations, during it's course, fully, and in their
own right. The 2d. Generation receives it clear of the debts and incumberances of the 1st. The 3d of
the 2d. and so on. For if the 1st. Could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead
and not the living generation."
Our Citizens must restore the centrality of the constitution, establishing a less powerful government
which will ensure President Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms , freedom of speech and expression,
freedom to worship God in ones own way, freedom from want "which means economic understandings which
will secure to every nation a healthy peace time life for its inhabitants " and freedom from fear "which means
a world-wide reduction of armaments "
Once restored: The Constitution will become, once again, the law of the land and of a free people.
We will establish a government, hold elections, begin to direct traffic, arrest criminal politicians
of the tyrannical oligarchy, and, in short, repair the damage of the previous totalitarian governments.
For the Democratic Republic! Sons and Daughters of Liberty [email protected]
@annamaria
The prominence of the "perfumed prince" Morell is the most telling indictment of the
so-called "elites" in the US. The arrogant, irresponsible (and untouchable) imbeciles among the real
"deciders" in the US have brought the country down to a sub-civilization status when the US does not
do diplomacy, does not follow international law, and does not keep with even marginal aspects of democracy
home and abroad. The proliferation of the incompetent and opportunists in the highest echelons of the
US government is the consequence of the lack of responsibility on the top. Morell - who has never been
in combat and never demonstrated any intellectual vigor - is a prime example of a sycophantic and poorly
educated opportunist that is endangering the US big time.
The arrogant, irresponsible (and untouchable) imbeciles among the real "deciders" in the US have
brought the country down to a sub-civilization status when the US does not do diplomacy, does not
follow international law, and does not keep with even marginal aspects of democracy home and abroad.
It is corrupt, annamaria, corrupt to the very core, corrupt throughout. Any talk of elections, honest
candidates, devoted elected representatives, etc., is sappy naivete. They're crooks; the sprinkling
of decent reps is minuscule and ineffective.
So, what to do?
• Replies:
@Bill Jones
The corruption is endemic from top to bottom.
My previous residence was in Hamilton Township in Monroe County, PA . Population about 8,000.
The 3 Township Supervisors appointed themselves to township jobs- Road master, Zoning officer etc and
pay themselves twice the going rate with the occupant of the job under review abstaining while his two
palls vote him the money. Anybody challenging this is met with a shit-storm of propaganda and a mysterious
explosion in voter turn-out: guess who runs the local polls?
The chief of the local volunteer fire company has to sign off on the sprinkler systems before any occupation
certificate can be issued for a commercial building. Conveniently he runs a plumbing business. Guess
who gets the lion's share of plumbing jobs for new commercial buildings?
As they climb the greasy pole, it only gets worse.
Meanwhile the routine business of looting continues:
My local rag (an organ of the Murdoch crime family) had a little piece last year about the new 3 year
contract for the local county prison guards. I went back to the two previous two contracts and discovered
that by 2018 they will have had 33% increases over nine years. Between 2008 and 2013 (the latest years
I could find data for) median household income in the county decreased by 13%.
At some point some rogue politician will start fighting this battle.
If the US is split between Trump and Clinton supporters, then the staffs of the CIA and FBI are probably
split the same way.
The CIA and FBI leadership may take one position or another, but many CIA and FBI employees joined
these agencies in the first place to serve their country – not to assist Neo-con MENA Imperial projects,
and they know a lot more than the general public about what is really going on.
Employees can really mess things up if they have a different political orientation to their employers.
@Mark Green
This is a good article but there's been a sudden shift. Incredibly, Obama has finally
gotten some balls in his dealings with Israel. And Trump is starting to sound like a neocon!
Maybe Trump is worried enough about a potential coup to dump his 'America First' platform (at least
for now) to shore up vital Jewish support for his teetering inauguration. This ploy will require a lot
of pro-Zionist noise and gesturing. Consequently, Trump is starting to play a familiar political role.
And the Zio-friendly media is holding his feet to the fire.
Has the smell of fear pushed Trump over the edge and into the lap of the Zionist establishment? It's
beginning to look that way.
Or is Trump just being a fox?
Let's face it: nobody can pull out all the stops better than Israel's Fifth Column. They've got the
money, the organization skills, the media leverage, and the raw intellectual moxie to make political
miracles/disasters happen. Trump wants them on his side. So he's is tacitly cutting a last-minute deal
with the Israelis. Trump's Zionized rhetoric (and political appointments) prove it.
This explains the apparent reversal that's now underway. Obama's pushing back while Trump is accommodating.
And, as usual, the Zions are dictating the Narrative.
As Israel Shamir reminds us: there's nothing as liberating to a politician as leaving office. Therefore,
Obama is finally free to do what's right. Trump however is facing no such luxury. And Bibi is more defiant
than ever. This is high drama. And Trump is feeling the heat.
Indeed, outgoing Sec. John Kerry just delivered a major speech where he reiterated strongly US support
for a real 'Two State' solution in Israel/Palestine.
And I thought the Two State Solution was dead.
Didn't you?
Kerry also criticized Israel's ongoing confiscation of the Occupied Territories. It was a brilliant
analysis that Kerry gave without the aid of a teleprompter. Hugely impressive. Even so, Kerry did not
throw Israel under the bus, as claimed. His speech was extremely fair.
This renewed, steadfast American position, coupled with the UNSC's unanimous vote against Israel
(which Obama permitted by not casting the usual US veto) has set the stage for a monumental showdown.
Israel has never been more isolated. But it's Trump--not Obama--that's looking weak in the face of Israeli
pressure.
Indeed, the international Jewish establishment remains uniquely powerful. They may be hated (and
appropriately so) but they get things accomplished in the political arena. Trump understands this all-too-well.
Will Trump--out of fear and necessity--run with the mega-powerful Jews who tried to sabotage his
campaign?--Or will he stay strong with America First and avoid "any more disasterous wars". It's impossible
to say. Trump is speaking out of both sides of his mouth.
I get the feeling that even Trump is unsure of where all this is going. But the situation is fast
approaching critical mass. Something's gotta give. The entire world is fed up with Israel.
Will Trump blink and take the easy road with the Zions?--Or will he summon Putin's independent, nationalistic
spirit and stay the course of 'America First'?
Unfortunately, having scrutinized the Zions in action for decades, I'm fearful that Trump will go
Pure Washington and run with the Israeli-Firsters. This will fortify his shaky political foundation.
I hope that I'm wrong about this but the Zions are brilliantly equipped to play both sides of America's
political divide. No politician is immune to their machinations.
Trump will go Pure Washington and run with the Israeli-Firsters. This will fortify his shaky political
foundation. I hope that I'm wrong about this but the Zions are brilliantly equipped to play both
sides of America's political divide. No politician is immune to their machinations.
I'm hoping that Trump is running with the neocons just as far as is necessary to pressure congress
to confirm his cabinet appointments and make sure he isn't JFK'd before he gets into office and can
set about putting security in place to protect his own and his family's lives.
For John McBloodstain to vote for a SoS that will make nice with his nemesis; Putin, will require
massive amounts of Zio-pressure. The only way that pressure will come is if the Zio-cons are convinced
that Trump is their man.
Once his cabinet appointments are secured, then perhaps we might see some independence of action.
Not until. At least that is my hope, however naďve.
It isn't just the Zio-cons that want to poke the Russian bear, it's also the MIC. Trump has to navigate
a very dangerous mine field if he's going to end the Endless Wars and return sanity and peace to the
world. He's going to have to wrangle with the devil himself (the Fiend), and outplay him at his own
game.
I do not like saying it, but the appointment of the Palestinian hating Jew as ambassador to Israel
has disarmed the Jew community – they can no longer call Trump an anti-Semite – the most power two words
in America. The result is that the domestic side of the coup is over.
The Russian thing has to play out. The Jew forces will try and make bad blood between America and
Russia – hopefully Trump and Putin will let it play out, but really ignore it.
If we get past the inauguration, the CIA is going to be toast. GOOD!
Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats today (effective Friday) - doing his best to screw things up before
Trump takes office. Will he start WWIII, then say Trump can't transition during war?
Obama has authorized transfer of weapons, including MANPADS, to terrorist affiliates. If we are at war
with terrorists, isn't this Treason? It is most certainly a felony under the Patriot Act - providing
aid, directly or indirectly, to terrorists.
A Bill of Impeachment against Obama might stave off WWIII.
Francis Boyle writes:
"... I am willing to serve as Counsel to any Member of the US House of Representatives willing to put
in a Bill of Impeachment against Obama as soon as Congress reconvenes-just as I did to the late, great
Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez on his Bill to Impeach Bush Sr. on the eve of Gulf War I. RIP.
Just have
the MOC get in touch with me as indicated below.
Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA
217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax)
That's not entirely accurate. CIA people like Michael Scheuer and Valery Plame were trying to
undermine the neocon narrative about Iraq and WMD, not bolster it.
It seems that our POTUS has just chosen to eject 35 Russian diplomats from our country, on grounds
of hacking the election against Hillary.
Is this some weird, preliminary "shot across the bow" in preparation for the coming "coup attempt"
you seem to believe is in the offing ?
It seem the powers-that-be are pulling out all the stops to prevent an authentic rapprochement with
Moscow.
What for ?
It makes you wonder if there is more to this than meets the eye, something beyond the sanguine disgruntlement
of the party bosses and a desire for payback against Hillary's big loss ?
Does anyone know if Russia is more aware than most Americans of certain classified details pertaining
to stuff ..like 9-11 ?
Why is cooperation between the new administration and Moscow so scary to these people that they would
initiate a preemptive diplomatic shut down ?
They seem to be dead set on welding shut every single diplomatic door to the Kremlin there is , before
Trumps inauguration.
Perhaps something "else "is being planned ..Does anyone have any ideas whats going on ?
@Tomster
What does Russian intelligence know? Err ... perhaps something like that the US/UK have
sold nukes to the head-choppers of the riyadh caliphate, say (knowing how completely mad their incestuous
brains are?). Who knows? - but such a fact could explain many inexplicable things.
@Art
I do not like saying it, but the appointment of the Palestinian hating Jew as ambassador to
Israel has disarmed the Jew community – they can no longer call Trump an anti-Semite – the most power
two words in America. The result is that the domestic side of the coup is over.
The Russian thing has to play out. The Jew forces will try and make bad blood between America and Russia
– hopefully Trump and Putin will let it play out, but really ignore it.
If we get past the inauguration, the CIA is going to be toast. GOOD!
Peace --- Art
"If we get past the inauguration ."
Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats today (effective Friday) – doing his best to screw things up
before Trump takes office. Will he start WWIII, then say Trump can't transition during war?
Obama has authorized transfer of weapons, including MANPADS, to terrorist affiliates. If we are at
war with terrorists, isn't this Treason? It is most certainly a felony under the Patriot Act – providing
aid, directly or indirectly, to terrorists.
A Bill of Impeachment against Obama might stave off WWIII. Francis Boyle writes:
" I am willing to serve as Counsel to any Member of the US House of Representatives willing to put
in a Bill of Impeachment against Obama as soon as Congress reconvenes-just as I did to the late, great
Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez on his Bill to Impeach Bush Sr. on the eve of Gulf War I. RIP. Just have
the MOC get in touch with me as indicated below.
Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA
217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax)
This is much ado about nothing - in a NYT's article today - they said that the DNC was told about
being hacked in the fall or winter of 2015 - they all knew the Russian were hacking all along!
The RNC got smart - not the DNC - it is 100% their fault. Right now they look real stupid.
Really - how pissed off can they be?
Peace --- Art
p.s. I do not blame Obama – he had to do something – looks like he did the minimum.
@Mark Green
This is a good article but there's been a sudden shift. Incredibly, Obama has finally
gotten some balls in his dealings with Israel. And Trump is starting to sound like a neocon!
Maybe Trump is worried enough about a potential coup to dump his 'America First' platform (at least
for now) to shore up vital Jewish support for his teetering inauguration. This ploy will require a lot
of pro-Zionist noise and gesturing. Consequently, Trump is starting to play a familiar political role.
And the Zio-friendly media is holding his feet to the fire.
Has the smell of fear pushed Trump over the edge and into the lap of the Zionist establishment? It's
beginning to look that way.
Or is Trump just being a fox?
Let's face it: nobody can pull out all the stops better than Israel's Fifth Column. They've got the
money, the organization skills, the media leverage, and the raw intellectual moxie to make political
miracles/disasters happen. Trump wants them on his side. So he's is tacitly cutting a last-minute deal
with the Israelis. Trump's Zionized rhetoric (and political appointments) prove it.
This explains the apparent reversal that's now underway. Obama's pushing back while Trump is accommodating.
And, as usual, the Zions are dictating the Narrative.
As Israel Shamir reminds us: there's nothing as liberating to a politician as leaving office. Therefore,
Obama is finally free to do what's right. Trump however is facing no such luxury. And Bibi is more defiant
than ever. This is high drama. And Trump is feeling the heat.
Indeed, outgoing Sec. John Kerry just delivered a major speech where he reiterated strongly US support
for a real 'Two State' solution in Israel/Palestine.
And I thought the Two State Solution was dead.
Didn't you?
Kerry also criticized Israel's ongoing confiscation of the Occupied Territories. It was a brilliant
analysis that Kerry gave without the aid of a teleprompter. Hugely impressive. Even so, Kerry did not
throw Israel under the bus, as claimed. His speech was extremely fair.
This renewed, steadfast American position, coupled with the UNSC's unanimous vote against Israel
(which Obama permitted by not casting the usual US veto) has set the stage for a monumental showdown.
Israel has never been more isolated. But it's Trump--not Obama--that's looking weak in the face of Israeli
pressure.
Indeed, the international Jewish establishment remains uniquely powerful. They may be hated (and
appropriately so) but they get things accomplished in the political arena. Trump understands this all-too-well.
Will Trump--out of fear and necessity--run with the mega-powerful Jews who tried to sabotage his
campaign?--Or will he stay strong with America First and avoid "any more disasterous wars". It's impossible
to say. Trump is speaking out of both sides of his mouth.
I get the feeling that even Trump is unsure of where all this is going. But the situation is fast
approaching critical mass. Something's gotta give. The entire world is fed up with Israel.
Will Trump blink and take the easy road with the Zions?--Or will he summon Putin's independent, nationalistic
spirit and stay the course of 'America First'?
Unfortunately, having scrutinized the Zions in action for decades, I'm fearful that Trump will go
Pure Washington and run with the Israeli-Firsters. This will fortify his shaky political foundation.
I hope that I'm wrong about this but the Zions are brilliantly equipped to play both sides of America's
political divide. No politician is immune to their machinations.
I wish people would stop making a big deal out of John Kerry's and Barack Obama's recent stance on
Israel. Neither of them are concerned about whatever injustice happened to the Palestinians.
What they are concerned with is Israeli actions discrediting the anti-white, anti-national globalism
program before it has successfully destroyed all of the white nations. That is the real reason why they
want a two-state solution or a right of return. If nationalists can look at the Israeli example as a
model for how to proceed then that will cause a civil war among leftists and discredit the entire left-wing
project.
Trump, therefore, pushing support for Israel's national concerns is not him bending to AIPAC. It
is a shrewd move that forces an internecine conflict between left-wing diaspora Jews and Israeli Jews.
It is a conflict Bibi is willing to have because the pet project of leftism would necessarily result
in Israel either being unlivable or largely extinct for its Jewish population. This NWO being pushed
by the diaspora is not something that will be enjoyed by Israeli Jews.
Consider the problem. The problem is that Palestinians have revanchist claims against Israel. Those
revanchist claims do not go away just because they get their own country or they get a right of return.
Either "solution" actually strengthens the Palestinian claim against Israel and results in a vastly
reduced security stance and quality of life for Israelis. The diaspora left is ok with that because
they want to continue importing revanchist groups into Europe and America to break down white countries.
So, Israel makes a small sacrifice for the greater good of anti-whitism, a deal that most Israelis do
not consider very good for themselves. Trump's support for Israeli nationalism short-circuits this project.
Of course, one could ask: why don't the Israeli Jews just move to America? What's the big deal if
Israel remains in the middle east? The big deal is the kind of jobs and activities available for Israelis
to do. A real nation requires a lot of scut work. Someone has to do the plumbing, unplug the sewers,
drive the nails, throw out the trash. Everyone can't be a doctor, a lawyer or a banker. Tradesmen, technicians,
workers are all required to get a project like Israel off the ground and maintained. How many of these
Israelis doing scut work in Israel for a greater good want to do the same scut work in America just
to get by? The problem operates in reverse for American Jews. A Jew with an American law degree is of
no use to Israelis outside of the money he brings and whether he can throw out the trash. Diaspora Jews,
therefore, have no reason to try and live and work in Israel.
So, again, we see that Trump's move is a masterstroke. Even his appointment to counter the coup with
Zionists is brilliant, since these Zionists are rich enough to both live anywhere and indulge their
pride in nationalist endeavors.
• Replies:
@joe webb
masterful interpretation here. But I doubt it , in spades. Trump cooled out the soccer
moms on the Negroes by yakking about Uplift. And he reduced the black vote a tad. That was very clever,
but probably did not come from Trump.
As for "The problem is that Palestinians have revanchist claims against Israel. Those revanchist
claims do not go away just because they get their own country or they get a right of return. Either
"solution" actually strengthens the Palestinian claim against Israel and results in a vastly reduced
security stance and quality of life for Israelis."
That is a huge claim which is not substantiated with argument. If the Palestinians sign a peace treaty
with Israel, and then continue to press their claims...Israel would have the moral high ground to beat
hell out of them. Clearly, the jews got the guns, and the Palestinians got nothing but world public
opinion.
Please present an argument on just how Palestinians and other Arabs could continue to logically and
morally challenge Israel. Right now, the only thing preventing Israel from cleansing Israel of Arabs
is world public opinion. That public opinion is real and a huge factor.
I have been arguing that T. may be outfoxing the jews, but I doubt it now. Don't forget the Christian evangelical vote and Christians generally who have a soft spot in their brains
for the jews.
Also, T's claim that he will end the ME wars is a big problem if he is going to go after Isis, big
time, in Syria or anywhere else. He has put himself in the rock/hard place position. I don't think he
is that smart. I voted for him of course and sent money, but...
Joe Webb ,
@RobinG
"A real nation requires a lot of scut work. Someone has to do the plumbing, unplug the sewers,
drive the nails, throw out the trash."
"The 'experts' were trotted out voicing vitriolic accusations, but they never presented any facts
and documentation of a 'rigged election'. Everyday, every hour, the 'Russian Plot' was breathlessly
described in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Financial Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, BBC,
NPR and their overseas followers in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Oceana and Africa."
You left out Fox, most of their news anchors and pundits are rabidly pro Israel and anti Russia.
There is a pretty good chance, since all else has failed so far, Obama will declare 'a special situation
martial law'. And you can be sure many on both sides of Congress will comply. This will once again demonstrate
who is on the power elite payroll. If this happens hopefully the military will be on Trumps side and
round up those responsible and proper justice meted out.
@map
I wish people would stop making a big deal out of John Kerry's and Barack Obama's recent stance
on Israel. Neither of them are concerned about whatever injustice happened to the Palestinians.
What they are concerned with is Israeli actions discrediting the anti-white, anti-national globalism
program before it has successfully destroyed all of the white nations. That is the real reason why they
want a two-state solution or a right of return. If nationalists can look at the Israeli example as a
model for how to proceed then that will cause a civil war among leftists and discredit the entire left-wing
project.
Trump, therefore, pushing support for Israel's national concerns is not him bending to AIPAC. It is
a shrewd move that forces an internecine conflict between left-wing diaspora Jews and Israeli Jews.
It is a conflict Bibi is willing to have because the pet project of leftism would necessarily result
in Israel either being unlivable or largely extinct for its Jewish population. This NWO being pushed
by the diaspora is not something that will be enjoyed by Israeli Jews.
Consider the problem. The problem is that Palestinians have revanchist claims against Israel. Those
revanchist claims do not go away just because they get their own country or they get a right of return.
Either "solution" actually strengthens the Palestinian claim against Israel and results in a vastly
reduced security stance and quality of life for Israelis. The diaspora left is ok with that because
they want to continue importing revanchist groups into Europe and America to break down white countries.
So, Israel makes a small sacrifice for the greater good of anti-whitism, a deal that most Israelis do
not consider very good for themselves. Trump's support for Israeli nationalism short-circuits this project.
Of course, one could ask: why don't the Israeli Jews just move to America? What's the big deal if Israel
remains in the middle east? The big deal is the kind of jobs and activities available for Israelis to
do. A real nation requires a lot of scut work. Someone has to do the plumbing, unplug the sewers, drive
the nails, throw out the trash. Everyone can't be a doctor, a lawyer or a banker. Tradesmen, technicians,
workers are all required to get a project like Israel off the ground and maintained. How many of these
Israelis doing scut work in Israel for a greater good want to do the same scut work in America just
to get by? The problem operates in reverse for American Jews. A Jew with an American law degree is of
no use to Israelis outside of the money he brings and whether he can throw out the trash. Diaspora Jews,
therefore, have no reason to try and live and work in Israel.
So, again, we see that Trump's move is a masterstroke. Even his appointment to counter the coup with
Zionists is brilliant, since these Zionists are rich enough to both live anywhere and indulge their
pride in nationalist endeavors.
masterful interpretation here. But I doubt it , in spades. Trump cooled out the soccer moms on the
Negroes by yakking about Uplift. And he reduced the black vote a tad. That was very clever, but probably
did not come from Trump.
As for "The problem is that Palestinians have revanchist claims against Israel. Those revanchist
claims do not go away just because they get their own country or they get a right of return. Either
"solution" actually strengthens the Palestinian claim against Israel and results in a vastly reduced
security stance and quality of life for Israelis."
That is a huge claim which is not substantiated with argument. If the Palestinians sign a peace treaty
with Israel, and then continue to press their claims Israel would have the moral high ground to beat
hell out of them. Clearly, the jews got the guns, and the Palestinians got nothing but world public
opinion.
Please present an argument on just how Palestinians and other Arabs could continue to logically and
morally challenge Israel. Right now, the only thing preventing Israel from cleansing Israel of Arabs
is world public opinion. That public opinion is real and a huge factor.
I have been arguing that T. may be outfoxing the jews, but I doubt it now. Don't forget the Christian evangelical vote and Christians generally who have a soft spot in their brains
for the jews.
Also, T's claim that he will end the ME wars is a big problem if he is going to go after Isis, big
time, in Syria or anywhere else. He has put himself in the rock/hard place position. I don't think he
is that smart. I voted for him of course and sent money, but
Joe Webb
• Replies:
@map
The revanchist claim that I refer to is psychological, not moral or legal. Palestinians think
their land was stolen in the same way Mexicans think Texas and California were stolen. That feeling
will not change just because they get a two-state solution or a right of return. What it will result
in is a comfortable base from which to continue to operate against Israel, one that Israel can't afford.
It is Nationalism 101 not to allow revanchist groups in your country.
The leftists are being consistent in their ideology by opposing Israel, because they are fully on board
going after what looks like a white country attacking brown people and demanding not to be dismantled
by anti-nationalist policies. Trump suggesting the capital go to Jerusalem and supporting Bibi is just
triangulation against the left.
I feel sorry for the Palestinians and I think they have been treated very shabbily. They did lose a
lot as any refugee population would and they should be comfortably repatriated around the Muslim Middle
East. I don't know who is using them or for what purpose.
@Realist
"The 'experts' were trotted out voicing vitriolic accusations, but they never presented
any facts and documentation of a 'rigged election'. Everyday, every hour, the 'Russian Plot' was breathlessly
described in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Financial Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, BBC,
NPR and their overseas followers in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Oceana and Africa."
You left out Fox, most of their news anchors and pundits are rabidly pro Israel and anti Russia.
There is a pretty good chance, since all else has failed so far, Obama will declare 'a special situation
martial law'. And you can be sure many on both sides of Congress will comply. This will once again demonstrate
who is on the power elite payroll. If this happens hopefully the military will be on Trumps side and
round up those responsible and proper justice meted out.
The obscenity of the US behavior abroad leads directly to an alliance of ziocons and war profiteers.
Here is a highly educational paper on the exceptional amorality of the US administration:
http://www.voltairenet.org/article194709.html
"The existence of a NATO bunker in East Aleppo confirms what we have been saying about the role of NATO
LandCom in the coordination of the jihadists The liberation of Syria should continue at Idleb the
zone is de facto governed by NATO via a string of pseudo-NGO's. At least, this is what was noted last
month by a US think-tank. To beat the jihadists there, it will be necessary first of all to cut their
supply lines, in other words, close the Turtkish frontier. This is what Russian diplomacy is currently
working on." Well. After wasting the uncounted trillions of US dollars on the war on terror and after filling the
VA hospitals with the ruined young men and women and after bringing death a destruction on apocalyptic
scale to the Middle East in the name of 9/11, the US has found new bosom buddies – the hordes of fanatical
jihadis.
Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats today (effective Friday) - doing his best to screw things up before
Trump takes office. Will he start WWIII, then say Trump can't transition during war?
Obama has authorized transfer of weapons, including MANPADS, to terrorist affiliates. If we are at war
with terrorists, isn't this Treason? It is most certainly a felony under the Patriot Act - providing
aid, directly or indirectly, to terrorists.
A Bill of Impeachment against Obama might stave off WWIII. Francis Boyle writes: "... I am willing to serve as Counsel to any Member of the US House of Representatives willing to put
in a Bill of Impeachment against Obama as soon as Congress reconvenes-just as I did to the late, great
Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez on his Bill to Impeach Bush Sr. on the eve of Gulf War I. RIP. Just have
the MOC get in touch with me as indicated below.
Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone)
217-244-1478 (fax)
Hi RobinG,
This is much ado about nothing – in a NYT's article today – they said that the DNC was told about
being hacked in the fall or winter of 2015 – they all knew the Russian were hacking all along!
The RNC got smart – not the DNC – it is 100% their fault. Right now they look real stupid.
Really – how pissed off can they be?
Peace - Art
p.s. I do not blame Obama – he had to do something – looks like he did the minimum.
I try to write clearly, but if this is your response I've failed miserably. My interest in the hacking
is nil.
What I have against Obama is his regime-change war in Syria, his State Department enabled coup in Ukraine,
his support of Saudi war/genocide against Yemen, his destruction of Libya, his demonization of Putin,
and his bringing us to a status near war in our relations with Russia.
Obama has been providing weapons, training, air support and propaganda for Terrorists via their affiliates
in Syria, and now directly. This is a felony, if not treason.
The feds have now released their reports, detailing how the dastardly Russians darkly influenced
the 2016 presidential election by releasing Democrats' emails, and giving the American public a peek
inside the Democrat machine.
Those dastardly Russkies have informed and enlightened the American public for long enough! This
shall not stand!
This is much ado about nothing - in a NYT's article today - they said that the DNC was told about
being hacked in the fall or winter of 2015 - they all knew the Russian were hacking all along!
The RNC got smart - not the DNC - it is 100% their fault. Right now they look real stupid.
Really - how pissed off can they be?
Peace --- Art
p.s. I do not blame Obama – he had to do something – looks like he did the minimum.
Hi Art,
I try to write clearly, but if this is your response I've failed miserably. My interest in the hacking
is nil.
What I have against Obama is his regime-change war in Syria, his State Department enabled coup in
Ukraine, his support of Saudi war/genocide against Yemen, his destruction of Libya, his demonization
of Putin, and his bringing us to a status near war in our relations with Russia.
Obama has been providing weapons, training, air support and propaganda for Terrorists via their affiliates
in Syria, and now directly. This is a felony, if not treason.
What I have against Obama is his regime-change war in Syria, his State Department enabled coup in
Ukraine, his support of Saudi war/genocide against Yemen, his destruction of Libya, his demonization
of Putin, and his bringing us to a status near war in our relations with Russia.
RobinG --- Agree 100% - some times I get things crossed up --- Peace Art
I assume that everyone agrees that the final outcome of the security breach was that 'Wikileaks'
leaked internal emails of Clinton Campaign Manager Pedesta and DNC emails regarding embarrassing behavior.
No one is suggesting that the leaked information is 'fake news'.
An alternative hypothesis is that the Wikileaks material was, in fact, leaked by members of the Democratic
campaign itself.
Given that Podesta's password was 'P@ssw0rd' - does it take Russian deep state security to hack?
Though CAP is still having issues with my email and computer, yours is good to go. jpodesta p@ssw0rd
The report is 13 pages of mostly nothing.
Note the Disclaimer:
DISCLAIMER: This report is provided "as is" for informational purposes only. The Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) does not provide any warranties of any kind regarding any information contained within.
DHS does not endorse any commercial product or service referenced in this advisory or otherwise. This
document is distributed as TLP:WHITE: Subject to standard copyright rules, TLP:WHITE information may
be distributed without restriction. For more information on the Traffic Light Protocol, see
https://www.us-cert.gov/tlp .
@annamaria
The obscenity of the US behavior abroad leads directly to an alliance of ziocons and
war profiteers. Here is a highly educational paper on the exceptional amorality of the US administration:
http://www.voltairenet.org/article194709.html
"The existence of a NATO bunker in East Aleppo confirms what we have been saying about the role of NATO
LandCom in the coordination of the jihadists... The liberation of Syria should continue at Idleb ...
the zone is de facto governed by NATO via a string of pseudo-NGO's. At least, this is what was noted
last month by a US think-tank. To beat the jihadists there, it will be necessary first of all to cut
their supply lines, in other words, close the Turtkish frontier. This is what Russian diplomacy is currently
working on."
Well. After wasting the uncounted trillions of US dollars on the war on terror and after filling the
VA hospitals with the ruined young men and women and after bringing death a destruction on apocalyptic
scale to the Middle East in the name of 9/11, the US has found new bosom buddies - the hordes of fanatical
jihadis.
@joe webb
masterful interpretation here. But I doubt it , in spades. Trump cooled out the soccer
moms on the Negroes by yakking about Uplift. And he reduced the black vote a tad. That was very clever,
but probably did not come from Trump.
As for "The problem is that Palestinians have revanchist claims against Israel. Those revanchist
claims do not go away just because they get their own country or they get a right of return. Either
"solution" actually strengthens the Palestinian claim against Israel and results in a vastly reduced
security stance and quality of life for Israelis."
That is a huge claim which is not substantiated with argument. If the Palestinians sign a peace treaty
with Israel, and then continue to press their claims...Israel would have the moral high ground to beat
hell out of them. Clearly, the jews got the guns, and the Palestinians got nothing but world public
opinion.
Please present an argument on just how Palestinians and other Arabs could continue to logically and
morally challenge Israel. Right now, the only thing preventing Israel from cleansing Israel of Arabs
is world public opinion. That public opinion is real and a huge factor.
I have been arguing that T. may be outfoxing the jews, but I doubt it now. Don't forget the Christian evangelical vote and Christians generally who have a soft spot in their brains
for the jews.
Also, T's claim that he will end the ME wars is a big problem if he is going to go after Isis, big
time, in Syria or anywhere else. He has put himself in the rock/hard place position. I don't think he
is that smart. I voted for him of course and sent money, but...
Joe Webb
The revanchist claim that I refer to is psychological, not moral or legal. Palestinians think their
land was stolen in the same way Mexicans think Texas and California were stolen. That feeling will not
change just because they get a two-state solution or a right of return. What it will result in is a
comfortable base from which to continue to operate against Israel, one that Israel can't afford.
It is Nationalism 101 not to allow revanchist groups in your country.
The leftists are being consistent in their ideology by opposing Israel, because they are fully on
board going after what looks like a white country attacking brown people and demanding not to be dismantled
by anti-nationalist policies. Trump suggesting the capital go to Jerusalem and supporting Bibi is just
triangulation against the left.
I feel sorry for the Palestinians and I think they have been treated very shabbily. They did lose
a lot as any refugee population would and they should be comfortably repatriated around the Muslim Middle
East. I don't know who is using them or for what purpose.
• Replies:
@Tomster
"treated very shabbily" indeed, by other Arabs - who have done virtually nothing for them.
,
@joe webb
good points. Yet, Palestinians ..."They should be comfortably repatriated around the Muslim
Middle East." sounds pretty much like an Israel talking point. How about Israel should be dissolved and the Jews repatriated around Europe and the US?
Not being an Idea world, but a Biological World, revanchism is true enough up to a point. Of course
The Revanchists of All Time are the jews, or the zionists, to speak liberalize.
As for feelings that don't change, there is a tendency for feelings to change over time, especially
when a "legal" document is signed by the participating parties. I have long advocated that the Jews
pay for the land they stole, and that that payment be made to a new Palestinian state. A Palestinian
with a home, a job, a family, and a nice car makes a lot of difference, just like anywhere else.
(We paid the Mexicans in a treaty that presumably ended the Mexican war. This is a normal state of affairs.
Mexico only "owned" California, etc, for about 25 years, and I do not think paid the injuns anything
for their land at the time. Also, if memory serves, I think Pat Buchanan claimed somewhere that there
were only about 10,000 Mexicans in California at the time, or maybe in the whole area under discussion..)
How Palestine stolen property, should be evaluated I leave to the experts. Jews would appear to have
ample resources and could pony up the dough.
The biggest problem is the US evangelicals and equally important, the nice Episcopalians and so on,
even the Catholic Church which used to Exclude Jews now luving them. This is part of our National Religion.
The Jews are god's favorites, and nobody seems to mind. Kill an Arab for Christ is the national gut
feeling, except when it gets too expensive or kills too many Americans.
As I have said, Trump is in between the rock and the hard place. If he wants to end the Jewish Wars
in the ME, he cannot luv the jews, and especially he cannot start lobbing bombs around too much...even
over Isis and the dozens of jihadist groups, especially now in Syria.
Sorry but your "comfortably repatriated" is a real howler. There is no comfort to be had by anybody
in the ME. And, like Jews with regard to your points about revanchism in general, Palestinians have
not blended into the general Arab populations of other countries, like Lebanon, etc.. Using your own
logic, the Palestinians will continue to nurse their grievances no matter where they are, just like
the Jews.
The neocon goals of failed states in the Arab World has been largely accomplished and the only way humpty-dumpty
will be put back together again is for tough Arab Strong Men to reestablish order. Like Assad, like
Hussein, etc. Arab IQ is about 85 in general. There is not going to be democracy/elections/civics lessons per the White countries's genetic predisposition.\
For that matter, Jews are not democrats. Left alone Israel, wherever it is, reverts to Rabbinic Control
and Jehovah, the Warrior God, reigns. Fact is , that is where Israel is heading anyway. Jews never invented free speech and rule of law, nor did Arabs, or any other race on the planet.
The Jews With Nukes is of World Historical Importance. And Whites have given them the Bomb, just as
Whites have given Third World inferior races, access to the Northern Cornucopia of wealth, both spiritual
and material. They will , like the jews, exploit free speech and game the economic system.
All Semites Out! Ditto just about everybody else, starting with the Chinese.
finally, if the jews had any real brains, they would get out of a neighborhood that hates them for their
jewishness, their Thefts, and their Wars. Otoh, Jews seem to thrive on being hated more than any other
race or ethnic group. Chosen to Always Complain.
I assume that everyone agrees that the final outcome of the security breach was that 'Wikileaks'
leaked internal emails of Clinton Campaign Manager Pedesta and DNC emails regarding embarrassing behavior.
No one is suggesting that the leaked information is 'fake news'.
An alternative hypothesis is that the Wikileaks material was, in fact, leaked by members of the Democratic
campaign itself.
Given that Podesta's password was 'P@ssw0rd' -- does it take Russian deep state security to hack?
Though CAP is still having issues with my email and computer, yours is good to go. jpodesta p@ssw0rd
The report is 13 pages of mostly nothing.
Note the Disclaimer:
DISCLAIMER: This report is provided "as is" for informational purposes only. The Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) does not provide any warranties of any kind regarding any information contained within.
DHS does not endorse any commercial product or service referenced in this advisory or otherwise. This
document is distributed as TLP:WHITE: Subject to standard copyright rules, TLP:WHITE information may
be distributed without restriction. For more information on the Traffic Light Protocol, see https://www.us-cert.gov/tlp.
An alternative hypothesis is that the Wikileaks material was, in fact, leaked by members of the
Democratic campaign itself.
His name was Seth Rich, and he did software for the DNC.
His name was Seth Rich, and he did software for the DNC.
"Was" is the operative word:
Julian Assange Suggests That DNC's Seth Rich Was Murdered For Being a Wikileaker
https://heatst.com/tech/wikileaks-offers-20000-for-information-about-seth-richs-killer/ ,
@alexander
Given all the hoaky, "evidence free" punitive assaults being launched against Moscow
today ....combined with the profusion of utterly fraudulent narratives foisted down the throats of the
American people over the last sixteen years...
Its NOT outside of reason to take a good hard look at the "Seth Rich incident" and reconstruct an
outline of events(probably) much closer to the truth than the big media would ever be willing to discuss
or admit.
Namely, that Seth Rich, a young decent kid (27) who was working as the data director for the campaign,
came across evidence of "dirty pool" within the voting systems during the DNC nomination ,which were
fraudulently (and maybe even blatantly) tilting the results towards Hillary.
He probably did the "right thing" by notifying one of the DNC bosses of the fraud ..who informed
him he would look into it and that he should keep it quite for the moment...
.I wouldn't be surprised if Seth reached out to a reporter , too, probably at the at the NY Times,
who informed his editor...who, in turn, had such deep connections to the Hillary corruption machine...that
he placed a call to a DNC backroom boss ... who , at some point, made the decision to take steps to
shut Seth's mouth, permanently...."just make it look like a robbery (or something)"
Seth, not being stupid, and knowing he had the dirt on Hillary that could crush her (as well as the
reputation of the entire democratic party)......probably reached out to Julian Assange, too, to hedge
his bets.
In the interview Julian gave shortly after Seth's death, he intimated that Seth was the leak, although
he did not state it outright.
Something like this sequence of events (with perhaps a few alterations ) is probably quite close
to what actually happened.
So here we have a scenario, where the D.N.C. Oligarchs , so corrupt, so evil, so disdainful of the
electorate, and the democratic process , rig the nomination results (on multiple levels) for Hillary..and
when the evidence of this is found, by a decent young kid with his whole life ahead of him, they had
him shot in the back.....four times...
And then "Big Media for Hillary", rather than investigate this horrific tragedy and expose the dirty
malevolence at play within the DNC , quashes the entire narrative and grafts in its place the"substitute"
Putin hacks..... demanding faux accountability... culminating with sanctions and ejections of the entire
Russian diplomatic corp.......all on the grounds of attempting to "sully American Democracy"
.
But hey, that's life in the USA....Right, Seamus ?
"what looks like a white country attacking brown people and demanding not to be dismantled by anti-nationalist
policies. "
The longer Israel persists in its "facts-on-the-ground" thievery, the less moral standing it has
for its white country. And it is a racist state also within its own "borders."
A pathetic excuse for a country. Without the USA it wouldn't exist.
A black mark on both countries' report cards.
@map
I wish people would stop making a big deal out of John Kerry's and Barack Obama's recent stance
on Israel. Neither of them are concerned about whatever injustice happened to the Palestinians.
What they are concerned with is Israeli actions discrediting the anti-white, anti-national globalism
program before it has successfully destroyed all of the white nations. That is the real reason why they
want a two-state solution or a right of return. If nationalists can look at the Israeli example as a
model for how to proceed then that will cause a civil war among leftists and discredit the entire left-wing
project.
Trump, therefore, pushing support for Israel's national concerns is not him bending to AIPAC. It is
a shrewd move that forces an internecine conflict between left-wing diaspora Jews and Israeli Jews.
It is a conflict Bibi is willing to have because the pet project of leftism would necessarily result
in Israel either being unlivable or largely extinct for its Jewish population. This NWO being pushed
by the diaspora is not something that will be enjoyed by Israeli Jews.
Consider the problem. The problem is that Palestinians have revanchist claims against Israel. Those
revanchist claims do not go away just because they get their own country or they get a right of return.
Either "solution" actually strengthens the Palestinian claim against Israel and results in a vastly
reduced security stance and quality of life for Israelis. The diaspora left is ok with that because
they want to continue importing revanchist groups into Europe and America to break down white countries.
So, Israel makes a small sacrifice for the greater good of anti-whitism, a deal that most Israelis do
not consider very good for themselves. Trump's support for Israeli nationalism short-circuits this project.
Of course, one could ask: why don't the Israeli Jews just move to America? What's the big deal if Israel
remains in the middle east? The big deal is the kind of jobs and activities available for Israelis to
do. A real nation requires a lot of scut work. Someone has to do the plumbing, unplug the sewers, drive
the nails, throw out the trash. Everyone can't be a doctor, a lawyer or a banker. Tradesmen, technicians,
workers are all required to get a project like Israel off the ground and maintained. How many of these
Israelis doing scut work in Israel for a greater good want to do the same scut work in America just
to get by?
The problem operates in reverse for American Jews. A Jew with an American law degree is of
no use to Israelis outside of the money he brings and whether he can throw out the trash. Diaspora Jews,
therefore, have no reason to try and live and work in Israel.
So, again, we see that Trump's move is a masterstroke. Even his appointment to counter the coup with
Zionists is brilliant, since these Zionists are rich enough to both live anywhere and indulge their
pride in nationalist endeavors.
"A real nation requires a lot of scut work. Someone has to do the plumbing, unplug the sewers, drive
the nails, throw out the trash."
Perhaps you'd like to discuss why so much of this and other "scut work" is done by Palestinians,
while an increasing number of Israeli Jews are on the dole.
@Mark Green
This is a good article but there's been a sudden shift. Incredibly, Obama has finally
gotten some balls in his dealings with Israel. And Trump is starting to sound like a neocon!
Maybe Trump is worried enough about a potential coup to dump his 'America First' platform (at least
for now) to shore up vital Jewish support for his teetering inauguration. This ploy will require a lot
of pro-Zionist noise and gesturing. Consequently, Trump is starting to play a familiar political role.
And the Zio-friendly media is holding his feet to the fire.
Has the smell of fear pushed Trump over the edge and into the lap of the Zionist establishment? It's
beginning to look that way.
Or is Trump just being a fox?
Let's face it: nobody can pull out all the stops better than Israel's Fifth Column. They've got the
money, the organization skills, the media leverage, and the raw intellectual moxie to make political
miracles/disasters happen. Trump wants them on his side. So he's is tacitly cutting a last-minute deal
with the Israelis. Trump's Zionized rhetoric (and political appointments) prove it.
This explains the apparent reversal that's now underway. Obama's pushing back while Trump is accommodating.
And, as usual, the Zions are dictating the Narrative.
As Israel Shamir reminds us: there's nothing as liberating to a politician as leaving office. Therefore,
Obama is finally free to do what's right. Trump however is facing no such luxury. And Bibi is more defiant
than ever. This is high drama. And Trump is feeling the heat.
Indeed, outgoing Sec. John Kerry just delivered a major speech where he reiterated strongly US support
for a real 'Two State' solution in Israel/Palestine.
And I thought the Two State Solution was dead.
Didn't you?
Kerry also criticized Israel's ongoing confiscation of the Occupied Territories. It was a brilliant
analysis that Kerry gave without the aid of a teleprompter. Hugely impressive. Even so, Kerry did not
throw Israel under the bus, as claimed. His speech was extremely fair.
This renewed, steadfast American position, coupled with the UNSC's unanimous vote against Israel
(which Obama permitted by not casting the usual US veto) has set the stage for a monumental showdown.
Israel has never been more isolated. But it's Trump--not Obama--that's looking weak in the face of Israeli
pressure.
Indeed, the international Jewish establishment remains uniquely powerful. They may be hated (and
appropriately so) but they get things accomplished in the political arena. Trump understands this all-too-well.
Will Trump--out of fear and necessity--run with the mega-powerful Jews who tried to sabotage his
campaign?--Or will he stay strong with America First and avoid "any more disasterous wars". It's impossible
to say. Trump is speaking out of both sides of his mouth.
I get the feeling that even Trump is unsure of where all this is going. But the situation is fast
approaching critical mass. Something's gotta give. The entire world is fed up with Israel.
Will Trump blink and take the easy road with the Zions?--Or will he summon Putin's independent, nationalistic
spirit and stay the course of 'America First'?
Unfortunately, having scrutinized the Zions in action for decades, I'm fearful that Trump will go
Pure Washington and run with the Israeli-Firsters. This will fortify his shaky political foundation.
I hope that I'm wrong about this but the Zions are brilliantly equipped to play both sides of America's
political divide. No politician is immune to their machinations.
"As Israel Shamir reminds us: there's nothing as liberating to a politician as leaving office. Therefore,
Obama is finally free to do what's right . "
THEN WHY DOESN'T HE DO WHAT'S RIGHT? As Seamus Padraig pointed out, the UN abstention is "just more
empty symbolism." Meanwhile The Christmas Eve attack on the First Amendment The approval of arming terrorists in Syria
The fake news about Russian hacking throwing Killary's election
Aid to terrorists is a felony. Obama should be indicted.
I try to write clearly, but if this is your response I've failed miserably. My interest in the hacking
is nil.
What I have against Obama is his regime-change war in Syria, his State Department enabled coup in Ukraine,
his support of Saudi war/genocide against Yemen, his destruction of Libya, his demonization of Putin,
and his bringing us to a status near war in our relations with Russia.
Obama has been providing weapons, training, air support and propaganda for Terrorists via their affiliates
in Syria, and now directly. This is a felony, if not treason.
What I have against Obama is his regime-change war in Syria, his State Department enabled coup
in Ukraine, his support of Saudi war/genocide against Yemen, his destruction of Libya, his demonization
of Putin, and his bringing us to a status near war in our relations with Russia.
RobinG - Agree 100% – some times I get things crossed up - Peace Art
@Mark Green
This is a good article but there's been a sudden shift. Incredibly, Obama has finally
gotten some balls in his dealings with Israel. And Trump is starting to sound like a neocon!
Maybe Trump is worried enough about a potential coup to dump his 'America First' platform (at least
for now) to shore up vital Jewish support for his teetering inauguration. This ploy will require a lot
of pro-Zionist noise and gesturing. Consequently, Trump is starting to play a familiar political role.
And the Zio-friendly media is holding his feet to the fire.
Has the smell of fear pushed Trump over the edge and into the lap of the Zionist establishment? It's
beginning to look that way.
Or is Trump just being a fox?
Let's face it: nobody can pull out all the stops better than Israel's Fifth Column. They've got the
money, the organization skills, the media leverage, and the raw intellectual moxie to make political
miracles/disasters happen. Trump wants them on his side. So he's is tacitly cutting a last-minute deal
with the Israelis. Trump's Zionized rhetoric (and political appointments) prove it.
This explains the apparent reversal that's now underway. Obama's pushing back while Trump is accommodating.
And, as usual, the Zions are dictating the Narrative.
As Israel Shamir reminds us: there's nothing as liberating to a politician as leaving office. Therefore,
Obama is finally free to do what's right. Trump however is facing no such luxury. And Bibi is more defiant
than ever. This is high drama. And Trump is feeling the heat.
Indeed, outgoing Sec. John Kerry just delivered a major speech where he reiterated strongly US support
for a real 'Two State' solution in Israel/Palestine.
And I thought the Two State Solution was dead.
Didn't you?
Kerry also criticized Israel's ongoing confiscation of the Occupied Territories. It was a brilliant
analysis that Kerry gave without the aid of a teleprompter. Hugely impressive. Even so, Kerry did not
throw Israel under the bus, as claimed. His speech was extremely fair.
This renewed, steadfast American position, coupled with the UNSC's unanimous vote against Israel
(which Obama permitted by not casting the usual US veto) has set the stage for a monumental showdown.
Israel has never been more isolated. But it's Trump--not Obama--that's looking weak in the face of Israeli
pressure.
Indeed, the international Jewish establishment remains uniquely powerful. They may be hated (and
appropriately so) but they get things accomplished in the political arena. Trump understands this all-too-well.
Will Trump--out of fear and necessity--run with the mega-powerful Jews who tried to sabotage his
campaign?--Or will he stay strong with America First and avoid "any more disasterous wars". It's impossible
to say. Trump is speaking out of both sides of his mouth.
I get the feeling that even Trump is unsure of where all this is going. But the situation is fast
approaching critical mass. Something's gotta give. The entire world is fed up with Israel.
Will Trump blink and take the easy road with the Zions?--Or will he summon Putin's independent, nationalistic
spirit and stay the course of 'America First'?
Unfortunately, having scrutinized the Zions in action for decades, I'm fearful that Trump will go
Pure Washington and run with the Israeli-Firsters. This will fortify his shaky political foundation.
I hope that I'm wrong about this but the Zions are brilliantly equipped to play both sides of America's
political divide. No politician is immune to their machinations.
Most of the Western world is much sicker of the head-choppers in charge of our 'human rights' at
the UN (thanks to Obama and the UK) than it is of Israel. It is they, not we, who have funded ISIS directly.
It seems that our POTUS has just chosen to eject 35 Russian diplomats from our country, on grounds of
hacking the election against Hillary.
Is this some weird, preliminary "shot across the bow" in preparation for the coming "coup attempt" you
seem to believe is in the offing ?
It seem the powers-that-be are pulling out all the stops to prevent an authentic rapprochement with
Moscow.
What for ?
It makes you wonder if there is more to this than meets the eye, something beyond the sanguine disgruntlement
of the party bosses and a desire for payback against Hillary's big loss ?
Does anyone know if Russia is more aware than most Americans of certain classified details pertaining
to stuff.....like 9-11 ?
Why is cooperation between the new administration and Moscow so scary to these people that they would
initiate a preemptive diplomatic shut down ?
They seem to be dead set on welding shut every single diplomatic door to the Kremlin there is , before
Trumps inauguration.
Perhaps something "else "is being planned........Does anyone have any ideas whats going on ?
What does Russian intelligence know? Err perhaps something like that the US/UK have sold nukes
to the head-choppers of the riyadh caliphate, say (knowing how completely mad their incestuous brains
are?). Who knows? – but such a fact could explain many inexplicable things.
@map
The revanchist claim that I refer to is psychological, not moral or legal. Palestinians think
their land was stolen in the same way Mexicans think Texas and California were stolen. That feeling
will not change just because they get a two-state solution or a right of return. What it will result
in is a comfortable base from which to continue to operate against Israel, one that Israel can't afford.
It is Nationalism 101 not to allow revanchist groups in your country.
The leftists are being consistent in their ideology by opposing Israel, because they are fully on board
going after what looks like a white country attacking brown people and demanding not to be dismantled
by anti-nationalist policies. Trump suggesting the capital go to Jerusalem and supporting Bibi is just
triangulation against the left.
I feel sorry for the Palestinians and I think they have been treated very shabbily. They did lose a
lot as any refugee population would and they should be comfortably repatriated around the Muslim Middle
East. I don't know who is using them or for what purpose.
"treated very shabbily" indeed, by other Arabs – who have done virtually nothing for them.
An alternative hypothesis is that the Wikileaks material was, in fact, leaked by members of the Democratic
campaign itself.
His name was Seth Rich, and he did software for the DNC.
Given all the hoaky, "evidence free" punitive assaults being launched against Moscow today .combined
with the profusion of utterly fraudulent narratives foisted down the throats of the American people
over the last sixteen years
Its NOT outside of reason to take a good hard look at the "Seth Rich incident" and reconstruct an
outline of events(probably) much closer to the truth than the big media would ever be willing to discuss
or admit.
Namely, that Seth Rich, a young decent kid (27) who was working as the data director for the campaign,
came across evidence of "dirty pool" within the voting systems during the DNC nomination ,which were
fraudulently (and maybe even blatantly) tilting the results towards Hillary.
He probably did the "right thing" by notifying one of the DNC bosses of the fraud ..who informed
him he would look into it and that he should keep it quite for the moment
.I wouldn't be surprised if Seth reached out to a reporter , too, probably at the at the NY Times,
who informed his editor who, in turn, had such deep connections to the Hillary corruption machine that
he placed a call to a DNC backroom boss who , at some point, made the decision to take steps to shut
Seth's mouth, permanently ."just make it look like a robbery (or something)"
Seth, not being stupid, and knowing he had the dirt on Hillary that could crush her (as well as the
reputation of the entire democratic party) probably reached out to Julian Assange, too, to hedge his
bets.
In the interview Julian gave shortly after Seth's death, he intimated that Seth was the leak, although
he did not state it outright.
Something like this sequence of events (with perhaps a few alterations ) is probably quite close
to what actually happened.
So here we have a scenario, where the D.N.C. Oligarchs , so corrupt, so evil, so disdainful of the
electorate, and the democratic process , rig the nomination results (on multiple levels) for Hillary..and
when the evidence of this is found, by a decent young kid with his whole life ahead of him, they had
him shot in the back ..four times
And then "Big Media for Hillary", rather than investigate this horrific tragedy and expose the dirty
malevolence at play within the DNC , quashes the entire narrative and grafts in its place the"substitute"
Putin hacks .. demanding faux accountability culminating with sanctions and ejections of the entire
Russian diplomatic corp .all on the grounds of attempting to "sully American Democracy"
.
@map
The revanchist claim that I refer to is psychological, not moral or legal. Palestinians think
their land was stolen in the same way Mexicans think Texas and California were stolen. That feeling
will not change just because they get a two-state solution or a right of return. What it will result
in is a comfortable base from which to continue to operate against Israel, one that Israel can't afford.
It is Nationalism 101 not to allow revanchist groups in your country.
The leftists are being consistent in their ideology by opposing Israel, because they are fully on board
going after what looks like a white country attacking brown people and demanding not to be dismantled
by anti-nationalist policies. Trump suggesting the capital go to Jerusalem and supporting Bibi is just
triangulation against the left.
I feel sorry for the Palestinians and I think they have been treated very shabbily. They did lose a
lot as any refugee population would and they should be comfortably repatriated around the Muslim Middle
East. I don't know who is using them or for what purpose.
good points. Yet, Palestinians "They should be comfortably repatriated around the Muslim Middle
East." sounds pretty much like an Israel talking point. How about Israel should be dissolved and the Jews repatriated around Europe and the US?
Not being an Idea world, but a Biological World, revanchism is true enough up to a point. Of course
The Revanchists of All Time are the jews, or the zionists, to speak liberalize.
As for feelings that don't change, there is a tendency for feelings to change over time, especially
when a "legal" document is signed by the participating parties. I have long advocated that the Jews
pay for the land they stole, and that that payment be made to a new Palestinian state. A Palestinian
with a home, a job, a family, and a nice car makes a lot of difference, just like anywhere else.
(We paid the Mexicans in a treaty that presumably ended the Mexican war. This is a normal state of
affairs. Mexico only "owned" California, etc, for about 25 years, and I do not think paid the injuns
anything for their land at the time. Also, if memory serves, I think Pat Buchanan claimed somewhere
that there were only about 10,000 Mexicans in California at the time, or maybe in the whole area under
discussion..)
How Palestine stolen property, should be evaluated I leave to the experts. Jews would appear to have
ample resources and could pony up the dough.
The biggest problem is the US evangelicals and equally important, the nice Episcopalians and so on,
even the Catholic Church which used to Exclude Jews now luving them. This is part of our National Religion.
The Jews are god's favorites, and nobody seems to mind. Kill an Arab for Christ is the national gut
feeling, except when it gets too expensive or kills too many Americans.
As I have said, Trump is in between the rock and the hard place. If he wants to end the Jewish Wars
in the ME, he cannot luv the jews, and especially he cannot start lobbing bombs around too much even
over Isis and the dozens of jihadist groups, especially now in Syria.
Sorry but your "comfortably repatriated" is a real howler. There is no comfort to be had by anybody
in the ME. And, like Jews with regard to your points about revanchism in general, Palestinians have
not blended into the general Arab populations of other countries, like Lebanon, etc.. Using your own
logic, the Palestinians will continue to nurse their grievances no matter where they are, just like
the Jews.
The neocon goals of failed states in the Arab World has been largely accomplished and the only way
humpty-dumpty will be put back together again is for tough Arab Strong Men to reestablish order. Like
Assad, like Hussein, etc. Arab IQ is about 85 in general. There is not going to be democracy/elections/civics lessons per the White countries's genetic predisposition.\
For that matter, Jews are not democrats. Left alone Israel, wherever it is, reverts to Rabbinic Control
and Jehovah, the Warrior God, reigns. Fact is , that is where Israel is heading anyway.
Jews never invented free speech and rule of law, nor did Arabs, or any other race on the planet.
The Jews With Nukes is of World Historical Importance. And Whites have given them the Bomb, just
as Whites have given Third World inferior races, access to the Northern Cornucopia of wealth, both spiritual
and material. They will , like the jews, exploit free speech and game the economic system.
All Semites Out! Ditto just about everybody else, starting with the Chinese.
finally, if the jews had any real brains, they would get out of a neighborhood that hates them for
their jewishness, their Thefts, and their Wars. Otoh, Jews seem to thrive on being hated more than any
other race or ethnic group. Chosen to Always Complain. Joe Webb
Trump has absolutely no support in the media. With the Fox News and Fox Business, first string, talking
heads on vacation (minimal support) the second and third string are insanely trying to push the Russian
hacking bullshit. Trump better realize that the only support he has are the people that voted for him.
January 2017 will be a bad month for this country and the rest of 2017 much worse.
Sorry Joe, the "whites" did not give the Jews the atomic bomb. In truth, the Jews were critically
important in developing the scientific ideas and technology critical to making the first atomic bomb.
I can recognize Jewish malfeasance where it exists, but to ignore their intellectual contributions
to Western Civilization is sheer blindness.
One thing lost in all the hullabaloo about Russian hacks is that the Obama
administration's record on cyber security has been terrible. Off the top of my
head I can think of several compromising cases:
* Anything having to do with HRC's bathroom server, of course
* The Sony hack that Obama said was North Korea, but other experts say was
probably just Trump's 400 lb fat guy on a bed.
* The alleged Chinese hacking of OPM
* And undoubtedly the "CYBER 911!!" of the alleged Russian interference in the
election.
I don't see anyone talking about the fact that cyber infrastructure looks
like it's been hit by birdshot. All the while, Obama's intelligence teams are
mining information on Americans as extralegally as possible.
"Russia tampered with vote tallies to help Donald Trump"
Yeah, that seems like a clear statement, but when you consider that the vast majority of people
do not habitually read closely and interpret things literally, I can see how this would easily
be misinterpreted.
Russia tampered with the election to help Donald Trump. That's a fairly well established fact.
It's not the same as "tampered with vote tallies" but an inattentive poll respondent might assume
the question was about the former. And most people are inattentive.
"Russia tampered with the election to help Donald Trump. That's a fairly well established fact."
You are funny. Especially with your "well established fact" nonsense.
In such cases the only source of well established facts is a court of law or International
observers of the elections. All other agencies have their own interest in distorting the truth.
For example, to get additional funding.
And that list includes President Obama himself, as a player, because he clearly was a Hillary
supporter and as such can not be considered an impartial player and can politically benefit from
shifting the blame for fiasco to Russia.
Also historically, he never was very truthful with American people, was he? As in case of his
"Change we can believe in!" bait and switch trick.
There were several other important foreign players in the US elections: for example KAS and
Israel. Were their actions investigated? Especially in the area of financial support of candidates.
And then FYI there is a documented history of US tampering in Russian Presidential election
of 2011-2012 such as meetings of the US ambassador with the opposition leaders, financing of opposition
via NGO, putting pressure by publishing election pools produced by US financed non-profits, and
so on and so forth. All in the name of democracy, of course. Which cost Ambassador McFaul his
position; NED was kicked out of the country.
As far as I remember nobody went to jail in the USA for those activities. There was no investigation.
So it looks like the USA authorities considered this to be a pretty legal activity. Then why they
complain now?
And then there is the whole rich history of CIA subverting elections in Latin America.
So is not this a case of "the pot calling the kettle black"?
I don't know. But I would avoid your simplistic position. The case is too complex for this.
At least more complex that the narrative the neoliberal MSMs try to present us with. It might
be Russian influence was a factor, but it might be that it was negligible and other factors were
in play. There is also a pre-history and there are other suspects.
You probably need to see a wider context of the event.
Some perspective: For most of human history, power was rooted in
possession
of land. After the
Industrial Revolution , power lay in controlling in the means of production. But today, the main
source of power is control of information.
Having the power to control information (what Steve Sailer calls
The Megaphone ) gives you the ability to determine what issues will be discussed, what
viewpoints are considered legitimate, and who is allowed to participate in polite society. It
ultimately allows you to push an entire code of morality on others. And morality is, ultimately,
a weapon more terrible than can be found in any arsenal [
Weaponized Morality , by Gregory Hood, Radix, October 12, 2016].
The 2016 election was ultimately a battle between the
commanding heights of media (newspapers, networks, and web portals) and what we could call the
guerillas of media (/pol, forums, hackers,
right wing trolls , and independent media outlets like us). The latter lacked power on their
own, but they united behind Donald Trump, a man whose brand was so well-established that the Establishment
couldn't ignore him. It was
Fourth Generation Warfare –this time over information.
And just as guerillas have been frustrating established armies all around the world on real-world
battlefields, so did the online commandos frustrate and eventually overcome the seemingly invincible
Fourth Estate.
But this victory wasn't inevitable. From day one,
the MSM tried to destroy Donald Trump , including his business empire, because of his stated
views on immigration.
Since that failed, they have started turning on his supporters with three tactics.
First , a blatant attempt to pathologize dissent–especially the Alt Right.
Soon after the election, the Leftist Think Progress blog announced that the Alt Right should
only be called "white nationalist" or "white supremacist". [
Think Progress will no longer describe racists as "alt-right" , November 22, 2016]
The AP dutifully echoed this pronouncement days later, warning journalists not to use the term and
instead to stick to pejoratives. [
AP issues guidelines for using the term 'alt-right,' by Brent Griffiths, Politico,
November 28, 2016]
This is a literally
Orwellian attempt to eliminate Crimethink through
linguistic control
. Of course, no such guidelines will apply to non-white Identitarian groups such as the National
Council of La Raza, which will continue to be called an "advocacy" or "progressive grass-roots immigration-reform
organization" [
NCLR head: Obama 'deporter-in-chief, ' by Reid Epstein, Politico, March 4,
2016].
Secondly , a meme has been invented about so-called
"Fake News," which will be used to shut down
dissident media outlets.
Needless to say, most the rationale for this is not just fake, but comically, obviously, wrong.
Thus the Washington Post
reported that VDARE.com (and many other sites) was a "Russian propaganda effort" based on no
evidence at all. We ask: where is our vodka?
Rolling Stone, which
pushed one of the most disgusting hoaxes in
modern journalism at the University
of Virginia, is having
meetings with President
Obama to discuss "fake news." The Guardian
fell for what appears to be a hoax decrying "online hate" precisely because it is impossible
to tell the difference today between the latest virtue signaling craze and satire.
Actual attacks on Trump supporters are not covered, while unsourced, unverified claims of a wave
of "hate crimes," which mostly consists of handwritten notes most likely written by the supposed
"victims" or
incidents so trivial normal people wouldn't even notice , dominate the headlines.
This is a far more insidious form of "fake news" than anything "the Russians" are promoting. And
what about the lie of "
hands up, don't shoot ?"
Another example: supposedly mainstream outlets are comfortable leveling wild charges Steve Bannon
is somehow a "white nationalist." Bannon on the evidence is actually a
civic nationalist who has specifically denounced racism and, if anything, is showing troubling
signs of moving towards the
"DemsRRealRacist"- style talking points which led Conservatism Inc. to disaster. There are absolutely
no statements by Bannon actually calling for, say, a white ethnostate.
Thirdly , the Trump victory is clearly leading to increased attempts at outright
repression.
Or, as VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow
told the NPI conference: "What we are going to see in the next few years is an intensified Reign
Of Terror."
For example, Buzzfeed's latest masterpiece of journalism: the shocking revelation that
reality stars Chip and Joanna Gaines attend a church that disagrees with homosexual marriage [
Chip and Joanna Gaines' Church Is Firmly Against Same-Sex Marriage , by Kate Aurthur,
Buzzfeed, November 29, 2016]. You know–like every Christian church for about 2000 years. The
obvious agenda: to get the show canceled or the Gaines to disavow their own pastor.
This is the goal of most "journalism" today–to get someone fired or to get someone to disavow
someone. The
Southern Poverty Law Center (
$PLC to VDARE.com) makes a
lucrative income from
policing speech . ( Right, a graph of their endowment fund.)And journalists today are no different
than the $PLC. They do not report, they do not provide information, and rather than ensuring freedom
they are the willing tools of repression.
And this repression only goes one way.
If you wouldn't invite
some communist demonstrator into your meeting, why would you invite an MSM journalist? They have
the same beliefs, the same motivations, and increasingly, they rely on the same tactics. Aside from
the occasional throwing of feces (as Richard Spencer learned at NPI), the preferred tactic of "Antifa"
consists of pearl-clutching blog posts.
Since the election, journalists have been paying tribute to their own courage, promising to hold
Trump accountable. But there is no greater enemy to free speech than reporters. Shutting down the
networks and shuttering the newspapers would be a boon to independence of thought, not an obstacle.
For his own sake, to defend his own Administration, Trump has to delegitimize the MSM, just as
he did during the campaign. He should continue to use his Twitter account and speak straight to the
people. He should not
hold press conferences with national MSM and speak only to local reporters before holding rallies.
If Twitter bans him, as Leftists are urging, he should nationalize it as a utility and make it a
free speech zone.[
Twitter has become a utility , by Alan Kohler, The Australian, October 17,
2016]
And Trump's supporters need to act the same way. Stop giving reporters access. Stop pretending
you can play the MSM for your own benefit. Stop acting like these people are anything other than
hostile political activists whose only interest in life is to make yours worse.
Stop giving them what they want.
Your career, family, and entire life may depend on it. And so does the life of the nation.
James Kirkpatrick [
Email him]
is a Beltway veteran and a refugee from Conservatism Inc.
"... "The lockstep zombies for the sleaze and global mayhem of the Clinton Machine and Dem Party gangsters are on the march. These liberals for US Empire are showing their reverence and fanboy love for the CIA and FBI and McCarthyism. ..."
"... They either cheered or shrugged when the Clinton thugs stole the primary from Bernie (with his obsequious assent) or snored when Obama/Clinton staged coups and installed fascists in Honduras and Ukraine but oh how they bellow and shake their fists at the *alleged* hacking by Russia that amounts to providing info on just how sleazy the Democratic Party is. ..."
"... THAT form of fake news is not only acceptable it is to be embraced and taught to our fucking children. If the NYT or WaPo tells us all bad things come from Putin these shock troops for the Democratic Party click their heels and salute. ..."
"... The risk of WWIII is not enough to deter these fucking maniacs from doing all they can to keep their team in power. Meanwhile their leaders want to "work with" Trump and "give him a chance." Who are the fascists in this shit show?? Such a clusterfuck of incoherence. ..."
"... If it's true the "Russians" (who be that by the way?) did what the professional liars in the intelligence agencies say they did it doesn't even amount to a parking violation compared to the billions and billions of dollars spent by the US over the last 70 years rigging and crushing democracy (literally with murder) across the globe. ..."
This post by Leftie on facebook offers glimpse into chasm on the other side.
It's Progs vs Globs. ProGlob is coming apart.
"The lockstep zombies for the sleaze and global mayhem of the Clinton Machine and Dem Party gangsters
are on the march. These liberals for US Empire are showing their reverence and fanboy love for the CIA
and FBI and McCarthyism.
They either cheered or shrugged when the Clinton thugs stole the primary from Bernie (with his obsequious
assent) or snored when Obama/Clinton staged coups and installed fascists in Honduras and Ukraine but
oh how they bellow and shake their fists at the
*alleged*
hacking by Russia that amounts
to providing info on just how sleazy the Democratic Party is.
The "fake news" (it's called free speech you fucking assholes) that the Rooskies pumped into our
helpless and confused brains is a threat to the Republic but "capitalism means freedom and democracy",
WMD's, yellow cake, mobile weapons labs, babies torn from incubators, the international monolithic communist
conspiracy, Gaddafi supplying viagra to his troops, the headchoppers Obama gives arms and sends into
Syria to destroy yet another nation are "moderates", KONY 2012, the filthy Hun is coming to kill us
all in 1917, "Duck and cover!!" Gulf of Tonkin, Ho Chi Min's soldiers are going to spring from their
canoes on the beaches of Malibu to rape your wife and make you wear pajamas, "superpredators" and on
and on etc etc etc
THAT form of fake news is not only acceptable it is to be embraced and taught to our fucking children.
If the NYT or WaPo tells us all bad things come from Putin these shock troops for the Democratic Party
click their heels and salute.
The risk of WWIII is not enough to deter these fucking maniacs from doing all they can to keep their
team in power. Meanwhile their leaders want to "work with" Trump and "give him a chance." Who are the
fascists in this shit show?? Such a clusterfuck of incoherence.
If it's true the "Russians" (who be
that by the way?) did what the professional liars in the intelligence agencies say they did it doesn't
even amount to a parking violation compared to the billions and billions of dollars spent by the US
over the last 70 years rigging and crushing democracy (literally with murder) across the globe.
And
the whole obscene carnival engulfing the nation is of course to be blamed on the racist knuckle-dragging
"basket of deplorables.""
A Wikileaks envoy today claims he personally received Clinton campaign emails in Washington
D.C. after they were leaked by 'disgusted' whisteblowers - and not hacked by Russia.
Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and a close associate of Wikileaks founder
Julian Assange, told Dailymail.com that he flew to Washington, D.C. for a clandestine hand-off
with one of the email sources in September.
'Neither of [the leaks] came from the Russians,' said Murray in an interview with Dailymail.com
on Tuesday. ' The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks,
not hacks.'
His account contradicts directly the version of how thousands of Democratic emails were published
before the election being advanced by U.S. intelligence.
Americans steeped in a culture of 'politics' are again being fooled, this election wasn't about
party or state lines, "Republicans" didn't win over "Democrats" - this election was about a wild
card, a non-politician, non-Establishment candidate winning by a landslide if going by the polls
(Trump was given 5% chance of winning up until the night of election).
When Peńa Nieto won, Sepúlveda began destroying evidence. He drilled holes in flash drives,
hard drives, and cell phones, fried their circuits in a microwave, then broke them to shards with
a hammer. He shredded documents and flushed them down the toilet and erased servers in Russia
and Ukraine rented anonymously with Bitcoins. He was dismantling what he says was a secret history
of one of the dirtiest Latin American campaigns in recent memory.
For eight years, Sepúlveda, now 31, says he traveled the continent rigging major political
campaigns. With a budget of $600,000, the Peńa Nieto job was by far his most complex. He led a
team of hackers that stole campaign strategies, manipulated social media to create false waves
of enthusiasm and derision, and installed spyware in opposition offices, all to help Peńa Nieto,
a right-of-center candidate, eke out a victory. On that July night, he cracked bottle after bottle
of Colón Negra beer in celebration. As usual on election night, he was alone.
Sepúlveda's career began in 2005, and his first jobs were small-mostly defacing campaign websites
and breaking into opponents' donor databases. Within a few years he was assembling teams that
spied, stole, and smeared on behalf of presidential campaigns across Latin America. He wasn't
cheap, but his services were extensive. For $12,000 a month, a customer hired a crew that could
hack smartphones, spoof and clone Web pages, and send mass e-mails and texts. The premium package,
at $20,000 a month, also included a full range of digital interception, attack, decryption, and
defense. The jobs were carefully laundered through layers of middlemen and consultants. Sepúlveda
says many of the candidates he helped might not even have known about his role; he says he met
only a few.
His teams worked on presidential elections in Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia,
Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Venezuela. Campaigns mentioned in this story were contacted
through former and current spokespeople; none but Mexico's PRI and the campaign of Guatemala's
National Advancement Party would comment.
The point here, well there are several points. One, Sepulveda is not the only guy in the world
doing this. The CIA even has a team of social media trolls and the NSA has a department that only
develops robots to do the same thing Sepulveda was doing and better. The age of 'spies' has transformed
into an electronic, digital, online version - much like the internet has transformed life and business
it has also changed the way the intelligence establishment deals with controlling the population.
Oh how the FBI has evolved since the days of Hoffman and Cointelpro!
Many of Sepúlveda's efforts were unsuccessful, but he has enough wins that he might be able
to claim as much influence over the political direction of modern Latin America as anyone in the
21st century. "My job was to do actions of dirty war and psychological operations, black propaganda,
rumors-the whole dark side of politics that nobody knows exists but everyone can see," he says
in Spanish, while sitting at a small plastic table in an outdoor courtyard deep within the heavily
fortified offices of Colombia's attorney general's office. He's serving 10 years in prison for
charges including use of malicious software, conspiracy to commit crime, violation of personal
data, and espionage, related to hacking during Colombia's 2014 presidential election. He has agreed
to tell his full story for the first time, hoping to convince the public that he's rehabilitated-and
gather support for a reduced sentence.
Usually, he says, he was on the payroll of Juan José Rendón, a Miami-based political consultant
who's been called the Karl Rove of Latin America. Rendón denies using Sepúlveda for anything illegal,
and categorically disputes the account Sepúlveda gave Bloomberg Businessweek of their relationship,
but admits knowing him and using him to do website design. "If I talked to him maybe once or twice,
it was in a group session about that, about the Web," he says. "I don't do illegal stuff at all.
There is negative campaigning. They don't like it-OK. But if it's legal, I'm gonna do it. I'm
not a saint, but I'm not a criminal." While Sepúlveda's policy was to destroy all data at the
completion of a job, he left some documents with members of his hacking teams and other trusted
third parties as a secret "insurance policy."
We don't need a degree in cybersecurity to see how this was going on against Trump all throughout
the campaign. Not only did they hire thugs to start riots at Trump rallies and protest, a massive
online campaign was staged against Trump.
Rendón, says Sepúlveda, saw that hackers could be completely integrated into a modern political
operation, running attack ads, researching the opposition, and finding ways to suppress a foe's
turnout. As for Sepúlveda, his insight was to understand that voters trusted what they thought
were spontaneous expressions of real people on social media more than they did experts on television
and in newspapers. He knew that accounts could be faked and social media trends fabricated, all
relatively cheaply. He wrote a software program, now called Social Media Predator, to manage and
direct a virtual army of fake Twitter accounts. The software let him quickly change names, profile
pictures, and biographies to fit any need. Eventually, he discovered, he could manipulate the
public debate as easily as moving pieces on a chessboard-or, as he puts it, "When I realized that
people believe what the Internet says more than reality, I discovered that I had the power to
make people believe almost anything."
Sepúlveda managed thousands of such fake profiles and used the accounts to shape discussion
around topics such as Peńa Nieto's plan to end drug violence, priming the social media pump with
views that real users would mimic. For less nuanced work, he had a larger army of 30,000 Twitter
bots, automatic posters that could create trends. One conversation he started stoked fear that
the more López Obrador rose in the polls, the lower the peso would sink. Sepúlveda knew the currency
issue was a major vulnerability; he'd read it in the candidate's own internal staff memos.
While there's no evidence that Rendon or Sepulveda were involved in the 2016 election, there is
also no evidence that Russian hackers were involved in the 2016 election. There's not even false
evidence. There isn't a hint of it. There isn't a witness, there isn't a document, there's nothing
- it's a conspiracy theory! And a very poor one.
Russian hackers would have had the same or better (probably much better) tools, strategies, and
resources than Sepulveda. But none of this shows up anywhere. If anything, this is an example of
how NOT to hack an election.
Thanks. Right. Hillary's official electronic communications is more correct than Hillary's emails.
(And the "wipe them, you mean like with a rag?" from Hillary, after having been in government
all her adult life and after having presented herself as a modern Secretary of State who knew
all about how government and modern technology worked would have been a funny joke if it hadn't
obviously been intended to cover up enormous crimes.)
Whoever is running the world with all of this fake stuff and all of the monitoring of people and
petty false propganda, they pretty much suck at it. it is as if they are claiming to be running
the world using "training wheels". As a substitute for God they stink! Grade D-!
The tale doesn't have to be a good one for the TV addicted masses to believe it, it only has to
be presented by the only sources these imbeciles are willing to use: their fucking TV sets. Most
people are so deluded by their main source of entertainment and information that they wouldn't
give a shit if incontrovertible evidence that their TV information source was lying was presented
to them.
Most people I know don't want to know anything that can't be spoonfed to them on a TV screen.
"The tale doesn't have to be a good one for the TV addicted masses to believe it..."
Like the tale that the only steel highrise buildings to ever collapse due to fires (turning
into dust at near freefall speed) ocurred on a single day 15 years ago, orchestrated, along with
everything else on that fateful day, by a man in a cave half a world away.
and that after every airport was closed and every single commercial plane was grounded, that man's
entire extended family resident in the u.s., some two dozen individuals, was given fbi protection,
rented cars and chartered planes, and flown out of the country without ever being interviewed,
at all, by any law enforcement branch of the government of the united states which, needless to
say, had absolutely no involvement with the deadliest foreign attack on u.s. soil since the war
of 1812, killing nearly 600 more than died at pearl harbor.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bin-laden-family-evacuated/
this was known at the time it happened. what took longer to discover was that the source of
the foreign attack was not a cave in afghanistan or even saudi arabia or the muslim world generally.
all along it was our trusted ally, brave little israel.
Anti-semitism enables one to ignore the elephant in the room, namely the Saudis who have been
spending billions promoting Wahhabism and terrorism, to blame a tiny little country for everything,
without ever having to bother about evidence. Seek help.
"... "Fake news was a term specifically about people who purposely fabricated stories for clicks and revenue," said David Mikkelson, the founder of Snopes, the myth-busting website. "Now it includes bad reporting, slanted journalism and outright propaganda. And I think we're doing a disservice to lump all those things together." ..."
"... "What I think is so unsettling about the fake news cries now is that their audience has already sort of bought into this idea that journalism has no credibility or legitimacy," ..."
"... The market in these divided times is undeniably ripe. "We now live in this fragmented media world where you can block people you disagree with. You can only be exposed to stories that make you feel good about what you want to believe," Mr. Ziegler, the radio host, said. "Unfortunately, the truth is unpopular a lot. And a good fairy tale beats a harsh truth every time." ..."
.... As reporters were walking out of a Trump rally this month in Orlando, Fla., a man heckled them with shouts of "Fake news!"
Until now, that term had been widely understood to refer to fabricated news accounts that are meant to spread virally online.
But conservative cable and radio personalities, top Republicans and even Mr. Trump himself, incredulous about suggestions that fake
stories may have helped swing the election, have appropriated the term and turned it against any news they see as hostile to their
agenda.
In defining "fake news" so broadly and seeking to dilute its meaning, they are capitalizing on the declining credibility of all
purveyors of information, one product of the country's increasing political polarization. And conservatives, seeing an opening to
undermine the mainstream media, a longtime foe, are more than happy to dig the hole deeper.
"Over the years, we've effectively brainwashed the core of our audience to distrust anything that they disagree with. And now
it's gone too far," said John Ziegler, a conservative radio host, who has been critical of what he sees as excessive partisanship
by pundits. "Because the gatekeepers have lost all credibility in the minds of consumers, I don't see how you reverse it."
Journalists who work to separate fact from fiction see a dangerous conflation of stories that turn out to be wrong because of
a legitimate misunderstanding with those whose clear intention is to deceive. A report, shared more than a million times on social
media, that the pope had endorsed Mr. Trump was undeniably false. But was it "fake news" to report on data models that showed Hillary
Clinton with overwhelming odds of winning the presidency? Are opinion articles fake if they cherry-pick facts to draw disputable
conclusions?
"Fake news was a term specifically about people who purposely fabricated stories for clicks and revenue," said David Mikkelson,
the founder of Snopes, the myth-busting website. "Now it includes bad reporting, slanted journalism and outright propaganda. And
I think we're doing a disservice to lump all those things together."
The right's labeling of "fake news" evokes one of the most successful efforts by conservatives to reorient how Americans think
about news media objectivity: the move by Fox News to brand its conservative-slanted coverage as "fair and balanced." Traditionally,
mainstream media outlets had thought of their own approach in those terms, viewing their coverage as strictly down the middle. Republicans
often found that laughable. As with Fox's ubiquitous promotion of its slogan, conservatives' appropriation of the "fake news" label
is an effort to further erode the mainstream media's claim to be a reliable and accurate source.
"What I think is so unsettling about the fake news cries now is that their audience has already sort of bought into this idea
that journalism has no credibility or legitimacy," said Angelo Carusone, the president of Media Matters, a liberal group that
polices the news media for bias. "Therefore, by applying that term to credible outlets, it becomes much more believable."
.... ... ...
Mr. Trump has used the term to deny news reports, as he did on Twitter recently after various outlets said he would stay on as
the executive producer of "The New Celebrity Apprentice" after taking office in January. "Ridiculous & untrue - FAKE NEWS!" he wrote.
(He will be credited as executive producer, a spokesman for the show's creator, Mark Burnett, has said. But it is unclear what work,
if any, he will do on the show.)
Many conservatives are pushing back at the outrage over fake news because they believe that liberals, unwilling to accept Mr.
Trump's victory, are attributing his triumph to nefarious external factors.
"The left refuses to admit that the fundamental problem isn't the Russians or Jim Comey or 'fake news' or the Electoral College,"
said Laura Ingraham, the author and radio host. "'Fake news' is just another fake excuse for their failed agenda."
Others see a larger effort to slander the basic journalistic function of fact-checking. Nonpartisan websites like Snopes and Factcheck.org
have found themselves maligned when they have disproved stories that had been flattering to conservatives.
When Snopes wrote about a State Farm insurance agent in Louisiana who had posted a sign outside his office that likened taxpayers
who voted for President Obama to chickens supporting Colonel Sanders, Mr. Mikkelson, the site's founder, was smeared as a partisan
Democrat who had never bothered to reach out to the agent for comment. Neither is true.
"They're trying to float anything they can find out there to discredit fact-checking," he said.
There are already efforts by highly partisan conservatives to claim that their fact-checking efforts are the same as those of
independent outlets like Snopes, which employ research teams to dig into seemingly dubious claims.
Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, has aired "fact-checking" segments on his program. Michelle Malkin, the conservative columnist,
has a web program, "Michelle Malkin Investigates," in which she conducts her own investigative reporting.
The market in these divided times is undeniably ripe. "We now live in this fragmented media world where you can block people
you disagree with. You can only be exposed to stories that make you feel good about what you want to believe," Mr. Ziegler, the radio
host, said. "Unfortunately, the truth is unpopular a lot. And a good fairy tale beats a harsh truth every time."
I wonder what facts you have to label Trump's team "globalist shills".
Robert W. Merry in his National Interest article disagrees with you
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/trump-vs-hillary-nationalism-vs-globalism-2016-16041
=== start of the quote ===
Globalists captured much of American society long ago by capturing the bulk of the nation's elite
institutions -- the media, academia, big corporations, big finance, Hollywood, think tanks, NGOs,
charitable foundations. So powerful are these institutions -- in themselves and, even more so,
collectively -- that the elites running them thought that their political victories were complete
and final. That's why we have witnessed in recent years a quantum expansion of social and political
arrogance on the part of these high-flyers.
Then along comes Donald Trump and upends the whole thing. Just about every major issue that this
super-rich political neophyte has thrown at the elites turns out to be anti-globalist and pro-nationalist.
And that is the single most significant factor in his unprecedented and totally unanticipated
rise. Consider some examples:
Immigration: Nationalists believe that any true nation must have clearly delineated and protected
borders, otherwise it isn't really a nation. They also believe that their nation's cultural heritage
is sacred and needs to be protected, whereas mass immigration from far-flung lands could undermine
the national commitment to that heritage.
Globalists don't care about borders. They believe the nation-state is obsolete, a relic of
the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which codified the recognition of co-existing nation states.
Globalists reject Westphalia in favor of an integrated world with information, money, goods
and people traversing the globe at accelerating speeds without much regard to traditional concepts
of nationhood or borders.
=== end of the quote ===
I wonder how "globalist shills" mantra correlates with the following Trump's statements:
=== start of quote ===
"Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very, very wealthy ... but
it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache," Trump told supporters
during a prepared speech targeting free trade in a nearly-shuttered former steel town in Pennsylvania.
In a speech devoted to what he called "How To Make America Wealthy Again," Trump offered a
series of familiar plans designed to deal with what he called [Obama] "failed trade policies"
- including rejection of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with Pacific Rim nations
and re-negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico,
withdrawing from it if necessary.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee also said he would pursue bilateral trade agreements
rather than multi-national deals like TPP and NAFTA.
In addition to appointing better trade negotiators and stepping up punishment of countries
that violate trade rules, Trump's plans would also target one specific economic competitor: China.
He vowed to label China a currency manipulator, bring it before the World Trade Organization and
consider slapping tariffs on Chinese imports coming into the U.S.
"... We have a dollar democracy that protects the economic interest of the elite class while more than willing to let working class families lose their homes and jobs on the back end of wide scale mortgage fraud. Then the fraud was perpetuated in the mortgage default process just to add insult to injury. ..."
"... One thing that Trump certainly got wrong that no one ever points out is that there is a lot more murder than rape crossing the Mexican-American border in the drug cartel operations ..."
"... The technocrats lied about how globalization would be great for everyone. People's actual experience in their lives has been different. ..."
"... Centrist Democrat partisans with their increasinly ineffectual defenses of the establishment say it's only about racism and xenophobia, but it's more than that. ..."
Assaults on democracy are working because our current political elites have no idea how to
defend it.
[There are certainly good points to this article, but the basic assumption that our electorally
representative form of republican government is the ideal incarnation of the democratic value
set is obviously incorrect. We have a dollar democracy that protects the economic interest of
the elite class while more than willing to let working class families lose their homes and jobs
on the back end of wide scale mortgage fraud. Then the fraud was perpetuated in the mortgage default
process just to add insult to injury.
One thing that Trump certainly got wrong that no one ever points out is that there is a lot
more murder than rape crossing the Mexican-American border in the drug cartel operations:<) ]
The author fails to mention the Sanders campaign. An elderly socialist Jew from Brooklyn was able
to win 23 primaries and caucuses and approximately 43% of pledged delegates to Clinton's 55%.
This despite a nasty, hostile campaign against him and his supporters by the Clinton campaign
and corporate media.
There's also Jeremy Corbyn in the UK. Podemos, Syriza, etc.
Italy's 5 Star movement demonstrates a hostility to technocrats as well.
The author doesn't really focus on how the technocrats have failed.
The technocrats lied about how globalization would be great for everyone. People's actual experience
in their lives has been different.
Trump scapegoated immigrants and trade, as did Brexit, but what he really did was channel hostility
and hatred at the elites and technocrats running the country.
Centrist Democrat partisans with their increasinly ineffectual defenses of the establishment
say it's only about racism and xenophobia, but it's more than that.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to Peter K.... , -1
"Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very, very wealthy ... but
it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache," Trump told supporters
during a prepared speech targeting free trade in a nearly-shuttered former steel town in Pennsylvania.
In a speech devoted to what he called "How To Make America Wealthy Again," Trump offered a series
of familiar plans designed to deal with what he called "failed trade policies" - including rejection
of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with Pacific Rim nations and re-negotiation of the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico, withdrawing from it if necessary.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee also said he would pursue bilateral trade agreements
rather than multi-national deals like TPP and NAFTA.
In addition to appointing better trade negotiators and stepping up punishment of countries that violate
trade rules, Trump's plans would also target one specific economic competitor: China. He vowed to
label China a currency manipulator, bring it before the World Trade Organization and consider slapping
tariffs on Chinese imports coming into the U.S.
This Russian hacking thing is being discussed entirely out of realistic context.
Cyber security
is a serious risk management operation that firms and governments spend outrageous sums of money
on because hacking attempts, especially from sources in China and Russia, occur in vast numbers
against every remotely desirable target corporate or government each and every day. At my former
employer, the State of Virginia, the data center repelled over two million hacking attempts from
sources in China each day. Northrop Grumman, the infrastructure management outsourcer for the
State of Virginia's IT infrastructure, has had no known intrusions into any Commonwealth of Virginia
servers that had been migrated to their standard security infrastructure thus far since the inception
of their contract in July 2006. That is almost the one good thing that I have to say about NG.
Some state servers, notably the Virginia Department of Health Professions, not under protection
of the NG standard network security were hacked and had private information such as client SSNs
stolen. Retail store servers are hacked almost routinely, but large banks and similarly well protected
corporations are not. Security costs and it costs a lot.
Even working in a data center with an excellent intrusion protection program as part of that
program I had to take an annual "securing the human" computer based training class. Despite all
of the technical precautions we were retrained each year to among other things NEVER put anything
in an E-Mail that we did not want to be available for everyone to read; i.e., to never assume
privacy is protected in an E-Mail. Embarrassing E-Mails need a source. We should assume that there
will always be a hacker to take advantage of our mistakes.
The reality is that all the major world powers (and some minor ones), including us, do this routinely
and always have. While it is entirely appropriate to be outraged that it may have materially determined
the election (which I think is impossible to know, though it did have some impact), we should
not be shocked or surprised by this.
"...I would suggest attacks on Putin's personal business holdings all over the world..."
[My guess is that has been being done a long time ago considering the direction of US/Russian
foreign relations over NATO expansion, the Ukraine, and Syria.
Long before TCP/IP the best way to prevent dirty secrets from getting out was not to have dirty
secrets. It still works.
The jabbering heads will not have much effect on the political opinions of ordinary citizens
because 40 million or more US adults had their credit information compromised by the Target hackers
three years ago. Target had been saving credit card numbers instead of deleting them as soon as
they obtained authorizations for transfers, so that the 40 million were certainly exposed while
more than twice that were probably exposed. Establishment politicians having their embarrassing
E-mails hacked is more like good fun family entertainment than something to get all riled up about.]
Voting machines are public and for Federal elections then tampering with them is elevated to a
Federal crime. Political parties are private. The Federal government did not protect Target or
Northrop Grumman's managed infrastructure for the Commonwealth of Virginia although either one
can take forensic information to the FBI that will obtain warrants for prosecution. Foreign criminal
operations go beyond the immediate domestic reach of the FBI. Not even Interpol interdicts foreign
leaders unless they are guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes.
The Federal government can do what it will as there are not hard guidelines for such clandestine
operations and responses. Moreover, there are none to realistically enforce against them, which
inevitably leads to war given sufficient cycles of escalation. Certainly our own government has
done worse (political assassinations and supporting coups with money and guns) with impunity merely
because of its size, reach, and power.
BTW, "the burglar that just ransacked your house" can be arrested and prosecuted by a established
regulated legal system with absolutely zero concerns of escalating into a nuclear war, trade war,
or any other global hostility. So, not the same thing at all. Odds are good though that the burglar
will get away without any of that because when he does finally get caught it will be an accident
and probably only after dozen if not hundreds of B&E's.
There is a line. The US has crossed that line, but always in less developed countries that
had no recourse against us. Putin knows where the line is with the US. He will dance around it
and lean over it, but not cross it. We have him outgunned and he knows it. Putin did not tamper
with an election, a government function. Putin tampered with private data exposing incriminating
information against a political party, which is a private entity rather than government entity.
Whatever we do should probably stay within the rule of law as it gets messy fast once outside
those boundaries.
As far as burglars go I live in a particular working class zip code that has very few burglaries.
It is a bad risk/reward deal unless you are just out to steal guns and then you better make sure
that no one is home. Most people with children still living at home also have a gun safe. Most
people have dogs.
There are plenty burglaries in a lower income zip code nearby and lots more in higher income
zip codes further away, the former being targets of opportunity with less security and possible
drug stashes, which has a faster turnover than fencing big screen TV's. High income neighborhoods
are natural targets with jewelry, cash, credit cards, and high end electronics, but far better
security systems. I don't know much about their actual crime stats because they are on the opposite
side of the City of Richmond VA from me, but I used to know a couple of burglars when I lived
in the inner city. They liked the upscale homes near the University of Richmond on River Road.
"They kept telling us the e-mail didn't reveal anything and now they say the e-mail determined
the election"
And those two statement are not in conflict unless you are a brain dead Fox bot. Big nothing-burgers
like Bhengazi or trivial emails can easily be blown up and affect a few hundred thousand voters.
When the heck are you going to grow up and get past your 5 stages of Sanders grief?
I know - and there used to be some signs of a functional brain. Now it is all "they are all the
same" ism and Hillary derangement syndrome on steroids. Someone who cares need to do an intervention
before it becomes he get gobbled up by "ilsm" ism.
ABC video interview by Martha Raddatz of Donna Brazile 2:43
Adding the following FACTS, not opinion, to the Russian Hacking debate at the DNC
Russian hacks of the DNC began at least as early as April, the FBI informed the DNC in May
of the hacks, NO ONE in the FedGovt offered to HELP the DNC at anytime (allowed it to continue),
and Russia's Putin DID NOT stop after President Obama told Putin in September to "Cut it Out",
despite Obama's belief otherwise
"DNC Chair Says Russian Hackers Attacked The Committee Through Election Day"
'That goes against Obama's statement that the attacks ended after he spoke to Putin in September'
by Dave Jamieson Labor Reporter...The Huffington Post...12/18/2016...10:59 am ET
"The chair of the Democratic National Committee said Sunday that the DNC was under constant
cyber attack by Russian hackers right through the election in November. Her claim contradicts
President Barack Obama's statement Friday that the attacks ended in September after he issued
a personal warning to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"No, they did not stop," Donna Brazile told Martha Raddatz on ABC's "This Week." "They came
after us absolutely every day until the end of the election. They tried to hack into our system
repeatedly. We put up the very best cyber security but they constantly [attacked]."
Brazile said the DNC was outgunned in its efforts to fend off the hacks, and suggested the
committee received insufficient protection from U.S. intelligence agencies. The CIA and FBI have
reportedly concluded that Russians carried out the attacks in an effort to help Donald Trump defeat
Hillary Clinton.
"I think the Obama administration ― the FBI, the various other federal agencies ― they informed
us, they told us what was happening. We knew as of May," Brazile said. "But in terms of helping
us to fight, we were fighting a foreign adversary in the cyberspace. The Democratic National Committee,
we were not a match. And yet we fought constantly."
In a surprising analogy, Brazile compared the FBI's help to the DNC to that of the Geek Squad,
the tech service provided at retailer Best Buy ― which is to say well-meaning, but limited.
"They reached out ― it's like going to Best Buy," Brazile said. "You get the Geek Squad, and
they're great people, by the way. They reached out to our IT vendors. But they reached us, meaning
senior Democratic officials, by then it was, you know, the Russians had been involved for a long
time."..."
This new perspective and set of facts is more than distressing it details a clear pattern of Executive
Branch incompetence, malfeasance, and ineptitude (perhaps worse if you are conspiratorially inclined)
im1dc -> im1dc... , -1
The information above puts in bold relief President Obama's denial of an Electoral College briefing
on the Russian Hacks
There is now no reason not to brief the Electors to the extent and degree of Putin's help for
demagogue Donald
Fred C. Dobbs -> Peter K....
December 26, 2016 at 07:15 AM neopopulism: A cultural and political movement, mainly in Latin
American countries, distinct from twentieth-century populism in radically combining classically opposed
left-wing and right-wing attitudes and using electronic media as a means of dissemination. (Wiktionary)
(facebook.com)
286
Posted by msmash
on Thursday November 24, 2016 @01:01PM
from the
stranger-things
dept.
On Wednesday, J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan's
Center for Computer Security & Society and a respected voice in computer
science and information society, said that the Clinton Campaign
should ask for a recount of the vote for the U.S. Presidential election
.
Later he wrote, "Were this year's deviations from pre-election polls the
results of a cyberattack? Probably not. I believe the most likely explanation
is that the polls were systematically wrong, rather than that the election was
hacked. But I don't believe that either one of these seemingly unlikely
explanations is overwhelmingly more likely than the other." The Outline, a new
publication by a dozen of respected journalists, has published a post (on
Facebook for now, since their website is still in the works), in which former
Motherboard's reporter Adrianne Jeffries makes it clear that we
still don't have concrete evidence that the vote was tampered with, but why
still the case for paper ballots is strong
. From the article:
Halderman
also repeats the erroneous claim that federal agencies have publicly said that
senior officials in Russia commissioned attacks on voter registration databases
in Arizona and Illinois. In October, federal agencies attributed the Democratic
National Committee email hack to Russia, but specifically said they could not
attribute the state hacks. Claims to the contrary seem to have spread due to
anonymous sourcing and the conflation of Russian hackers with Russian
state-sponsored hackers. Unfortunately, the Russia-hacked-us meme is spreading
fast on social media and among disaffected Clinton voters. "It's just
ignorance," said the cybersecurity consultant Jeffrey Carr, who published his
own response to Halderman on Medium. "It's fear and ignorance that's fueling
that." The urgency comes from deadlines for recount petitions, which start
kicking in on Friday in Wisconsin, Monday in Pennsylvania, and the following
Wednesday in Michigan. There is disagreement about how likely it is that the
Russian government interfered with election results. There is little
disagreement, however, that our voting system could be more robust -- namely,
by requiring paper ballot backups for electronic voting and mandating that all
results be audited, as they already are in some states including California.
Despite the 150,000 signatures collected on a Change.org petition, what happens
next really comes down to the Clinton team's decision.
(wired.co.uk)
270 Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday November 27, 2016 @03:34AM from the help-me-hive-mind
dept. Upworthy co-founder Eli Pariser is leading a group of online volunteers hunting for ways to
respond to the spread of fake news. An anonymous reader quotes Wired UK: Inside a Google Doc,
volunteers
are gathering ideas and approaches to get a grip on the untruthful news stories. It is part analysis,
part brainstorming, with those involved being encouraged to read widely around the topic before contributing.
"This is a massive endeavour but well worth it," they say...
At present, the group is coming up with
a list of potential solutions and approaches . Possible methods the group is looking at include:
more human editors, fingerprinting viral stories then training algorithms on confirmed fakes, domain
checking, the blockchain, a reliability algorithm, sentiment analysis, a Wikipedia for news sources,
and more.
The article also suggests this effort may one day spawn fake news-fighting tech startups.
(rollingstone.com)
335
Posted by EditorDavid
on Sunday December 04, 2016 @12:39PM
from the
ghosts-of-Joseph-McCarthy
dept.
MyFirstNameIsPaul
was one
of several readers who spotted this disturbing instance of fake news about fake
news. An anonymous reader writes:
Last week the Washington Post described
"independent researchers" who'd identified "more than 200 websites as
routine peddlers of Russian propaganda
" that they estimated were viewed
more than 200 million times on Facebook. But the researchers insisted on
remaining anonymous "to avoid being targeted by Russia's legions of skilled
hackers," and when criticized on Twitter,
responded
"Awww, wook at all the angwy Putinists, trying to change the
subject -- they're so vewwy angwy!!"
The group "seems to have been in existence for just a few months,"
writes Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi
, calling the Post's article an
"astonishingly lazy report". (Chris Hedges, who once worked on a Pulitzer
Prize-winning team at the New York Times, even found his site
Truthdig
on the group's dubious list of over 200 "
sites
that reliably echo Russian propaganda
," along with other long-standing
sites like
Zero
Hedge
,
Naked
Capitalism
, and the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.) "By
overplaying the influence of Russia's disinformation campaign, the report also
plays directly into the hands of the Russian propagandists
that it hopes to
combat," complains Adrian Chen, who in 2015 documented real Russian propaganda
efforts which he traced to "a building in St. Petersburg where
hundreds
of young Russians worked to churn out propaganda
."
The Post's article was picked up by other major news outlets (
including
USA Today
), and included an ominous warning that "The
sophistication of the Russian tactics may complicate efforts by Facebook and
Google to crack down on 'fake news'."
"... Another thing: it will be clear how serious they take the allegations of Russian hacking, by how they address the problem of auditing electronic voting machines. ..."
"... If the 2018 elections aren't all with voter verified paper ballots, accompanied by random auditing and auditing all close elections, we know the accusations of Russian hacking were blatant lies. ..."
Another thing: it will be clear how serious they take the allegations of Russian hacking,
by how they address the problem of auditing electronic voting machines.
If the 2018 elections aren't all with voter verified paper ballots, accompanied by random auditing
and auditing all close elections, we know the accusations of Russian hacking were blatant lies.
"... The use of the term, however, rather naďvely implies that it is possible for a government agency to not be politicized. A non -political government agency, it is assumed, acts without regard to how its actions and claims affect its political standing among powerful interests in Washington. Such an agency has never existed. ..."
"... Indeed, when a government agency relies on taxpayer funding, Congressional lawmaking, and White House politics to sustain itself, it is absurd to expect that agency to somehow remain not "politicized." That is, it's a logical impossibility to think it possible to set up a government agency that relies on government policymakers to sustain it, and then think the agency in question will not attempt to influence or curry favor with those policymakers. ..."
"... Does the organization depend on taxpayer funding for a substantial amount of its budget? ..."
"... Does the organization engage in what would be illegal activities were it not for protective government legislation? ..."
Anonymous leakers at the CIA continue to make claims about Russia and the 2016 election. In response to demands to provide evidence,
the CIA has declined to offer any, refusing to meet with Congressional intelligence committees, and refusing to issue any documents
offering evidence. Instead, the CIA, communicating via leaks, simply says the equivalent of "trust us."
Not troubled by the lack of evidence, many in the media and in the Democratic party have been repeating unsubstantiated CIA claims
as fact.
Of course, as
I've noted before , the history of CIA intelligence is largely a history of missing the forest for the trees. Sometimes, the
failures have been spectacular.
One of the questions that immediately arises in the media in situations like these, however, is "
has the CIA been politicized ?"
When used in this way, the term "politicized" means that the CIA is involved in helping or hurting specific political factions
(e,g., specific ideological groups, pressure groups, or presidential administrations) in order to strengthen the CIA's financial
or political standing.
All Government Agencies Are Politicized
The use of the term, however, rather
naďvely implies that it is possible for a government agency to not be politicized. A non -political government agency, it is
assumed, acts without regard to how its actions and claims affect its political standing among powerful interests in Washington.
Such an agency has never existed.
Indeed, when a government agency relies on taxpayer funding, Congressional lawmaking, and White House politics to sustain
itself, it is absurd to expect that agency to somehow remain not "politicized." That is, it's a logical impossibility to think it
possible to set up a government agency that relies on government policymakers to sustain it, and then think the agency in question
will not attempt to influence or curry favor with those policymakers.
This idea might seem plausible to school children in junior-high-school civics classes, but not to anyone who lives in the real
world.
In fact, if we wish to ascertain whether or not an institution or organization is "politicized" we can simply ask ourselves a
few questions:
Does the organization depend on a legal monopoly to accomplish its mission? That is, does the organization benefit from a
government prohibition on other organizations - especially private-sector ones - doing the same thing?
Does the organization depend on taxpayer funding for a substantial amount of its budget?
Was the organization created by government legislation?
Are senior officials appointed by government policymakers (i.e., the President)?
Does the organization engage in what would be illegal activities were it not for protective government legislation?
If the answer to any of these questions is "yes" then you are probably dealing with a politicized organization. If the answer
to all of these questions is "yes" - as is the case with the CIA - then you're definitely dealing with a very politicized organization.
(Other "non-political" organizations that fall well within this criteria as well include so-called "private" organizations such as
the Federal Reserve System and Fannie Mae.)
So, it has always been foolish to ask ourselves if the CIA is "politicized" since the answer is obviously "yes" for anyone who
is paying attention.
Nevertheless, the myth that the CIA and agencies like it can be non-political continues to endure, although in many cases, the
charge has produced numerous helpful historical analysis of just how politicized the CIA has been in practice.
Recent Narratives on CIA Politicization
Stories of CIA politicization take at least two forms: One type consists of anti-CIA writers attempting to illustrate how the
CIA acts to manipulate political actors to achieve its own political ends. The other type consists of pro-CIA writers attempting
to cast the CIA as an innocent victim of manipulation by senior Washington officials.
Of course, it doesn't matter whether the provenance of CIA politicking comes from within the agency or outside it. In both cases,
the fact remains that the Agency is a tool for political actors to deceive, manipulate, and attack political enemies.
With CIA leaks apparently attempting to call the integrity of the 2016 election into question, the CIA is once again being accused
of politicization. Consequently, articles in the
Washington
Times , the
Daily Caller , and
The Intercept all question the CIA's motivation and present numerous examples of the Agency's history of deception.
The current controversy is hardly the first time the Agency has been accused of being political, and during the build up to the
Iraq invasion in 2003, for example, the CIA worked with the Bush Administration to essentially manufacture "intelligence."
In his book Failure of Intelligence , Melvin Allan Goodman writes:
Three years after the invasion of Iraq, a senior CIA analyst, Paul Pillar, documented the efforts of the Bush administration
to politicize the intelligence of the CIA on Iraqi WMD and so-called links between Iraq and al Qaeda. Pillar accused the Bush
administration of using policy to drive intelligence production, which was the same argument offered by the chief of British intelligence
in the Downing Street memorandum prior to the war, and aggressively using intelligence to win public support for the decision
to go to war....Pillar does not explain why no senior CIA official protested, let alone resigned in the wake of the president's
misuse of intelligence on Iraq's so-called efforts to obtain uranium ore in Africa. Pillar falsely claimed "for the most part,
the intelligence community's own substantive judgments do not appear to have been compromised," when it was clear that the CIA
wa wrong on every conclusion and had to politicize the intelligence to be so egregiously wrong."
Since then, CIA officials have attempted to rehabilitate the agency by claiming the agency was the hapless victim of the Administration.
But, as Goodman notes, we heard no protests from the Agency when such protests would have actually mattered, and the fact is the
Agency was easily used for political ends. Whether or not some agents wanted to participate in assisting the Bush administration
with trumping up evidence against Iraq remains irrelevant. The fact remains the CIA did it.
Moreover, according to documents compiled by John Prados
at the George Washington University , "The U.S. intelligence community buckled sooner in 2002 than previously reported" and that
"Under the circumstances, it is difficult to avoid the impression that the CIA and other intelligence agencies defended themselves
against the dangers of attack from the Bush administration through a process of self-censorship. That is the very essence of politicization
in intelligence."
In other words, to protect its own budgets and privileges, the CIA reacted quickly to shape its intelligence to meet the political
goals of others.
Journalist Robert Parry has also
attempted to go the CIA-as-victim
route in his own writings. In an article written before the Iraq War debacle, Parry looks at how the Agency was used by both
Reagan and Clinton, and claims that what is arguably of the CIA's biggest analytical errors - repeatedly overstating the economic
strength of the Soviet Union - was the result of pressure applied to the Agency by the Reagan administration. (Parry may be mistaken
here, as the CIA
was
wrong about the Soviet economy long before the Reagan Administration .)
While attempting to defend the CIA, however, Parry is merely providing a list of the many ways in which the CIA serves to manufacture
false information that are useful for political officials.
In this essay for the Center for
International Policy, Goodman further lists many examples of politicization and concludes "Throughout the CIA's 60-year history,
there have been many efforts to slant analytical conclusions, skew estimates, and repress evidence that challenged a particular policy
or point of view. As a result, the agency must recognize the impact of politicization and introduce barriers to protect analysts
from political pressures. Unfortunately, the CIA has largely ignored the problem."
It is difficult to ascertain whether past intelligence failures were due to pressure form the administration or whether they originated
from within the Agency itself. Nevertheless, the intelligence failures are numerous, including:
The CIA was wrong about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
The fact that politicization occurs might help explain some of these failures, but simply claiming "politicization" doesn't erase
the legacy of failure, and it hardly serves as an argument in favor of allowing the CIA to continue to
command huge budgets and essentially
function unsupervised. Regardless of fanciful claims of non-political professionalism, it is undeniable that, as an agency of the
US government, the CIA is a political institution.
The only type of organization that is not politicized is a private-sector organization under a relatively laissez-faire regime.
Heavily regulated private industries and all government agencies are politicized by nature because they depend heavily on active
assistance from political actors to sustain themselves.
It should be assumed that politicized organizations seek to influence policymakers, and thus all the actions and claims of these
organization should be treated with skepticism and a recognition that these organizations benefit from further taxation and expanded
government powers inflicted on ordinary taxpayers and other productive members of society outside the privileged circles of Washington,
DC.
Perimetr -> Chupacabra-322 •Dec 23, 2016 11:34 AM
Is the CIA politicized?
...Is the pope catholic?
How many more presidents does the CIA have to kill to answer your question?
Oldwood -> DownWithYogaPants •Dec 23, 2016 11:26 AM
How could the CIA NOT be politicized? They collect "intelligence" and use it to influence policy makers without ANY accountability
and no real proof. The CIA operates on CONJECTURE that is completely subjective to bias and agenda. Is that ANYTHING BUT political?
TeaClipper's picture -> TeaClipper •Dec 23, 2016 11:24 AM
The CIA was not wrong about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, it lied about them. That is a very big distinction.
Old Poor Richard •Dec 23, 2016 12:13 PM
The question is whether the CIA is puppeteer and not the puppet.
The Snowden report, jam packed with provably false scurrilous accusations, demonstrates that not only is the US intelligence
community entirely lacking in credibility, but that they believe themselves so powerful that they can indefinitely get away with
baldfaced lies.
The thing is, the deep state can only keep up the charade when they completely control the narrative, the way China does. Hence
the attacks on the first amendment that are accelerating as fast as the attacks on the second amendment. Majority of Americans
don't believe the Russian hacking hoax and it make the CIA increasingly hysterical.
DarthVaderMentor •Dec 23, 2016 12:33 PM
The CIA has been politicized. In fact, all the way down to the COS level, and in concert with the State Department. Brennan and
Moran are nothing but Clinton surrogates.
In one embassy in a country where IEDs keep blowing up, there were millions of taxpayer dollars spent and continue to be spent
in "safe spaces" and "comfort food and liquor" inside an embassy (taking away space from the US Marine Giuards for it) to let
"Democrat snowflakes" in senior embassy and CIA positions recover from the Trump elections.
The real reaon for the loss of the Phillipines as an ally may eventually come out that a gay senior embassy official made a
pass at the President of the country. Just like it happened with the gay ambassador in the Dominican Republic.
That Libral You Hate •Dec 23, 2016 12:41 PM
I would say the simple answer to the question asked in the headline of this article is "yes" but it is important to actually understand
the nuance of the langer answer.
The critical nuance is that: politics didn't conquor the CIA, but rather the CIA injected itself into politics. I.e. the CIA
aren't political stooges, but act political because they have injected political stooges into politics and they have to act political
to protect them to protect their interests. Thus while the answer is "yes" the question is phrased wrong as: "Has the CIA Been
Politicized," the appropriate question is "Has politics been co-opted by the CIA"
insanelysane •Dec 23, 2016 12:50 PM
The first post is spot on except the CIA was in Southeast Asia stirring stuff up to get us into a war. War is big business.
The entire reason for Vietnam was "If Vietnam falls the commies will be marching down Main Street USA afterwards."
Well we fucking lost Vietnam and the commies still aren't marching down Main Street and yet the assessment is still being peddled
by the Corporation.
Kennedy was killed because, even though he was fucking totally drugged up, he still saw Vietnam for what it was.
The Corporation gave Johnson and offer he couldn't refuse, take the keys to the kingdom, just keep "fighting" in Vietnam. I
say fighting because we were just fucking around there. No one in charge wanted to risk winning the war.
And here we are today, 23rd, December, 2016, "fighting" in the Middle East and the Corporation not willing to risk winning
the war. Just need to keep it hot enough for the weapons and ammunition to be used in a nice steady pace to keep business going.
Fox Business News discusses a potential investigation involving CIA Director John Brennan over whether
he leaked information about the Russian hacking investigation to the media
John Brennan takes his cues directly from Barack Obama, which means the entire CIA, Russian hack
investigation, was initiated and conducted under Obama's direct order.
The Russian hack, media spin, has been and remains a political play. National security has very
little to do with it.
"... Democratic party under Bill Clinton became yet another neoliberal party (soft neoliberals) and betrayed both organized labour and middle class in favour of financial oligarchy. ..."
"... The cynical calculation was that "they have nowhere to go" and will vote for Democrats anyway. And that was true up to and including election of "change we can believe in" guy. After this attempt of yet another Clinton-style "bait and switch" trick failed. ..."
"... Now it is clear that far right picked up large part of those votes. So in a way Bill Clinton is the godfather of the US far right renaissances. The same is true for Hillary: her "kick the can down the road" stance made victory of Trump possible (although it surprised me; I expected that neoliberals were still strong enough to push their candidate down the US people throat) ..."
"... Under "democrat" Obama the USA pursued imperial policy of creating global neoliberal empire. The foreign policy remained essentially unchanged. Neocons were partially replaced with "liberal interventionists" which is the same staff in a different bottle. This policy costs the US tremendous amount of money and it is probable that the US is going the way British empire went -- overextending itself. ..."
"... Regional currency blocks are now a reality and arrangements bypass the usage of US dollar if international trade are common. They are now in place between several large countries such as Russia and China and absolutely nothing can reverse this trend. So dollar became virtualized -- a kind of "conversion gauge" but without profits for real conversion national currency to dollars for major TBTF banks. ..."
This Washington Post article on Poland - where a right-wing, anti-intellectual, nativist party
now rules, and has garnered a lot of public support - is chilling for those of us who worry that
Trump_vs_deep_state may really be the end of the road for US democracy. The supporters of Law and Justice
clearly looked a lot like Trump's white working class enthusiasts; so are we headed down the same
path?
(In Poland, a window on what happens when
populists come to power http://wpo.st/aHJO2
Washington Post - Anthony Faiola - December 18)
Well, there's an important difference - a bit of American exceptionalism, if you like. Europe's
populist parties are actually populist; they pursue policies that really do help workers, as long
as those workers are the right color and ethnicity. As someone put it, they're selling a herrenvolk
welfare state. Law and Justice has raised minimum wages and reduced the retirement age; France's
National Front advocates the same things.
Trump, however, is different. He said lots of things on the campaign trail, but his personnel
choices indicate that in practice he's going to be a standard hard-line economic-right Republican.
His Congressional allies are revving up to dismantle Obamacare, privatize Medicare, and raise
the retirement age. His pick for Labor Secretary is a fast-food tycoon
who loathes minimum wage hikes. And his pick for top economic advisor is the king of trickle-down.
So in what sense is Trump a populist? Basically, he plays one on TV - he claims to stand for
the common man, disparages elites, trashes political correctness; but it's all for show. When
it comes to substance, he's pro-elite all the way.
It's infuriating and dismaying that he managed to get away with this in the election. But that
was all big talk. What happens when reality begins to hit? Repealing Obamacare will inflict huge
harm on precisely the people who were most enthusiastic Trump supporters - people who somehow
believed that their benefits would be left intact. What happens when they realize their mistake?
I wish I were confident in a coming moment of truth. I'm not. Given history, what we can count
on is a massive effort to spin the coming working-class devastation as somehow being the fault
of liberals, and for all I know it might work. (Think of how Britain's Tories managed to shift
blame for austerity onto Labour's mythical fiscal irresponsibility.) But there is certainly an
opportunity for Democrats coming.
And the indicated political strategy is clear: make Trump and company own all the hardship
they're about to inflict. No cooperation in devising an Obamacare replacement; no votes for Medicare
privatization and increasing the retirement age. No bipartisan cover for the end of the TV illusion
and the coming of plain old, ugly reality.
Democratic party under Bill Clinton became yet another neoliberal party (soft neoliberals)
and betrayed both organized labour and middle class in favour of financial oligarchy.
The cynical calculation was that "they have nowhere to go" and will vote for Democrats
anyway. And that was true up to and including election of "change we can believe in" guy. After
this attempt of yet another Clinton-style "bait and switch" trick failed.
Now it is clear that far right picked up large part of those votes. So in a way Bill Clinton
is the godfather of the US far right renaissances. The same is true for Hillary: her "kick the
can down the road" stance made victory of Trump possible (although it surprised me; I expected
that neoliberals were still strong enough to push their candidate down the US people throat)
Point 2:
Under "democrat" Obama the USA pursued imperial policy of creating global neoliberal empire.
The foreign policy remained essentially unchanged. Neocons were partially replaced with "liberal
interventionists" which is the same staff in a different bottle. This policy costs the US tremendous
amount of money and it is probable that the US is going the way British empire went -- overextending
itself.
Regional currency blocks are now a reality and arrangements bypass the usage of US dollar
if international trade are common. They are now in place between several large countries such
as Russia and China and absolutely nothing can reverse this trend. So dollar became virtualized
-- a kind of "conversion gauge" but without profits for real conversion national currency to dollars
for major TBTF banks.
So if we think about Iraq war as the way to prevent to use euro as alternative to dollar in
oil sales that goal was not achieved and all blood and treasure were wasted.
In this sense it would be difficult to Trump to continue with "bastard neoliberalism" both
in foreign policy and domestically and betray his election promises because they reflected real
problems facing the USA and are the cornerstone of his political support.
Also in this case neocons establishment will simply get rid of him one way or the other. I
hope that he understand this danger and will avoid trimming Social Security.
Returning to Democratic Party betrayal of interests of labour, Krugman hissy fit signifies
that he does not understand the current political situation. Neoliberal wing of Democratic Party
is now bankrupt both morally and politically. Trump election was the last nail into Bill Clinton
political legacy coffin.
Now we returned to essentially the same political process that took place after the Great Depression,
with much weaker political leaders, this time. So this is the time for stronger, more interventionist
in internal policy state and the suppression of financial oligarchy. If Trump does not understand
this he is probably doomed and will not last long.
That's why I think Trump inspired far right renaissance will continue and the political role
of military might dramatically increase. And politically Trump is the hostage of this renaissance.
Flint appointment in this sense is just the first swallow of increased role of military leaders
in government.
There certainly are experts in the field who should know
about the alleged hacking, but they are not allowed to disrupt mainstream media's Russophobe
frenzy. Bet you never saw William Binney on mainstream media. Who is Binney? He is the guy who
put together the NSA's elaborate worldwide surveillance system. He has publicly stated on
alternative news sites, that if something was "hacked", the NSA would instantly know who, when,
and whether the info was passed on to another party. He designed the system. He argues, there was
no hacking for that very reason. Binney insists the e-mails had to have been leaked by an
"insider" who had access to the data. Never heard him on mainstream media huh? Next comes Craig
Murray a former US Ambassador who claims he knows who leaked the e-mails, because he met with the
individual in Washington D.C. Never heard him on mainstream media either huh? Finally, Julian
Assange, the man who released the e-mails. He insisted all along he never got the e-mails from
Russia. Another no show on mainstream media. Whatever happened to the journalistic adage of going
to the source? Assange is the source, but no mainstream media journalist, and I use the term very
loosely, has ventured to speak with him. The accusation has been repeated countless times,
without any evidence, or consulting with any of the above three experts.
Because the big lie has been repeated so many times by
corporate media, about half of the US public, according to a recent poll, believes Russia
interfered, even though there is not a bit of evidence to support it. Once again they take the
bait; hook, line, and sinker.
For believers of Russian hacking, I offer the following analogy. It might, but I doubt it will
help, because you cannot undo the effect of propaganda. You are put on trial for murder that you
did not commit. The prosecutor and judge simply say they have reached a "consensus view", the
phrase offered by intelligence agencies, that you committed the murder and are guilty. You ask
for proof. They offer none. They just keep repeating that you did it. You challenge and ask how
do you know I did it? Answer: we have anonymous sources, but we cannot tell you who they are, nor
can we show you proof.
Just as in the fake run-up to the Iraq war, the expert voices of the opposition are not tolerated
on mainstream media. Do these folks really want a war with Russia? Are they so upset with Trump's
pronouncement that he wanted better relations with Russia? What sane person would not? Hmmm.
It appears there is a war already raging between the Russophobes, who do not want better
relations with Russia, and are doing their best to smear and demonize Putin, and those who do.
This is the same tactic used with Manuel Noriega of Panama, Muarmar Gaddafi, and Saddam Hussein,
before they made war on all three. Demonize, then make war.
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Shame on those who buy into propaganda
without any proof.
The oddity of the above author's first paragraph is that the
CIA was not lying in 2001-03. The CIA said Iraq/Saddam had no
wmds.
In fact, if you lived through it then perhaps you recall the
words cherry-picking and stove-piped intel. Now, I understand
he's CIA so there's no reason to believe them, but ask Larry
Johnson (I know, great name for CIA).
Actually he didn't mention the CIA in the first paragraph.
However in late 2002 CIA director George Tenet and United
States Secretary of State Colin Powell both cited attempts
by Hussein to obtain uranium from Niger in their September
testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
using intelligence Italy, Britain, and France.
Days before the Iraq invasion, the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) voiced serious doubt on the
authenticity of the documents to the UN Security Council,
judging them counterfeit but the CIA while having
suspicions, largely kept them to themselves.
The author of the above article, Joe Clifford is referring
to what CIA Chief George Tenet who represented US
intelligence, said: it was "Slam Dunk" Iraq had WMD. Tenet
was quoted over and over again by Bush-Dick regime to
justify US war against Iraq. After Tenet said those words,
CIA neither contradicted him nor corrected him which meant
that they went along with the "Slam Dunk" Iraq had WMD.
Tenet, representing US intelligence, even sat quietly
behind Powell at the UNSC when Powell was spewing his lies
about Iraq's nonexistent WMD.
Not only to officials repeat false assertions over and over,
but those who hear the falsities, themselves start repeating
them. The more outrageous, the more they are repeated.
You forgot former Yugoslavia.There they "sharpened "their
tools.They "demonized" that country,demonized their
President,trained and financed those local soldiers and then
destroyed that country while "peace making".Filthy
BASTARDS.And you people call USA a decent country?They lied
when they created that country and still their mouths and
deeds are full of lies,murder and plunder.And their Churches
are cheer leaders in that endeavour yet they will proclaim
even this Christmas "Peace to the world" while they will plot
more of the same.They preach one thing but their actions are
totally opposite.They leave wrecked countries behind them and
those people end up feeding from containers.I hope that they
choke on that stolen turkey.
The counter tactic for the "big lie" is the "big truth."
Ordinary people have access to e-mail, social media and
website comments. No secret organization is needed. Just make
counter-bullturdism part of your personal routine.
This takes time. Most people invest little thought into
the news they digest. Quite often, news (or "news") is not
even digested at all, just internalised. They know this.
The CIA, th eDNC, all of them. They rely on public apathy
to survive.
This the the lie the liberals love just like Iraq's wmd was
the lie so dear to the conservatives. It's sickening the way
these partisan idiots are so easily manipulated.
It doesn't matter who hacked the emails one bit! That right
there is the point the powers that be want us to argue about
endlessly, because it draws attention away from what actually
matters: What matters is that the emails revealed the truth
about the democratic party, and that they rigged their
primaries. What matters is that the press did not reveal this
and since the reveal, they have been trying to distract
people from the truth. It is the press and the Democratic
party that were influencing the 2016 election by lying and
cheating, not the Russians or whoever hacked the email.
The e-mails were not hacked: they were leaked. Every time
anyone refers to the "hacked" e-mails, it raises the
question "Who dunnit ?" This is a wild goose chase. The
e-mails were leaked by a disgusted insider.
The contents of the leaks/hacks were almost never claimed to
be false. Even the very faint cries of "the e-mails were
doctored" eventually died out. Nobody has stepped in to claim
that the information was false since. This means that all
Wikileaks revealed was true. Whoever was responsible for
providing this information has done a very valuable public
service. Yes, even if it (somehow) was the Russians. To deny
that the leak/hack was beneficial to the public is insane.
Not that we didn't know beforehand that the CIA are quite
crazy, but still. I would at least have expected them to
welcome this 4th detente. I mean, they have thus far shown
that their intelligence gathering efforts in Russia are
laughably bad. Do they not want some respite form the
humiliation? It would at least be good PR.
During the third and last presidential debate between Republican Donald Trump and
Democrat Hillary Clinton, debate moderator Chris Wallace
pulled a quote from a speech
Clinton had given to Brazilian bankers, noting the
information had been made available to the public via WikiLeaks.
Instead of
answering the question, Clinton blamed the Russian government for the leaks
,
alleging "
[t]he Russian government has engaged in espionage against Americans
,"
hacking "
American websites, American accounts of private people, of institutions
in an effort, as 17 of our intelligence agencies have confirmed, to influence our
election
."
Following the claim,
Clinton criticized Trump for
saying
"
[Clinton] has no idea whether it's Russia, China, or anybody else
,"
repeating her assertion that 17 U.S. intelligence agencies had determined the Russian
government had been behind the Democratic National Committee (DNC) hack.
Despite her claim, reality couldn't be more different.
Instead of 17 agencies, only the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI)
and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have
offered the public
any input on this matter, claiming the DNC attacks "
are
consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts
."
Without offering any evidence, these two - not 17 - agencies hinted that the
Kremlin
could
be behind the cyber attack.
But saying they
believe
the hacks come from the Russians is far short of saying they
know
the Russians
were behind them.
During an
interview on Aaron Klein's Sunday radio program
, former high-ranking NSA
intelligence official-turned-whistleblower,
William Binney
, discussed the alleged Russian involvement in our elections,
suggesting the cyber attack against the DNC may not have originated from the Russian
government. Instead, Binney says, a
"
disgruntled U.S. intelligence worker
"
is likely behind the breach.
According to Binney, what Mueller meant is that
the FBI has access to the NSA
database and that it's accessed without any oversight, meaning the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), as well as the FBI, have open access to anything the NSA has access to. "
So
if the FBI really wanted [Clinton's and the DNC emails] they can go into that database
and get them right now
," Binney
told
Klein.
Asked
if he believed the NSA had copies of all Clinton's emails,
"
including
the deleted correspondence
,"
Binney said:
"
Yes. That would be my point. They have them all and the FBI can get
them right there
."
While Binney seems to be the only intelligence insider who has come forward with this
type of analysis, a young man from Russia whose servers were implicated in the recent
hacking of the DNC sites says he has information that will lead to the hacker - yet the
FBI won't knock on his door.
In a conversation with the
New York Times
, Vladimir M. Fomenko said his server rental company, King
Servers, is oftentimes used by hackers. Fomenko added that the hackers behind the attack
against computerized election systems in Arizona and Illinois - which, like the DNC
hack, were
also linked to the Russian government by the FBI
- had used his servers.
According to the 26-year-old entrepreneur,
"[w]e have the information.
If the F.B.I. asks, we are ready to supply the I.P. addresses, the logs, but nobody
contacted us."
"
It's like nobody wants to sort this out,
"
he
added
.
After learning that two renters using the nicknames Robin Good and Dick Robin had
used his servers to hack the Arizona and Illinois voting systems, Fomenko
released a statement
saying he learned about the problem through the news and shut
down the two users down shortly after.
While he
told the
New York Times
he doesn't know who the hackers are, he used his
statement to report that the hackers are not Russian security agents.
"
The analysis of the internal data allows King Servers to confidently
refute any conclusions about the involvement of the Russian special services in this
attack
,"
he
said
on September 15, the
New York Times
reported.
According to Fomenko, he found a trail left by the hackers through their contact with
King Servers' billing page, which leads to the next step in the chain
"
to
bring investigators in the United States closer to the hackers
."
The clients used about 60 I.P. addresses to contact Fomenko, including addresses
belonging to server companies in Finland, France, Italy, Norway, Britain, and Sweden.
With these addresses in hand, authorities could track the hackers down.
But while this information is somewhat recent, few news organizations found it
necessary to report on the King Servers link. In the past, however, at least one major
news network mentioned Binney.
In August 2016, Judge Andrew Napolitano
commented
on
the DNC hack.
On "Judge Napolitano Chambers," the Judge said that while the DNC, government
officials, and the Clinton campaign all accuse the Russians of hacking into the DNC
servers,
"
the Russians had nothing to do with it.
"
"A group of retired senior intelligence officials, including the NSA whistleblower
William Binney (former Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis,
NSA), have posted an open letter on consortiumnews.com that destroys the Obama
administration's "Russian hacking" narrative.
Within the letter, Binney argues that, thanks to the NSA's "extensive domestic
data-collection network," any data removed remotely from Hillary Clinton or DNC
servers would have passed over fiber networks and therefore would have been captured
by the NSA who could have then analyzed packet data to determine the origination
point and destination address of those packets. As Binney further notes, the only way
the leaks could have avoided NSA detection is if they were never passed over fiber
networks but rather downloaded to a thumb drive by someone with internal access to
servers."
"... Democracy is inevitably going to clash with the demands of Globalization as they are opposite. Globalization requires entrepreneurs to search cheaper means of production worldwide. ..."
"... In practice, this means moving capital out of the USA. ..."
"... To put it in Marxist terms the interests of American society to survive and prosper came into contradiction with the interests of capitalism as a system of production and with the capitalists as a class who has no homeland, and for whom homeland is where it is easier to make money. ..."
"... American capitalism from its very beginning was based on the assumption that what was good for business was good for America. Until 1929 it more or less worked. The robber barons were robbing other entrepreneurs and workers but at least they reinvested their ill gained profits in America. The crash of 1929 showed that the interests of Big Banks clashed with the interest of American society with devastating results. ..."
"... The decades after WWII have seen a slow and steady erosion of American superiority in technology and productivity and slow and steady flight of capital from the USA. Globalization has been undermining America. From the point of view of Global prosperity if it is cheaper to produce in China, production should relocate to China. From the point of view of American worker, this is treason, a policy destroying the United States as an industrial power, as a nation, and as a community of citizens. Donald Trump is the first top ranking politician who has realized this simple fact. The vote for Donald Trump has been a protest against Globalization, immigration, open borders, capital flight, multiculturalism, liberalism and all the values American Liberal establishment has been preaching for 60 years that are killing the USA. ..."
"... Donald Trump wants to arrest the assault of Globalization on America. He promised to reduce taxes, and to attract business back to the USA. However, reduced taxes are only one ingredient in incentives. For businesses to stay or come back to the US, companies must have educated labor force, steady supply of talented, well-educated young people, excellent schools, and safe neighborhoods, among other things. As of now most of these preconditions are missing. ..."
"... Dr. Brovkin is a historian, formerly a Harvard Professor of History. He has published several books and numerous articles on Russian History and Politics. Currently, Dr. Brovkin works and lives in Marrakech, Morocco. ..."
"... This is an interesting question: is it possible to contain neoliberal globalization by building walls, rejecting 'trade' agreement, and so on. I get the feeling that a direct attack may not work. Water will find a way, as they say. With a direct attack against globalization, what you're likely to face is major capital flight. ..."
In his election campaign Donald Trump has identified several key themes that defined American malaise.
He pointed to capital flight, bad trade deals, illegal immigration, and corruption of the government
and of the press. What is missing in Trump's diagnosis though is an explanation of this crisis. What
are the causes of American decline or as Ross Pero used to say: Let's look under the hood.
Most of the challenges America faces today have to do with two processes we call Globalization
and Sovietization. By Globalization we mean a process of externalizing American business thanks to
the doctrine of Free trade which has been up to now the Gospel of the establishment. By Sovietization
we mean a process of slow expansion of the role of the government in economy, education, business,
military, press, virtually any and every aspect of politics and society.
Let us start with Globalization.
Dani Rodrick (
The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy) has argued that
it is impossible to have democracy and globalization at the same time. Democracy is inevitably
going to clash with the demands of Globalization as they are opposite. Globalization requires entrepreneurs
to search cheaper means of production worldwide.
In practice, this means moving capital out of the USA. For fifty years economists have
been preaching Free trade, meaning that free unimpeded, no tariffs trade is good for America. And
it was in the 1950s, 60s and 1970s that American products were cheaper or better than those overseas.
Beginning with the 1970s, the process reversed. Globalization enriched the capitalists and impoverished
the rest of Americans. To put it in Marxist terms the interests of American society to survive
and prosper came into contradiction with the interests of capitalism as a system of production and
with the capitalists as a class who has no homeland, and for whom homeland is where it is easier
to make money.
American capitalism from its very beginning was based on the assumption that what was good
for business was good for America. Until 1929 it more or less worked. The robber barons were robbing
other entrepreneurs and workers but at least they reinvested their ill gained profits in America.
The crash of 1929 showed that the interests of Big Banks clashed with the interest of American society
with devastating results.
The decades after WWII have seen a slow and steady erosion of American superiority in technology
and productivity and slow and steady flight of capital from the USA. Globalization has been undermining
America. From the point of view of Global prosperity if it is cheaper to produce in China, production
should relocate to China. From the point of view of American worker, this is treason, a policy destroying
the United States as an industrial power, as a nation, and as a community of citizens. Donald Trump
is the first top ranking politician who has realized this simple fact. The vote for Donald Trump
has been a protest against Globalization, immigration, open borders, capital flight, multiculturalism,
liberalism and all the values American Liberal establishment has been preaching for 60 years that
are killing the USA.
Donald Trump wants to arrest the assault of Globalization on America. He promised to reduce
taxes, and to attract business back to the USA. However, reduced taxes are only one ingredient in
incentives. For businesses to stay or come back to the US, companies must have educated labor force,
steady supply of talented, well-educated young people, excellent schools, and safe neighborhoods,
among other things. As of now most of these preconditions are missing.
To fight Globalization Donald Trump announced in his agenda to drop or renegotiate NAFTA and TPP.
That is a step in the right direction. However, this will not be easy. There are powerful vested
interests in making money overseas that will put up great resistance to America first policy. They
have powerful lobbies and votes in the Congress and it is by far not certain if Trump will succeed
in overcoming their opposition.
Another step along these lines of fighting Globalization is the proposed building of the Wall
on Mexican border. That too may or may not work. Powerful agricultural interests in California have
a vested interest in easy and cheap labor force made up of illegal migrants. If their supply is cut
off they are going to hike up the prices on agricultural goods that may lead to inflation or higher
consumer prices for the American workers.
... ... ...
The Military: Americans are told they have a best military in the world. In fact, it is not the
best but the most expensive one in the world. According to the National priorities Project, in fiscal
2015 the military spending amounted to 54% of the discretionary spending in the
amount of 598.5 billion dollars . Of those almost 200 billion dollars goes for operations and
maintenance, 135 billion for military personnel and 90 billion for procurement (see
Here is How the US Military Spends its Billions )
American military industrial complex spends more that the next seven runners up combined. It is
a Sovietized, bureaucratic structure that exists and thrives on internal deals behind closed doors,
procurement process closed to public scrutiny, wasted funds on consultants, kickbacks, and outrageous
prices for military hardware. Specific investigations of fraud do not surface too often. Yet for
example, DoD Inspector General reported:
Why is it that an F35 fighter jet should cost 135 million apiece and the Russian SU 35 that can
do similar things is sold for 35 million dollars and produced for 15 million? The answer is that
the Congress operates on a principle that any price the military asks is good enough. The entire
system of military procurement has to be scrapped. It is a source of billions of stolen and wasted
dollars. The Pentagon budget of half a trillion a year is a drain on the economy that is unsustainable,
and what you get is not worth the money. The military industrial complex in America does not deliver
the best equipment or security it is supposed to.(on this see:
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/cutting-waste-isnt-enough-curb-pentagon-spending-18640
)
Donald Trump was the first to his credit who raised the issue: Do we need all these bases overseas?
Do they really enhance American security? Or are they a waste of money for the benefit of other countries
who take America for a free ride. Why indeed should the US pay for the defense of Japan? Is Japan
a poor country that cannot afford to defend itself? Defense commitments like those expose America
to unnecessary confrontations and risk of war over issues that have nothing to do with America's
interests. Is it worth it to fight China over some uninhabitable islands that Japan claims? (See
discussion:
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/should-the-us-continue-guarantee-the-security-wealthy-states-17720
)
Similarly, Trump is the first one to raise the question: What is the purpose of NATO? ( see discussion
of NATO utility:
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/will-president-trump-renegotiate-the-nato-treaty-18647
) Yes the Liberal pro-Clinton media answer is: to defend Europe from Russian aggression. But
really what aggression? If the Russians wanted to they could have taken Kiev in a day two years ago.
Instead, they put up with the most virulently hostile regime in Kiev. Let us ask ourselves would
we have put up with a virulently anti-American regime in Mexico, a regime that would have announced
its intention to conclude a military alliance with China or Russia? Were we not ready to go to nuclear
war over Soviet missiles in Cuba? If we would not have accepted such a regime in Mexico, why do we
complain that the Russians took action against the new regime in Ukraine. Oh yes, they took Crimea.
But the population there is Russian, and until 1954 it was Russian territory and after Ukrainian
independence the Russians did not raise the issue of Crimea as Ukrainian territory and paid rent
for their naval base there The Russians took it over only when a hostile regime clamoring for NATO
membership settled in Kiev. Does that constitute Russian aggression or actually Russian limited response
to a hostile act? (see on this Steven Cohen:
http://eastwestaccord.com/podcast-stephen-f-cohen-talks-russia-israel-middle-east-diplomacy-steele-unger/
) As I have argued elsewhere Putin has been under tremendous pressure to act more decisively
against the neo-Nazis in Kiev. (see Vlad Brovkin: On Russian Assertiveness in Foreign Policy. (
http://eastwestaccord.com/?s=brovkin&submit=Search
)
With a little bit of patience and good will a compromise is possible on Ukraine through Minsk
accords. Moreover, Ukraine is not in NATO and as long as it is not admitted to NATO, a deal with
the Russians on Ukraine is feasible. Just like so many other pro-American governments, Ukraine wants
to milk Uncle Sam for what it is worth. They expect to be paid for being anti/Russian. (See discussion
on need of enemy:
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/does-america-need-enemy-18106
) Would it not be a better policy to let Ukraine know that they are on their own: no more subsidies,
no more payments? Mend your relations with Russia yourselves. Then peace would immediately prevail.
If we admit that there is no Russian aggression and that this myth was propagated by the Neo/Cons
with the specific purpose to return to the paradigm of the cold war, i.e. more money for the military
industrial complex, if we start thinking boldly as Trump has begun, we should say to the Europeans:
go ahead, build your own European army to allay your fears of the Russians. Europe is strong enough,
rich enough and united enough to take care of its defense without American assistance. (See discussion
of Trumps agenda:
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/course-correction-18062
)
So, if Trump restructures procurement mess, reduces the number of military bases overseas, and
invests in high tech research and development for the military on the basis of real competition,
hundreds of billions of dollars could be saved and the defense capability of the country would increase.
... ... ...
Dr. Brovkin is a historian, formerly a Harvard Professor of History. He has published several
books and numerous articles on Russian History and Politics. Currently, Dr. Brovkin works and lives
in Marrakech, Morocco.
This is a bit too much, Volodya. Maybe you should've taken one subject – globalization, for
example – and stop there.
This is an interesting question: is it possible to contain neoliberal globalization by
building walls, rejecting 'trade' agreement, and so on. I get the feeling that a direct attack
may not work. Water will find a way, as they say. With a direct attack against globalization,
what you're likely to face is major capital flight.
You might be able to make neoliberal globalization work for you (for your population, that
is), like Germany and the Scandinavians do, but that's a struggle, constant struggle. And it's
a competition; it will have to be done at the expense of other nations (see Greece, Portugal,
Central (eastern) Europe). And having an anti-neoliberal president is not enough; this would require
a major change, almost a U turn, in the whole governing philosophy. Forget the sanctity of 'free
market', start worshiping the new god: national interest
What an INTERESTING article -- So much that is right, so much that is wrong. An article you
can get your teeth into.
On globalisation: pretty spot-on (although I believe he exaggerates the US weakness in what he
calls "preconditions": there are still many well educated Americans, still good neighborhoods
(yes, sure it could be a lot better). He's against NAFTA & other neoliberal Trade self indulgences.
But then we come to his concept of "Sovietization" of the US. Perhaps it's mere semantics, but
I find the concept incoherent & suspiciously adapted to deliberately agitate US conservatives.
Example: "huge sectors of American economy are not private at all, that in fact they have been
slowly taken over by an ever growing state ownership and control"
This is nonsense on its face: the government spews out trillions to private actors to provide
goods & services. It does so, in part, because it has systematically privatized every government
function capable of returning a profit. The author can't see the actor behind the mask: how much
legislation is now written by & for the benefit of private interests ? (Obama care, Bush pharmaceutical
laws ?)
Of course, the author is correct on the US military-industrial complex: it is a sump of crime
& corruption. Yet he seems not to grasp that the problem is regulative capture. How is the Fiasco
of the F35 & MacDonald Douglas merely an issue for the Legislature alone & how does this circus
resemble the Soviet Union, beyond the fact that BOTH systems (like most systems) are capable of
gross negligence & corruption ?
I like what the author says about NATO, Japan, bases etc. Although he's a little naive if he
thinks NATO for instance is about "protecting" Europe. Yes, that's a part of it: but primarily
NATO etc exist as a tool/mask behind which the US can exert it's imperial ambitions against friend
& for alike.
The author does go off against welfare well that's to be expected: sadly I don't think he quite
gets the connection between globalisation & welfare .He also legitimately goes after tertiary
education, but seems to be (again) confused as to cause & effect.
The author is completely spot on with his sovietization analogy when he comes to the US security
state. Only difference between the Soviets & the US on security totalitarianism ? The US is much
better at it (of course the US has technological advantages unimaginable to the Soviets)
• Replies:
@Randal I agree with you that it's a fascinating piece, and I also agree with many of the points
you agree with.
But then we come to his concept of "Sovietization" of the US. Perhaps it's mere semantics, but
I find the concept incoherent & suspiciously adapted to deliberately agitate US conservatives.
Example: "huge sectors of American economy are not private at all, that in fact they
have been slowly taken over by an ever growing state ownership and control"
This is nonsense on its face: the government spews out trillions to private actors to provide
goods & services. It does so, in part, because it has systematically privatized every government
function capable of returning a profit. The author can't see the actor behind the mask: how much
legislation is now written by & for the benefit of private interests ? (Obama care, Bush pharmaceutical
laws ?)
I think part of the problem here might be a mistaken focus on "the government" as an independent
actor, when in reality it is just a mechanism whereby the rulers (whether they are a dictator,
a political party or an oligarchy or whatever), and those with sufficient clout to influence them,
get things done the way they want to see them done.
As such there is really not much difference between the government directly employing the people
who do things (state socialism), and the government paying money to companies to get the same
things done. Either way, those who use the government to get things done, get to say what gets
done and how. There are differences of nuance, in terms of organizational strengths and weaknesses,
degrees of corruption and of efficiency, but fundamentally it's all big government.
A more interesting question might be - how really different are these big government variants
from the small government systems, in which the rulers pay people directly to get things done
the way they want them to be done?
An excellent article. The points that resonated the most were:
For businesses to stay or come back to the US, companies must have educated labor force,
steady supply of talented, well-educated young people, excellent schools, and safe neighborhoods,
among other things. As of now most of these preconditions are missing.
This is an enormously difficult problem that will take years to resolve, and it will need a
rethink of education from the ground up + the political will to fight the heart of Cultural Bolshevism
and the inevitable 24/7 Media assault.
Drain the swamp in Washington: ban the lobbyists, make it a crime to lobby for private interest
in a public place, restructure procurement, introduce real competition, restore capitalism,
phase out any government subsidies to Universities, force them to compete for students, force
hospitals to compete for patients. Cut cut cut expenditure everywhere possible, including welfare.
Banning lobbyists should be possible but draining the rest of the swamp looks really complicated.
Each area would need to be examined from the ground up from a value for money – efficiency viewpoint.
It doesn't matter which philosophy each one is run on – good value healthcare is desirable whichever
system produces it.
Could we have ever imagined in our worst dreams that a system of mass surveillance would
be created and perfected in the USA. (see discussion on this in: Surveillance State, in
http://www.americamagazine.org/issue/surveillance-state
This one should be easy. The Constitution guarantees a right to privacy so just shut down the
NSA. Also shut down the vast CIA mafia (it didn't exist prior to 1947) and the expensive and useless
FED (controlling the money supply isn't the business of a group of private banks – an office in
the Treasury could easily match the money supply to economic activity).
This one should be easy. The Constitution guarantees a right to privacy so just shut down the
NSA. Also shut down the vast CIA mafia (it didn't exist prior to 1947) and the expensive and useless
FED (controlling the money supply isn't the business of a group of private banks – an office in
the Treasury could easily match the money supply to economic activity).
From Unz, I have learned that the US actually has a four-part government: the "Deep State"
part which has no clear oversight from any of the other three branches.
To put it in Marxist terms the interests of American society to survive and prosper came
into contradiction with the interests of capitalism as a system of production and with the
capitalists as a class who has no homeland, and for whom homeland is where it is easier to
make money.
Another add-on contradiction, comrade, is that the selfsame capitalist class expect their host
nation to defend their interests whenever threatened abroad. This entails using the resources
derived from the masses to enforce this protection including using the little people as cannon
fodder when deemed useful.
Donald Trump is the first top ranking politician who has realized this simple fact.
Come now, do you really believe that all these politicians who have gone to these world-class
schools don't know this? They simply don't care. They're working on behalf of the .1% who are
their benefactors and who will make them rich. They did not go into politics to take vows of poverty.
They just realize the need to placate the masses with speeches written by professional speechwriters,
that's all.
Insofar as Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid goes, those are the most democratic institutions
of all. It's money spent on ourselves, internally, with money being cycled in and out at the grassroots
level. Doctors, nurses, home-care providers, etc etc, all local people get a piece of the action
unlike military spending which siphons money upwards to the upper classes.
I'd rather be employed in a government job than unemployed in the private sector. That's not
the kind of "freedom" I'm searching for comrade.
@animalogic What an INTERESTING article -- So much that is right, so much that is wrong. An
article you can get your teeth into.
On globalisation: pretty spot-on (although I believe he exaggerates the US weakness in what
he calls "preconditions": there are still many well educated Americans, still good neighborhoods
(yes, sure it could be a lot better). He's against NAFTA & other neoliberal Trade self indulgences.
But then we come to his concept of "Sovietization" of the US. Perhaps it's mere semantics, but
I find the concept... incoherent...& suspiciously adapted to deliberately agitate US conservatives.
Example: "huge sectors of American economy are not private at all, that in fact they
have been slowly taken over by an ever growing state ownership and control"
This is nonsense on its face: the government spews out trillions to private actors to provide
goods & services. It does so, in part, because it has systematically privatized every government
function capable of returning a profit. The author can't see the actor behind the mask: how much
legislation is now written by & for the benefit of private interests ? (Obama care, Bush pharmaceutical
laws ?)
Of course, the author is correct on the US military-industrial complex: it is a sump of crime
& corruption. Yet he seems not to grasp that the problem is regulative capture. How is the Fiasco
of the F35 & MacDonald Douglas merely an issue for the Legislature alone...& how does this circus
resemble the Soviet Union, beyond the fact that BOTH systems (like most systems) are capable of
gross negligence & corruption ?
I like what the author says about NATO, Japan, bases etc. Although he's a little naive if he
thinks NATO for instance is about "protecting" Europe. Yes, that's a part of it: but primarily
NATO etc exist as a tool/mask behind which the US can exert it's imperial ambitions ...against
friend & for alike.
The author does go off against welfare...well that's to be expected: sadly I don't think he quite
gets the connection between globalisation & welfare....He also legitimately goes after tertiary
education, but seems to be (again) confused as to cause & effect.
The author is completely spot on with his sovietization analogy when he comes to the US security
state. Only difference between the Soviets & the US on security totalitarianism ? The US is much
better at it (of course the US has technological advantages unimaginable to the Soviets)
I agree with you that it's a fascinating piece, and I also agree with many of the points you
agree with.
But then we come to his concept of "Sovietization" of the US. Perhaps it's mere semantics,
but I find the concept incoherent & suspiciously adapted to deliberately agitate US conservatives.
Example: "huge sectors of American economy are not private at all, that in fact they have been
slowly taken over by an ever growing state ownership and control"
This is nonsense on its face: the government spews out trillions to private actors to provide
goods & services. It does so, in part, because it has systematically privatized every government
function capable of returning a profit. The author can't see the actor behind the mask: how
much legislation is now written by & for the benefit of private interests ? (Obama care, Bush
pharmaceutical laws ?)
I think part of the problem here might be a mistaken focus on "the government" as an independent
actor, when in reality it is just a mechanism whereby the rulers (whether they are a dictator,
a political party or an oligarchy or whatever), and those with sufficient clout to influence them,
get things done the way they want to see them done.
As such there is really not much difference between the government directly employing the people
who do things (state socialism), and the government paying money to companies to get the same
things done. Either way, those who use the government to get things done, get to say what gets
done and how. There are differences of nuance, in terms of organisational strengths and weaknesses,
degrees of corruption and of efficiency, but fundamentally it's all big government.
A more interesting question might be – how really different are these big government variants
from the small government systems, in which the rulers pay people directly to get things done
the way they want them to be done?
"... At some point the GOP has to decide how much of Trump's populist agenda they can stuff in the toilet without inducing an uncontrollable backlash. ..."
"... The reason Trump won the GOP nomination was exactly because he claimed to reject traditional GOP policies and approaches. ..."
"... If the GOP just go ahead with a traditional "rule for the rich" policy (because they won) there could be serious fireworks ahead - provided the Dems can pull out a populist alternative policy by the the next election. ..."
"... I have no idea what's going to happen, but my guess is that Trump and the Republicans are going to completely sell out the "Trump voters." ..."
"... But they still tried to push through Social Security privatization even though everyone is against it. ..."
"... If recent history is any guide, incumbents get a second term regardless of how bad the economy is. Clinton, Bush, and Obama were all reelected despite a lousy economy. The only exception in recent memory was Bush 41. ..."
"... Upper class tax cuts were central to his policies. Anybody who believed he was anything other than an standard issue Republican would buy shares in Arizona swampland. ..."
"... trump did indeed state that he would give bigger tax cuts to the rich, repeatedly. the genius of trump's performance is that by never having a clear position his gullible followers were able to fill in the gaps using their own hopes and desires. ..."
"... That is correct, but also the weakness in his support. They will almost certainly be disappointed as the exact interpretations and choices between incompatible promises turns out to be different from the individuals hopes and desires. ..."
"... And consider how dysfunction from laissez faire healthcare policy readoption leads to rising prices/costs above current trend to limit disposable income even more, it will be amazing if we do not have stagnation and worse for the bulk of society. ..."
"... Bush implemented and expanded a community health clinic system, that reallnwoukd be a nice infrastructure play for the US, but this Congress is more likely to disinvest here. They certainly don't want these do-gooder nonprofits competing against the doctor establishment. ..."
"... The question is first of all whether Trump can bully the Fed away from their current and traditional course (which would not allow much of a stimulus, before they cancelled it out with rate hikes). ..."
"... Second whether the Fed itself having been traditionally prone to support GOP presidents (see inconsistencies in Greenspan's policies during Clinton vs. Bush) will change its policies and allow higher inflation and wage growth than they have under any Dem president. ..."
"... The little people go to the credit channels to help finance the purchase of durables and higher education too. The Fed's actions themselves will see these credit prices ratchet, so nit good fir basic demand. Veblen goods will see more price rises as the buyers will have lots of rentier/lobbying gathered money to burn. ..."
At some point the GOP has to decide how much of Trump's populist agenda they can stuff in
the toilet without inducing an uncontrollable backlash.
The reason Trump won the GOP nomination was exactly because he claimed to reject traditional
GOP policies and approaches. It was the old tea-partiers insisting that their anti-rich/Anti-Wall
street sentiments be inserted into the GOP.
If the GOP just go ahead with a traditional "rule for the rich" policy (because they won)
there could be serious fireworks ahead - provided the Dems can pull out a populist alternative
policy by the the next election.
I have no idea what's going to happen, but my guess is that Trump and the Republicans are
going to completely sell out the "Trump voters."
George W. Bush wasn't completely horrible (besides Iraq, John Roberts, tax cuts for the rich,
the Patriot act and the surveillance state, Katrina, etc. etc. etc.). He was good on immigration,
world AIDS prevention, expensive Medicare drug expansion, etc.
But they still tried to push through Social Security privatization even though everyone
is against it.
To some extent Bush demoralized the Republican base and they didn't turn out in 2008.
If recent history is any guide, incumbents get a second term regardless of how bad the economy
is. Clinton, Bush, and Obama were all reelected despite a lousy economy. The only exception in
recent memory was Bush 41.
About the only thing that can derail Trump is a big recession in 2019.
"The reason Trump won the GOP nomination was exactly because he claimed to reject traditional
GOP policies and approaches."
While generally enthusiastically embracing them. Upper class tax cuts were central to his
policies. Anybody who believed he was anything other than an standard issue Republican would buy
shares in Arizona swampland.
He never came out directly saying or tweeting that he would give bigger tax cuts to the rich than
anybody else - he said he would give bigger tax cuts. It is true that people with a college education
had an easy time figuring him out even before the election. But the populist messages he campaigned
on were anti-establishment including suggesting that the "hedge-fund guys" were making a killing
by being taxed at a lower rate.
trump did indeed state that he would give bigger tax cuts to the rich, repeatedly. the genius
of trump's performance is that by never having a clear position his gullible followers were able
to fill in the gaps using their own hopes and desires.
"his gullible followers were able to fill in the gaps using their own hopes and desires"
That is correct, but also the weakness in his support. They will almost certainly be disappointed
as the exact interpretations and choices between incompatible promises turns out to be different
from the individuals hopes and desires. The reason Trump was able to beat even a Tea party
darling, was the backlash against big money having taken over the Tea party. The backlash against
Trump_vs_deep_state being "taken over by big money" interest will be interesting to observe, especially if
the Dems find the right way to play it.
Following up on Johnny Bakho's comment below, let's assume that average wage growth YoY for nonsupervisory
workers never reaches 3% before the next recession hits. Wage growth rates always decline in recessions,
usually by over 2%.
If in the next recession, we see actual slight nominal wage decreases, is a debt-deflationary
wage-price spiral inevitable? Or could there be a small decline of less than -1% without triggering
such a spiral.
"is a debt-deflationary wage-price spiral inevitable?"
Good question. It all depends on the response of policy makers. If we continue with the stupid
fiscal austerity that began in 2011, it may be inevitable. Which is why doing public infrastructure
investment is a very good idea.
And consider how dysfunction from laissez faire healthcare policy readoption leads to rising
prices/costs above current trend to limit disposable income even more, it will be amazing if we
do not have stagnation and worse for the bulk of society.
Bush implemented and expanded a community health clinic system, that reallnwoukd be a nice
infrastructure play for the US, but this Congress is more likely to disinvest here. They certainly
don't want these do-gooder nonprofits competing against the doctor establishment.
For Clinton dems, the ones the wiki revealed are con artists, doing for the peeps [like Bernie
stood for] is too far ideologically for the faux centrists.
They are neoliberals market monetarists who keep the bankers green and everyone else takes
the back seats.
At this point in time pretty much anything the policy makers do will be countered by the Fed.
The question is first of all whether Trump can bully the Fed away from their current and traditional
course (which would not allow much of a stimulus, before they cancelled it out with rate hikes).
Second whether the Fed itself having been traditionally prone to support GOP presidents
(see inconsistencies in Greenspan's policies during Clinton vs. Bush) will change its policies
and allow higher inflation and wage growth than they have under any Dem president.
As long as the FED thinks the natural rate of the employment to population ratio is only 60% -
you'd be right. But then the FED is not thinking clearly.
like many of my fellow socialists, i fulminated about bernanke's coddling of banks and asset holders.
i was somewhat wrong. bernanke was a evidently a strong voice for banking regulation and an end
to the moral hazard of TBTF. it is a pity that obama did not listen to him.
The little people go to the credit channels to help finance the purchase of durables and higher
education too. The Fed's actions themselves will see these credit prices ratchet, so nit good
fir basic demand. Veblen goods will see more price rises as the buyers will have lots of rentier/lobbying
gathered money to burn.
Will the Fed use rulemaking to control bubbling in the financial asset marketplaces as they
wont want to rause rates too much. I hope they are paying attention
the article contain at least one blatant lie which discredits its connect: the assertion the Sony
attack was from North Korea. No mentioning of Flame and Stixnet. Another proof that NYT is a part
of Clinton campaign and became a neocons mouthpiece...
Notable quotes:
"... How many of us have signed petitions to exonerate Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning for letting us know what our govt was doing? Didn't they do us all, and democracy, a great service? ..."
"... I'm happy to know how the DNC operated, the astounding and unprecedented conflation of a national party committee with one candidate's campaign organization. ..."
"... What they were doing to Bernie Sanders, and the use they were making of national media was just wrong. ..."
"... Clinton herself was involved (via her neocon undersecretary, formerly Cheney's chief foreign policy aide) in overthrowing the elected president of Ukraine, a friend of Russia, and installing a US-capitalist friendly fellow in his stead. ..."
"... What goes around comes around. If we wanted to stop all this cyber warfare, the time to do it was by treaty BEFORE we risked Iranian lives with the Stuxnet virus. ..."
"... The release of e-mails was embarrassing for Secretary Clinton and the Democratic Party, but I don't think it tipped the election. How many longtime Democratic voters stayed home on November 9th because of the release of these e-mails? How many working class voters switched their vote because of the release of these e-mails? ..."
"... If the hacking had tampered with voting, I would be extremely concerned, but since it only involved email systems, I am not concerned. ..."
"... The hacked and subsequently published emails revealed the dishonest, deceitful, and unethical practices of the Democrats, especially in the treatment of Sanders, who should have ditched the Democrats run for president as an Independent. ..."
"... The emails also revealed that Obama was a participant in HRC's use of a nongovernmental email system when he stated emphatically that the first time he had ever heard of it was when the media first reported it. ..."
"... That's not the first and probably not the last time he will lie to the public. And the emails revealed the satanic practices of Podesta. The published emails made the election interesting and entertaining. But it is over and mow its time to put this issue to rest, accept the fact that Donald Trump is our next President, the leader of the freest county in the free world, and get on with governing this blessed great nation. Thank you. ..."
"... I suppose Hillary's email server could have been hacked like this too. Could this be the reason for Comey's stern reprimand of her? It is a little ironic, isn't it, that the DNC, while down playing Hillary's issues with her private server and criticizing Comey for his handling of the investigation, should itself suffer a damaging security breach of its own servers at the hands of a foreign power, which was exactly Comey's concern. Not to mention the fact that the NYT, which told us enough was enough with Hillary's email, is now up in arms about exactly that issue with the shoe on the other foot ..."
"... I am struggling with how to react to this, just as i do with the Edward Snowden disclosures. On the one hand Russian meddling in a US election is certainly a concern, and should be investigated. On the other hand the disclosures laid bare things many people had suspected, let the sunlight in, so to speak. ..."
"... Would Hillary even have had the nomination were it not for the favoritism shown by the DNC to her campaign at the expense of the Sanders campaign? What was more meddlesome, the Russian hack and release or the DNC's unfair treatment of Bernie? There is no suggestion that the leaked documents were altered. The effect of the hack was to reveal the truth. Is that the Russian goal, to delegitimize the election process by revealing the truth? ..."
"... I suppose we finally got a taste of our own medicine -- countless governments overthrown and elections influenced at the hand of the United States. Not fun is it? Perhaps we can learn a lesson from this. ..."
An aspect that truly surprises me is the hopeless ineptitude of the DNC response (which could
easily have parallels in the RNC).
Irrespective of who the cyber-attacker is, it's astounding in this day and age that sensitive
organizations do not pre-arm themselves with the highest security, and treat every sign of interference
(eg, an actual FBI WARNING PHONE CALL) as a major alarm.
Sadly, that this response is probably replicated all over the place underscores a theory I've
held for some time: Technology will kill democracy. Maybe it already has.
I'm surprised at what's missing here. How many of us have signed petitions to exonerate Edward
Snowden and Chelsea Manning for letting us know what our govt was doing? Didn't they do us all,
and democracy, a great service?
I'm happy to know how the DNC operated, the astounding and unprecedented
conflation of a national party committee with one candidate's campaign organization.
What they
were doing to Bernie Sanders, and the use they were making of national media was just wrong.
Assange
and Putin (if he was involved) revealed the truth. And since Clinton took no care to guard her
private emails, mixed with public communications, how much sympathy is she owed?
Clinton herself
was involved (via her neocon undersecretary, formerly Cheney's chief foreign policy aide) in overthrowing
the elected president of Ukraine, a friend of Russia, and installing a US-capitalist friendly
fellow in his stead. We do this sort of thing all the time, so if the Russians "interfere" in
our electoral process by revealing true stuff (far short of fomenting a coup like we did in Ukraine),
isn't that just tit for tat? We even hacked into the communications of European leaders and international
organizations. We were the first to use cyber warfare (Stuxnet, v. Iran), so how can we play holier
than thou? What goes around comes around. If we wanted to stop all this cyber warfare, the time
to do it was by treaty BEFORE we risked Iranian lives with the Stuxnet virus.
The release of e-mails was embarrassing for Secretary Clinton and the Democratic Party, but
I don't think it tipped the election. How many longtime Democratic voters stayed home on November
9th because of the release of these e-mails? How many working class voters switched their vote
because of the release of these e-mails?
The bigger issue for me is that because we are now politicizing this hacking (i.e. making the
argument that the hacking helped Republicans), many Republicans are opposed to investigating it.
If the hacking had tampered with voting, I would be extremely concerned, but since it only
involved email systems, I am not concerned.
The hacked and subsequently published emails revealed
the dishonest, deceitful, and unethical practices of the Democrats, especially in the treatment
of Sanders, who should have ditched the Democrats run for president as an Independent.
The emails
also revealed that Obama was a participant in HRC's use of a nongovernmental email system when
he stated emphatically that the first time he had ever heard of it was when the media first reported
it.
That's not the first and probably not the last time he will lie to the public. And the emails
revealed the satanic practices of Podesta. The published emails made the election interesting
and entertaining. But it is over and mow its time to put this issue to rest, accept the fact that
Donald Trump is our next President, the leader of the freest county in the free world, and get
on with governing this blessed great nation. Thank you.
I suppose Hillary's email server could have been hacked like this too. Could this be the reason
for Comey's stern reprimand of her? It is a little ironic, isn't it, that the DNC, while down
playing Hillary's issues with her private server and criticizing Comey for his handling of the
investigation, should itself suffer a damaging security breach of its own servers at the hands
of a foreign power, which was exactly Comey's concern. Not to mention the fact that the NYT, which
told us enough was enough with Hillary's email, is now up in arms about exactly that issue with
the shoe on the other foot
I am struggling with how to react to this, just as i do with the Edward Snowden disclosures. On
the one hand Russian meddling in a US election is certainly a concern, and should be investigated.
On the other hand the disclosures laid bare things many people had suspected, let the sunlight
in, so to speak.
Would Hillary even have had the nomination were it not for the favoritism shown
by the DNC to her campaign at the expense of the Sanders campaign? What was more meddlesome, the
Russian hack and release or the DNC's unfair treatment of Bernie? There is no suggestion that
the leaked documents were altered. The effect of the hack was to reveal the truth. Is that the
Russian goal, to delegitimize the election process by revealing the truth?
I suppose we finally got a taste of our own medicine -- countless governments overthrown and
elections influenced at the hand of the United States. Not fun is it? Perhaps we can learn a lesson
from this.
The agent could have walked over to the DNC headquarters and shown the DNC IT consultant his
badge. Or he could have invited the DNC IT consultant to his office--confirming his true identity.
Instead, the two communicated for several months just by phone, and as a result, the DNC IT consultant
did not fully believe he was speaking to an FBI agent, and so he did not act as aggressively to
search for the possible cyber intrusion.
She lost, get over it. Yes the Electoral College is obsolete. Yes some voting machines can
be hacked, but no-one is claiming that in states with tight results. Let's see what the official
investigation says, and who says it.
For better or worse Mr. Trump will be our next President because he won the election. Personally
I'm delighted that he may damp down the over-the-top Russophobia that is swirling around DC, "defense"
contractor Congressional shills, & the offices of the NYT but nowhere else in the country.
It's time for progressives to emerge from Obama-daze and convince the rest of the country that
they have a better vision for this country's future than that offered by conservatives/reactionaries.
One that doesn't involve bombing hapless foreigners. Articulate your policies as best you can,
learn from your defeats and from your victories. Onward!
If the hacking had tampered with voting, I would be extremely concerned, but since it only
involved email systems, I am not concerned. The hacked and subsequently published emails revealed
the dishonest, deceitful, and unethical practices of the Democrats, especially in the treatment
of Sanders, who should have ditched the Democrats run for president as an Independent. The emails
also revealed that Obama was a participant in HRC's use of a nongovernmental email system when
he stated emphatically that the first time he had ever heard of it was when the media first reported
it. That's not the first and probably not the last time he will lie to the public. And the emails
revealed the satanic practices of Podesta. The published emails made the election interesting
and entertaining. But it is over and mow its time to put this issue to rest, accept the fact that
Donald Trump is our next President, the leader of the freest county in the free world, and get
on with governing this blessed great nation. Thank you.
"... Can you please explain to me why you are thinking that this was a hack, not a leak by an insider? ..."
"... Yes, of course, Russians are everywhere, much like Jews in traditional anti-Semitic propaganda. ..."
"... Or in good McCarthyism tradition, they are under each bed. This evil autocrat Putin (who actually looks like yet another corrupt neoliberal ruler, who got Russia into WTO mousetrap and invests state money in the USA debt) manages to get everywhere, control everything and at the same time (German elections, Ukraine, Syria, world oil prices, Chechnya Islamic insurgence, US Presidential election, US stock market, you name it.) Amazing fit for a man over 60. ..."
"... And citing NYT article as for Russian hacks is probably not so much different from citing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to support anti-Semitic propaganda. NYT was and still is one of the most enthusiastic supporters of Hillary campaign. Hardly a neutral observer. ..."
"... This level of anti-Russian hysteria that several people here are demonstrating is absolutely disgusting. Do you really want a military confrontation with Russia in Syria as most neocons badly want (but would prefer that other fought for them in the trenches) ? ..."
Former British Ambassador and current Wikileaks operative Craig Murray recently said he has
met the person who leaked DNC and Clinton campaign emails, and they aren't Russian.
While he is highly critical of Wikileaks, he suggests that without NSA coming forward with
hard data obtained via special program that uncover multiple levels of indirection, those charges
are just propaganda and insinuations.
And BTW after the fact it is usually impossible to discover who obtained the information, as
they use multiple levels of indirection and Russia might be just one of those indirection levels.
Use of Russian IP-space or Russian IPS might be just an attempt to create a false trail and to
implicate a wrong party.
As in any complex case you should not jump to conclusions so easily.
Or you can explain why you believe strange Faux news conspiracy stories with absolutely no evidence
that this person was in a position to hack the computers? Or why do you believe the obvious hugely
conflicted statements from Wikileaks operatives, who would never want to admit that they were
played by the Russians? Or a guy like Snowden who's life depend on Putins charity? Why would those
sources make anybody question the clear evidence already presented?
The fact that NSA is not going to publish all its evidence, is not a surprise. No need to tell
the Russians and other hackers how they can avoid detection. But it is not just the government
that conclude Russian involvement. Private company experts have reached the same conclusion. The
case for a Russian government hack is about as good as it can get.
Yes, of course, Russians are everywhere, much like Jews in traditional anti-Semitic propaganda.
Or in good McCarthyism tradition, they are under each bed. This evil autocrat Putin (who actually
looks like yet another corrupt neoliberal ruler, who got Russia into WTO mousetrap and invests
state money in the USA debt) manages to get everywhere, control everything and at the same time
(German elections, Ukraine, Syria, world oil prices, Chechnya Islamic insurgence, US Presidential
election, US stock market, you name it.) Amazing fit for a man over 60.
And citing NYT article as for Russian hacks is probably not so much different from citing
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to support anti-Semitic propaganda. NYT was and still
is one of the most enthusiastic supporters of Hillary campaign. Hardly a neutral observer.
This level of anti-Russian hysteria that several people here are demonstrating is absolutely
disgusting. Do you really want a military confrontation with Russia in Syria as most neocons badly
want (but would prefer that other fought for them in the trenches) ?
That's what this hysteria is now about, I think.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> likbez... , -1
The NSA is very good at finding the source of intrusion attempts because they happen all the time
every day from China, Russia, North Korea and just little island backwaters in the Pacific.
Doing
something to stop or punish the perpetrators is what is hard. Individual US installation instances
must each be protected by their own firewalls and then still monitored for unusual variations
in traffic patterns through firewalls to detect IP spoofing.
"... But "bastard neoliberalism" that Trump represents in his internal economic policy probably is not a solution for the nations problems. It is too early to say what will be the level of his deviation from election promises, but judging for his appointments it probably will be considerable -- up to a complete reverse on certain promises. ..."
"... So I view his election as the next logical step (after the first two by Bush II and Obama) toward military dictatorship. Previous forms of "Inverted totalitarism" -- a neoliberal version of Bolshevism (or, more correctly, Trotskyism -- many neocons were actually former Trotskyites ) seems to stop working. Neoliberal ideology was discredited in 2008. All three: Bolshevism, Trotskyism and neoliberalism might also be viewed as just different flavors of Corporatism. ..."
"... After 2008 crisis, neoliberalism in the USA continues to exist in zombie state: as a non-dead dead, so it will be inevitably replaced by something else. Much like Bolshevism after 1945. How soon it will happen and what will be the actual trigger (the next oil crisis which turns into another round of Great Recession?) and what will be the successor is anybody guess. Bolshevism in the USSR lasted till 1991 or 46 years. The victory on neoliberalism in the Cold War was in 1991 so if we add 50 years then 2041 might be the date. ..."
I think the shift from New Deal Capitalism to neoliberalism proved to be fatal for the form
of democracy that used to exist in the USA (never perfect, and never for the plebs).
Neoliberalism as a strange combination of socialism for the rich and feudalism for the poor
is anathema for democracy even for the narrow strata of the US society who used to have a say
in the political process. Like Bolshevism was dictatorship of nomenklatura under the slogan of
"Proletarians of all countries, unite!", neoliberalism is more like dictatorship of financial
oligarchy under the slogan "The financial elite of all countries, unite!")
In this sense Trump is just the logical end of the process that started in 1980 with Reagan,
or even earlier with Carter.
And at the same time [he is] the symptom of the crisis of the system, as large swats of population
this time voted against status quo and that created the revolutionary situation when the elite
was unable to govern in the old fashion. That's why, I think, Hillary lost and Trump won.
But "bastard neoliberalism" that Trump represents in his internal economic policy probably
is not a solution for the nations problems. It is too early to say what will be the level of his
deviation from election promises, but judging for his appointments it probably will be considerable
-- up to a complete reverse on certain promises.
So I view his election as the next logical step (after the first two by Bush II and Obama)
toward military dictatorship. Previous forms of "Inverted totalitarism" -- a neoliberal version
of Bolshevism (or, more correctly, Trotskyism -- many neocons were actually former Trotskyites
) seems to stop working. Neoliberal ideology was discredited in 2008. All three: Bolshevism, Trotskyism
and neoliberalism might also be viewed as just different flavors of Corporatism.
After 2008 crisis, neoliberalism in the USA continues to exist in zombie state: as a non-dead
dead, so it will be inevitably replaced by something else. Much like Bolshevism after 1945. How
soon it will happen and what will be the actual trigger (the next oil crisis which turns into
another round of Great Recession?) and what will be the successor is anybody guess. Bolshevism
in the USSR lasted till 1991 or 46 years. The victory on neoliberalism in the Cold War was in
1991 so if we add 50 years then 2041 might be the date.
And the slide toward military dictatorship does not necessary need to take a form of junta,
which takes power via coup d'état. The control of the government by three letter agencies ("national
security state") seems to be sufficient, can be accomplished by stealth, and might well be viewed
as a form of military dictatorship too. So it can be a gradual slide: phase I, II, III, etc.
The problem here as with Brezhnev socialism in the USSR is the growing level of degeneration
of elite and the growth of influence of deep state, which includes at its core three letter agencies.
As Michail Gorbachev famously said about neoliberal revolution in the USSR "the process already
started in full force". He just did not understand at this point that he already completely lost
control over neoliberal "Perestroika" of the USSR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perestroika
In a way, the US Presidents are now more and more ceremonial figures that help to maintain
the illusion of the legitimacy of the system. Obama is probably the current pinnacle of this process
(which is reflected in one of his nicknames -- "teleprompter" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/22/obama-photo-caption-contest-teleprompter_n_1821154.html)
.
You probably could elect a dog instead of Trump and the US foreign policy will stay exactly
the same. This hissy fits about Russians that deep state gave Trump before December 19, might
be viewed as a warning as for any potential changes in foreign policy.
As we saw with foreign policy none of recent presidents really fully control it. They still
are important players, but the question is whether they are still dominant players. My impression
is that it is already by-and-large defined and implemented by the deep state. Sometimes dragging
the President forcefully into the desirable course of actions.
"... Republican leaders in Congress are already sending Trump a subtle but clear warning: accept our business-as-usual Chamber of Commerce agenda or we will join Democrats to impeach you. ..."
"... Impeachment has been the goal of Democrats since the day after Trump won the election, and the Republican establishment will use the veiled threat as leverage to win concession after concession from the Trump White House. ..."
"... There are at least four Trump campaign promises which, if not dropped or severely compromised, could generate Republican support for impeachment: Trump's Supreme Court appointments, abandoning the Trans Pacific Partnership, radical rollback of Obama regulatory projects, and real enforcement of our nation's immigration laws. ..."
"... On regulatory rollback, Congress can legitimately insist on negotiating the details with Trump. But on the other three, immigration, the TPP, and Supreme Court nominees, Trump's campaign promises were so specific - and so popular - that he need not accept congressional foot-dragging. ..."
"... Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell announced this week he will oppose Trump's tax reforms. Senator Lindsey Graham is joining Democrats in sponsoring new legislation to protect the "Dreamers" from deportation after their unlawfully granted legal status and work permits expire. Senator Susan Collins will oppose any restrictions on Muslim refugees, no matter how weak and inadequate the vetting to weed out jihadists. Senator Lamar Alexander aims to protect major parts of Obamacare, despite five years of voluminous Republican promises to "repeal and replace" it if they ever had the power to do so. ..."
"... on the House side, we have the naysayer-in-chief, Speaker Paul Ryan, who refused to campaign with Donald Trump in Wisconsin, and who has vowed to obstruct Trump's most important and most popular campaign promise - an end to open borders and vigorous immigration law enforcement. ..."
"... Donald Trump won a electoral mandate to change direction and put American interests first, beginning with border security. If the congressional Republican establishment chooses to block the implementation of that electoral mandate, it would destroy not only Trump's agenda, it would destroy the Republican Party. ..."
Several months ago I was asked what advice I would give to the Trump campaign.
I said, only half joking, that he had better pick a vice presidential candidate the establishment
hates more than it hates him. That would be his only insurance against impeachment. Those drums have
already begun to beat, be it ever so subtly.
Is anyone surprised how quickly the establishment that Donald Trump campaigned against has announced
opposition to much of his policy agenda? No. But few understand that the passionate opposition includes
a willingness to impeach and remove President Trump if he does not come to heel on his America First
goals.
Ferocious opposition to Trump from the left was expected and thus surprises nobody. From the comical
demands for vote recounts to street protests by roving bands of leftist hate-mongers and condescending
satire on late-night television, hysterical leftist opposition to Trump is now part of the cultural
landscape.
But those are amusing sideshows to the main event, the Republican establishment's intransigent
opposition to key pillars of the Republican president's agenda.
Republican leaders in Congress are already sending Trump a subtle but clear warning: accept our
business-as-usual Chamber of Commerce agenda or we will join Democrats to impeach you.
If you think talk of impeachment is insane when the man has not even been sworn into office yet,
you have not been paying attention. Impeachment has been the goal of Democrats since the day after
Trump won the election, and the Republican establishment will use the veiled threat as leverage to
win concession after concession from the Trump White House.
What are the key policy differences that motivate congressional opposition to the Trump agenda?
There are at least four Trump campaign promises which, if not dropped or severely compromised, could
generate Republican support for impeachment: Trump's Supreme Court appointments, abandoning the Trans
Pacific Partnership, radical rollback of Obama regulatory projects, and real enforcement of our nation's
immigration laws.
On regulatory rollback, Congress can legitimately insist on negotiating the details with Trump.
But on the other three, immigration, the TPP, and Supreme Court nominees, Trump's campaign promises
were so specific - and so popular - that he need not accept congressional foot-dragging.
Yet, while the President-elect 's transition teams at the EPA, State Department and Education
Department are busy mapping ambitious changes in direction, Congress's Republican leadership is busy
doubling down on dissonance and disloyalty.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell announced this week he will oppose Trump's tax reforms.
Senator Lindsey Graham is joining Democrats in sponsoring new legislation to protect the "Dreamers"
from deportation after their unlawfully granted legal status and work permits expire. Senator Susan
Collins will oppose any restrictions on Muslim refugees, no matter how weak and inadequate the vetting
to weed out jihadists. Senator Lamar Alexander aims to protect major parts of Obamacare, despite
five years of voluminous Republican promises to "repeal and replace" it if they ever had the power
to do so.
And then, on the House side, we have the naysayer-in-chief, Speaker Paul Ryan, who refused to
campaign with Donald Trump in Wisconsin, and who has vowed to obstruct Trump's most important and
most popular campaign promise - an end to open borders and vigorous immigration law enforcement.
It is no exaggeration to say that Trump's success or failure in overcoming the opposition to immigration
enforcement will determine the success or failure of his presidency. If he cannot deliver on his
most prominent and most popular campaign promise, nothing else will matter very much.
So, the bad news for President Trump is this: If he keeps faith with his campaign promises on
immigration, for example to limit Muslim immigration from terrorism afflicted regions, which is within
his legitimate constitutional powers as President, he will risk impeachment. However, his congressional
critics will face one enormous hurdle in bringing impeachment charges related to immigration enforcement:
about 90 percent of what Trump plans to do is within current law and would require no new legislation
in Congress. Obama disregarded immigration laws he did not like, so all Trump has to do is enforce
those laws.
Now, if you think talk of impeachment is ridiculous because Republicans control Congress, you
are underestimating the depth of Establishment Republican support for open borders.
The first effort in the 21st century at a general amnesty for all 20 million illegal aliens came
in January 2005 from newly re-elected President George Bush. The "Gang of Eight" amnesty bill passed
by the US Senate in 2013 did not have the support of the majority of Republican senators, and now
they are faced with a Republican president pledged to the exact opposite agenda, immigration enforcement.
And yet, do not doubt the establishment will sacrifice a Republican president to protect the globalist,
open borders status quo.
The leader and spokesman for that establishment open borders agenda is not some obscure backbencher,
it is the Republican Speaker of the House. Because the Speaker controls the rules and the legislative
calendar, if he chooses to play hardball against Trump on immigration he can block any of Trump's
other policy initiatives until Trump abandons his immigration enforcement goals.
What all this points to is a bloody civil war within the Republican Party fought on the battlefield
of congressional committee votes.
Donald Trump won a electoral mandate to change direction and put American interests first, beginning
with border security. If the congressional Republican establishment chooses to block the implementation
of that electoral mandate, it would destroy not only Trump's agenda, it would destroy the Republican
Party.
"... "Earlier this week, I met separately with FBI [Director] James Comey and DNI Jim Clapper, and there is strong consensus among us on the scope, nature, and intent of Russian interference in our presidential election," the message said, according to officials who have seen it. ..."
"... Comment: The FBI now flip-flops from its previous assessment: FBI rejects CIA assessment that Russia influenced presidential election ..."
FBI and National Intelligence chiefs both agree with the CIA assessment that Russia interfered with
the 2016 US presidential elections partly in an effort to help Donald Trump win the White House,
US media report.
FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper are both convinced
that Russia was behind cyberattacks that targeted Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton
and her campaign chairman, John Podesta,
The Washington Post and reported Friday, citing a message sent by CIA Director John Brennan
to his employees.
"Earlier this week, I met separately with FBI [Director] James Comey and DNI Jim Clapper,
and there is strong consensus among us on the scope, nature, and intent of Russian interference in
our presidential election," the message said, according to officials who have seen it.
"The three of us also agree that our organizations, along with others, need to focus on completing
the thorough review of this issue that has been directed by President Obama and which is being led
by the DNI," it continued.
"... To whom do US intelligence agencies owe protection against hackers? The DNC was informed that the Russians or someone pretending to be the Russians was on them. To put your political dirty tricks or your apprehensions about the possible discovery of apparent pay-to-play games in your client's foundation in your emails after being warned was just plain foolish. ..."
"... The Clintons' venality has been an open secret for 30 years, though Dem-leaning pundits prefer to ignore it or attribute it to the evil right wing conspiracy. From the Arkansas arrangements permitting the purchase of influence by engaging as attorney the wife of the AG or the Governor, the miraculous commodity investment, the Marc Rich and other pardons all stunk. ..."
"... That the Clinton Foundation and its generous support for Clinton political operators might be a pay-to-play operation was not a surprise to longtime observers. I thought it was admirably bold and clever myself. Nobody else has been able to organize a tax-exempt political slush fund under personal control except even in Illinois where we have a lot of smart lawyers in politics. I suspect we will see a lot more political slush funds disguised as foundations in the future. ..."
"... We also need to think about what political parties actually are. Then are not government agencies or acting on behalf of government agencies or the people at large. Political parties are large private lobbying firms for a set of loosely affiliated private interests that promote an agenda and communications expressly triangulated to satisfy both their donor class and voting majority constituencies. They are more like corporations with owners, employees, and clients than any public entity. ..."
"... Former British Ambassador and current Wikileaks operative Craig Murray recently said he has met the person who leaked DNC and Clinton campaign emails, and they aren't Russian. ..."
"... And BTW after the fact it is usually impossible to discover who obtained the information, as they use multiple levels of indirection and Russia might be just one of those indirection levels. Use of Russian IP-space or Russian IPS might be just an attempt to create a false trail and to implicate a wrong party. ..."
It was only after listening to the Donna Brazile interview that I decided to comment on the hacking
because of how wrong that Donna Brazile was in so many ways. What responsibility do you think
that the Federal government should have for protecting the data of a private political operation?
What legal or regulatory responsibility do you think that the Federal government has towards the
protection of data for private civilian entities? The second question is rhetorical only to put
the first question in perspective since they are materially exactly the same thing according to
law. How difficult do you think it is to avoid exposure of incriminating or covert E-mails simply
by not having such things?
To whom do US intelligence agencies owe protection against hackers? The DNC was informed that
the Russians or someone pretending to be the Russians was on them. To put your political dirty
tricks or your apprehensions about the possible discovery of apparent pay-to-play games in your
client's foundation in your emails after being warned was just plain foolish.
The Clintons' venality
has been an open secret for 30 years, though Dem-leaning pundits prefer to ignore it or attribute
it to the evil right wing conspiracy. From the Arkansas arrangements permitting the purchase of
influence by engaging as attorney the wife of the AG or the Governor, the miraculous commodity
investment, the Marc Rich and other pardons all stunk.
HRC was elected senator from NY despite
that. That the Clinton Foundation and its generous support for Clinton political operators might
be a pay-to-play operation was not a surprise to longtime observers. I thought it was admirably
bold and clever myself. Nobody else has been able to organize a tax-exempt political slush fund
under personal control except even in Illinois where we have a lot of smart lawyers in politics.
I suspect we will see a lot more political slush funds disguised as foundations in the future.
THANKS! We better get used to Republicans, at least until they "d'oh" their way out of political
power just like the Democrats did. Democrats will never get it back on their own.
I think there was a serious lack of IT competence in the DNC playing a big role. One being with
the obvious incompetence of their cyber-security contractor and another the lack of supervision
or procedures set for this person:
I agree that the procedures and rules at the FBI could have been much better. Why the FBI agent
didn't (or maybe (s)he did) send the information up higher in the chain (all the way to the President)
is a bit of a mystery. Hacking of one of our two major parties should have been Presidential level
info, or at least cabinet level.
How about the possibility of not even having any E-mails incriminating Democrats of political
corruption? Would that have been to hard? I am not saying that they should not be corrupt, just
don't put it in an E-mail for Christ's sake.
[Interesting that Putin is the bad guy here for exposing the behavior of the DNC. Why so much
talk of Russians and so little talk of what was in those Emails?]
The 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak is a collection of Democratic National Committee
(DNC) emails leaked to and subsequently published by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016. This collection
included 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments from the DNC, the governing body of the United States'
Democratic Party.[1] The leak includes emails from seven key DNC staff members, and date from
January 2015 to May 2016.[2] The leak prompted the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz
before the Democratic National Convention.[3] After the convention, DNC CEO Amy Dacey, CFO Brad
Marshall, and Communications Director Luis Miranda also resigned in the wake of the controversy.[4]
WikiLeaks did not reveal its source; a self-styled hacker going by the moniker Guccifer 2.0
claimed responsibility for the attack. On July 25, 2016, the FBI announced that it would investigate
the hack[5][6][7][8][9][10][11] The same day, the DNC issued a formal apology to Bernie Sanders
and his supporters, stating, "On behalf of everyone at the DNC, we want to offer a deep and sincere
apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic Party for the inexcusable
remarks made over email," and that the emails did not reflect the DNC's "steadfast commitment
to neutrality during the nominating process."[12] On November 6, 2016, WikiLeaks released a second
batch of DNC emails, adding 8,263 emails to its collection.[13]
On December 9, 2016, the CIA told U.S. legislators that the U.S. Intelligence Community concluded
Russia conducted operations during the 2016 U.S. election to assist Donald Trump in winning the
presidency.[14] Multiple U.S intelligence agencies concluded people with direct ties to the Kremlin
gave WikiLeaks hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee...
...Bernie Sanders' campaign
In the emails, DNC staffers derided the Sanders campaign.[45] The Washington Post reported:
"Many of the most damaging emails suggest the committee was actively trying to undermine Bernie
Sanders's presidential campaign. Basically, all of these examples came late in the primary-after
Hillary Clinton was clearly headed for victory-but they belie the national party committee's stated
neutrality in the race even at that late stage."[46]
In a May 2016 email chain, the DNC chief financial officer (CFO) Brad Marshall told the DNC
chief executive officer, Amy Dacy, that they should have someone from the media ask Sanders if
he is an atheist prior to the West Virginia primary.[46][47] In another email, Wasserman Schultz
said of Bernie Sanders, "He isn't going to be president."[45]
On May 21, 2016, DNC National Press Secretary Mark Paustenbach sent an email to DNC Spokesman
Luis Miranda mentioning a controversy that ensued in December 2015 when the National Data Director
of the Sanders campaign and three subordinate staffers accessed the Clinton campaign's voter information
on the NGP VAN database.[48] (The party accused Sanders' campaign of impropriety and briefly limited
their access to the database. The Sanders campaign filed suit for breach of contract against the
DNC; they dropped the suit on April 29, 2016.)[47][49][50] Paustenbach suggested that the incident
could be used to promote a "narrative for a story, which is that Bernie never had his act together,
that his campaign was a mess." (The suggestion was rejected by the DNC.) [46][47] The Washington
Post wrote: "Paustenbach's suggestion, in that way, could be read as a defense of the committee
rather than pushing negative information about Sanders. But this is still the committee pushing
negative information about one of its candidates."...
...Financial and donor information
The New York Times wrote that the cache included "thousands of emails exchanged by Democratic
officials and party fund-raisers, revealing in rarely seen detail the elaborate, ingratiating
and often bluntly transactional exchanges necessary to harvest hundreds of millions of dollars
from the party's wealthy donor class. The emails capture a world where seating charts are arranged
with dollar totals in mind, where a White House celebration of gay pride is a thinly disguised
occasion for rewarding wealthy donors and where physical proximity to the president is the most
precious of currencies."[60] As is common in national politics, large party donors "were the subject
of entire dossiers, as fund-raisers tried to gauge their interests, annoyances and passions."[60]
In a series of email exchanges in April and May 2016, DNC fundraising staff discussed and compiled
a list of people (mainly donors) who might be appointed to federal boards and commissions.[61]
Center for Responsive Politics senior fellow Bob Biersack noted that this is a longstanding practice
in the United States: "Big donors have always risen to the top of lists for appointment to plum
ambassadorships and other boards and commissions around the federal landscape."[61] The White
House denied that financial support for the party was connected to board appointments, saying:
"Being a donor does not get you a role in this administration, nor does it preclude you from getting
one. We've said this for many years now and there's nothing in the emails that have been released
that contradicts that."...
That does not make Putin a good guy. I was not a fan of Snowden's either. But it is easier for
me to avoid incriminating myself in Emails than it is to get a foreign leader half way around
the world to not expose my self-incrimination if it is in his self-interest to do so and he has
the resources to do so.
We also need to think about what political parties actually are. Then are not government agencies
or acting on behalf of government agencies or the people at large. Political parties are large
private lobbying firms for a set of loosely affiliated private interests that promote an agenda
and communications expressly triangulated to satisfy both their donor class and voting majority
constituencies. They are more like corporations with owners, employees, and clients than any public
entity.
So a bunch of nothing burgers about how the sausage is made. You don't say that there is actually
people in the DNC that have their own personal favorite among the primary candidates - shocking???
And campaign donations in exchange for the ability to gain influence -- almost half a chocking
as the K-Street project - and a quarter as shocking as the revelation that donating to the Clinton
foundation could NOT give the donors what they wanted from the State Department (what an absurdly
incompetent scheme of corruption - how could we let her run the gobinment).
I am sure that the Russian governments hack of the GOP didn't find anything like that - and
that's the reason they didn't make those emails public.
The general advice that you should not send anything by email that you don't want the public
to know should have been headed by all involved. Maybe the DNC could learn from Hillary - who
had > 30K emails examined and not a single one where she had said anything not good for public
consumption.
"...Maybe the DNC could learn from Hillary - who had > 30K emails examined and not a single one
where she had said anything not good for public consumption."
[Now you are starting to come around.
NO, I did not find anything in the Emails shocking. None of it was a surprise at all to me.
However, it was enough for a lot of other people to be influenced in their voting (likely to stay
home and maybe it helped the Green Party get a few more votes), otherwise no one would care that
they were hacked.
Observer's comment just down thread shows that he got it. Now he was not a Hillary supporter
and more likely than not a Libertarian of sorts, but the principle here is universal, simple risk
management where there was nothing to be gained and everything to lose.
Also, going to war over the hacked Emails of any political party is probably off the table:<)
Where Hillary made a mistake was making an enemy that had one of the worlds most aggressive state
sponsored internet hacking programs (China and the US being the only ones that are more capable,
but still less aggressive and more covert).]
You have exhaustively proven that there was no crime or wrong doing committed by the DNC or Hillary.
Thanks.
You have provided evidence that politics is politics and like sausage making you don't want
to actually see it up close and personal.
Nothing here, nothing at all.
Except for Marshall McLuhan's observation that the media is the message. In this case the Russian
leaked emails to Assange lead Wikileaks calculated to dribble out over the months and weeks before
the November election to suggest there were illegalities and criminal behavior being covered up
by Hillary and the DNC at EXACTLY the same time Donald Trump is jetting around the country telling
everybody who listened that the election was rigged, Hillary is a crook, and the MSM was out to
get him.
Wow, how did you miss that and the implications derived from it?
Former British Ambassador and current Wikileaks operative Craig Murray recently said he has
met the person who leaked DNC and Clinton campaign emails, and they aren't Russian.
While he is highly critical of Wikileaks, he suggests that without NSA coming forward with
hard data obtained via special program that uncover multiple levels of indirection, those charges
are just propaganda and insinuations.
And BTW after the fact it is usually impossible to discover who obtained the information, as
they use multiple levels of indirection and Russia might be just one of those indirection levels.
Use of Russian IP-space or Russian IPS might be just an attempt to create a false trail and to
implicate a wrong party.
As in any complex case you should not jump to conclusions so easily.
ilsm -> im1dc... , -1
Nothing Ron says is clearing.
The e-mail thing is about safeguarding and preserving public records. The content of mishandled records is not an issue.
The public demanded to know what government does. Congress passed the federal records act. The crime has nothing to do with content.
That is one felony Comey could complain about justice whitewashing. The elements of friendly information released must never be discussed, that would make the
breeches worse. Except in closed, secure rooms with no electronic bugging devices.
"... These allegations were followed Wednesday by a press briefing in which White House spokesman Josh Earnest declared that media outfits in the US, in reporting on the Democratic Party emails released by WikiLeaks, "essentially became the arms of Russian intelligence." ..."
"... Later that day, President Obama threatened to retaliate against Russia, telling National Public Radio, "I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections, that we need to take action and we will." ..."
"... The Times followed up its inflammatory article with an editorial Thursday all but accusing the president-elect of acting as a Russian agent. ..."
"... There are bitter and raging conflicts within the state, and a faction of the military-intelligence apparatus is determined that there be no retreat from an aggressive confrontation with Russia. This is connected to anger over the debacle of the CIA-led regime-change operation in Syria. ..."
"... Bound up with this internecine conflict within the ruling class, there is a concerted effort to politically bludgeon the American people into supporting further military escalation, both in the Middle East and against Russia itself. ..."
The American population is being subjected to a furious barrage of propaganda by the media and
political establishment aimed at paving the way to war.
The campaign was sharply escalated this week, beginning with Wednesday's publication of a lead
article in the New York Times . Based entirely on unnamed sources and flimsy and concocted
evidence, it was presented as definitive proof of Russia's hacking of Democratic Party emails and
waging of "cyberwar" against the United States.
These allegations were followed Wednesday by a press briefing in which White House spokesman
Josh Earnest declared that media outfits in the US, in reporting on the Democratic Party emails released
by WikiLeaks, "essentially became the arms of Russian intelligence."
On Thursday, Earnest declared that president-elect Trump had encouraged "Russia to hack his opponent
because he believed it would help his campaign." Later that day, President Obama threatened to
retaliate against Russia, telling National Public Radio, "I think there is no doubt that when any
foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections, that we need to take action and
we will."
These warmongering comments by the Obama administration were accompanied by editorials in leading
US and international newspapers denouncing Trump's accommodative stance toward Russia and clamoring
for a more aggressive response to the alleged hacking. News reports, based on unnamed intelligence
officials, breathlessly proclaim that Russian President Vladimir Putin directly ordered and oversaw
the hacking.
The Times followed up its inflammatory article with an editorial Thursday all but accusing
the president-elect of acting as a Russian agent. "There could be no more 'useful idiot,' to
use Lenin's term of art, than an American president who doesn't know he's being played by a wily
foreign power," the Times declared. The editorial further defined Russia as "one of our oldest, most
determined foreign adversaries," adding, "Kremlin meddling in the 2016 election" justifies "retaliatory
measures."
The declarations by the Times and other media outlets combine all of the noxious elements
of 1950s McCarthyism, with capitalist Russia replacing the Soviet Union: hysterical denunciation
of "wily" Russia, shameless lying and attacks on domestic opponents as spies, traitors and agents
of foreign governments.
There are bitter and raging conflicts within the state, and a faction of the military-intelligence
apparatus is determined that there be no retreat from an aggressive confrontation with Russia. This
is connected to anger over the debacle of the CIA-led regime-change operation in Syria. Trump
has packed his cabinet with generals and is planning a massive escalation of war, but he has also
indicated a preference for greater accommodation with Russia.
Bound up with this internecine conflict within the ruling class, there is a concerted effort
to politically bludgeon the American people into supporting further military escalation, both in
the Middle East and against Russia itself.
The propaganda campaign alleging Russian interference in the US election parallels a related media
blitzkrieg claiming that Syrian government troops, backed by Russia, are carrying out massacres as
they retake the Syrian city of Aleppo.
The Times ' lead editorial on Thursday, titled "Aleppo's Destroyers: Assad, Putin, Iran,"
declares: "After calling on Mr. Assad to 'step aside' in 2011, Mr. Obama was never able to make it
happen, and it may never have been in his power to make it happen, at least at a cost acceptable
to the American people." The front-page lead of Thursday's Times bemoans the fact that efforts
to whip up public support for US military intervention in Syria have "not resonated" as much as previous
propaganda campaigns.
The international press has joined in the hysteria. An op-ed in Germany's Der Spiegel bitterly
complains that "Obama sought a diplomatic, not a military solution" to the crisis in Syria. It "made
him popular, both in the United States and here [in Germany]," the piece states, but adds that such
"self-righteousness is wrong."
Such media propaganda campaigns are not new. Without exception, they have preceded every bloody
military adventure: the attempts to blame Afghanistan for the September 11 terrorist attacks in the
run-up to that country's invasion in 2001; the lying claims about "weapons of mass destruction" before
the 2003 invasion of Iraq; and the reports of an imminent massacre of civilians in Benghazi that
preceded the US bombing and destruction of Libya in 2011.
The difference now, however, is that this campaign is directed not at a virtually defenseless
and impoverished former colony, but at Russia, the world's second-ranked nuclear power. None of the
figures carrying out this campaign care to explain how a war against Russia should be fought, how
many people will die, and how such a war could avoid a nuclear exchange leading to the destruction
of human civilization.
Behind the banner headlines and vituperative editorials, real steps are being taken to prepare
for warfare on a scale not seen for 60 years. Earlier this year, US Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark
A. Milley told the Association of the United States Army that the military must prepare for wars
against great powers, which will be "very highly lethal, unlike anything our Army has experienced
since World War II."
The campaign that has developed over the past two weeks makes clear what the policy of a Clinton
administration would have been. The Democratic Party and its allied media outlets have rooted their
opposition to Trump not on the basis of his losing the popular vote by nearly three million ballots,
or that he is appointing a cabinet dominated by right-wing, reactionary billionaires, bankers, business
executives and generals, but on the charge that he is "soft" on Russia. That is, the Democratic Party
has managed to attack Trump from the right.
Whatever the outcome of the conflict within the state, the American ruling class is preparing
for war. The dissolution of the USSR 25 years ago was greeted with enraptured declarations of an
era of perpetual peace, in which a world under the unrivaled hegemony of the United States would
be free of the wars that plagued mankind in the 20th century. Now, after a quarter century of bloody
regional conflicts, the blood-curdling declarations of the press make it clear that a new world war
is in the making.
Among broad sections of workers and young people, there is deep skepticism toward government
lies and hostility to war. However, this opposition can find no reflection within any faction of
the political establishment. The building of a new anti-war movement, based on the international
unity of the working class in opposition to capitalism and all the political parties of the ruling
class, is the urgent task.
Last week we reported that the State of Georgia had traced an attempted break-in to its voter
registration database to none other than the famous Russian government agency, the Department of
Homeland Security.
Now it has been revealed that Kentucky and West Virginia "have confirmed suspected cyberattacks
linked to the same U.S. Department of Homeland Security IP address as last month's massive attack
in Georgia". There must be some way to blame Moscow:
While there could be an "innocent" explanation for such attacks (testing network security, for
example), the Department of Homeland Security did not inform any of these states - before or
after the attacks - that they had been conducted, for security-checking purposes or otherwise. In
other words: These states still don't know why DHS targeted, and they're still waiting for an
answer:
In the past week, the Georgia Secretary of State's Office has confirmed 10 separate
cyberattacks on its network over the past 10 months that were traced back to DHS addresses.
"We're being told something that they think they have it figured out, yet nobody's really
showed us how this happened," Kemp said. "We need to know."
He says the new information from the two other states presents even more reason to be
concerned.
"So now this just raises more questions that haven't been answered about this and continues to
raise the alarms and concern that I have," Kemp said.
Georgia's Secretary of State says he has already sent an appeal to the incoming Trump
administration, asking for assistance in resolving this bizarre string of cyber attacks.
Donald Trump won the electoral college at least in part by promising to bring coal jobs
back to Appalachia and manufacturing jobs back to the Rust Belt. Neither promise can be honored
– for the most part we're talking about jobs lost, not to unfair foreign competition, but to
technological change. But a funny thing happens when people like me try to point that out:
we get enraged responses from economists who feel an affinity for the working people of the
afflicted regions – responses that assume that trying to do the numbers must reflect contempt
for regional cultures, or something.
Is this the right narrative? I am no longer comfortable with this line:
for the most part we're talking about jobs lost, not to unfair foreign competition, but
to technological change.
Try to place that line in context with this from
Noah Smith:
Then, in the 1990s and 2000s, the U.S opened its markets to Chinese goods, first with Most
Favored Nation trading status, and then by supporting China's accession to the WTO. The resulting
competition from cheap Chinese goods contributed to vast inequality in the United States, reversing
many of the employment gains of the 1990s and holding down U.S. wages. But this sacrifice on
the part of 90% of the American populace enabled China to lift its enormous population out
of abject poverty and become a middle-income country.
Was this "fair" trade? I think not. Let me suggest this narrative: Sometime during the
Clinton Administration, it was decided that an economically strong China was good for both the
globe and the U.S. Fair enough. To enable that outcome, U.S. policy deliberately sacrificed manufacturing
workers on the theory that a.) the marginal global benefit from the job gain to a Chinese worker
exceeded the marginal global cost from a lost US manufacturing job, b.) the U.S. was shifting
toward a service sector economy anyway and needed to reposition its workforce accordingly and
c.) the transition costs of shifting workers across sectors in the U.S. were minimal.
As a consequence – and through a succession of administrations – the US tolerated implicit
subsidies of Chinese industries, including national industrial policy designed to strip production
from the US.
And then there was the currency manipulation. I am always shocked when international economists
claim "fair trade," pretending that the financial side of the international accounts is irrelevant.
As if that wasn't a big, fat thumb on the scale. Sure, "currency manipulation" is running the
other way these days. After, of course, a portion of manufacturing was absorbed overseas. After
the damage is done.
Yes, technological change is happening. But the impact, and the costs, were certainly accelerated
by U.S. policy.
It was a great plan. On paper, at least. And I would argue that in fact points a and b above
were correct.
But point c. Point c was a bad call. Point c was a disastrous call. Point c helped deliver
Donald Trump to the Oval Office. To be sure, the FBI played its role, as did the Russians. But
even allowing for the poor choice of Hilary Clinton as the Democratic nominee (the lack of contact
with rural and semi-rural voters blinded the Democrats to the deep animosity toward their candidate),
it should never have come to this.
As the opioid epidemic sweeps through rural America, an ever-greater number of drug-dependent
newborns are straining hospital neonatal units and draining precious medical resources.
The problem has grown more quickly than realized and shows no signs of abating, researchers
reported on Monday. Their study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, concludes for the first time
that the increase in drug-dependent newborns has been disproportionately larger in rural areas.
The latest causalities in the opioid epidemic are newborns.
The transition costs were not minimal.
My take is that "fair trade" as practiced since the late 1990s created another disenfranchised
class of citizens. As if we hadn't done enough of that already. Then we weaponized those newly
disenfranchised citizens with the rhetoric of identity politics. That's coming back to bite us.
We didn't really need a white nationalist movement, did we?
Now comes the big challenge: What can we do to make amends? Can we change the narrative? And
here is where I agree with Paul Krugman:
Now, if we want to have a discussion of regional policies – an argument to the effect that
my pessimism is unwarranted – fine. As someone who is generally a supporter of government activism,
I'd actually like to be convinced that a judicious program of subsidies, relocating government
departments, whatever, really can sustain communities whose traditional industry has eroded.
The damage done is largely irreversible. In medium-size regions, lower relative housing
costs may help attract overflow from the east and west coast urban areas. And maybe a program
of guaranteed jobs for small- to medium-size regions combined with relocation subsidies for very
small-size regions could help. But it won't happen overnight, if ever. And even if you could reverse
the patterns of trade – which wouldn't be easy given the intertwining of global supply chains
– the winners wouldn't be the same current losers. Tough nut to crack.
Bottom Line: I don't know how to fix this either. But I don't absolve the policy community
from their role in this disaster. I think you can easily tell a story that this was one big policy
experiment gone terribly wrong.
"... Shorter Paul Krugman: nobody acted more irresponsibly in the last election than the New York Times. ..."
"... Looks like Putin recruited the NYT, the FBI and the DNC. ..."
"... Dr. Krugman is feeding this "shoot first, ask questions later" mentality. He comes across as increasingly shrill and even unhinged - it's a slide he's been taking for years IMO, which is a big shame. ..."
"... It is downright irresponsible and dangerous for a major public intellectual with so little information to cast the shadow of legitimacy on a president ("And it means not acting as if this was a normal election whose result gives the winner any kind of a mandate, or indeed any legitimacy beyond the bare legal requirements.") This kind of behavior is EXACTLY what TRUMP and other authoritarians exhibit - using pieces of information to discredit institutions and individuals. Since foreign governments have and will continue to try to influence U.S. policy through increasingly sophisticated means, this opens the door for anyone to declare our elections and policies as illegitimate in the future. ..."
"... Any influence Russian hacking had was entirely a consequence of U.S. media obsession with celebrity, gotcha and horse race trivia and two-party red state/blue state tribalism. ..."
"... Without the preceding, neither Trump nor Clinton would have been contenders in the first place. Putin didn't invent super delegates, Citizens United, Fox News, talk radio, Goldman-Sachs, etc. etc. etc. If Putin exploited vulnerabilities, it is because preserving those vulnerabilities was more important to the elites than fostering a democratic political culture. ..."
"... It's not a "coup". It's an election result that didn't go the way a lot of people want. That's it. It's probably not optimal, but I'm pretty sure that democracy isn't supposed to produce optimal results. ..."
"... All this talk about "coups" and "illegitimacy" is nuts, and -- true to Dem practice -- incredibly short-sighted. For many, voting for Trump was an available way to say to those people, "We don't believe you any more. At all." Seen in that light, it is a profoundly democratic (small 'd') response to elites that have most consistently served only themselves. ..."
"... Post Truth is Pre-Fascism. The party that thinks your loyalty is suspect unless you wear a flag pin fuels itself on Post Truth. Isnt't this absurdity the gist of Obama's Russia comments today!?! ..."
"... Unless the Russians or someone else hacked the ballot box machines, it is our own damn fault. ..."
"... The ship of neo-liberal trade sailed in the mid-2000's. That you don't get that is sad. You can only milk that so far the cow had been milked. ..."
"... The people of the United States did not have much to choose between: Either a servant of the Plutocrats or a member of the Plutocratic class. The Dems brought this on us when they refused to play fair with Bernie. (Hillary would almost certainly have won the nomination anyway.) ..."
"... The Repubs brought this on, by refusing to govern. The media brought this on: I seem to remember Hillary's misfeasances, once nominated, festering in the media, while Trump's were mentioned, and then disappeared. (Correct me if I'm wrong in this.) Also, the media downplayed Bernie until he had no real chance. ..."
"... The government brought this on, by failing to pursue justice against the bankers, and failing to represent the people, especially the majority who have been screwed by trade and the plutocratic elite and their apologists. ..."
"... The educational system brought this on, by failing to educate the people to critical thought. For instance: 1) The wealthy run the country. 2) The wealthy have been doing very well. 3) Everybody else has not. It seems most people cannot draw the obvious conclusion. ..."
"... Krugman is himself one of those most useful idiots. I do not recall his clarion call to Democrats last spring that "FBI investigation" and "party Presidential nominee" was bound to be an ugly combination. Some did; right here as I recall. Or his part in the official "don't vote for third party" week in the Clinton media machine....thanks, hundreds of thousands of Trump votes got the message. ..."
"... It's too rich to complain about Russia and Wikileaks as if those elements in anyway justified Clinton becoming President. Leaks mess with our democracy? Then for darn sure do not vote for a former Sec. of State willing to use a home server for her official business. Russia is menacing? Just who has been managing US-Russia relations the past 8 years? I voted for her anyway, but the heck if I think some tragic fate has befell the nation here. Republicans picked a better candidate to win this thing than we Democrats did. ..."
"... The truth of the matter is that Clinton was a very weak candidate with nothing to offer but narcissism ("I'm with her"). It's notable that Clinton has still not accepted responsibility for her campaign, preferring to throw the blame for the loss anywhere but herself. Sociopathy much? ..."
[ I find it terrifying, simply terrifying, to refer to people as "useful idiots" after all
the personal destruction that has followed when the expression was specifically used in the past.
To me, using such an expression is an honored economist intent on becoming Joseph McCarthy.
]
To demean a person as though the person were a communist or a fool of communists or the like,
with all the personal harm that has historically brought in this country, is cruel beyond my understanding
or imagining.
Well, not really. For example he referred to "the close relationship between Wikileaks and Russian
intelligence." But Wikileaks is a channel. They don't seek out material. They rely on people to
bring material to them. They supposedly make an effort to verify that the material is not a forgery,
but aside from that what they release is what people bring to them. Incidentally, like so many
people you seem to not care whether the material is accurate or not -- Podesta and the DNC have
not claimed that any of the emails are different from what they sent.
ZURICH - If Putin the Thug gets away with crushing Ukraine's new democratic experiment and
unilaterally redrawing the borders of Europe, every pro-Western country around Russia will be
in danger....
Yup, like the other elections, the bases stayed solvent and current events factored into the turnout
and voting patterns which spurred the independent vote.
When people were claiming Clinton was going to win big, I thought no Republican and Democratic
voters are going to pull the lever like a trained monkey as usual. Only difference in this election
was Hillary's huge negatives due entirely by her and Bill Clinton's support for moving manufacturing
jobs to Mexico and China in the 90s.
To Understand Trump, Learn Russian http://nyti.ms/2hLcrB1
NYT - Andrew Rosenthal - December 15
The Russian language has two words for truth - a linguistic quirk that seems relevant to our
current political climate, especially because of all the disturbing ties between the newly elected
president and the Kremlin.
The word for truth in Russian that most Americans know is "pravda" - the truth that seems evident
on the surface. It's subjective and infinitely malleable, which is why the Soviet Communists called
their party newspaper "Pravda." Despots, autocrats and other cynical politicians are adept at
manipulating pravda to their own ends.
But the real truth, the underlying, cosmic, unshakable truth of things is called "istina" in
Russian. You can fiddle with the pravda all you want, but you can't change the istina.
For the Trump team, the pravda of the 2016 election is that not all Trump voters are explicitly
racist. But the istina of the 2016 campaign is that Trump's base was heavily dependent on racists
and xenophobes, Trump basked in and stoked their anger and hatred, and all those who voted for
him cast a ballot for a man they knew to be a racist, sexist xenophobe. That was an act of racism.
Trump's team took to Twitter with lightning speed recently to sneer at the conclusion by all
17 intelligence agencies that the Kremlin hacked Democratic Party emails for the specific purpose
of helping Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton. Trump said the intelligence agencies got it wrong
about Iraq, and that someone else could have been responsible for the hack and that the Democrats
were just finding another excuse for losing.
The istina of this mess is that powerful evidence suggests that the Russians set out to interfere
in American politics, and that Trump, with his rejection of Western European alliances and embrace
of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, was their chosen candidate.
The pravda of Trump's selection of Rex Tillerson, head of Exxon Mobil, as secretary of state
is that by choosing an oil baron who has made billions for his company by collaborating with Russia,
Trump will make American foreign policy beholden to American corporate interests.
That's bad enough, but the istina is far worse. For one thing, American foreign policy has
been in thrall to American corporate interests since, well, since there were American corporations.
Just look at the mess this country created in Latin America, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and
the Middle East to serve American companies.
Yes, Tillerson has ignored American interests repeatedly, including in Russia and Iraq, and
has been trying to remove sanctions imposed after Russia's seizure of Crimea because they interfered
with one of his many business deals. But take him out of the equation in the Trump cabinet and
nothing changes. Trump has made it plain, with every action he takes, that he is going to put
every facet of policy, domestic and foreign, at the service of corporate America. The istina here
is that Tillerson is just a symptom of a much bigger problem.
The pravda is that Trump was right in saying that the intelligence agencies got it wrong about
Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction.
But the istina is that Trump's contempt for the intelligence services is profound and dangerous.
He's not getting daily intelligence briefings anymore, apparently because they are just too dull
to hold his attention.
And now we know that Condoleezza Rice was instrumental in bringing Tillerson to Trump's attention.
As national security adviser and then secretary of state for president George W. Bush, Rice was
not just wrong about Iraq, she helped fabricate the story that Hussein had nuclear weapons.
Trump and Tillerson clearly think they are a match for the wily and infinitely dangerous Putin,
but as they move foward with their plan to collaborate with Russia instead of opposing its imperialist
tendencies, they might keep in mind another Russian saying, this one from Lenin.
"There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience," he wrote. "A scoundrel may be
of use to us just because he is a scoundrel."
Putin has that philosophy hard-wired into his political soul. When it comes to using scoundrels
to get what he wants, he is a professional, and Trump is only an amateur. That is the istina of
the matter.
If nothing else, Russia - with a notably un-free press - has shrewdly used our own 'free press'
against US.
RUSSIA'S UNFREE PRESS
The Boston Globe - Marshall Goldman - January 29, 2001
AS THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION DEBATES ITS POLICY TOWARD RUSSIA, FREEDOM OF THE PRESS SHOULD BE
ONE OF ITS MAJOR CONCERNS. UNDER PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN THE PRESS IS FREE ONLY AS LONG AS IT
DOES NOT CRITICIZE PUTIN OR HIS POLICIES. WHEN NTV, THE TELEVISION NETWORK OF THE MEDIA GIANT
MEDIA MOST, REFUSED TO PULL ITS PUNCHES, MEDIA MOST'S OWNER, VLADIMIR GUSINSKY, FOUND HIMSELF
IN JAIL, AND GAZPROM, A COMPANY DOMINATED BY THE STATE, BEGAN TO CALL IN LOANS TO MEDIA MOST.
Unfortunately, Putin's actions are applauded by more than 70 percent of the Russian people. They
crave a strong and forceful leader; his KGB past and conditioned KGB responses are just what they
seem to want after what many regard as the social, political, and economic chaos of the last decade.
But what to the Russians is law and order (the "dictatorship of the law," as Putin has so accurately
put it) looks more and more like an old Soviet clampdown to many Western observers.
There is no complaint about Putin's promises. He tells everyone he wants freedom of the press.
But in the context of his KGB heritage, his notion of freedom of the press is something very different.
In an interview with the Toronto Globe and Mail, he said that that press freedom excludes the
"hooliganism" or "uncivilized" reporting he has to deal with in Moscow. By that he means criticism,
especially of his conduct of the war in Chechnya, his belated response to the sinking of the Kursk,
and the heavy-handed way in which he has pushed aside candidates for governor in regional elections
if they are not to Putin's liking.
He does not take well to criticism. When asked by the relatives of those lost in the Kursk
why he seemed so unresponsive, Putin tried to shift the blame for the disaster onto the media
barons, or at least those who had criticized him. They were the ones, he insisted, who had pressed
for reduced funding for the Navy while they were building villas in Spain and France. As for their
criticism of his behavior, They lie! They lie! They lie!
Our Western press has provided good coverage of the dogged way Putin and his aides have tried
to muscle Gusinsky out of the Media Most press conglomerate he created. But those on the Putin
enemies list now include even Boris Berezovsky, originally one of Putin's most enthusiastic promoters
who after the sinking of the Kursk also became a critic and thus an opponent.
Gusinsky would have a hard time winning a merit badge for trustworthiness (Berezovsky shouldn't
even apply), but in the late Yeltsin and Putin years, Gusinsky has earned enormous credit for
his consistently objective news coverage, including a spotlight on malfeasance at the very top.
More than that, he has supported his programmers when they have subjected Yeltsin and now Putin
to bitter satire on Kukly, his Sunday evening prime-time puppet show.
What we hear less of, though, is what is happening to individual reporters, especially those
engaged in investigative work. Almost monthly now there are cases of violence and intimidation.
Among those brutalized since Putin assumed power are a reporter for Radio Liberty who dared to
write negative reports about the Russian Army's role in Chechnia and four reporters for Novaya
Gazeta. Two of them were investigating misdeeds by the FSB (today's equivalent of the KGB), including
the possibility that it rather than Chechins had blown up a series of apartment buildings. Another
was pursuing reports of money-laundering by Yeltsin family members and senior staff in Switzerland.
Although these journalists were very much in the public eye, they were all physically assaulted.
Those working for provincial papers labor under even more pressure with less visibility. There
are numerous instances where regional bosses such as the governor of Vladivostok operate as little
dictators, and as a growing number of journalists have discovered, challenges are met with threats,
physical intimidation, and, if need be, murder.
True, freedom of the press in Russia is still less than 15 years old, and not all the country's
journalists or their bosses have always used that freedom responsibly. During the 1996 election
campaign, for example, the media owners, including Gusinsky conspired to denigrate or ignore every
viable candidate other than Yeltsin. But attempts to muffle if not silence criticism have multiplied
since Putin and his fellow KGB veterans have come to power. Criticism from any source, be it an
individual journalist or a corporate entity, invites retaliation.
When Media Most persisted in its criticism, Putin sat by approvingly as his subordinates sent
in masked and armed tax police and prosecutors. When that didn't work, they jailed Gusinsky on
charges that were later dropped, although they are seeking to extradite and jail him again. along
with his treasurer, on a new set of charges. Yesterday the prosecutor general summoned Tatyana
Mitkova, the anchor of NTV's evening news program, for questioning. Putin's aides are also doing
all they can to prevent Gusinsky from refinancing his debt-ridden operation with Ted Turner or
anyone else in or outside of the country.
According to one report, Putin told one official, You deal with the shares, debts, and management
and I will deal with the journalists. His goal simply is to end to independent TV coverage in
Russia. ...
"Unfortunately, Putin's actions are applauded by more than 70 percent of the Russian people"
Exactly; the majority of people are so stupid and/or lazy that they cannot be bothered understanding
what is going on; and how their hard won democracy is being subjugated. But thank God that is
in Russia not here in the US - right?
"Pravda" is etymologically derived from "prav-" which means "right" (as opposed to "left", other
connotations are "proper", "correct", "rightful", also legal right). It designates the social-construct
aspect of "righteousness/truthfulness/correctness" as opposed to "objective reality" (conceptually
independent of social standards, in reality anything but). In formal logic, "istina" is used to
designate truth. Logical falsity is designated a "lie".
It is a feature common to most European languages that rightfulness, righteousness, correctness,
and legal rights are identified with the designation for the right side. "Sinister" is Latin for
"left".
If you believe 911 was a Zionist conspiracy, so where the Paris attacks of November 2015, when
Trump was failing in the polls as the race was moving toward as you would expect, toward other
candidates. After the Paris attacks, his numbers reaccelerated.
If "ZOG" created the "false flag" of the Paris attacks to start a anti-Muslim fervor, they
succeeded, much like 911. Bastille day attacks were likewise, a false flag. This is not new, this
goes back to when the aristocracy merged with the merchant caste, creating the "bourgeois". They
have been running a parallel government in the shadows to effect what is seen.
There used to be something called Usenet News, where at the protocol level reader software could
fetch meta data (headers containing author, (stated) origin, title, etc.) independently from comment
bodies. This was largely owed to limited download bandwidth. Basically all readers had "kill files"
i.e. filters where one could configure that comments with certain header parameters should not
be downloaded, or even hidden.
The main application was that the reader would download comments in the background when headers
were already shown, or on demand when you open a comment.
Now you get the whole thing (or in units of 100) by the megabyte.
A major problem is signal extraction out of the massive amounts of noise generated by the media,
social media, parties, and pundits.
It's easy enough to highlight this thread of information here, but in real time people are
being bombarded by so many other stories.
In particular, the Clinton Foundation was also regularly being highlighted for its questionable
ties to foreign influence. And HRC's extravagant ties to Wall St. And so much more.
The media's job was to sell Trump and denounce Clinton. The mistake a lot of people make is thinking
the global elite are the "status quo". They are not. They are generally the ones that break the
status quo more often than not.
The bulk of them wanted Trump/Republican President and made damn sure it was President. Buffering
the campaign against criticism while overly focusing on Clinton's "crap". It took away from the
issues which of course would have low key'd the election.
Not much bullying has to be applied when there are "economic incentives". The media attention
economy and ratings system thrive on controversy and emotional engagement. This was known a century
ago as "only bad news is good news". As long as I have lived, the non-commercial media not subject
(or not as much) to these dynamics have always been perceived as dry and boring.
I heard from a number of people that they followed the campaign "coverage" (in particular Trump)
as gossip/entertainment, and those were people who had no sympathies for him. And even media coverage
by outlets generally critical of Trump's unbelievable scandals and outrageous performances catered
to this sentiment.
First, let me disclose that I detest TRUMP and that the Russian meddling has me deeply concerned.
Yet...
We only have assertions that the Russian hacking had some influence. We do not know whether
it likely had *material* influence that could have reasonably led to a swing state(s) going to
TRUMP that otherwise would have gone to HRC.
Dr. Krugman is feeding this "shoot first, ask questions later" mentality. He comes across
as increasingly shrill and even unhinged - it's a slide he's been taking for years IMO, which
is a big shame.
It is downright irresponsible and dangerous for a major public intellectual with so little
information to cast the shadow of legitimacy on a president ("And it means not acting as if this
was a normal election whose result gives the winner any kind of a mandate, or indeed any legitimacy
beyond the bare legal requirements.") This kind of behavior is EXACTLY what TRUMP and other authoritarians
exhibit - using pieces of information to discredit institutions and individuals. Since foreign
governments have and will continue to try to influence U.S. policy through increasingly sophisticated
means, this opens the door for anyone to declare our elections and policies as illegitimate in
the future.
It is quite clear that the Russians intervened on Trump's behalf and that this intervention had
an impact. The problem is that we cannot actually quantify that impact.
"We only have assertions that the Russian hacking had some influence."
Any influence Russian hacking had was entirely a consequence of U.S. media obsession with
celebrity, gotcha and horse race trivia and two-party red state/blue state tribalism.
Without the preceding, neither Trump nor Clinton would have been contenders in the first
place. Putin didn't invent super delegates, Citizens United, Fox News, talk radio, Goldman-Sachs,
etc. etc. etc. If Putin exploited vulnerabilities, it is because preserving those vulnerabilities
was more important to the elites than fostering a democratic political culture.
But this is how influence is exerted - by using the dynamics of the adversary's/targets organization
as an amplifier. Hierarchical organizations are approached through their management or oversight
bodies, social networks through key influencers, etc.
I see this so much and it's so right wing cheap: I hate Trump, but assertions that Russia intervened
are unproven.
First, Trump openly invited Russia to hack DNC emails. That is on its face treason and sedition.
It's freaking on video. If HRC did that there would be calls of the right for her execution.
Second, a NYT story showed that the FBI knew about the hacking but did not alert the DNC properly
- they didn't even show up, they sent a note to a help desk.
This was a serious national security breach that was not addressed properly. This is criminal
negligence.
This was a hacked election by collusion of the FBI and the Russian hackers and it totally discredits
the FBI as it throwed out chum and then denied at the last minute. Now the CIA comes in and says
PUTIN, Trump's bff, was directly involved in manipulating the timetable that the hacked emails
were released in drip drip form to cater to the media - creating story after story about emails.
It was a perfect storm for a coup. Putin played us. And he will play Trump. And God knows how
it ends. But it doesn't matter b/c we're all screwed with climate change anyway.
"It was a perfect storm for a coup. Putin played us. And he will play Trump. And God knows how
it ends. But it doesn't matter b/c we're all screwed with climate change anyway."
It's not a "coup". It's an election result that didn't go the way a lot of people want.
That's it. It's probably not optimal, but I'm pretty sure that democracy isn't supposed to produce
optimal results.
All this talk about "coups" and "illegitimacy" is nuts, and -- true to Dem practice --
incredibly short-sighted. For many, voting for Trump was an available way to say to those people,
"We don't believe you any more. At all." Seen in that light, it is a profoundly democratic (small
'd') response to elites that have most consistently served only themselves.
Trump and his gang will be deeply grateful if the left follows Krugman's "wisdom", and clings
to his ever-changing excuses. (I thought it was the evil Greens who deprived Clinton of her due?)
Post Truth is Pre-Fascism. The party that thinks your loyalty is suspect unless you wear a
flag pin fuels itself on Post Truth. Isnt't this absurdity the gist of Obama's Russia comments
today!?!
"On Wednesday an editorial in The Times described Donald Trump as a "useful idiot" serving Russian
interests." I think that is beyond the pale. Yes, I realize that Adolph Hitler was democratically
elected. I agree that Trump seems like a scary monster under the bed. That doesn't mean we have
too pee our pants, Paul. He's a bully, tough guy, maybe, the kind of kid that tortured you before
you kicked the shit out of them with your brilliance. That's not what is needed now.
What really is needed, is a watchdog, like Dean Baker, that alerts we dolts of pending bills and
their ramifications. The ship of neo-liberal trade bullshit has sailed. Hell, you don't believe
it yourself, you've said as much. Be gracious, and tell the truth. We can handle it.
The experience of voting for the Hill was painful, vs Donald Trump.
The Hill seemed like the least likely aristocrat, given two choices, to finish off all government
focus on the folks that actually built this society. Two Titans of Hubris, Hillary vs Donald,
each ridiculous in the concept of representing the interests of the common man.
At the end of the day. the American people decided that the struggle with the unknown monster
Donald was worth deposing the great deplorable, Clinton.
The real argument is whether the correct plan of action is the way of FDR, or the way of the industrialists,
the Waltons, the Kochs, the Trumps, the Bushes and the outright cowards like the Cheneys and the
Clintons, people that never spent a day defending this country in combat. What do they call it,
the Commander in Chief.
My father was awarded a silver and a bronze star for his efforts in battle during WW2. He was
shot in the face while driving a tank destroyer by a German sniper in a place called Schmitten
Germany.
He told me once, that he looked over at the guy next to him on the plane to the hospital in
England, and his intestines were splayed on his chest. It was awful.
What was he fighting for ? Freedom, America. Then the Republicans, Ronald Reagan, who spent the
war stateside began the real war, garnering the wealth of the nation to the entitled like him.
Ronald Reagan was a life guard.
Anthony Weiner
Podesta
Biden (for not running)
Tim Kaine (for accepting the nomination instead of deferring to a latino)
CNN and other TV news media (for giving trump so much coverage- even an empty podium)
Donna Brazile
etc.
The people of the United States did not have much to choose between: Either a servant of the
Plutocrats or a member of the Plutocratic class. The Dems brought this on us when they refused
to play fair with Bernie. (Hillary would almost certainly have won the nomination anyway.)
The Repubs brought this on, by refusing to govern. The media brought this on: I seem to
remember Hillary's misfeasances, once nominated, festering in the media, while Trump's were mentioned,
and then disappeared. (Correct me if I'm wrong in this.) Also, the media downplayed Bernie until
he had no real chance.
The government brought this on, by failing to pursue justice against the bankers, and failing
to represent the people, especially the majority who have been screwed by trade and the plutocratic
elite and their apologists.
The educational system brought this on, by failing to educate the people to critical thought.
For instance: 1) The wealthy run the country. 2) The wealthy have been doing very well. 3) Everybody
else has not. It seems most people cannot draw the obvious conclusion.
The wealthy brought this on. For 230 years they have, essentially run this country. They are
too stupid to be satisfied with enough, but always want more.
The economics profession brought this on, by excusing treasonous behavior as efficient, and
failing to understand the underlying principles of their profession, and the limits of their understanding.
(They don't even know what money is, or how a trade deficit destroys productive capacity, and
thus the very ability of a nation to pay back the debts it incurs.)
The people brought this on, by neglecting their duty to be informed, to be educated, and to
be thoughtful.
Anybody else care for their share of blame? I myself deserve some, but for reasons I cannot
say.
What amazes me now is, the bird having shown its feathers, there is no howl of outrage from
the people who voted for him. Do they imagine that the Plutocrats who will soon monopolize the
White House will take their interests to heart?
As far as I can tell, not one person of 'the people' has been appointed to his cabinet. Not
one. But the oppressed masses who turned to Mr Trump seem to be OK with this.
I can only wonder, how much crap will have to be rubbed in their faces, before they awaken to
the taste of what it is?
Eric377 : , -1
Krugman is himself one of those most useful idiots. I do not recall his clarion call to Democrats
last spring that "FBI investigation" and "party Presidential nominee" was bound to be an ugly
combination. Some did; right here as I recall. Or his part in the official "don't vote for third
party" week in the Clinton media machine....thanks, hundreds of thousands of Trump votes got the
message.
It's too rich to complain about Russia and Wikileaks as if those elements in anyway justified
Clinton becoming President. Leaks mess with our democracy? Then for darn sure do not vote for
a former Sec. of State willing to use a home server for her official business. Russia is menacing?
Just who has been managing US-Russia relations the past 8 years? I voted for her anyway, but the
heck if I think some tragic fate has befell the nation here. Republicans picked a better candidate
to win this thing than we Democrats did.
The truth of the matter is that Clinton was a very weak candidate with nothing to offer
but narcissism ("I'm with her"). It's notable that Clinton has still not accepted responsibility
for her campaign, preferring to throw the blame for the loss anywhere but herself. Sociopathy
much?
This has made me cynical. I used to think that at least *some* members of the US political
elite had the best interests of ordinary households in mind, but now I see that it's just ego
vs. ego, whatever the party.
As for democracy being on the edge: I believe Adam Smith over Krugman: "there is a lot of ruin
in a nation". It takes more than this to overturn an entrenched institution.
I think American democracy will survive a decade of authoritarianism, and if it does not, then
H. L. Mencken said it best: "The American people know what they want, and they deserve to get
it -- good and hard."
The agitprop out of the White House isn't working these days, thanks to the advent of fake
news of course. Following weeks of hysteria, following Donald J. Trump's triumphant victory of
Hillary Clinton and Obama's legacy, Obama took to the podium for one last time to divide
Americans -- this time invoking the revered late President Ronald Reagan -- saying he'd be
'rolling over in his grave' now had he known that over a third of republicans approve of Putin in
some random poll.
If Obama truly wants to know why Americans are willing to accept the words of Putin,
undoubtedly a strong man leader, over his -- he should take a look in the mirror and then gander
over to his computer to re-read all of the Wikileaks from John Podesta's email that Putin so
graciously made available to us all. They speak volumes about the corruptness and the rot
permeating in our capitol. Even without the emails, we see the neocon strategy of persistent war
and deceit hollowing out this nation -- devouring its resources, emptying its treasury, and there
is nothing redeeming about it.
During the press conference, Obama provided his media with incontrovertible evidence that
Russia was behind the WikiLeaks, saying 'not much happens in Russia without Putin's approval.'
Russia has a land mass of 6,592,800 sq miles and Putin controls every single inch of it. This is
retard level thinking.
Moreover, Obama says he told Putin to 'cut it out' when he last saw him in China, warning him
of serious consequences. Luckily for us, Putin got scared and ceased all further hackings.
However, the damage had already been done and the Wikileaks released.
I suppose this type of lazy thinking appeals to a certain subset of America, else why would he
make such infantile statements?
The Divider in Chief, one last time reminding himself and the press that XENOPHOBIA against
Russians is good. The Russians are a useless sort, who produce nothing of interest, a very small
and weak country, only capable of wiping out the entirety of America 10x over via very large
nuclear detonations. Oh, and you pesky republicans love Putin because you're sooo political.
This is what some might call 'idiotic diplomacy', mocking and deriding a rival nation to the
point of war, a war that could exterminate life on planet earth for at least a millennia. Genius.
Assuming these "rogue-Electors" from the Electoral College
get a briefing on the "Russian election-hack" from the CIA
, and assuming the
Electors have a few working brain cells, and assuming they care, here are the top 11
questions they should ask the CIA presenter.
Questions One through Three (repeated with enthusiasm and fervor):
Are you just
going to feed us generalities and tell us you can't detail specifics because that would
compromise your methods and personnel? We can read the generalities in the Washington
Post, whose owner, Jeff Bezos, chief honcho at Amazon, has a $600 million contract with
the CIA to provide cloud computing services, so he and the Post and the CIA are in bed
together.
Question Four:
We need a precise
distinction here. How did "Russia hacked the DNC, Hillary, Podesta, and Weiner emails
and fed the emails to WikiLeaks who released them" suddenly morph into "Russia hacked
the election vote"?
Question Five:
The security systems
that protected the DNC, Hillary, Podesta, and Weiner emails were so feeble a child could
have gotten past them in a few minutes. Why should we assume high-level Russian agents
were involved?
Question Six:
Not only does the CIA
have a history of lying to the American people, lying is part of your job description.
Why should we believe you? Take your time. We can have food brought in.
Question Seven:
We're getting the
feeling you're talking down to us as if we're the peasants and you're the feudal barons.
Why is that? Do you work for us, or do we work for you? Once upon a time, before you
went to work for the Agency, were you like us, or were you always arrogant and
dismissive?
Question Eight:
Let's put aside for a
moment the question of who leaked all those emails. What about the substance and content
of the emails? Was all that forged or was it real? If you claim there was forgery, prove
it. Put a dozen emails up on that big screen and take us through them, piece by piece,
and show us where and how the forgery occurred. By the way, why didn't you allow us to
bring several former NSA analysts into this briefing? Are we living in the US or the
USSR?
Question Nine:
Are you personally a
computer expert, sir? Or are you merely relaying what someone else at the CIA told you?
Would you spell your name for us again? What is your job description at the Agency? Do
you work in public information? Are you tasked with "being convincing"?
Question Ten:
Do you think we're
completely stupid?
Question Eleven:
Let's all let our
hair down, okay? Forget facts and specifics. Of course we want to overthrow the election
and install Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office. So do you. We're on the same team. But
we need you to give us something, anything. So far, this briefing is embarrassing. Once
we get out of here, we want to tell a few persuasive lies. Give us a Russian name, any
name. Or a location in Russia we can use. The brand name of a Russian vodka. Caviar.
Something that sounds Russian. Make up a code with letters and numbers. Help us out. How
about the name of an American who who's actually a Russian spy? You could shoot him
later today in a "gun battle at a shopping mall." That would work.
Good luck.
(To read about Jon's mega-collection,
Power
Outside The Matrix
,
click here
.)
We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses,
breaking news and videos (
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for details ).
Contributed by Jon Rappoport of
No More Fake News .
The author of an explosive collection,
THE
MATRIX REVEALED , Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the
29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an
investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health
for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines
in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics,
health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world.
Podesta essentially gave up his email due to committed by him blunder: sending his password to the
attacker. As such it was far from high-end hacking, which can be attributed to intelligence
agencies. It is more like a regular, primitive phishing expedition
which became successful due to Podesta blunder. So this is not hacking but phishing
expedition... That makes big difference.
Notable quotes:
"... The DNC hackers inserted the name of the founder of Russian intelligence, in Russian, in the metadata of the hacked documents. Why would the G.R.U., Russian military intelligence do that? ..."
"... If the hackers were indeed part of Russian intelligence, why did they use a free Russian email account, or, in the hack of the state election systems, a Russian-owned server? Does Russian intelligence normally display such poor tradecraft? ..."
"... Why would Russian intelligence, for the purposes of hacking the election systems of Arizona and Illinois, book space on a Russian-owned server and then use only English, as documents furnished by Vladimir Fomenko, proprietor of Kings Servers, the company that owned the server in question, clearly indicate? ..."
"... Numerous reports ascribe the hacks to hacking groups known as APT 28 or "Fancy Bear" and APT 29 or "Cozy Bear." But these groups had already been accused of nefarious actions on behalf of Russian intelligence prior to the hacks under discussion. Why would the Kremlin and its intelligence agencies select well-known groups to conduct a regime-change operation on the most powerful country on earth? ..."
"... The joint statement issued by the DNI and DHS on October 7 2016 confirmed that US intelligence had no evidence of official Russian involvement in the leak of hacked documents to Wikileaks, etc, saying only that the leaks were " consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts." Has the US acquired any evidence whatsoever since that time regarding Russian involvement in the leaks? ..."
It is being reported that John Podesta, Chairman of the defeated $1.2 billion Clinton presidential
campaign, is supporting the call by various officials, including at least forty Electors, that the
members of the Electoral College be given a classified intelligence briefing on the alleged Russian
hacking before the College votes on December 19.
In the event such a briefing comes to pass, it might be helpful if the Electors had some informed
questions to ask the CIA
The DNC hackers inserted the name of the founder of Russian intelligence, in Russian,
in the metadata of the hacked documents. Why would the G.R.U., Russian military intelligence
do that?
If the hackers were indeed part of Russian intelligence, why did they use a free Russian
email account, or, in the hack of the state election systems, a Russian-owned server?
Does Russian intelligence normally display such poor tradecraft?
Why would Russian intelligence, for the purposes of hacking the election systems of Arizona
and Illinois, book space on a Russian-owned server and then use only English, as documents furnished
by Vladimir Fomenko, proprietor of Kings Servers, the company that owned the server in question,
clearly indicate?
Numerous reports ascribe the hacks to hacking groups known as APT 28 or "Fancy Bear" and
APT 29 or "Cozy Bear." But these groups had already been accused of nefarious actions on
behalf of Russian intelligence prior to the hacks under discussion. Why would the Kremlin
and its intelligence agencies select well-known groups to conduct a regime-change operation on
the most powerful country on earth?
It has been reported in the New York Times , without attribution, that U.S. intelligence
has identified specific G.R.U. officials who directed the hacking. Is this true, and if so, please
provide details (Witness should be sworn)
The joint statement issued by the DNI and DHS on October 7 2016 confirmed that US intelligence
had no evidence of official Russian involvement in the leak of hacked documents to Wikileaks,
etc, saying only that the leaks were " consistent with the methods and motivations
of Russian-directed efforts." Has the US acquired any evidence whatsoever since that time
regarding Russian involvement in the leaks?
Since the most effective initiative in tipping the election to Donald Trump was the intervention
of FBI Director Comey, are you investigating any possible connections he might have to Russian
intelligence and Vladimir Putin?
by
Gary Leupp
Mainstream TV news anchors including MSNBC's Chris Hayes are reporting as fact---with
fuming indignation---that Russia (and specifically Vladimir Putin) not only sought to
influence the U.S. election (and---gosh!---promote "doubt" about the whole legitimacy
of the U.S. electoral system) but to throw the vote to Donald Trump.
The main
accusation is that the DNC and Podesta emails leaked through Wikileaks were provided
by state-backed Russian hackers (while they did not leak material hacked from the
Republicans). I have my doubts on this. Former U.S. ambassador to Uzbekistan and
torture whistle-blower Craig Murray, a friend of Julian Assange, has stated that the
DNC emails were leaked by a DNC insider whose identity he knows. The person, Murray
contends, handed the material over to him, in a D.C. park. I have met Murray, admire
and am inclined to believe him. (I just heard now that John Bolton, of all people,
has also opined this was an inside job.)
Putin Lashes Out At Obama: "Show Some Proof Or Shut Up"
Tyler Durden
Dec 16, 2016 9:09 AM
0
SHARES
Putin has had enough of the relentless barrage of US accusations that he, personally,
"hacked the US presidential election."
The Russian president's spokesman, Dmitry
Peskov, said on Friday that the US must either stop accusing Russia of meddling in its
elections or prove it. Peskov said it was "indecent" of the United States to
"groundlessly" accuse Russia of intervention in its elections.
"You need to either stop talking about it, or finally show some kind of
proof. Otherwise it just looks very indecent
", Peskov told Reporters in Tokyo
where Putin is meeting with Japan PM Abe, responding to the latest accusations that
Russia was responsible for hacker attacks.
Peskov also warned that Obama's threat to "retaliate" to the alleged Russian hack is
"against both American and international law", hinting at open-ended escalation should
Obama take the podium today at 2:15pm to officially launch cyberwar against Russia.
Previously, on Thursday, Peskov told the AP the report was "
laughable
nonsense
", while Russian foreign ministry spox Maria Zakharova accused "Western
media" of being a "shill" and a "mouthpiece of various power groups", and added that
"it's not the general public who's being manipulated," Zakharova said. "the general
public nowadays can distinguish the truth. It's the mass media that is manipulating
themselves."
Meanwhile, on Friday Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister told state television
network, Russia 24, he was "dumbstruck" by the NBC report which alleges that Russian
President Vladimir Putin was personally involved in an election hack.
The report cited U.S. intelligence officials that now believe with a "high level of
confidence" that Putin became personally involved in a secret campaign to influence the
outcome of the U.S. presidential election.
"I think this is just silly, and the
futility of the attempt to convince somebody of this is absolutely obvious,"
Lavrov added, according to the news outlet.
As a reminder,
last night Obama vowed retaliatory
action against Russia for its meddling in the US
presidential election last month. "I think there is no doubt that when any foreign
government tries to impact the integrity of our elections that we need to take action
and we will at a time and place of our own choosing," Obama told National Public Radio.
US intelligence agencies in October pinned blame on Russia for election-related
hacking. At the time, the White House vowed a "proportional response" to the
cyberactivity, though declined to preview what that response might entail. Meanwhile,
both President-elect Donald Trump, the FBI,
and the ODNI
have dismissed the CIA's intelligence community's assessment, for the
the same reason Putin finally lashed out at Obama: there is no proof.
That, however, has never stopped the US from escalating a geopolitical conflict to
the point of war, or beyond, so pay close attention to what Obama says this afternoon.
According to an
NBC report
, a team of analysts at Eurasia Group said in a note on Friday that they
believe the outgoing administration
is likely to take action which could result
in a significant barrier for Trump's team once he takes office in January
.
"It is unlikely that U.S. intelligence reports will change Trump's intention to
initiate a rapprochement with Moscow,
but the congressional response following
its own investigations could obstruct the new administration's effort
," Eurasia
Group analysts added.
At the same time, Wikileaks offered its "validation" services, tweeting that "
Obama
should submit any Putin documents to WikiLeaks to be authenticated to our standards if
he wants them to be seen as credible.
"
Obama should submit any Putin documents to WikiLeaks to be
authenticated to our standards if he wants them to be seen as credible.
And orchestrated by Mossad/CIA Millions upon millions of
ordinary folks just got up and voted to take out the trash, and
by God their will be done. If we don't remove the cancerous
tumors now, they will regrow and regroup and in our weakened
state it will be GAME OVER.
The sad part is they are spinning this as election tampering when
in fact there was none, some decent human beings found out the
truth of how corrupt, evil, and treasonous these people are and
wanted the American public to know.
You can tell they are
desperate now, I just hope the law enforcement community is ready
to uphold their oath.
False testimony to Congress on NSA surveillance programs
[
edit
]
Excerpt of James Clapper's testimony before the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence
On March 12, 2013, during a
United
States Senate
Select
Committee on Intelligence
hearing, Senator
Ron
Wyden
quoted the keynote speech at the 2012
DEF
CON
by the director of the NSA,
Keith
B. Alexander
. Alexander had stated that "Our job is foreign
intelligence" and that "Those who would want to weave the story that we have
millions or hundreds of millions of dossiers on people, is absolutely
false From my perspective, this is absolute nonsense." Senator Wyden then
asked Clapper, "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or
hundreds of millions of Americans?" He responded "No, sir." Wyden asked "It
does not?" and Clapper said "Not wittingly. There are cases where they could
inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly."
[30]
When
Edward
Snowden
was asked during his January 26, 2014 TV interview in Moscow
what the decisive moment was or why he blew the whistle, he replied: "Sort
of the breaking point was seeing the Director of National Intelligence,
James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress. Seeing that really
meant for me there was no going back."
[31]
This is the man reponsible for the newest lie to the American people. Are
you serious?
This asshole jack off obozo wants to start WW3 with Russia for Soros and all
his globalist neocon pals BEFORE he leaves office. His pals shoveled out way
too much money to get that dirty corrupt, crooked pig Hillary elected. The
anti-Trump street protests, riots, burning, pillaging and looting didn't work.
The recount directed by the Hillary stooge Jill Stein actually got Trump more
votes so this didn't work. So now we go with "fake news" accusations against
Russia and Putin. The assholes in our goverment pushing this theme are the
dirty fucking crooks we voted against by voting for Donald Trump. They won't go
down without a fight. So today at 2:15PM ET Obozo will do his best to get the
actual war with Russia on deck!!!
The war mongering neocons won't stop until we have
literally minutes to live. Russia has underground facilitities for 70% of the
citizens in the Russian Federation. In the US only the so-called elites have
some underground place to hide. Like that would save them anyway as it would be
delayed death from Cobalt bombs. We peons and serfs will simply be vaporized
immediately into non-existance. Obozo and his minions and handlers know this
and don't give a fuck.
Obozo and those around him are insane and believe that a
nuclear war with Russia is winnable. The truth is that the world will not even
be fit for human life after a full scale nuclear, chemical and biological
exchange. Who thinks it stops at nuclear? Russia inherited the WMD arsenal of
the Soviet Union. There are enough chemical and biological weapons in the
Russian Federation to kill everyone on earth twenty times.
This is real simple. Obama and Hillary got their asses kicked by Putin in the
Ukraine, Crimea, and Syria because Putin was honest and acted out of integrity
and real concern for his people, and Obama and Hillary were evil and
pathological liars and up to no good, and acted out of a lust for power,
control over others, and stealing their resources. And now the two pathetic
losers want revenge. And this is their vile attempt at trying to get it.
We're laughing at you Hillary and Obama. You are a disgrace to your country and
the human race.
You must remember something here - we laid it on for Vlad / Serg. Our
governments made it so easy for them to play the white knights, they didn't
even need to try. Russian administration is just like any other - the
machine - but we fucked up so tragically bad in our foreign policy conduct
that just going against the unilateral actions of US / NATO / UN has won
Russians major support in Western societies, sick to the back teeth of the
media game BS.
Our elites came to believe that the world is theirs. That
they can take what they want. Citizenry hasn't been best pleased due to
cognitive dissonance ("shining house on the hill" =/= 500k dead Iraqis
"worth it"). Enter the Russians: central admin personnel = expert level 120,
conservative social values, non-interventionist foreign policy, always
stressing legality / due process. They showed us up. Simple as. They were
the first to dare point at our naked emperors.
They also have guns. Lots of guns, and big ones too. We will never really
fight them head on - we wouldn't stand a chance. Not with their society
coalescing around the govt, and ours hating the guts out of our elites. We'd
get stomped.
To quote Joseph Goebbels "If you tell a lie big enough and keep
repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." There are several
things going on. MSM and deep state were counting on a Hillary Clinton victory
and continued US bellicose posturing against Russia. The deep state is also
apoplectic about the military debacle in Syria. The ministry of propaganda-
corporate media (owned by 6 large corporations; Link:
www.wakingtimes.com/2015/08/28/the-illusion-of-choice-90-of-american-media-controlled-by-6-corporations
)
has been saturating the airwaves and social media with ongoing stories about
Russian "hacking" which are probably nonsense. A far more likely scenario is
this "hacking" was carried out by people with intimate knowledge of Hillary
Clinton's background, her email correspondence and location of servers where
this information was stored/archived, such as people in the FBI, CIA, DHS or
State Dept. These hacked messages were then forwarded to Judicial Watch,
WikiLeaks or contacts in Russia or China to cover their tracks.
This might be of interest-
Former NSA Officer – CIA Lying About Russians Hacking DNC By Jim W. Dean Dec
14, 2016; Link:
www.veteranstoday.com/2016/12/14/former-nsa-officer-cia-lying-about-russians-hacking-dnc
Bottom line is that fierce battles are going on between completing
economic factions who run the US. Both groups are pursuing increasingly
reckless and bellicose foreign policies which are likely to lead to direct
military confrontations with Russia and China.
I'm a cyber security professional with over 30 years experience and several
certifications. Hackers with apparent Russian ties (not necessarily the
Russian government) have been involved in global hacking efforts for many
years. So have the Chinese. So has everyone else, including the US.
None of
this may be true at all, because hackers that know what they're doing never
leave a trail behind. EVER. And if they do leave a trail, it's almost always
a false flag -- which means that what you think you see is not actually where
it came from. It's highly unlikely that sophisticated hackers connected with
the Russian government would be stupid enough to leave anything behind that
identified who they were or where they operated from.
I'm calling BS on this whole thing, for two reasons. One -- the
"election" wasn't hacked, the DNC was -- and their extremely dirty laundry
aired. We now know for certain that the Democrats are a bunch of liars,
thieves, and hooligans that could care less about the country. And two -- the
politicization of this by Obama is nauseating. The likelihood that anyone knows
for certain that the Russian government was behind it is about zero or less.
Yesterday, Julian Assange emphatically stated on Sean Hannity's radio show that
the Russians had absolutely no involvement in the Wikileaks hacks. I'll
believe Assange before the Obama administration or US media shills. Assange
has never been proven wrong.
The Associated Press and the New York Times are repeating, word for word,
whatever CIA and CIA-in-Chief says, and then all Vatican-controlled
newspapers are printing the AP and NYT articles. Big dose of CIA in my
local newspaper today, and yesterday, and every day since, at least,
Merrimack College pointed the way toward The One True Propaganda, with its
junior-professor-of-how-Hollywood-and-TV-portray-overweight-people's
omniscient and omnipotent list of "Fake News Sites". Still waiting for the
Pope to endorse this list: maybe when Rome Freezes Over.
The article nails an important point. The purpose of this exercise is to
sabotage any Trump attempts for a rapprochement with Russia. Peace with major
powers is bad for business and Obama's Zionist masters need war to advance
their one world government plans.
Obama knows no moral compass and will
do anything, say anything, to get the treats from his masters that a faithful
lap dog believes it deserves.
Some of the racist quotes here I can't uptick, that said it was classic Obama
from the trump speech telling EVERYONE in advance what he was going to do
military wise. That is disapointing. Lets assume that China, Russia, and many
other capable state actors did hack Hillary's server? Lets go the route of
occums razor and assume that as a truth. That does not excuse the behavior and
sheer stupidity of:
Setting up an illegal server anyway, AFTER hillary
requested and was denied a phone like the POTUS.
Emails show NSA rejected Hillary Clinton's request for secure smartphone
So let us start here! Keep in mind she lost numerous devices, the stupid
cunt kept loosing her phones and misplacing them.
Then Hillary hell bent on having her own private communication system
circumvents the DOS and sets up her own! At the point where that decision was
made there was no longer any attack against the United States of America but
instead an attack against a politician leaking state level data on a non-secure
media. If anyone should be held accountable it should be Hillary despite
INTENT, yes Hillary.
But it gets better folks!
Then we have the DNC and Weiner hacks, and the DNC and the RNC are not
actual offices of government, There is no fucking .gov address behind the DNC
or GOP. The nice lady who runs the local GOP isn't a vetted government
employee and used some poor habits in her handling of data, she was ignorant of
a BCC and the security of doing so. (to her credit she learned quickly) ***
side note
And then finally there was Weiners emails. These emails were on a
non-government device/computer and seemed to have been traversed by yahoo. So
you have these stupid fucking people doing the following: Using Yahoo, DNC,
and Gov systems utilizing the same passwords. BUT IT GETS BETTER
So now a phishing attack at one account podesta becomes a swiss cheese
attack as numerous vectors are exploited, did the Russians hack weiner and put
the emails on his device? It is with password complexity, password expiration,
and non-passowrd reuse that government can ensure that you don't use the same
password on Yahoo that you use at .gov sites. It is by using multi-factor
authentication and geo location that a .gov account can be authenticated and
authorized.
But what we have is a bunch of assholes who mishandled the peoples data or
governmnet data and it was never their personal data! It was either the data
of the united states in which case Hillary should be fucking charged or it was
not and she is a stupid fucking victim like the other billion or so yahoo
hacks.
So now we got Obama just like Trump said, telling the world what we are
going to do before we do it for optimal results.. lets tell russia in
advance.. we will attack at noon...for what has been characterized as yoga
emails on non-government systems by the attorney general.
This is why I hate the elites, this is why I never needed Russia to do
anything to votes against these incompetent and ridiculous assholes.
As Obama leaves offce remember that this observation is concise and made
from an educated and unbiased persepctive of handling government data.
The echo cjhamber that Obama lives in has become as insular as that of
Hillary. And damn these people for their confusion of conviction with fact.
And finally.. we beat the democrats in PA the good old fashioned way.. we were
grassroots and not astro-turf.
***** The local GOP website was being cyber-squated when I volunteered, an
email of so from me on blacklisting it and there ads would not have shut them
down, but it would have hit them in the pocket and caused monetary disruption,
they released the expired domain and stopped squatting, the local head of the
GOP, defintly not .gov but "GOP" was being blocked by email systems because she
would send out GOP emails to an email list with 100 or so recipients and the
spam filters thought it was spam or a virus. So I explained to her how to use
BCC tools, and our communication improved. I didn't want my email shared with
everyone anyway! But the DNC and GOP ain't fucking government.. at best these
people are like televangelists which is like hollywood for ugly people.
I can say this, I have an ENORMOUS respect for the local GOP, I have come to
like many of them. I don't agree with them on everything but never has so few,
worked so hard, to empower so many more to volunteer and win an election. And
to their credit shown the right way changed, they didn't piss and moan.
Good observations, sir. People like you are the reason ZH is so useful for
enlightenment.
I should add that if Hillary was claiming to lose her
phone, then Hillary probably wasn't losing her phone all the time. She was
probably periodically destroying it to destroy evidence. Burn phones or
burners are a common technique among criminals to minimize the evidence
available if/when they get caught.
Looks to me like Obola and his cabal are trying to cause as much friction as
possible with Russia before he leaves office.
This garbage allegation about
Putin being personally involved in hacking the US election, the recent
announcement of supplying more weapons to terrorists in Syria, recent wild
allegations of Russian genocide in Syria (whilst ignoring Syrian people waving
and cheering when the SAA arrived in Allepo) and threats to begin a cyberwar
are all designed to do this.
Obama has acted like a CIA employee for 8 years. He lied to get into office
and he's lied ever since, just like the CIA teaches its employees to do. The
CIA is not bound by US or international law and they could give a shit about
our Constitution, our laws, or our elections, as long as their preferred
candidate gets in of course. Are we currently any better than the Nazis?
Conquering other countries is the same regardless if you do it covertly or
not, regardless of how many lies you say or not. These people must be stopped.
Unfortunately it might take mass civil unrest to bring the changes we need.
Stealing the election from Trump and handing it to a criminal like Clinton may
be the spark. Let's hope there are enough people left with integrity and
intelligence in DC to do the right thing.
There is no concept of a open courtroom to decide contentious technical issues
like. This . Cozy bear, whatever bear
'more than i can' bear. A jury of fair minded people can decide when a good
adversarial courtroom encounter occurs.
I would like to see Trey Gowdy defending Putin against whatever CIA stooge they
send up. Obama has a lot of gall to complain about hacking when Hillary,
Podesta, and the run DNC gang was so careless that a very amateur
hacking/phishing effort would be sufficient to do this break in. Then there is
the assertion that some disgruntled democratic people leaked the whole works-
from the inside- being mad at Hillary over Bernie I guess.
If the US wants as gentlemen agreement not to read each others mail, maybe
we could pursue that but hacking Putin and sending NGO's to undermine him, the
numerous color revolutions from George Soros in Ukraine, Georgia, ... make it
seem to me that Putin is the aggrieved party here, now being threatened by
Obama personally. Everybody snoops on everybody. Israel, Russia, US and the
five eyes, China, ... but when it gets personal like this Putin Obama threat
thing, we could cross a line, like an obscure assassination of the Austrian
Archduke by some Serbian did. Putin is a serious fellow and not somebody to
threaten without consequences. We may think he sees it as just posturing, and
we better hope it stops right there. If the Clinton mob can't win, they may
decide to bring the house down on everybody.
Obama: "I am, of course, not speaking about the real, live Vladimir Putin. I
am speaking about our CIA cardboard-cutout caricature of Vladimir Putin. We
ALWAYS have a number of cardboard-cutouts in stock, of various people, to blame
for whatever goes wrong next.
"....while Russian foreign ministry spox Maria Zakharova accused "Western
media" of being a "shill" and a "mouthpiece of
various power groups
",
and added that "it's not the general public who's being manipulated," Zakharova
said. "
the general public nowadays can distinguish the truth
. It's the
mass
media that is manipulating themselves
.""
Can you effin believe
such a statement made by the Russian gubmint - and that it is
true
?
This whole affair screams one thing and one thing only: politics. And dirty,
childish, Democrat politics at that. COULD the Russian government have hacked
the DNC? Sure, anything is possible. Is it likely? NO. Government-sponsored
hackers don't leave telltale signs as to who they are, they leave false flags
and a trail of breadcrumbs that lead nowhere or to places they want you to
think the hack came from. Anyone smart enough to hack the DNC isn't going to
do anything to reveal who they are. Not even accidentally.
Vladimir Putin's Valdai Speech at the XIII Meeting (Final Plenary Session) of the Valdai International
Discussion Club (Sochi, 27 October 2016)
As is his usual custom, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a speech at the final session
of the annual Valdai International Discussion Club's 13th meeting, held this year in Sochi, before
an audience that included the President of Finland Tarja Halonen and former President of South Africa
Thabo Mbeki. The theme for the 2016 meeting and its discussion forums was "The Future in Progress:
Shaping the World of Tomorrow" which as Putin noted was very topical and relevant to current developments
and trends in global politics, economic and social affairs.
Putin noted that the previous year's Valdai Club discussions centred on global problems and crises,
in particular the ongoing wars in the Middle East; this fact gave him the opportunity to summarise
global political developments over the past half-century, beginning with the United States' presumption
of having won the Cold War and subsequently reshaping the international political, economic and social
order to conform to its expectations based on neoliberal capitalist assumptions. To that end, the
US and its allies across western Europe, North America and the western Pacific have co-operated in
pressing economic and political restructuring including regime change in many parts of the world:
in eastern Europe and the Balkans, in western Asia (particularly Afghanistan and Iraq) and in northern
Africa (Libya). In achieving these goals, the West has either ignored at best or at worst exploited
international political, military and economic structures, agencies and alliances to the detriment
of these institutions' reputations and credibility around the world. The West also has not hesitated
to dredge and drum up imaginary threats to the security of the world, most notably the threat of
Russian aggression and desire to recreate the Soviet Union on former Soviet territories and beyond,
the supposed Russian meddling in the US Presidential elections, and apparent Russian hacking and
leaking of emails related to failed US Presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton's conduct as
US Secretary of State from 2008 to 2012.
After his observation of current world trends as they have developed since 1991, Putin queries
what kind of future we face if political elites in Washington and elsewhere focus on non-existent
problems and threats, or on problems of their own making, and ignore the very real issues and problems
affecting ordinary people everywhere: issues of stability, security and sustainable economic development.
The US alone has problems of police violence against minority groups, high levels of public and private
debt measured in trillions of dollars, failing transport infrastructure across most states, massive
unemployment that either goes undocumented or is deliberately under-reported, high prison incarceration
rates and other problems and issues indicative of a highly dysfunctional society. In societies that
are ostensibly liberal democracies where the public enjoys political freedoms, there is an ever-growing
and vast gap between what people perceive as major problems needing solutions and the political establishment's
perceptions of what the problems are, and all too often the public view and the elite view are at
polar opposites. The result is that when referenda and elections are held, predictions and assurances
of victory one way or another are smashed by actual results showing public preference for the other
way, and polling organisations, corporate media with their self-styled "pundits" and "analysts" and
governments are caught scrambling to make sense of what just happened.
Putin points out that the only way forward is for all countries to acknowledge and work together
on the problems that challenge all humans today, the resolution of which should make the world more
stable, more secure and more sustaining of human existence. Globalisation should not just benefit
a small plutocratic elite but should be demonstrated in concrete ways to benefit all. Only by adhering
to international law and legal arrangements, through the charter of the United Nations and its agencies,
can all countries hope to achieve security and stability and achieve a better future for their peoples.
To this end, the sovereignty of Middle Eastern countries like Iraq, Syria and Yemen should be
respected and the wars in those countries should be brought to an end, replaced by long-term plans
and programs of economic and social reconstruction and development. Global economic development and
progress that will reduce disparities between First World and Third World countries, eliminate notions
of "winning" and "losing", and end grinding poverty and the problems that go with it should be a
major priority. Economic co-operation should be mutually beneficial for all parties that engage in
it.
Putin also briefly mentioned in passing the development of human potential and creativity, environmental
protection and climate change, and global healthcare as important goals that all countries should
strive for.
While there's not much in Putin's speech that he hasn't said before, what he says is typical of
his worldview, the breadth and depth of his understanding of current world events (which very, very
few Western politicians can match), and his preferred approach of nations working together on common
problems and coming to solutions that benefit all and which don't advantage one party's interests
to the detriment of others and their needs. Putin's approach is a typically pragmatic and cautious
one, neutral with regards to political or economic ideology, but one focused on goals and results,
and the best way and methods to achieve those goals.
One interesting aspect of Putin's speech comes near the end where he says that only a world with
opportunities for everyone, with access to knowledge to all and many ways to realise creative potential,
can be considered truly free. Putin's understanding of freedom would appear to be very different
from what the West (and Americans in particular) understand to be "freedom", that is, being free
of restraints on one's behaviour. Putin's understanding of freedom would be closer to what 20th-century
Russian-born British philosopher Isaiah Berlin would consider to be "positive freedom", the freedom
that comes with self-mastery, being able to think and behave freely and being able to choose the
government of the society in which one lives.
The most outstanding point in Putin's speech, which unfortunately he does not elaborate on further,
given the context of the venue, is the disconnect between the political establishment and the public
in most developed countries, the role of the mass media industry in reducing or widening it, and
the dangers that this disconnect poses to societies if it continues. If elites continue to pursue
their own fantasies and lies, and neglect the needs of the public on whom they rely for support (yet
abuse by diminishing their security through offshoring jobs, weakening and eliminating worker protection,
privatising education, health and energy, and encouraging housing and other debt bubbles), the invisible
bonds of society – what might collectively be called "the social contract" between the ruler and
the ruled – will disintegrate and people may turn to violence or other extreme activities to get
what they want.
An English-language transcript of the speech can be found at
this link .
On watching the "Keiser Report " on the imperial blowback against independent media, it strikes me
that the MSM are as to the Papacy as the new media are to Martin Luther:
"... That those scheming Russians were clever enough to hack into voting machines, but not clever enough to cover their tracks? ..."
"... It's strangely reminiscent of the days of the Red scare, minus the Reds. ..."
"... The displaced machinists in the industrial midwest, whose votes helped put Trump in the White House, believe that free trade deals are responsible for their economic woes and they never trusted Clinton's turn against the TPP. ..."
"... was Clinton's campaign for you, bereft of principle and pathologically concerned with "optics" at the expense of substance. ..."
"... They were so confident of their inevitable victory that they wrote off the old industrial states in favor of luring upscale suburbanites who normally vote Republican. They hoped they would be so revolted by Trump that they would vote for her, but they didn't. ..."
"... It's panic over loss of control. They aren't pondering ways to make things better for the American people. Not in the Beltaway. Not the duoploy. The handwringing is strictly about control and pasification of the population. ..."
"... The long, long list of dodgy-donors to The Clinton Foundation told large numbers of Democrat voters everything they needed to know about a potential Hillary Clinton presidency. This, and the 'knifing' of Bernie, sealed her fate. ..."
"... America will never, and should never, forgive Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. ..."
"... At last! Someone on this newspaper talking common sense. ..."
"... Absurd! She was a rich white hawkish neolib who has no one but herself and the Democratic Pary to blame for the terrible loss which will seal the supreme court for years. Face facts!! She couldn't even beat Trump and was widely viewed as a fraud. ..."
"... The person who lost the Presidential Election in USA is Hillary Clinton. She, like Blair is a war monger. I, if I had a vote, would not have voted for her. ..."
"... If she had been elected we would have had bigger and better wars in the Middle East. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan never ended despite Obama calling the Iraq war a "strategic mistake". One that continued for another eight years. To those two we have added Syria and Lybia. ..."
"... " ...reflecting on how baseless our self-image as the world's greatest democracy is. " The rest of the world has known that for decades. ..."
"... I don't understand how accurate reporting by Wikileaks of politicians' emails is considered 'interference' with the US elections. To me, it seems helpful. If a US newspaper made the report, they would probably get a prize. If a foreign organization made the report, so what? People abroad are free (I hope) to comment on US matters, and people in the US are free to read it or not. ..."
"... Perhaps they mean the Guardian's politics. Identity politics has been thoroughly rejected and instead of learning from the experience, Guardian has been electing to throw more of the same tactics, except louder ..."
"... Americans across the political spectrum are happy to use Putin to distract them from reflecting on how baseless our self-image as the world's greatest democracy is. ..."
"... You're absolutely right. Putin is the boogeyman for every ill, real or purported, of his own society, and when the American political system and its institutions prove to be broken, Putin gets to be the boogeyman for that, too. What a powerful man! He must be pleased. ..."
"... This is an ultimate truth because it explains why Merkel will not be elected. These days Putin is in full control of the world and is responsible for everything. ..."
"... Let's thank Hillary for that. There is a very good news: on the 20th January we'll cut all Saudi supply channels to the IS and kill all the bastards within 2 months. ..."
"... In the modern world it is enough to do nothing to be a good man, eg if Bush, Blair, Obama and Clinton didn't create ISIS, the world would be a much better place. You do not even need to be smart to understand this. ..."
"... It's crazy. Even if the Russian hacking claims are legitimate, the leaks still revealed things about the Democrats that were true. It's like telling your friend that their spouse is cheating on them, and then the spouse blaming you for ruining the marriage. ..."
"... The Clinton campaign spent like drunken sailors, on media. This is a new role for the media giants that took care of Clinton's every need, including providing motivational research and other consultants. ..."
"... The ongoing scenario that now spins around Putin as a central figure is a product of "after shock media". ..."
"... To weave fictional reality in real time for a mass audience is a magnum leap from internet fake news. This drama is concocted to keep DNC from going into seclusion until the inauguration. ..."
"... Doug Henwood is absolutely correct. This obsession with the supposed foreign interference is baseless. All the real culprits operate within our own system. ..."
"... Trump's embrace of Russia and decision to end the neocon-neoliberal agenda of regime change skewer two of the corporate establishment's cash cows - arms sales to the numerous conflicts in the Middle East initiated by the corporate cabal, and arms sales to NATO and all the new post Cold War NATO members to continue the buildup of armaments on Russia's borders." ..."
"... I'd love to be pleasantly surprised, and I note that already Trump's campaign has put down TWO odious political dynasties, AND the TPP -- all very healthy developments. ..."
"... The only thing that kept the contest somehow close was the unprecedented all-media fear campaign against Trump. ..."
"... It was always Hillary's election to lose and she lost it simply because she was not to be trusted. Her very public endorsement by gangster capitalist Jay-Z told you all you needed to know about who she represented. ..."
"... I was dubious before, but I'm now actively concerned. This crop of Democrats and their deep state cohorts are unhinged and dangerous. They see me and my families' lives as an externality in their eventual war with Russia. As Phyrric a victory as there could possibly be. They are psychotic; not only waging countless coups and intelligence operations abroad, but now in plain sight on American soil. The mainstream media seems to invoke the spirit of Goebbels more vividly with each passing day. Their disdain and manipulation of the general populace is chilling. They see us not as people to be won-over, but as things to be manipulated, tricked and coerced. Nothing new for politicians (particularity the opposition) - but the levels here are staggering. ..."
"... January couldn't come soon enough - and I say that as strong critic of Trump. ..."
"... A good article to counterbalance the reams of rubbish we are hearing in the US election post-mortem. Anyone who had neural activity should have known that when you steal the candidacy, you certainly won't get the votes. Clinton effectively handed the election to Trump by not having the humility, humanity and honesty to admit defeat by Benie Sanders. ..."
"... There's always the possibility of course, that the US establishment realised Clinton's blatant warmongering wasn't 'good for business'. ..."
"... So maybe, they thought, we can get the Russkies 'on side', deal with China (ie. reduce it to a 'client state'/ turn it into an ashtray) - and then move on Russia and grab all those lovely resources freed up by global warming.... ..."
"... Only her campaign volunteers knew, her message to the public was "dont vote for Trump" which translates to, I could lose to him, vote for me! ..."
"... The Podesta emails confirmed what many people already suspected and knew of Hillary and her campaign. Those who were interested in reading them had to actually look for them, since MSM was not reporting on them. It's not as if an avid MSNBC or CNN watcher was going to be exposed. ..."
"... It's hilarious how the major Left outlets (Washington Post) are now telling it's readers how Russia is to blame for people voting against Hillary due to the Podesta emails, when they didn't even report on the emails in the first place. ..."
"... EVERYTHING about the system all halfway decent people detest, is summed up in the figure of Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... Like Donald said, she had 'experience', but it was all BAD 'experience'. ..."
"... she is a frail, withered old woman who needs to retire - def the wrong democrat choice, crazy -- Berni.S would have won if for them - he is far more sincere ..."
"... "The displaced machinists... believe that free trade deals are responsible for their economic woes and they never trusted Clinton's turn against the TPP. But that was Clinton's campaign for you, bereft of principle and pathologically concerned with "optics" at the expense of substance." ..."
"... This argument is as asinine as the one the author opposes. It was a collusion of events that led to this result, including the failure of both parties to adapt to an evolving economic and social climate over decades. The right wing hailing the collapse of liberalism as a result of decades of liberal mismanagement conveniently forget their own parties have held the reins for half that time, and failed just as miserably as the left.... ..."
"... It's quite bizarre to see "progressives" openly side with the military industrial complex, which is threatened by a president elect weary of more warfare. ..."
"... It's to be expected from career politicians like McCain who is kicking and screaming, but it's shameful to see supposed liberally-minded people help spread the Red Scare storyline. ..."
"... Obama has behaved dreadfully, first he or his office gets one of its poodles namely MI6 to point the finger at Putin re cyberwar, which was swiftly followed by the International Olympic Committee looking at Russia for 2012 Olympic games, the elections in the US and the Democrats CIA coming out with unsubstantiated nonsense (funny how they never like, providing collaborative evidence - on this or anything that supposedly Russia has done) then there is Syria, and Obama and the Democrats were the cheerleader for regime change, because they have been out manoeuvred in that sphere. All of it in less than a week. ..."
"... If Obama, the administration, and the CIA were smart they would have realised that a concerted effort to blame Putin / Russia would be seen for what it is - a liar and one of trying to discredit both the outcome of the US elections, the dislike of HRC, and her association with Wall St. - she raised more money for her campaign than Trump and Sanders put together (if the Democrats had chosen Sanders, then they would have stood a chance) and that their hawk would not be in a position to create WW111 - thank goodness. The Democrats deserved what they got. ..."
"... This organ of the liberal media (no scare quotes required - it is socially liberal and economically neoliberal), along with many others, dogmatically supported Clinton against Sanders to the point of printing daily and ridiculous dishonesty, even going so far as to make out as if anyone who supports any form of wealth redistribution is a racist, sexist, whitesplaining dude-bro. ..."
"... The Wikileaks emails proved the votes were rigged against Sanders, it why Debbie W Shulz had to resign ..."
"... The election was close, and if one less thing had gone wrong for Hillary she would have won. However I think an important thing that lost her the election was identity politics. She patronized Afro-Americans and Hispanics, by tell them that because they are Trump-threatened minorities, they should vote for her. In the same vein, gays and women were supposed to vote for her. But what she was really telling these groups was that they should revel in their supposed victimhood, which was not a great message. ..."
"... Completely agreed! The onus for defeat belongs to the Democrat party leadership as well. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders both understood where the momentum of the election was headed before anyone else did. The election was won and lost in the white blue collar Midwest. A place that decided that diet corporatism is decidedly worse than a populist right wing extremist. ..."
"... No one here believed the ridiculous about-face Hillary pulled on the question of the TPP. I guarantee you Bernie would have cleaned Trump's clock in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and perhaps Ohio and Iowa. ..."
"... "Our self-image as the world's greatest democracy...." Well, speaking for myself and plenty of other Americans, I never said anything like that about us. In fact, like a lot of people I wish we would stick to our own business, quit trying to be the world's cop, and cease meddling in other countries' affairs. ..."
"... Assuming that it really was the Russians who done it, I guess they had a better game plan than the Saudis. ..."
"... Her 'deplorables' comment was every bit as telling as Mitt Romney's '47%'. We really needed to know about her 'public versus private positions', even if it only confirmed what everybody already knew. I am not 100% sure the system made the worst choice in raising up Donald Trump. ..."
"... The American voters heard a steady stream of these arguments. Some may have simply ignored them. Others took them into consideration, but concluded that they wanted drastic change enough to put them aside. White women decided that Trump's comments, while distasteful, were things they'd heard before. ..."
"... Reliance on the sanctity of racial and gender pieties was a mistake. Not everyone treats these subjects as the holiest of holies. The people who would be most swayed by those arguments never would have voted for Trump anyways. ..."
"... Colin Powell said Clinton destroys everything she touches with hubris. Seeing as how she destroyed the democrat "blue wall" and also had low turnout which hurt democrats down the ticket I agree. ..."
"... All this hysteria about the USA and Russia finally working together than apart doesn't help either for it appears that the [neoliberal] lefties want a perpetual war rather than peace. ..."
"... The CIA being outraged about a foreign state intervening in an election is quite funny. They have intervened so many times, especially in Latin America, to install puppet regimes. ..."
"... As for hacking... does anybody believe the CIA has never hacked anybody? ..."
Hillary Clinton was the symbol of neoliberal globalization and contept of neoliberal for common
poeple (aka deplorable). That's why she lost. this is more of the first defeat of neoliberal
candidate in the USA then personal defeat of Hillary. She was just a symbol, or puppet, if you wish.
... ... ...
And what exactly are the claims made by these Putin-did-it stories? That were it not for Russian
chicanery, Hillary Clinton would have won the popular vote by five million and not almost three million?
That displaced machinists on the banks of Lake Erie were so incensed by the Podesta emails that they
voted for Trump instead of Clinton? That Putin was pulling FBI director James Comey's strings in
his investigation of the Clinton emails? That those scheming Russians were clever enough to hack
into voting machines, but not clever enough to cover their tracks?
It's strangely reminiscent of the days of the Red scare, minus the Reds.
... ... ...
The displaced machinists in the industrial midwest, whose votes helped put Trump in the White
House, believe that free trade deals are responsible for their economic woes and they never trusted
Clinton's turn against the TPP. But that was Clinton's campaign for you, bereft of principle
and pathologically concerned with "optics" at the expense of substance.
They were so confident of their inevitable victory that they wrote off the old industrial
states in favor of luring upscale suburbanites who normally vote Republican. They hoped they would
be so revolted by Trump that they would vote for her, but they didn't.
... ... ...
Of course there are questions about our voting machines. The American balloting system is a chaotic
mess, with an array of state and local authorities conducting elections under a vast variety of rules
using technologies ranging from old-fashioned paper ballots to sleek touch-screen devices.
The former take forever to count, and the latter are unauditable – we can have no idea whether
the counts are accurate. The whole system is a perfect example of a quote attributed (probably falsely)
to Joseph Stalin: "The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide
everything." It's not a system that inspires trust, but we barely discuss that.
It's panic over loss of control. They aren't pondering ways to make things better for the
American people. Not in the Beltaway. Not the duoploy. The handwringing is strictly about control
and pasification of the population.
And you're shocked? I'm shocked you expected more.
The really amazing story about the presidential elections 2016 was actually not Clinton or Trump.
It was how close the US actually got to get its first socialist, or factually rather social-democratic
president. Americans are craving for more justice and equality.
And no, Clinton does not stand for any "left values". Therefore the media favored her.
The long, long list of dodgy-donors to The Clinton Foundation told large numbers of Democrat
voters everything they needed to know about a potential Hillary Clinton presidency. This, and
the 'knifing' of Bernie, sealed her fate. A reincarnated Tricky Dicky would have trounced
her, too.
Weird in your mind only. A letter just before the election suggesting that Clinton might be indicted?
And was she? Of course not. Match the letter's release with the polls at the time to see it's
influence.
Clinton's problems such as her email server were nothing compared to all the baggage that Trump
carries, yet Trump's problems were blithely ignored by many because they thought Trump would make
a difference.
At last! Someone on this newspaper talking common sense.
For the last twenty years, (way before we even knew Putin's name) the Republican Party have
promoted, fomented and instigated the most ludicrous lies and calumnies about the Democratic Party
and particularly Hilary Clinton, who they quite rightly recognised as a future Democratic Presidential
candidate.
They have politicised: education, defense, Federal Parks, water, race, religion and even the
air we breath in their efforts to ensure victory and to this end, they bought and paid for populist
uprisings against Democratic politicians, like the now abandoned Tea Party.
The problem was that even when Republicans were elected, they obviously couldn't keep their
own nonsensical promises to their now rabid audience who no longer trusted their own elected Government.
When Trump, a disestablishment, anti-Government candidate came along, the electorate (naively)
saw a possibility of the change they have been promised.
Of course the Russians prefer Trump over Clinton, since they can see the destruction he can
cause their geopolitical adversary and Putin would say as much as he can to support Trump...errr....even
though it would be counter-productive with conservative voters...but it is unlikely that he bears
anywhere near the blame that the Republican Party does, who foolishly allowed their own 'attack
dog' to bite them on the arse.
I'm sorry to say that the Republican Party (and the US) has to suck this one up and admit...(to
mix my hackneyed metaphors) that they've blown themselves up with their own petard!
I think with hindsight Bernie Sanders is going to be blamed for dividing the Democratic Party
and bolstering the Republican propaganda against the Clintons. If only we had stuck together with
Clinton we wouldn't be facing the Trump disaster now. Hillary Clinton is not evil and she was
very highly qualified--to paraphrase Brando, we could have had progress instead of a disaster,
which is what we have now.
Absurd! She was a rich white hawkish neolib who has no one but herself and the Democratic
Pary to blame for the terrible loss which will seal the supreme court for years. Face facts!!
She couldn't even beat Trump and was widely viewed as a fraud.
You fool, the Libertarian party is the largest third party in the US and they mostly take votes
from the Republicans. Stop blaming third parties when their existence demonstrably helps the Democrats.
Or perhaps you dream of a world where conservatives still support their third party just as much
as they ever did but lefties all move in perfect lockstep? If so, it's time for a reality check.
Up jumped Hilary Benn with the theory that Jeremy Corbyn had caused the Brexit vote. His resignation
and the denunciation of 172 Labour MP's based on an "indisputable fact" that nobody believes to
be true today. The person who lost the Presidential Election in USA is Hillary Clinton. She,
like Blair is a war monger. I, if I had a vote, would not have voted for her.
If she had been elected we would have had bigger and better wars in the Middle East. The
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan never ended despite Obama calling the Iraq war a "strategic mistake".
One that continued for another eight years. To those two we have added Syria and Lybia. The
west, like Russia, is dabbling in other people's wars. They have been made one hundred times worse.
What Hillary would not have dabbled in is the industrial decline in the "Rust Belt" states.
She is proposing to do nothing. So they had the prospect of no rectification at home with yet
more wars abroad. No wonder they stayed at home. Hillary and Nu Labour are the same: belligerancy
in the Middle East coupled with tame pussy cat against failing capitalism at home. The middle
east has got total destruction from the west and total nothingness but austerity (ie more failure)
as the action plan for capitalism. They are on the "same page" then!
I don't understand how accurate reporting by Wikileaks of politicians' emails is considered
'interference' with the US elections. To me, it seems helpful. If a US newspaper made the report,
they would probably get a prize. If a foreign organization made the report, so what? People abroad
are free (I hope) to comment on US matters, and people in the US are free to read it or not.
It could be argued that only reporting democratic emails is distorting the truth: I'd say its
a step towards the whole truth. I welcome all disclosures that are pertinent to a good decision
by US voters.
Perhaps they mean the Guardian's politics. Identity politics has been thoroughly rejected
and instead of learning from the experience, Guardian has been electing to throw more of the same
tactics, except louder
Citizens of the UK are by far the most heavily surveilled in the western world. This has been
the case since long before the ubiquitous introduction of CCTV cameras.
Americans across the political spectrum are happy to use Putin to distract them from
reflecting on how baseless our self-image as the world's greatest democracy is.
You're absolutely right. Putin is the boogeyman for every ill, real or purported, of his
own society, and when the American political system and its institutions prove to be broken, Putin
gets to be the boogeyman for that, too. What a powerful man! He must be pleased.
Only, the thing is, the American political system and its institutions - American democracy
- weren't undermined overnight. It took several decades and it was done by Americans who weren't
so keen on democracy. Can't fob that off on Putin, try as they might.
If American power takes a big fat fall like Humpty Dumpty, don't look to Vladimir Putin, look
in a fucking mirror. That's where you'll find the culprit.
This is an ultimate truth because it explains why Merkel will not be elected. These days Putin
is in full control of the world and is responsible for everything.
Let's thank Hillary for that. There is a very good news: on the 20th January we'll cut all
Saudi supply channels to the IS and kill all the bastards within 2 months.
In the modern world it is enough to do nothing to be a good man, eg if Bush, Blair, Obama
and Clinton didn't create ISIS, the world would be a much better place. You do not even need to
be smart to understand this.
Your Donald.
From where you'd rather be.
With love.
It's crazy. Even if the Russian hacking claims are legitimate, the leaks still revealed things
about the Democrats that were true. It's like telling your friend that their spouse is cheating
on them, and then the spouse blaming you for ruining the marriage.
The Clinton campaign spent like drunken sailors, on media. This is a new role for the media
giants that took care of Clinton's every need, including providing motivational research and other
consultants.
The ongoing scenario that now spins around Putin as a central figure is a product of "after
shock media". Broadcast media bounced America back and forth from sit-com to gun violence
for decades, giving fiction paramount value. To weave fictional reality in real time for a
mass audience is a magnum leap from internet fake news. This drama is concocted to keep DNC from
going into seclusion until the inauguration.
Doug Henwood is absolutely correct. This obsession with the supposed foreign interference
is baseless. All the real culprits operate within our own system.
Maybe, in four years, Trump's administration can oversee a secure election. Unlike the Obama folks,
who seem to make a calamity out of any project bigger than making a sandwich.
This hullabaloo really highlights the disdain the establishment has for the American voter. They
thought they had it tied up. They thought they had pulled one over on the American people. They
are not interested in what the voter actually wants.
And this raises questions about why our servicemen and women are making sacrifices. The establishment
story-line talks about our brave soldiers dying so we can have free elections. Or something like
that. The establishment does not care about free and fair elections. In fact, this hullabaloo
should have demonstrated to everybody that the establishment does not respect or accepts the results
of elections that don't go their way.
Look at WikiLeaks. They died so Hillary could present her ever-so-clever "tick-tock on Libya"
and make fools think she's a constructive foreign policy force.
H. Clinton would have started a war against Russia in Syria come January; and war against Russia
in The Ukraine shortly after. Trump could yet end civilization as we know it: thereagain the CIA
might 'JFK' him early doors before he's able to.
Fully agree with you. Trump's victory is certain to have incalculable consequences for life on
earth. I believe he will give Netenyahu the green light to use tactical nuclear weapons against
Iranian nuclear and military facilities. I am no fan of Trump.
American 'exceptionalism;' The World's Policeman; The greatest country on earth. Descriptions
believed and espoused by the USA. So Exceptional is America that it claims a God-given right to
interfere with or sabotage political parties, foriegn governments (democratically-elected or not)
and sovereign states anywhere it chooses. Now we have the hilarious spectacle of a historically
blood-drenched CIA (Fake News Central) squawking and squealing completely fabricated nonsense
about Kremlin interference in Trump's election victory. Tell that to the tens of millions slaughtered
in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and the many other nations and people's around the globe who have
had first hand experience of American Exceptionalism. You could not make it up..
Arguably, Clinton and the DNC themselves showed very little respect for democracy, as we know
from leaks. And now they are whining because of a democratic outcome they don't like.
We should discuss two things:
- the content of the mails
- and the ethical question: did the hacker, whoever it is, did democracy rather a service than
a disservice? From when on is a piece of information so valuable that its origins don't matter
anymore?
Media, at least in times when msm still had some moral clout, often relied in their investigative
journalism on source which by themselves were not necessarily ethically bona fide - but the public
interest, the common good benefited by the information.
Had Clinton won the election and we only found out now about the trickery that aided in her
success we would have a major dilemma. We would have to have endless discussions now about her
legitimacy.
I am one who firmly believes that Clinton lost this election because of Clinton's and the DNC's
ineptitude and hubris.
But that doesn't mean the Russians weren't running a psy-ops campaign of fake news stories
and misinformation about Clinton and this election on Facebook.
Which was more responsible for Clinton's loss? Most probably Clinton's ineptitude but the fake
news campaigns on Facebook had some effect. It needs to be addressed...
But hadn't Hillary made it personal by saying Trump was Putin's puppet etc?
She even refused to state whether she'd seek to impose a no-fly zone over Syria; this despite
leading Generals telling her it would mean going to war with Russia and Syria.
Given all that, it's hardly surprising the Russian Duma broke into spontaneous applause upon
the confirmation of her defeat. She'd very much cast herself as the enemy of Russia in the campaign.
With the naming of Rex Tillerson, a close business, and personal, friend of Putin, to be Secy.
of State I am not sure the argument can be made that she was wrong in her assessment.
This article is absolutely right. Trump was not a good candidate and for him to beat Clinton should
be setting alarm bells ringing in Democrat HQ. The left though does have an entrenched culture
of deluding itself and convincing itself that its a victim of things beyond its control. That
lack of self awareness and inability to be brutally honest with itself is a major reason why the
left wins many fewer elections than the left. It is also why there are never shock wins for the
Democrats or Labour because they always assume too much. The Tories and Republicans are very good
at understanding their weaknesses and mitigating them to win elections.
It's absurd to consider Clinton and the mainstream Democrats as part of "the Left". Even the best
of the Democrats are generally more on the Right than on the Left, in that they are pro-capitalist
and defend the national interests of U.S. imperialism. Add to that their almost unanimous support
for the settler colony called "Israel" and there's very little leftism to be found among them.
Cunning of Putin to go back in time and persuade the framers of the US constitution to institute
an electoral college, so that he could put his own candidate in place all those hundreds of years
later.
No. Both candidates fought an election under the same rules. In the run up to the vote, Hillary's
spokesmen often argued that even if the vote was close, they had the electoral college sewn up.
She has nobody to blame but herself.
There are plenty of villains who contributed to the electoral downfall of HRC, mostly, though,
it's HRC who is primarily responsible, with a big assist from an arrogant & politically inept
DNC. Hillary won a bare majority of women, plus the average income of Trump voters exceeded that
of Hillies' supporters. Then all the groundwork for the deplorables was laid by Bill, who got
rid of Glass-Steagell. Too much is being made of the machinist from Erie & the deplorables generally
& if the Dems don't take a serious look at themselves we'll have Agent Orange for 8 rather than
4 deplorable years.
For goodness sake, it is not foreign governments , it is information. With advance of social media
and internet it became so much harder to control the information that gets out.
That is where we are in a post-propaganda world. You are not only receiving your government approved
daily portion of brainwashing but propaganda and brainwashing and information from various sources,
all with their various interests. It is your job a s an individual to decide what to believe.
You can't put the jinni back in the box.
It is all about a narrative to suit the agenda. Had Trump outspent Clinton 2:1 he would now be
reviled as the candidate of arms industry, pharmaceuticals and big banks. Had Clinton defeated
him it would be celebrated as a successful setback for the aforementioned industries; the intelligence
of the voters would have been praised. But then supposedly, Clinton was more supported by disadvantaged
groups, albeit they then also would be disadvantaged with regards to their education.
It will always end up in absurdity. However, the notion that "Putin" (never with first name,
or Mr, preferably pronounced "Poot'n") decided the US presidency is, interesting.
Usually the issue simply is, crap candidate, crap result.
Had Sanders been the candidate and had he lost to Trump, I doubt very much he'd have started all
this blaming the Russians nonsense.
Ultimately, Hilary had terrible trustworthiness ratings from nearly 25 years in frontline politics;
every shortcoming ruthlessly exploited along the way by her and her husband's political opponents.
Ignoring all that historic baggage(dating back to the early '90s) as irrelevant and blaming defeat
on the Russians makes everyone supporting that theory look equally absurd.
In the 2016 Presidential election, in the 49 States other than California, Trump won the popular
vote and enough electoral votes to win the election.
In California, the most populous State in America, the popular vote was so overwhelmingly in favor
of Hillary Clinton that she ended up winning the overall popular vote.
The electoral college is working exactly as the Founding Fathers intended.
In Shakespeare's book "Julius Caesar" the dictator was told not to go to the Capitol where he
will be murdered. His wife warned him, the soothsayer warned him but he ignored it. Caesar's wisdom
was consumed in confidence...confidence that he will be crowned king, confidence that all Romans
(most stupid people then) loved him, and confidence that those who surround him are his 'friends.'
He adamantly went to the Capitol and was murdered.
Clinton ignored most rural areas and I totally agree with the writer along this line "They
were so confident of their inevitable victory that they wrote off the old industrial states in
favor of luring upscale suburbanites who normally vote Republican." Clinton and her team paid
dearly for it just like Caesar did. Blaming Russian for the loss is like "You made me do it."
In the UK, Rupert Murdoch accesses a Prime Minister as readily as any government minister and
wields at least as much influence. At least he is open and honest about this. Similar oligarchs
exert their power more discretely. Murdoch's an Australian born US citizen (for business reasons)
with a truly global empire.
A country's big rich have always ruled it's politics. Imperial powers have intervened
in their spheres of influence . But now the big rich are international and, it seems,
1st world electorates are getting a taste of what 3rd world people have become used to.
What strikes me is the reluctance of the US political elite (including Obama) to intervene,
even when there's a suspicion of vote rigging. The right of the rich and powerful to control the
electoral process (as they have long done) trumps the national-interest (US v. rival powers)
side of politics.
Hilary Clinton won the popular vote. More people voted for her. What is the deal with the electoral
college? How is it possible to have such a huge discrepancy between the two. What is the point
of blaming the candidate when they can lose while winning?
And what is the point of blaming the candidate for their campaign when large numbers of Americans
are prepared to believe the most random bullshit? What did you want her to do, lie more often?
Because apparently, that's what it takes.
From my comment above... "In the 2016 Presidential election, in the 49 States other than California,
Trump won the popular vote and enough electoral votes to win the election.
In California, the most populous State in America, the popular vote was so overwhelmingly in favor
of Hillary Clinton that she ended up winning the overall popular vote.
The electoral college is working exactly as the Founding Fathers intended."
The election is decided by Electoral Votes. Everyone including Hillary knew that. Complaining
that she won the popular vote while losing in the Electoral College would be similar to the loser
of a soccer match complaining they lost 1-nil even though they outshot the victor by a 6-1 margin.
Whine all you want about the popular vote, it is irrelevant.
Hillary Clinton visited Arizona in the last week of the election, while visiting Wisconsin
ZERO times in the general election campaign. The trip to Arizona was a waste of time.
She lost because she was a horrible candidate with terrible strategy. All these people bleating
about "Putin" and or the "popular vote" make me laugh.
With respect, you're going to have to back up some of those claims in the second paragraph and
how they could apply to Russia.
As for the first paragraph, a few things come to mind.
Firstly, it's a huge simplification - there are things like public interest laws to be borne
in mind when talking about the press having to obey the law. I don't think there is much doubt
that this was in the public interest. I mean what Clinton did with the email server was actually
illegal. If someone hacked into a mob boss' computer, got evidence of his/her crimes, and leaked
them to the press, would you criticise the hacker or the mob boss?
Secondly, how on earth was this selectively released to favour one side? How do you favour
one side over the other when you only have information on one side. You are literally saying that
you shouldn't report on one side's wrongdoings if you can't find anything wrong about the other's!
If these are genuine - which absolutely no-one to do with Clinton has denied - then that is all
there is to it. Reality isn't partisan.
Or are you talking about how it was released? You mean dumped en masse onto Wikileaks? How
was that showing bias in any way? I just don't understand what you are trying to claim here.
Finally this comment makes me suspect you don't appreciate the American political climate:
But, given the result, the section of the press that would investigate hasn't got the money
or power to do so. You can be assured the Fox network would have devoted billions to the investigation
had HRC won though.
Fox News aren't the only people with money - indeed, Clinton vastly outspent Trump in the election...
by roughly half a billion(!) dollars.
O -- The Director of the CIA says it, then it must be true? Forgive me, but isn't this an organisation
created to spread disinformation around the world, overthrow foreign governments, and subvert
democracy? Which elections in the world has the CIA not tried to influence? Time Magazine openly
boasts that the US government and agencies had a direct role in securing the election of President
Yeltsin (who sold off a significant share of the country's assets under US advice, and plunged
Russia into the worst recession since the 1930s). Hillary Clinton openly supported the management
of the elections for the Palestine National Authority in 2006. Bill Clinton openly agitated for
the overthrow of President Aristide.
Now that the CIA's most assiduous supporters have lost office, up pops the CIA, blaming the Russians,
like we were in some bad 1950s Cold War pastiche. Get real. Take responsibility for your own failures,
Democrats. Time to cleanse the stables.
Where is even the proof of Russian propaganda? It all seems to come from an "Anonymous source",
without verfication I don't see how this is any more legitimate than the rest of the post truth
fake news out there that people believe just because it confirms their biases.
The CIA claim to know that Russian hackers leaked the Clinton campaign emails to Assange. You
can, of course, disbelieve them, but they're not a random anonymous source exactly.
Putin extremely powerful man. Make regime change in Amerika without needing invasion or rebels.
Soon regime change also in many Europan countries by sending copies of emails to small room in
embassy of little country in London.
You know how powerful Putin? Last week even show finger to Chuck Norris! Chuck Norris now call
Putin "sir".
Thank you, Doug Henwood for pointing out what the wholly-owned corporate "pundits" choose not
to divulge to coincide with their own agendas.
Hillary was a disastrous choice for the "Democratic" party, but the vast majority of Democratic
politicians were just too feckless to support Bernie Sanders, so now we have an equally terrible
choice in Donald Trump.
That Clinton and Trump even competed for the presidency is in itself an indication of just
how disconnected and undemocratic U.S. politics has become.
Moreover, as Henwood (a frequent and unsparing critic of Clinton, Inc. over the years) has
pointed out both Democrats and Republicans are supporting the Russia conspiracy theory in a cowardly
attempt to distract the U.S. public from the real and far more dire crisis, which is Washington's
enormous political dysfunction not Russia's complicity. (Read Henwood's essay: Stop Hillary! Vote
no to a Clinton Dynasty in Harper's Magazine, November 2014 - one article a month is free for
reading).
Yes, the electoral college is a ridiculous throwback to slavery which should be abolished,
but its dissolution is just one of many things I'd like to see eradicated from a governing body
that has long stopped representing the interests of working class Americans; unless, of course
you have the influence and money for such access.
The non-violent and powerful Black Lives Matter, Moral Mondays in North Carolina and Standing
Rock protesters (reinforced by U.S. veterans and other supporters) have demonstrated that change
is possible if we're carefully focused on uprooting and replacing government corruption.
The West support for regimes like Israel and Saudi Arabia makes it hard to present a credible
case against Putin on any issues but, rigging the election is just absurd. These days people are
more clued up and know Hillary lost because she was not trusted, carried baggage and was funded
by big banks. It is rather worrying that we've gone backward and Nazi propaganda tactics are the
norm again.
There was a 50/50 chance the Democrats would take the fall from grace; both parties are out of
touch with mainstream, middle-class America, it's just coincidence Trump manifested himself when
he did. Neither party had a good message or a good messenger; the dark phenomenon of Trump could
have come from either party, the nation was so desperate for change. Yet the GOP really maneuvered
for Jeb Bush to begin with; the Democrats, with a significantly smaller field, laid their bet
on Clinton. The public's rejection of both Bush and Clinton left the door open for a GOP interloper,
Trump; and Clinton was pushed on the Democrats rather than Sanders.
Even the GOP will have buyers remorse if/when they cannot temper Trump.
As someone who wanted Hilary to win, it is difficult to disagree with any of this.
If she couldn't beat Trump - who about three times a day said something idiotic or repugnant,
then she really was the wrong candidate
Since he won Trump has actually sounded miles more sensible. I can't help feel that if he had
adopted his current tone before the election that he would have won by a landslide
"This was the strategy not because Clinton was was incompetent; it was the strategy because all
available data pointed to the fact that it was working."
What a joke.
She had a billion dollars in her campaign fund. The money she spent on "data" was just money
flushed down the sewer. (No doubt various Clinton hangers-on got very nice "consulting" fees.)
She was a Democrat who publicly bragged about her devotion to **Henry Kissinger**.
She lost to **Donald Trump**. I think even Martin O'Malley could've beaten Trump; I'm certain
Sanders could. Only Hillary Clinton had the "magic" necessary to lose to a casino and real estate
huckster.
She was always a lousy candidate, and she's an incompetent politician as well. Dems can face
that, face reality, or keep going as they are, in which case there won't **be** a Democratic Party
before long.
Agreed. HRC, DNC and the Clintonistas are the only ones responsible for her loss. But there's
more to their post-election pushback than just shifting the blame, a lot more.
Demonizing Russia isn't just about seeking a scapegoat. Trump's embrace of Russia and decision
to end the neocon-neoliberal agenda of regime change skewer two of the corporate establishment's
cash cows - arms sales to the numerous conflicts in the Middle East initiated by the corporate
cabal, and arms sales to NATO and all the new post Cold War NATO members to continue the buildup
of armaments on Russia's borders.
That's a lot of anticipated arms sales and a lot of every bit as anticipated political "donations"
from the corporate establishment.
" Trump's embrace of Russia and decision to end the neocon-neoliberal agenda of regime change
skewer two of the corporate establishment's cash cows - arms sales to the numerous conflicts in
the Middle East initiated by the corporate cabal, and arms sales to NATO and all the new post
Cold War NATO members to continue the buildup of armaments on Russia's borders."
That's a mighty optimistic forecast, but it's not impossible. I think Trump is likely to be
a disaster, and even if he isn't, an unleashed Republican gang is a horrible thing to imagine.
Still, I'd love to be pleasantly surprised, and I note that already Trump's campaign has put
down TWO odious political dynasties, AND the TPP -- all very healthy developments.
Hillary Clinton lost because the majority of the voters were nauseated by her by her fake perma-
smile which might as well have been installed by cosmetic surgery. The well rehearsed, worn-out,
hollow on-message crap she spouted had zilch credibility and as much resonance. She had nothing
to say to the electorate.
That the Clinton spent about twice as much as the Trump camp in this case did not work to her
favour: every appearance on tv made her lose voters.
The only thing that kept the contest somehow close was the unprecedented all-media fear
campaign against Trump.
I have never had any doubt that that Trump would get the job. What surprised me though, is
that only one in 200 eligible voters bothered with the Green's Jill Stein: they are supposedly
relatively highly committed to their causes.
Another mistake of the Clinton campaign, btw. was to focus on scandal. My experience of 45
years of campaigning tells me "scandal" does not win any campaigns.
99% of the weapons in the Trump arsenal were Trumped up Hillary "scandals"
They did not decide it. Neither did the new "sexual victim" paraded every couple of days by
the Clinton camp. Scandal and counter-scandal are part of every campaign and ignored by non-committed
voters.
What did it for Trump was, that he spoke unscripted, thus came across a somewhat more genuine,
and at least acknowledged the victims of de-industrialisation, for which he could not be blamed,
but Clinton could. Clinton did not have anything she could present apart from "better equipped
because of experience" - with an undistinguished actual record. The name Clinton can be blamed
for the plight of the "rust-belt".
Americans have paid a heavy price because of free trade deals and they want a different direction.
In the last 15 years there is a noticeable difference in opportunity and wages and most of our
politicians don't care. Hillary lost this because she supported most free trade and outsourcing
jobs to India and China. They DNC has a chance to reform but they choose not to. I hope Bernie
starts a new party and leaves the neo liberals behind. Who knows where Trump will take us but
if he adds to the swamp he will be a one term president. Right now it looks like he is repaying
his Wall Street fundraisers and big oil super pacs. Our politicians deserve the embarrassment
for ignoring our citizens struggles.
Steven Mnuchin with ties to Wall Street stepped in when no one else would and fund raised for
Trump. Mnuchin is picked as secretary of treasury. Big oil supported Cruz and moved to Trump with
a few superpacs that Kellyanne Conway managed. Both Wall Street and energy will be deregulated.
Also tax reform for corporations. He will have to follow through on new trade deals, tax on imports
and immigration or he will only help the 1%. We will see if he follows through...
I bet in Moscow they're quite enjoying this notion Putin can simply dismiss any govt on earth
by simply letting loose a few hackers and propagandists. And probably thinking if only.
The west looks like its collectively losing its marbles. Political systems, like tastes and
fashion change naturally over time. Our two party systems struggle to cope with any change, thus
the bewildered politicians within these parties lash out.
On November 25, 2016, the Obama administration said the results from November 8, "accurately reflect
the will of the American people." The following day, the White House released another statement
saying, "the federal government did not observe any increased level of malicious cyberactivity
aimed at disrupting our electoral process on Election Day."
And? Does anybody claim that any foreign power hacked the voting machines themselves?
The claim is that Russian directed operatives hacked the DNC, etc. in an attempt to find embarrassing
material that would damage Clinton's candidacy. They succeeded.
Doug Henwood trying to beat the Bernie Sanders drum. What I heard from Bernie Sanders Townhall
in Wisconsin is that people blamed illegal immigrants for their situation. Deep down inside they
have been Trump supporters for a while. That is why Trump won Wisconsin.
A Labour MP is claiming that Putin also fixed the Brexit vote - which also shows how people will
blame anyone but themselves for losing a vote. There is not one Clinton supporter who would have
complained about the result had she won the Electoral College and lost the popular vote.
That is not to say that the system should not be changed but Democrats and/or Clintonites should
not try to change it retrospectively. That would mean chaos.
Totally agree with this article by Mr. Henwood. If Democrats, and Republicans for that matter,
want to go on a wild goose chase to blame Russians for the election outcome, with basically no
hard evidence to back their claim, rather than look at the real reasons why they lost (disaffected
angry citizens and not being able to compete with Trump because they chose lousy candidates) then
they deserve to continue losing their future elections. So be it.
If she had not spent so much time calling Trump a Misogynist while taking money from Saudi Arabia
then maybe , just maybe she would have not come across as the most deceitful and toxic candidate
the US has ever seen.
Hillary Clinton lost Pennsylvania, Michigan & Wisconsin solely because of NAFTA & TPP. Bill &
Hillary Clinton supported NAFTA. Hillary Clinton had a history of supporting TPP & Obama was actively
pushing it. When Hillary Clinton changed her position on TPP people in the old industrial heartland
were not convinced that was sincere. The Russians were not responsible for Hillary, Bill & Obama's
history of support for trade deals that facilitate moving jobs to low wage countries that suppress
unions, allow unsafe working conditions & don't have meaningful environmental regulations.
Julian Assange denies that the Russian government was the source of the hacked emails
to and from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta that WikiLeaks published. Of course, there's
no way of knowing if he's telling the truth – but regardless of their source, how much influence
did they have on the election outcome?
oh, right
so when the Wikileaks reveals evilness of the conservatives, it's good, but when the liberals
get revealed, he's not telling the truth?
give me a break.
Wikileaks is a neutral source, not a conservative or a liberal one.
I agree with you. However may I add that the point is not whether Assange is of good character
or whether Wikileaks is left or right. The point is has any Wikileaks releases been proven false
in the last 10 years or so?
Wikileaks is a neutral source, not a conservative or a liberal one.
Bull. Assange dripped, dripped, dripped the leaks so that it would do maximum damage to Clinton.
Whether he has conservative or liberal leanings is irrelevant. What in incontrovertible, however,
is that he has an anti-Clinton bias.
What the leaks revealed is exactly the kind of internal policy debates, calibration of message,
and gossipy venting that occurs in any political campaign. Only out of context did they appear
damaging.
The other big elephant in the room is that nearly half of those eligible to vote did not. Instead,
the hysterical US media engage the gullible populace in yet another game of mass distraction,
and soon Putin will be forgotten and all will salivate over the Oscar nominations. Thus the United
States of Amnesia will settle into its usual addictive habit of running after any "news" that
holds the promise of distractive entertainment. Never mind the nation's democracy... "We amuse
ourselves to death" (Neil Postman).
Otto Bismarck once said: "laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made"
To paraphrase, I guess you could also say the same about elections. Leaks revealing behind
the curtains shenanigans of any election would turn most stomachs. After seeing this election
I may become a vegetarian.
Too right. It was always Hillary's election to lose and she lost it simply because she was
not to be trusted. Her very public endorsement by gangster capitalist Jay-Z told you all you needed
to know about who she represented.
I used to work for an American oil company. Clinton was the one thing that united Democrats and
Republicans over lunch time chats. She was unsuitable, and unfit for office. People voted not
necessarily for Trump, but against Clinton. Don't blame Trump for this result. Blame the democrats
and their poor candidates. So far I like his choice of cabinet members. Except for the banker
they are men that create wealth by providing work for talented people. Not something the Guardian
understands.
So your prime character witness for Hillary Clinton is.....Bill Clinton.
Good luck with that.
FYI mishandling protectively marked documents is wrongdoing, which James Comey testified that
she had. Had it been ANYBODY other than a presidential candidate their feet wouldn't have touched
the floor.
What the author fails to emphasize is the degree to which Dem. party 'insiders' like DWSchulz
and DBrazile and so on sabotaged their own nomination process by biasing the pre-primary and primary
contests in favor of Clinton in subtle and stupidly obvious ways.
Had this been a contest between Trump and B. Sanders, M. O'Malley, J. Biden, E. Warren, etc.
there would have been no Podesta emails to care hack, no home server to investigate, etc. By tipping
the scales in favor of Clinton early, parts of the Dem. party caused the current outcome.
I was dubious before, but I'm now actively concerned. This crop of Democrats and their deep
state cohorts are unhinged and dangerous. They see me and my families' lives as an externality
in their eventual war with Russia. As Phyrric a victory as there could possibly be. They are psychotic;
not only waging countless coups and intelligence operations abroad, but now in plain sight on
American soil. The mainstream media seems to invoke the spirit of Goebbels more vividly with each
passing day. Their disdain and manipulation of the general populace is chilling. They see us not
as people to be won-over, but as things to be manipulated, tricked and coerced. Nothing new for
politicians (particularity the opposition) - but the levels here are staggering.
January couldn't come soon enough - and I say that as strong critic of Trump.
There is an update to yesterday's Guardian article. Update: David Swanson interviewed Murray today,
and obtained additional information. Specifically, Murray told Swanson that: (1) there were two
American leakers ... one for the emails of the Democratic National Committee and one for the emails
of top Clinton aide John Podesta; (2) Murray met one of those leakers; and (3) both leakers are
American insiders with the NSA and/or the DNC, with no known connections to Russia.
"Putin didn't win this election for Trump. Hillary Clinton did"
Nailed it. If the Democrats had fielded someone who actually represented the people (and who
spoke the truth) instead of a corporate shill, the outcome would have been very different.
They had the ideal candidate in Sanders and they fucked him out of it. But have they learned
anything? I seriously doubt it.
Mrs Clinton is not blaming others. She never did. It's the CIA - backed by the 17 US intelligence
agencies - that's saying Russia interfered with the election process in the USA.
In UK as well, the MI6 said something similar a few weeks ago. Germany is also concerned about
the next elections in France and Germany. If any of this was true then it would be a serious threat
against democracy in Western countries.
So who's blaming who? Deep cheaters or bad loosers? The CIA could be wrong but is probably
correct this time. Trying to bury this unanimous call from western secret services under contempt
is significant by itself.
" It's the CIA - backed by the 17 US intelligence agencies - that's saying Russia interfered with
the election process in the USA. "
Way to parrot FAKE NEWS.
That is a COMPLETE LIE. Unless you honestly believe that agencies like the DEA and NASA's "intelligence"
conclusively found "proof" that does not exist. That TALKING POINT was a lie when CLINTON'S CAMPAIGN
originated it, and it is STILL a lie.
But hey, it's only wrong when the "bad guys" on the "other team" spread fake news and engage
in intellectual dishonesty, right? When it's the "good guys" it's just a case of the "ends justify
the means" and perfectly acceptable, right?
"Mrs Clinton is not blaming others. She never did."
Bullshit. Just last week she resurfaced (can't she grasp the idea of the graceful exit?) to
yammer on about the menace of "fake news". Because of course we all know that before 2016, all
American elections have been exercises in fair-mindedness and scrupulous devotion to truth.
It's funny how media simply refuses to admit that Trump did it.
Russians, Hilary, polar bears - none of them had anything to do with it - HE WON.
Live with it.
The clickbait headline is frustrating. No serious person is accusing Russia of having caused Clinton's
loss. Instead, serious people (including, thankfully, leading Republicans) are demanding that
we take a thoughtful and comprehensive look at the evidence that Russia intended to influence
the election. That's a necessary step for protecting our democracy and it's irresponsible to ascribe
political motives to that task.
There was a good article in The Intercept the other regarding the CIA's unsubstantiated (and subserviently
published by the media) claims of Russian interference - how it has essentially become a willy-waving
contest between the CIA and the FBI in the wake of the elections; how the CIA is an inherently
untrustworthy organisation and the media allowing "senior officials" to dictate the news with
empty leaks and no evidence (while shouting the loudest about fake news) is folly.
Very true. It takes an abysmal candidate to lose against (quoting Jimmy Dore here:) Donny Tinyhands.
It takes a special brand of dense to run
- for Wall Street (against reinstatement of Glass Steagall)
- for a direct military confrontation with nuclear power Russia (wich Clinton's pet-project of
no-fly zones in Syria would have signified)
- for trade deals (nobody bought Clinton was suddenly against that)
and expect the DEMOCRATIC base to turn out.
Jesus Christ, Donny ran to the left of Hillary on all three issues. Not that anyone trusts him
to keep any promise, but at least he didn't outright spit in the face of the people who want less
war, less neoliberalism and less Wall Street cronyism while running for election.
No Democratic candidate worth his/her name would have lost against Trump, not even if the Axis
of Evil (whoever that currently is) had hacked all their emails, photobooks and private porn-flicks,
in which they starred, and had them all run nonstop 24/7 on every screen on Earth.
I'm shocked!!! Aren't the Russians to blame for everything???
My t.v breaking, the rain outside, brexit, Donald trump, the Iraq war, the death of Jesus, those
damn Russians, nothing is safe around those monsters.
Hilarious
I am so sick and tired of hearing those whining elite democrats gone incessantly about white
males , the FBI , Putin , Russia , stupid red state citizens , etc., etc ..
I want say ' Shut the fuck up -- ..... and look in the bloody mirror ' .
I am a classic liberal .... always have been ..... always will be ...... and I don't know what
you would like to call these corrupt , elitist , contemporary democrats but you certainly can
not call them real liberals .
I call them designer democrats . They care only for their particular pet issues and they ongoing
pursuit of notions of their own superiority . They routinely generalize in highly sexist and racist
fashions and through the use of political correctness seek to silence all of their critics .
I , simply , loath them .
They sabotaged Bernie Sanders campaign . Bernie Sanders ..... the nicest , most caring man
to come along in American politics in the past 50 years . Not since , FDR , John and Robert Kennedy
have we seen such hope for average people .
But oh , no ..... Bernie was an outsider ..... not part of their corrupt , elite club . He
was a threat to their ongoing party . He had to go .
They didn't give a shit about what was good for the people . They only cared about themselves
and their exploitation of the Democratic Party and it's traditional status ..... and their vulgar
corruption of genuine liberalism for their own purposes .
The Democratic Party establishment will now undergo a long , long overdue cleansing . The Clintons
are the first to go as they should be . Two total career political scoundrels , if ever there
were any . Lies and secrecy were all that you ever got from them aside form the horrific repeal
of the 'Glass-Steggall Act ' and the Stock Trade Modernization Bill which lead to the licensing
of the financial elite to plunder the economy , ruin the lives of countless average Americans
and turn the economy into a complete casino .
Elitist to the core , they were .
Imagine an elite , spoon fed , self-interested urbanite like Hillary Clinton telling some poor
white male schmuck living in some small town , who for economic reasons has never had a good full
time time and works 3 temporary part-time jobs to pay the bills that he is privileged .
Bloody ridiculous --
Talk about overt sexism . Talk about overt racism .
It's these kinds of behaviours that doomed Hillary Clinton .
She only has herself to blame .
If she really had cared about average people she would have not sabotaged Bernie Sanders and
she would have stepped aside back in June when every poll indicated the she could not beat Trump
and that Bernie could beat him by 10 to 15 points .
Now , we the people are stuck with a Trump presidency ..... something which you can pretty
much be assured is going to be un mitigated disaster in ways that we can't even begin to imagine
yet .
Lord help us .
Good-bye Democratic Party elites ..... don't let the fucking door hit on the way out .
I wish I could say that it was nice knowing you but it wasn't .
Go off to your designer lives and pontificate about what is good for people ..... a subject
that you know little about and really don't give a damn .
Go back to Davos and party with the financial global elite for they are really your people
.... your kind . Certainly , average hardworking , genuinely liberal people are not .
Liberalism exists for all people not just the self-anointed few .
Have you noticed how recently the 'we are not racist and you are' left have started to use the
Chinese and Russians as convenient foreign bogeymen to scare the people with?
Awkward economic figures, blame the Chinese.
Awkward diplomatic issues or you lost a vote, blame the Russians.
The problem with this is that our media then amplifies these attacks on China and Russia, they
hear them, and they start to resent it and respond. And our future relations with two major world
powers are made worse than they needed to be.
A good article to counterbalance the reams of rubbish we are hearing in the US election post-mortem.
Anyone who had neural activity should have known that when you steal the candidacy, you certainly
won't get the votes. Clinton effectively handed the election to Trump by not having the humility,
humanity and honesty to admit defeat by Benie Sanders.
He was not a perfect choice, but he could have been a candidate who was everything that Trump
wasn't - uncorrupted, honest, and with a clearly thought out and principled agenda.
All Trump was facing was someone as entitled and establishment as he was,. but with less of
what passes for 'the human touch' across the pond.
There's always the possibility of course, that the US establishment realised Clinton's
blatant warmongering wasn't 'good for business'.
The Russians are no doubt aware that the US has to try and cut the Gordian knot - Washington
cannot face down China and Russia at the same time; and the two countries are mutually supportive
in the UN and are developing many economic projects together.
So maybe, they thought, we can get the Russkies 'on side', deal with China (ie. reduce
it to a 'client state'/ turn it into an ashtray) - and then move on Russia and grab all those
lovely resources freed up by global warming....
Seems to me like the Clinton agenda of big oil, big banks and alot of lies won the WH. Hillary's
big corporate donors are on Trumps transition team. Surely they didnt want her to win, since she
adopted Sanders regulatory, tax the wealthy platform, hence Clinton was duped with marketing strategy
which turned voters off, she was reduced to name calling over promotong policy...what did she
represent? Only her campaign volunteers knew, her message to the public was "dont vote for
Trump" which translates to, I could lose to him, vote for me!
The Podesta emails confirmed what many people already suspected and knew of Hillary and her
campaign. Those who were interested in reading them had to actually look for them, since MSM was
not reporting on them. It's not as if an avid MSNBC or CNN watcher was going to be exposed.
So, if you were seeking them out, A: you probably already suspected those things and B: you
weren't going to vote for Hillary to begin with.
It's hilarious how the major Left outlets (Washington Post) are now telling it's readers
how Russia is to blame for people voting against Hillary due to the Podesta emails, when they
didn't even report on the emails in the first place.
FINALLY sanity intrudes. For one article and one day. But hey , progress is progress. Trump will
NOT be what you think him to be. He will be far better. He will still do things you don't like,
but not REALLY bad things. :-)
There was no reason to vote for Clinton as the article says. She offered nothing except the
entitlement of HER. It wasn't enough. Thank The Gods. EVERYTHING about the system all
halfway decent people detest, is summed up in the figure of Hillary Clinton. And evidently
(and I stand to be corrected) she didn't even have the stones not to melt down on election night
and Podesta had to go out there and be a complete buffoon.
Trump might be an unknown but Clinton and her used up party were a complete known. Like
Donald said, she had 'experience', but it was all BAD 'experience'. Trump might not fix the
problems but at least he's going to try. Clinton didn't even see the problems.
she is a frail, withered old woman who needs to retire - def the wrong democrat choice, crazy -- Berni.S would have won if for them - he is far more sincere
Here is the key paragraph: "The displaced machinists... believe that free trade deals are
responsible for their economic woes and they never trusted Clinton's turn against the TPP. But
that was Clinton's campaign for you, bereft of principle and pathologically concerned with "optics"
at the expense of substance." Funny the author fails to notice that that describes to a T
Trump's campaign, and actually his whole life. That description applies to Trump several orders
of magnitude moreso than it applies to Hillary Clinton's life. If you think Trump is really interested
in bringing jobs, especially good paying jobs back, you are willfully blind.
"Putin didn't win this election for Trump. Hillary Clinton did"
Trump won, he played the game brilliantly to the rules (including the electoral college system),
Clinton lost (you can't win it for the opposition, you can just lose, and the Democrats didn't
put out their best hope) and Putin was irrelevant in terms of any interference (although maybe
Trump voters would rather the US develop a better relationship with Russia, but that's down to
Trump in playing that card).
This argument is as asinine as the one the author opposes. It was a collusion of events that
led to this result, including the failure of both parties to adapt to an evolving economic
and social climate over decades. The right wing hailing the collapse of liberalism as a result
of decades of liberal mismanagement conveniently forget their own parties have held the reins
for half that time, and failed just as miserably as the left....
It's quite bizarre to see "progressives" openly side with the military industrial complex,
which is threatened by a president elect weary of more warfare.
It's to be expected from career politicians like McCain who is kicking and screaming, but
it's shameful to see supposed liberally-minded people help spread the Red Scare storyline.
The Democrats are in full blown tantrum mode, throwing teddies out of their pram and spitting
dummies across the room, because their warmonger and deceitful candidate HRC, didn't win, that's
why there has been all this bad news nonsense about Putin and/or Russia since last week.
Obama has behaved dreadfully, first he or his office gets one of its poodles namely MI6 to
point the finger at Putin re cyberwar, which was swiftly followed by the International Olympic
Committee looking at Russia for 2012 Olympic games, the elections in the US and the Democrats
CIA coming out with unsubstantiated nonsense (funny how they never like, providing collaborative
evidence - on this or anything that supposedly Russia has done) then there is Syria, and Obama
and the Democrats were the cheerleader for regime change, because they have been out manoeuvred
in that sphere. All of it in less than a week.
If Obama, the administration, and the CIA were smart they would have realised that a concerted
effort to blame Putin / Russia would be seen for what it is - a liar and one of trying to discredit
both the outcome of the US elections, the dislike of HRC, and her association with Wall St. -
she raised more money for her campaign than Trump and Sanders put together (if the Democrats had
chosen Sanders, then they would have stood a chance) and that their hawk would not be in a position
to create WW111 - thank goodness. The Democrats deserved what they got.
This organ of the liberal media (no scare quotes required - it is socially liberal and economically
neoliberal), along with many others, dogmatically supported Clinton against Sanders to the point
of printing daily and ridiculous dishonesty, even going so far as to make out as if anyone who
supports any form of wealth redistribution is a racist, sexist, whitesplaining dude-bro.
Or more precisely the Superdelegates and the Democratic National Committee did. Her Goldman/Morgan
Stanley speechs were in 2013 ffs, they all knew she had form and was 'viewed as an insider' as
Obama put it in The New Yorker interview.
The election was close, and if one less thing had gone wrong for Hillary she would have won.
However I think an important thing that lost her the election was identity politics. She patronized
Afro-Americans and Hispanics, by tell them that because they are Trump-threatened minorities,
they should vote for her. In the same vein, gays and women were supposed to vote for her. But
what she was really telling these groups was that they should revel in their supposed victimhood,
which was not a great message.
Completely agreed! The onus for defeat belongs to the Democrat party leadership as well. Donald
Trump and Bernie Sanders both understood where the momentum of the election was headed before
anyone else did. The election was won and lost in the white blue collar Midwest. A place that
decided that diet corporatism is decidedly worse than a populist right wing extremist.
No one here believed the ridiculous about-face Hillary pulled on the question of the TPP.
I guarantee you Bernie would have cleaned Trump's clock in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan,
and perhaps Ohio and Iowa.
"Our self-image as the world's greatest democracy...." Well, speaking for myself and plenty
of other Americans, I never said anything like that about us. In fact, like a lot of people I
wish we would stick to our own business, quit trying to be the world's cop, and cease meddling
in other countries' affairs.
If we do that, then I could care less about our image or what the rest of the world thinks.
Let some other country be the "leader of the Free World." Who died and left the US in charge,
anyway? Not one war we have fought since WWII has been worth the price of one drop of American
blood.
Assuming that it really was the Russians who done it, I guess they had a better game plan
than the Saudis. I consider the Russians to have done us a favor of sorts by exposing Hillary's
secret Wall Street speeches and the machinations of the DNC. Her 'deplorables' comment was
every bit as telling as Mitt Romney's '47%'. We really needed to know about her 'public versus
private positions', even if it only confirmed what everybody already knew. I am not 100% sure
the system made the worst choice in raising up Donald Trump.
And even so, if it takes four years of Trump to remove the people who thought Hillary was a
good candidate from power in the Democratic Party, it may work out for the best in the long run.
And if it takes four years of Trump to show the people who voted for Trump that Republican ideologues
can only make their problems worse, so be it. It's mostly the hubris that amuses me at this point.
They thought they were the pros. They had the money. They had the ground game. All they did wrong
was to preselect and preordain a candidate nobody wanted.
abuses women, advances the cause of racism, attacks women's rights, is xenophobic
The American voters heard a steady stream of these arguments. Some may have simply ignored
them. Others took them into consideration, but concluded that they wanted drastic change enough
to put them aside. White women decided that Trump's comments, while distasteful, were things they'd
heard before.
Reliance on the sanctity of racial and gender pieties was a mistake. Not everyone treats
these subjects as the holiest of holies. The people who would be most swayed by those arguments
never would have voted for Trump anyways.
Colin Powell did not advise Clinton to do that, and even if he did she was a fool to take his
advice when her boss Obama explicitly told her not to keep a private server. Colin Powell
said Clinton destroys everything she touches with hubris. Seeing as how she destroyed the democrat
"blue wall" and also had low turnout which hurt democrats down the ticket I agree.
Zero evidence other than "he said, she said" regarding any involvement of Russian espionage agencies
in the U.S. elections but the left, incredulous once the result didn't go their way, are now clinging
to anything to divert attention from the issues that HRC ignored and Trump embraced.
All this hysteria about the USA and Russia finally working together than apart doesn't
help either for it appears that the [neoliberal] lefties want a perpetual war rather than peace.
The CIA being outraged about a foreign state intervening in an election is quite funny. They
have intervened so many times, especially in Latin America, to install puppet regimes.
As for hacking... does anybody believe the CIA has never hacked anybody?
Anyway, had the emails not existed, there would have been nothing with which to help Trump.
The Democrats have only themselves to blame. Bernie Sanders or ANY other candidate without the
Clintons baggage could have done a better job f beating Trump. They wanted Hillary at all cost;
they lost!
A major threat to liberty is the assault on the right to discuss political issues, seek out alternative
information sources, and promote dissenting ideas and causes such as non-interventionism in foreign
and domestic affairs. If this ongoing assault on free speech succeeds, then all of our liberties
are endangered.
One of the most common assaults on the First Amendment is the attempt to force public policy organizations
to disclose their donors. Regardless of the intent of these laws, the effect is to subject supporters
of controversial causes to harassment, or worse. This harassment makes other potential donors afraid
to support organizations opposing a popular war or defending the rights of an unpopular group.
Many free speech opponents support laws and regulations forbidding activist or educational organizations
from distributing factual information regarding a candidate's positions for several months before
an election. The ban would apply to communications that do not endorse or oppose any candidate. These
laws would result in the only sources of information on the candidate's views being the campaigns
and the media.
Recently the Federal Election Commission (FEC) rejected a proposal to add language exempting books,
movies, and streaming videos from its regulations. The majority of FEC commissioners apparently believe
they should have the power, for example, to ban Oliver Stone's biography of Edward Snowden, since
it was released two months before the election and features clips of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump
discussing Snowden.
The latest, and potentially most dangerous, threat to the First Amendment is the war on "fake
news." Those leading the war are using a few "viral" Internet hoaxes to justify increased government
regulation - and even outright censorship - of Internet news sites. Some popular websites, such as
Facebook, are not waiting for the government to force them to crack down on fake news.
Those calling for bans on "fake news" are not just trying to censor easily-disproved Internet
hoaxes. They are working to create a government-sanctioned "gatekeeper" (to use Hillary Clinton's
infamous phrase) with the power to censor any news or opinion displeasing to the political establishment.
None of those wringing their hands over fake news have expressed any concern over the fake news stories
that helped lead to the Iraq War. Those fake news stories led to the destabilizing of the Middle
East, the rise of ISIS, and the deaths of millions.
The war on "fake news" has taken a chilling turn with efforts to label news and opinion sites
of alternative news sources as peddlers of Russian propaganda. The main targets are critics of US
interventionist foreign policy, proponents of a gold standard, critics of the US government's skyrocketing
debt, and even those working to end police militarization. All have been smeared as anti-American
agents of Russia.
Just last week, Congress passed legislation creating a special committee, composed of key federal
agencies, to counter foreign interference in US elections. There have also been calls for congressional
investigations into Russian influence on the elections. Can anyone doubt that the goal of this is
to discredit and silence those who question the mainstream media's pro-welfare/warfare state propaganda?
The attempts to ban "fake news;" smear antiwar, anti-Federal Reserve, and other pro-liberty movements
as Russian agents; and stop independent organizations from discussing a politician's record before
an election are all parts of an ongoing war on the First Amendment. All Americans, no matter their
political persuasion, have a stake in defeating these efforts to limit free speech.
dirtscratcher
Snípéir_Ag_Obair ,
Dec 13, 2016 11:45 AM
For the MSM to declare war on 'fake news' they would have to shoot themselves in the head (instead
of the foot). A delightful idea, now that I think about it.
Traditional left is equal protection under the law, against imperial war and, most importantly,
pro-justice for the working and middle classes (i.e., against off-shoring mfg, etc.).
All this nonsense PC and identity politics is designed to divide the left (the working class)
on the core issues.
from my Easter European point of view (after a decade spent in the USSA) - Democrats seem much
more Stalininst and totalitarian than Republicans. $hitlery really reminds me of former prez Milosevic's
ugly wife (she was also politically involved and as totalitarian as $hitlery)
They are not "pro-immigration", they are against an intrusive police state that use illegal immigration
as an excuse to adopt artificial measures. Do you find logic that in many states you have in parallel
1) Welfare for refugees & illegal immigrants
2) Other government services as well
3) Money use to crack down on business with spot checks to see if they hire illegal immigrants
4) Money use to increase the patrols along the border or even build a wall
5) Naturalization of illegal immigrants after a few years of residence
Usually when the media organize a debate it's always rigged
On one side you will have the guy/woman who say that Westerners are selfish because they need
to offer more to those who arrive and adapt themselves to the new migrants
On the other side the guy/woman who will say that we are at war with Islam, that they have
wage a war on us with this invasion and that some asses need to be kick out overthere, Assad,
Ghadafi, Iran, you can name them, martial law is necessary to defend ourself by bombing them.
The fake news accusation is possible to counter. ... Let them call you a 'Fake News' website all
they want. ..
Post and publish well researched and truthful news and then let MSM do your advertising for
you. ... Call yourself "Fake News - 'Something'" and let the MSM lying fuckers send you traffic.
When they say fake news said this, that or something else and people search you out to hear all
your 'fake news' and discover your reports are more on the mark than all the fictional gibberish
MSM is trying to feed them, MSM loses it's audience even more.
Truth has a way of bubbling to the top. ..... Just look at the story of ZeroHedge.
Send in the lawyers if you have to.
Live Hard, Sue The Deep Pockets Of MSM When They Lie, Die Free
Enough with "the Russians" already. This "Russian Disinformation" and "Russian Hacking" stuff
is getting more ridiculous by the day.
First, don't let the irony escape you that most, if not all, of the pundits breathlessly blaming
the Russians for "fake news" and "election interference" are the very ones who were saying that Hillary
Clinton was a shoe-in for president. They're the ones who were providing her campaign with questions
in advance, and allowing her people to approve/disapprove of articles.
Secondly, many of the entities blamed for spreading "Russian propaganda" were the ones with the
audacity to tell the truth about the Clinton crime family and spread knowledge of the information
released by Wikileaks. Obviously, I'm not including
those Macedonian college kids in this, but keep in mind that they weren't doing it for the Russians
– they were doing it to make money.
This isn't about the Russians at all, which anyone with half a brain realizes is absolutely ridiculous.
Here's what this really is.
This is a war on the Trump presidency. It's an attempted coup.
Maybe it's even another effort to outright steal the presidency from Trump. Maybe there's someone
with a lot of money to throw into this "OMG THE RUSSIANS" rhetoric who really hates Russia and who
really wanted Hillary Clinton to be the President. Maybe his name rhymes with "Doros." I don't know
this for sure, but it's at least a more likely story than "The Russians" hacking our election and
deliberately spreading propaganda.
It's important to note that the MSM lost every single bit of their remaining credibility during
the last election and they're desperate to get it back. It reminds me of a high school kid who gets
caught doing something she shouldn't, who then makes up stories about another group of kids to get
people talking about them instead of her. The MSM can't accept the fact that Hillary Clinton lost,
despite their dishonest but enthusiastic efforts to steal the election for her. They'll
collude with whoever they have to in order to become relevant again.
Do you really have any doubt that they'll collude with whoever they have to in order to become
relevant again?
About "The Russians"
The whole plotline about "the Russians" really took off when the
Washington Post published an article listing a couple hundred websites as Russian "fake news"
sites. (I know the owners of quite a few of these sites personally -as in, we've shared meals and
wine together – and I can tell you, they're as American as apple pie." The Washington Post later
backtracked on the accusations but did not retract the article.
Except that when you consider that evidence by definition is definitive and the NYT admits everything
they have is circumstantial, then, doesn't that completely negates the headline? The article is sheer
speculation, just like the WaPo article that named the "fake news" sites.
What's more, the FBI completely disagrees with the CIA, and they've been very public about it.
They don't believe that there is well, evidence . I'll quote
from WaPo here .
The competing messages, according to officials in attendance, also reflect cultural differences
between the FBI and the CIA The bureau, true to its law enforcement roots, wants facts and tangible
evidence to prove something beyond all reasonable doubt. The CIA is more comfortable drawing inferences
from behavior.
"The FBI briefers think in terms of criminal standards - can we prove this in court," one of
the officials said. "The CIA briefers weigh the preponderance of intelligence and then make judgment
calls to help policymakers make informed decisions. High confidence for them means 'we're pretty
damn sure.' It doesn't mean they can prove it in court."
Give me a break. That, ladies and gentlemen, is why you should never, ever believe anything the
Washington Post refers to as investigative journalism. They have no idea what proof or evidence even
means.
There's a psy-op, all right, but it isn't "the Russians" perpetrating it.
It's the CIA (keep in mind that psyops is part of their job) working hand in hand with the MSM.
You just have to laugh at some of these headlines and quotes.
For your entertainment, enjoy the following round-up of headlines promoting the "Blame Russia"
sentiment.
Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House (
source )
House passes intelligence bill enhancing efforts against Russia (
source )
Where's the outrage over Russia's hack of the US election?" (
CNN )
Fake News, Russians, and Election Reversal (
Town Hall )
A Powerful Russian Weapon: The Spread of False Stories (
NY Times )
DID RUSSIAN AGENTS INFLUENCE THE U.S. ELECTION WITH FAKE NEWS? (
Vanity
Fair)
Experts Say Russian Propaganda Helped Spread Fake News During Election (
NPR )
Media Wakes Up To Russia's 'Fake News' Only After It Is Applied Against Hillary (
Forbes )
And then, have an eyeroll at some very silly quotes
From an interview on NPR:
"But let's remember, this was a very close vote where just, you know, a few tens of thousands
of votes in a few states ended up making the difference. So I don't know, if you believe that
the kind of information that crashes through all of our social media accounts affects how we think
and potentially how we vote, I think you would conclude that this kind of stuff does matter."
(
source )
From the NY Times:
"RT [Russia Today] often seems obsessed with the United States, portraying life there as hellish.
On the day President Obama spoke at the
Democratic National Convention , for example, it emphasized scattered demonstrations rather
than the speeches. It defends the Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, as an underdog
maligned by the established news media." (
source )
From a secret mystery source on CNN:
"There was no way that any one could have walked out of there with that the evidence and conclude
that the Russian government was not behind this." (
source )
From CBS:
Responding to intelligence officials' report that Russia
tried to influence the U.S. presidential election in favor of President-elect Donald Trump,
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Arizona) on Sunday said he doesn't know
what to make of Mr. Trump's dismissal of the issue.
"I don't know what to make of it because it's clear the Russians interfered," he told CBS'
"Face the Nation." "Whether they intended to interfere to the degree that they were trying to
elect a certain candidate, I think that's a subject of investigation. But facts are stubborn things.
They did hack into this campaign." (
source )
Politico reported:
"Donald Trump's insult-laced dismissal of reports that the CIA believes Russia hacked the 2016
election to help him is rattling a spy community already puzzled over how to gain the ear and
trust of the incoming president." (
source )
While some of the efforts are laughable, the end result could be incredibly serious.
And by serious, I mean devastating. It could result in civil war. It could result in World War
III.
Despite the inadvertent hilarity, this is a blatant effort to keep President-Elect Trump out of
the White House and to silence the opposition.
We learned that some people will do anything to remain in power.
We're watching them do anything right now.
Never has an election been so vehemently contested. Never has our country been so divided. If
the election results are cast aside, what do you really think will happen? Do you think Trump supporters
will just sigh and accept it?
And what about Russia?
Just a few months ago, we were
on the verge of war with them . By scapegoating "The Russians," if this psy-op is successful,
and Trump is kept out of office, what do you think is going to happen with tensions between the two
countries?
Enough with "the Russians" already. The real conspiracy is happening right here in America.
Glenn Greenwald
notes that – in the face of Trump and Brexit (which were
primarily caused by
economic
policies which have created
massive inequality ) – the Democratic National committee is trying to blame everybody and everything
but their own status quo policies and candidates which rig the system for the fatcats and hurt the
little guy:
The indisputable fact is that prevailing institutions of authority in the West, for decades,
have relentlessly and with complete indifference stomped on the economic welfare and social security
of hundreds of millions of people. While elite circles gorged themselves on globalism, free trade,
Wall Street casino gambling, and endless wars (wars that enriched the perpetrators and sent the
poorest and most marginalized to bear all their burdens), they completely ignored the victims
of their gluttony, except when those victims piped up a bit too much - when they caused a ruckus
- and were then scornfully condemned as troglodytes who were the deserved losers in the glorious,
global game of meritocracy.
***
A
short, incredibly insightful, and now more relevant than ever post-Brexit Facebook note by
the Los Angeles Times's Vincent Bevins wrote that "both Brexit and Trump_vs_deep_state are the very, very
wrong answers to legitimate questions that urban elites have refused to ask for 30 years." Bevins
went on: "Since the 1980s the elites in rich countries have overplayed their hand, taking all
the gains for themselves and just covering their ears when anyone else talks, and now they are
watching in horror as voters revolt."
For those who tried to remove themselves from the self-affirming, vehemently pro-Clinton elite
echo chamber of 2016, the warning signs that Brexit screechingly announced were not hard to see.
Two short
passages
from
a Slate interview I gave in July summarized those grave dangers: that opinion-making elites
were so clustered, so incestuous, so far removed from the people who would decide this election
- so contemptuous of them - that they were not only incapable of seeing the trends toward Trump
but were unwittingly accelerating those trends with their own condescending, self-glorifying behavior.
***
The warning lights were flashing in neon for a long time, but they were in seedy places that
elites studiously avoid. The few people who purposely went to those places and listened,
such as Chris Arnade , saw and heard them loud and clear. The ongoing failure to take heed
of this intense but invisible resentment and suffering guarantees that it will fester and strengthen.
This was the last paragraph of my July article on the Brexit fallout:
Instead of acknowledging and addressing the fundamental flaws within themselves, [elites]
are devoting their energies to demonizing the victims of their corruption, all in order to
delegitimize those grievances and thus relieve themselves of responsibility to meaningfully
address them. That reaction only serves to bolster, if not vindicate, the animating perceptions
that these elite institutions are hopelessly self-interested, toxic, and destructive and thus
cannot be reformed but rather must be destroyed. That, in turn, only ensures there will be
many more Brexits, and Trumps, in our collective future.
***
Democrats have already begun flailing around trying to blame anyone and everyone they can
find - everyone except themselves - for last night's crushing defeat of their party.
You know the drearily predictable list of their scapegoats: Russia, WikiLeaks, James Comey,
Jill Stein, Bernie Bros, The Media, news outlets (including, perhaps especially, The Intercept)
that sinned by reporting negatively on Hillary Clinton. Anyone who thinks that what happened
last night in places like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Michigan can be blamed on any of that
is drowning in self-protective ignorance so deep that it's impossible to express in words.
***
Put simply, Democrats knowingly chose to nominate a deeply unpopular, extremely vulnerable,
scandal-plagued candidate, who - for very good reason - was widely perceived to be a protector
and beneficiary of all the worst components of status quo elite corruption. It's astonishing
that
those of us who tried frantically to warn Democrats that nominating Hillary Clinton was a huge
and scary gamble - that all empirical evidence showed that she could lose to anyone
and Bernie Sanders would be a much stronger candidate, especially in this climate - are now
the ones being blamed: by the very same people who insisted on ignoring all that data and nominating
her anyway.
But that's just basic blame shifting and self-preservation. Far more significant is what
this shows about the mentality of the Democratic Party. Just think about who they nominated:
someone who - when she wasn't dining with Saudi monarchs and being feted in Davos by tyrants
who gave million-dollar checks - spent the last several years piggishly running around to Wall
Street banks and major corporations cashing in with $250,000 fees for 45-minute secret speeches
even though she had already become unimaginably rich with book advances while her husband already
made tens of millions playing these same games. She did all that without the slightest apparent
concern for how that would feed into all the perceptions and resentments of her and the Democratic
Party as corrupt, status quo-protecting, aristocratic tools of the rich and powerful: exactly
the worst possible behavior for this post-2008-economic-crisis era of globalism and destroyed
industries.
***
Trump vowed to destroy the system that elites love (for good reason) and the masses hate
(for equally good reason), while Clinton vowed to manage it more efficiently. That, as Matt
Stoller's
indispensable article in The Atlantic three weeks ago documented, is the conniving choice
the Democratic Party made decades ago: to abandon populism and become the party of technocratically
proficient, mildly benevolent managers of elite power. Those are the cynical, self-interested
seeds they planted, and now the crop has sprouted.
Indeed, the Dems re-elected Mrs. Status Quo – Nancy Pelosi – as minority leader. And Pelosi
claims :
I don't think people want a new direction.
Similarly, outgoing Senate minority leader Harry Reid
says
:
I don't think the Democratic Party is in that big of trouble.
I mean, if Comey kept his mouth shut, we would have picked up a couple more Senate seats and
we probably would have elected Hillary.
Of course, the whole claim that Russia hacked the U.S. election
is baseless as
is the whole
hysterical
claim that Russian propaganda swung the election.
But it's not just America
After Brexit and Italexit – with a potential
Frexit looming on the horizon – the status quo in Europe is also trying to shift attention (look,
squirrel!) from their failed policies to boogeymen.
For example, European leaders
are
also
claiming that Russian propaganda is interfering with European values.
And Germany's incredibly unpopular Social Democratic party is
claiming
that Russia might hack its election.
A former British cabinet member
alleges that Russian hackers "probably" swayed the Brexit vote.
And Washington Post national security reporter at Adam Entous told BBC this week that a CIA official
claims that Russia hacked
the Brexit vote, and the vote in Ukraine (starting around 1:09:58).
What's next the status quo starts blaming their electoral losses on little green men?
"... What is ALREADY going on with Trump, Dems, Russia is fascinating – and he is NOT EVEN SWORN in yet!!! WOW! The war mongers are REALLY panicking . Anti commie – its the new politically correct viewpoint . ..."
"... adding: "a party of buck-passing juveniles that have no vision for the future " ..."
"... Republicans have an agenda. It's terrible but they have one. Democrats represent rule by the professional class, including bankers. That's it. Publicly, they're for rainbows, good things and bringing people together. ..."
"... Several of my Democratic friends are simultaneously convinced that Trump is a Russian stooge and outraged that he won't listen to his daily national security briefings. ..."
"... No. First, access was granted by .. Hillary and Podesta and their own idiocy ( her with the server, him with the pas*word) . IMO we are entitled to know what was in the emails. It certainly did not change my vote nor did it change the vote of anyone I know. ..."
"... I think both Clinton and Trump would be terrible presidents but it has been obvious since she lost that Hillary is unable to accept this to the point of mental illness. First she tried to have her proxies do some damage and when that did not work, she counters with this. ..."
"... The anti-Trump tapes . And the one with former Miss Universe – is she an American now? Do you call that 'foreign' intervention? "Former Miss Universe tries to steal election for HIllary!!!" ..."
Hillary: " Where is Steiner?!?!?!? " I don't envy whoever's gonna have to take her aside
and tell her it's really over. Poor Bill
If you boil down what Clinton and the Clintonites are saying, Putin stole the election from her,
and Trump is a Russian agent of influence. The first is a casus belli , and the second is
treason. The first demands a response at the very least of recalling our Ambassador from Moscow.
That hasn't happened, which tells you that the people responsible for such things (Obama) don't take
Clinton's casus belli seriously. The second calls for a solution "by any means necessary"
(exactly as Clinton's previous claim, that Trump is a fascist, does).
"By any means necessary" would include anything from a
von Stauffenberg solution
(no doubt the CIA has a wet team) all the way up to a coup. (This last is hard to imagine, since
a coup demands occupying physical space with armed force. Who could Clinton call on?)
So what the Clintonites have settled on is trying get the Electoral College to reverse the election.
I can't imagine this coming to anything, since the majority of the electors - since Trump won the
election - are Republicans
If I were a Trump voter, and a bunch of electors, on data that is this uncertain, and which
even if it is true amounts to "telling the truth about Hillary and Democrats" were to give the
election to Clinton I would be furious.
I would consider it a violation of democratic norms: an overturning of a valid election result
because elites didn't like the result.
And while I'm not saying they should, or I would (nor that I wouldn't), many will feel that
if the ballot box is not respected, then violence is the only solution.
If faithless electors give the election to Clinton, there will be a LOT of violence as a result,
and there might even be a civil war.
Ian is Canadian; then again, installing Clinton in office by retroactively changing the
election rules is a "cross the Rubicon" moment. At least in Maine, I wouldn't picture a Civil War,
but I would picture shattered windows in every Democrat headquarters in the state, and then we'd
go on from there. Welsh concludes:
This is where Nazi/Fascist/Hitler/Camps rhetoric leaves you. Nothing is off the table.
Either decide you mean it, or calm down and take shit off the table that is going to get a
lot of people dead if you pull it off.
Exactly.
"CIA admits it broke into Senate computers; senators call for spy chief's ouster" [
McClatchy (Re Silc)]. Fooled ya! From 2013. I'm so old I remember when anonymous CIA soruces
weren't always revered as truth-tellers.
What is ALREADY going on with Trump, Dems, Russia is fascinating – and he is NOT EVEN SWORN
in yet!!! WOW! The war mongers are REALLY panicking . Anti commie – its the new politically correct
viewpoint .
Yes, there is something weird going on with these stories that the CIA appears to be spreading.
MOA is saying the MSN is falsely reporting China is flying nukes it doesn't have in planes all
over the place. Just a guess but bet this too comes from CIA
China threatening us with nukes and Russia stealing our elections. The fake news B.S. quotient
is off the richter scale. Makes you yearn for the good old days when all we had to worry about
was WMD in Iraq.
except Putin & his dominant party in the Russian gov are not Commie, Putin is a right-wing
authoritarian. I suppose Putin, Trump, & HClinton could each be labeled within the right-wing
authoritarian category.
politicalcompass certaintly categorized HClinton & Trump as right-wing authoritarian, & HClinton
was closer to Trump on the graph, than she was to Sanders (left-wing libertarian)
I'd expect this 'reds under the bed' fear mongering from Fox News, not from WaPo. Guess the
Wapo is to the Dems what Fox News is to the GOP. Clarifying election, indeed.
Really? Check out where Saints Jack and Bobby were during the red scare craze of the 50's.
Freedom of speech wasn't their pet project. I know but "Dallas 1963", but there whereabouts in
the 1950's aren't the product of conspiracy theory. For the fetishists, their red hunter status
has to be ignored. Bobby was a full fledged inquisitor for McCarthy.
The Dems are throwing on the golden oldies in an attempt to relive the glory of the past.
what drives me crazy about the Russian hacking conspiracy theory is that there actually WAS
a conspiracy to steal the 2016 election, as carefully documented by Greg Palast and Brad Friedman.
It consisted of the crosscheck purge of the voting rolls, voter suppression and vapour voting
machines. That no Democrat is talking about this tells me that the party is done for.
Good points, and yes, that ticks me off as well. The D Party continues to sit on their thumbs
and do bupkiss about real voting issues while issuing Red Scare Menace 3.0.
Why bother voting Democratic? They're not going to do one blasted thing for the proles. They
haven't for years and years.
Republicans have an agenda. It's terrible but they have one. Democrats represent rule by
the professional class, including bankers. That's it. Publicly, they're for rainbows, good things
and bringing people together.
Yes, the tin foil hat theory is that this all stems from the situation in Syria The CIA's aka
HRC"s Syria regime change is a failure. The CIA had high hopes, now dashed. The only chance for
war with Russia is to get HRC installed. The recount failed. So, Plan B.
There is a politico article from the wake of the 2014 disaster where elite Dems promised Hillary
would save them. An incredible amount of money, time, and reputations was put behind a loser,
not just a loser but a person who lost to Donald Trump. Anyone who donated any thing to the Clinton
effort should be crazy about Clinton Inc's conduct, so Clinton Inc needs to blame everyone but
themselves.
Let's just say for the sake of argument that the CIA and the Democrats have massively overplayed
their hand in these accusations against Russia. I suspect it wouldn't take all that much to bring
it all down like a house of cards, with a major scandal ensuing in its wake. Let's say that the
anonymous CIA source, assuming it was legit, has badly misrepresented what evidence, circumstantial
or otherwise, is there. They're "all-in" on this now. People will have to resign or get fired
within these organizations after Trump takes over because of this, wouldn't they? If their careers
are on the line, who knows what they'll resort to in order to save their own skins? Maybe this
play at flipping the Electoral College was the game all along.
The Clintons were abysmal candidates before emails were uttered. Hillary significantly under
performed Gore in 2000 in New York by a significant margin despite a candidate too extreme for
Peter King.
Every doubt about Hillary's electability was based in fact and OBVIOUS to anyone who spent
more than half a second taking the election seriously. Every Hillary primary voter who isn't a
already spectacular crook failed as citizens by putting forth a clown such a Hillary. There are
no ways around this.
Hillary just lost to Donald Trump because "liberals" are too childish to take politics seriously,
even her centrist supporters should have seen she is a clod. Of course, most centrists would stop
being centrists if they possessed critical thinking skills.
This is no less than trying to latch onto something that excuses their failures as citizens
and human beings.
Several of my Democratic friends are simultaneously convinced that Trump is a Russian stooge
and outraged that he won't listen to his daily national security briefings.
In light of the risible 'fake news' meme and NC's invocation of media related laws, here's
a reminder of another law you may find useful –
Sturgeon's Law .
Sci fi writer Theodore Sturgeon was told by a critic that 90% of scifi was crap and he retorted
that 90% of everything was crap. You just need to know how to find the good stuff.
Seems like this fake 'fake news' news (c) 2016 is primed to blow up right in the face
of entities like The Times, as more and more people see that half of what they purvey
as news is as likely to be B.S. as anything coming from an alternative, or even fringe website.
What's more is that they are driving the point home that their news stories can't
be trusted, with the very same 'fake news' story they are trying to use to emphasize how comparatively
real their news is. The irony levels are off the scale. It's uncharted territory.
In order to accept this is any kind of deal ( I do not support Trump nor did I vote for him)
there are so many hidden premises you have to accept it is laughable
First let's assume that Putin himself donned a Mr Robot Hoodie and hacked the server and printed
the emails and gave them to Assange who was sitting next to him.
SO WHAT?
Is the American public so gullible? Was that somehow unfair?
No. First, access was granted by .. Hillary and Podesta and their own idiocy ( her with the
server, him with the pas*word) . IMO we are entitled to know what was in the emails. It certainly
did not change my vote nor did it change the vote of anyone I know.
It's not like all the anti-Trump tapes etc were not strategically timed to influence the election.
IS it OK if Americans do it?
Second, all they could do with Trump was run past business stuff. He did not have a public
policy record to reveal the man was not in government service.. she was. My view is that if the
public was so influenced by the emails, which had some absolutely appalling details, none of which
were forged, then they were entitled to be ,even if Hitler himself had done the hacking.
It is disheartening that , less than a month after the NYT said maybe we were biased and we
promise to be more careful they are again acting as propagandists and not pointing out all the
absurd hidden premises that must be accepted to manufacture an issue. I am still waiting for the
Times report on her "fake news" that she was under fire- obviously a story designed to influence
primary voters.
I think both Clinton and Trump would be terrible presidents but it has been obvious since she
lost that Hillary is unable to accept this to the point of mental illness. First she tried to
have her proxies do some damage and when that did not work, she counters with this.
I never recall anyone saying that the Democratic party has an absolute right to control the
flow of information in the world. AS much as i despise Trump and his stone age cabinet, I am starting
to think he is less pathological about this than her. Perhaps if this latest gambit fails she
will go the way of Lady Macbeth,
The anti-Trump tapes . And the one with former Miss Universe – is she an American now? Do you call that 'foreign'
intervention? "Former Miss Universe tries to steal election for HIllary!!!"
Beverly,
=== quote ===
Just the fact that Trump has now said he thinks the CIA's cyber forensics team is the same group that tries to determine the
nuclear capacity of other countries is itself scary–and revealing. He doesn't recognize and obvious distinctions even about
incredibly important things, doesn't understand the concept of expertise, and can't distinguish between important and unimportant
things.
=== end of quote ===
Two points:
1. After Iraq WMD false claim CIA as agency had lost a large part of its credibility, because it is clear that it had succumbed
to political pressure and became just a pocket tool in the dirty neocon political games. At this time the pressure was from
neocons in Bush administration. Don't you think that it is possible that this is the case now too ?
2. It's not the job of CIA to determine who and how hacked DNC computers or any other computers in the USA. CIA mandate
is limited to foreign intelligence and intelligence aggregation and analysis. It is job of FBI and NSA, especially the latter,
as only NSA has technical means to trace from where really the attack had come, if it was an attack.
So any CIA involvement here is slightly suspect and might point to some internal conflicts within Obama administration.
It is unclear why Obama had chosen CIA Also as CIA and State Department are closely linked as CIA operatives usually use diplomatic
cover that request looks a little bit disingenuous as Hillary used to work for State Department. In this case one of the explanation
might be that it can be attributed to the desire to create a smoke screen and shield Clintons from pressure by rank-and-file
Hillary supporter (and donors) to explain the devastating defeat in electoral college votes against rather weak, really amateur
opponent.
"... Multiple CIA sources are now denouncing the Washington Post for knowingly reporting misleading national security intelligence. Intelligence insiders said no one in the Agency or in the FBI, who is running at least one parallel inquiry, has ruled out a possible internal leak within the Democratic National Committee from actor(s) inside the United States who funneled private DNC emails to WikiLeaks. ..."
Apparently CIA has finally figured out that their asses are toast. CIA has fed a constant stream
of half truths and outright rabrications to US MSM and are now turning on WaPo. CIA also has killer
drones and military powers they have no right to exercise. Apparently the rats are turning on each
other. Let the trials and subsequent executions begin.
LONG LIVE THE REPUBLIC
However, the FBI reported they did not find evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the Russian
Government did such a thing. The POST reported that a secret CIA report had been presented to lawmakers
on Capitol Hill allegedly saying there was information linking Russia to the election hackings in
favor of President-elect Trump.
Now, the CIA is saying the POST got it wrong in fact, they allegedly lied. At this point I think
the whole thing is a mess, and I don't see how the American people can decipher the "real" news from
the "fake" news.
Multiple CIA sources are now denouncing the Washington Post for knowingly reporting misleading
national security intelligence. Intelligence insiders said no one in the Agency or in the FBI, who
is running at least one parallel inquiry, has ruled out a possible internal leak within the Democratic
National Committee from actor(s) inside the United States who funneled private DNC emails to WikiLeaks.
Worth noting that Ukrainian associations have been deeply embedded in most large US cities
since the early 1950s. Not unlike the AIPAC propaganda wing that pulls the strings in the
US government.
And having a KNOWN perjurer (James Clapper) presiding over this farce
of an "investigation" is just the icing on the cake.
"Senator Wyden
then asked Clapper, "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on
millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" He responded "No,
sir." Wyden asked "It does not?" and Clapper said "Not wittingly.
There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but
not wittingly."
Then it was revealed by Edward Snowden that, why yes, in fact the
NSA does collect data on HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE HERE IN
AMERICA (probably all) and not "unwittlingly"...on fucking
purpose...snaring both Obama and Clapper in their fabricated stories
otherwise known as lies.
Clapper perjured himself before Congress,
a felony.
The next month, a Senate subcommittee launched an investigation
and found no proof of any subversive activity. Moreover, many of
McCarthy's Democratic and Republican colleagues, including
President Dwight Eisenhower, disapproved of his tactics ("I will
not get into the gutter with this guy," the president told his
aides). Still, the senator continued his so-called Red-baiting
campaign. In 1953, at the beginning of his second term as
senator, McCarthy was put in charge of the Committee on
Government Operations, which allowed him to launch even more
expansive investigations of the alleged communist infiltration
of the federal government. In hearing after hearing, he
aggressively interrogated witnesses in what many came to
perceive as a blatant violation of their civil rights. Despite a
lack of any proof of subversion, more than 2,000 government
employees lost their jobs as a result of McCarthy's
investigations.
"Have you no sense of decency, sir?"
In April 1954, Senator McCarthy turned his attention to
"exposing" the supposed communist infiltration of the armed
services. Many people had been willing to overlook their
discomfort with McCarthyism during the senator's campaign
against government employees and others they saw as "elites";
now, however, their support began to wane. Almost at once, the
aura of invulnerability that had surrounded McCarthy for nearly
five years began to disappear. First, the Army undermined the
senator's credibility by showing evidence that he had tried to
win preferential treatment for his aides when they were drafted.
Then came the fatal blow: the decision to broadcast the
"Army-McCarthy" hearings on national television. The American
people watched as McCarthy intimidated witnesses and offered
evasive responses when questioned. When he attacked a young Army
lawyer, the Army's chief counsel thundered, "Have you no sense
of decency, sir?" The Army-McCarthy hearings struck many
observers as a shameful moment in American politics.
The Fall of Joseph McCarthy
By the time the hearings were over, McCarthy had lost most of
his allies. The Senate voted to condemn him for his
"inexcusable," "reprehensible," "vulgar and insulting" conduct
"unbecoming a senator." He kept his job but lost his power, and
died in 1957 at the age of 48.
"... The authenticity of the content of the hacked/leaked emails were never in doubt. Several DNC lackeys, including the chair of the democratic national committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, were fired on the grounds of bias, fraud and even conspiracy to commit criminal acts. ..."
"... Their desperation makes them very dangerous, especially while still ostensibly in charge of many elements of gov't and, of course, the entrenched MSM. ..."
"... So can we now accept that the Russians hacked Hillarys server? Seems before the election, the Demorats kept trying to deny it happened. ..."
"... What about the DHS trying to Hack the Georgia Election Computer System? ..."
"... Not just gossip, an un-named official (not an official statement by the department head) stating with "confidence" (not evidence), off the record but reported in every major fish-wrap, that Russian hackers were interfered in our elections, AND inferring that they knew the motives/intentions behind this conjured crime. ..."
"... If there were ANY evidence, the Dems would have paraded it out in front of us loudly and proudly the second they found it. Instead, they prefer making jacka$$es out of themselves (and our country) with innuendo-based trial balloons, as everyone in the world capable of critical thinking laughs at them (us). ..."
"... So we are still "shooting the messenger"? Nobody wants to discuss the content of the Podesta emails, even though they have not been discredited in any way. ..."
Russians did not affect my votes against HRC. HRC did: Whitewater. Mena. Foster. Waco. OKC.
Ruby Ridge. Her continuing career and liberty is proof of a Conspiracy.
Gucifer said, that it was open. The sysadmin said, that it was unmodified Windows business
suite server.
Who needs more to get in, as a standard MS product? I am convinced every intelligence
agency on this earth (yes, Zimbabwian agency as well), has a copy of all emails there.
The authenticity of the content of the hacked/leaked emails were never in doubt. Several
DNC lackeys, including the chair of the democratic national committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz,
were fired on the grounds of bias, fraud and even conspiracy to commit criminal acts.
Hillary Clinton herself can be indicted on lying under oath to Congress, conspiracy to commit
criminal acts (Paying agitators to assault the supporters of her opponents), election fraud (See
Veritas), contravening the Federal Records Act, Improper handling of classified documents, and
I won't even go into Pizzagate, Saudi funding and the Clinton Foundation, or I'll be here typing
all night.
Where it gets interesting (actually vomit-inducing disgusting), just as Julian Assange alluded,
is inside the Podesta emails that colludes with Huma Abedin's dirty laundry on her/Weiner's laptop.
The missing (deleted) emails, the references to paedophile activities and snippets of pay-for-play
inside the Clinton Foundation. These are not just embarrassing or technicalities that can be woven
into excuses, but information that could bring hanging back as the ultimate form of justice for
the perpetrators.
So, these cretins are doing what they glanced at in The Art of War: That the best defense is
offence. They are going all out full retard to save their lives using every asset they have in
the msm, intelligence, politics and oligarchy.
Look how fast they moved with H.R.6393 to criminalize alternative news. To discredit the leaked
information, to discredit the source, to attack anyone who publishes or mentions them. They will
not stop because they cannot stop. This isn't a subsidy for the failing msm, that's a bonus, this
is a fight for their existence because they have committed crimes that not a single decent person
in the world can abide. It is so horrific, I still have trouble with believing it, but the circumstantial
evidence is overwhelming.
Where this will lead is obvious -- a distraction first from the content of the leaks, false
accusations and attacks on Russia and anyone who talks about it, leading to the biggest false
accusation of all: Trump as a (willing or unwilling) foreign agent which amounts to treason and
therefore unfit to be president. Bring the hammer down on the stock market at the same time and
we have a conflagration erupting from the already boiling cauldron of American society. Too much
conjecture? Maybe.
No, you articulated what I was alluding to a few posts above (I posted before reading yours).
Their desperation makes them very dangerous, especially while still ostensibly in charge of
many elements of gov't and, of course, the entrenched MSM.
They'll create the crisis they vow to not let go to waste. Any excuse to seize ultimate
power.
No, I can't accept that the Russian's hacked Hillary's server. Not until I see some evidence.
Just repeating the same gossip a million times is not providing evidence.
Not just gossip, an un-named official (not an official statement by the department head) stating
with "confidence" (not evidence), off the record but reported in every major fish-wrap, that Russian
hackers were interfered in our elections, AND inferring that they knew the motives/intentions
behind this conjured crime.
If there were ANY evidence, the Dems would have paraded it out in front of us loudly and
proudly the second they found it. Instead, they prefer making jacka$$es out of themselves
(and our country) with innuendo-based trial balloons, as everyone in the world capable of critical
thinking laughs at them (us).
This tactic is so brutally transparent that I really fear what they are really up to......or
maybe they are this stupid?
So we are still "shooting the messenger"? Nobody wants to discuss the content of the Podesta
emails, even though they have not been discredited in any way. Classic divert and deflect
tactics which a Libtard MSM enjoys being a part of.
They probably forgot about Snowden revelation way too soon...
Either Russian intelligence officials have suddenly become extremely efficient at disrupting national
elections in the world's largest democracies or the establishment leaders of those democracies have
intentionally launched a coordinated, baseless witch hunt as a way to distract voters from their
failed policies. We have our suspicions on which is more likely closer to the truth...
Either way, per Reuters
, Germany's domestic intelligence agency is reporting a "striking increase" in Russian propaganda
and disinformation campaigns aimed at destabilizing German society, and targeted cyber attacks against
political parties.
"We see aggressive and increased cyber spying and cyber operations that could potentially endanger
German government officials, members of parliament and employees of democratic parties," Hans-Georg
Maassen, head of the BfV spy agency, said in statement.
Maassen, who raised similar concerns about Russian efforts to interfere in German elections
last month, cited what he called increasing evidence about such efforts and said further cyber
attacks were expected.
The agency said it had seen a wide variety of Russian propaganda tools and "enormous use of
financial resources" to carry out "disinformation" campaigns aimed at the Russian-speaking community
in Germany, political movements, parties and other decision makers.
The goal was to spread uncertainty, strengthen extremist groups and parties, complicate the
work of the federal government and "weaken or destabilise the Federal Republic of Germany".
Like accusations made by Hillary and Obama in the U.S., German politicians, including Chancellor
Angela Merkel, have asserted that Russian intelligence agents and media outlets have attempted to
spread "fake news" in an effort to "fan popular angst over issues like the migrant crisis." Of course,
it can't simply be that voters disagree with Merkel's "open border" policies which have resulted
in a massive influx of migrants that have been linked to increasing crime, terrorist attacks and
sexual assaults on German citizens...that would just be silly and racist and xenophobic.
German officials have accused Moscow of trying to manipulate German media to fan popular angst
over issues like the migrant crisis , weaken voter trust and breed dissent within the European
Union so that it drops sanctions against Moscow.
But intelligence officials have stepped up their warnings in recent weeks, alarmed about the
number of attacks.
Last month, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she could not rule out Russia interfering
in Germany's 2017 election through Internet attacks and misinformation campaigns.
Estonian Foreign Minister Sven Mikser on Thursday said he expected Russia to continue a campaign
of "psychological warfare" and spreading false information after the cyber attacks launched during
the U.S. election.
"It's a pretty safe bet that they will try to do it again," he told Reuters in Hamburg at a
meeting of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. "They will try to surprise
us. That's something that we should be very careful to look at and try to protect ourselves from."
While we have absolutely no doubt in Merkel and Obama's assertions that Russia has been able to
successfully sabotage national elections, it is curious that, in the U.S., Russian efforts were only
successful in certain states where voters had been disproportionately hurt by past Clinton policies
(e.g. WI, MI, PA, OH) but not in other swing states like Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado.
Exactly. The whole Putin did it narrative in the MSM is government propaganda. Nato bullshit Deep
State military industrial complex trying very hard to get the Sheeple to believe in their leaders.....
The biggest defeat for globalists would be that Europe will start looking east, towards Russia,
instead of West. Follow the money for these German politicians: bet the "Open Society Foundation"
from George Soros will be mentioned regularly.
The world would be a better place if Russia actualy did all the things they have been accused
of instead of the CIA and Germany making all this shit up.
One thing is for certain the NWO was working on Russia at the time of the election, which Clinton
was meant to be a guaranteed winner - expcept the Soros-Neocon-Clinton-DNC cabal totally fucked
up their rigging, not realising how popular Trump actually was.
NOW they are in total fucking panic trying to think of ways to get Trump out.
These neocon fucktard New World Order proponents were trying to corner Russia, remove Putin
and make Russia kow tow to the NWO and accept their new overlords. EXCEPT it was and is a total
fucking stupid idea because the result would have been nuclear war - Russia would never ever bend
to the USA and the NWO - they were totally dreaming if they believed that. And the result would
have been a military alliance between China and Russia - with Europe and the USA and Russia in
ashes.
The world dodge a nuclear bullet when Trump won. So now, having failed to overturn the
election through Stein recounts and rigging (the judges wouldn't play along) they have to go the
whole demonise Russia thing, as was their original plan. And they want to push it fast before
the EU breaks up, as the sheeple wake the fuck up to these neocon Oligarch overlords.
My bet is a major False Flag attack somewhere outrageous blamed on Russia.
These fucking neocons like Soros, Israel, Germany, Clintons and all their backers and cabal
either are totally stupid or just don't give a fuck, knowing that nuclear war is a real possibility
- AND that the USA CANNOT defend itself against nuclear attack , despite all the wankery about
their defense systems.
So these people know there is a chance of laying waste to the USA - and they don't care, it
is worth it for their NWO.
Considering that the Russians are Hollywood's favorite general purpose villains (as opposed to
the practitioners of the religion of peace, or Mexican criminals), this is hardly unexpected,
dontcha think?
last week I read that the german government was aware of the NSA spying at least since 2001. No
outrage here. Outrage only occurs if you don't have any evidence, and it's the russians. Do you
know how most of german elections are held? Paper ballots, ID-cards and lists of citizens who
are elligible to vote. There's definitely some hacking possible... Hate your politicians,
often!
Not only did they know that the NSA spied on the German government -including Merkel's mobile-
the German BND along with the NSA spied on the rest of Europe: policitians, EU officials and European
businesses.
While I will agree that if you knew where to look, in a basic fashion, everything he brought
to light was already known or knowable, at least.
The thing Snowden did was brought all the pieces together, stole the graphics (great visualizing
tools), program names and working details and evidence that these things are all possible and
on-line. ..... He brought the story together and made it very public. .........
Not something that Boos Hamilton, the CIA or the NSA would have wanted. ..
well, whatever you might think about Russian influence in the US...
... Russian influence on and in Germany (and all other european countries) is a quite different
affair. one little factoid: the so called "Russlands-Deutsche"( * ), i.e. "Russian-Germans" number
somewhere between two and three million , in Germany. we are talking here about at least one million
that speaks Russian better then German, and reads/watches Russian News
here, on this continent, we are btw somewhat used to external influences, be them Russian or
US ones
I forecasted to "Haus" some years ago that eventually the German political "status-quo" would
start to point out the Russian influence on "Alternative für Deutschland". That moment is nearly
there
again: US Americans might be somewhat confused about foreign influences on their political
matters
here , it has been a reality during the whole of the Cold War and after, from both the US and
Russia
just some examples:
the reports over the last years about the German parliament being spied upon and hacked by
both the CIA and the Russian intelligence services are completely plausible. Merkel was holding
up her phone... and alleged that the CIA was spying on her. again, very plausible
the EU org in Brussels was hacked/spied upon by the British intelligence services, too. again,
very plausible. indeed, now that the Brexit talks begin in a confrontational manner... there are
even more reasons for the British GCHQ to spy on Brussels
They are caled "Spaetaussiedler" Ghordius. There are about the same number of Turks in Germany.
It is true the prison population of Germany is largely Serbs, Turks, Spaetaussiedler and New Arrivals.
I hear Russian but after having millions of Russian soldiers in Germany since 1945 and huge
Russian influence back into the 18th Century that is not unusual. You can get Tax Forms in Russian
but not English.
Berlin always was the capital of the East never of the West which Adenauer cleverly placed
on the Rhine rather than the Spree. Berlin has always had to consider Russia because ONLY in the
years 1919-1939 and 1990-2016 has Germany NOT shared a border with Russia in the past 250 years.
It is German Aggression that twice brought Russian troops to Berlin
Sandmann, as often, you try to "soften the blow" of my message with some tidbits that are often
completely irrelevant
they don't call themselves "Spätaussiedler". They call themselves Russlands-Deutsche, i.e.
Russian-Germans
their prison population is irrelevant, here. their right to vote in the German election is
they read Russian News, they watch RT in Russian, they hold up signs like "Putin save us",
and they are quite confused, to boot, and pawns in this "game"
some Germans, when they arrived, made jokes that some of those Russian-Germans hardly qualified
to "Germanness", up to saying things like "all families that in the 19th Century had once a German
Shephard as pet". but this is too, irrelevant
fact is that their numbers are substantial. fact is that they are influenced by their media
consumption from Russia. fact is that they were used to see Putin and Merkel as good friends...
until they weren't anymore, and since then they are bombarded with news how Merkel is the source
of all evils, in Europe
fact is also that the political establishments in Germany were, up to now, not that fond to
tell them anything that would make them too confused because... they are voters, too. and in a
political setup like Germany's, you don't tell hard truths to voters, and you don't insult them
as dupes
nevertheless, fact is that Russian (and US, note) influence on Germany's politics is substantial,
including that on the Russlands-Deutsche in Germany
I don't think anyone is denying the fact that Germany has become a playball of foreign powers
ever since it lost WW1, yes the first, not the second one was already desicive in that.
Now, no matter how many German-Russians there are in Germany they are still citizens of your
country, else they would not have been allowed to come back. The question for Germany needs to
be looking ahead into the future, become aware that it is dependent or even controlled by other
greater powers, a status it lost, one century ago. Its citizens should start to raise the question
which side is better for us, should we work more closely with continental Russia, with all its
ressources and land? Or should we work closer with martim ZATO? What has that relationship really
done for us, what have we truly benefitted from it?
Once there is a serious discussion going on about it, Germans will surely never support an
atlantcist such as Merkel. For the time being, I'm glad there are German-Russians at least one
branch of German society that is keenly aware of the dire situation your country is in.
" no matter how many German-Russians there are in Germany they are still citizens of your country,
else they would not have been allowed to come back "
do you live in some alternate reality planet? check yourself on this your assumption
we are talking about Russian citizens that were granted German citizenship when arriving in
Germany because of their German ancestry
the "Return of the Russian-Germans" to Germany has gone on since before and after WWI, and
the only thing that stopped it for a while was the Iron Curtain
nevertheless, it was a German policy to grant them citizenship on arrival
and no, your "Merkel the Atlanticist" is a tad... extreme. it's not about Russia or "ZATO",
here
Right, else they would not have been granted citizenship, I don't see why we should disagree on
that subject.
Regarding Merkel is not an Atlanticist, I would like a bit more of an argument just calling
it extreme but not providing information as to why is not making your argument very strong. I
have plenty of reasons to believe she is: "Allowing nuclear weaopns to be stationed in Germany
against the will of the Bundestag, not being the slightest bit affected by the NSA spying scandal,
supporting sanctions to Russia that hurt German business much more than British or American...the
list goes on and on."
samjam7, do you ever check on what you believe ? let's take only this: " (Merkel) allowing nuclear
weapons to be stationed in Germany against the will of the Bundestag "
just googled it. already in the second hit I get this:
" The Bundestag decided in March 2010 by a large majority, that the federal government should
'press for the withdrawal of US nuclear weapons from Germany.' Even the coalition agreement between
the CDU and FDP, the German government in 2009 had promised the withdrawal of nuclear weapons
from Büchel. "
that's the German Bundestag pressing/instructing the German executive to "do something" in
that direction, yes
that's not the German Bundestag doing a law , which is the very thing it could do, being a
lawgiver
saying "the will of the Bundestag" in this is just that: propaganda. and you fell for it
the true will of the Bundestag is expressed in law. the rest is "please, try to...", so that
your "Merkel is going against the will of..." is just... stretching the truth
in the same way, there is a substantial difference between welcoming citizens of other countries
because of their ancestry and granting them citizenship versus: "they already had that German
citizenship"
Where in the above statement did I talk of law? You Germans always need everything 'schwarz auf
weiss' or its wrong....
I spoke of will and to be honest even your quote that you thankfully looked up, proofs without
any doubt that the parliament had a will, namely not to station more nuclear weapons in Büchel.
Now that the Bundestag doesn't fight with Merkel over it 'i.e. pass a law' is related to the political
system of Germany and that its major parties are co-opted and prefer to nod off Merkel's politics
than resist it. Also it is highly questionable whether the German Parliament has the authority
to decide on these matters, as it delves into the grey area of who actually decides what kind
of troops are stationed in Germany, Merkel or the US/UK?
To call that Propaganda though is unwarranted and rather weak, or how more clearly can a Parliament
demonstrate its will?
"... William Casey (CIA Director), "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false."? ..."
"... if an organization has lost trust of national security affairs it should be DISBANDED ..."
"... ...so why did Debbie Wassername-Schultz resign if the hacks were untrue about her non-neutrality toward Bernie Marx in favor of Hillary Crony? Is this not a usurpation of the peoples will and an affront to "democracy" everywhere? ..."
"... How is it that a "charity" is only a "charity" as long as the people running this "charity" remain in power? Everyone suddenly becomes "less charitable" because she lost? Why is that? Can't they say cronyism and be done with it? ..."
"... The entire story is based on a leak from Senate Staff on SSCI alleging what they were told in a briefing by CIMC. What SSCI was told is that there is no evidence of who was the hacker. Because Russia is one of many possibilities, somebody on SSCI who leaked to WaPo concluded for himself that the hacker was Russia. That is not what they were told. The vitriol should be directed toward WaPo and their Senate SSCI source. ..."
"... As the Obama Administration falls apart, expect the various players to begin to look out for themselves. ..."
"... Obama is hanging everyone out to dry in the futile attempt to save his own 'legacy'. ..."
"... Truman signed its charter. The original intent was to assemble and study Information, period. Truman later remarked he would never have done so had he known it would go amok. Instead, it became a weapon of the Deep State. It is now a direct threat to the American Republic. ..."
"... Ah, yes. The CIA The folks who claimed that Sony was hacked by North Korea, when a private security firm was able to directly finger the disgruntled ex-employees responsible. ..."
"... The CIA is run by neocons, who are upset that their stooge Hillary lost the election and Trump, the elected President-to-be, is making a direct pivot towards accomodation with their arch-enemy Vladimir Putin. ..."
"... Meanwhile, the receivers of the DNC leaks know who they got the information from, and swear publicly that that also was an inside leak. But if it were an inside leak, then it couldn't call the results of the election into question. Only interference by a Foreign Power can do that. ..."
"... Same for the Nameless One. Does she want to admit that her own bureaucracy prefers that she not sit on the throne, or does she like the idea of blaming a sinister foreign entity for her loss? ..."
"... If the Russians did it, is Obama twisting the knife in the Clinton's back? The email leaks were a false flag attack against the Clintons perpetrated by Obama to remove them from the power matrix, and install himself as head of the Democrat party, free from their influence, and free to move that party in the direction he wants as it's defacto leader. ..."
"... John Swinton, Chief editorial writer of the New York Times from 1860 to 1870: "There is no such thing as a free press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who would dare to write his honest opinions. The business of the journalist is to destroy truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell himself, his country, and his race, for his daily bread. We are tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping jacks; they pull the strings, we dance; our talents, our possibilities, and our lives are the property of these men. We are intellectual prostitutes." ..."
"... Clinton's is a common defense of the CIA: namely, the American people should stop criticizing the CIA because they don't know what it really does. This, of course, is the heart of the problem in the first place. An agency that is above criticism is also above moral behavior and reform. Its secrecy and lack of accountability allows its corruption to grow unchecked. ..."
"... The CIA's response to this growing knowledge and criticism follows a typical historical pattern.(Indeed, there are remarkable parallels to the Medieval Church's fight against the Scientific Revolution.) The first journalists and writers to reveal the CIA's criminal behavior were harassed and censored if they were American writers, and tortured and murdered if they were foreigners. ..."
"... Another common apologetic is that "the world is filled with unsavory characters, and we must deal with them if we are to protect American interests at all." There are two things wrong with this. First, it ignores the fact that the CIA has regularly spurned alliances with defenders of democracy, free speech and human rights, preferring the company of military dictators and tyrants. ..."
"... Second, this argument begs several questions. The first is: " Which American interests?" The CIA has courted right-wing dictators because they allow wealthy Americans to exploit the country's cheap labor and resources. But poor and middle-class Americans pay the price whenever they fight the wars that stem from CIA actions, from Vietnam to the Gulf War to Panama. ..."
"... The other begged question is: "Why should American interests come at the expense of other peoples' human rights?" The CIA should be abolished, its leadership dismissed and its relevant members tried for crimes against humanity. ..."
"... Craig Murray: "[...] the mad CIA allegations against Russia and now claiming – incredibly – that the CIA believe the FBI is deliberately blocking the information on Russian collusion. " I wasn't aware of this CIA allegation against the FBI, it's quite astonishing. ..."
"... Craig Murray: "[...] this rubbish has been the lead today in the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. " No one should be surprised that The Guardian is up to its neck in publishing ... garbage ..."
A little simple logic demolishes the CIA's claims. The CIA claim they "know the individuals"
involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers,
and its pursuit of foreign hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the
most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power to destabilise a US election, even
though the CIA knows who the individuals are, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited, or
(if in Russia) made subject to yet more banking and other restrictions against Russian individuals?
Plainly it stinks.
The anonymous source claims of "We know who it was, it was the Russians" are beneath contempt.
The CIA has lots of evidence (both collected and manufactured) which is then misconstrued through
politiczed analysis and dissemination to serve their own and their primary customer's personal
interests.
Back during the Reagan administration, someone casually told me "We spend more on disinformaion
than we do on information" - I doubt things have changed that much since then.
Correct me if Im wrong; but i thought the law prohibits the CIA from operations and investigations
on home soil. That is the job for the FBI. Why is the CIA commenting on computer systems that
were hacked in the US of A? There are at least a dozen other agencies (just as worthless) that
this would fall under their jurisdiction.
If the Russians had anything to do with the hacked emails, which are only accusations, they
did the American people a great service by exposing the evil of the DNC, HRottenC and their
MSM minions, none of whom could care less about their ethics violations. They are only upset
because they were caught. Their supporters have been had by their own kind and their leaders
are now redirecting their exposure onto the Russians and Trump to keep their sheep misdirected
from the real problems, HRC and Obama.
we all know what happened to the boy who cried "wolf" when none were there... by the time there
actually _were_ wolves, no one believed him...
the CIA has lost the plot and cried "wolf" too many times for anyone to believe them anymore...
if an organization has lost trust of national security affairs it should be DISBANDED
Well it is a wide open "bear trap"...lol...(to use a metaphor) sitting there out in the open
un-camouflaged for everyone with two brain cells left in their heads to see...and at some point
someone is going to ask...
...so why did Debbie Wassername-Schultz resign if the hacks were untrue about her non-neutrality
toward Bernie Marx in favor of Hillary Crony? Is this not a usurpation of the peoples will
and an affront to "democracy" everywhere?
How is it that a "charity" is only a "charity" as long as the people running this "charity"
remain in power? Everyone suddenly becomes "less charitable" because she lost? Why is that?
Can't they say cronyism and be done with it?
Yezzz, let the progressive tears flow, they taste wonderful ;-)
The Brit Ambassador has the wrong target, because he was caught by Fake News.
The entire story is based on a leak from Senate Staff on SSCI alleging what they were
told in a briefing by CIMC. What SSCI was told is that there is no evidence of who was the
hacker. Because Russia is one of many possibilities, somebody on SSCI who leaked to WaPo concluded
for himself that the hacker was Russia. That is not what they were told. The vitriol should
be directed toward WaPo and their Senate SSCI source.
As the Obama Administration falls apart, expect the various players to begin to look
out for themselves. Do not be surprised if in the next few days, Brennan or someone else
at the agency sets the record straight and throws some 'shade' on WaPo and Obama.
Obama is hanging everyone out to dry in the futile attempt to save his own 'legacy'.
Whoever might have been a loyal soldier and who fell on his sword if requested to do so
is not going to do it anymore. Obama is a child who cannot accept that he has been an abject
failure, so he is getting desperate to create some false historical record.
I remember Zerohedge reporting on a meeting last year with US Senator McCain and Arab terrorists
that included photos . These terrorists were on the US most wanted list. Too bad
that Canadian reporter did not mention that.
I'd say this entire campaign is far too clunky and clumsy to be executed by the CIA
The CIA has done some incredibly evil shit in the past so I wouldn't put something like this
past them, however they are far more professional generally than this from my limited exposure
and what I've researched about activities of the agency.
The "CIA" has outlived its usefulness. It needs to be broken up and disbanded.
Truman signed its charter. The original intent was to assemble and study Information,
period. Truman later remarked he would never have done so had he known it would go amok. Instead,
it became a weapon of the Deep State. It is now a direct threat to the American Republic.
Our spy and security apparatus didn't defeat the Soviet Union's "evil empire" so much as it
emulated it, using Orwell and Huxley as roadmaps, rather than warnings.
Maybe it wasn't the Russians. Who else could it possibly be? Not the CIA! Not in good ol USA.
Maybe it was Aliens! After all the UK Mail thought as much with Kennedy. Or maybe Bush and
his clan are the Aliens. All I can say is Trump better never let the CIA instead of Secret
Service guard him and his motorcade!
The CIA Kennedy assassination theory is a prominent John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy
theory. The CIA's potential involvement was frequently mentioned during the 1960s and 1970s
when the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was involved in plots to assassinate foreign
leaders, particularly Fidel Castro.[1][2] According to author James Douglass, Kennedy was
assassinated because he was turning away from the Cold War and seeking a negotiated peace
with the Soviet Union.[3][4] Accusations and confessions of and by alleged conspirators,
as well as official government reports citing the CIA as uncooperative in investigations,
have at times renewed interest in these conspiracy theories.
Ah, yes. The CIA The folks who claimed that Sony was hacked by North Korea,
when a private security firm was able to directly finger the disgruntled ex-employees responsible.
Let's break this down some more. The CIA is run by neocons, who are upset that
their stooge Hillary lost the election and Trump, the elected President-to-be, is making a
direct pivot towards accomodation with their arch-enemy Vladimir Putin.
Meanwhile, the FBI is stacked with political employees and their career hirees installed
under GW Bush, and leans strongly against the Democrats, to the point of deliberately leaking
damaging evidence against the Democratic candidate the week before the election . . . granted
that there wouldn't have been any information to leak, if Hillary had followed the laws and
policies of her federal position.
Meanwhile, the receivers of the DNC leaks know who they got the information from, and
swear publicly that that also was an inside leak. But if it were an inside leak, then
it couldn't call the results of the election into question. Only interference by a Foreign
Power can do that.
But to the extent that the Russians DID lobby against Hillary, they did so completely openly.
If you read an article in Russia Today in favor of Trump or against Hillary, you can hardly
claim to be deceived.
The Russians are allowed to have an opinion; we can't stop that. What they aren't
allowed to do is to vote, or to contribute money to the candidates' campaigns (here we will
lightly skip over the millions donated to Hillary's campaign by Israeli dual citizens, the
Saudis, the Australians, Nigeria, VietNam, India, Haiti . . .).
What did you expect them to say? "Uh, yes, Mr. President, it was us, actually." Of course
they are going to point the finger elsewhere. Especially to someplace that cannot be pressured.
You would too, if placed in the same position. Same for the Nameless One. Does she
want to admit that her own bureaucracy prefers that she not sit on the throne, or does she
like the idea of blaming a sinister foreign entity for her loss?
And even if Russia did it, it's not like they made anything up. Come on, people. Realpolitik.
The CIA (Central Insanity Agency) IS the United States government. It controls all of the other
so-called independent intelligence agencies. Would the CIA lie to overturn the 2016 Presidential
elections? Well, the CIA are the very same people who: <
for decades have had hundreds of nationally and internationally prominent so-called
journalists on the CIA payroll and controlled the stories reported by Western Mainstream
Conporate News Media;
assassinated President John F. Kennedy because they were furious about the failure of
their insane Bay of Pigs fiasco, the peaceful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis, etc.,
etc., etc.;
faked the Gulf of Tonkin intelligence to get the United States Congress to pass the
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution giving the bloodthirsty Generals and Admirals and President Lyndon
B. Johnson the false flag incident to drastically escalate the Vietnam War–closely located
to the Golden Triangle's highly coveted rich heroin supplies–and all of the attendant decades
of lying about that war;
destabilized Afghanistan to encourage invasion by the Soviet Union;
created, supported and armed the Sunni Mujahideen, which morphed into Al Qaeda following
the Gulf War, to fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan;
encouraged President Jimmy Carter to admit the Shah of Iran to create the pretext for
decades of enmity between Iran and the United States and destroy Jimmy Carter's Presidency;
encouraged Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait to give President George H. W. Bush the pretext
to declare war on Iraq;
were behind the 9/11/2001 false flag attacks on the World Trade Center towers, and their
destruction with controlled explosives demolitions charges, and the Pentagon and then lied
that it was all an Al Qaeda plot;
lied about Al Qaeda's role in 9/11/2001 to justify the invasion of Afghanistan with
its highly coveted, rich poppy fields for heroin production;
lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify President George W. Bush's war
of aggression against Iraq;
created, finances, arms and supports ISIS;
plans and carries out false flag operations to influence public opinion;
lie about whatever whenever it suits their agenda;
controls the 'narratives' in the Feral gangster government's organs of state propaganda
(mainstream & social media and entertainment oligopoly);
And far, far more. But, I got tired of typing and I don't want to bore the readers. The
point being that they are ALL professional liars and the love of truth and the American Republic
is not in them.
Yes, of course the CIA would lie to overturn the 2016 Presidential elections.
If the Russians did it, is Obama twisting the knife in the Clinton's back?
The email leaks were a false flag attack against the Clintons perpetrated by Obama to remove
them from the power matrix, and install himself as head of the Democrat party, free from their
influence, and free to move that party in the direction he wants as it's defacto leader.
Blaming the leaks on the Russians gains obfuscation of Obama's chief foreign policy failure
as President.... drawing a red line, then failing to act when it was crossed, which signaled
to the world that he was an impudent little bitch that could be ignored in a world that understands
only one thiing..... strength.
John Swinton, Chief editorial writer of the New York Times from 1860 to 1870: "There
is no such thing as a free press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who would
dare to write his honest opinions. The business of the journalist is to destroy truth, to lie
outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell himself, his country,
and his race, for his daily bread. We are tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes.
We are jumping jacks; they pull the strings, we dance; our talents, our possibilities, and
our lives are the property of these men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
Clinton's is a common defense of the CIA: namely, the American people should stop criticizing
the CIA because they don't know what it really does. This, of course, is the heart of the problem
in the first place. An agency that is above criticism is also above moral behavior and reform.
Its secrecy and lack of accountability allows its corruption to grow unchecked.
Furthermore, Clinton's statement is simply untrue. The history of the agency is growing
painfully clear, especially with the declassification of historical CIA documents. We may not
know the details of specific operations, but we do know, quite well, the general behavior of
the CIA These facts began emerging nearly two decades ago at an ever-quickening pace. Today
we have a remarkably accurate and consistent picture, repeated in country after country, and
verified from countless different directions.
The CIA's response to this growing knowledge and criticism follows a typical historical
pattern.(Indeed, there are remarkable parallels to the Medieval Church's fight against the
Scientific Revolution.) The first journalists and writers to reveal the CIA's criminal behavior
were harassed and censored if they were American writers, and tortured and murdered if they
were foreigners.
However, over the last two decades the tide of evidence has become overwhelming, and the
CIA has found that it does not have enough fingers to plug every hole in the dike. This is
especially true in the age of the Internet, where information flows freely among millions of
people. Since censorship is impossible, the Agency must now defend itself with apologetics.
Clinton's "Americans will never know" defense is a prime example.
Another common apologetic is that "the world is filled with unsavory characters, and we must
deal with them if we are to protect American interests at all."
There are two things wrong with this. First, it ignores the fact that the CIA has regularly
spurned alliances with defenders of democracy, free speech and human rights, preferring the
company of military dictators and tyrants.
The CIA had moral options available to them, but did not take them.
Second, this argument begs several questions. The first is: " Which American interests?" The CIA has courted right-wing dictators because they allow wealthy Americans to exploit
the country's cheap labor and resources. But poor and middle-class Americans pay the price whenever they fight the wars that stem
from CIA actions, from Vietnam to the Gulf War to Panama.
The other begged question is: "Why should American interests come at the expense of other
peoples' human rights?" The CIA should be abolished, its leadership dismissed and its relevant members tried for
crimes against humanity.
Our intelligence community should be rebuilt from the ground up, with the goal of collecting
and analyzing information. As for covert action, there are two moral options.
The first one is to eliminate covert action completely. But this gives jitters to people worried about the Adolf Hitlers of the world. So a second
option is that we can place covert action under extensive and true democratic oversight. For example, a bipartisan Congressional Committee of 40 members could review and veto all
aspects of CIA operations upon a majority or super-majority vote.
Which of these two options is best may be the subject of debate, but one thing is clear:
like dictatorship, like monarchy, unaccountable covert operations should die like the dinosaurs
they are.
Craig Murray: "[...] the mad CIA allegations against Russia and now claiming – incredibly –
that the CIA believe the FBI is deliberately blocking the information on Russian collusion.
"
I wasn't aware of this CIA allegation against the FBI, it's quite astonishing.
The FBI and CIA are both utterly corrupt, as is every other faction of the Obola Administration
including the Marxist slimeball himself at the very top, but what we see here are factions
throwing allegations against each other.
Craig Murray: "[...] this rubbish has been the lead today in the Washington Post in the US
and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. "
No one should be surprised that The Guardian is up to its neck in publishing ... garbage
written by Jonathen Freedland. After all it's been "the progressive Left's" house newspaper
for years and is known as " The Grauniad " by dissenters.
What is truly bad is that the BBC are coming out of the closet and once again revealing
their own Left-wing Establishment bias by running fake news stories on its TV news channel.
"... President-elect Donald Trump, in an exclusive interview with " Fox News Sunday ," decried as "ridiculous" the CIA's reported assessment that Russia intervened in the election to boost his candidacy – describing the claim as another "excuse" pushed by Democrats to explain his upset victory. ..."
President-elect Donald Trump, in an exclusive interview with "
Fox News
Sunday ," decried as "ridiculous" the CIA's reported assessment that Russia intervened in
the election to boost his candidacy – describing the claim as another "excuse" pushed by Democrats
to explain his upset victory.
"It's just another excuse. I don't believe it," Trump said. " Every week it's another excuse.
We had a massive landslide victory, as you know, in the Electoral College."
Trump spoke with Fox News' Chris Wallace in the president-elect's first Sunday show interview
since winning the election.
"... If the CIA is actually stupid enough to believe this, the US is without a competent intelligence agency. Of course, the CIA didn't say and doesn't believe any such thing. The fake news stories in the presstitute media are all sourced to unnamed officials. Former British ambassador Craig Murray described the reports accurately: "bullshit." ..."
"... Fake news is the presstitute's product. Throughout the presidential primaries and presidential campaign it was completely clear that the mainstream print and TV media were producing endless fake news designed to damage Trump and to boost Hillary. We all saw it. We all lived through it. What is this pretense that Russia is the source of fake news? ..."
"... We have had nothing but fake news from the presstitutes since the Klingon regime. Fake news was used against Yugoslavia and Serbia in order to cloak the Clinton's war crimes. ..."
"... Ironic, isn't it, that it is those who purport to be liberal and progressive who are responsible for the revival of McCarthyism in America. Moreover, the liberal progressives are institutionalizing McCarthyism in the US government. There is clearly a concerted effort being made to define truth as fake news and to define lies as truth. ..."
Speaking of fake news, the latest issue of the National Enquirer at the supermarket checkout is
giving the mainstream presstitute media a run for the money: "Castro's Deathbed Confession: I Killed
JFK. How I framed Oswald."
That's almost as good as the fake news going around the presstitute media, such as the TV stations,
the Washington Post, New York Times, and Guardian-yes, even the former leftwing British newspaper
has joined the ranks of the press prostitutes-that the CIA has concluded that "Russian operatives
covertly interfered in the election campaign in an attempt to ensure the Republican candidate's victory."
If the CIA is actually stupid enough to believe this, the US is without a competent intelligence
agency. Of course, the CIA didn't say and doesn't believe any such thing. The fake news stories in
the presstitute media are all sourced to unnamed officials. Former British ambassador Craig Murray
described the reports accurately: "bullshit."
So who is making the stories up, another anonymous group tied to Hillary such as PropOrNot, the
secret, hidden organization that released a list of 200 websites that are Russian agents?
Fake news is the presstitute's product. Throughout the presidential primaries and presidential
campaign it was completely clear that the mainstream print and TV media were producing endless fake
news designed to damage Trump and to boost Hillary. We all saw it. We all lived through it. What
is this pretense that Russia is the source of fake news?
We have had nothing but fake news from the presstitutes since the Klingon regime. Fake news was
used against Yugoslavia and Serbia in order to cloak the Clinton's war crimes.
Fake news was used against Osama bin Laden, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia in
order to cloak the Bush regime's war crimes.
Fake news was used against Libya and Syria in order to cloak the Obama regime's war crimes.
Without fake news these three blood-drenched presidencies would have been hauled before the War
Crimes Commission, tried, and convicted.
Can anyone produce any truthful statement from the presstitute media about anything of importance?
MH-17? Crimea? Ukraine?
Ironic, isn't it, that it is those who purport to be liberal and progressive who are responsible
for the revival of McCarthyism in America. Moreover, the liberal progressives are institutionalizing
McCarthyism in the US government. There is clearly a concerted effort being made to define truth
as fake news and to define lies as truth.
"... As Pam Martens reports, another imbecile has now composed a list of 200 suspect professors who also dissent from the official bullshit fed to the American people. ..."
"... In an effort to regain control over Americans' minds, they are attempting to define dissenters and truth-tellers as "Russian agents." Why "Russian agents"? Because they hope that their fake news portrait of Russia as America's deadly enemy has taken hold and will result in the public turning away from those of us labeled "Russian agents." ..."
As Pam Martens reports, another imbecile has now composed a list of 200 suspect professors who also
dissent from the official bullshit fed to the American people.
The official government purveyors of fake news in the US and their presstitute agents are concerned
that they are losing control over the explanations given to the American people.
In an effort to regain control over Americans' minds, they are attempting to define dissenters and
truth-tellers as "Russian agents." Why "Russian agents"? Because they hope that their
fake news portrait of Russia as America's deadly enemy has taken hold and will result in the public
turning away from those of us labeled "Russian agents."
"... At the present moment, it is practically obligatory to slam Russia and Putin at every opportunity even though Moscow is too militarily weak and poor to fancy itself a global adversary of the U.S. ..."
"... Candidate Donald Trump appeared to recognize that fact before he began listening to Michael Flynn, who has a rather different view. Hopefully the old Trump will prevail. ..."
"... Blaming Russia, which has good reasons to be suspicious of Washington's intentions, is particularly convenient for those many diverse inside the Beltway interests that require a significant enemy to keep the cash flowing out of the pockets of taxpayers and into the bank accounts of the useless grifters who inhabit K-Street and Capitol Hill. ..."
...Does the name Judith Miller ring any bells? And the squeaks of rage coming from
the U.S. Congress over being lied to is also something to behold as the federal
government has been acting in collusion with the media to dish up falsehoods
designed to start wars since the time of the Spanish-American conflict in 1898,
if not before.
The fake news saga is intended to discredit Donald Trump, whom
the media hates mostly because they failed to understand either him or the
Americans who voted for him in the recent election. You have to blame somebody
when you are wrong so you invent "fake news" as the game changer that explains
your failure to comprehend simple truths. To accomplish that, the clearly
observable evidence that the media was piling on Donald Trump at every
opportunity has somehow been deliberately morphed into a narrative that it is
Trump who was
attacking the media, suggesting that it was all self-defense on the part of
the Rachel Maddows of this world, but anyone who viewed even a small portion of
the farrago surely will have noted that it was the Republican candidate who was
continuously coming under attack from both the right and left of the
political-media spectrum.
There are also some secondary narratives being promoted, including a
pervasive argument that Hillary Clinton was somehow the victim of the news
reporting due specifically to fake stories emanating largely from Moscow in an
attempt to not only influence the election but also to subvert
America's democratic institutions. I
have observed that if such a truly ridiculous objective were President
Vladimir Putin's desired goal he might as well relax. Our own Democratic and
Republican duopoly has already been doing a fine job at subverting democracy by
assiduously separating the American people from the elite Establishment that
theoretically represents and serves them.
Another side of the mainstream media lament that has been relatively
unexplored is what the media chooses not to report. At the present moment, it
is practically obligatory to slam Russia and Putin at every opportunity even
though Moscow is too militarily weak and poor to fancy itself a global
adversary of the U.S.
Instead of seeking a new Cold War, Washington should
instead focus on working with Russia to make sure that disagreements over
policies in relatively unimportant parts of the world do not escalate into
nuclear exchanges. Russian actions on its own doorstep in Eastern Europe do not
in fact threaten the United States or any actual vital interest. Nor does
Moscow threaten the U.S. through its intervention on behalf of the Syrian
government in the Middle East. That Russia is described incessantly as a threat
in those areas is largely a contrivance arranged by the media, the Democratic
and Republican National Committees and by the White House.
Candidate Donald
Trump appeared to recognize that fact before he began listening to Michael
Flynn, who has a rather different view. Hopefully the old Trump will prevail.
Blaming Russia, which has good reasons to be suspicious of Washington's
intentions, is particularly convenient for those many diverse inside the
Beltway interests that require a significant enemy to keep the cash flowing out
of the pockets of taxpayers and into the bank accounts of the useless grifters
who inhabit K-Street and Capitol Hill.
Neoconservatives are frequently
described as ideologues, but the truth is that they are more interested in
gaining increased access to money and power than they are in promulgating their
own brand of global regime change.
Russophobia/Putinophobia is as big as it is because it is a rare issue where the
mainstream right, the left and the political class all agree, albeit for different reasons. The
mainstream right is anti Russia because of the Cold War and Russia's support for Iran, Venezuela
and Cuba. The left hates Russia because of Pussy Riot, humiliating Obama and Merkel in the
Ukraine, Snowden, supporting anti immigrant politicians like Le Pen and Wilders, jailing/killing
pro Western Russian politicians, the gay stuff and especially for Trump. The political class
hates Russia simply because it is a rival to US power in Europe and the Middle East. Put all
three together, and you get a political consensus for Russophobia.
At the end of the day, however, Russophobia or even Putinophobia is a minority position in the
US; or else Trump wouldn't have been elected. And a huge chunk of the people who voted for
Hillary are blacks and hispanics, who don't give a rat's ass about Russia and probably couldn't
even find it on a map.
Before Pussy Riot/Ukraine/Snowden/Gays/Trump there was even a lot of sympathy in the US media for
victims of Chechen terrorism, especially after the Beslan school thing. As late as the 2012
election, Obama was mocking Mitt Romney's Russophobia.
"... There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton's corruption. Yet this rubbish has been the lead today in the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. I suspect it is leading the American broadcasts also. ..."
I have watched incredulous as the CIA's blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story – blatant
because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it.
There is no Russian involvement
in the leaks of emails showing Clinton's corruption. Yet this rubbish has been the lead today in
the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news.
I suspect it is leading the American broadcasts also.
Thanks for this– a much-needed Onion-esque satirical dig at the Globe/Post/NYT trifecta of
garbage. To base a headline on information gleaned from anonymous sources and unnamed officials
in secret meetings with unpublished agendas seems the most dangerous type of fake news there is.
The death of irony was greatly exaggerated, if you ask me.
Are we seeing a pattern here? Tillerson - a Putin counterpart and
recipient of Russia's Order of Friendship - to Moscow; Gov Branstad - farmin'
buddy of Premier Xi since the 1980s - to Beijing. And so forth.
Inside-the-Beltway folk are upset at the overturning of the established
order, in which diplomatic posts go to the biggest bundlers, regardless of
country knowledge. Lacking titles of nobility here in the Homeland, we need
an outlet for the well-connected to purchase a prestigious sinecure and a
black diplomatic passport. Otherwise a frightening Revolt of the Affluent
could roil our streets.
Still angling for the Court of St James myself - got any witticisms I
could share with the Queen?
Like it or not, Tillerson as secretary of "state" makes a fair amount of
sense.
His appointment would acknowledge, pretty overtly, that american foreign
"policy" is, always and everywhere, about energy.
We ignore human rights abuses in saudi arabia and overthrow Gadhafi when
he proposes demanding payment for oil in a gold-backed currency. Iraq. Assad
must "go" because of a pipeline. A biden boy gets a seat on the board of a
Ukranian energy company after a u. s. backed coup. The clinton foundation in
Nigeria.
And that's just the last decade or so of wars and "threats to american
interests." Maybe it's time we just got honest about it.
"... My perspective from across the ocean has always been that the McCarthy philosophy was the least admirable episode in recent US history. ..."
"... It's almost as if the West, or at least Western Elite circles who have strived to saturate the airways with Russia-the-bogey-man material since the year dot, can they, on the back of this one-sided propaganda machine, wheel-out blame directed towards Russia for .... well almost anything they desire. ..."
"... If only Barack Hussain Obama had not taken it upon his self to interfere in our referendum with his clear 'Back of the queue' threat, it may have been possible to not think he is a hypocrite. ..."
"... I suspect this is one last roll of the dice by the 'democrats' to keep Trump out of office. ..."
"... Obama is foolishly upping the ante, not on Putin, but on Trump. Trump's instinct will be to put a 10x hurt on Obama for this. Don't punk Trump. ..."
"... They are desperate to discredit the winner. It is as ineffective as any of his failed policies ..."
"... In other words, Obama admits he hasn't kept America secure versus 21st-century threats. ..."
"... Obama has said the intelligence agencies had the proof that Russia interfered with the election. With all their proof why order a review? Can't wait until Obama leaves office. ..."
"... what, is the USA the new Latin America, and Russia the new CIA ? forever meddling surreptitiously to undermine and overthrow other sovereign nation states democratic processes ? that's just so unfair ..."
"... It is a funny joke, but on the essence I would advise to read investigative report "The New Red Scare" in Harpers. The evidence of Russian government having anything to do with any hacks is literally non-existing. ..."
"... The US, heckler of the world for decades, stirring trouble wherever the dart falls, and yet Russian hackers and North Korean hookers are to blame for 99.9% of the worlds problems. Reality is, if the US didn't move past its own borders for 10 years the world would be already a much, much better place. ..."
"... The Guardian probably shouldn't go along in helping build the new McCarthyist, Cold War narrative, especially when it's just a bunch of US politicians and media figures repeating politically expedient, but factually unsupported claims. The Western media is trying to be Hearst Newspapers in the Spanish-American war. ..."
"... This is explicitly bad because it allows the suppression of dissent, of creating blacklists, the military industrial complex to further consolidate power, and to blame all sorts of domestic failures on shadowing foreign influence. ..."
"... But when Judith Miller, the NYT, George Bush and Hillary Clinton used fake news to kill hundreds of thousands, Obama told us to get over it, to "look forward and not backward." ..."
"... The United States has attempted to push its democratic ideologies on countries all over the world, using means much more direct than hacking. Yet they cannot take a fraction of what they dish out. If Russia is indeed intervening to aid nationalists around the world, then Russia is a friend and should be welcomed with open arms. Trump should do the same, and used the powers of the United States to undermine [neoliberal] leftists around the globe. ..."
Interesting - Obama never ordered an independent probe into 9/11 or invasion of Iraq or on the
Wall Street Collapse. Somehow Russian hacking seems to be more draconian than all the above.
And Russians somehow got into the brains of the disgruntled white population, and controlled
Trump's brain so that he would be voted to power. Then they still control Trump's brain so much
that he is wanting to let NATO countries pay for their security, make Japan, South Korea and everyone
else where US maintains its bases to pay for themselves.
And then suddenly there is a news of a thousand Russian athletes doing well in 2012 London
Olympics due to enhanced drugs. Until now, no one knew about this or heard about it.
It is not that I am supporting Russia all of a sudden. It is just that I am not supporting
the attempt to create enemies out of thin air and make them monstrous as needed, while covering
even more sinister schemes that need public attention.
Obama is part of the same system too that runs everything from behind the curtains. He still
is a good man. But he has only some much room to function within and survive.
A good man is not capable of bombing 7 countries in 8 years' time. People are too naive to believe
that someone could look as nice and sound as nice as Obama and push to advance the agenda of some
of the most evil and power-hungry megalomaniacs on the planet.
I don't know if the Russians provided Wikileaks with the actual emails or not but Wikileaks
like so many news organisations before them released info obtained illegally that they thought
the public had a right to know.
Now Assange has effectively been imprisoned in an Embassy in London for around 5 years on bogus
charges and his reputation was damaged by the same charges - Obviously Obama does not want to
give any credit to Assange and he knows he has played a part in this outrageous persecution.
This would also a could time to remind fellow commentators here about the Nuland - Pyatt conversation
that was recorded by Russia and released. This conversation showed the the involvement of two
high ranking US Politicians in the armed coup in Ukraine where an elected albeit corrupt leader
was forced to flee the country.
The period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from
1950 to 1956 and characterized by heightened political repression against supposed communists,
as well as a campaign spreading fear of their influence on American institutions and of espionage
by Soviet agents.
The third Red Scare? *clutches teddy bear*
Only one slight problem ...there aren't any reds in charge in Russia anymore.
My point being, there is no great ideological clash anymore. Assange volunteered the fact the
email data didn't come from the Russians. And whether Trump is better than Hillary is open to
debate.
My perspective from across the ocean has always been that the McCarthy philosophy was the
least admirable episode in recent US history. I doubt many people want to return to that
but surely, demonstrable evidence in either direction is the only antidote to accusations and
conspiracy theories, and is needed now more than ever in this supposed 'post truth' era.
Reply Share
I assume that Obama is being told to do this, and probably by the same people who backed the Clinton
individual for POTUS. The American people must be exceedingly dumb if they fall for this rubbish.
It's almost as if the West, or at least Western Elite circles who have strived to saturate
the airways with Russia-the-bogey-man material since the year dot, can they, on the back of this
one-sided propaganda machine, wheel-out blame directed towards Russia for .... well almost anything
they desire.
Problem is, are the public still eating out of their hands!?
Brext and the Trump victory is suggesting - not all of us by a long way.
If only Barack Hussain Obama had not taken it upon his self to interfere in our referendum
with his clear 'Back of the queue' threat, it may have been possible to not think he is a hypocrite.
what a joke, america has been 'interfering' (i.e. bombing and destroying) how many countries since
1945?? incredible hypocrisy and sickening double-standards.
War propoganda. Will the White Helmets be saving Russian civilians too? I suspect this is
one last roll of the dice by the 'democrats' to keep Trump out of office.
Obama has said the intelligence agencies had the proof that Russia interfered with the election.
With all their proof why order a review? Can't wait until Obama leaves office.
what, is the USA the new Latin America, and Russia the new CIA ? forever meddling surreptitiously
to undermine and overthrow other sovereign nation states democratic processes ? that's just so
unfair
It is a funny joke, but on the essence I would advise to read investigative report "The New
Red Scare" in Harpers. The evidence of Russian government having anything to do with any
hacks is literally non-existing.
The US, heckler of the world for decades, stirring trouble wherever the dart falls, and yet
Russian hackers and North Korean hookers are to blame for 99.9% of the worlds problems. Reality
is, if the US didn't move past its own borders for 10 years the world would be already a much,
much better place.
The Guardian probably shouldn't go along in helping build the new McCarthyist, Cold War narrative,
especially when it's just a bunch of US politicians and media figures repeating politically expedient,
but factually unsupported claims. The Western media is trying to be Hearst Newspapers in the Spanish-American
war.
This is explicitly bad because it allows the suppression of dissent, of creating blacklists,
the military industrial complex to further consolidate power, and to blame all sorts of domestic
failures on shadowing foreign influence. This is exactly what countries like Iran and North
Korea do. Bravo guys, for keep this story going for almost half a year with no substantial proof
whatsoever.
But when Judith Miller, the NYT, George Bush and Hillary Clinton used fake news to kill hundreds
of thousands, Obama told us to get over it, to "look forward and not backward." What a waste
of 8 years.
he suddenly discovered, 2-3 wks ago, that he was enthusiastic about space technology and exploration.
He (that is his ghost writers) published a 1 p. article about his love of space. Fact is, first
thing great-mind Obama did 8yrs ago is gut NASA's budget. He never mentioned space once in 8 yrs.
Suddenly, he is a fan. Creepy ... how does he deal with his hypocritical self every morning?
Political theatre. He will be out of office before anyone will even be asked to take office.
Its hilarious that The Guardian tries to frame US Intelligence as a single cohesive unit. Its
a splintered multi-headed hydra that will never act on this. Once again Obama brings righteous
powerful leadership to the act of being ineffective.
Starring:
Shirtless Putin
Legacy Obama
Hillary "I'm Not Trump" Clinton
Donald "OG Troll" Trump
Super Elite Genius Ninja Russian Hackers
The Poor Defenseless Victim DNC
John "Let's All Just Laugh at The Risotto Recipe and Not Pay Attention to any of my Other Emails"
Podesta
80's synth "rock" and really bright neon clothing
And featuring: Lou Diamond Phillips as.....Guccifer 2.0
The United States has attempted to push its democratic ideologies on countries all over the
world, using means much more direct than hacking. Yet they cannot take a fraction of what they
dish out. If Russia is indeed intervening to aid nationalists around the world, then Russia is
a friend and should be welcomed with open arms. Trump should do the same, and used the powers
of the United States to undermine [neoliberal] leftists around the globe.
No its by the letter actually. Libya, Yemen backed by US, Pakistan, Tunisia had some financial
and military backing. Obama is the drone king. And Ukraine well have you heard of Victoria nuland
before? Regime change in Ukraine cost the taxpayer 5 billion dollars
"... Outrageous how the Russians interfered with the Koch brothers and Soros's electoral process... ..."
"... No one, not the government agencies, not those ominous private security firms, no one presented even a shred of evidence for any involvement of the Russian government. Not even some lackluster ambiguous data, it was all anecdotal stuff, 'confidence' and fluffy rhetoric. ..."
"... The McCarthy-esque paranoia spread by the Clinton campaign to deflect from the content of those emails took foothold it seems. ..."
"... If the evidence were to hand, actually existed, it would have been all over the front pages of the WaPo, NYT and other major news outlets, not just in the US but everywhere else too. Investigating this 'evidence' is, to borrow William Gibson's simile, "Like planning to assassinate a figure out of myth and legend". The usual 'national security considerations' which have been and will continue to be adduced, as reasons for not publishing the evidence is pure triple-distilled BS and pretty much everyone knows that it's BS. ..."
Russia has always been the convenient whipping boy for the United States. We manufactured the
cold war because we needed an enemy to prop up our war economy. We built the Soviet Union into
this monolithic bogey man, spoiling to crush the west, enemies of "freedom," in order to keep
the west scared and pliant and in our pocket. After so-called communism collapsed, we found new
enemies in the middle east but they lacked the staying power. So now it's back to Russia. Maybe
the Russians did hack into the DNC. If so, they merely exposed the damning material. They didn't
write it.
Oh boy the knives are out against Russia, first I read about the 2012 Olympics which even if it
is true I would hold the British Olympic Committee responsible for the failure to find out about
the doping at the time of the Games and not 4 years later. I have just read US, Obama is now pointing
the finger at Russia for the outcome of the US Elections oh dear they are really scraping the
barrell to look for someone to blame instead of finding out why their own people decided to vote
for Trump. This is all typical American hyperbole and nonsense and a concerted effort on America's
efforts to orchestrate the next War.
America is so way behind with any modern services, they apparently do not have their bank cards
with pin or contactless as yet.
Unlucky failed mainstream media lost all confidence of its readership and are now broke. What
will they do next? ask for money saying that they're helping others whilst keeping most of it?
No one, not the government agencies, not those ominous private security firms, no one presented
even a shred of evidence for any involvement of the Russian government. Not even some lackluster
ambiguous data, it was all anecdotal stuff, 'confidence' and fluffy rhetoric.
But if it makes them happy....
The McCarthy-esque paranoia spread by the Clinton campaign to deflect from the content
of those emails took foothold it seems.
If the evidence were to hand, actually existed, it would have been all over the front pages
of the WaPo, NYT and other major news outlets, not just in the US but everywhere else too. Investigating
this 'evidence' is, to borrow William Gibson's simile, "Like planning to assassinate a figure
out of myth and legend". The usual 'national security considerations' which have been and will
continue to be adduced, as reasons for not publishing the evidence is pure triple-distilled BS
and pretty much everyone knows that it's BS.
Yeah sure, just like how it was 'all over the front pages' about what really happened on 9/11,
who was really involved etc.
And don't give me any of that conspiracy theory, tin-foil hat bs either...unless you are able
to be honest about this conspiracy: 19 or 20 strip-club lovin, don't-need-no-takeoff/landing-lessons
jihadists used box-cutters to overpower jet air planes and with the-luck-of-the-century HIT NOT
ONE....BUT TWO skyscrapers at the EXACT SPOT where the 47 concrete -steel inner columns were weak
enough to cause 'pancaking' of the undamaged 60-90 UNDAMAGED FLOORS. Collapsing (and pulverizing
concrete into dust) the building into itself.
And then weirdly enough a small cabal of PNAC signees who in writing had expressed that pax-americana
was going to be 'difficult unless a pearl harbor like event happens' had almost as much Luck-of-the-century
as the jihadists when......WA LA....into their lap.....a new pearl harbor.
Trying to blame one of the most flawed and undemocratic election process's in the Western hemisphere
on the Russians is laughable to the point of hysteria.
The dumb-ed down bigoted electorate is a direct result of decades of a two party political
system, backed up by a compliant media, that fosters mindless patriotism and ignorance rather
than enlightenment and intelligent discussion on the problems facing the country.
Never have I seen a better example of your own dog biting you on the arse!
But Clinton lost the election because the Republicans realised she was certain to be the Democratic
Presidential candidate fifteen years ago and they began their smear campaign against her right
there and then, and a lot of it stuck.
When you add to that tens of thousands on the left like me who voted for her...but would not
campaign for her because we didn't agree with her disastrous blunder in helping to overthrow Qaddafi
in Libya ( a country that is now a feudal backwater) and her stated goals of regime change in
Syria and all the while she had a domestic policy was cosying up to the bankers and Wall Street
elites, whilst ignoring blue collar Americans without jobs and prospects for their future...the
almost inevitable result is Trump as President of the United States.
'Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud, hatch out!'
The US will get what it deserves...and it deserves Trump I'm afraid.
"... Greenwald's take down is another hammer meets nail piece. The CIA are systemic liars. In fact, that's their job to move around in the shadows and deceive. They literally lie about everything. They lied about Iran/Contra, torture programs, their propensity for drug smuggling and dealing, infesting the media with agents, imaginary WMDs that launch war and massacre, mass surveillance of citizens, just to name a few. ..."
"... This is the agency who are in secret and anonymity, with no verifiable evidence, whispering rumors in the WaPoo and NYTimes' ears that the Russians made Hillary lose. What moron would take the CIA at its word anymore? Much less a major newspaper? Did I miss something, is it 1950 again? Methinks I've picked up the scent of fake news ..."
"... Apparently, all the morons who are still screaming about Trump, as if he alone will be in charge of the government and not his GOP handlers. Please keep in mind that the ardent Clinton supporters quite clearly reveal cult behavior, and anything that allows them to continue embracing their belief in their righteousness will be embraced without question or qualm. ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... The upside of these overtly political battles among intelligence agencies is that we are eroding away the idea that these are non-partisan institutions without overt political agendas. ..."
"... What Stengel and various mainstream media outlets appear to be arguing for is the creation of a "Ministry of Truth" managed by mainstream U.S. media outlets and enforced by Google, Facebook and other technology platforms. ..."
"... In other words, once these supposedly responsible outlets decide what the "truth" is, then questioning that narrative will earn you "virtual" expulsion from the marketplace of ideas, possibly eliminated via algorithms of major search engines or marked with a special app to warn readers not to believe what you say, a sort of yellow Star of David for the Internet age. ..."
"... The NC lawsuit against WaPo, like the lawsuit of Hedges et al. against provisions of the NDAA, marks a watershed moment for defending free speech in our country! I hope that my oft-expressed belief -- that we will soon need to revive samizdat ..."
"... According to a recent posting on Wolf Street, according to records, the Treasury has borrowed 4 trillion more between 2004-15, than can actually be accounted for in spending. This is because it is the borrowing and thus public obligations, which really matter to the powers that be. The generals just get their toys and wars as icing on the cake. It doesn't matter if they win, because there would be less war to spend it on. Eventually they will use "public/private partnerships" to take their piles of public obligations and trade for the rest of the Commons. ..."
"... Money needs to be understand as a public utility, like roads. We no more own it than we own the section of road we are using. It is like blood, not fat. ..."
"... The CIA whinging about a right wing president being installed by a foreign power might just be the greatest self-awareness fail ever! ..."
"... LOL at that! You'd think they were afraid trump might turn out to be the next Hugo Chavez! They must really, really love their program to help al Qaeda in Syria. ..."
"... The CIA lies as a matter of course, and now they're being propped up as the paragons of honesty, simply out of political expediency. Crazy days. ..."
"... Modern Democrats simply aren't a political party but fanatics of a professional sports club. If it wasn't the Russians, it would be referees or Bill Belichick at fault. I'm surprised they aren't mentioning "Comrade Nader" at all times. ..."
"... In fact, Trump's coalition looks remarkably similar to the one that Scott Walker put together in 2014. ..."
"... Obama in Spartanburg, SC in 2007: And understand this: If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I'm in the White House, I'll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself, I will walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America. Because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner. ..."
"... And the Dems wonder why the working class feel betrayed. ..."
Meet the Democrats' proto-Trumps Politico. "In three major states with a governor's
mansion up for grabs in 2018, a big-name, politically active billionaire or multimillionaire
is taking steps toward a run - [Democrat] donors looking to take matters into their own
hands after 2016's gutting losses."
The Evidence to Prove the Russian Hack emptywheel. The headline is a bit off, since the
post's subject is really the evidence required to prove the Russian hack. Some of
which does exist. That said, this is an excellent summary of the state of play. I take issue
with one point:
Crowdstrike reported that GRU also hacked the DNC. As it explains, GRU does this by sending
someone something that looks like an email password update, but which instead is a fake
site designed to get someone to hand over their password. The reason this claim is strong
is because people at the DNC say this happened to them.
First, CrowdStrike is a private security firm, so there's a high likelihood they're talking
their book, Beltway IT being what it is. Second, a result (DNC got phished) isn't "strong"
proof of a claim (GRU did the phishing). We live in a world where 12-year-olds know how to
do email phishing, and a world where professional phishing operations can camouflage themselves
as whoever they like. So color me skeptical absent some unpacking on this point. A second post
from emptywheel,
Unpacking the New CIA Leak: Don't Ignore the Aluminum Tube Footnote , is also well worth
a read.
Greenwald's take down is another hammer meets nail piece. The CIA are systemic liars.
In fact, that's their job to move around in the shadows and deceive. They literally lie about
everything. They lied about Iran/Contra, torture programs, their propensity for drug smuggling
and dealing, infesting the media with agents, imaginary WMDs that launch war and massacre,
mass surveillance of citizens, just to name a few.
They murder, torture, train hired mercenary proxies (who they are often pretending to oppose),
stage coups of democratically elected govt.'s, interfere with elections, topple regimes, install
ruthless puppet dictators, and generally enslave other nations to western corporate pirates.
They are a rogue band of pirates themselves.
This is the agency who are in secret and anonymity, with no verifiable evidence, whispering
rumors in the WaPoo and NYTimes' ears that the Russians made Hillary lose. What moron would
take the CIA at its word anymore? Much less a major newspaper? Did I miss something, is it
1950 again? Methinks I've picked up the scent of fake news
Conclusion: It isn't the Russians that are interfering with U.S. kangaroo elections, it's
the professionals over at the CIA
Apparently, all the morons who are still screaming about Trump, as if he alone will
be in charge of the government and not his GOP handlers. Please keep in mind that the ardent
Clinton supporters quite clearly reveal cult behavior, and anything that allows them to continue
embracing their belief in their righteousness will be embraced without question or qualm.
I've tried to point out on other blogs just how shaky that story in the Washington Post
is, and the response I get is something along the lines of, well, other outlets are also
reporting it, so it must be true. It does me no good to point out that this is the same tactic
used by the Bush administration in the run-up to the Iraq war. People will believe what they
want to believe.
It may help to point to the history of CIA influence at WaPoo. Counterpunch had a short
piece reminding everyone of Operation Mockingbird (going from memory on that name) where CIA
had reporters on staff at the paper directly taking orders and simultaneously on CIA payroll.
If questioned about CIA's motivation for hating trump, my best guess is that it is because
trump is undermining their project to overthrow assad in syria using nusra rebels. And also
because trump wants to be nice to russia.
I think there's some people in the cia that think they played a major role in winning the
cold war through their support for mujahadeen rebels in afghanistan. I suspect they think they
can beat putin in syria the same way. This is absolutely nutty.
The upside of these overtly political battles among intelligence agencies is that we
are eroding away the idea that these are non-partisan institutions without overt political
agendas.
There's a large number of people that will see through the facade. Right now, Trump supporters
are getting a lesson in how much resistance there can be within the establishment. I'm no Trump
supporter, but I think seeing what these institutions are capable of is a useful exercise for
all involved.
Apologies if this analysis by Robert Parry has already been shared here:
"What Stengel and various mainstream media outlets appear to be arguing for is the
creation of a "Ministry of Truth" managed by mainstream U.S. media outlets and enforced
by Google, Facebook and other technology platforms.
In other words, once these supposedly responsible outlets decide what the "truth"
is, then questioning that narrative will earn you "virtual" expulsion from the marketplace
of ideas, possibly eliminated via algorithms of major search engines or marked with a special
app to warn readers not to believe what you say, a sort of yellow Star of David for the
Internet age.
And then there's the possibility of more direct (and old-fashioned) government enforcement
by launching FBI investigations into media outlets that won't toe the official line. (All
of these "solutions" have been advocated in recent weeks.)
On the other hand, if you do toe the official line that comes from Stengel's public diplomacy
shop, you stand to get rewarded with government financial support. Stengel disclosed in
his interview with Ignatius that his office funds "investigative" journalism projects.
"How should citizens who want a fact-based world combat this assault on truth?" Ignatius
asks, adding: "Stengel has approved State Department programs that teach investigative reporting
and empower truth-tellers."
The NC lawsuit against WaPo, like the lawsuit of Hedges et al. against provisions of
the NDAA, marks a watershed moment for defending free speech in our country! I hope that my
oft-expressed belief -- that we will soon need to revive samizdat techniques to preserve
truth– may turn ou to be overly pessimistic.
Keep in mind the basis of this capitalist economy is Federal debt. They have to spend it
on something. The government doesn't even budget, which is to list priorities and spend according
to need/ability. They put together these enormous bills, add enough to get the votes, which
don't come cheap and then the prez can only pass or veto.
If they wanted to actually budget, taking the old line item veto as a template, they could
break these bills into all their various items, have each legislator assign a percentage value
to each one, put them back together in order of preference and the prez would draw the line.
"The buck stops here."
That would keep powers separate, with congress prioritizing and the prez individually responsible
for deficit spending. It would also totally crash our current "Capitalist" system.
According to a recent posting on Wolf Street, according to records, the Treasury has
borrowed 4 trillion more between 2004-15, than can actually be accounted for in spending. This
is because it is the borrowing and thus public obligations, which really matter to the powers
that be. The generals just get their toys and wars as icing on the cake. It doesn't matter
if they win, because there would be less war to spend it on. Eventually they will use "public/private
partnerships" to take their piles of public obligations and trade for the rest of the Commons.
Money needs to be understand as a public utility, like roads. We no more own it than
we own the section of road we are using. It is like blood, not fat.
LOL at that! You'd think they were afraid trump might turn out to be the next Hugo Chavez!
They must really, really love their program to help al Qaeda in Syria.
There are so many eye-rolling ironies in all this I think my eyeballs might just pop out
of their sockets. And the liberals going out of their way to tout the virtues of the CIA the
very same organization that never shied from assassinating or overthrowing a leftwing president/prime
minister it galls. The CIA lies as a matter of course, and now they're being propped up
as the paragons of honesty, simply out of political expediency. Crazy days.
Modern Democrats simply aren't a political party but fanatics of a professional sports
club. If it wasn't the Russians, it would be referees or Bill Belichick at fault. I'm surprised
they aren't mentioning "Comrade Nader" at all times.
My guess is donors are annoyed after the 2014 debacle and are having a hard time rationalizing
a loss to a reality TV show host with a cameo in Home Alone 2.
And understand this: If American workers are being denied their right to organize and
collectively bargain when I'm in the White House, I'll put on a comfortable pair of shoes
myself, I will walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America.
Because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner.
And the Dems wonder why the working class feel betrayed.
That ProPublica piece (
Suspected of Corruption at Home, Powerful Foreigners Find Refuge in the U.S. Pro Publica)
is brutal. Not only do we have to be the shittest corrupt country in the world but we have
to be a safe haven for ever other corrupt politician in the world as long as they have $$.
Can someone just make it all end? Please. There needs to be a maximum wealth where anything
you earn past it just gets automatically redistributed to the poor.
Thanks for the link – really important and scary things are going in congress concerning
'fake news' and Russian propaganda and HR 6393 is particularly bad. The EU is also taking steps
to counter 'fake news' as well. Obama claimed that some form of curation is required – and
it is happening quickly. People are suggesting that propornot has been debunked. That does
not matter anymore. The Obama regime and the MSM don't care – that have gotten the message
out.
And the people behind this are really deranged – check out Adam Schiff calling Tucker Carlson
a Kremlin stooge for even suggesting that there is no certainty that Russia leaked the emails
to Wikileaks.
After all, the media went all in for Hillary and spent huge amounts of time explaining why
Trump is unfit. But they lost.
And now our efforts on behalf of al Queada are failing in Syria and more hysteria ensues.
See for example:
The email saga lost a provable set of sources a long time ago. Before the files were given
to Wikileaks it was already too late to determine which people did it. So-called forensic evidence
of these computers only tell us that investigators either found evidence of a past compromise
or that people want us to believe they did. Since the compromise was determined after the fact,
the people with access could have done anything to the computers, including leave a false trail.
The core problem is that since security for all of these machines, including the DNC's email
server and most likely many of those from Team R, was nearly non-existent nearly nothing useful
can be determined. The time to learn something about a remote attacker, when it's possible
at all, is while the machine is being attacked – assuming it has never been compromised before.
If the attacker's machine has also been compromised then you know pretty much nothing unless
you can get access to it.
As far as physical access protection goes. If the machine has been left on and unattended
or is not completely encrypted then the only thing that might help is a 24 hour surveillance
camera pointed at the machine.
Forensic evidence in compromised computers is significantly less reliable than DNA and hair
samples. It's much too easy for investigators to frame another party by twiddling some bits.
Anyone that thinks that even well intentioned physical crime investigators have never gotten
convictions with bad or manipulated evidence has been watching and believing way too many crime
oriented mysteries. "Blindspot" is not a documentary.
As for projecting behaviors on a country by calling it a "state action", Russia or otherwise,
implying that there is no difference between independent and government sponsored actions,
that is just silly.
Apt observation from Gareth: "I believe the CIA is attempting to delegitimize Trump's election
so as to force him into a defensive position in which he will temper his dual goals of normalizing
relations with Russia and destroying the CIA's proxy armies of jihadists. We will see if Trump has
the guts to make some heads roll in the CIA He will remember that the last President who even
threatened to take on the CIA received a massive dose of flying lead poisoning. "
Essentially after WaPo scandal it is prudent to view all US MSM as yellow press.
Notable quotes:
"... The Post and the like are terrified over their loss of credibility just as the internet has destroyed their advertising. Interesting that their response to competition isn't to outdo the competition but to smother the competition with a lie. Their own fake news. ..."
"... As a moral American and supporter of free speech, I am going to make a list of online or print WaPo advertisers. Then I will communicate to them that I will never buy another thing from them as long as they advertise in the Washington Post. ..."
"... Open their ads in Firefox ad blocker. Then add them to the script and spam blacklist. ..."
"... The story serves many purposes. One is firing a shot across TrumpCo's bow: 'Submit to us or we'll delegitimate your election.' ..."
"... Another is excusing the Democratic Party establishment for losing the election, and thus diverting the wrath of the rank and file. ..."
"... About all we can do at the moment is remember to remember the names of the people who purveyed and supported the story, just as we should remember to remember the names of those who purveyed WMD stories. ..."
"... Job #1 always is suppressing the Sanders faction. Not beating Trump or the Republicans. They want control of their little pond. ..."
"... Personally, after what we did in Ukraine (essentially funding a revolution) I refuse to get the vapors because Russia apparently "helped" elect Trump by exposing (not forcing her to be a liar or cheat) Hillary. ..."
"... All of this crap about Russia, or the electoral college system is a distraction from the real issues at hand about our political system, which is a two party one oligarchy (ALEC) anti-democratic system. The rot runs from national presidential elections to the comptroller of the smaller city governments. ..."
"... If any candidate was capable of speaking to the working and middle class, then either Russia nor the the 0.01% who compose the oligarchy could control who wins in popular elections. What is really needed is to eliminate either the two party system, or democratize their methods of selecting candidates. ..."
"... Think Hillary played an unfair hand to Sanders? That was nothing compared to the shenanigans that get played at local level, state level, and Congress level to filter out populist candidates and replace them with machine / oligarchy pets. ..."
"... the idea that Saudi (or other Middle Eastern states) also intervened (with money), is not more credible? ..."
"... Yes, the NYT piece on Russian hacking is complete evidence free tripe. Not once do they say what evidence they base these accusations on, beyond the Cyrillic keyboard. The code for Cyrillic keyboard is, "fuzzy bear" et al. as the original reporting on the DNC hack and the company that ran security made clear that this was the one and only piece of concrete evidence the attacks by "fuzzy bear" et al. were perpetrated by the Russians. ..."
"... So based on a Cyrillic keyboard and the below quote, unnamed "American intelligence agencies know it was the Russians, really? ..."
"... Based on this it appears the NYTs definition of fake reporting is anything that isn't fed directly to it by unnamed experts or the USG and uncritically reported. ..."
"... I think these unnamed agencies are not going to have a very good working relationship with the orange overlord if they keep this up. They might not even be getting that new war they wanted for Christmas. ..."
"... It's as though the NYT and WaPo had these vast pools of accumulated credibility and they could go out on a limb here Oh wait - their credibility has been destroyed countless times over the past decade or so. One would think they'd realise: If you're in a ditch, the first thing to do is stop digging. ..."
"... The world is flat . Note: This is not me awarding a Thomas L. Friedman prize. In this case, I am simply sharing the article because I think it is hilarious. ..."
"... Nowhere, in any of this, is it mentioned that Clinton's illegal private email server (that got hacked) played any factor whatsoever. It just stinks so bad, I wonder how they can not smell what they are sitting in.. ..."
"... Summarizing a very plausible theory, NeoCon Coup Attempt: As Syria's Assad (with Russian help) is close to crushing HRC's jihadi Queda & Nusra rebels in Aleppo, the NeoCons are freaking out on both sides of the Atlantic. ..."
"... What to do? Jill's recount is floundering. So, last resort: Concoct Russia hacking myth to either delay Dec 19 EC vote or create more faithless electors. Result: A NeoCon like HRC or a NeoCon sympathizer is installed. ..."
"... Two biggest war hawks, McCain and Graham, are leading the Senate charges against Russia. All of this within days of Obama sending 200 MORE US troops to Syria and lifting the ban on more arms to the Syrian rebels, including anti-aircraft MANPADS. ..."
"... The recount farce makes me angry, and has made me resolve to never give Stein my vote again. ..."
"... That implies the NeoCon establishment views DJT and cabinet as a threat in any way, which is an extremely dubious premise. Occam's razor: Clinton and the media establishment that gifted the country DJT will do anything they can to cast the blame elsewhere. ..."
"... I'm not sure if that is a simpler explanation. I offer this: It's simpler to see that they are engaging in a struggle for now and the future – that means the neocons vs Trump. ..."
"... "The story reveals that a CIA assessment detailing this conclusion had been presented to President Obama and top congressional leaders last week." You read that? It's "detailed". None of us peasants will ever know what those "details" are, but its the f#ckin CIA, dude. ..."
"... The problem is we are expected to just trust the NYT and CIA without evidence??? Anybody remember WMD in Iraq?? The complete loss of credibility by the NYT and CIA over the last decade means I have to see credible evidence before I believe anything they say. ..."
"... Seems coordinated to me -- Globe/Times/WaPo. Double down for WaPoo who are now reporting from area 51 where they found Bigfoot sitting on a stockpile of Sadam's WMDs. Reading this article is surreal. The CIA, a terrorist outfit which our own former reporter (Bernstein) showed to be infesting our own newsroom, whispered in our ear that the Cold War 2.0 is going to escalate with or without the establishment coronation queen. ..."
"... "Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House" The link on WaPoo's site actually says a different headline so I am just sharing the headline itself. Not another secret assessment . no more passing notes in class, students. ..."
"... Robert Reich has posted the news that the Russians helped to secure the election for Trump on his FB page, to it seems much acclaim – perhaps I was foolish for having expected better from him. ..."
"... WaPo seems allied with the CIA-FIRE sector Clintonian group, while T may be more inclusive of the classic MICC-Pentagon sector which was asserting itself in Syria. ..."
"... Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims "bullshit", adding: "They are absolutely making it up." "I know who leaked them," Murray said. "I've met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it's an insider. It's a leak, not a hack; the two are different things. ..."
"... Although I'm convinced that the Republicans are, on average, noticeably worse than the Democrats, I agree with you. It is useful that there is no doubt about where Trump and the Congressional Republicans stand, which is on the side of the billionaires and the giant corporations. We've had 8 years of Obama's obeisance to the oligarchs, and millions of Americans still don't understand that this was happening. ..."
"... rhetoric that is beginning conspicuously to resemble the celebration by capitalist elites during the interwar years of German and Italian fascism (and even Stalinist communism) for their apparently superior economic governance. [12] ..."
"... I always knew Trump would be a disaster. However, Trump is a survivable disaster–with Hillary that would have been the end. ..."
"... If Trump has many Goldman guys, is it a case of 'keeping your enemies close?' ..."
"... First of all, the Democrats would use Clinton to suppress the left and to insist that Clinton was more electable. That would lead to a validation of the idea that the left has nowhere to go and set a precedent for decades with a 3 point formula: ..."
"... Suppress the left ..."
"... Accept money from Wall Street and move to the right with each election ..."
"... Use identity politics as a distraction. ..."
"... There were other dangers. Clinton wanted war with Russia. That could easily escalate into a nuclear conflict. With Trump, the risk is reduced, although given his ego, I will concede that anything is possible. We would also be seeing some very damaging neoliberal policies. ..."
"... The reality is that the US was screwed the moment Sanders was out of the picture. With Trump, at least it is more naked and more obvious. The real challenge is that the left has a 2 front war, first with the corporate Democrats, then the GOP. On the GOP side, Trump's supporters are going to wake up at some point to an Obama like betrayal, which is exactly what I expect will happen. ..."
"... There are elements of the Trump fan base already calling him out for the people he has appointed, which is a very encouraging sign. Trump's economic performance is what will make or break him. He has sold himself on his business acumen. Needless to say, I expect it will break him because he won't even try to do anything for his base. ..."
"... I like a lot of your analysis. "We would also be seeing some very damaging neoliberal policies." We could still yet under Trump, given the cabinet nominees. ..."
"... By dangerous and delegitimizing I assume you mean the results of the election will be reversed sometime in the next six weeks while the current establishment still has martial authority. ..."
"... Both sides now fear the other side will lock them up or, at the very least, remove them from power permanently. Why do I think this is not over? ..."
"... I am certainly not ready to rule out Moore's gut feeling. Capitalist Party + MSM + Clinton + Nuland + CIA has shown to be an equation that ends in color revolution ..or at least an attempted color revolution ..."
"... At the same time that the media hysteria over "fake news" has reached a fever pitch, yesterday the Senate passed the "Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act" , colloquially known as the Portman-Murphy Counter-Propaganda Bill, as part of the FY 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Conference Report. ..."
"... " establishing an interagency center housed at the State Department to coordinate and synchronize counter-propaganda efforts throughout the U.S. government." Our very own Ministry of Truth! ..."
"... Under Ukrainian law journalists that disagree with Kiev's policies are collaborators. They are subject to any mechanism Kiev can devise to stop them. In the case of RT Ruptly or the Guardian this means developing a strategy to ruin their reputations. The Interpreter was developed to that end. Kiev has gone so far as to petition the UK government to censure the Guardian for its coverage of events in Ukraine hoping to bully the publication into line. US broadcasters (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) have put RT on the same list as ISIS. ..."
"... This plan to censor opposing viewpoints in the US was intended to be executed during a Clinton presidency, and would've been almost impossible to stop under those circumstances. There is now a window of opportunity to fight back and ruin these clowns once and for all. ..."
"... These rallies are Trump's means of maintaining contact with his base, and making sure that he knows what they want. And a means of showing that he is trying to get it for them. If Hillary had bothered to do anything of the sort she would have been elected. Sanders did it and it was much appreciated. Trump's ego is huge but the rallies are much more than an ego-trip. ..."
"... Re: WP's response to Truthdig's retraction request. It seems as if they are doubling down on the "not our responsibility to verify the validity theme". My first reaction is that the WP is now the equivalent of the National Enquirer. What's next, a headline " I gave birth to Trump's Love Child". ..."
I believe the CIA is attempting to delegitimize Trump's election so as to force him into a
defensive position in which he will temper his dual goals of normalizing relations with Russia
and destroying the CIA's proxy armies of jihadists. We will see if Trump has the guts to make
some heads roll in the CIA He will remember that the last President who even threatened to
take on the CIA received a massive dose of flying lead poisoning.
This hysteria over Russia is getting downright dangerous. The people pushing that story will
seemingly stop at nothing to delegitimize the election results.
The Post's Marc Fisher was on the PBS Newshour last night. He talked about Alex Jones. They
probably didn't expect the pushback from Yves, Truthdig, etc. The Establishment often underestimates
dissenters.
Real fake news, like Jones, benefits from the fake news charge. Their readers hate the MSM.
I wonder if the same ethic can develop on the left.
The Post and the like are terrified over their loss of credibility just as the internet
has destroyed their advertising. Interesting that their response to competition isn't to outdo
the competition but to smother the competition with a lie. Their own fake news.
I heard Stephen Colbert lump Alex Jones together w/Wikileaks as if they were the same "fake
news". I have also repeatedly heard Samantha Bee refer to Julian Assange as a rapist. Sigh. Both
of those comments are "fake news". The allegations against JA are tissue thin and Wikileaks has
NEVER been challenged about the truth of their releases. Please correct me if I am wrong.
"just as the internet has destroyed their advertising." Shouldn't that be "destroyed their ability to sell advertising?"
As a moral American and supporter of free speech, I am going to make a list of online or print
WaPo advertisers.
Then I will communicate to them that I will never buy another thing from them as long as they
advertise in the Washington Post.
Open their ads in Firefox ad blocker. Then add them to the script and spam blacklist.
The Wapo's trying to steal Craigslist business with online job listings. Looks like an opportunity
to have some fun for creatives.
Boss WaPo OwnerMan Bezos is very rich. He bought WaPo as a propaganda outlet. He is prepared
to lose a lot of money keeping it "open for propaganda." Naming and shaming and boycotting every advertiser WaPo has could certainly embarass WaPo and
perhaps diminish its credibility-patina for Bezoganda purposes. It is certainly worth trying.
The WaPo brand also owns a lot of other moneymaking entities like Kaplan testing and test-prepping
I believe. It would be a lot harder to boycott those because millions of people find them to be
important. But perhaps a boycott against them until WaPo sells them off to non Bezos ownership
would be worth trying.
Perhaps a savage boycott against Amazon until Bezos fires everyone at WaPo involved in this
McCarthy-list and related articles . . . and humiliates them into unhireability anywhere else
ever again?
The Dem Liberals (Joan Walsh etc). on the twitter are going full throttle with this, it's a
twofer as Joan is using this to attack Sanders supporters for not being on the front lines of
Russia Fear.
The story serves many purposes. One is firing a shot across TrumpCo's bow: 'Submit to us or
we'll delegitimate your election.' (Apparently TrumpCo has not delivered a convincing submission
yet.)
Another is excusing the Democratic Party establishment for losing the election, and thus
diverting the wrath of the rank and file. Evidently it's also going to be used against the Sanders
faction of the Democrats. About all we can do at the moment is remember to remember the names
of the people who purveyed and supported the story, just as we should remember to remember the
names of those who purveyed WMD stories.
Personally, after what we did in Ukraine (essentially funding a revolution) I refuse to get
the vapors because Russia apparently "helped" elect Trump by exposing (not forcing her to be a
liar or cheat) Hillary.
Perhaps they should consider that it could be worse, a foreign nation could be arming people
and encouraging them to topple the government we have like what we're doing in Syria. It isn't
like the very sharp divisions elsewhere haven't resulted in civil war.
All of this crap about Russia, or the electoral college system is a distraction from the real
issues at hand about our political system, which is a
two party one oligarchy (ALEC) anti-democratic system. The rot runs from national presidential
elections to the comptroller of the smaller city governments.
If any candidate was capable of speaking to the working and middle class, then either Russia
nor the the 0.01% who compose the oligarchy could control who wins in popular elections. What
is really needed is to eliminate either the two party system, or democratize their methods
of selecting candidates.
Think Hillary played an unfair hand to Sanders? That was nothing
compared to the shenanigans that get played at local level, state level, and Congress level to
filter out populist candidates and replace them with machine / oligarchy pets.
The popular vs. electoral vote – look up the rules next time you play.
Recount – to investigate without much evidence is something senator McCarthy would do.
Russia – and the idea that Saudi (or other Middle Eastern states) also intervened (with money),
is not more credible?
Coincidentally, all these urgent initiatives will lead to replacing Trump with Hillary as president.
"I will tear down the very building just to achieve my Pyrrhic victory."
Thank you, sorry Dems, Boris Badunov did not swing the election. If you want *hard* evidence
(not fake news) of a foreign government influencing the election you might have a look at the
beheading, gay-killing, women-supressing tyrannical monarchy known as The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
and ask whether it made sense for them to be the *#1* contributor to your candidate.
Yes, the NYT piece on Russian hacking is complete evidence free tripe. Not once do they say
what evidence they base these accusations on, beyond the Cyrillic keyboard. The code for Cyrillic
keyboard is, "fuzzy bear" et al. as the original reporting on the DNC hack and the company that
ran security made clear that this was the one and only piece of concrete evidence the attacks
by "fuzzy bear" et al. were perpetrated by the Russians.
So based on a Cyrillic keyboard and the below quote, unnamed "American intelligence agencies
know it was the Russians, really?
"They based that conclusion, in part, on another finding - which they say was also reached
with high confidence - that the Russians hacked the Republican National Committee's computer systems
in addition to their attacks on Democratic organizations, but did not release whatever information
they gleaned from the Republican networks."
Based on this it appears the NYTs definition of fake reporting is anything that isn't fed directly
to it by unnamed experts or the USG and uncritically reported.
I think these unnamed agencies are not going to have a very good working relationship with
the orange overlord if they keep this up. They might not even be getting that new war they wanted
for Christmas.
It's as though the NYT and WaPo had these vast pools of accumulated credibility and they could
go out on a limb here Oh wait - their credibility has been destroyed countless times over the
past decade or so. One would think they'd realise: If you're in a ditch, the first thing to do is stop digging.
Especially when dealing with a President Trump. He's already made his distaste for the WaPo
clear. We are entering a new, crazy, dangerous era of press-presidential relations. All the more
reason for the newspapers to behave responsibly - is that too much to ask?
The world is flat .
Note: This is not me awarding a Thomas L. Friedman prize. In this case, I am simply sharing
the article because I think it is hilarious.
Also, Bradford deLong should be included with Krugman and Friedman, though the length and width
of deLong's connections don't seem to have the same acceleration, energy, or viscosity, as the
other two. There are also olfactory and temporal differences.
Come to think of it, I also don't think Krugman Turdman or Friedman
Flathead would have to grovel to Neera "I'm a loyal soldier" Tanden and John "Done, so
think about something else" Podesta to get a family member a "meritocratic" job.
If Russia is so dangerous, then anyone who mishandles classified information (say, by storing
it on a personal server) should be prosecuted, shouldn't they?
Nowhere, in any of this, is it mentioned that Clinton's illegal private email server (that
got hacked) played any factor whatsoever. It just stinks so bad, I wonder how they can not smell
what they are sitting in.. I also wonder just where the line is between those who actually buy
into this hysteria, and those who simply feel justified in using whatever means they can to discredit
Trump and overturn the election. I think there's a lot of overlap and grey area there in many
people's minds.
Summarizing a very plausible theory, NeoCon Coup Attempt: As Syria's Assad (with Russian help) is close to crushing HRC's jihadi Queda & Nusra rebels
in Aleppo, the NeoCons are freaking out on both sides of the Atlantic.
What to do? Jill's recount is floundering. So, last resort: Concoct Russia hacking myth to
either delay Dec 19 EC vote or create more faithless electors. Result: A NeoCon like HRC or a
NeoCon sympathizer is installed.
Two biggest war hawks, McCain and Graham, are leading the Senate charges against Russia.
All of this within days of Obama sending 200 MORE US troops to Syria and lifting the ban on
more arms to the Syrian rebels, including anti-aircraft MANPADS.
The recount farce makes me angry, and has made me resolve to never give Stein my vote again.
Apparently she's in opposition to much of her party leadership on this, so if they ditch her in
the future and get someone better I may consider voting for them again. The reality of Trump as
president is going to be bad enough, attempting to sabotage the transition isn't doing anyone
any favors. I don't like Obama at all, but he wants a clean, peaceful transfer of power, and on
that issue at least he's correct.
That implies the NeoCon establishment views DJT and cabinet as a threat in any way, which is
an extremely dubious premise. Occam's razor: Clinton and the media establishment that gifted the country DJT will do anything
they can to cast the blame elsewhere.
I'm not sure if that is a simpler explanation. I offer this: It's simpler to see that they are engaging in a struggle for now and the future – that means
the neocons vs Trump.
Hillary vs Trump, invoking Russia now, is about fighting the last war. That one was over more
than a month ago. It's more convoluted to say one team still desires to continue the fight.
"The story reveals that a CIA assessment detailing this conclusion had been presented to President
Obama and top congressional leaders last week." You read that? It's "detailed". None of us peasants will ever know what those "details" are,
but its the f#ckin CIA, dude.
The problem is we are expected to just trust the NYT and CIA without evidence??? Anybody remember
WMD in Iraq?? The complete loss of credibility by the NYT and CIA over the last decade means I
have to see credible evidence before I believe anything they say. But that is just me. From reading
the NYT comments on the OBama Russia election hack article, the NYT commenters have en mass swallowed
the story hook, line and sinker. They apparently don't need evidence and have completely loss
any sort of functioning long term memory.
Based on the fact that she was hidden more than actually performing on the campaign trail,
that is a possibility. She may have very well been our own puppet government member that some were ready to install
here just like we tend to do over in other nations. No real marbles needed since she wouldn't
actually be running things. It's come to my attention that we seem to be inching closer and closer
to third world here and those places rarely have vibrant democracies.
Seems coordinated to me -- Globe/Times/WaPo. Double down for WaPoo who are now reporting from
area 51 where they found Bigfoot sitting on a stockpile of Sadam's WMDs. Reading this article
is surreal. The CIA, a terrorist outfit which our own former reporter (Bernstein) showed to be
infesting our own newsroom, whispered in our ear that the Cold War 2.0 is going to escalate with
or without the establishment coronation queen.
"Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House" The link on WaPoo's site actually says a different headline so I am just sharing the headline
itself. Not another secret assessment . no more passing notes in class, students.
Robert Reich has posted the news that the Russians helped to secure the election for Trump
on his FB page, to it seems much acclaim – perhaps I was foolish for having expected better from
him.
Sifting the election through a Peter Turchin filter, Sanders' run was a response to 'popular
immiseration' while the choice-of-billionaires was 'intra-elite competition'. WaPo seems allied
with the CIA-FIRE sector Clintonian group, while T may be more inclusive of the classic MICC-Pentagon
sector which was asserting itself in Syria.
I needed
Jalen & Jacoby to sooth me to sleep last night, after seeing the last chart (Fig. 14.4) from
Turchin's latest book. You can see it by hitting Ctrl-End from this
pdf . If he's correct,
this election was just the warm-up for 2020. Crikey.
Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange,
called the CIA claims "bullshit", adding: "They are absolutely making it up." "I know who leaked them," Murray said. "I've met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly
not Russian and it's an insider. It's a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.
Although I'm convinced that the Republicans are, on average, noticeably worse than the Democrats,
I agree with you. It is useful that there is no doubt about where Trump and the Congressional
Republicans stand, which is on the side of the billionaires and the giant corporations. We've
had 8 years of Obama's obeisance to the oligarchs, and millions of Americans still don't understand
that this was happening.
I hope people will vigorously lobby their Representatives and Senators, and pay attention to
who the genuine progressives are in the 2018 primaries.
Like ordinary citizens, although for the opposite reasons, elites are losing faith in democratic
government and its suitability for reshaping societies in line with market imperatives. Public
Choice's disparaging view of democratic politics as a corruption of market justice, in the
service of opportunistic politicians and their clientele, has become common sense among elite
publics-as has the belief that market capitalism cleansed of democratic politics will not only
be more efficient but also virtuous and responsible. [11]
Countries like China are complimented
for their authoritarian political systems being so much better equipped than majoritarian democracy,
with its egalitarian bent, to deal with what are claimed to be the challenges of 'globalization'
-- a
rhetoric that is beginning conspicuously to resemble the celebration by capitalist elites during
the interwar years of German and Italian fascism (and even Stalinist communism) for their apparently
superior economic governance. [12]
Right, the euphemisms have been done away with. I always knew Trump would be a disaster. However,
Trump is a survivable disaster–with Hillary that would have been the end.
In the long run, a Clinton presidency would be far more damaging.
First of all, the Democrats would use Clinton to suppress the left and to insist that Clinton
was more electable. That would lead to a validation of the idea that the left has nowhere to go
and set a precedent for decades with a 3 point formula:
Suppress the left
Accept money from Wall Street and move to the right with each election
Use identity politics as a distraction.
A Trump victory forces questions on the conventional wisdom (not really wisdom), and forces
changes. At best, they can hope to shove another Obama that is attractive on the outside, but
will betray people, but even that will be harder because people now are more watchful. Not to
mention, the mainstream media has lost its power.
There were other dangers. Clinton wanted war with Russia. That could easily escalate into a
nuclear conflict. With Trump, the risk is reduced, although given his ego, I will concede that
anything is possible. We would also be seeing some very damaging neoliberal policies.
The reality is that the US was screwed the moment Sanders was out of the picture. With Trump,
at least it is more naked and more obvious. The real challenge is that the left has a 2 front
war, first with the corporate Democrats, then the GOP. On the GOP side, Trump's supporters are
going to wake up at some point to an Obama like betrayal, which is exactly what I expect will
happen.
There are elements of the Trump fan base already calling him out for the people he has appointed,
which is a very encouraging sign. Trump's economic performance is what will make or break him.
He has sold himself on his business acumen. Needless to say, I expect it will break him because
he won't even try to do anything for his base.
I like a lot of your analysis. "We would also be seeing some very damaging neoliberal policies."
We could still yet under Trump, given the cabinet nominees.
The left must be vigilant and smart. There is opportunity here, but sidetracking on fake news,
pop vote, etc. doesn't gain much in terms of opposition.
I think you're possibly right, and I just couldn't pull the lever to vote for Trump. Sometimes
we just have to be true to ourselves and hope it works out.
By dangerous and delegitimizing I assume you mean the results of the election will be reversed
sometime in the next six weeks while the current establishment still has martial authority.
All
the intelligent agencies are now in lock step over Russian intervention. How do they let this
result stand? Trump obviously realizes his win is now in play and has gone after those same agencies
pointing out their gross incompetence.
Both sides now fear the other side will lock them up or, at the very least, remove them from power
permanently. Why do I think this is not over?
Michael Moore agrees with you – something is, or might be (more accurate description of what
he is said to have said, I think), brewing, according to him, or rather, his intuition .
I am certainly not ready to rule out Moore's gut feeling.
Capitalist Party + MSM + Clinton + Nuland + CIA has shown to be an equation that ends in color
revolution ..or at least an attempted color revolution
What the State Department and MSM have pleasantly referred to in the past as a bloodless coup.
See Ukraine, Brazil, Argentina et al
At the same time that the media hysteria over "fake news" has reached a fever pitch, yesterday
the Senate passed the
"Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act" , colloquially known as the Portman-Murphy
Counter-Propaganda Bill, as part of the FY 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Conference
Report.
According to Senator Portman's press release, the Bill "will improve the ability of the United
States to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation by establishing an interagency center
housed at the State Department to coordinate and synchronize counter-propaganda efforts throughout
the U.S. government." The bill also creates a "grant program for NGOs, think tanks, civil society
and other experts outside government who are engaged in counter-propaganda related work."
While the passage of this bill seems very coincidentally timed given recent events, it was
actually introduced in March. Not sure whether it simply followed a normal legislative track,
or was brought back from the dead recently, etc.
" establishing an interagency center housed at the State Department to coordinate and synchronize
counter-propaganda efforts throughout the U.S. government." Our very own Ministry of Truth!
It is important to find work for our newly minted graduates of marketing, psychology and sociology
as well as those graduates of the communication school and the arts. The need of our post-industrial
information age is to make things up as opposed to just making things.
Our liberal nation has promised our children that after they have enslaved themselves through
student debt they will find work. The work they find is likely to be meaningful only to the creditors
who wish to be repaid.
The graduates will find idealistic rationales like patriotism or making
"'Merica Grate Again" to soothe their corrupted souls while keeping the fake news as fresh as
a steamy load.
Under Ukrainian law journalists that disagree with Kiev's policies are collaborators. They
are subject to any mechanism Kiev can devise to stop them. In the case of RT Ruptly or the
Guardian this means developing a strategy to ruin their reputations. The Interpreter was developed
to that end. Kiev has gone so far as to petition the UK government to censure the Guardian
for its coverage of events in Ukraine hoping to bully the publication into line. US broadcasters
(Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) have put RT on the same list as ISIS.
From yesterday's links but seems appropriate. This plan to censor opposing viewpoints in the
US was intended to be executed during a Clinton presidency, and would've been almost impossible
to stop under those circumstances. There is now a window of opportunity to fight back and ruin
these clowns once and for all.
That may be but what we are seeing now is just an echo of the Clinton/Soros plan, and not even
close to the disaster that would result from having Soros et al at the helm. My guess is that
the CIA are now simply using gullible Republicans (yes, there is certainly some redundancy there)
as useful idiots, but this dynamic significantly weakens the original plan.
Amy Davidson ends her article with this paragraph.
And that is why the rallies are likely to endure: to serve as calibrators of or infomercials
for what Trump believes that "the public" wants. One can waste a lot of time delving into the
question of Trump's psychological need for affirmation . What is politically more important is
how he might use the set piece of a cheering crowd to brush aside other considerations, particularly
those involving the checks on the Presidency, and the willingness of those in other areas of the
government, or in the White House itself, to exercise them. Should courts worry about "a lot of
angry people"? One important point not to let go of is that a crowd that the President assembles
and the broader public are two very different things, no matter how big the arena, or how filled
it is with love . A better opportunity to hear that public voice will come in two years, at the
midterm elections. Maybe those will surprise Trump.
News flash for Amy. When a narcissist uses the word "love" it doesn't mean what you think it
does. Those rallies are about training people to react emotionally in a way that is fulfilling
to Donald. Nothing more, nothing less.
A better opportunity to hear that public voice will come in two years, at the midterm elections.
Maybe those will surprise Trump.
We remind ourselves that no one can help us but us. We empower ourselves.
So, it goes for today, as it did in 2008. Such moderation!!! A better opportunity will come
in two years!!!! I said that to myself 8 years ago, but I didn't hear much of it from the media
then. And we (not just I) say that now.
As for crowds reacting and it being fulfilling for the one being looked up on – again, it's
the same human psychology, whether the guy on stage is a rock star, Lenin, Roosevelt, Pol Pot,
the next savior or Idi Amin. How much love is there for anyone in any long term relationship,
except to affirm and be affirmed by 'love' everyday, in small acts or otherwise, much less some
politicians you interact through abstractions, like, through the media or stories told to us.
"Those rallies are about training people to react emotionally in a way that is fulfilling to
Donald. Nothing more, nothing less."
These rallies are Trump's means of maintaining contact with his base, and making sure that
he knows what they want. And a means of showing that he is trying to get it for them. If Hillary
had bothered to do anything of the sort she would have been elected. Sanders did it and it was
much appreciated. Trump's ego is huge but the rallies are much more than an ego-trip.
Re: WP's response to Truthdig's retraction request. It seems as if they are doubling down on
the "not our responsibility to verify the validity theme". My first reaction is that the WP is
now the equivalent of the National Enquirer. What's next, a headline " I gave birth to Trump's
Love Child".
Patriotic Correctness is a useful term and concept. Otherwise, the article was extremely long-winded
and boring. Editor to writer: "I need you to fill 3,000 words worth of space with this 50-word
idea "
I don't consider Trump a compromise candidate and that's largely because I don't see him actually
moving the country forward in the right direction. Sanders, for me, would have been a compromise
from the point of view of he probably wouldn't have moved us far enough fast enough for me but
he would have set us leftward instead of ever rightward and that IS an improvement.
The mainstream media is doubling down on imagined pro-Russian heresies in a fashion not seen
since the Reformation. Back then the Catholic Church held a monopoly on ideology. They lost it
to an unruly bunch of rebellious Protestants who were assisted by the new technology of the printing
press.
Nowadays various non-conformist internet sites, with the help of the new technology of the
internet, are challenging the MSM's monopoly on the means of persuasion. To show how much things
have changed, back in the 60's, dissidents such as the John Birch Society were limited to issuing
pamphlets to expound on their theories of Russians taking over America. In a very ironic role-reversal,
today it is the increasingly desperate Washington Post that more closely matches the paranoia
of the John Birch Society as it accuses non-conformist media heretics – who are threatening the
MSM's monopoly on the means of persuasion - of allowing Russians to take over America.
But let's spare a thought for poor Jeff Bezos. He basically thought he was purchasing the medieval
equivalent of a Bishopry when he bought the WaPo. But now after running six anti-Trump editorials
each and every day for the past 18 months, in which his establishment clergy engaged in an ever
increasing hysteria-spiral trying to outdo each other in turning Trump into Hitler, it ends up
Bezos' side lost the election anyway. It's like he bought a Blockbuster store in 2008 and never
even thought about Netflix!
And so now the MSM is literally launching an Establishment Inquisition by issuing "indexes"
of prohibited heretical websites.
Where will this lead? The grossly paranoiac reading is the Establishment's Counter Reformation
is laying the ideological groundwork for a sort of coup d'etat to be followed by the rule of a
goodthink junta. In this case we have to start calculating how many divisions are loyal to Trump's
gang of generals versus how many are loyal to Obama's generals. A more moderate reading is that
with these anti-Russian headlines, the Establishment is attempting to pressure Trump to stay the
Establishment course on foreign policy and to appoint a SecState who is hostile to Russia. And
in the best case these crazy MSM ramblings are just the last gasps of soon to be extinct media
mammoths.
One thing you can say about Trump is that he is most certainly not a wuss. In the face of this
firestorm about Russian influence sources say Trump is going to nominate Rex Tillerson, who is
very pro-Putin, as Secretary of State!
I wonder what happens when they don't confirm any of his nominees? Is this a case of 'I will nominee so many you don't like, you will be forced to confirm at
least a few?'
Yes I do because Trump is reportedly naming NeoCon John Bolton as undersecretary. That's going
to be a package deal; if they reject Tillerson then Bolton is gone as well. The NeoCons are desperate
to get Bolton into the Administration.
Bolton's job will be to go on talk shows and defend Trump's policies. If he doesn't do it then
he gets fired.
And so from the rest of the world's point of view, Tillerson is the carrot but Bolton remains
in the background as the stick in case anyone starts thinking Trump is too soft and decides to
test him.
Praetorian Guard Redux. Any nation that embraces secret police will find itself ruled by them in short order.
Notable quotes:
"... Yes, the CIA's sterling reputation around the world for truth-telling and integrity might be sullied if someone doubts their claims... https://t.co/2uyQXvFdOK - Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 10, 2016 ..."
"... When is it hardest to get people not to blindly accept anonymous, evidence-free CIA claims? When it's very pleasing to believe them. - Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 10, 2016 ..."
"... "...there is no clear evidence - even now," said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a member of the Trump transition team. "There's a lot of innuendo, lots of circumstantial evidence, that's it." ..."
"... "...Obama wants the report before he leaves office Jan. 20, Monaco said. The review will be led by [PROVEN LIAR] James Clapper, the outgoing director of national intelligence, officials said." ..."
"... Aside from its instigation of coups and alliances with right-wing juntas, Washington sought to more subtly influence elections in all corners of the world. And so did Moscow. Political scientist Dov Levin calculates that the "two powers intervened in 117 elections around the world from 1946 to 2000 - an average of once in every nine competitive elections. ..."
"... In the late 1940s, the newly established CIA cut its teeth in Western Europe, pushing back against some of the continent's most influential leftist parties and labor unions. In 1948, the United States propped up Italy's centrist Christian Democrats and helped ensure their electoral victory against a leftist coalition, anchored by one of the most powerful communist parties in Europe. CIA operatives gave millions of dollars to their Italian allies and helped orchestrate what was then an unprecedented, clandestine propaganda campaign : This included forging documents to besmirch communist leaders via fabricated sex scandals, starting a mass letter-writing campaign from Italian Americans to their compatriots, and spreading hysteria about a Russian takeover and the undermining of the Catholic Church. ..."
"... "We had bags of money that we delivered to selected politicians, to defray their political expenses, their campaign expenses, for posters, for pamphlets," recounted F. Mark Wyatt , the CIA officer who handled the mission and later participated in more than 2˝ decades of direct support to the Christian Democrats. ..."
"... This template spread everywhere : CIA operative Edward G. Lansdale, notorious for his efforts to bring down the North Vietnamese government, is said to have run the successful 1953 campaign of Philippines President Ramon Magsaysay. Japan's center-right Liberal Democratic Party was backed with secret American funds through the 1950s and the 1960s. The U.S. government and American oil corporations helped Christian parties in Lebanon win crucial elections in 1957 with briefcases full of cash. ..."
"... In Chile, the United States prevented Allende from winning an election in 1964. "A total of nearly four million dollars was spent on some fifteen covert action projects, ranging from organizing slum dwellers to passing funds to political parties," detailed a Senate inquiry in the mid-1970s that started to expose the role of the CIA in overseas elections. When it couldn't defeat Allende at the ballot box in 1970, Washington decided to remove him anyway. ..."
"... Obama & The Presstitutes: Legalized DOMESTIC Propaganda to American Citizens The National Defense Authorization Act of July 2013 (NDAA) included an amendment that legalized the use of propaganda on the American public. The amendment - originally proposed by Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) and Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and passed – nullified the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which explicitly forbids information and psychological operations aimed at influencing U.S. public opinion. The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 allowed U.S. propaganda intended to influence foreign audiences to be used on the domestic population. ..."
"... This Russia CIA Program aimed at US Citizens is part of the OBAMA FRAUD to cover the crimes of Clinton et al. The MSM and especially the NYT is the epi-center of "Fake News" ..."
"... Hillary was a big threat to Russia security. Trump was willing to work with Russia. Does anyone really believe Russia has absolutely no part to play in Trump's win? Think again. ..."
"... Thinking is one thing. Proving it is another. And what do you "think" about the CIA and Victoria Nuland's role in toppling the elected government in the Ukraine? ..."
"... After a year of MSM propaganda and lies, you are now obsessed with "fake news" ironically the kind that totally obliterated your propaganda for the lies that they were. ..."
"... Go back to the 1960s. Phillp Graham and his wife rans Wa Post. Phillip got a young girl friend and started going off the reservation saying WaPo was becoming a mouthpiece for the See Eye Ah. He was going to divorce his wife. He then was commited to an insane asylum, released and then killed himself with a shotgun. ..."
"... There have to be good, patriotic Americans within CIA These intelligence reports are obvious fictions: The agitprop of a neocon/zionist Deep State that fully intends to expand the wars, target Iran and Russia, while sending American blood and treasure to pay their bill. ..."
"... Kennedy knew that the CIA was nothing but a group of Useless, Meddling, Lying Assholes, and made it known Publicly. Unfortunately for him, things didn't turn out all that well. "Wetwork" is never in shortage with that crew. ..."
"... Praetorian Guard Redux. Any nation that embraces secret police will find itself ruled by them in short order. ..."
"... Most CIA directors are/were members of the Rockefeller/CFR including: Morell, Petraeus, Hayden, Tenet, Deutch, Woolsey, Gates, Webster, Casey, Turner, Bush, Colby, Schlesinger, Helms, McCone and Allen Dulles. Also every Fed chairman since WW2. See member lists at cfr dot org. ..."
"... The domestic policies of both CFR wings are the same: the maintenance of the American Empire... There is no possibility of [outsiders] capturing power at the top of either party... ..."
Overnight the media propaganda wars escalated after the late Friday release
of an article by the Washington Post (which last week
admitted to using unverified, or fake, news in an attempt to smear other so-called "fake news" sites) according to which a secret
CIA assessment found that Russia sought to tip last month's U.S. presidential election in Donald Trump's favor, a conclusion presented
without any actual evidence, and which drew an extraordinary, and angry rebuke from the president-elect's camp.
"These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction," Trump's transition team said, launching
a broadside against the spy agency. "The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history.
It's now time to move on and 'Make America Great Again.' "
The Washington Post report comes after outgoing President Barack Obama
ordered a review of all cyberattacks that took place during the 2016 election cycle , amid growing calls from Congress for more
information on the extent of Russian interference in the campaign. The newspaper cited officials briefed on the matter as saying
that individuals with connections to Moscow provided WikiLeaks with email hacked from the Democratic National Committee, Democratic
nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign chief and others.
Without a shred of evidence provided, and despite Wikileaks' own on the record denial that the source of the emails was Russian,
the WaPo attack piece claims the email messages were steadily leaked out via WikiLeaks in the months before the election, damaging
Clinton's White House run. Essentially, according to the WaPo, the Russians' aim was to help Donald Trump win and not just undermine
the U.S. electoral process, hinting at a counter-Hillary intent on the side of Putin.
"It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia's goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to
help Trump get elected," the newspaper quoted a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation last week to key
senators as saying. " That's the consensus view."
CIA agents told the lawmakers it was "quite clear" - although it was not reported exactly what made it "clear" - that electing
Trump was Russia's goal, according to officials who spoke to the Post, citing growing evidence from multiple sources.
And yet, key questions remain unanswered, and the CIA's report fell short of being a formal U.S. assessment produced by all 17
intelligence agencies the newspaper said, for two reasons. As we reported in November "
The "Fact" That 17 Intelligence Agencies Confirmed Russia is Behind the Email Hacks Isn't Actually A "Fact ", and then also because
aside from so-called "consensus", there is - once again - no evidence, otherwise the appropriate agencies would have long since released
it, and this is nothing more than another propaganda attempt to build tension with Russia. In fact, the WaPo admits as much in the
following text, which effectively destroys the article's entire argument :
The CIA presentation to senators about Russia's intentions fell short of a formal U.S. assessment produced by all 17 intelligence
agencies. A senior U.S. official said there were minor disagreements among intelligence officials about the agency's assessment,
in part because some questions remain unanswered.
For example, intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin "directing" the identified
individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks, a second senior U.S. official said. Those actors, according to the official,
were "one step" removed from the Russian government, rather than government employees. Moscow has in the past used middlemen to
participate in sensitive intelligence operations so it has plausible deniability.
* * *
"I'll be the first one to come out and point at Russia if there's clear evidence, but there is no clear evidence - even now,"
said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a member of the Trump transition team.
"There's a lot of innuendo, lots of circumstantial evidence, that's it."
And since even the WaPo is forced to admit that intelligence agents don't have the proof that Russian officials directed the identified
individuals to supply WikiLeaks with the hacked Democratic emails, the best it can do is speculate based on circumstantial inferences,
especially since, as noted above, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has
denied links with Russia's government
, putting the burden of proof on the side of those who challenge the Wikileaks narrative. So far that proof has not been provided.
Nonetheless, at the White House, Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz said Obama called for the cyberattacks review earlier this
week to ensure "the integrity of our elections."
"This report will dig into this pattern of malicious cyberactivity timed to our elections, take stock of our defensive capabilities
and capture lessons learned to make sure that we brief members of Congress and stakeholders as appropriate," Schultz said.
Taking the absurdity to a whole new level, Obama wants the report completed before his term ends on January 20, by none other
than a proven and confirmed liar : " The review will be led by James Clapper, the outgoing director of national intelligence, officials
said. " In other words, the report that the Kremlin stole the election should be prepared by the time Trump is expected to be sworn
in.
"We are going to make public as much as we can," the spokesman added. "This is a major priority for the president."
The move comes after Democrats in Congress pressed the White House to reveal details, to Congress or to the public, of Russian
hacking and disinformation in the election.
On Oct. 7, one month before the election, the Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence announced
that "the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of emails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political
organizations." "These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process," they said.
Trump dismissed those findings in an interview published Wednesday by Time magazine for its "Person of the Year" award. Asked
if the intelligence was politicized, Trump answered: "I think so."
"I don't believe they interfered," he said. "It could be Russia. And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in
New Jersey."
Worried that Trump will sweep the issue under the rug after his inauguration, seven Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee
called on Nov. 29 for the White House to declassify what it knows about Russian interference. The seven have already been briefed
on the classified details, suggesting they believe there is more information the public should know. On Tuesday this week, leading
House Democrats called on Obama to give members of the entire Congress a classified briefing on Russian interference, from hacking
to the spreading of fake news stories to mislead U.S. voters.
Republicans in Congress have also promised hearings into Russian activities once the new administration comes in.
Obama's homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco said the cyberinterference goes back to the 2008 presidential race, when both the
Obama and John McCain campaigns were hit by malicious computer intrusions.
* * *
An interesting aside to emerge from last night's hit piece and the Trump team response is that there is now a full blown turf
war between Trump and the CIA, as NBC's Chuck Todd observed in a series of late Friday tweets:
The implication in the Trump transition statement is that he doesn't believe a single thing from the CIA
To which Glenn Greenwald provided the best counterargument:
Yes, the CIA's sterling reputation around the world for truth-telling and integrity might be sullied if someone doubts
their claims...https://t.co/2uyQXvFdOK - Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald)
December 10, 2016
When is it hardest to get people not to blindly accept anonymous, evidence-free CIA claims? When it's very pleasing to
believe them. - Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald)
December 10, 2016
However, of the mini Tweetstorm, this was the most important aspect: the veiled suggestion that in addition to Russia, both the
FBI and the Obama presidency prevented Hillary from becoming the next US president...
While Obama's FBI director smeared Hillary, Obama sat on evidence of Russian efforts to elect Trump that had basis in evidence.
... which in light of these stunning new unproven and baseless allegations, she may very well have renewed aspirations toward.
* * *
So while there is no "there" there following the WaPo's latest attempt to fan the rarging fires of evidence-free propaganda, or
as the WaPo itself would say "fake news", here is why the story has dramatic implications. First, the only two quotes which matter:
"...there is no clear evidence - even now," said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee
and a member of the Trump transition team. "There's a lot of innuendo, lots of circumstantial evidence, that's it."
* * *
"...Obama wants the report before he leaves office Jan. 20, Monaco said. The review will be led by [PROVEN LIAR] James
Clapper, the outgoing director of national intelligence, officials said."
And then the summary:
Announce "consensus" (not unanimous) "conclusion" based in circumstantial evidence now, before the Electoral College vote,
then write a report with actual details due by Jan 20.
Put a proven liar in charge of writing the report on Russian hacking.
Fail to mention that not one of the leaked DNC or Podesta emails has been shown to be inauthentic. So the supposed Russian
hacking simply revealed truth about Hillary, DNC, and MSM collusion and corruption.
Fail to mention that if hacking was done by or for US government to stop Hillary, blaming the Russians would be the most likely
disinformation used by US agencies.
Expect every pro-Hillary lapdog journalist - which is virtually all of them - in America will hyperventilate (Twitter is currently
on fire) about this latest fact-free, anti-Trump political stunt for the next nine days.
Or, as a reader put it, this is a soft coup attempt by leaders of Intel community and Obama Admin to influence the Electoral College
vote, similar to the 1960s novel " Seven Days in May
."
Once again it's a case of "watch the shiny object"... The "secret CIA report" seems to focus on who leaked the documents to Wikileaks
and not the content of those documents... The left have not refuted that the emails are real, just who leaked them to Assange...
Fuck 'em, if they keep Trump from the white house there will be revolution...
"Aside from its instigation of coups and alliances with right-wing juntas, Washington sought to more subtly influence elections
in all corners of the world. And so did Moscow. Political scientist
Dov Levin calculates that the "two powers intervened in 117 elections around the world from 1946 to 2000 - an average of once
in every nine competitive elections."
In the late 1940s, the newly established CIA cut its teeth in Western Europe, pushing back against some of the continent's
most influential leftist parties and labor unions. In 1948, the United States propped up Italy's centrist Christian Democrats
and helped ensure their electoral victory against a leftist coalition, anchored by one of the most powerful communist parties
in Europe. CIA operatives gave millions of dollars
to their Italian allies and helped orchestrate what was then
an unprecedented, clandestine propaganda campaign
: This included forging documents to besmirch communist leaders via fabricated sex scandals, starting a mass letter-writing
campaign from Italian Americans to their compatriots, and spreading hysteria about a Russian takeover and the undermining of the
Catholic Church.
"We had bags of money that we delivered to selected politicians, to defray their political expenses, their campaign expenses,
for posters, for pamphlets," recounted F. Mark Wyatt
, the CIA officer who handled the mission and later participated in more than 2˝ decades of direct support to the Christian
Democrats.
This
template spread everywhere : CIA operative Edward G. Lansdale, notorious for his efforts to bring down the North Vietnamese
government, is said to have run the successful 1953 campaign of Philippines President Ramon Magsaysay. Japan's center-right Liberal
Democratic Party was backed with secret American funds through the 1950s and the 1960s. The U.S. government and American oil corporations
helped Christian parties in Lebanon win crucial elections in 1957 with briefcases full of cash.
In Chile, the United States prevented Allende from winning an election in 1964. "A total of nearly four million dollars
was spent on some fifteen covert action projects, ranging from organizing slum dwellers to passing funds to political parties,"
detailed a Senate
inquiry in the mid-1970s that started to expose the role of the CIA in overseas elections. When it couldn't defeat Allende at
the ballot box in 1970, Washington decided to remove him anyway."
A US Official has claimed the Russians are out to get Merkel in a cyber campaign.
A CIA probe confirms Moscow helped Trump win the election.
"In both cases, said the official, Mr. Putin's campaigns in both Europe and the US are intended to disrupt and discredit the
Western concept of democracy by promoting extremist candidates, parties, and political figures."
Both WAPO , & C.TODD would NOT be missed. Per Todd: "How helpful is it for the CIA's reputation around the world if the next US
questions their findings so publicly?"
Todd is concerned about The CIA's "Reputation" ?????? AS IF its current rep is wonderful??? - TODD: There is no "reputation"
to damage!!! Lame brain !!
17 intelligence agencies? Is this some dystopian record?
"There's a lot of innuendo, lots of circumstantial evidence, that's it."
So these 'intelligence' agencies are in the same boat as the pizzgate crowd. The main difference is after failing to produce
any actionable evidence the pizzagate crowd will loose interest and move on. We still have to give the bureaucrats at these intelligence
agencies a paycheck next month.
Russians are training the illegals in secret camps in the Sierra Madre mountains before they are released into the US. I was there
and saw it. Bigfoot was guarding the entrance.
Obama & The Presstitutes: Legalized DOMESTIC Propaganda to American Citizens The National Defense Authorization Act of July
2013 (NDAA) included an amendment that legalized the use of propaganda on the American public. The amendment - originally proposed
by Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) and Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and passed – nullified the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which explicitly forbids
information and psychological operations aimed at influencing U.S. public opinion. The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 allowed
U.S. propaganda intended to influence foreign audiences to be used on the domestic population.
Signed by .. Obama. This Act formalized systems in place covertly or ad hoc for some time.
Hillary was a big threat to Russia security. Trump was willing to work with Russia. Does anyone really believe Russia has
absolutely no part to play in Trump's win? Think again. They should and I think they did! Whether it was an illegal intervention
would be another question.
Thinking is one thing. Proving it is another. And what do you "think" about the CIA and Victoria Nuland's role in toppling
the elected government in the Ukraine? How about NATO expansion for decades under Clinton, Bush and Obama? Aren't these DIRECT
THREATS against Putin and Russia? Yes, they most certainly are. Fuck the CIA They do far more harm than good for the people in
the USA.
Hillary was a threat to life on Earth. She made it clear her intent was to wage war against Russia (and probably China). Obviously
the US has been conducting cyberwarfare, psyops and propaganda against Russia, as this has been documented in the past. Russia's
response may merely have been presenting authentic information via RT/Sputnik/etc. and putting clips of Putin online where he
sounds like a rational human being. In other words, they may be guilty of nothing more than providing Americans with the truth,
much as America did with the Soviets.
That was exactly what this brought to mind for me - a John F Kennedy moment, but not his assassination. I was thinking of an earlier
time well before this., ie, Nikita Krushev banging the table at the UN with his shoe. The state of the nation - people were in
a panic because Russia let it be known it was about to bring nuclear missiles into Cuba. It was a ploy by the Russians and Krushev
to de-escalate the tensions between the two countries over our attempt to take out Castro and the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
Fade to today. Why would the Russians care who won the presidency? Hillary the war monger or the Donald, the negotiator? Ahh,
maybe because we just brought into Turkey then consequently moved fifty nuclear missiles into position along Russia's border?
Who authorized and ordered that? Would that be any cause for worry by Russia or its citizenry? Is that or is it not total insanity?
Total fuckery? Obama and Hillary have put us four minutes away from a worldwide nuclear holocaust and now they are trying to make
Trump look like he was in bed with Putin. I don't know what Trump is but I do know he and Putin are the only two people on the
same wavelength right now, thank the electoral college.
You are delusional, dishonest, ignrorant, and proud of it. Fortunately, YOU LOST.
After a year of MSM propaganda and lies, you are now obsessed with "fake news" ironically the kind that totally obliterated
your propaganda for the lies that they were.
After a year of cackling laughter when every two bit dictator and NWO globalist bad mouthed Trump, like a child, you are OUTRAGED
that Russia might have not wanted Hillary to take power and make war against it. At least Russia didn't PUBLICALLY attempt to
influence an American election LIKE HILLARY'S NWO GOONS DID FROM THEIR EXECUTIVE OFFICES.
The popular vote: Ignoring fraud, which was proven in the Michigan recount, Hillary supporters are trying to make hay out of
her garnering 2.6 million more votes than Trump. Besides the fact that this is irrelevant in a campaign for the electoral college,
2.6 million votes is only somewhere @0.7% of the US population. That's hardly a mandate, especially when we consider she only
had that dubious edge over Trump, not the entire playing field. There were other candidate you know.
I'm sorry, I forgot, YOU LOST, and you think you can spoil our good time with the assertion that the better candidate was Hillary.
LOL, losers.
Trump is a wildcard, we all knew that when we voted for him.
Hillary is a witchcard and we all knew what she would do.
Bernie wasn't even a choice, Hillary had him as a straw man opponent.
Rand Paul to me was the best choice but establishment didn't want him, Gay media wanted Trump because they thought Hillary
could beat him and many of the Ron Paulers still butthurt over him endorsing Romney. Never mind Ron Paul didn't even put up a
fight when they robbed him of the nomination he won.
Go back to the 1960s. Phillp Graham and his wife rans Wa Post. Phillip got a young girl friend and started going off the reservation
saying WaPo was becoming a mouthpiece for the See Eye Ah. He was going to divorce his wife. He then was commited to an insane
asylum, released and then killed himself with a shotgun.
Phil's wife was the daughter of Eugene Meyer who ran The Fed.
Watergate was not what you were told. Nixon wanted tariffs and the Rockefellers (who myguess started the CIA - David was an
OSS officer in WW2) got mad at their boy Nixon. Nixon hated George Bush and did not trust him. All the info the Wa Post got on
Nixon was C**IIA info to Ben Bradley, editor of Wa Post, probably from George Bush. All of Nixons,relatively minor, dirt was passed
from See EYE Ah to Wa Post. Woodward and Bernstein just typed it up.
Bradley was brther in law to Cord Meyer (operation mockingbird). Cord's wife (Mary Pinchot-Meyer) had an ongoing affair with
JFK. After he was killed, she was gonna spill the beans like Marilyn Monroe. She was killed taking a walk. Ben BRadley and the
See EYE Ah rush to her apartment to get her diary.
the CIA has been arming Al Qaeda and (likely) 'ISIS'.
It is very probable US forces will be killed by these weapons.
Add to that the small issue of the hundreds of thousands of people, Christian and non-Salafist/non-Wahhabi Muslims murdered
by the Islamopsycho and Acadami etc. private western mercs.
There have to be good, patriotic Americans within CIA These intelligence reports are obvious fictions: The agitprop of
a neocon/zionist Deep State that fully intends to expand the wars, target Iran and Russia, while sending American blood and treasure
to pay their bill.
And now they are going to try to overturn an election in which Clinton not only lost by the rules of our system, but in which
Clinton's 'popular vote' win was the product of illegal immigrant and other fraudulent voting.
all of which means they are also willing to risk civil war.
Kennedy knew that the CIA was nothing but a group of Useless, Meddling, Lying Assholes, and made it known Publicly. Unfortunately
for him, things didn't turn out all that well. "Wetwork" is never in shortage with that crew.
Most CIA directors are/were members of the Rockefeller/CFR including: Morell, Petraeus, Hayden, Tenet, Deutch, Woolsey, Gates,
Webster, Casey, Turner, Bush, Colby, Schlesinger, Helms, McCone and Allen Dulles. Also every Fed chairman since WW2. See member
lists at cfr dot org.
"I have discussed Council on Foreign Relations Team A vs. Team B for 35 years. I have seen two anti-CFR people get through
the [presidential] screening... The domestic policies of both CFR wings are the same: the maintenance of the American Empire...
There is no possibility of [outsiders] capturing power at the top of either party..."
"... In principle, every router between the DNC server and Russia has the potential to be hacked, with a tunnel added to send the traffic somewhere else in the world with new source and destination addresses. This is known as router table poisoning. It is preventable but the mechanisms are rarely ever used because the security services want to be able to do this themselves. There are some nice logs of the NSA using this. ..."
"... In principle, someone at an ISP or backbone service could have had a laptop plugged into a switch or router to do the same thing, or lit up a strand of dark fibre to let some uber-wealthy business do this. And there's no shortage of uber-wealthy businesses who aren't keen on Democrats. This technique is used for local and remote network diagnostics, no reason it can't be used nefarious, it's not like the hardware cares why a wire is plugged in. ..."
"... Russia has an independent foreign policy and acts in what it perceives as it's own best interests. It has refused to become a vassal state of the West and is a threat to the Empire's full-spectrum dominance. Worst of all it has begun trading outside the $US in energy and other resources with China and Iran. ..."
"... Mainstream media are now busy repressing any news and any questioning about facts ..."
"... Western media are in full panic as Aleppo falls with all sorts of gruesome tales about the mistreatment of their favorite terrorists in Aleppo and a strange silence on the whereabouts of their '250K civilians' under siege ..."
"... I cant believe the Fake News outlets are still making a big deal about this issue. Obomber is leaving in a cloud of failure as he deserves ..."
"... "Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state." ― Noam Chomsky, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda. ..."
"... New Canadian documentary - All Governments Lie. "It lucidly argues that powerful interests have been creating supercharged fake stories for decades to advance their own nefarious interests. And the institutional media have too often blithely played along." The Globe and Mail. ..."
"... No comments about Seth Rich the DNC staffer Assange hinted had leaked the Podesta emails to Wikileaks and was subsequently shot multiple times and died at 04:20 on a Washington DC street in a 'motiveless' crime in which none of his possessions were taken. ..."
"... The rise of the right wing in Europe is due to the fact that Social Democratic parties have completely sold out to neo-liberal agenda. ..."
"... So Putin's plan to undermine U.S. voter confidence was to simply show what actually happens behind the scenes at the DNC, how diabolical! ..."
"... Peter Schweizer, the author of Clinton Cash, has published a report that claims that that Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta was on the executive board of a foreign company that received $35 million from the Kremlin. "The company was a transparent Russian front, and how much Podesta was compensated - and for what - is unclear. In addition, Podesta failed to disclose his position on that board to the Federal government, as required by law," John Schindler of the Observer wrote. ..."
"... So it's true because the CIA said so. That's the gold standard for me. ..."
"... "Truth is Treason in the Empire of Lies" - Ron Paul ..."
"... At least Tucker Carlson is able to see through the BS and asks searching question. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRkeGkCjdHg ..."
"... President-elect Donald Trump's transition team said in a statement Friday afternoon that the same people who claim Russia interfered in the presidential election had previously claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. ..."
"... The neoliberal corporate machine is wounded but not dead. They will use every trick, ploy and opportunity to try to regain power. The fight goes on. ..."
"... Good occasion to substantiate the accusation which ,substantiated or not,will remind the "useful idiots" of the "change of regime " US policy and who started the Ukrainian crisis. ..."
"... Just another chapter in the sad saga of the Democrats unwillingness to admit they ran the worst candidate & the worst campaign in recent memory. It's not our fault! Them dirty Russkies did it! ..."
Well, if Rupert Mudroach, an American citizen, can influence the Australian elections, who gives a stuff about anyone else's
involvement in US politics?
The US loves demonising Russia, even supporting ISIS to fight against them.
The United States of Amnesia just can't understand that they are run by the military machine.
As Frank Zappa once correctly stated: The US government is just the entertainment unit of the Military.
Altogether the only thing people are accusing the Russians of is the WikiLeaks scandal. And in hindsight of the enormous media
bias toward Trump it really comes of as little more than leveling the playing field. Hardly the sort of democratic subversion
that is being suggested.
And of course there is another problem and that is in principle, the DNC server could have had malware in an e-mail that set
up a NAT entry that made the connecting computer appear somewhere else, with the entry deleted afterwards. Typically, IP table
modifications aren't logged, so this would not be detectable.
In principle, the DNC server could have had malware in an e-mail that ran a SED script at a specific time that changed any
occurrence of one IP address with another. Not sure anyone would bother with this, but it's why good system admins place so much
emphasis on securing logs. However, it's obvious we're not talking about good admins.
In principle, every router between the DNC server and Russia has the potential to be hacked, with a tunnel added to send the
traffic somewhere else in the world with new source and destination addresses. This is known as router table poisoning. It is
preventable but the mechanisms are rarely ever used because the security services want to be able to do this themselves. There
are some nice logs of the NSA using this.
In principle, someone along the way could tap into the fibre, spoofing IP addresses and injecting/sniffing packets. The US
even has a submarine designed for this, but optics aren't complex and any number of neo-phone phreaks could have the hardware.
In principle, someone at an ISP or backbone service could have had a laptop plugged into a switch or router to do the same
thing, or lit up a strand of dark fibre to let some uber-wealthy business do this. And there's no shortage of uber-wealthy businesses
who aren't keen on Democrats. This technique is used for local and remote network diagnostics, no reason it can't be used nefarious,
it's not like the hardware cares why a wire is plugged in.
In principle, the supposed destination machine could have been hacked to relay the packets in encrypted form to the South Pole
or a college campus in Texas. There are many examples of client machines being hacked to do this. It's basically what zombie machines
are in botnets.
In practice, it is flat-out guaranteed that none of the security agencies could distinguish this from a Russian attack. Nothing
in the area monitored could tell the difference. We know, for a fact, that college kids spoofing a scan from China have fooled
the DoD and NSA on previous occasions, it has caused international incidents.
So we have known forms of attack that are known to exist, aren't complex and in some cases are already used for attacks. They
are 100% untraceable.
Don't know about Russians, but in the early 2000's the Ukrainian hackers had some nasty viruses embedded in email attachments
that could fuckup ARM based computers.
Russia has an independent foreign policy and acts in what it perceives as it's own best interests. It has refused to become
a vassal state of the West and is a threat to the Empire's full-spectrum dominance. Worst of all it has begun trading outside
the $US in energy and other resources with China and Iran.
Mainstream media are now busy repressing any news and any questioning about facts, as the last battle in their support to jidaists
fighting the Syrian Army. This is the dark pit where our so called free press has fallen into.
Yep had a chat with an army mate yesterday asked him what the fcuk the supposed head of MI6 was on about regarding Russian support
for Syrian govt suggesting Russian actions made terrorism more likely here in UK. He shrugged his shoulders and said he hoped
Putin wiped the terrorists out...
Western media are in full panic as Aleppo falls with all sorts of gruesome tales about the mistreatment of their favorite terrorists
in Aleppo and a strange silence on the whereabouts of their '250K civilians' under siege
Of course no news on the danger to the civilians of W,Aleppo, who have been bombarded indiscriminately for months by the 'moderates'
in the east of the city or the danger to the civilians of Palmyra, Mosul or al Bab.
I cant believe the Fake News outlets are still making a big deal about this issue. Obomber is leaving in a cloud of failure as
he deserves.
I´ll still look for the Guardian articles on football which are excellent.
Cheers!
The Sanders movement inside the Democratic party did offer some hope but this was snuffed out by the DNC and the Clinton campaign
in collusion with the media. This is what likely caused her defeat in November and not some Kremlin intrigue.
"Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state."
― Noam Chomsky, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda.
New Canadian documentary - All Governments Lie. "It lucidly argues that powerful interests have been creating supercharged fake
stories for decades to advance their own nefarious interests. And the institutional media have too often blithely played along."
The Globe and Mail.
No comments about Seth Rich the DNC staffer Assange hinted had leaked the Podesta emails to Wikileaks and was subsequently shot
multiple times and died at 04:20 on a Washington DC street in a 'motiveless' crime in which none of his possessions were taken.
Distract the masses with bullsh*t , nothing new...
Trump needs to double up on his personal security, he has doubled down on the CIA tonight bringing upmtheir bullsh*t on WMD. Thing
are getting interesting...
"If we can revert to the truth, then a great deal of one's suffering can be erased, because a great deal of one's suffering is
based on sheer lies. "
R. D. Laing
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
US politicians and the MSM depend on sheer lies.....
They are playing a game. They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they
will punish me. I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.
R. D. Laing
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
I'm sick of jumping through their hoops - how about you?
"Tin Foil Hat" Hillary--
"This is not about politics or partisanship," she went on. "Lives are at risk, lives of ordinary people just trying to go about
their days to do their jobs, contribute to their communities. It is a danger that must be addressed and addressed quickly."
We fail to see how Russian propaganda has put people's lives directly at risk. Unless, of course, Hillary is suggesting that
the increasingly-bizarre #Pizzagate swarm journalism campaign (which apparently caused a man to shoot up a floor tile in a D.C.
pizza shop) was conjured up by a bunch of Russian trolls.
And this is about as absurd as saying Russian trolls were why Trump got elected.
"It needs to be said," former counterintelligence agent John R. Schindler (who, by the way, believes Assange and Snowden are
both Russian plants), writes in the Observer, "that nearly all of the liberals eagerly pontificating about how Putin put Trump
in office know nothing about 21st century espionage, much less Russia's unique spy model and how it works. Indeed, some of the
most ardent advocates of this Kremlin-did-it conspiracy theory were big fans of Snowden and Wikileaks -- right until clandestine
Russian shenanigans started to hurt Democrats. Now, they're panicking."
(Nonetheless, #Pizzagate and Trump, IMHO, are manifestations of a population which deeply deeply distrusts the handlers and
gatekeepers of the status quo. Justified or not. And with or without Putin's shadowy fingers strumming its magic hypno-harp across
the Land of the Free. This runs deeper than just Putin.)
Fake news has always been around, from the fake news which led Americans to believe the Pearl Harbor attack was a surprise
and completely unprovoked .
To the fake news campaigns put out by Edward Bernays tricking women into believing cigarettes were empowering little phallics
of feminism. (AKA "Torches of Freedom.")
This War on Fake News has more to do with the elites finally realizing how little control they have over the minds of the unwashed
masses. Rather, this is a war on the freaks, geeks and weirdos who've formed a decentralized and massively-influential media right
under their noses.
and there may be some truth to that. An article says has delved into financial matters in Russia.
Kremlin Connection? The TRUTH About Hillary's Shady Ties To Russia REVEALED
Find out why insiders say Clinton has some explaining to do.
Americans have no idea just how closely Hillary Clinton is tied to the Kremlin! That's the shocking claim of a new report that
alleges the Democratic nominee is secretly pals with Vladimir Putin and his countrymen.
Peter Schweizer, the author of Clinton Cash, has published a report that claims that that Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta
was on the executive board of a foreign company that received $35 million from the Kremlin. "The company was a transparent Russian
front, and how much Podesta was compensated - and for what - is unclear. In addition, Podesta failed to disclose his position
on that board to the Federal government, as required by law," John Schindler of the Observer wrote.
As Radar previously reported, when Clinton was secretary of state, she profited from the "Russian Reset," a failed attempt
to improve relations between the U.S. and Russia.
chweizer wrote, "Many of the key figures in the Skolkovo process - on both the Russian and U.S. sides - had major financial ties
to the Clintons. During the Russian reset, these figures and entities provided the Clintons with tens of millions of dollars,
including contributions to the Clinton Foundation, paid for speeches by Bill Clinton, or investments in small start-up companies
with deep Clinton ties." Schweizer also details "Skolkovo," a Silicon Valley-like campus that both the U.S. and Russia worked
on for developing biomed, space, nuclear and IT technologies. He told the New York Post that there was a "pattern that shows a
high percentage of participants in Skolkovo who happen to be Clinton Foundation donors."
So it's true because the CIA said so.
That's the gold standard for me.
So let me be the first to thank Russia for providing us with their research.
Instead of assassination, coup or invasion, they simply showed us our leaders' own words when written behind the public's backs.
I'm no fan of Putin, but this was a useful bit of intelligence you've shared with us.
Happy Christmas, Vlad.
Next time why not provide us with the email of all our banks and fossil fuel companies; you can help us clean up both political
parties with one fell swoop that way.
The U.S. is getting what it deserves, IF Russia was even dumb enough to meddle. The government in this country has been meddling
in other countries' affairs sixty years, in the Middle East, in South America and other places we don't even know about. The result
is mayhem, all in the 'interests' of the U.S., as it is described.
Where's the gap in this logic:
A) The American public has been offered ZERO proof of hacking by the Russian government to alter our election.
B) Even if true, no one has disputed the authenticity of the emails hacked.
C) Therefore, the WORST Russia could have done is show us who are own leader are when they don't think we're listening.
D) Taken together, this article is pretty close to fake news, and gives us nothing that should outrage us much at this time --
unless we are trying to foment war with Russia or call for a military coup against the baboon about to take the oath of office.
Hacking by unnamed individuals. No direct involvement of the Russian government, only implied, alleged, etc. Seems to me that
if Hillary had obeyed the law and not schemed behind the scenes to sabotage Bernie S. there would have been nothing to leak! Really
this is all about being caught with fer fingers in the cookie jar. Does it matter who leaked it? Did the US public not have a
right to know what the people they were voting for had been up to? It's a bit like the governor of a province being filmed burgling
someone's house and then complaining that someone had leaked the film to the media, just when he was trying to get re-elected!
It is called passing the buck, and because of the underhanded undermining of Bernie Sanders, who was winning, we have Trump. Thank
you Democratic party.
I am disappointed that the Guardian gives so much prominence to such speculation which is almost totally irrelevant. Why would
we necessarily (a) believe what the superspies tell us and (b) even if it is true why should we care?
I am also very disappointed at the Guardians attitude to Putin, the elected leader of Russia, who was so badly treated by the
US from the moment he took over from Yeltsin. I was in Russia as a visitor around that time and it was obvious that Putin restored
some dignity to the Russian people after the disastrous Yeltsin term of office. If the US had been willing to deal with him with
respect the world could be a much better place today. Instead the US insisted in trying to subvert his rule with the support of
its supine NATO allies in order to satisfy its corporate rulers.
If this is true, the US can hardly complain. After all, the US has a long record of interfering in other countries' elections--including
CIA overthrow of elected governments and their replacement with murderous, oppressive, right-wing dictatorships.
If the worst that Russia did was reveal the truth about what Democratic Party figures were saying behind closed doors, I'd
say it helped correct the unbalanced media focus on preventing Trump from becoming President. Call it the globalization of elections.
First, the government has yet to present any persuasive evidence that Russia hacked the DNC or anyone else. All we have is that
there is Russian code (meaningless according to cyber-security experts) and seemingly baseless "conclusions" by "intelligence"
officials. In other words, fake news at this point.
Second, even if true, the allegation amounts to an argument that Russia presented us with facts that we shouldn't have seen.
Think about that for a while. We are seeing demands that we self-censor ourselves from facts that seem unfair. What utter idiocy.
This is particularly outrageous given that the U.S. directly intervenes in the governance of any number of nations all the
time. We can support coups, arm insurgencies, or directly invade, but god forbid that someone present us with unsettling facts
about our ruling class.
This nation has jumped the shark. The fact that Trump is our president is merely confirmation of this long evident fact. That
fighting REAL NEWS of emails whose content has not been disputed is part of our war on "fake news," and the top priority for some
so-called liberals, promises only worse to come.
>> Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said Russia had "succeeded" in "sow[ing] discord" in the
election, and urged as much public disclosure as is possible.
What utter bullshit. The DNC's own dirty tricks did that. Donna Brasille stealing debate questions and handing them to Hillary
so that she could cheat did that. The FBIs investigation into Hillary did that. Podesta's emails did that. The totally one-sided
press coverage (apart from Fox) of the election did that. But it seems the american people were smart enough to see through the
BS and voted for trump. Good for them.
And we're gonna need a lot more than the word of a few politicised so-called intelligence agencies to believe this russo-hacking
story. These are the same people who lied about Iraqi WMDs so they are proven fakers/liars. These are also the same people who
hack EVERYONE else so I, quite frankly, have no sympathy even of the story turns out to be true.
Announce "consensus" (not unanimous) "conclusion" based in circumstantial evidence now, before the Electoral College vote,
then write a report with actual details due by Jan 20.
Put a proven liar in charge of writing the report on Russian hacking.
Fail to mention that not one of the leaked DNC or Podesta emails has been shown to be inauthentic. So the supposed Russian hacking
simply revealed truth about Hillary, DNC, and MSM collusion and corruption.
Fail to mention that if hacking was done by or for US government to stop Hillary, blaming the Russians would be the most likely
disinformation used by US agencies.
Expect every pro-Hillary lapdog journalist - which is virtually all of them - in America will hyperventilate (Twitter is currently
on fire) about this latest fact-free, anti-Trump political stunt for the next nine days.
Or, as a reader put it, this is a soft coup attempt by leaders of Intel community and Obama Admin to influence the Electoral College
vote, similar to the 1960s novel "Seven Days in May."
When the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security release a joint
statement it is not without very careful consideration to the wording.
Therefore, to understand what is known by the US intelligence services one must analyse the language used.
This is very telling:
"The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona
are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts."
Alleged:
adjective [attributive]
said, without proof, to have taken place or to have a specified illegal or undesirable quality
Consistent:
adjective
acting or done in the same way over time
Method:
noun
a particular procedure for accomplishing or approaching something
Motivation:
noun
a reason or reasons for acting or behaving in a particular way
So, what exactly is known by the US intelligence services?
Well what we can tell is:
the alleged (without proof) hacks were consistent (done in the same way) with the methods (using a particular procedure) and motivations
(and having reason for doing so) with Russian State actions.
There is absolutely no certainty about this whatsoever.
Thank God Obama will be out of office soon. He is the biggest disappointment ever. He has ordered the death of THOUSANDS via drone
strikes in other people's countries and most of the deaths were innocent bystanders. If President Xi of China or Putin were to
do that we would all be calling them tyrannical dictators and accusing them of a back door invasions. But somehow people are brainwashed
into thinking its ok of the US president to do such things. Truly sickening.
Says the CIA the organisation set up to destabilise governments all over the world. Lol.....
Congratulations for keeping a straight face I hope Trump makes urgently needed personnel changes in the alphabet soup agencies
working against humanity for very many years.
This is an extremely dangerous game that Obama and the political elites are playing.
The American political elites - including senetors, bankers, investors, multinationals et al, can feel power and control slipping
away from them.
This makes them very dangerous people indeed - as self-preservation and holding onto power is their number one priority.
What they're aiming to do ( a child can see what's coming ), is to call into question the validity of Trump's victory and blame
the Russians for it.
The elites are looking to create chaos and insurrection, to have the result nullified and to vilify Putin and Russia.
American and Russian troops are already lined up and facing each other along the Eastern European borders and all it takes
is one small incident from either side.
And all because those that have ruled the roost for so many decades ( in the White house, the 2 houses of Congress and Wall
St ), simply cannot face losing their positions of power, wealth and political influence.
They're out to get Trump, the populists and President Putin.
This is starting to feel like an attempt to make the Trump presidency appear illegitimate. The problem is that it could actually
make the democrats look like sore losers instead. We've had the recount, now it's foreign interference. This might harm them in
2020.
I don't like that Trump won, but he did. The electoral college system is clearly in the constitution and all sides understood
and agreed to it at the campaign commencement. Also some, by no means all, of commenters saying that the popular vote should win
have also been on referendum BTL saying the result isn't a legitimate leave vote, make your minds up!
I don't want Trump and I wanted to remain but, by the rules, my sides lost.
Yet in August, Snowden warned that the recent hack of NSA tied cyber spies was not designed to expose Hillary Clinton, but rather
a display of strength by the hackers, showing they could eventually unmask the NSA's own international cyber espionage and prove
the U.S. meddles in elections around the world.
Will the CIA be providing evidence to support these allegations or is it a case of "just trust us guys"? In any event, hypocrisy
is a national sport for the Yanks. According to a Reuters article 9 August 2016 "NSA operations have, for example, recently delved
into elections in Mexico, targeting its last presidential campaign. According to a top-secret PowerPoint presentation leaked by
former NSA contract employee Edward Snowden, the operation involved a "surge effort against one of Mexico's leading presidential
candidates, Enrique Peńa Nieto, and nine of his close associates." Peńa won that election and is now Mexico's president.
The NSA identified Peńa's cellphone and those of his associates using advanced software that can filter out specific phones
from the swarm around the candidate. These lines were then targeted. The technology, one NSA analyst noted, "might find a needle
in a haystack." The analyst described it as "a repeatable and efficient" process.
The eavesdroppers also succeeded in intercepting 85,489 text messages, a Der Spiegel article noted.
Another NSA operation, begun in May 2010 and codenamed FLATLIQUID, targeted Pena's predecessor, President Felipe Calderon.
The NSA, the documents revealed, was able "to gain first-ever access to President Felipe Calderon's public email account."
At the same time, members of a highly secret joint NSA/CIA organization, called the Special Collection Service, are based in
the U.S. embassy in Mexico City and other U.S. embassies around the world. It targets local government communications, as well
as foreign embassies nearby. For Mexico, additional eavesdropping, and much of the analysis, is conducted by NSA Texas, a large
listening post in San Antonio that focuses on the Caribbean, Central America and South America."
Breaking news! CIA admits people in USA aren't smart enough to vote for the person right person. Why blame Russians now?
Come on. Let's move on and enjoy the mess Trump will start. This is going to be worse than GWB.
We should all just enjoy the political comedy programs.
The CIA accusing a foreign power of interfering in the election of a showman for president - it would take me all day top cite
the times that this evil criminal organisation has interfered in the affairs of other countries, ordered assassinations, coups
etc. etc. etc
Yes like the "help" the CIA gave to the Taliban, Bin Laden and Co. when the Russians were in Afghanistan.
Then these dimwits from the CIA who taught Bin Laden and Co guerrilla warfare totally "missed" 9/11 and Twin Towers with all their
billions of funding.
So basically this is a total load of crap and if you think we are going to believe any reports vs. Russia these fools at the CIA
are going to publish then think again.
During the election our media was exposed as in essence a propaganda tool for the Democrat campaign and they continue the unholy
alliance after the election
Pathetic move from an organisation that created ISIS and is single handling every single conflict in the world. Here we have a
muppet president that for once wants to look after USA affairs internally and here we have a so alleged independent organisation
that wants to keep bombing and destabilising the world. Didn't Trump said he wanted to shake the FBI and CIA ? Who is going to
stop this machine of treachery ? : south America, middle east ...Asia ... they put their fingers on to create a problem- solution
caveat wereas is to create weapons contracts /farma or construction and sovereign debt . But it never tricles down to the layperson
..
"We are Not calling into question the election results"
next White House sentence - "Just the integrity.. " WTF
What more do you need to know - Bullshit Fake News.. propaganda, spoken by the youngest possible puppet boy White House Rep.
who almost managed to have his tie done up..
I am bookmarking this guy, for a laugh! White House Fake Newscaster ..:)
Worth watching the sides of his mouth onto his attempt to engage you with the eyes, but blinking way too much before, during
and after the word "Integrity".. FAKE!
His hand signals.. lmfao, so measured, how sweet.. now sack the sycophants --
People should know that these Breaking News stories we see in Western media on BBC, Guardian etc, about Russian interference are
in fact from Wash Post and NY Times quoting mysterious sources within the CIA
Of course we know that Wash Post and NY Times were completely objective during the election and didn't favor any party
Russia made Hillary run the most expensive campaign ever, spending 1.2 billion dollars.
Russia stole Hillary's message to the working people and gave her lousy slogans
My real comment is below, but work with me, for a moment.
So, since 2008, eh? Barack has thought carefully, with a legal mind.
Can't we somehow blame the Russians for the whole Economic collapse.. coming soon, Wall Street Cyber Crash, screwed up sKewed
up systems of Ponzi virus spiraling out of control..
blame the Russians , logic, the KGB held the FED at gunpoint and said "create $16.2 Trillion in 5 working days"
jeez, blame anything and anybody except peace prize guy Obama, the Pope, Bankers & Israel..
Now can we discuss the Security of the Pound against Cyber Attack.. what was it 6% in 2 minutes, early on Sunday morning, just
over month ago.. whoosh!
It seems more important than discussing an election where the result was always OBVIOUS!
And we called it, just like Kellyanne Conway..
Who is Huma Abedin? I wish to know and hear her talking to Kellyanne Conway, graciously in defeat.. is that so unreasonable?
********
Obama wishes to distract from exceedingly poor judgement, at the very minimum....
after his Greek Affair with Goldman Sachs.. surely.
As for his other Foreign Policy: Eternal Shame, founded on Fake News!
Obama the Fake News Founder to flounder over the Russians, who can prove that he, Obama supports & supported Terrorism!
Thus this article exists, to create doubt over the veracity of evidence to be presented over NATO's involvement in SYRIA! Obama
continues to resist, or loose face completely..
Just ask Can Dundar.... what he knows now and ask Obama to secure the release of Can Dundar's wife's passport, held for no
legitimate reason in Turkey! This outrageous stand off, from Erdogan & Obama to address their failures and arrogant disrespect
of Woman and her Legal Human Rights is Criminal.. & a Sickness of Mind that promotes Dictatorship!
Mainstream Media - Fake News.. for quite some time!
& Obama is guilty!
The one certainty of the US/EU led drive to remove an elected leader just in their 2nd year after an election that saw them
gain 47% of the popular vote was the Russki response, its borders were immediately at open 'threat' from any alliance. NATO or
otherwise, the deep sea ports of eastern Ukraine which had always been accessed by the Russki fleets would lose guaranteed access
etc....to believe the West was surprised by this action, would be to assume the US Generals were as stupid as the US administration,
they knew exactly the response of the Russkis & would have made no difference if their leader had been named Putin or Uncle Tom
Cobbly.
In some ways the Russkis partitioning of the East of Ukraine could well minimise the possibility of a world conflict as the
perceived threat is neutralised by the buffer.
The Russkis cyber doodah is no different to our own the US etc, they're all 'at it' & all attempt to inveigle the others in
terms of making life difficult.....not too sure Putin will be quite as comfortable with the Pres Elects 3 Trumpeteers though as
the new Pressie looks likely to open channels of communications but those negotiations might well see a far tougher stance......still,
in truth, all is never fair in love or war
.....that the CIA is not only suddenly involved, but suddenly at the forefront, may well reflect President-elect Trump's stated
policy intentions being far removed from those that the CIA has endorsed, and might be done with an eye toward undermining Trump's
position in those upcoming policy battles.
At the center of those Trump vs. CIA battles is Syria, as the CIA has for years pushed to move away from the ISIS war and toward
imposing regime change in Syria. Trump, by contrast, has said he intends to end the CIA-Saudi program arming the Syrian rebels,
and focus on fighting ISIS. Trump was even said to be seeking to coordinate anti-ISIS operations with Russia.
The CIA allegations could easily imperil that plan, as so long as the allegations remain part of the public discourse, evidence
or not, anything Trump does with respect to Russia is going to have a black cloud hanging over it. http://news.antiwar.com/2016/12/09/cia-claims-russia-intervened-to-get-trump-elected
/
Oh dear Obama trolls? Food for your starved thoughts:
Your degree of understanding IT is disturbing, especially given how dependent we are on it.
This is all very simple. The process by which you find out if and how a machine was hacked was clearly documented in the Russian
"Internet Audit", run by a group of Grey Hats.
Grey Hats: People concerned about security who perform unauthorized hacks for relatively benign purposes, often just notifying
people of how their system is flawed. IT staff have mixed reactions(!), the illegality is not disputed but the benefit of not
being hit by a Black Hat first can be considerable at times. Differentiation is rare, especially as some hacktivist groups belong
here, causing no damage beyond reputational by flagging activity that is not acceptable to the hacktivists.
Black Hats: These are the guys to worry about. These include actually destructive hacktivists. These are the ones who steal
data for malicious purposes, disrupt for malicious purposes and just generally act maliciously.
Nothing in reports indicates if the DNC hack was Grey Hat or Black Hat, but it should be obvious that there is a difference.
IP addresses and hangouts - worthless as evidence. Anyone can spoof the former, happens all the time (NMap used to provide
the option, probably still does), Grey Hats and Black Hats alike have the latter and may break into other people's. It's all about
knowing vulnerabilities.
That voting machines were even on the Internet is disturbing. That they and the DNC server were improperly configured for such
an environment is frightening - and possibly illegal.
The standard sequence of events is thus:
Network intrusion detector system identifies crafted packet attacking known vulnerability.
In a good system, the firewall is set to block the attack at that instant.
If the attacker scans the network, the only machine responding to such knocks should be a virtual machine running a honeypot
on attractive-looking port numbers. The other machines in the zone should technically violate the RFCs by not responding to ICMP
or generating recognized error codes on unused/blocked ports.
The system logger picks up an event that creates a process that shouldn't be happening.
In a good system, this either can't happen because the combination of permissions needed doesn't exist, or it doesn't matter because
the process is root jailed and hasn't the privileges to actually do any harm.
The file alteration logger (possibly Tripwire, though the Linux kernel can do this itself) detects that a process with escalated
privileges is trying to create, delete or alter a file that it isn't supposed to be able to change.
In a good system with mandatory access controls, this really is impossible. In a good system with logging file systems, it doesn't
matter as you can instruct the filesystem to revert those specific alterations. Even in adequate but feeble systems, checkpoints
will exist. No use in a voting system, but perfectly adequate for a campaign server. In all cases, the system logs will document
what got damaged.
The correct IT manager response is thus:
Find out why the firewall wasn't defaulting to deny for all unknown sources and for unnecessary ports.
Find out why the public-facing system wasn't isolated in the firewall's DMZ.
Find out why NIDS didn't stop the attack.
Non-public user mobility should be via IPSec using certificates. That deals with connecting from unknown IP addresses without
exposing the innards of the system.
Lock down misconfigured network systems.
Backup files identified by file alteration detection as corrupt for forensic purposes.
Revert files identified by file alteration detection as corrupt to last good version.
Close permission loopholes. Everything should run with the fewest privileges necessary, OS included. On Linux, kernel permissions
are controlled via capabilities.
Establish from the logs if the intruder came through a public-facing application, an essential LAN service or a non-essential
service.
If it's a LAN service, block access to that service outside the LAN on the host firewall.
Run network and host vulnerability scanners to detect potential attack vectors.
Update any essential software that is detected as flawed, then rerun the scanners. Repeat until fixed.
Now the system is locked down against general attacks, you examine the logs to find out exactly what failed and how. If that line
of attack got fixed, good. If it didn't, then fix it.
Password policy should prevent rainbow attacks, not users. Edit as necessary, lock accounts that aren't secure and set the password
control system to ban bad passwords.
It is impossible from system logs to track where an intruder came from, unsecured routers are common and that means a skilled
attacker can divert packets to anywhere. You can't trust brags, in security nobody is honest. The sensible thing is to not allow
such events in the first place, but when (not if) they happen, learn from them.
If the USA is to investigate the effect of foreign governments 'corrupting' the free decisions of the American people in elections,
perhaps they could look into the fact that for the past three decades every Republican candidate for president, after they have
won the nomination of their party, has gone to just one foreign country to pledge their firm commitment/allegiance to that foreign
power, for the purpose of shoring up large blocks of donors prior to the actual presidential election. The effect is probably
more 'corrupting' than any leak of emails!
Obama should confess to creating ISIS, sustaining ISIS & utilising ISIS as a proxy army to have them do things that he knew US
soldiers could never be caught doing!!!
They then spoon fed you bullshit propaganda about who the bad guys were, without ever being to properly explain why the US
armed forces were prevented from taking any hostile action against ISIS, until they were FORCED TO, that is, when Putin let the
the cat out of the bag!!!
Hilarious. One would've thought Obama of all presidents would be reluctant to delve too deeply into this particular midden. As
the author of the weakest and most incompetent American foreign policy agenda since Carter's, it's much the likeliest that if
China or Russia have been hacking US elections, then by far the biggest beneficiary will have been himself.
cdm Begin forwarded message: > From: Lynn Forester de Rothschild <[email protected]> > Date: May 28, 2015 at 9:44:12 AM
EDT > To: Nick Merrill <[email protected]>, "Cheryl Mills ([email protected])" <[email protected]> > Subject: FW:
POLITICO Playbook > > Morning, > I am sure you are working on this, but clearly, the opposition is trying to undercut Hillary's
reputation for honesty (the number one characteristic people look for in a President according to most polls) ..and also to benefit
from an attack on wealth that Dems did the most to start I am sure we need to fight back against both of these attacks. > Xoxo
> Lynn > > By Mike Allen (@mikeallen; [email protected]), and Daniel Lippman (@dlippman; [email protected]) > > > > QUINNIPIAC
POLL, out at 6 a.m., "Rubio, Paul are only Republicans even close to Clinton": "In a general election, ... Clinton gets 46 percent
of American voters to 42 percent for Paul and 45 percent of voters to 41 percent for Rubio." Clinton leads Christie 46-37 ...
Huckabee 47-40 ... Jeb 47-37 ... Walker 46-38 ... Cruz 48-37 ... Trump 50-32. > > --"[V]oters say 53-39 percent that Clinton is
NOT honest and trustworthy, but say 60-37 ... that she has strong leadership qualities. Voters are divided 48-47 ... over whether
Clinton cares about their needs and problems." > > --RNC's new chart - "'Dead Broke' Clintons vs. Everyday Americans": "Check
out the chart below to see how many households in each state it would take to equal the 'Dead Broke' Clintons."
http://bit.ly/1Avg8iE
Blind leading the Blind.. & Obama knows that very well after it was clear that Clinton was NEVER trusted by the Voters, which
makes Debbie and the DNC look like a complete bunch of..
Idiots?!?! STILL BLAMING The RUSSIANS.... instead of themselves!
She was and always will be unelectable due to exceedingly poor judgement, across the board.
Who is in charge of Internet security in the US government? Because it seems full of holes. Last time it was the Chinese and this
time it's the Russians, yet not one piece of evidence to say where hacks have come from. How much are these world class Internet
security people paid? And why do they still have a job? People sitting in their bedrooms on a pc from stores like staples have
hacked their security regularly.
In 2016, he said, the government did not detect any increased cyber activity on election day itself but the FBI made public
specific acts in the summer and fall, tied to the highest levels of the Russian government. "This is going to put that activity
in a greater context ... dating all the way back to 2008."
Extremely vague. Seems like there is no evidence at all to suggest any Russian involvement, but they need to pretend otherwise.
Blah, blah, blah, Weapons of mass destruction... Apollo mission, etc
Ole, Russians exposed the DNC emails, we knew about that. I though this should investigate Russians vote rigging, but I guess
not. I for once welcome anyone who hacks my government and exposes their skeletons, so I can see what kind of dirty garbage I
had leading or potentially leading my country.
Maybe the DNC should play fair and not dirty next time and put a candidate forward without skeletons that still reek of rotting
flesh.
Don't believe any of this at all.
American has been thee most corrupt and disgusting western nation for decades, run by people who are now being shown for who they
really are and they're shitting themselves big time. The stakes don't get higher than this.
What a total load of double talk. There is zero integrity in anything CIA says or does since the weapons of mass destruction deal
or before that it was the Iran Contra deal and before that it was the Bay of Pigs. Now we have this rigging os the election results
based on zero evidence. The whole thing is just idiocy. What is Obama trying to achieve?The end game will be for Obama to go down
in history as ... let's just say he is not the smartest tool in the shed when it comes to being a so called world leader. Well
done Obama you have now completely trashed what is left of your legacy.
"CIA concludes Russia interfered to help Trump win election – report "
You might as well ask accountants to do a study on wether it's worthwhile to use an accountant. Part of the CIAs job is to
influence elections around the world to get US-Corporation friendly gov'ts in to power. So yes of course they are going to say
that a gov't can influence elections, if they said otherwise then they'd be admitting they're wasting money.
So, it was the Russians! I knew it must've been them, they're so sneaky. All HFC had was the total backing of the entire establishment,
including prominent Republican figures, the total fawning support of the entire main-stream media machine which carefully controlled
the "she's got a comfortable 3 point lead maybe even double-digit lead" narrative and the "boo and hiss" pantomime slagging of
her opponent. Plus the endless funds from the crooked foundation and murderous fanatics from the compliant Gulf states, and lost.
But hey, do keep this going please, it'll help the Trumpster get a second term! Trump/Nugent 2020.
Good point. Add that the whole election was dogged is the most glaring media bias and suddenly Russia comes off as simply leveling
the playing field a bit
The 'secret' enquiry reported to Congress that the CIA concludes etc, etc, etc. Then yet more revelations from 'anonymous sources'
are quoted in the Washington Post and The New York Times reaching the same conclusions.....talk about paranoia, or are the Democrats
guilty of news fakery of the highest order to deny the US voters....
Ooh Obama...there's a little snag about this investigation.
In principle, the DNC server could have had malware in an e-mail that set up a NAT entry that made the connecting computer
appear somewhere else, with the entry deleted afterwards. Typically, IP table modifications aren't logged, so this would not be
detectable.
In principle, the DNC server could have had malware in an e-mail that ran a SED script at a specific time that changed any
occurrence of one IP address with another. Not sure anyone would bother with this, but it's why good system admins place so much
emphasis on securing logs. However, it's obvious we're not talking about good admins.
In principle, every router between the DNC server and Russia has the potential to be hacked, with a tunnel added to send the
traffic somewhere else in the world with new source and destination addresses. This is known as router table poisoning. It is
preventable but the mechanisms are rarely ever used because the security services want to be able to do this themselves. There
are some nice logs of the NSA using this.
In principle, someone along the way could tap into the fibre, spoofing IP addresses and injecting/sniffing packets. The U.S.
even has a submarine designed for this, but optics aren't complex and any number of neo-phone phreaks could have the hardware.
In principle, someone at an ISP or backbone service could have had a laptop plugged into a switch or router to do the same
thing, or lit up a strand of dark fibre to let some uber-wealthy business do this. And there's no shortage of uber-wealthy businesses
who aren't keen on Democrats. This technique is used for local and remote network diagnostics, no reason it can't be used nefarious,
it's not like the hardware cares why a wire is plugged in.
In principle, the supposed destination machine could have been hacked to relay the packets in encrypted form to the South Pole
or a college campus in Texas. There are many examples of client machines being hacked to do this. It's basically what zombie machines
are in botnets.
In practice, it is flat-out guaranteed that none of the security agencies could distinguish this from a Russian attack. Nothing
in the area monitored could tell the difference. We know, for a fact, that college kids spoofing a scan from China have fooled
the DoD and NSA on previous occasions, it has caused international incidents.
So we have known forms of attack that are known to exist, aren't complex and in some cases are already used for attacks. They
are 100% untraceable.
Of course the Americans would never interfere in other people's elections would they?...........I imagine the Russians wanted
to avoid a nuclear war with war monger Hilary & who can blame them?
Y'know really all they seem to be looking possibly guilty of is the wikileaks scandal. Compare that to the enormous media bias
regarding Trump and suddenly the Russians at worst come off as evening the playing field so as to help an election be less biased...
Paranoia about Russia has arrived at the laughable, almost like the fable of the boy who cried wolf! Even the way the CIA statement
is worded makes you smile. "silk purse sows ear"? Everyone is clutching at straws rather than looking down the barrel at the truth......that
folks is what is missing from Western Politics......"The Truth" --
Obama expected the review to be completed before he leaves office...
Really?? Obama wants a "deep review" of internet activities surrounding the elections of 2008, 2012, and 2016; and he wants
this done in less than 40 days? And it encompasses voting stations throughout the 50 states? That's the definition of political
shenanigans.
Seeing as how the CIA interfered with Ukraine before and during the overthrow of Yanukovich, and with Moscow protests a few years
ago...... seems like everyone is always trying to interfere with each-other. Hypocrisy abounds
This is not really a fight against Trump. That is lost. This is an intramural fight among Democrats.
This is desperate efforts by the corporate Democrats to hang on to power after Hillary (again) lost.
Excuses. Allegations without sources given, anonymous.
Remember that the same people used the same media contacts to spread fake news that the Podesta leaks were faked, and tried
to shift attention from what was revealed to who revealed it.
if the Ruskies did it, there's something funny: they did it on Obama's watch and her protege, Hillary, lost it. The system is
a real mess in this case.
Interesting link. It raises a particularly salient question: assuming the Russians did indeed do it - and after the whole CIA
yellow cake thing in Iraq, no one could possibly doubt national intelligence agencies any more - does it particularly matter?
Did the Russians write the emails? The betrayal of Sanders, the poor protection on classified materials, the cynical,
vicious nonsense spewed out by the HRC campaign, the media collusion with the DNC and HRC: did the Russians do these things too?
Or was that Clinton and the DNC? Silly question, I'm sure.
Well, chief, the Wisconsin recount is in and the results are staggering: after the recount, Clinton has gained on Trump by 3 votes...
and Trump gained on Clinton by a heady six votes. One begins to wonder at the 'Manchurian candidate' claim.
It is precisely charades like this that millions in the US and around the world have given up on the establishment. Business as
usual or rather lying as usual will only alienate more not-so-stupid citizens. It speaks volumes about their desperation that
they're are actually employing such obviously infantile tactics on the Russia even as they continue to paper over Hillary's tattered
past. The result of the investigation is totally predictable..................Yes, the Russians were involved in hacking the elections,
but..........for reasons of national security, details of the investigative process and evidence cannot be revealed.
If the Russians really wanted Trump to win that means they helped Hillary win the Democratic primaries because Bernie would have
beat Trump.. There was a mess of hanky-panky going on to defeat Bernie, and deflecting the blame to a foreign actor should keep
the demonstrators off the streets.
If someone is gullible enough to believe the Russians did it they'd also believe that Elvis made Bigfoot hack the DNC. That's
even more plausible since bigfoot is just a guy who spends so much time sitting at his computer he lost all interest in personal
hygiene.
The Democrats are really desperate to find anything they can use to challenge the results of the election.
Either way they look foolish - openly investigating the possibility of Russian hacking which acknowledges that their electoral
systems aren't well secured, OR look really foolish if they find anything (whether real or faked).
The big question now is if, and how much, they will fake the findings of the investigation so that they can declare the
election results wrong, and put Clinton into the White House.
Clearly, it is a case of desperate times calling for desperate measures. It is incredible that one man can make the largest Western
nation look so ridiculous in the eyes of the world.
Pot calling the kettle black. Reveal fully what the CIA get up to all over the planet. The phoney intel America has used to go
to war causing countries to implode. The selective way they release information to project the picture they want. I am not convinced
that Russia is any better or any worse than the USA.
I can understand the Russians wanting Obama in 2008 and 2012 because he is a weak leader and totally incompetent.
I can also understand Putin preferring DJT to HRC.
It's about time the planet settled down a little bit, Trump and Putin will do more for world peace in the next year than Obama
achieved in his 8 wasted years in charge.
The Democrats have yet to realise the reason for their demise was not the racists, the homophobes, the KKK, the Deplorables,
the misogynists, the xenophobes etc etc etc.
It was Hillary Clinton.
Get over it, move on, stop whining, get out of your safe room, put the puppy down, throw the play dough away, stop protesting,
behave like an adult.
As much as I am enjoying the monumental meltdown of the left, it is getting sad now and I am starting to feel very sorry for
you.
What a sad bunch of clowns. But the time is ripe. You and your sort are done Obama, Hillary Clinton, Juncker, Merkel, Hollande,
Mogherini, Kerry, Tusk, Nuland, Albright, Breedlove, SaManThe Power and the rest of the reptiles. With all respect - mwuahahaha!
- you will soon sink into the darkness of the darkest places of history, but you won't be forgotten, no you won't!
As for the Podesta email. John Podesta was so stupid that he gave out his password in a simple email scam that any 8 year old
kid could have conducted. I wouldn't be surprised if Assange did it himself. Assange will be celebrating at the demise of Hillary.
Guys! Your side lost the election. Get over it & stop looking for excuses.
I don't think it was the Russians, it was just a lot of people got sick of being told what to think & how to behave by your
side of politics.
It is because people who disagree with you are either ignored, shut-down or called names with weaponised words such as "racist,
bigot, xenophobe, homophobe, islamophobe, you name it. You go out onto the streets chanting mindless slogans aimed at shutting
down debate. You have infiltrated academia and no journalism graduate comes out of a western univerity without a 60 degree lean
to the left. People of alternative views to what is now the dominant social paradigm are not permitted to speak at universities.
Once they were the vanguard of dangerous ideas. Now they are just sheep pens.
You have infiltrated the mainstream media so of course people need to go to Info Wars, Breitbart & Project Veritas to get the
other side to your one-sided argument.
Your side of politics has regulated the very words we speak so that we can't even express a thought anymore without being chanted
down, or shut down, prosecuted or sued.
There was once a time when it was the left who spoke up for freedom of speech. It was the left who demanded that a man be judged
by the content of his character & not the color of his skin & it was once the right who used to be worried about the Russians
taking over our institutions.
Have a look at yourselves. Look at what you've become. You've stopped being the guardians of freedom & now you have become
the very anti-freedom totalitarians you thought you were campaigning against.
Bleating about the "popular vote" doesn't cut it either. That's like saying, the other side scored more goals than us but we
had possession of the ball more times. It is sad for you but it is irrelevant.
Trump won the election! Get over it!
Let's see what sort of job he does before deciding what to do next.
In principle, the DNC server could have had malware in an e-mail that set up a NAT entry that made the connecting computer
appear somewhere else, with the entry deleted afterwards. Typically, IP table modifications aren't logged, so this would not be
detectable.
In principle, the DNC server could have had malware in an e-mail that ran a SED script at a specific time that changed any
occurrence of one IP address with another. Not sure anyone would bother with this, but it's why good system admins place so much
emphasis on securing logs. However, it's obvious we're not talking about good admins.
In principle, every router between the DNC server and Russia has the potential to be hacked, with a tunnel added to send the
traffic somewhere else in the world with new source and destination addresses. This is known as router table poisoning. It is
preventable but the mechanisms are rarely ever used because the security services want to be able to do this themselves. There
are some nice logs of the NSA using this.
In principle, someone along the way could tap into the fibre, spoofing IP addresses and injecting/sniffing packets. The U.S.
even has a submarine designed for this, but optics aren't complex and any number of neo-phone phreaks could have the hardware.
In principle, someone at an ISP or backbone service could have had a laptop plugged into a switch or router to do the same
thing, or lit up a strand of dark fibre to let some uber-wealthy business do this. And there's no shortage of uber-wealthy businesses
who aren't keen on Democrats. This technique is used for local and remote network diagnostics, no reason it can't be used nefarious,
it's not like the hardware cares why a wire is plugged in.
In principle, the supposed destination machine could have been hacked to relay the packets in encrypted form to the South Pole
or a college campus in Texas. There are many examples of client machines being hacked to do this. It's basically what zombie machines
are in botnets.
In practice, it is flat-out guaranteed that none of the security agencies could distinguish this from a Russian attack. Nothing
in the area monitored could tell the difference. We know, for a fact, that college kids spoofing a scan from China have fooled
the DoD and NSA on previous occasions, it has caused international incidents.
So we have known forms of attack that are known to exist, aren't complex and in some cases are already used for attacks. They
are 100% untraceable.
Joe Biden unwittingly gave the game up when he spoke to the press with indignation of the Russian hacks. The US would respond
in kind with a covert cyber operation run by the CIA First of all it would be the NSA, not the CIA Secondly, it's not covert when
you tell the press! Oh Joe, you really let the Obama administration down with that gaffe! Who would believe them now? A lot of
people it would seem. Mainly those still reeling from an election they were so vested in
Unfortunately our media has lost all credibility.
For years we were told it was necessary to remove the dictator Assad in Syria. The result, a country destroyed, migrant crisis
that fuelled Brexit and brought EU to its knees.
Now they are going to sell the 'foreign entities decided the US election'.
It's just a sad situation
Syria has been destroyed because Western client states in the Middle East wanted this to happen. Assad had a reasonably successful
secular government and our medieval gulf state allies felt. threatened by his regime. there was the little business of a pipeline,
but of course that would be called a "conspiracy theory".
If Obama has resources to spend on investigations, he should be investigating why the US is providing guided missiles to the terrorist
in Syria. We had such great hopes for him, and he has proved to be totally useless as a president. Rather than giving us leadership
and guidance he is looking under his bed for spooks. Just another example of his incompetence at a time when we needed leadership.
Looking for proof of espionage will be like trying to prove a negative and only result in a possible or at best a likely type
of result for no purpose. It would just be another case of an unsupported accusation being thrown about.
Facing up to the question of who is supplying weapons to terrorist would require the courage to take on the Military Industrial
Complex and he hasn't got it. Trump will be different.
If the russians did interfere in the USA elections perhaps is a bit of poetic justice.
The USA has interfere in Latin America for over hundred years and they have given us Batista, Somoza, Trujillo, Noriega, Pinochet,
Duvaliers , military juntas in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Streener in Paraguay to name a few. They all were narcissists, racists
and insecure. The american people love this type of leader now they got him in the white house may be from Russia with love. Empires
get destroyed from within, look at Little Britain now, maybe the same will happen soon in the USA.
Viva China , is far from Latin America
So if the US managed to somehow get rid of Russia and China, what would they do then? How would it justify hundreds of billions
in defense spending? Just remember, the US military industry desperately needs an external enemy to exist. Without it, there is
no industry.
No I disagree. I don't think it was a conpriscy. It was just decades of misinformation, lies, usually perpertrated by our esteemed
foreign minister. The man is a buffoon , liar and incompetent. It is quite amusing to see how inept, Incompotent and totally unsuited
this man child is to public office.
Another red herring that smacks of desperation. The final death throes of a failed administration. These carefully chosen words
reveal a lot. The email leaks were "consistent with the methods and motivations" of Russian hackers. In layman's terms its the
equivalent of saying "we haven't got a clue who it was but it's the kind of thing they would probably do". Don't expect a smoking
gun because it doesn't exist, otherwise we would have known about it by now.
It's not just the US who has accused Putin of meddling in their domestic affairs. Germany and the UK have made the same allegations.
Are they wrong too?
I think anyone with reasonable intelligence would take each accusation on a case by case basis. There is no doubt that Russia
conducts cyber operations, as the US and UK and Germany does. There is also little doubt that significant Russophobia exists,
particularly since the failed foreign attempt of regime change in Syria that was thwarted by Russia. On that last point many citizens
of the West are coming to the realisation that a secular government in Syria is preferable to one run by jihadists installing
crude sharia law (Libya was certainly a lesson). Furthermore, if Hillary Clinton had succeeded one dreads to think of the consequences
of her no-fly-zone plans. Thankfully she didn't succeed, no doubt in part to wikileaks revelations, who for the record stated
that did not result from Russian hacks
Hows the election recount going? You know the one this paper kept going on about a few weeks ago in Wisconsin that was supposed
to be motivated by "Russian Hacking" in the election? Not very well but you have gone quiet. Also I see the Washington Post has
been forced to backtrack for implying news outlets like Breitbart are Russian controlled on the advice of their own lawyers....after
all calling someone a Russian agent without a shred of evidence is seriously libellous and they know it. Russian agents to blame
yeah ok Obama no doubt the Easter Bunny will be next in your sights you fraud.
Look no further than Hillarys private server. Classified information sent and received and Obam was part of it. Obama is a liar
and a fraud who is now blaming the Russians for crooked Hillarys loss.
Feed the flames of the war mongers that want Russia and Putin to be our bogeyman.Feed the military industrial complex more billions.The
U.S. Defense budget is already 10 times that of Russia ,feed NATO already on Russia's boarder with tanks ,troops and heavy weapons.i
did expect more from this pres,... The lies ,mis information and propaganda has worked so well since the end of WW2,upon a public
who has been fed those lies {and is to busy with sports ,gadgets,games, alcohol and other drugs }for 70 yrs by a compliant,for
profit lap dog media more interested in producing infotainment and profits than supplying information..If you don't think the
"public" isn't very poorly informed and will believe anything ,..just look at who the next prez will be..
I don't think it's true that Trump voters were less informed than Clinton voters. The public knows that they all lie, they simply
choose the one who's lies most appeal to them.
Unfortunately Obama is not leaving office with dignity.
This action is another attempt to delegitimize the election of Trump. We already have the recount farce going on.
If Republicans had tried to delegitimize the election of Obama we know what the reaction from media would have been. An outcry
against antidemocratic and racist behaviour
The corporate media is so predictable at this point. The news cranks up the anti-Russia hysteria while the guys over in entertainment
roll out a slick fantasy about anti-Nazi resistance. It all adds up to a big steaming pile of crap but you hope it will push enough
buttons to keep the citizens chained to their their desks for another quarter. Don't bet on it. As a great American said at another
time of upheaval, you can't fool everyone forever...
Kremlin Connection? The TRUTH About Hillary's Shady Ties To Russia REVEALED
Find out why insiders say Clinton has some explaining to do.
Americans have no idea just how closely Hillary Clinton is tied to the Kremlin! That's the shocking claim of a new report that
alleges the Democratic nominee is secretly pals with Vladimir Putin and his countrymen.
Peter Schweizer, the author of Clinton Cash, has published a report that claims that that Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta
was on the executive board of a foreign company that received $35 million from the Kremlin. "The company was a transparent Russian
front, and how much Podesta was compensated - and for what - is unclear. In addition, Podesta failed to disclose his position
on that board to the Federal government, as required by law," John Schindler of the Observer wrote.
As Radar previously reported, when Clinton was secretary of state, she profited from the "Russian Reset," a failed attempt
to improve relations between the U.S. and Russia.
chweizer wrote, "Many of the key figures in the Skolkovo process - on both the Russian and U.S. sides - had major financial ties
to the Clintons. During the Russian reset, these figures and entities provided the Clintons with tens of millions of dollars,
including contributions to the Clinton Foundation, paid for speeches by Bill Clinton, or investments in small start-up companies
with deep Clinton ties." Schweizer also details "Skolkovo," a Silicon Valley-like campus that both the U.S. and Russia worked
on for developing biomed, space, nuclear and IT technologies. He told the New York Post that there was a "pattern that shows a
high percentage of participants in Skolkovo who happen to be Clinton Foundation donors."
Sour grapes at the liberation of Aleppo and their loss of face.
I'm surprised they haven't started asking about the missing 250K civilians,who must even now be languishing in Assad's dungeons.
Keeping that one for tomorrow probably.
When Cheney used the terror alert levels to keep the US population in the constant state of fear, the Democrats denounced it as
fear mongering. Now they're embracing the same tactics in the constant demonization of Russia. Look, it's raining today! Russia
must be trying to control the weather in the US! Get them! Utterly ridiculous.
The US has been the most bloodthirsty, aggressive nation in my lifetime. Where the US goes we obediently follow. Yet as Obama
(7 countries he's bombed in his presidency, not bad for a Nobel Prize Winner) continues to circle Russia with NATO on their borders.
We're continually spun headline news that Russia is the aggressor and is continually meddling in foreign affairs. We are the aggressors,
we are the danger to ourselves and it's we who are run by megalomaniac elites who pump us full of fear and propaganda.
Malicious cyberactivity... has no place in international community... No? When West does it, then it's for democratic purposes?
But invading countries on a humanitarian pretense does? So Democrats are still looking to blame Russia for everything not going
their way I see. This rhetoric didn't work for Clinton in the election and it won't now. Stop with this nonsense
The Egyptian Empire lasted millenum,
The Greek and Roman Empires a thousand years, give or take.
The Holy Roman Empire centuries.
The British and French circa 200 years.
The USSR about 70, the USA 70 and counting
This is just the cyclical death throes of empires played out at ever increasing speed before our very eyes.
This is exactly why we should never move to electronic voting. Can you imagine the lengths the IPA would go to ensure their men
security the power they need to roll out their neoliberal agenda? As a tax-free right wing think tank composed of rich like Rinehart,
Murdoch, Forrest, et al. the sky's the limit.
The five stages of dealing with psychological trauma: Anger, Denial, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Hillary and the Democrats
are still at stage one and two. Obama is only beginning stage one as events dawn on him.
I really do feel the established media and its elite hierarchy are vexed by both the Trump victory and Brexit here in the UK.
Now the media attention turns to a report on another of its perpetual campaigns, namely Russia, and corruption in sport.
I'm not going to doubt the 'findings', but I know humans are corrupt ALL over the world, but it does strike me that no Western
outlet, ever prints anything positive about Russia. I mean - nothing, zero!
If, indeed, the Russian government gathered the DNC and Podesta info released by Wikileaks, the Russians did the American people
a favor by pulling back the curtain on behind the scenes scheming by Clinton campaign potentates.
Of course, I don't believe the Democratic claim that Clinton lost the election because of the Russians and the FBI.
US backed a coup, or set up a coup, to overthrow the democratically elected government in Ukraine which led to war. Putin's payback
seems fully justified.
Oh my, a foreign country may have had a tiny influence on a US Election.
How about investigating the overthrow of the Democratically elected Govt in Ukraine, or the influence the US has had on the
Syrian Govt, or even in Australia, where the Chinese Govt donates massive amounts of money to Political Parties (note, there's
no link of course between Chinese Govt donations and Chinese Companies being able to buy most of Australia and employ Chinese
Nationals in Australia on Chinese conditions and 500,000 Chinese Nationals being able to buy Real Estate in Sydney alone... none
whatsoever).
I'm not a policy or think tank wonk, but isn't Russia just a euphemism for China. Aren't their geopolitical interests linked.
You just say Russia because China has us by the financial balls (I'm sure the Guardian would prefer to NOT be censored on the
mainland) right? Package it that way and I'm on board. My love of Dostoevsky goes out the window. Albeit I still think Demons
one of the best novels ever written. Woke me up.
I'm all in favor of delegitimizing the incoming semi-fascist Trump/Pence regime, and find Obama's talk of a smooth transition
disgusting. However, I reject the appeal to Russophobia or other Xenophobia.
BTW, Obama and his collaborators like Diane Feinstein have done a lot to prepare the legal basis for fascistic repression under
the new POtuS.
I already know what the comission will find. They will find evidences that Iraq holds vast ammonúnt of weapons of mass destruction!
Oh wait, that was already used.
Obama has been as useless as his predecessor young Bush. His policies generally are in tatters and the US neo cons evil fantasy
of full spectrum dominance has met its death in Syria. Bravo.
After an election cycle with proven collusion between the DNC/Hillary Clinton campaign and our media, our media has the nerve
to come up with the term 'fake news'.
Hypocrisy at its finest
Nobody does paranoia like the yanks. To the rest of the world, the unedifying spectacle of the world's biggest bullies, snoops,
warmongers, liars and hypocrites complaining about how unfair life is, is pretty nauseating. Most of America's problems are home-grown.
And the final report will conclude with something along the lines of:
'After a thorough, exhaustive investigation of all relevant evidence concerning the potential of foreign interference in the United
States electoral process, the results of the investigation have shown that, although there remain troubling questions about the
integrity of U.S. cyber-security which should prompt immediate Congressional review, there has been uncovered no conclusive evidence
to support the conjecture that cyber attacks originating with any foreign actor, state or individual had any significant effect
on the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election, and that there is no cause or justification for the American People to question
the fairness of or lose faith in the electoral process and laid out by and carried out according to the Constitution.'
I do Holiday cards too.
Georgia's Secretary of State is accusing someone at the Department of Homeland Security of illegally trying to hack its computer
network, including the voter registration database.
In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, copied to the full Georgia congressional delegation, Georgia Secretary
of State Brian Kemp alleges that a computer with a DHS internet address attempted to breach its systems.
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/309530-state-of-georgia-allegedly-accusing-homeland-security-of-attempted-hack
Wake up and smell the BS, the hacking is being done by people a lot nearer home.....
Oh dear, the GOP seem to have forgotten what they were saying about Putin and the Kremlin a short while back:
The continuing erosion of personal liberty and fundamental rights under the current officials in the Kremlin. Repressive
at home and reckless abroad, their policies imperil the nations which regained their self-determination upon the collapse of
the Soviet Union. We will meet the return of Russian belligerence with the same resolve that led to the collapse of the Soviet
Union. We will not accept any territorial change in Eastern Europe imposed by force, in Ukraine, Georgia, or elsewhere, and
will use all appropriate constitutional measures to bring to justice the practitioners of aggression and assassination.
..... prohibiting "fake" or "false" news would be a cure worse than the disease, i.e., censorship by other means. The government
cannot be trusted with distinguishing fake from genuine news because it has ulterior motives. News the government dislikes would
be conflated with fakery, and news the government approved would be conflated with truthfulness. Private businesses like Facebook
cannot be trusted with distinguishing fake from genuine news because its overriding mission is to make money and to win popularity,
not to spread truth. It would suppress news that risked injury to its reputation or profits but leave news that did the opposite
undisturbed. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/dec/5/reflections-fake-news
/
Uh excuse me but that sort of introspection doesn't fly. She was flawless and the blame rests solely on Russia/alt-right/Sanders/Third
Parties/Racism/Misogyny/Alignment of the stars/etc/etc
I thnk the idea that russia has world domination is quite laughable, what else they gonna be blamed for next, reduction of giraffe
population!Lol
I think a teeny wee paranoia is setting in, or outright deliberate propaganda, too obvious
Is this worse than when the two CIA operatives were caught searching through files in the Offices of the British Labour Party
about thirty years ago. What goes around comes around.
The CIA hacks have been destabalisuping Government for a at least seventy years.
One thing is pretty obvious paper ballots and a different ballot for each is much harder to rig.
It is ironic it takes a despot life key Trump to bring the issue to a head AFTER unexpectedly won.
"Is this worse than when the two CIA operatives were caught searching through files in the Offices of the British Labour Party
about thirty years ago. What goes around comes around."
The CIA were caught hacking into the US Congressional computers just 6 or so months ago. Nothing came out of it.
Based on the fact that the US 2000 (and possibly 2004) election was outright stolen by George Bush Jr., perhaps the propagandists
in the White House and media ought to be looking for a "Russian connection" in regards to our illustrious former president.
I'm shocked--shocked--to hear that our close Russian allies have done anything to influence and undermine the stability of other
countries. Preposterous accusation! And to try to become huge winners in the Western Hemisphere, by cheating? Vitriolic nonsense!
Many posters here actually believe that Good Old Russia should just stick with what they do best. That's poison!
Rather like the Litvenenko inquiry...full of maybe's and possibilities, with not a shred of hard, factual proof shown - demonstrating
that the order came from the Kremlin.
It's just a total accident that Putin's most vocal opponents keep getting shot in the head, gunned down on bridges, suffering
'accidents' or strange miscarriages of (sometimes post-mortem) 'justice' and fall victim to radiological state-enacted terrorism
in foreign countries. No pattern there, whatsoever.
I am at a loss. On the one hand, I hear about Russian economy in tatters, gas station posing as a country, deep crisis, economy
the size of Italy, rusty old military toys, aircraft carrier smoking out the whole Northern hemisphere, etc. On the other hand,
I hear about Russian threat all the time, which must be countered by massive build up of the US and EU military, Russia successfully
interfering in the elections in the beacon of democracy, the US, with 20 times greater economy, with powerful allies, the best
armed forces in the world, etc. Are we talking about two different Russias, or is this schizophrenia, pure and simple?
It's always easy to find reasons to fear something, added to that the psychology of the unknown, and we have the makings of very
powerful propaganda. Whatever Russia's level of corruption, and general society, I feel I cannot trust the Western media anymore
100%. There seems to be a equally sinister hidden agenda deep within Western Elites - accessing Russia's land, political and potential
wealthly resources must surely be one of them!? The longterm Western agenda/mission?
The Democratic Party's problem is Russia, which the President is rightly putting front and center. All Russians are the summit
of eviality, and must be endlessly scapegoated in order for Democrats to regain power for the nation's greater good.
Democrats' problems have nothing to do with corruption, glaring conflicts of interest, favoritism, ass-licking editors, crappy
data, lacking enthusiasm, and horribly poor judgement.
None of these issues need to be publicly addressed, being of no consequence to independent voters, and the President, Guardian,
et al. must continue their silent -- and "independent" -- vigil on such silly topics, if Democrats are to have any hope of cultivating
enough mindless, enraged, and abandoned sheep to bring them future victories.
I admire Trump, Putin & Farage. Don't agree with them but I have admiration for them. They show all the cunning, calculating,
resourcefulness that put the European race on top. Liberals don't like that and want to see the own people fall to the bottom.
Thankfuly the neoliberal elite are finishedm
Absurd nonsense - the third anti-Russian story of the day. Very little of this has much traction because of the sheer volume of
misinformation coming out about Russia. there are very good cogent reasons why the Democrats lost the US election - none of them
have anything to do with Russia.
I can't see a thing wrong with reviewing the last three election cycles, if there is any doubt at all and to put speculation to
bed, it should be done.
So the US intelligence servies aren't doing similar operations?
If they werent, heads would roll as they have a considerable budget. Did we learn nothing from Edward Snowden? Are Russia just
better at this? I doubt it.
I think both sides conduct themselves in a despicable manner so please dont call me a Putin apologist. Well, feel free actually,
I could'nt care less.
Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election
US interference:
COUNTRY OR STATE Dates of intervention Comments
VIETNAM l960-75 Fought South Vietnam revolt & North Vietnam; one million killed in longest U.S. war; atomic bomb threats in
l968 and l969.
CUBA l961 CIA-directed exile invasion fails.
GERMANY l961 Alert during Berlin Wall crisis.
LAOS 1962 Military buildup during guerrilla war.
142 more rows
the vietnam fiasco alone is enough to disqualify america from any criticism about interference in internal affairs
they practically destroyed the country
The pathetic way the media are pushing this big-bad-Russians meme is a little depressing.
This "hack" is totally fictional, the wikileaks e-mails were almost certainly that...leaks. As most o their output has been
over the years. For 95% of the Wikileaks existence there have been absolutely zero connections with "the Kremlin", in fact they
have leaked stuff damaging to Russia before now.
The Russian's did not hack the DNC, or rig the election, this is yet another example of the political establishment hysterically
pointing fingers and making up lies when their chosen side loses an election.
I remember how North Korea was blamed for Sony hack. I think they were even cut from the internet for a day and there was all
this talk of punishing them. And then later it came out that very likely wasn't North Korea. Only the news cycle already moved
on and nobody cared.
Traditionally, the best Cold Warriors have been right-wing liberals. In the absence of policies that concretely benefit the people
they engage in threat inflation and demagoguery.
In 90s US set all figures in Russia - from president to news program anchor. Elections of 96 were ripped by American "advisors"
so that Eltsyn with 3% rating "won" them. It's payback time.
And yet the so-called "Russian trolls" (which is apparently anyone who exercise a modicum of skepticism) seem to be winning here
at CiF based on the number of likes per comment, which is likely why the NSA sponsored propagandists and clueless dopes are getting
so increasingly shrill.
If you take a wider view, this is all really about keeping the Dems in the game, trying to undo the Trump validity and give them
another go in 4 or so years. Really, seems quite desperate that a man that allowed 270000 wild horses to be sold for horsemeat
this year across the border to Mexico, brought HC in to his own cabinet having said 'she will say anything and do nothing', knowing
what a nightmare that would make, and is going to watch his healthcare get ripped to shreds, needs more accomplishments in his
last year, aka Obama, ergo, let's investigate the evil russians and their female athletes with male DNA ( you would think I am
making this stuff up, but I am not ) ... Come on Grandma, where are you when we need you most
we must somehow, subvert the despicable populace that elected trump. we must erase from history the conceding of president elect
clinton - newpeak from the ministry of truth. we'll get her into the white house if it takes more cash, lies, and corruption.
after all, who needs democracy in the democratic party when we have big brother. democracy just confuses the members. we'll send
the despicables through the ministry of love to re-educate them, of course, this IS 1984 after all....we will vote for you, the
intelligentsia of the left knows what is best for you.
"Malicious cyber activity, specifically malicious cyber activity tied to our elections , has no place in the international
community. Unfortunately this activity is not new to Moscow. We've seen them do this for years ... The president has made it clear
to President Putin that this is unacceptable."
Note how carefully it specifies that it is cyber activity tied to the american elections that is inappropriate. I presume that
is simply to avoid openly saying that mass-surveillance by the US government of everyone's private email, and social network accounts
doesn't come under that "no place in the international community" phrase. You know, one does wonder how these people's faces don't
come off in shame when whinning about potential interference by foreign governemnts after a full 8 years or so of constant revelations
of permanent spying and mass-surveillance by the US government of international leaders and ordinary citizens worldwide.
So the DNC was hacked - so what. Hacking is so common these days as to be expected. A quick perusal of the internet provides some
SIGNIFICANT hacks that deserved some consternation:
9/4/07 The Chinese government hacked a noncritical Defense Department computer system in June, a Pentagon source told FOX News
on Tuesday.
Spring 2011 Foreign hackers broke into the Pentagon computer system this spring and stole 24,000 files - one of the biggest
cyber-attacks ever on the U.S. military,
On the 12th of July 2011, Booz Allen Hamilton the largest U.S. military defence contractor admitted that they had just suffered
a very serious security breach, at the hands of hacktivist group AntiSec.
5/28/13 The confidential version of a Defense Science Board report compiled earlier this year reportedly says Chinese hackers
accessed designs for more than two dozen of the U.S. military's most important and expensive weapon systems.
June 2014 The UK's National Crime Agency has arrested an unnamed young man over allegations that he breached the Department
of Defense's network last June.
1/12/15 The Twitter account for U.S. Central Command was suspended Monday after it was hacked by ISIS sympathizers (OK twitter
accounts shouldn't be a big deal. Why does US CentCom even HAVE a twitter account???)
5/6/15 OPM hack: China blamed for massive breach of US government data
And so the neocon propaganda machine trundles on, churning out this interesting material day after day. The elephant in the room
is that if you get hacked you have no knowledge of this until your private stuff is all over the internet, and the chances of
finding out who did it are zilch. Everyone in IT security knows this.
Another "fake news" story. Does anybody with a pulse really believe that Russia hacked the DNC? The US Security Services admitted
that it was NOT Russia; the likelihood is that the leaks were provided to Wikileaks by insiders within the US Administration -
they wanted to ensure that Hillary did not win. None of the actual revelations were covered by the MSM, and "the Russians did
it" was a convenient distraction.
All people that on earth do dwell have no clue who hacked the DNC to the amusing end that Podesta's e-mails ended up on the internet,
but it suits a dangerous political narrative to demonise Russia until it becomes plain logical to attack them.
YES YES let attack Russia, YES YES YES, Russia Russia we should carry on attacking Russia. We the journalists are well paid by
the man from Australia. YES YES we must to carry on attacking Russia and forget the shit happening in other countries. YES YES
it is our duty.
Election hacking: Obama orders 'full review' of Russia interference
And I guess Obama has also ordered the Guardian to do a full court press of anti-Russian propaganda, just judging by the articles
pumped out on today's rag alone.
The US government is seemingly attempting the "Big Lie" tactic of Joseph Goebbels and instigating support in the public for
war against Russia. By repeating the completely unsubstantiated allegations that Russia has somehow "interfered with the election"
they hope, without any genuine basis, to strong arm the public into accepting a further ramping of tensions and starting yet another
illegal war for profit.
There's nothing wrong with conducting the investigation, but shouldn't it have been done before accusing Russia?
And aren't all the people cited in the article political appointees, Democrats or avowed Trump enemies, and then there's closing,
" A spokesman for the director of national intelligence declined to comment."
Surely of all the Orders Obama might issue during his last weeks in office, why does he choose to give a stupid Order that effectively
makes US some sort of Banana Republic? This man was/is more hype than real! At a stroke of a pen he seriously undermines the integrity
of the US Electoral System. Whatever credibility was left has now been eroded by these constant and silly claims that somehow
Russians installed Trump as President. Doesn't that make Trump some sort of Russian Agent?
Meanwhile MSM keeps on streaming some fake news and theories and then Obama Orders US intelligence to dig deeper. This is lunacy!
Obama certainly understands that Russia is not the reason why Trump was elected. However, he wants to create new obstacles on
the way of normalization of relations between the US and Russia and make it more difficult for Trump.
However, Trump is not a weak man, not a skinny worm; and he can hit these opponents back so hard that international court for
them (for invasions into sovereign countries) will lead to their life sentences.
Only two weeks ago the Obama Administration publicly stated there was no evidence of cybersecurity breaches affecting the electoral
process,
as reported in the NYT :
The administration, in its statement, confirmed reports from the Department of Homeland Security and intelligence officials
that they did not see "any increased level of malicious cyberactivity aimed at disrupting our electoral process on Election
Day."
The administration said it remained "confident in the overall integrity of electoral infrastructure, a confidence that was
borne out." It added: "As a result, we believe our elections were free and fair from a cybersecurity perspective."
Is there any limit to the ridicolous, Mr. Obama? what is this? a tragicomic play of the inept?
Here we are with the most childish fabrication that it must be the Russians' fault if Trump won the election. I'll be laughing
for an entire cosmic era! And all this after US publically announced that they were going to launch a devastating acher attack
against the badies: the Russians, which of course didn't work out. Come on, this is more comedy that a serious play.
What probably is going on, the readers can gather by having a look at the numberless articles that are being published by maistream
media against the Russians.
Why this histeric insurgence of Russofobia? Couldn't it be that it is intolerable for the US and their allies to see the Russians
winning in Aleppo, and most of all restoring peace and tollerance among the population returning to their abbandoned homes.
I think Hillary, in part, lost the election due to all the fake news being pumped out by the mainstream corporate media, doing
her bidding. People are tired of it, along with all the corruption and lies that came to the surface through the likes of Wikileaks.
Trump is a terrible alternative, but the only alternative people were given, so many went with it.
Now we see fake news making out the Russians to be the bad guys again, pumping out story after story, trying to propagandize the
population into sucking up these new memes. Russia has its problems, and will always act in its own self-interest, but it's nothing
compared to the tactics the US uses, bullying countries around the world to pander to its own will, desperately trying to maintain
its Empire.
The scripture tells us those who live by the sword will perish by it.
America was in the interference of other countries' elections before its ugly 2016 presidential election. Remember Ukraine
and Secretary Hillary Clinton's employee Victoria F****the EU Nuland in Ukraine. Now we have the makings of some kind of conflict
with Russia over its alleged meddling in America's elections. More global tension= More cash flowing into the US equity market,
money printing by another means.
I'd be surprised if the Russians weren't trying to affect the outcome of the election. The Brits had a debate in Parliament on
Trump, Obama made threats to the UK on the Brexit vote, so who knows what we're all doing in each others elections behind closed
doors while we are clear to do so publically.
The MSM's absolute refusal to address the leaks in a meaningful way (other than the stuff about recipes) suggests to be no
one felt it a big deal at the time.
Obama could realise that Hillary's viewes on Putin and Russia did not help her at all. People are not that stupid, they see well,
use own brains and not so easily impressed by whatever CNN says to them.
John McAfee said that any organization sophisticated enough to do these hacks is also sophisticated enough to make it look as
though any country they want did it. So it could have been anyone.
It's reported today on Ars Technica : ThyssenKrupp suffered a "professional attack"
The steelmaker, which makes military subs, says it was targeted from south-east Asia.
..the design of its plants were penetrated by a "massive," coordinated attack which made off with an unknown amount of "technological
know-how and research."
Neoliberals are just desperately losing ideological competition at home and abroad. They cannot convince people that they are
right because it's not what's going on.
It does not matter what some others say, it's what really goes on matters.
But there is innate, basic self-interest in all people (that does not depend on education, ethnicity, race) and people know it
instinctively well. They will not go against it even if all around will tell otherwise.
I love how this has now become solid fact. No confirmation, nothing official but it is no common fact that the Russians interfered.
How many reports do we hear about US interference with foreign countries infastructure through covert means.
Meh. Seems like tampering happens all the time. How many elections in South America did the USA fix? How many in the middle
east and Africa? I think this "russian's did it" rhetoric is counterproductive as it is stopping Democrats from doing the introspective
needed to really understand why HRC lost the election.
Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot and there was credible evidence that the Russians had rigged the election in favor
of the Democrat. The right-wing echo chamber would be having seizures! These people are UTTER HYPOCRITES. And they would obviously
rather win with the help of a hostile foreign power than try to preserve the integrity of our elections.
Russia may or may not have hacked the DNC. I'd like to find out. I hope the DNC aren't enough of doofusses to assume this wouldn't
be in the realm of possibility.
I presume that the U.S. has its own group of hackers doing the same Worldwide. This is not a criticism; I would expect the U.S.
intelligence community to learn what our rivals, and even some of our friends, are up to.
This is getting to be pretty lame. I have doubts that "Russia" could interfere to any great extent with our elections any more
than we could with theirs. Sure, individuals or organizations, and more than likely in THIS country, could do so. And they have,
as we saw with the DNC and Sanders campaign (and vice versa). Let's not go into an almost inevitable nuclear war over what is
quite possibly "fake news".
Russia did this, Russia did that
its getting very boring now, you have lost all credibility
you have cried wolf to many times
stop trying to manipulate us
When will the Democrats get it? It wasn't the Russians, who are blamed for everything, including the weather, by desperate Western
failed leaders, but an unsuitable candidate in Clinton, which lost them the Election. Bernie Sanders would have walked it.
Regarding the notorious "fuck the EU " on the part of the US "diplomat" Victoria Nuland "the State Department and the White House
suggested that an assistant to the deputy prime minister of Russia Dmitry Rogozin was the source of the leak, which he denied
" Wiki
Good occasion to substantiate the accusation which ,substantiated or not,will remind the "useful idiots" of the "change of regime
" US policy and who started the Ukrainian crisis.
Boy, oh boy, fake news is everywhere just read this headline!
Election hacking: Obama orders 'full review' of Russia interference
Which states as fact there was interference by Russia and that the investigation is to determine how bad it was. NO EVIDENCE WHAT SO EVER has been offered by anyone that Russia interfered in any way. FAKE NEWS!!
Voting machine hacking is a very serious problem but you generally need physical access to a voting machine to hack it.
Anyone notice thousands of Russians hanging around in Detriot, Los Angeles, etc election HQs? How about Clinton drones?
If the DNC hadn't rigged the primary we'd be celebrating president-elect Bernie. If they hadn't rigged the general Hillary
would have lost by a landslide.
1000 Russian athletes were doping in the 2012 Olympics - but it's taken until now to realise it?!
Russia influenced the 2016 US election?!
Russia is presently "influencing" the German elections?!
Russia is killing civilians and destroying hospitals with impunity in Syria?!
etc
Wow! Russia is taking over the world, it must be stopped, can anyone save us? Obama? Trump? NATO?
Look out! Russian armies are massing on the border ready to sweep into Europe.......arrhhh!
"..ex-prime minister Anthony Charles Lynton Blair of the United Kingdom, and Hillary Rodham Clinton of the United States
of America, have formally announced a new transatlantic political party to be named: The Neoliberal Elite Party for bitter
anti-Brexiters and sore anti-Trumpettes.
Rather rich coming from my country which has interfered in elections around the world for decades. I suppose it's only cheating
if the other team does it.
Not that they'll find any evidence. Just another chapter in the sad saga of the Democrats unwillingness to admit they ran the
worst candidate & the worst campaign in recent memory. It's not our fault! Them dirty Russkies did it!
"... Joe McCarthy rose to corrosive prominence at the midpoint of the 20th century by riding hysteria and spurring it on. The demagoguery was fueled not only by opportunistic politicians but also by media outlets all too eager to damage the First Amendment and other civil liberties in the name of Americanism and anti-communism. ..."
"... Most Democratic leaders, for their part, seem determined to implicitly - or even explicitly - scapegoat the Russian government for the presidential election results. Rather than clearly assess the impacts of Hillary Clinton 's coziness with Wall Street, or even the role of the FBI director just before the election, the Democratic line seems bent on playing an anti-Russia card. ..."
This country went through protracted witch hunts during the McCarthy era. A lot of citizens -
including many government workers - had their lives damaged or even destroyed. The chill on the First
Amendment became frosty, then icy. Democracy was on the ropes.
Joe McCarthy rose to corrosive prominence at the midpoint of the 20th century by riding hysteria
and spurring it on. The demagoguery was fueled not only by opportunistic politicians but also by
media outlets all too eager to damage the First Amendment and other civil liberties in the name of
Americanism and anti-communism.
Today, congressional leaders of both parties seem glad to pretend that Section 501 of the Intelligence
Authorization Act is just fine, rather than an odious and dangerous threat to precious constitutional
freedoms. On automatic pilot, many senators will vote aye without a second thought.
Yet by rights, with growing grassroots
opposition , this terrible provision should be blocked by legislators in both parties, whether
calling themselves progressives, liberals, libertarians, Tea Partyers or whatever, who don't want
to chip away at cornerstones of the Bill of Rights.
Most Democratic leaders, for their part, seem determined to implicitly - or even explicitly
- scapegoat the Russian government for the presidential election results. Rather than clearly assess
the impacts of Hillary Clinton
's coziness with Wall Street, or even the role of the FBI director just before the election,
the Democratic line seems bent on playing an anti-Russia card.
Perhaps in the mistaken belief that they can gain some kind of competitive advantage over the
GOP by charging Russian intervention for
Donald Trump 's victory, the
Democrats are playing with fire. The likely burn victims are the First Amendment and other precious
freedoms.
From Wikipedia article
Communist propaganda.
"....the term "propaganda" broadly refers to any publication or campaign aimed at promoting a cause
and is/was used for official purposes by most communist-oriented governments. Rooted in Marxist thought,
the propaganda of communism is viewed by its proponents as the vehicle for spreading the enlightenment
of working class people and pulling them away from the propaganda of their oppressors that reinforces
their exploitation, such as religion or consumerism. A Bolshevik theoretician, Nikolai Bukharin, in
his The ABC of Communism wrote:[1] The State propaganda of communism becomes in the long run a means
for the eradication of the last traces of bourgeois propaganda dating from the old régime; and it is
a powerful instrument for the creation of a new ideology, of new modes of thought, of a new outlook
on the world.
Similarly neoliberal propaganda is the vehicle of spreading neoliberal ideas and "neoliberal rationality"
inside the country and all over the world the reinforces key postulated of neoliberalism -- unlimited
"free market" for transnational corporations, deregulation, suppression of wages via "free movement
of labor" and outsourcing and offshoring, decimation of labor unions and organized labor in general
(atomization of working force"), "greed is good" memo, etc.
Like Communist propaganda during Brezhnev rule, neoliberal propaganda after 2008 is in crisis, and
it is natural to expect that neoliberal propagandists will resort to heavy handed tactic of McCarthyism
in a vain attempt to restore its influence.
Wall Street On Parade closely examined the report issued by PropOrNot, its related Twitter page,
and its registration as a business in New Mexico, looking for "tells" as to the individual(s) behind
it. We learned quite a number of interesting facts.
As part of its McCarthyite tactics, PropOrNot
has developed a plugin to help readers censor material from the websites it has blacklisted. It calls
that its YYYCampaignYYY. In that effort,
it lists an official address of 530-B Harkle Road, Suite 100, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505. That's
one of those agent addresses that serve as a virtual address for the creation of limited liability
corporations that want to keep their actual principals secret. The address has dozens of businesses
associated with it. There should also be a corresponding business listed in the online archives of
the business registry at the Secretary of State of New Mexico. However, no business with the words
Propaganda or PropOrNot or YYY exist in
the
New Mexico business registry, suggesting PropOrNot is using a double cloaking device to shield
its identity by registering under a completely different name.
PropOrNot's Twitter page provides a "tell" that its report may simply be a hodgepodge compilation
of other people's research that was used to arrive at its dangerous assertion that critical thinkers
across America are a clandestine network of Russian propaganda experts. Its
Tweet on
November 7 indicates that the research of Peter Pomerantsev, a Senior Fellow at the Legatum Institute
in London, who has also been cooperating
on research with the Information Warfare Project of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA)
in Washington, D.C, inspired its efforts.
According to SourceWatch, the Legatum Institute "is a right-wing think tank promoting 'free markets,
free minds, and free peoples.' " SourceWatch adds that the Legatum Institute "is a project founded
and funded by the Legatum Group, a private investment group based in Dubai." According to the Internet
Archive known as the Wayback Machine, the Center for European Policy Analysis
previously
indicated it was an affiliate of the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA). We can see why
they might want to remove that affiliation now that the Koch brothers have been exposed as funders
of a very real network of interrelated websites and nonprofits.
According to
Desmog, NCPA has received millions of dollars in funding from right wing billionaires like the
Koch brothers and their related trusts along with the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the
Sarah Scaife Foundation
(heir to the Mellon fortune) along with corporations like ExxonMobil.
CEPA's InfoWar Project is currently listed as a "Related Project" at PropOrNot's website. Indeed,
there are numerous references within the report issued by PropOrNot that sound a familiar refrain
to Pomerantsev and/or CEPA. Both think the U.S. Congress is in denial on the rising dangers of Russian
propaganda and want it to take more direct counter measures. Pages 31 and 32 of the PropOrNot report
urge the American people to demand answers from the U.S. government about how much it knows about
Russian propaganda. The report provides a detailed list of specific questions that should be asked.
In the August 2016 report
released by CEPA (the same month the PropOrNot Twitter account was established) Pomerantsev and his
co-author, Edward Lucas, recommend the establishment of "An international commission under the auspices
of the Council of Europe on the lines of the Venice Commission" to "act as a broadcasting badge of
quality. If an official body cannot be created, then an NGO could play a similar advisory role."
On its website, PropOrNot recommends
a much stronger censorship of independent media websites, writing:
"We call on the American public to Obtain news from actual reporters,
who report to an editor and are professionally accountable for mistakes. We suggest NPR, the BBC,
the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Buzzfeed News, VICE, etc, and especially
your local papers and local TV news channels. Support them by subscribing, if you can!"
CounterPunch
was quick to point out that the Washington Post's former publisher, Philip Graham, supervised
a disinformation network for the CIA during the Cold War, known as Mockingbird. Graham was reported
to have died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his farm in 1963.
CEPA's website
indicates that on May 10 it hosted Senators Chris Murphy and Rob Portman to discuss "Russia's
sophisticated disinformation campaign." CEPA's President, A. Wess Mitchell is quoted as saying: "What's
missing is a significant effort on the part of the U.S. government. Not nearly enough has been done."
Six days after Washington Post reporter Craig Timberg ran his first PropOrNot story, he
published another article indicating that "Congressional negotiators on Wednesday approved an
initiative to track and combat foreign propaganda amid growing concerns that Russian efforts to spread
'fake news' and disinformation threaten U.S. national security." Quoted in the story was none other
than the very Senator who had met with CEPA in May on that very topic, Senator Rob Portman.
Portman is quoted as follows: "This propaganda and disinformation threat is real, it's growing,
and right now the U.S. government is asleep at the wheel." Among Portman's
top three donors to his 2016 Senate race were Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, two Wall Street behemoths
that would very much like to pivot the national debate to anything other than Wall Street power and
corruption.
"... Sorry, Brian, but you and your ilk sold your credibility for a full investment position in Hillary and Globalism. Your only recourse now is to attack and try to delegitamize those who call you out. ..."
Now this is rich. Brian Williams, the disgraced ex-NBC journalist who was literally fired for
falsely reporting that he was in a helicopter during the Iraq war that took on combatant fire, is
now going on a crusade against "fake news." On his MSNBC show last night, Williams decided to attack
retired General Flynn and Donald Trump for spreading "fake news" via their twitter accounts.
... ... ...
nuubee •Dec 9, 2016 11:42 AM
I'm going to start reading The Onion and taking it seriously now.
nope-1004 -> Pladizow •Dec 9, 2016 11:48 AM
At least he wasn't in real harms way, like Hillary, when she landed under sniper fire.
It's like [neo]Liberals are genetically compelled or something to accuse others of what they
themselves are actually doing. I've never seen anything this universally true for an entire group
of people suffering the same mental illness ([neo]liberalism).
- "A terrible moment a dozen years back during the invasion of Iraq when the helicopter
we were traveling in was forced down after being hit by an RPG." - NBC Nightly News, January
30, 2015
- "It was no more than 120 seconds later that the helicopter in front of us was hit." -
Brian Williams to Tim Russert on CNBC,
March 2005
- "I was instead following the aircraft" [that was struck by the RPG]. - NBC Nightly News,
Wednesday February 5, 2015
- Williams' original [March 26, 2003, NBC News] report indicated that a helicopter in front
of his was hit. -
PolitiFact
- NBC publishes a book [in 2003], "Operation Iraqi Freedom," in which they describe Williams'
experience, implying that his helicopter sustained fire. -
PolitiFact
- May 2008: Williams writes another [NBC News] blog, responding to a note from a soldier
who he met in Iraq. In this post, Williams indicates that he was in a helicopter that took
fire. -
PolitiFact
- "I've done some ridiculously stupid things under that banner, like being in a helicopter
I had no business being in Iraq with rounds coming into the airframe," he said [to Alec Baldwin
in March 2014] -
PolitiFact
- "We were in some helicopters. What we didn't know was, we were north of the invasion.
We were the northernmost Americans in Iraq. We were going to drop some bridge portions across
the Euphrates so the Third Infantry could cross on them. Two of the four helicopters were hit,
by ground fire, including the one I was in, RPG and AK-47. - Williams to Letterman on March
26, 2013 -
PolitiFact.
- In the initial NBC broadcast where he described his 2003 Iraq reporting mission, embattled
NBC anchor Brian Williams falsely claimed that "we saw the guy . . . [who] put a round through
the back of a chopper," which he further and incorrectly claimed was "the Chinook [helicopter]
in front of us." -
Breitbart
- "We flew over a bridge. He waved to the lead pilot very kindly. With that someone else
removed the tarp, stood up, and put a round through the back of a chopper missing the rear
rotor by four or five feet." - To Tom Brokaw on March 26, 2003 -
Breitbart
- "[Y]ou go back to Iraq, and I looked down the tube of an RPG that had been fired at us
and it hit the chopper in front of ours." - Williams to Fairfield University in 2007 -
Ace of Spades
SEAL Team 6 Tale
- "We have some idea which of our special operations teams carried this out," Williams said
on "The Late Show With David Letterman" the day after the raid [May 2, 2011]. "It happens to
be a team I flew into Baghdad with, on the condition that I would never speak of what I saw
on the aircraft, what aircraft we were on, what we were carrying, or who we were after." -
Huffington Post
- "Now, people might be hearing about SEAL Team 6," Williams said the next night, May 3,
2011, on "Nightly News." "I happen to have the great honor of flying into Baghdad with them
at the start of the war." -
Huffington Post
- "I flew into Baghdad, invasion plus three days, on a blackout mission at night with elements
of SEAL Team 6, and I was told not to make any eye contact with them or initiate any conversation,"
Williams said. (Three days after the U.S. invasion would have been March 22, 2003, not April
9, 2003, which was the day Williams broadcasted from the Baghdad airport.) - To David Letterman
in May of 2012 -
Huffinton Post
- In the 2012 "Late Show" appearance, Williams also recalled carrying a box of Wheat Thins,
which he said a hungry special operator dug into with a "hand the size of a canned ham." They
got to talking, and Williams told the commando how much he admired his knife. "Darned if that
knife didn't show up at my office a couple weeks later," Williams told Letterman. -
Huffington Post
- "About six weeks after the Bin Laden raid, I got a white envelope and in it was a thank-you
note, unsigned," Williams said on "Letterman" in January 2013. "And in it was a piece of the
fuselage of the blown-up Black Hawk in that courtyard. Sent to me by one of my friends." -
Huffington Post
- In February 2014, Williams elaborated on the helicopter gift in another media appearance,
this time on the sports talk show hosted by Dan Patrick. "It's one of the toughest things to
get," he said, "and the president has a piece of it as well It's made of a material most people
haven't seen or held in their hands." -
Huffington Post
Fall of the Berlin Wall
- "I've been so fortunate," he said during a 2008 forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential
Library. "I was at the Brandenburg Gate the night the wall came down." -
CNN
- "Here's a fact: 25 years ago tonight, Tom Brokaw and I were at the Berlin Wall," Williams
said at a gala held on November 8, 2014. -
CNN
The Pope
- "I was there during the visit of the pope," Williams said [in 2002]. -
CNN
- While delivering the commencement address at Catholic University that year [2004], Williams
said the "highlight" of his time at the school "was in this very doorway, shaking hands with
the Holy Father during his visit to this campus." -
CNN
Katyusha Rocket Fire
- "There were Katyusha rockets passing just beneath the helicopter I was riding in," he
told a student interviewer from Fairfield (Conn.) University that year [2007]. -
Washington Post
- "When you look out of your hotel window in the French Quarter and watch a man float by
face down, when you see bodies that you last saw in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and swore to yourself
that you would never see in your country," Williams told Eisner [in 2006], who suggested in
the interview that Williams emerged from former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw's shadow with his
Katrina coverage. -
USA Today
- In Williams's telling, the pathos of the scene extended to his crew's access to food.
"We were desperate for food and drink. But not like the people we were seeing in the streets,"
he said in the documentary "In His Own Words: Brian Williams on Hurricane Katrina." -
Washington Post
Puppy Rescue
- "I remember one such house fire - the structure was fully involved with flames and smoke.
I was wearing a breathing apparatus, conducting a search on my hands and knees, when I felt
something warm, squishy and furry on the floor of a closet. I instinctively tucked it in my
coat." -
October 2011, USA Today
- "All I ever did as a volunteer fireman was once save two puppies." -
January 2007, Esquire
Christmas Tree Robbery
In a 2005 interview with Esquire magazine, Williams said a thief drew on him in the 1970s
- leaving him "looking up at a thug's snub-nosed .38 while selling Christmas trees out of the
back of a truck." –
NY Post
Quitting College
- "One day, I'm at the copy machine in the White House and Walter Mondale comes up behind
me and clears his throat. A classic throat-clearing. I thought people only did that in movies,
but it turns out vice-presidents do it, too. Anyway, it makes for an exceptionally good morning,
and I run from the White House to the GW campus for class. I'm still wearing my West Wing hard
pass on a chain, and when my professor sees it, he admits that he's only been to the White
House on the public tour. And I thought to myself, This is costing me money that I don't have,
and I'm a young man in too much of a hurry. So I left school." - Brian Williams to
Esquire , 2005
- But then a friend invited him to drive to Washington, D.C., for a weekend, and everything
changed. Smitten with the city and its youthful energy, Williams decided to move there. He
transferred what credits he could from Brookdale to Catholic University and took a job in the
public relations department to help pay his expenses. He landed an internship at the White
House, and when that ended, he answered an ad for a clerking job at a broadcasting association.
- 2009,
New Jersey-Star Ledger
It's just amazing what a shameless loser this guy has always been. I was surprised that they even
fired him for contriving this story, that is after all, what they do. The whole idea behind embedding
journalists was to make them part of the team, which prevents subjective journalism (not that
there was a risk of that happening with him) and turning the war into a fictionalized patriotic
orgy of bullshit reality TV. This was a huge shame to the profession of journalism before you
factor in the lies and perpetual fabrication.
The only reason he was fired was due to the fact that we were in the throws of a giant national
masturbation frenzy over military aggression and the military and it's endeavors became untouchable
overnight. When they got pissed off during that time frame it definitely mattered, not so much
now. Now they are just screwing them and everybody else. These news anchors are absolutely disgusting,
just about every one of them. They all look like pumpkins and hookers. They need to lay off the
hairspray and man-makeup before throwing themselves into 170 degree acidic geyser (you don't want
it too hot).
These ratfuck pressitutes haven't noticed Clinton lost the election because we stopped buying
the MSM lies nothing there that's worthwhile to read based on his stupidity here.
Brian Willians has been discredited and should either retire or find another job. But also, and
I'm serious about this, Pizzagate is a ridiculous made-up bullshit story that is distracting everyone
from the real issues and the way that the Dems have fucked our whole civilization for real, not
just a few kids that likely never even happened.
Even if pizzagate is real it is far less important than the many real ways in which the elites
have fucked us all.
Brian Williams is a member of the Rockefeller/CFR along with Mika Brzezinski and Charles "Joe"
Scarborough. See member lists at cfr dot org.
"The fact that we will not reestablish [another] Walter Cronkite, because of technology...
does not mean we can't have people who are trusted. Brian Williams is sitting here , Charlie Gibson
and Katie Couric..."
With over a century of government schooling to dumb down the population, I'd say their lack of
tact is fairly well warranted, given the average length of attention span can likely be measured
in hours.
All we can do is tell the unawake to turn off the idiot box, stop ingesting Kellogg's etc etc.
Every day we win a few more battles, and one day come to realize the enemy are all lying on the
ground, motionless.
Obama orders review of cyber attacks on 2016 election – adviser
President Barack Obama directed US intelligence agencies to conduct a full review of cyber
attacks and foreign intervention into the 2016 election and deliver a report before he leaves
office, homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco said on Friday. Monaco told reporters the results
of the report would be shared with lawmakers and others. Obama leaves office on January 20. (Reuters)
remember, this has nothing to do with fake news. This has everything to do with competition. THe
MSM is getting too much competition from independent bloggers and opinions that don't follow their
narrative. Their goal now......figure out some way to shut them down.
And that's the entirety of the issue: if McCain had won in 2008, we'd have been hearing about
fake news then. It really is just that we had the audacity to disagree with the legacy media--who
for the first time in my memory broke every rule they had for themselves in appearing to cover
all sides--to try to corral the US public into voting for their candidate of choice. Even Fox
News was anti-Trump, for fuck's sake: did they not realize that gave away the game?!
Ironically, I feel if the media hadn't been so in-the-bag for Clinton from the start, I wouldn't
be surprised if she had won. The media lost her A LOT of votes by making it look like, whether
true or not, they had been bought off. (Yeah, I know they were. But they aren't supposed to APPEAR
it; Clinton should ask for a refund, in my opinion.)
So yeah; look forward to media licensing being floated, and somehow requiring credentials for
journalists (which will end with needing to be 'certified,' which will inevitably require an expensive
several year trip to your university daycare of choice.)
Will it work? Actually, for once, I have hope: I don't think it will. In fact, I suspect fairly
soon, someone is going to notice that Thomas Payne was probably the first purveyor of "fake news"
in this country, and that's a fucked up thing to be against as an American.
BS. If McCain won in 2008 we'd already be in an actual fucking hot war with Russia. 2008 was a
wet-dream for Soros and his boys. They got to win big or win FUCKING BIG.
The FBI found State Dept emails showing that Hillary Clinton went to "Orgy Island" at least
6 times - and at least once in the company of convicted pedo Jeffrey Epstein. (Bill Clinton went
there "at least 20 times" - those pesky progressives!)
You are the epitome of and exactly exactly the type of vile, disgusting, reprehensible Scum
at the bottom of the Swap. A bottom feeder at best.
The Presstitute Centrailized Media has been exposed for the farce that it is. The obvious denial
of it simply exposes the Sociopathic / Psychopathic Nature of you vile Scum Fucks.
Accept it. The Public has lost all respect for the Centrailzed Industrial Complex Presstitiute
Media.
The Libtards are desperate to attack Russia and start WW III, bailout Wall Street again and keep
the Swamp parasites in power in DC to keep the gravy train flowing.
MSM and Dem lies get Yuuuger every day...it's almost laughable but they are actually very dangerous
people and thus, we need to protect the 2nd to protect us from them if they get to desperate.
There has never been an actual media in America to begin with --- just go back and check out
the trash that the Pulitzer fellow wrote, and then realize why that prize is awarded to the riff-raff
who usually receive it.
Sorry, Brian, but you and your ilk sold your credibility for a full investment position
in Hillary and Globalism. Your only recourse now is to attack and try to delegitamize those who
call you out.
The gig is up for these MSM pantywaists and they know it. The only way they maintain viewership
is if the gov't shuts down the internet, which it may. These little fucktards like williams are
some of the biggest purveyors of bullshit in the history of mankind and they know we are on to
their game. No one is going back to believing anything these assholes say except for the most
partisan, retarded, misinformed of the US population.
the news organizations are all propped up to keep the global culture industry operational. If
they were to be displaced by conscious consumers of worth while real news, like the kind that's
now starting to make it's way through the alternative media, they would only exist for viewers
who were being groomed for social unrest. Oh wait, that's what their doing now isn't it?
This is the opportunity to wake people up that you care about. If nothing else you can show that
the news is all coordinated. There is no possibility that in a free competitive market every org
would repeat the same message from the same perspective.
I have taken advantage of the oligarchs sloppiness. People who thought I was crazy two years
ago are now acknowledging I was right. I have delivered news to people and two weeks later it
was a breaking story. Take the opportunity and bring a few more people over.
The only truly fake news is the US MSM. This bullshit that is called "news" is filled with omissions,
distortions, half truths, bald faced lies and fabrications. This is the "official narrative" the
Kool Aid that we are all supposed to drink. Remember how the MSM colluded with the Bush Administration's
neocons to sell the bullshit Iraq WMD story that was presented to the UN by Colin Powell? Total
bullshit. How can anyone believe anything that is fed to us from the MSM.
Ironic but the guy I'm going to tell you about was featured on 60 minutes. You know what I
love is when the US State Department or the MSM quotes the UK Britain-based Syrian Observatory
for Human Rights. This is a little old man in a dingy apartment in a slum Arab neighborhood in
London. This old fucking guy claims to know whats going on in Syria. Actually this is a neocon
propaganda mill for the CIA It's comments, suggestions and conclusions are solely based upon
an official narrative created by the CIA and sold to us through the MSM.
Look at the pre-election coverage and non-stop polling data talked about by all the MSM boneheads
including this Brian Williams jack off. Donald Trump was continously slammed, over and over again
by *all of them.*The exception was Sean Hannity. Now look at the partial list of donors to crooked
Hillary's campaign.
The list of donors to the Clinton campaign included many of the most powerful media institutions
in the country - among the donors: Comcast (which owns NBC, and its cable sister channels, such
as MSNBC); James Murdoch of News Corporation (owner of Fox News and its sister stations, among
many other media holdings); Time Warner (CNN, HBO, scores of other channels); Bloomberg; Reuters;
Viacom; Howard Stringer (of CBS News); AOL (owner of Huffington Post); Google; Twitter; The Washington
Post Company; George Stephanopoulos (host of ABC News' flagship Sunday show); PBS; PRI; the Hearst
Corporation and others (
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/37451-the-clinton-foundation-and-the-... ).
Trump is correct when he says the US media is crooked. It's all fucking fake news!!
Post election- I now watch local news for traffic and weather in the morning. But fuck them
I will not listen to the MSM talking heads or anything else on the crooked MSM. To know whats
going on in the world I now watch RT which presents an objective and honest perspective of what's
really going on in the world. Of course they call RT fake news, or Russian propaganda. All I can
say is they can go fuck themselves! I am sick and tired of the lies and bullshit which is the
official US narrative as presented by our 100% crooked MSM!
The real fake news is presented by the liars in our MSM!
Lol makes no difference now ... I left the MSM, never read it anymore.
I am no longer misinformed by them - that's a bonus.
I now prefer news from other nations because domestically it is all the fucking same from the
libtards and progressives of more people murdered because of some shit they created. Still get
drug addicts committing crime just like all them illegal immigrants because with no money you
have to commit a crime to exist. We all know that domestically your bankers are robbing you and
that the politicians are lying pieces of shit.
So why would I want to read what I already know? Nope don't need it.
Bye, bye NBC and the rest of you I can predict what the stories you will run with tomorrow
because they are the same fucking lies like the past 30 years.
Attack the MSM by attacking their ability to sell advertising.
"That newspaper you are advertising in has been wrong on everything, from going into Iraq to
recommending that loser Hillary Clinton to the final election results. If you are advertising
in that dishonest discredited rag, your product or service is being tarnished by association.
"
"Just watch President Elect Trump's Thank You Tour speech. Tens of thousands of people loudly
booed the press and the media that were there. You really want to spend your money buying ads
from those discredited losers?"
The neocons and fascist Democrat factions are joining forces looks like and as desperate as can
be. They've lied since day one, bombed RNC offices, beat innocent people up at Trump rallys, published
non-stop fake news, and now pull the "Russian agent" theory out of their closet.
Most Americans laugh at these nuts but I think they are very scary and serious since they have
alot of money invested in Queeb Hillary and war with Russia.
The Washington Post ( fake news organization) is reporting that the CIA secretly informed the
senate last week that there was Russian interference in our election and that it was Russia's
goal to ensure the election of Donald Trump. Apparently the house was informed in September and
was questioned if this should be made public and the Republicams said no, according to the Washington
Post - the source identified himself as " DNC in deep shit" . /Sarc.
Rachel Maddow was gleefully reporting on this tonight, as if it somehow vindicated her and
her morally bankrupt colleagues from the fact that they should have been reporting on this rather
than the Russians, since it is an American election and it is their job to investigate and report
the news.
Of course Obama has decided to keep this information secret, although, 7 "Democratic " senators
were requesting that the Obama administration released PARTS of the findings of the investigation
which can only lead one to question which PARTS they would prefer to keep from the American public
and why. It also is a concern of national security that national secrets are ending up on the
Washington Post- maybe they received this information from Russia.
Mitch McConell was reported to have been dismissive of the allegations as a result of the lack
of agreement over the evidence among the 17 security agencies involved, the lack of any source
directly linking the Russian government to releasing DNC hacked emails to the Wikileaks
This also begs to question Rachel Maddow on her lack of outrage of the behavior of the DNC in
colluding with the press and rigging the primary. As if to say, since Russia revealed the information
and the wrong doing of the DNC, it is not a question of if the behavior of the DNC was just or
unjust.
Nor does it vindicate any Hillary supporter, it does not legitimize what the DNC, the press,
or Hillary Clinton did.
Leave it to the incompetent Washington Post and MSNBC and Rachel Maddow to completely miss
the ball again.
Is it surprising to anyone that Russia did not wish for world war 3?
We don't have to be too concerned about fake news pumped out by Russia and other evil doers. That
job is being well handled already by NBC, CNN, the New York Times, and others.
In this post-truth world, these openly left-biased media organizations can rival Pravada of
the old Soviet Union in their laughable news reports, lack of integrity, and willingness to suppress
news they don't want known while publishing outright propaganda.
In a democracy where citizens must make informed decisions about governments, politicians and
issues, it seems to me that the people behind these corrupt media outlets are just debasing their
country; I imagine they at least get well paid for their treachery.
Curious how, having destroyed their own credibility and lost so many viewers and readers, these
organizations are now attacking their new, smaller divergent rivals on the internet.
The Liberal Leftist and the MSM created the terms Alt-Right and Fake News to distort real news
and make them fit into their political agenda! They use this to discredit Conservatives in an
effort to shut down Alternative and Conservatist News Media, especially on the Internet and Talk
Radio to end competition! They want Free Speech for the Left and Censorship for the Right! The
truth is that people discovered their plot and it backfired!!!
Mainstream media lost all credibility with We the People!!!
"... All of the "The Russians are Coming" nonsense is coming from Democrat party organs and mouthpieces. Not Trump and his media allies. ..."
"... An excellent article from Mark. This Alexandra Chalupa sounds like a real piece of work. These Cold Warriors seem to have red-colored glasses and see commies everywhere they look. ..."
"... Of course, there was that old experiment ( Kohler et al ) where they had people wearing different colored goggles for some time, then asked participants to take them off. And what happened? The participants continued to see in those hues. ..."
"... Wait a second, so there was ..."
"... CIA has been whipping ethnic Ukies into a patriotic frenzy for decades with social clubs that seep revanchist propaganda. ..."
"... HR 6393: "(Sec. 501) This title establishes an executive branch interagency committee to counter active measures by the Russian Federation to exert covert influence over peoples and governments (with the role of the Russian Federation hidden or not acknowledged publicly) through front groups, covert broadcasting, media manipulation, disinformation or forgeries, funding agents of influence, incitement, offensive counterintelligence, assassinations, or terrorist acts. The committee shall expose falsehoods, agents of influence, corruption, human rights abuses, terrorism, and assassinations carried out by the security services or political elites of the Russian Federation or their proxies." ..."
"... Plus, that will add $160 million, IIRC, to The Deficit. ..."
"... Two things this article curiously doesn't seem to mention. The first is Victoria Nuland, who must be a close Hillary confidante, and architect of the coup in Ukraine ..."
"... So your food for thought is that the Russian state behaves rationally in the face of an aggressive military power? Of course, they are hacking everything. If they weren't before the NSA revelations (where the U.S. vacuums up everything and then has no safeguards on what they grab; Congress has had testimony about NSA employees using their power to stalk people), they were afterwards. ..."
"... Here's some food for thought. John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Hillary Clinton all tried to make a country of 145 million or so people with numerous internal problems a major campaign platform. Not one of them is President. Could there be a connection? ..."
"... As one of the people who consistently calls bull hockey about the claims that the wikileaks releases of the DNC and Podesta emails are the results of Russian government hackers, I will hereby agree with the idea that Russia is hacking everything they can get their hands on. Mind you I believe that every major government from the US to China to Germany to India are hacking everything they can get their hands on. And that every government knows that about all the rest. As far as I am concerned anyone who doesn't believe that is beyond naive. ..."
"... But thinking that every major government had access to Clinton's emails, Boeing's files, and knows what internet videos Obama/May/Merkel/Putin/Castro have accessed more than once is not the same thing as thinking they are stupid enough or have decent strategic reasons to make that public knowledge by releasing damaging but not destroying emails concerning the massive stupidity and arrogance of one candidate for President and her core people. ..."
"... There is only one reason that the meme about Fake News is being pushed now – the people who have been pushing fake news for awhile to promote their agendas have lost the control they thought they had over the public and now worry about them rebelling. If fake news were important Judith Miller wouldn't have a job or a book deal and the opportunity to promote that book. Hell Murdoch wouldn't have a media empire. ..."
"... I don't know why so many so-called movers and shakers want war with Russia, but it is clear that anyone getting in the way of that goal is now in the cross hairs. ProporNOT may be more about Ukrainian support, but the people who promoted them are about the reasons it was being used in the first place. ..."
"... Eastern European fascists running propaganda web sites for the Whappo, indeed. ..."
"... If you read Matt Stoller's excellent piece from The Atlantic ..."
"... I don't see "Banana Republican" Trump as a fascist - he is in many ways an exemplar of Caudillismo , a charismatic, populist, but authoritarian oligarch. ..."
"... Nance used fake news about Clinton speeches to propagate the fake news that the Podesta emails were fake. ..."
"... Was amused to see that naturalnews (one of the sites listed in propornot – it looks like I guess a right wing alternative medicine type site) is offering a $10k reward for unmasking propornot but I don't think anyone's ever going to be able to collect. ..."
"... Why? Because they take the site seriously on its claim of being composed of 30 members and will only pay out for the identities of at least ten. I think it's just one, maybe two guys. ..."
"... There are dots to connect – the WP article, Congressional Section 501 activity, Senators McCain/Graham "leadership"; and most recently, Hillary's comments. Suspect coordination. Connect the dots. And then search for a motive. ..."
"... The national security state is concerned that Trump will seek mutually beneficial agreements with Russia. For evidence of the power of the national "security" state a tour of the Pentagon is not necessary. Tour Tyson Corner, Virginia, instead, for starters. ..."
"... And once Trump has established these agreements there will then be no stopping several Eastern European countries + Germany (of course) realizing where their economic interests really lie. Does anyone really believe that Germany is going to let itself be turned into an irradiated wasteland just to please a bunch of neocon paranoids ? ..."
"... That's what the neocons, the MIC, and all their shills, and enablers truly fear. Paradoxically this ludicrous attempt to revive McCarthyism may well end up actually ending the Cold War for good & all 25 years after it should have ended. ..."
"... From the article: "It's now been a few days, and the shock and disgust is turning to questions about how to fight back-and who we should be fighting against." ..."
"... How many people, world-wide, are involved and invested in the whole "taking over everything" machinery of "state security" and espionage and corporate hegemony? And who is this "we" who should be fighting? ..."
"... This book provides a detailed account of the ways in which the CIA penetrated and influenced a vast array of cultural organizations, through its front groups and via friendly philanthropic organizations like the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. The author, Frances Stonor Saunders, details how and why the CIA ran cultural congresses, mounted exhibits, and organized concerts. The CIA also published and translated well-known authors who toed the Washington line, sponsored abstract art to counteract art with any social content and, throughout the world, subsidized journals that criticized Marxism, communism, and revolutionary politics and apologized for, or ignored, violent and destructive imperialist U.S. policies. ..."
"... The CIA was able to harness some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom in the West in service of these policies, to the extent that some intellectuals were directly on the CIA payroll. Many were knowingly involved with CIA "projects," and others drifted in and out of its orbit, claiming ignorance of the CIA connection after their CIA sponsors were publicly exposed during the late 1960s and the Vietnam war, after the turn of the political tide to the left. ..."
"... U.S. and European anticommunist publications receiving direct or indirect funding included Partisan Review, Kenyon Review, New Leader, Encounter and many others. Among the intellectuals who were funded and promoted by the CIA were Irving Kristol, Melvin Lasky, Isaiah Berlin, Stephen Spender, Sidney Hook, Daniel Bell, Dwight MacDonald, Robert Lowell, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, and numerous others in the United States and Europe. In Europe, the CIA was particularly interested in and promoted the "Democratic Left" and ex-leftists, including Ignacio Silone, Stephen Spender, Arthur Koestler, Raymond Aron, Anthony Crosland, Michael Josselson, and George Orwell. The CIA, under the prodding of Sidney Hook and Melvin Lasky, was instrumental in funding the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a kind of cultural NATO that grouped together all sorts of "anti-Stalinist" leftists and rightists. They were completely free to defend Western cultural and political values, attack "Stalinist totalitarianism" and to tiptoe gently around U.S. racism and imperialism. Occasionally, a piece marginally critical of U.S. mass society was printed in the CIA-subsidized journals. What was particularly bizarre about this collection of CIA-funded intellectuals was not only their political partisanship, but their pretense that they were disinterested seekers of truth, iconoclastic humanists, freespirited intellectuals, or artists for art's sake, who counterposed themselves to the corrupted "committed" house "hacks" of the Stalinist apparatus. ..."
"... It is impossible to believe their claims of ignorance of CIA ties. How could they ignore the absence in the journals of any basic criticism of the numerous lynchings throughout the southern United States during the whole period? How could they ignore the absence, during their cultural congresses, of criticism of U.S. imperialist intervention in Guatemala, Iran, Greece, and Korea that led to millions of deaths? How could they ignore the gross apologies of every imperialist crime of their day in the journals in which they wrote? They were all soldiers: some glib, vitriolic, crude, and polemical, like Hook and Lasky; others elegant essayists like Stephen Spender or self-righteous informers like George Orwell. Saunders portrays the WASP Ivy League elite at the CIA holding the strings, and the vitriolic Jewish ex-leftists snarling at leftist dissidents. When the truth came out in the late 1960s and New York, Paris, and London "intellectuals" feigned indignation at having been used, the CIA retaliated. Tom Braden, who directed the International Organizations Branch of the CIA, blew their cover by detailing how they all had to have known who paid their salaries and stipends (397-404). ..."
"... I have no answers for "what is to be done." ..."
"... It seems inevitable that perversion and corruption and greed will always eventually "trump" decency and comity, once a certain size and composition of a human population has been reached. ..."
"... One may hope that the general principle of eventual incompetence that seems to apply to even the Deep State activities might become more immanent. ..."
"... Dems didn't lose this elections because of "fake news". Dems lost because they did not prosecute the bankers who caused the 2008 financial crash, who fraudulently foreclosed on homes and are still engaged in fraud (see: Wells Fargo). imo. ..."
Great article but I'm unsure about the conclusion. ""This is the world the Washington Post
is bringing back to its front pages. And the timing is incredible-as if Bezos' rag has taken upon
itself to soften up the American media before Trump moves in for the kill. And it's all being
done in the name of fighting "fake news" and fascism.""
I was much more worried about this happening with Hillary at the helm. She seems more in line
with Soros and the Ukrainian extremists. Trump still seems to be interested in working with Putin
on things of mutual interest although he will probably find resistance in both US parties.
Yup. I'm still thinking "Make Ukraine Great Again" is not on Trump's agenda. But I'm just taking
things day by day. Still digesting Soros found some Nazis he likes. [Facebook "Like" gots it covered.
No new tweaking of social media required.]
However, I think it would be interesting if Trump investigated whether treason against Ukraine
is punishable by firing squad under US Treason Law. Since they've made it kinda personal.
Yeah, the piece is a bit uneven and the last bit a bit revealing of the author's own biases.
All of the "The Russians are Coming" nonsense is coming from Democrat party organs and mouthpieces.
Not Trump and his media allies.
The most effective neo-fascism that we see emerging everywhere is pretty consistently on the
erstwhile voices of the "left" affiliated with the Democrat Party which is double speak for the
New American Right. Indeed, by going back to the height of the cold war to make connections to
these shady organizations rather than modern day plutocrats (Amazonia and Googlie are low hanging
fruit), the author is employing misdirection. So, I will take this with a few grains of salt.
An excellent article from Mark. This Alexandra Chalupa sounds like a real piece of work.
These Cold Warriors seem to have red-colored glasses and see commies everywhere they look.
Of course, there was that old experiment (
Kohler et al ) where they had people wearing different colored goggles for some time, then
asked participants to take them off. And what happened? The participants continued to see in those
hues.
Wait a second, so there was foreign intervention in this election and there
were nefarious racists and eugenicists involved, but they weren't behind Trump,
but Clinton!?
/heavy sarcasm
Thank you very much for sharing this JLS! What a fasc inating read! The historical
context Ames provides is very intriguing and convincing.
"Convincing" is too strong. I would say rather suggestive, possibly persuasive. There is not
enough evidence to convince. More investigation is needed, and this might be a productive line
of inquiry, but it is too soon to talk about conclusions.
I am a huge fan of your website and donate as regularly as i can. I am appalled at what the
Washington Post did and its implications for free speech in the US going forward.
That said, I find this article defamatory in purpose, rather than informative. I do not believe
it meets the usual standards of Naked Capitalism: it is not fairly reasoned, nor based only on
relevant fact to the issue at hand. In my opinion, it is designed to smear and thus undermines
the considerable, unusual credibility of your website. I find it disturbing that it has been amplified
by its inclusion as a link. It does damage to the cause, rather than further it.
How so? First off, we know very little and Ames acknowledges that, but he uses historical context
to expand on that and build a case behind the PropOrNot / FPRI claims and their potential motives.
He fully admits he is working with that we've got. Maybe all these illustrations do just happen
to line up well and new information will change perception, but Ames discussion hits a lot of
typical looking benchmarks.
How is Mr Ames experience and the very place in which Chalupa works, what she says, as well
as the history of our countries actions upon others around the world and within not reasonable
to consider?
I'm sorry if incorrect but you seem like a troll without explaining yourself in specificity
further.
Disturbed voter, batshit Springtime-for-Hitler Ukies long predate Biden's involvement.
CIA has been whipping ethnic Ukies into a patriotic frenzy for decades with social clubs that
seep revanchist propaganda. The hapless Ukies were meant to be cannon fodder for hot war
on the USSR. When Russia molted and shed the USSR, Ukraine continued its Soviet degeneration but
the associations had a life of their own. That's how CIA clowns wound up proud owners of the Exclusion
Zone.
HR 6393: "(Sec. 501) This title establishes an executive branch interagency committee to
counter active measures by the Russian Federation to exert covert influence over peoples and governments
(with the role of the Russian Federation hidden or not acknowledged publicly) through front groups,
covert broadcasting, media manipulation, disinformation or forgeries, funding agents of influence,
incitement, offensive counterintelligence, assassinations, or terrorist acts. The committee shall
expose falsehoods, agents of influence, corruption, human rights abuses, terrorism, and assassinations
carried out by the security services or political elites of the Russian Federation or their proxies."
Two things this article curiously doesn't seem to mention. The first is Victoria Nuland,
who must be a close Hillary confidante, and architect of the coup in Ukraine .
The second thing is not so curious per se, but a common feature of articles about Russian hacking
accusations–they gloss over the fact that there is good evidence that the Russians are hacking
everything they can get their hands on. To assume otherwise is naive. Much of this evidence is
available in a recently-published book, The Plot to Hack America by Malcolm Nance.
He doesn't identify American news sources of being Russian stooges, but does describe how the
hacks on the DNC have FSB (the new KGB) fingerprints all over them. He also describes Trump's
ties to the Kremlin, as well as his advisors' business interests there. Food for thought.
So your food for thought is that the Russian state behaves rationally in the face of an
aggressive military power? Of course, they are hacking everything. If they weren't before the
NSA revelations (where the U.S. vacuums up everything and then has no safeguards on what they
grab; Congress has had testimony about NSA employees using their power to stalk people), they
were afterwards.
Here's some food for thought. John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Hillary Clinton all tried to
make a country of 145 million or so people with numerous internal problems a major campaign platform.
Not one of them is President. Could there be a connection?
As one of the people who consistently calls bull hockey about the claims that the wikileaks
releases of the DNC and Podesta emails are the results of Russian government hackers, I will hereby
agree with the idea that Russia is hacking everything they can get their hands on. Mind you I
believe that every major government from the US to China to Germany to India are hacking everything
they can get their hands on. And that every government knows that about all the rest. As far as
I am concerned anyone who doesn't believe that is beyond naive.
But thinking that every major government had access to Clinton's emails, Boeing's files,
and knows what internet videos Obama/May/Merkel/Putin/Castro have accessed more than once is not
the same thing as thinking they are stupid enough or have decent strategic reasons to make that
public knowledge by releasing damaging but not destroying emails concerning the massive stupidity
and arrogance of one candidate for President and her core people.
There is only one reason that the meme about Fake News is being pushed now – the people
who have been pushing fake news for awhile to promote their agendas have lost the control they
thought they had over the public and now worry about them rebelling. If fake news were important
Judith Miller wouldn't have a job or a book deal and the opportunity to promote that book. Hell
Murdoch wouldn't have a media empire.
I don't know why so many so-called movers and shakers want war with Russia, but it is clear
that anyone getting in the way of that goal is now in the cross hairs. ProporNOT may be more about
Ukrainian support, but the people who promoted them are about the reasons it was being used in
the first place.
Because big picture. Eurasia is inevitably coming together and it is the end of an era. Why
we thought we could prevent this from happening must be based on pure hubris. Everything has changed
so much in one century that even language makes no sense. Eastern European fascists running
propaganda web sites for the Whappo, indeed.
Hillary Clinton taking up the cause against fake news. Jesus. As Liz Warren said, personnel
is policy. You hire fascist nut cases, you create fascism. Hillary, you're so very patriotic.
If you read Matt Stoller's excellent piece from The Atlantic , "How the Democrats
Killed their Populist Soul" you'll see that Clintonism matches the corporatist model of fascism
as derided by Franklin Roosevelt in the late '30's, before mass-murder became associated with
the brand and when people like Charles Lindbergh were touting it as the "modern" way forward.
If you understand Clintonism as corporatist fascism, the DNC's affinity for Ukraine becomes more
and more logical.
I don't see "Banana Republican" Trump as a fascist - he is in many ways an exemplar of
Caudillismo , a charismatic, populist, but authoritarian oligarch.
I read that. I don't believe Nance said the Podesta emails were fake, just that there was a
possibility that those supplying the documents to Wikileaks could adulterate the documents or
introduce fabricated documents into the pipeline. Quite easy to do when leaking, what was it,
fifty thousand emails? And I still haven't heard a single persuasive argument to disprove that
the Russians hacked the DNC. Quite the contrary. The hacks originated from IP addresses known
to originate in the FSA (Fancy Bear) who have led a prodigious list of pro-Russian exploits against
targets throughout eastern Europe, including the Baltic states, Ukraine, and the German Bundestag.
Real-time adjustments from those IPs also occurred from the Moscow time zone, and some used cyrillic
keyboards.
Don't get me wrong: I disagree with the WaPo piece, and have read, commented, and financially
supported Naked Capitalism for quite a while now. And there's no faker news than that Iraq had
WMDs, a fact that the press has never quite overcome in the eyes of the public. But just because
spooky Intelligence Community people say that Russia hacked the DNC, doesn't make it not so. There
are way too many people on the left going off half-cocked. Have you noticed how since the "fake
news" imbroglio flamed up, MSM criticism of Trump's swampland cabinet picks have been quite muted?
The Intercept post has a
link
to the Nance tweet, which is still out there, saying
Malcolm Nance Retweeted KA Semenova
Official Warning: #PodestaEmails are already proving to be riddled with obvious forgeries
& #blackpropaganda not even professionally done.
He, Podesta, and the correspondents in the leaked emails never provided a single example and/or
proof that any email was forged. Also, I don't understand the technicality, but there is some
type of hash value associated with an email such that WL was able provide confirmation of those
emails where the hash value was intact. Instructions on how to replicate that confirmation process
were published at the time.
Was amused to see that naturalnews (one of the sites listed in propornot – it looks like
I guess a right wing alternative medicine type site) is offering a $10k reward for unmasking propornot
but I don't think anyone's ever going to be able to collect.
Why? Because they take the site seriously on its claim of being composed of 30 members
and will only pay out for the identities of at least ten. I think it's just one, maybe two guys.
There are dots to connect – the WP article, Congressional Section 501 activity, Senators
McCain/Graham "leadership"; and most recently, Hillary's comments. Suspect coordination. Connect
the dots. And then search for a motive.
The national security state is concerned that Trump will seek mutually beneficial agreements
with Russia. For evidence of the power of the national "security" state a tour of the Pentagon
is not necessary. Tour Tyson Corner, Virginia, instead, for starters.
And once Trump has established these agreements there will then be no stopping several
Eastern European countries + Germany (of course) realizing where their economic interests really
lie. Does anyone really believe that Germany is going to let itself be turned into an irradiated
wasteland just to please a bunch of neocon paranoids ?
Goodbye sanctions and then, shortly after, its bye, bye NATO bye bye.
That's what the neocons, the MIC, and all their shills, and enablers truly fear. Paradoxically
this ludicrous attempt to revive McCarthyism may well end up actually ending the Cold War for
good & all 25 years after it should have ended.
From the article: "It's now been a few days, and the shock and disgust is turning to questions
about how to fight back-and who we should be fighting against."
How many people, world-wide, are involved and invested in the whole "taking over everything"
machinery of "state security" and espionage and corporate hegemony? And who is this "we" who should
be fighting?
Fundamentals: The human siege of the planet is (it seems sort of clear) driving the biosphere
toward collapse as a sustainer of most human life. Ever more of the extractable entities of the
planet (mineral and living resources, "money" whatever that is, the day labor of most of us, on
and on) are being used, and used up, in service to what? a relatively few masters of manipulation
who are playing a game that most of the rest of us, were we able to focus and figure it out, would
recognize as murder and attempted murder as part of a war "we" did not enlist (most of us) to
participate in. The manipulators, both the ones sitting on extreme piles of wealth and the power
it provides, and the senior effectives in the various "agencies" that play out the game, what
the heck do they "want?" Other than "MORE"?
What motivates a Coors or Koch or Bezos or Brock or the various political figures and their
handlers and minions and "advisors?" This one little episode shows how completely it appears that
the whole species is screwed: "Who do we fight, and how?" Are "we" is the readers of NC? Some
few of whom are stooges and operatives for the Ministries of Truth who are tracking and recording
what transpires here and no doubt subtly injecting "influencers" into the discourse. Some are
just ordinary people, of varying degrees of insight and ability to influence the collective net
vector of human activity (for good or ill). Some are hoping to just find some awareness of and
comprehension of what-all is shaking on the Big Game Board of Life. In this moment, "we" depend,
in this one tiny instance among the great flood of chaos-induction and interest-seeking, on the
responses and pressures "our" hosts can bring to bear - threatening letters to the propagators
like WaPo and Craig Timberg, just one tumor in the vast cancer that afflicts the species, attempts
to link up with other parts of the too-small "good will, comity and deceny" population that is
fractioned and atomized and constantly seduced or frightened into going along with the larger
trend line, grabbing URLs and stuff I'm not smart enough to understand, all that. But the Big
People, the Deep State that "we" are subtly taught NOT to believe exists by various bits of sophistry,
is a lot better armed and equipped and always active - its operatives are paid, usually pretty
well, to be on the job all the time, operating their various and manifold, multifarious, often
ingenious, always disingenous operations, and always thinking up new ways to screw over and loot
and debase and oppress and enserf the rest of us.
Here's just one explication of how the Deep State operates:
This book provides a detailed account of the ways in which the CIA penetrated and influenced
a vast array of cultural organizations, through its front groups and via friendly philanthropic
organizations like the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. The author, Frances Stonor Saunders,
details how and why the CIA ran cultural congresses, mounted exhibits, and organized concerts.
The CIA also published and translated well-known authors who toed the Washington line, sponsored
abstract art to counteract art with any social content and, throughout the world, subsidized
journals that criticized Marxism, communism, and revolutionary politics and apologized for,
or ignored, violent and destructive imperialist U.S. policies.
The CIA was able to harness some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom
in the West in service of these policies, to the extent that some intellectuals were directly
on the CIA payroll. Many were knowingly involved with CIA "projects," and others drifted in
and out of its orbit, claiming ignorance of the CIA connection after their CIA sponsors were
publicly exposed during the late 1960s and the Vietnam war, after the turn of the political
tide to the left.
U.S. and European anticommunist publications receiving direct or indirect funding included
Partisan Review, Kenyon Review, New Leader, Encounter and many others. Among the intellectuals
who were funded and promoted by the CIA were Irving Kristol, Melvin Lasky, Isaiah Berlin, Stephen
Spender, Sidney Hook, Daniel Bell, Dwight MacDonald, Robert Lowell, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy,
and numerous others in the United States and Europe. In Europe, the CIA was particularly interested
in and promoted the "Democratic Left" and ex-leftists, including Ignacio Silone, Stephen Spender,
Arthur Koestler, Raymond Aron, Anthony Crosland, Michael Josselson, and George Orwell.
The CIA, under the prodding of Sidney Hook and Melvin Lasky, was instrumental in funding
the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a kind of cultural NATO that grouped together all sorts
of "anti-Stalinist" leftists and rightists. They were completely free to defend Western cultural
and political values, attack "Stalinist totalitarianism" and to tiptoe gently around U.S. racism
and imperialism. Occasionally, a piece marginally critical of U.S. mass society was printed
in the CIA-subsidized journals.
What was particularly bizarre about this collection of CIA-funded intellectuals was not
only their political partisanship, but their pretense that they were disinterested seekers
of truth, iconoclastic humanists, freespirited intellectuals, or artists for art's sake, who
counterposed themselves to the corrupted "committed" house "hacks" of the Stalinist apparatus.
It is impossible to believe their claims of ignorance of CIA ties. How could they ignore
the absence in the journals of any basic criticism of the numerous lynchings throughout the
southern United States during the whole period? How could they ignore the absence, during their
cultural congresses, of criticism of U.S. imperialist intervention in Guatemala, Iran, Greece,
and Korea that led to millions of deaths? How could they ignore the gross apologies of every
imperialist crime of their day in the journals in which they wrote? They were all soldiers:
some glib, vitriolic, crude, and polemical, like Hook and Lasky; others elegant essayists like
Stephen Spender or self-righteous informers like George Orwell. Saunders portrays the WASP
Ivy League elite at the CIA holding the strings, and the vitriolic Jewish ex-leftists snarling
at leftist dissidents. When the truth came out in the late 1960s and New York, Paris, and London
"intellectuals" feigned indignation at having been used, the CIA retaliated. Tom Braden, who
directed the International Organizations Branch of the CIA, blew their cover by detailing how
they all had to have known who paid their salaries and stipends (397-404).
http://monthlyreview.org/1999/11/01/the-cia-and-the-cultural-cold-war-revisited/
And that is just one part of the "operations" put in motion by just "our" national rulers by
ONE of the "seventeen national security agencies" that apparently appear in the organization chart
of the US empire.
These mostly faceless people, from "wet workers" to "economic hit men" to analysts and office
workers and Station Chiefs and functionaries at DIA and NIA and NSA and the rest of the acronymists
of "state security," are "just doing their jobs," with more or less personal malevolence (William
Casey, Dick Cheney, the Dulleses, Kermit Roosevelt, on and on), seem to be working from a central
organizing principle: Control of minds and resources, in service to imperial and corporate and
personal dominion. What tools and actions and thought processes do ordinary people have, to fight
back or even resist against this kind of onslaught? "We" are told we are becoming responsible
to do our daily best, in among fulfilling our and our families' basic needs, and to minimize our
environmental impacts to at least slow the destruction, and also somehow to become aware, in a
world of dis- and dysinformation, of what is being done to us and our children and communities,
and "resist." And "fight back." Against who, and against what, and by what means, when you have
the "Googolverment," and all those millions of employees and managers and executives thereof,
on call and on task 24/7 looking for ever more subtle ways to data mine and monetize and manipulate
"us"? And in a feedback loop that has been ongoing since no doubt the earliest of "civilization"
cities and tribes and nations, the "arms race" both in straight military terms and in the sneaky-pete
realm of espionage and state security and "statecraft," "the Russians" and the Pakistanis and
Chinese and Israelites, and probably Brazilians and Zoroastrians, are all growing their own machinery
of consumption and dominance and destruction.
What's the model "we" are supposed to be working from? Some people here are looking for "investment
opportunities" to take advantage of the chaos and destruction, and there are many for those who
can see the patterns and buy in. But what would a "just and decent world" (at least the human
population) even look like, and is there anything in our DNA that moves enough of us toward that
inchoate model to even have a prayer of suppressing those darker and deadlier impulses and motivations
and goals?
I have no answers for "what is to be done." It seems inevitable that perversion and corruption
and greed will always eventually "trump" decency and comity, once a certain size and composition
of a human population has been reached. One may hope that the general principle of eventual incompetence
that seems to apply to even the Deep State activities might become more immanent. And try to build
little communities that don't depend on killable cyber connections for their interconnectedness.
And work on an "organizing principle" of their/our own, that has a chance of surviving the crushing
mass of energetic but negative energy that infects the species.
And thanks to our hosts, for doing their bit to face down the fokkers that would take us all
down if they could. It's a constant struggle, and no doubt they are more aware than even a Futilitarian
like myself of all the parasites and malignancies that are so increasingly active and invested
in looting what's left of "antidotes."
Yes you do, the part about little communities and ad-hoc organizing principles is spot-on;
that stuff works, it just grows slowly at first. It is also self-limiting, a valuable feature,
given the manifest evidence of how badly things can go wrong when communities are pushed to grow
beyond their capacities.
It seems inevitable that perversion and corruption and greed will always eventually "trump"
decency and comity, once a certain size and composition of a human population has been reached.
Decency and comity have their little flaws, too; both can obscure incidents of gross folly.
But yeah, population factors are just ferocious.
One may hope that the general principle of eventual incompetence that seems to apply to
even the Deep State activities might become more immanent.
Not to worry. Incompetence is on it! Any second now wait for it wait for it excuse me, my timepiece
seems to have frozen hmm. Well, it appears that "peak incompetence" has already arrived and done
the bulk of its work, we just haven't noticed all of the results yet. We are now in that phase
between the giant's stumble and their final impact on the ground.
All this is normal, predictable, and as it should be (even the unfortunate parts); it's entropy.
It would be wiser to abandon bivalent moralities and just evaluate each circumstance on its merits,
and do our best.
That Ukrainian nationalists are behind propornot seems clear; that they're from the Nazified
wing seems implausible. Would the Bandera crowd be likely to think of putting a USS Liberty veterans'
website on a list of Russian propaganda outlets?
Ukrainian nationalists = Nazified Ukrainians. Israel is also involved so yes it makes a lot
of sense that the USS Liberty veterans' website on "the list". Might be time for Israel (and Genie
energy) to kiss the Golan Heights goodbye.
Yats and Porky are Jewish, so are some oligarchs who sponsor various neo-Nazi military formations.
Ihor Kolomoyskyi, for example, sponsors the Aidar Battalion. The bottom line is, the neo-Nazis
need to please their US government and Ukie oligarch sponsors in order to keep the dough flowing,
so Russians are the new Jews in Ukraine. Geopolitics makes for strange bedfellows.
Wikipedia has Yats being a member of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic and Porky belonging to the
Ukrainian Orthodox church. Not vouching for Wikipedia and knowing that history can produce some
interesting heritage, I thought I would point that out. Kolomoyskyi has dual citizenship with
Israel and of course infamous Clinton Foundation donor and Maidan supporter Victor Pinchuk was
raised by Jewish parents before sacking his own country.
The Forward certainly counts Porky as a Jew, and many Jewish organizations have attacked Yats
for concealing his Jewish roots. Given the rampant anti-antisemitism in Ukraine, can't really
blame them for concealing their identity. It was shortly before the Maidan that Mila Kunis went
back to her native Ukraine to promote her flick, and got called very unsavory names by some rabid
anti-Semites in Kiev.
" Dimitri - who asked NBC News not to use his real name - is one of dozens of teenagers in
the Macedonian town of Veles who got rich during the U.S. presidential election producing fake
news for millions on social media. "
heh. Dems didn't lose this elections because of "fake news". Dems lost because they did
not prosecute the bankers who caused the 2008 financial crash, who fraudulently foreclosed on
homes and are still engaged in fraud (see: Wells Fargo). imo.
Well that and passed a regressive health insurance bailout that required people to purchase
expensive and largely useless insurance; and showed their complete and utter contempt for working
Americans by ignoring the real state of the under and unemployment, and continued that contempt
by passing several job killing trade bills and attempting three other mega steroid versions of
same.
There are many reasons why the Democrats lost, but mostly it is because they stopped doing
little more than barely pretending to represent the interests of anyone outside of the wealthy
and corporate 'persons' who fund their campaigns and retirements. Protecting the banks and bankers
being only the clearest example.
I still don't see any of my favorite bloggers going after Bezos. I didn't even see him mentioned
until today. We are looking pretty timid so far in the face of Trump and Bezos (Trump from another
direction). No possibility of winning without fighting the war where it's taking place.
For Hire: Established corporation seeking experienced individuals in need of a challenge. Applicants
should have –
*at least 3 Yrs. experience of having their head head firmly up their backsides.
* a certificate from a licensed physician confirming applicants
mental impairment
* an ability to to obfuscate combined with no understanding of the terms 'cognitive dissonance'
'false moral equivalence' and 'logical fallacy'
Applicant must be at least 13 years old and show the capacity to convince 45% of America that
he or she is 30.
Earlier in this thread there was a comment from Claudia Riche claiming the Ames article is,
essentially, a smear job. I feel compelled to respond as I have direct personal knowledge of one
of his two main points, specifically re: the extreme right-wing tenor of the Foreign Policy Research
Institute, or FPRI in Philadelphia.
I worked at FPRI (yes, me the Marxist) in the mid-to-late 1970's, and was in contact with people
there through the early 1980's. I can testify that Ames's description of Strausz-Hupe and his
ideas are entirely accurate. I didn't know much about S-H when I first started working there,
but I figured out his age and original location probably made him a 3-way spook, at the least.
I could cite chapter and verse of the various associates and leading personalities that went through
there (including Alexander Haig) but I don't have the energy today.
Ames mentions that FPRI was driven off the Penn campus – well, only in the technical sense.
If you spit out the window you'd hit a university building, and many principals there were professors
at Penn, including Strausz-Hupe. Also, many Penn grad students passed through there, and undergrads
(like me).
For laughs, here is an interesting, if airbrushed, synopsis of the influence of FPRI by my
old friend Alan Luxenberg:
Here it is – sorry it didn't post immediately. BTW stuff not posting immediately doesn't necessarily
mean either (1) there is anything wrong with your comment, or (2) it got permanently eaten by
Skynet. Sometimes the algorithm for finding spam gets false positives for reasons that are not
entirely clear.
that was alot of investigative digging jerri-lynn -- so nice To see u surprise me twice in a
week. tremendous effort -thank you a post worth cross posting if it hasn't been already
This is indeed a great post, but I'm not the author. Mark Ames is the author. I just cross-posted
his fine work, which was originally published by AlterNet.
The CIA's apparent involvement reveals the immense danger and probable failure of expecting
a few managers to keep the sty clean.
Its not just in spookery that standards have collapsed. The world of professionals – doctors,
lawyers, accountants – has followed the same downward trajectory and it started in 1970 with demonetization
and the subsequent expansion of honorable greed.
It was in early 1970s that creative accounting and its penchant for creating wealth out of
nothing appeared.Then we saw these dodgy scorers appearing in court and swearing to the truth
of their new view. That infected the legal profession. The prosecutors were still willing to present
all their evidence for and against conviction to the Judge but the defense increasingly cheated,
led by the lawyer who tells his customers 'we never plead guilty,' and starts the creation of
a case beyond a reasonable doubt in place of the defendant's actual evidence.
It may be that doctors have so far escaped the moral collapse although on a recent visit to
hospital I saw the elevator lobbies infested with the army of capitalism in the shape of suited
drug salesmen trying to create obligations on the part of doctors.
We seem to have lost our way and for the time being its the man who cares only for the bottom
line who is winning the war of the world. He's the man who owns the newspaper that tells you every
bad thing is because of foreigners.
Typically Diaspora is more nationalistic the "mainland" population. This is very true about
Ukrainian Diaspora, which partially is represented by those who fought on the side of Germany in the WWII.
They are adamantly anti-Russian.
Notable quotes:
"... Here it also bears mentioning that it has been established that Yanukovych's Party of Regions transferred $200,000 to the far right Svoboda party and about $30,000 to the nationalist UNA-UNSO. This is serious money in Ukraine. ..."
"... Firstly, most Ukrainians don't give a shit about Bandera and the OUN. So if they're not speaking out against people using those symbols or slogans it's not because they support them, but because they're more concerned with issues of pure survival. ..."
"... And then these same fascists were whitewashed as noble freedom fighters by Western MSM simply because their interests happen to allign with the interests of the US, for the moment. ..."
"... Uh, no. I haven't noticed anyone here thinking that Russia is some sort of fighter for social and economic justice. Rather, we as a group are sick of noxious propaganda driven by American Exceptionalism. ..."
"... And speaking for myself, I find the rise of Russia to be potentially a very good thing for the US itself, if it manages to curtail the MIC-driven hegemonic drive, weakens its relative power, and forces it to focus its money and energies on pressing domestic issues. ..."
"... The idea of considering Putin to be anticapitalist is risible. Putin represents a limit on a US hegemonized economic order and the greater likelihood that some portion ..."
"... This is some insidious strawman and dishonest argumentation, speaking of "BS." Nowhere does this article state that the entire Maidan revolution was a "fascist coup"-that's you putting words in the author's mouth to make his article appear to be Russian propaganda. The author specifies names of top figures in power today with seriously disturbing neo-Nazi backgrounds-the speaker of Ukraine's parliament, its Interior Minister, and head of National Police. He never once calls it a "fascist coup". Using strawman to avoid having to answer these specific allegations is bad faith commenting. ..."
"... The false analogy to Occupy shows how dishonest your comment is. No one disputes that neo-Nazi leader Parubiy was in charge of Maidan's "self-defense"; and that neo-Nazi Right Sektor played a lead role in the confrontations with the Yanukovych authorities. ..."
"... I suspect that Mr. Kovpak is a member of the Ukrainian diaspora that first infested this country starting around 1945, and has since been trying to justify the belief that the wrong side won WWII. ..."
"... "The appalling corruption of Yanukovich was replaced by the appalling corruption of Yats and Poroschenko " ..."
"... Paruiby (Neo Fascist) was in charge before and after the Maidan for security – the trajectory of the bullets came from his peoples positions that shot the cops – analyzed over and over ..."
"... The Nazi Asov Battalion among other organizations supporting the Regime in Kiev has Nazi symbols, objectives and is one of the main forces armed and trained by American Military. ..."
"... The entire corrupt Kiev administration is Nazi and now it appears the Clinton Campaign has direct ties well beyond the $13 million she received in her Slush Fund from the Oligarchs in 2013. The driving force behind this entire Fake News Initiative and support for Hillary is becoming more visible each day. ..."
"... Not to mention the Ukrainian Nazis penchant for shelling civilians. Or will Kovpak (Ukrainian school perhaps? Did his grandfather emigrate with the other Ukrainian SS?) will repeat the canard that unbeknownst to the locals, the rebels are shelling themselves, using artillery shells that can 180 mid-flight? ..."
"... What is the liberals' talking point these days? "Not all Trump supporters are racist, but all of them decided that racism isn't a deal-breaker. End of story." Hillary's SoS-designate Nuland and Barry 0 decided that Ukie nazism wasn't a deal breaker. End of story. ..."
"... Ukrainian neo-fascists were an integral part of the Maidan (trained in Poland, US, and Canada). ..."
"... Yes, ordinary Ukrainians protested against corruption – but every U. government since 1991 has been corrupt. Yanukovich was no exception – but he was also not the worst one (do some research on J. Timoshenko). ..."
"... There is enough actual footage from Maidan that shows the presence of neo-nazi members on the square from the beginning. They were also the one who completed the violent overthrow of the government that happened on 2/21-22/14 – after a deal had been signed calling for early elections. The burning of 48 people in Odessa was probably done by angels, according to your likely analysis. ..."
"... So perhaps in the future instead of repeating a bunch of Russian talking points ..."
"... I was going to say something about how the CIA made Ukraine's Social Nationalist party change its name to Svoboda (freedom), to obscure the obvious Nazi connection, but instead I will just laugh at you. ..."
"... What a shocker that Jim Kovpak, the commenter who tries smearing this article as "repeating a bunch of Russian talking points" -- works for CIA-founded Voice of America and is a regular with Ukraine's "StopFake.org" which is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy , the CIA's color revolution "soft" arm - in other words, PropOrNot's folks. Can't make this stuff up. ..."
"... Wait, so in Kovpak's case our tax dollars are used to fund and disseminate propaganda to America's public, too? I am not shocked or anything, but rather amused that the vaunted American democracy and famously free media is beginning to resemble communist Bulgaria. ..."
"... Okay, but isn't it the case that many far-right leaders have migrated to parties closer to the center, such as People's Front? Svoboda's leaders have done this. Andriy Parubiy, Tetiana Chornovol, and Oleksandr Turchynov, for example, hold high positions in People's Front, but started out as members or Svoboda. If I'm not mistaken, People's Front also has strong connections to the far-right Volunteer Battalions. I believe People's Front has its own paramilitary branch too. ..."
"... What this tells me is that much of Ukraine's far-right may be masquerading as right-center. That's kind of like a political Trojan Horse operation. This way the fascists avoid standing out as far-right, but at the same time, move closer to the mechanisms of power within Ukraine's government. ..."
"... Here's an article by Lev Golinkin commenting on the far-right's strong and dangerous influence on Ukraine today. A fascist presence like this could easily be a powerful element in Ukrainian elections, very suddenly and unpredictably too. https://www.thenation.com/article/the-ukrainian-far-right-and-the-danger-it-poses/ ..."
"... This is getting darker and darker. As much as I dislike Trump I feel happier that Clinton didn't make it. The TINA party is the most reactionary thing by far! ..."
"... Sanders might have had a hard time driving as far left on FP as he did on domestic issues. I'm his constituent, and I have a letter from him from mid-'15 reiterating all the mainstream lies about Russia and Ukraine. ..."
Hello, I'm the blogger of Russia Without BS, a site you cited once in the stories about PropOrNot.
As I have recently written
on my blog
, I believe PropOrNot is most likely one person who is not linked to any real organization
group or intelligence agency. The individual is most likely what I call a cheerleader, which is
basically a person with no reasonable connection to some conflict, yet who takes a side and sort
of lives vicariously through their imagined "struggle."
That being said, you're probably not going to do yourself any favors claiming that Maidan was
a fascist coup and that fascists are in charge in Ukraine. Euromaidan was not started by right-wingers
(quite the opposite, actually), and they were not the majority of people there. Basically you
condemning Maidan is like someone condemning Occupy just because of the presence of neo-Nazis
and racists who were sometimes involved in certain Occupy chapters (this is well documented).
Without actually bothering to look at the issues involved, you are basically telling millions
of Ukrainians that they should have tolerated a corrupt, increasingly authoritarian government
that was literally stealing their future all because some right-wingers happened to latch on to
that cause too. Here it also bears mentioning that it has been established that Yanukovych's
Party of Regions transferred $200,000 to the far right Svoboda party and about $30,000 to the
nationalist UNA-UNSO. This is serious money in Ukraine.
As for the slogan, yes, Slava Ukraini, Heroiam Slava! has its origins in the OUN, but there
are some important things to consider when discussing Ukrainian history.
Firstly, most Ukrainians don't give a shit about Bandera and the OUN. So if they're not
speaking out against people using those symbols or slogans it's not because they support them,
but because they're more concerned with issues of pure survival. Look at the average salary
in Ukraine and look into some of the instances of corruption (some of which continue to this day),
and you'll understand why a lot of people aren't going to get up in arms about someone waving
the red and black flag. Most people have become very cynical and see the nationalists as provocateurs
or clowns, and thus they don't take them seriously enough.
Before you call this good points, please familiarize yourself with the (accurate) history of
the Maidan, Ukraine, neo-nazi presence in that country, and Russian history. Please Kovpak seems
to be an embodiment of what Ames tries to convey.
The more experienced observer listens to all sides; and all sides lie at least a little, if
only for their own comfort. Beyond that, subjectivity is inescapable, and any pair of subjectives
will inevitably diverge. This is not a malign intent, it's existential circumstance, the burden
of identity, of individual life.
My own (admittedly cursory) analysis happens to coincide with Jim Kovpak's first para (PropOrNot
being primarily a lone "cheerleader"). And I can see merit, and the call for dispassionate assessment,
in some of his other points. This does not mean I endorse Kovpak over Ames, or Ames over Kovpak;
both contribute to the searching discussion with cogent observation (and the inevitable measure
of subjective evaluation).
I thank both for their remarks, and also thank our gracious hosts ;).
No, but it was hijacked by fascists. It is sad that more democratic/progressive forces lost
out, but that's what happened. You seem to be trying to avoid recognizing this fact by affirming
the rightfulness of those who began the revolt. Their agency was removed not by Naked Capitalism
or Mark Ames, but by fascists who out maneuvered, spent, and gunned them. It's time to mourn,
not to defend a parasitic Frankenstein that is trying to develop a European fascist movement.
Goons from that movement assaulted and injured May Day demonstrators in Sweden this year and then
fled back to the Ukraine. They are dangerous and should not be protected with illusions.
Their agency was removed not by Naked Capitalism or Mark Ames, but by fascists who out maneuvered,
spent, and gunned them
And then these same fascists were whitewashed as noble freedom fighters by Western MSM
simply because their interests happen to allign with the interests of the US, for the moment.
Thus we have the ridiculous situation where supposedly reputable media like NYT and WaPoo
cheer on the Azov battalion and its brethren, and deny the very symbolism of the various Nazi
insignia and regalia featured on their uniforms. Jim makes some very good points, but he fell
way short in ignoring the role of the US MSM in this travesty.
And just in case someone tries to claim that we all make mistakes at times and that the MSM
made an honest mistake in regards to these neo-Nazi formations, the same thing has been happening
in Syria, where the US and its Gulf allies have armed extremists and have whitewashed their extremism
by claiming even Al Qaeda and its offshoots are noble freedom fighters.
Good on the parallel with Syria. The evolution, or distortion, of revolutionary movements as
they struggle to gain support and offensive power and then either are modified or jacked by "supporting"
external powers is not a cheering subject. The tendency to ignore that this has happened takes
two forms. One is what we are here discussing. The other is its opposite, as seen in, for example,
the way some writers try to maintain that there never was a significant democratic/progressive/humane
etc. element to the Syrian opposition.
Ukraine, as I understand it, is not monolith but has roughly 2 interest areas – western and
eastern – divided by the River Dnieper. The Western half is more pro-European and EU, the Eastern
half is more pro-Russia. The word "fascist" in Ukraine means something slightly different than
in means in the US and the EU. So I take your comment with a grain of salt, even though it is
interesting.
Ukraine's geographical location as the land "highway" between Europe and Asia has created a
long and embattled history there.
So perhaps in the future instead of repeating a bunch of Russian talking points because
you mistakenly think Russia is somehow opposed to US capitalism,
Uh, no. I haven't noticed anyone here thinking that Russia is some sort of fighter for
social and economic justice. Rather, we as a group are sick of noxious propaganda driven by American
Exceptionalism.
And speaking for myself, I find the rise of Russia to be potentially a very good thing
for the US itself, if it manages to curtail the MIC-driven hegemonic drive, weakens its relative
power, and forces it to focus its money and energies on pressing domestic issues.
Thirded. The idea of considering Putin to be anticapitalist is risible. Putin represents
a limit on a US hegemonized economic order and the greater likelihood that some portion
of the fruits of the Russian oligarchic capitalist effort will benefit Russians, not elites
tied to the US, because of his self-interested nationalism. Not much to cheer about but better
than where things were headed when Yeltsin was in power.
This is some insidious strawman and dishonest argumentation, speaking of "BS." Nowhere
does this article state that the entire Maidan revolution was a "fascist coup"-that's you putting
words in the author's mouth to make his article appear to be Russian propaganda. The author specifies
names of top figures in power today with seriously disturbing neo-Nazi backgrounds-the speaker
of Ukraine's parliament, its Interior Minister, and head of National Police. He never once calls
it a "fascist coup". Using strawman to avoid having to answer these specific allegations is bad
faith commenting.
The false analogy to Occupy shows how dishonest your comment is. No one disputes that neo-Nazi
leader Parubiy was in charge of Maidan's "self-defense"; and that neo-Nazi Right Sektor played
a lead role in the confrontations with the Yanukovych authorities. There is absolutely no
equivalent to this with Occupy at all. Where does this false analogy even come from? No where
does the author state that Maidan was ONLY fascists, that is again your strawman response. Maidan
had a lot of support from pro-western, pro-european, pro-liberal forces. But to deny the key and
often lead roles played by neo-fascists in the actual organization, "self defense" and violent
confrontations with the Yanukovych goons is gross whitewashing.
Much worse is the way you rationalize the fascist OUN salute by arguing that it means something
else now, or it's become normalized, etc. These are all the same bullshit arguments made by defenders
of the Confederate flag. "It means something different now." "it's about heritage/being a rebel!/individualism!"
There is no "but" to this, and anyone who claims so is an asshole of the first order. The salute
descends directly from collaborators in the Holocaust and mass-murder of Jews and Poles and collaboration
with Nazis. If people claim they don't understand its origins, then educate them on why it's so
fucked up, don't make excuses for them. Really disgusting that you'd try to rationalize this away.
There is no "but" and no excuse, period.
"Russia Without BS" is one hell of an ironic name for someone bs-ing like this. Your failure
to actually engage the article, setting up and knocking down strawmen instead, and evading, using
false analogies-reveal your own intellectual pathologies. Try responding to the actual text here,
and maybe you'll be taken seriously.
My thought was that this post was an example of the strawman fallacy. Yet certainly Mr. Kovpak
wasn't just shooting from the hip. That is, he thought about this thing, wrote it, looked it over,
and said "well enough" and posted it. Poor logic, or bad faith?
I think the tell was his characterization of the article as "repeating a bunch of Russian talking
points." What the hell is a "Russian talking point"? How do Ames' contentions follow said talking
points? Are he saying, perhaps, that Ames is another one of those Kremlin agents we've been hearing
about, or perhaps another "useful idiot"? Perhaps Ames – of all people – is a dupe for Putin,
right?
Hasbara, Ukrainian style. Bringing this junk onto NS, either this guy is alot of dumber than
he gives himself credit for, or he actually has no familiarity with NS, outside of the now- and
rightly-notorious WP/ProporNot blacklist. Probably the latter, since it looks like his comment
was a pre-masticated one-and-done.
I suspect that Mr. Kovpak is a member of the Ukrainian diaspora that first infested this
country starting around 1945, and has since been trying to justify the belief that the wrong side
won WWII.
I'm glad Jim Kovpak provided this background. I was very troubled to see Ames breezily smear
the Ukrainian uprising as "fascist," essentially writing off the protesters as U.S. proxies and
dismissing their grievances as either non-existent or irrelevant. Something similar has happened
in Syria, of course. Yes, the U.S. ruling blocs try to advance their interests in such places,
but if you ignore the people on the ground or dismiss them as irrelevant, you're just playing
into the hands of other tyrannical interests (in Syria: Assad, Putin, Hezbollah, etc.).
$5 billion spent over the past 25 years by the US in Ukraine (per Nuland). Yeah, they ain't
US proxies. Gla that you straightened that out for us.
The grievances in Ukraine are many and are legitimate. But that the people's anger was hijacked
by US-financed proxies is a fact. Nuland was caught dictating that Yats would be the new PM, and
darned if he didn't become just that. The appalling corruption of Yanukovich was replaced by the
appalling corruption of Yats and Poroschenko, and the country was plunged into a civil war. But
Yats and Porky are freedom-loving democrats! The old saying remains true: "They may be corrupt
SOBs, but they are our corrupt SOBs!"
Heck, for all the crocodile tears shed by the West about corruption and democracy, it has nurtured
corruption in Eastern Europe and looked the other way as democracy has been trampled. Including
in my native Bulgaria, where millions of dollars spent by the US and allied NGOs on promoting
and financing "free press" have seen Bulgaria's freedom of media ranking slip to third world levels.
But Bulgaria is a "democracy" because it is a member of the EU and NATO, and as such its elites
have done the bidding of its Western masters at the expense of Bulgaria's national interests and
the interests of its people. Ukraine is headed down that road, and all I can say to regular Ukrainians
is that they are in for an even bigger screwing down the road, cheer-led by the Western "democracies"
and "free" media.
Meddling by US hyperpower in the internal affairs and the replacement of one set of bastahds
with another set of bastahds that is beholden to the US is not progress, which is why we call
it out. After all the spilled blood and destruction sponsored by the US, can you honestly say
that Ukraine and Syria and Libya and Iraq are now better off, and that their futures are bright?
I can't, and I can't say that for my native country either. That's because this new version of
neocolonialism is the most destructive and virulent yet. And it is particularly insidious because
it fools well-meaning people, like yourself, into believing that it actually helps improve the
lives of the natives. It does not.
"The appalling corruption of Yanukovich was replaced by the appalling corruption of
Yats and Poroschenko "
That pretty much sums it up. Jim Kovpak does make some excellent points which help to understand
what the Ukranians are thinking. The discussion regarding the poor education system and potential
lack of knowledge of what certain symbolism refers to was really good. Sort of reminds me of the
Southerners in the US who still claim that the Stars and Bars is just about Southern heritage
and pride without bothering to consider the other ramifications and what the symbol means for
those who were persecuted at one time (and continuing to today). But yeah, I'm sure there are
those who think that that flag was just something the Duke boys used on the General Lee when trying
to outrun Roscoe.
All that being said, I don't believe anybody here thinks that Yanukovich was some paragon of
virtue ruling a modern utopia. The problem is that the new boss looks surprisingly familiar to
the old boss with the main difference being that the fruits of corruption are being funneled to
different parties with the people likely still getting the shaft.
If your a(just as many in the US are), it's quite possible they are also unaware of the current
US influence in their country, just as most US citizens are unaware of what the US has done in
other countries.
I'd be very interested in Jim Kovpak's thoughts on this.
$5 billion spent over the past 25 years by the US in Ukraine (per Nuland). Yeah, they
ain't US proxies. Gla[d] that you straightened that out for us.
Yes, it doesn't get any more blatant than that, and if anyone believes otherwise they are obviously
hooked on the officially sanctioned fake news, aka the MSM.
"Euromaidan was not started by right-wingers / Ukraine certainly does not have more right-wingers
than other Eastern European nations" silly at best!
Paruiby (Neo Fascist) was in charge before and after the Maidan for security – the trajectory
of the bullets came from his peoples positions that shot the cops – analyzed over and over
The Nazi Asov Battalion among other organizations supporting the Regime in Kiev has Nazi
symbols, objectives and is one of the main forces armed and trained by American Military.
The entire corrupt Kiev administration is Nazi and now it appears the Clinton Campaign
has direct ties well beyond the $13 million she received in her Slush Fund from the Oligarchs
in 2013. The driving force behind this entire Fake News Initiative and support for Hillary is
becoming more visible each day.
Your statements are pure propaganda and I would assume you work indirectly for Alexandra Chalupa!
Not to mention the Ukrainian Nazis penchant for shelling civilians. Or will Kovpak (Ukrainian
school perhaps? Did his grandfather emigrate with the other Ukrainian SS?) will repeat the canard
that unbeknownst to the locals, the rebels are shelling themselves, using artillery shells that
can 180 mid-flight?
"Basically you condemning Maidan is like someone condemning Occupy just because of the presence
of neo-Nazis and racists who were sometimes involved in certain Occupy chapters (this is well
documented)."
You must be kidding. Where to begin? Can we start with the simple fact that the Russian Foreign
Ministry wasn't handing out baked goods to Occupy protesters in NYC, egging them on as they tossed
molotov cocktails at police, who, strangely enough, refrained from shooting protesters until right
after a peaceful political settlement was reached? Coincidence or fate? Or maybe there is strong
evidence that right wing fanatics were the ones who started the shooting on that fateful day?
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31359021
And sorry, no matter how much Kovpak denies it, the muscle behind the "glorious revolution"
was a bunch of far-right thugs that make our American alt-right look like girl scouts. Andrei
Biletsky, leader of Azov Battalion and head of Ukraine's creatively named Social-National Assembly,
says he's committed to "punishing severely sexual perversions and any interracial contacts that
lead to the extinction of the white man."
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28329329
- Just like those hippies at Zuccotti Park, right?! Oh,and this guy received a medal from
Poroshenko.
I can keep going, but your "Maidan was just like Occupy!" argument pretty much speaks for itself.
Glory to the heroes indeed.
As someone who lived many years in Ukraine, speaks Ukrainian and Russian and knows personally
many of the people involved, yes, Ukrainians know full well the origin of the Nazi slogans that
the local Nazis spout.
That doesn't mean that the average frustrated euromaidan supporter is a Nazi, but Nazis bussed
in from Galicia did eventually provide the muscle, as it were, and the rest of the country were
willing to get in bed with them, appoint them to run ministries, and let them have independent
military units.
Those Nazis are perfectly happy to call themselves Nazis.
What is the liberals' talking point these days? "Not all Trump supporters are racist, but
all of them decided that racism isn't a deal-breaker. End of story." Hillary's SoS-designate Nuland
and Barry 0 decided that Ukie nazism wasn't a deal breaker. End of story.
To be fair, there is a fairly wide gap between 'racist' and 'violent racist of the KKK/Nazi
variety'.
Also (yes, partly preaching to the choir, but with a purpose), liberals are perfectly happy
to stay quiet about enormous income/prosecution/incarceration/kill rate differences, so long as
those targeted/affected can (bureau-/meritocratically) be described as 'druggies/criminals/"extremists"/uneducated-thus-
undeserving '. And to ignore drone bombing of brown people. Etc. So all the pearl-clutching/virtue-signaling
concerning racism is pretty easy to shrug off as concerning little more than a plea to express
one's support for racist policy in a PC fashion.
(Highly recommend The New Jim Crow , which I've only recently started reading, for no
good reason. Bizarre to realize that all of the stuff that's being reported on a little bit now
has been going on for 30 years now (30y of silence / wir-haben-es-nicht-gewusst wrt the structural
nature; note that any/all reporting that im/explicitly describes these issues as "scandals"/"excesses"
is part of the problem.)
WOW I guess we have democracy, so your comment got through. In a way, your post confirms the
existence of rabidly anti-Russian entities – the very point that Mark Ames makes. But you know,
there are people who know a thing or two about Russia and Ukraine, and can easily refute much
of your diatribe. (1) Ukrainian neo-fascists were an integral part of the Maidan (trained
in Poland, US, and Canada).
Yes, ordinary Ukrainians protested against corruption – but every U. government since 1991
has been corrupt. Yanukovich was no exception – but he was also not the worst one (do some research
on J. Timoshenko).
Corruption persists in U. today – and based on the now-required property disclosures by U.
politicians – may be even worse. It is likely correct that most U. don't give a damn about Bandera
– but most U. also do not have any power to do anything about the neo-nazis, as they are (at least
in the western part of the country) numerous, vocal, and prone to violence.
There is enough actual footage from Maidan that shows the presence of neo-nazi members
on the square from the beginning. They were also the one who completed the violent overthrow of
the government that happened on 2/21-22/14 – after a deal had been signed calling for early elections.
The burning of 48 people in Odessa was probably done by angels, according to your likely analysis.
(2) But it is your comments about the U. neo-nazi participation in the war that seem to clarify
who you really represent. This participation was not much discussed during the soviet times –
I only found out that they continued to fight against the soviet state long after the war ended
recently – from family members who witnessed it (in Belorussia, west. Ukr., and eastern Czechoslovakia).
Some of them witnessed the unspeakable cruelty of these Ukr. "troops" against villagers and any
partisans they could find. White-washing this period (or smearing soviet educational system) will
not help – there is plenty of historical evidence for those who are interested in the subject.
(3) What you say about the Russian state promoting this or that is just a scurrilous attack,
with no proof. Not even worth exploring. On the other hand, there are plenty of documented murders
of Ukr. journalists (google Buzina – a highly intelligent and eloquent Ukr. journalist, who was
gunned down in front of his home; there are quite a few others).
Ukr. in 2014 may have been protesting inept government, but what they ended up with is far
worse – by any measure, Ukr. standard of living has gone way down. But now, the industrial base
of the country has been destroyed, and the neo-nazi genie will not go back into the bottle any
time soon. Ukr. as a unified place did not exist until after WWI, and the great divisions – brought
starkly into contrast by the 2014 destruction of the state – cannot be papered over anytime soon.
Appreciate the points you bring up but if the Ukranians truly want an end to an exploitative
system, they probably are not going to get it by allying themselves with Uncle Sugar. The US provided
billions of dollars to foment the coup and our oligarchs expect a return on that investment –
they aren't going to suddenly start trust funds for all Ukranians out of the goodness of their
hearts. You are aware of that aren't you?
So perhaps in the future instead of repeating a bunch of Russian talking points
I was going to say something about how the CIA made Ukraine's Social Nationalist party
change its name to Svoboda (freedom), to obscure the obvious Nazi connection, but instead I will
just laugh at you.
Hahahahahaha!
What a shocker that Jim Kovpak, the commenter who tries smearing this article as "repeating
a bunch of Russian talking points" -- works for CIA-founded
Voice of America and is
a regular with Ukraine's
"StopFake.org"
which is
funded
by the National Endowment for Democracy , the CIA's color revolution "soft" arm - in other
words, PropOrNot's folks. Can't make this stuff up.
Wait, so in Kovpak's case our tax dollars are used to fund and disseminate propaganda to
America's public, too? I am not shocked or anything, but rather amused that the vaunted American
democracy and famously free media is beginning to resemble communist Bulgaria. The good news
is that by the 80's nobody believed the state and its propagandists, even on the rare occasion
they were telling the truth, and America's people seem to be a bit ahead of the curve already,
which may explain the "fake news" hysteria from the creators and disseminators of fake news.
Ukraine certainly does not have more right-wingers than other Eastern European nations,
but if you look at their polls and elections you see that the far-right in Ukraine does far
worse than it does in other Eastern and even Western European countries
Okay, but isn't it the case that many far-right leaders have migrated to parties closer
to the center, such as People's Front? Svoboda's leaders have done this. Andriy Parubiy, Tetiana
Chornovol, and Oleksandr Turchynov, for example, hold high positions in People's Front, but started
out as members or Svoboda. If I'm not mistaken, People's Front also has strong connections to
the far-right Volunteer Battalions. I believe People's Front has its own paramilitary branch too.
What this tells me is that much of Ukraine's far-right may be masquerading as right-center.
That's kind of like a political Trojan Horse operation. This way the fascists avoid standing out
as far-right, but at the same time, move closer to the mechanisms of power within Ukraine's government.
Here in America we saw something like that in the early 1990s, when KKK leader David Duke migrated
to the political mainstream by running for office as a Republican in Louisiana. Of course Duke
never changed his views, he just learned to dissemble himself in the way he sold his politics
to the public.
This is getting darker and darker. As much as I dislike Trump I feel happier that Clinton
didn't make it. The TINA party is the most reactionary thing by far!
Yes, these are dangerous people, as are most "true believers". I'm also becoming even more
disappointed at Ms, Clinton. For a while, she seemed to be keeping a little distance from her
dead-enders, but now that her and Bill are out back on the money trail (How much is enough?),
it doesn't look good.
Selling fear? Really? Isn't there a shelf life on that?
I'm not certain about the contents of that crock, good sir. We now live in a "culture" where
s–t IS gold. Otherwise, why are we now enduring a "popular press" full of "wardrobe malfunctions,"
new amazing bikini bodies, salacious gossip, and equally salacious "news?" (The Page Three was
shut down really because there was too much competition.)
Oh tempura, oh s'mores! (Latinate for "We're crisped!")
Indeed. The above article is great, great stuff and shows why some of us found Hillary more
disturbing than Trump. Therefore Ames' final assumption
And the timing is incredible-as if Bezos' rag has taken upon itself to soften up the
American media before Trump moves in for the kill.
seems a bit off. It's certainly true that Trump said news organizations should face greater
exposure to libel laws but one suspects this has more to do with his personal peevishness and
inability to take criticism than the Deep State-y motives described above. Clearly the "public
versus private" Hillary–Nixon in a pant suit–would have been just the person to embrace this sort
of censorship by smear and her connection with various shadowy exiles and in her own campaign
no less shows why Sanders' failure to make FP the center of his opposition was, if not a political
mistake, at least evidence of his limited point of view.
It's unlikely that anyone running this time would be able to change our domestic trajectory
but this fascism from abroad is a real danger IMO. In Reagan times some of us thought that Reagan
supported reactionary governments abroad because that's what he and his rogue's gallery including
Casey and North wished they could do here. The people getting hysterical over Trump while pining
for Hillary don't seem to know fascism when it's right in front of them. Or perhaps it's just
a matter of whose ox is going to be gored.
Sanders might have had a hard time driving as far left on FP as he did on domestic issues.
I'm his constituent, and I have a letter from him from mid-'15 reiterating all the mainstream
lies about Russia and Ukraine.
No surprise, ever since the US, and Biden, got involved in Ukraine. And it is even probable,
that people like that were behind the Kennedy assassination, that the US has admitted was a conspiracy,
that is still protected from "journalistic sunshine" under lock and key by the US government.
Thanks for giving this article its own post, and thanks to dcblogger for providing the
link in yesterday's Water Cooler.
Seems to me that this little bout of D-party/CIA incompetence, and/or incontinence, will finally
sound the death knell for the Operation Paperclip gang's plan. Good riddance.
"... The MSM has lost control of the narrative. The big dailies continue to hemorrhage ad revenue, month in and month out, year in and year out. Their existence going forward will be even more dependent on government assistance. Fake News is the pathetic death rattle of the neoliberal order. ..."
More importantly, the editor's note vaults into verbal gymnastics in an attempt to simultaneously
rationalize and distance itself from an obviously flawed primary source. Any data analysis is
only as good as the sum of its parts, and it's clear that PropOrNot's methodology was lacking.
The Post, of course, was merely reporting what PropOrNot said . Yet it used declarative
language throughout, sans caveat, lending credence to a largely unknown organization that lumps
together independent left-wing publications and legitimately Russian-backed news services. The
Post diminished its credibility at a time when media credibility is in short supply, and the non-apologetic
editor's note doesn't help.
Almost two weeks after its article ran, the Post ran a
sort of correction in the form of an editorial comment in italics pasted on top of the online
edition of Timberg's November 24 piece (where only those looking for the by then old original
story would find it). In that note, the editors say that the paper
did not name any of the sites [on PropOrNot's blacklist], does not itself vouch for the
validity of PropOrNot's findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article
purport to do so. Since publication of the Post 's story, PropOrNot has removed some
of those sites from its list.
Of course, the damage was already done, as the original article achieved widespread circulation
via the Post 's wire service; it would be up to all those news organizations that bought
and ran the story, or reported their own versions of it, to make any correction.
Meanwhile, the facile dodge of "we didn't name the sites" ignores the reality that the Post
had prominently showcased PropOrNot and let its name vouch for the heretofore unknown group's
credibility. The paper didn't have to run the list; anyone with a smartphone could do a Google
search, find PropOrNot's website as the first listing, go to the homepage and find a link
button headed "The List."
And apparently plenty of readers did that. While thanks to the Post 's grant of anonymity,
PropOrNot's hidden principals remained safe from inquiring reporters and Russian hackers alike,
editors of sites named on its McCarthyite hit list quickly found themselves deluged with venomous
calls and emails. As Jeffrey St. Clair, a co-founder and editor of CounterPunch.org , another
site listed prominently as a propaganda tool, recalls, "The morning after the Post published
its article, I found 1,000 emails in my inbox, mostly hate mail and death threats."
Expert media commentators criticized the Post's handwave in the form of an editor's note
that it placed at the top of a story that is now history, as opposed to news. The mild concession
is likely to be read only by fans of the 199 sites that were defamed by the Post, and journalists
who've taken interest in the row and not the vast public that read the story through the post
and other major outlets, like USA Today, that re-reported or syndicated Timberg's piece.
It all depends upon who you follow on Twitter, but from my check-in's today, the WaPo is not
coming off well.
This whole 'fake news' mess is downright weird.
I have trouble understanding how anyone can govern, given the growing legitimacy problems.
It seems as if there are (very well greased) wheels within (extravagantly funded) wheels moving
behind the scenes.
Meanwhile, apparently Obama has formally requested that the Intel Community develop a 'consensus
report' about the role of the Russians in this most recent election (per Emptywheel). "Senior
officials' in Congress have already been briefed, and some are apparently leaking: this much smoke
signals a battle royale behind the scenes.
The worst possible outcome, IMVHO, is failing to investigate and come clean.
Every time our government is too gutless to deal with reality - whether WMD, or the Financial
Crisis - the legitimacy of government is further eroded. It would be helpful if Hillary renounced
the Presidency, and agreed that even if the election should be overturned, that she would defer
to some other person. The investigation should not be used as a recount, nor as a re-do. It should
function only to restore credibility to the US federal government, and for no other reason.
Unfortunately for Trump, if he blocks this kind of investigation, it will only diminish his
credibility, and weaken the very power he seeks to hold.
Life is full of paradoxes and mysteries; this one takes the cake.
I agree with your comment re Twitter, but Twitter is heavy with journalists who love the story
of a media fight. This is catnip to them.
The Washington Post story was tweeted far more heavily when it first ran than the follow-on
criticism was. The story proper got 14,800 comments. It was picked up by USA Today, CNN, and I
haven't even begun to track how many different other publishers. The original reach was at least
an order of magnitude, and probably two orders of magnitude, bigger than the discussion of the
itty bitty walkback.
Please see our Tip Jar in the right column. It tells you how to donate using a debit or credit
card, or send a check.
We had a recent emergency fundraiser, and some of that has already been allocated to extra
site coverage (to have others do more site-minding and content generation so as to free me up
to spend time on this stuff) and the other part (a bit more than half the total) is to fund expenses
for litigation.
Is this episode really Bezos carrying water for a faction of the deep state? They had to have
known that if you malign the entirety of the alt media-left and right that they'd show their teeny
little teeth.
I bet they feed this chump Timberg to the crocodiles ultimately. Meanwhile Mark Ames will ferret
out the weird nexus of Ukrainian Nazi types. But since the WaPo will take the heat and the public
will lose interest, nobody will care. But in the end the 4 or 5 folks who came up with this scheme
will have achieved their goals:
*Throw mud on non corporate news reportage.
*Fire a warning shot over Trumps bow
*Plant seeds with the population for the future when some ginned up provocation will again put
Russia in the crosshairs of a black propaganda campaign.
These archonic m_fers are relentless. Russia represents an independent power which absolutely
cannot be permitted by Empire. This is part of a long term strategy to box Russia in. They are
seen as the weaker of the Sino Russian partnership and are being targeted first.
Not having witnessed anything like this before I'm having trouble understanding the strategy
here. What potential end game is there in dealing directly with PropOrNot? Jim Moody's time is
valuable, Yves' time is valuable, but they seem likely to be a few nobodies who no one would have
paid any attention to if the Washington Post hadn't amplified the reach of their amateurish operation
by factor of a million.
I think you said it all there without maybe realizing it - PropOrNot may seem like
harmless nobodies and, left to their own devices and not given the oxygen of publicity that is
what they'd have remained.
But there are no accidents in life. The Washington Post (and do keep in mind its owner)
picked up on their output and played their tune on the Mighty Media Wurlitzer thereby amplifying
it. That alone is suggestive that PropOrNot may not be the two guys working out of their Mom's
basement which it is easy to think they might be.
Add in the fact that - worldwide now, I can tell you that even outside the U.S. this whole
"fake news" meme is still getting lots of airtime, the BBC in England is running 'Russia Hacked
the U.S. Election' stories right now as I watch and the Japanese language media has similar too
- what the Washington Post is seeking to do looks very well orchestrated and coordinated it means
that you must not take anything at face value here.
The MSM is all in. Last night the PBS Newshour ran the first in a series of stories
on FakeNews™, with favorably framed clips of Clinton and Sheryl Sandberg, and an extended
interview with Marc Fisher of the WaPo. Oddly, no mention of the PropOrNot fiasco.
It doesn't take a tin foil hat to believe the globalist-neocon-neolib-blob_thing feels it necessary
to delegitimize Trump and Trump's election in order to reassure its merry band of practitioners
that it's still biz as usual in the One World.
And tho it may seem a challenge to re-paint "Lying Hillary" as the beacon of truth, challenges
are what keep one motivated and ever stronger. No pain no gain.
P.S. Irony Of The Year Award goes to Russia for hacking and releasing real news. If we are
giving them the credit for DNC hacks and Hillary's secret private server discovery.
I went to a fundraiser last night where the very politically involved crowd was largely liberal
and one of the award presenters brought up 'fake news' during her speech. If I'm not mistaken
a member of this woman's family was one of Clinton's superdelegates. This 'fake news' meme is
definitely being spread far and wide.
We need to pursue the source of the defamation. See the BuzzFeed story yesterday, which is
generally very sympathetic to our position. Yet even that reporter says, Why have you gone after
the Post and not ProOrNot too?
I think this is at the very most six guys and probably more like two or three, for reasons
not worth taking the time to explain. And do not forget that the New Yorker said not only they
but other major pubs were shown the story and passed on it.
So the question is more: why did the Post pick up on obvious rubbish and treat it as newsworthy?
This may have less to do with grand conspiracy as much as a bad intersection of events, such as:
the Post under Bezos explicitly placing much more pressure on reporters to churn out stories quickly,
which means less fact checking; hysteria over Russia and fake news; and individual reporters and
editors seeing it as to their advantage to be in front of a hot area, no matter at what risk.
Recall the Post has run such nutty stories as one saying that Hillary's 9/11 collapse was due
to Putin poisoning her.
I think WAPO picked it up because they were obviously all in for Clinton during the election.
Whether Bezos was the hand behind this or not, WAPO has certainly focused on Trump. They even
admitted they were doing it as Bob Woodward disclosed in a Zero Hedge article. And of course,
WAPO assisted Clinton against Sanders with their coverage which has been documented many times.
Now Clinton is on the bandwagon of the fake news fiasco. She just gave a speech about it Thursday.
Thanks Yves (and Clive) for the responses. My concern is that if a shoddy three-man operation,
paired with a useful idiot MSM amplifier, can provoke a response that puts sites like NC on the
defensive and takes time from original reporting, it could be a template for quick-and-dirty future
attacks against independent media outlets. It seems like the amplifier is the only part of the
chain that can't just change domain names and set up shop somewhere else.
But I can see how ignoring them entirely isn't an optimal solution either. I'll keep throwing
my change in the tip jar and seeing how it all unfolds.
The PorN site is a dark site. We don't know who the principals are or where its funding comes
from. YYYYvesYYY also said NC needs to know what jurisdiction to file in in order to pursue PorN,
but that is not even known at this point. But in the Wapo response to TruthDig, Wapo stated they
did have "numerous" discussions with some persons at PorN before running the story.
So you got to shake the tree by the branches you can grab. The ball is now in Wapo's court
to state, "Journalistic integrity demands we do not reveal our sources in order to protect their
safety."
Meanwhile PorN is calling upon the entire USG security apparatus to investigate 200 websites
for Treason, but we are unsure about which country[government] Treason is being committed against
in One World. This doesn't sound like a very safe situation for simple minded provincial US citizen
homebodies.
I have been browsing your links for many years now – I find them well balanced, genuine, thought
provoking, and usually quite deep. And it is not just me – your quality is well recognized among
financial online community and punditry.
It is important you treat this thing with the right kind of attention. This is not mccarthian.
If it would be, you would be locked down in some hole in a secret location. This is somebody claiming
you have silicone tits and an extramarital affair with Michael Moore. Nobody gives a shit about
this, or their software, or WaPo and thir article – even if it gets 10 million retweets. Twitter
attention span is 1 minute.
Sure, sue everybody. But never give them an aureola of some dark sinister power. Ridicule them
every way of the step. Ridicule "newspapers of record". Ridicule retweets. Have fun with it. Find
new cases of such crap, where you personally are not affected. Help Melania Trump in her great
fight against online violence :-)
Just never concede to this as a "media fight" or "two versions of reality". This has nothing
to do with news or reality. Do not give them that ground. This is some insignificant ass claiming
you have fake tits, and it was picked up by an obsolete marketing tool called WaPo. A claim of
an extramarital affair with Michael Moore would probably get even more coverage and more retweets
and I bet some cable news discussions about public health consequences of missionary position
with such a voluptuous man.
We are fighting a legal battle and a political battle. The need to do both somewhat restricts
our degrees of freedom. The political battle is ultimately the far more important one, since the
"fake news" scare is part of a major push to restrict content on the web, by de facto rather than
de jure means.
you're kidding yourself, every time lately that I look at mainstream headlines the fake news
story is there near the top, can no longer stomach the news hour but another commenter says they're
doing a series think about all those proper folks demanding their kids not read alternative views?
The only consolation I can think of is that hillary lost because clearly this story was put out
in advance of her losing and would still be amplified had she won, .the outcome looks bleak either
way from here might as well fight it
I can tell you these fake news websites articles were heavily promoted here in Europe, so the
consequences are wide spread world wide.
I tried to explain the reasons and people behind ProporNot, but my comments were censored on
3 of the biggest digital newspapers in The Netherlands, some of them are in close contact with
Soros.
We have national elections in March 2017 and I can tell you the majority of the people are
mad as hell and they know the news presented to them in the MSM are/were heavily biased
towards Clinton. The MSM are sh*t scared what will happen in March 2017, an earthquake in the
political landscape. All the liberal political leaders are now suddenly promoting political stuff
that was unimaginable 2 years ago.
I have followed your website on and off the last 5 years and the idea that you are guided by
the Ruskies is absolutely preposterous even insane.
I just wonder, was Wapo so blinded by the total unexpected loss of Clinton that they keep on
publicing this nonsense or is it the trench war by Trump through his tweets. Wapo must have been
aware of the amateurish drivel from Propornot and took a big risk of being exposed as havily biased
and unprofessional with a heavy backlash.
Anyways, I would like to donate to you in this battle, do you accept Paypal as well.
I wish you and your team lots of success, Yves in this battle for truth.
However, if PropOrNot doesn't respond you might be able to get their Whois privacy provider
to get you the real owner's details – click on "File a Claim" at
https://www.domainsbyproxy.com/default.aspx
to see their process.
I realize that there were a number of right wing news outlets included in this de facto
censorship effort. But, they seem to be in a much stronger position than the left wing ones.
Wider distribution, less choosy about what they'll run, favored by the incoming power elite, etc.
Except, perhaps for a few paleocons-turned-libertarian-contrarians like Paul Craig Roberts. The
Drudge Report types seem less vulnerable.
I haven't been paying as much attention as I should to post a comment. But, first order, it
looks like this imbalance may pertain to targeting. No one could expect to dull the impact of
the Drudge Report by including it in an app of this kind. It is simply too prominent. Therefore,
dampening the influence of the Drudge Report (and similar sites) was not the point of this little
exercise.
Slurring the actual targets by including Drudge & company in the app seems . more the point.
Last night the PBS Newshour did a segment on "fake news." They are also participating in the
current PBS pledge drive. Perhaps they are hoping that George Soros will send them a big check.
One had hoped that the show would improve now that the election is over. One was wrong.
The MSM has lost control of the narrative. The big dailies continue to hemorrhage ad revenue,
month in and month out, year in and year out. Their existence going forward will be even more
dependent on government assistance. Fake News is the pathetic death rattle of the neoliberal order.
Short-termism is a real problem for the US politicians. It is only now the "teeth of dragon"
sowed during domination of neoliberalism since 80th start to show up in unexpected places. And reaction
is pretty predictable. As one commenter said: "Looks like the CIA's latest candidate for regime change
is the USA."
Notable quotes:
"... Divide and Control is being brilliantly employed once again against 'us'. The same tactics used against foreign countries are being used here at home on 'us'. ..."
"... Divide and Conquer, yes indeed, watch McCain and Graham push this Russian hacking angle hard. ..."
"... i regard this 'secret' CIA report, following on from the 'fake news' meme, to be another of what will become a never-ending series of attempts to deligitemize Trump, so that later on this year the coming economic collapse (and shootings, street violence, markets etc) can be more successfully blamed not only on Trump and his policies, but by extension, on the Russians. (a two-fer for the globalist statists) ..."
"... Nevermind that many states voting machines are on private networks and are not even connected to the internet. ..."
"... The Russians 'might' have influenced the election..... The American Government DID subvert and remove a democratically elected leader (Ukraine).Anyone see the difference there? ..."
"... Voted for Trump, but the Oligarcy picked him too. Check the connection between Ross and Trump and Wilburs former employer. TPTB laughs at all of us ..."
"... The sad facts are the CIA itself and it's massive propaganda arm has its gummy fingers all over this election and elections all over the planet. ..."
"... The Russians, my ass. ................. The CIA are famous for doing nefarious crap and blaming their handy work on someone else. Crap that usually causes thousands of deaths. ... Even in the KGB days the CIA was the king of causing chaos. ..... the KGB would kill a dissident or spy or two and the CIA in the same time frame would start a couple of wars killing thousands or millions. ..."
"... What makes people think the Post is believable? The truth has been hijacked by their self annihilating ideology. Honestly one would have to be dumb as a fence 'Post' (pun intended) to believe ANYTHING coming from this rag and the rest of these 'Fake News' MSM propaganda machines, good lord! ..."
"... As for the CIA, it was reported at the time to be largely purged under the Dubya administration, of consitutionalists and other dissidents to the 9-11 -->> total-war program. Stacked to the brim with with neocon cadres. ..."
"... Out of the 3,153 counties in this country, Hillary Clinton won only 480. A dismal and pathetic 15% of this country. The worst showing EVER for a presidential candidate. ..."
"... The much vaunted 2 million vote lead in the popular vote can be attributed to exactly 4 boroughs in NYC; Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, & Brooklyn ..."
"... 96 MILLION Americans were either too disgusted, too lazy, or too apathetic to even bother to go out and cast a vote for ANYONE in this election. ..."
"... Looks like the CIA's latest candidate for regime change is the USA. ..."
"... Clapper sat in front of congress and perjured himself. When confronted with his perjury he defended himself saying he told them the "least untruthful thing" he could - admitting he had not problem whatsoever about lying to Congress. ..."
"... There certainly is foreign meddling in US government policy but it is not coming from Russia. The countries that have much greater influence than Russia on 'our' government are the Sunni-dominated Persian Gulf oil states including the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and, of course, that bastion of human rights, Saudi Arabia. ..."
"... Oil money from these states has found its way into influentual think tanks including the Brookings Institution, the Atlantic Council, the Middle East Institute and the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies and others. ..."
"... And also, there are arms sales. Arm sales to Saudi/Gulf States come with training. With training comes military ties, foreign policy ties and even intelligence ties. Saudi Arabia, with other Gulf oil states as partners, practically owns the CIA now. ..."
"... Reverse Blockade: emphatically insisting upon something which is the opposite of the truth blocks the average person's mind from perceiving the truth. In accordance with the dictates of healthy common sense, he starts searching for meaning in the "golden mean" between truth and its opposite, winding up with some satisfactory counterfeit. People who think like this do not realize that this effect is precisely the intent of the person who subjects them to this method. ..."
"... I recall lots of "consensus views" that were outright lies, bullshit and/or stupidity: "The Sun circles the Earth. The Earth is flat. Global cooling / next ice age (1970s). Global warming (no polar ice) 1990s-00's. Weapons of mass destruction." You can keep your doctor. ..."
"... The CIA, Pentagon and "intelligence" agencies need both a cleaning and culling ..."
"... Blacklist Promoted by the Washington Post Has Apparent Ties to Ukrainian Fascism and CIA Spying. ..."
"... This whopper of a story from the CIA makes the one fabricated about WMD's in Iraq that fooled Bush Jr. and convinced him to almost take this country down by violating the sage advice on war strategy from Sun-Tzu and Clausewitz and opening up a second front in Iraq almost child's play. ..."
"... At least with the WMD story they had false witnesses and some made up evidence! With this story, there is no "HUMINT (human intelligence) sources" and no physical evidence, just some alleged traces that could have been actually produced from the ether or if they knew ahead of time of Trump's possible win sent someone to Russia and had them actually run the IP routes for show. ..."
"... Bush was misled because the CIA management was scared of some of his budgetary saber rattles and his chasing after some CIA management. In this case, someone is really scared of what the people will find when the swam gets drained, if ever it gets done. This includes so-called "false flag conservatives" like Lindsey Graham and top Democrats "Cambridge 5 Admirers" salted in over the years into the CIA ..."
"... Trump has already signaled he is going hand them nearly unlimited power by appointing Pompeo in the first place. I would think they would be very happy to welcome the incoming administration with open arms. ..."
"... I could see it if they were really that pissed about Trumps proposed Russian re-set and maybe they are but even that has to be in doubt because of the rate at which Trump is militarizing his cabinet. ..."
"... In all reality Trump is a MIC, intelligence cabal dream come true, so why would they even consider biting the hand that feeds so well? Perhaps their is more going on here under the surface, maybe all the various agencies and bureaucracies are not playing nice, or together for that matter. ..."
"... after all the CIA and the Pentagon's proxy armies are already killing each other in Syria so one has to wonder in what other arenas are they clashing? ..."
"... The neocons are desperate. Their war monger Hitlery lost by a landslide now they fabricate all sorts of irrational BS. ..."
"... 'CIA Team B' ..."
"... 'Committee on the Present Danger' ..."
"... 'Office of Special Plans' ..."
"... Trump is a curious fellow. I've thought about this quite a bit and tried to put myself in his shoes. He has no friends in .gov, no real close "mates" he can depend on, especially in his own party, so he had to start from scratch to put his cabinet together. ..."
"... It could very well be that this was Trump & the establishment plan to con the American public from the start of course. I kind of doubt it, since the efforts of the establishment to destroy Trump was genuinely full retard from the outset and still continues. ..."
"... He would have done better to ignore the political divide to choose those who have spent their lives challenging the Deep State. My ignorance of US politics does not supply me with a complete picture, but Ron Paul, David Kucinich, Trey Gowdy, Tulsi Gabard and even turncoat Bernie Sanders would have been better to drain the swamp than the neocon zionists he has installed in power. ..."
It is worse than "shiny object." Human brains have a latency issue - the first time they hear
something, it sticks. To unstick something, takes a lot of counter evidence.
So, a Goebbels-like big lie, or shiny object can be told, and then it can take on a life of
its own. False flags operate under this premise. There is an action (false flag), and then false
narrative is issued into press mouthpieces immediately. This then plants a shiny object in sheeple
brains. It then takes too much mental effort for average sheeple to undo this narrative, so "crowds"
can be herded.
Six million dead is a good example of this technique.
Fortunately, with the internet, "supposed fake news sites like ZH" are spreading truth so fast
- that shiny stories issued by our Oligarch overlords are being shot down quickly.
Bezo's, who owns Washington Post, is taking rents by avoiding sales taxes; not that I'm a fan
of sales taxes. But, ultimately, Bezos is taking rental thefts, and he is afraid of Trump - who
may change the law, hence collapse the profit scheme of Amazon.
Cognitive Dissonance -> Oldwood •Dec 10, 2016 10:49 AM
Oldwood. I have a great deal of respect for you and your intelligent opinions.
My only concern is our constant and directed attention towards the 'liberals' and 'progressives'.
When we do so we are thinking it is 'them' that are the problem.
In fact it is the force behind 'them' that is the problem. If we oppose 'them', we are wasting
our energy upon ghosts and boogeymen.
Divide and Control is being brilliantly employed once again against 'us'. The same tactics
used against foreign countries are being used here at home on 'us'.
chunga -> Cognitive Dissonance •Dec 10, 2016 11:33 AM
I've been reading what the blue-teamers are saying over on the "Democratic Underground" site
and for a while they've been expressing it's their "duty" to disrupt this thing. They are now
calling Trump a "Puppet Regime".
Divide and Conquer, yes indeed, watch McCain and Graham push this Russian hacking angle
hard. Also watch for moar of the Suprun elector frauds pop out of the woodwork. The Russian
people must be absolutely galvanized by what's happening, USSA...torn into many opposing directions.
dark pools of soros -> chunga •Dec 10, 2016 1:38 PM
First tell them to change their name to the Progressive Party of Globalists. Then remind them
that many democrats left them and voted for Trump.. Remind them again and again that if they really
want to see blue states again, they have to actually act like democrats again
I assure you that you'll be banned within an hour from any of their sites
American Gorbachev -> Oldwood •Dec 10, 2016 10:12 AM
not an argument to the contrary, but one of elongating the timing
i regard this 'secret' CIA report, following on from the 'fake news' meme, to be another
of what will become a never-ending series of attempts to deligitemize Trump, so that later on
this year the coming economic collapse (and shootings, street violence, markets etc) can be more
successfully blamed not only on Trump and his policies, but by extension, on the Russians. (a
two-fer for the globalist statists)
with a political timetable operative as well, whereby some (pardon the pun :) trumped up excuse
for impeachment investigations/proceedings can consume the daily news during the run-up to the
mid-term elections (with the intent of flipping the Senate and possibly House)
these are very powerful, patient, and deliberate bastards (globalist statists) who may very
well have engineered Trump's election for the very purpose of marginalizing, near the point of
eliminating, the rural, christian, middle-class, nationalist voices from subsequent public debate
Oldwood -> American Gorbachev •Dec 10, 2016 10:21 AM
The problem is that once Trump becomes president, he will have much more power to direct the
message as well as the many factions of government agencies that would otherwise be used to substantiate
so called Trump failures. This is a calculated risk scenario for them, but to deny Trump the presidency
by far produces more positives for them than any other.
They will have control of the message and will likely shut down much of alternate media news.
It is imperative that Trump be stopped BEFORE taking the presidency.
sleigher -> overbet •Dec 10, 2016 10:00 AM
"I read one morons comment that the IP address was traced back to a Russian IP. Are people
really that dumb? I can post this comment from dozens of country IPs right now."
Nevermind that many states voting machines are on private networks and are not even connected
to the internet. IP addresses from Russia mean nothing.
kellys_eye -> Nemontel •Dec 10, 2016 9:40 AM
The Russians 'might' have influenced the election..... The American Government DID subvert
and remove a democratically elected leader (Ukraine).Anyone see the difference there?
Paul Kersey -> Nemontel •Dec 10, 2016 9:40 AM
"Most of our politicians are chosen by the Oligarchy."
And most of our politicians choose the Oligarchy. Trump's choices:
Anthony Scaramucci, Goldman Sachs
Gary Cohn, Goldman Sachs
Steven Mnuchin. Goldman Sachs
Steve Bannon, Goldman Sachs
Jared Kushner, Goldman Sachs
Wilbur Ross, Rothschild, Inc
The working man's choices.....very limited.
Paul Kersey -> Paul Kersey •Dec 10, 2016 10:27 AM
"Barack Obama received more money from Goldman Sachs employees than any other corporation.
Tim Geithner, Obama's first treasury secretary, was the protege of one-time Goldman CEO Robert
Rubin. "
"The more things change, the more they stay the same."
Nameshavebeench... -> Nemontel •Dec 10, 2016 11:53 AM
If Trump gets hit, the 'official story' of who did it will be a lie.
There needs to be a lot of online discussion about this ahead of time in preparation. If/when
the incident happens, there needs to be a successful counter-offensive that puts an end to the
Deep State. (take from that what you will)
We've seen the MO many times now;
Pearl Harbor
Iran in the 50's
Congo
Vietnam
Most of Latin America many times over
JFK
911
Sandy Hook
Boston Marathon 'Bombings'
Numerous 'mass shootings'
The patterns are well established & if Trump gets hit it should be no surprise, now the 'jackals'
need to be exterminated.
Also, keep in mind that everything we're hearing in all media just might be psyops/counter-intel/planted
'news' etc.
sgt_doom -> Nemontel •Dec 10, 2016 1:25 PM
Although I have little hope for this happening, ideally Trump should initiate full forensic
audits of the CIA, NSA, DIA and FBI. The last time a sitting president undertook an actual audit
of the CIA, he had his brains blown out (President John F. Kennedy) and the Fake News (CBS, NBC,
ABC, etc.) reported that a fellow who couldn't even qualify as marksman, the lowest category (he
was pencilled in) was the sniper.
Then, on the 50th anniversary of that horrible coup d'etat, another Fake News show (NPR) claimed
that a woman in the military who worked at the rifle range at Atsuga saw Oswald practicing weekly
- - absurd on the fact of it, since women weren't allowed at military rifle ranges until the late
1970s or 1980s (and I doublechecked and there was never a woman assigned there in the late 1950s).
Just be sure he has trustworthy bodyguards, unlike the last batch of phony Secret Service agents
(and never employ anyone named Elmer Moore).
2rigged2fail -> Nemontel •Dec 10, 2016 4:04 PM
Voted for Trump, but the Oligarcy picked him too. Check the connection between Ross and
Trump and Wilburs former employer. TPTB laughs at all of us
All these Russian interference claims require one to believe that the MSM and democrat machine
got out played and out cheated by a bunch of ruskies. This is the level of desperation the democrats
have fallen too. To pretend to be so incompetent that the Russians outplayed and overpowered their
machine. But I guess they have to fall on that narrative vs the fact that a "crazy" real estate
billionaire with a twitter account whipped their asses.
Democrats, you are morally and credulously bankrupt. all your schemes, agenda's and machinations
cannot put humpty dumpty back together again. So now it is another period of scorched earth. The
Federal Bureaucracy will fight Trump tooth and nail, joined by the democrats in the judiciary,
and probably not a few rino's too.
It is going to get ugly, like a machete fight. W. got a taste of it with his Plame affair,
the brouhaha over the AGA firings, the regime of Porter Goss as DCI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_Goss
DuneCreature -> cherry picker •Dec 10, 2016 10:30 AM
The sad facts are the CIA itself and it's massive propaganda arm has its gummy fingers
all over this election and elections all over the planet.
The Russians, my ass. ................. The CIA are famous for doing nefarious crap and
blaming their handy work on someone else. Crap that usually causes thousands of deaths. ... Even
in the KGB days the CIA was the king of causing chaos. ..... the KGB would kill a dissident or
spy or two and the CIA in the same time frame would start a couple of wars killing thousands or
millions.
You said a mouth full, cherry picker. ..... Until the US Intel community goes 'bye bye' the
world will HATE the US. ... People aren't stupid. They know who is behind the evil shit.
... ... ..
G-R-U-N-T •Dec 10, 2016 9:39 AM
What makes people think the Post is believable? The truth has been hijacked by their self
annihilating ideology. Honestly one would have to be dumb as a fence 'Post' (pun intended) to
believe ANYTHING coming from this rag and the rest of these 'Fake News' MSM propaganda machines,
good lord!
Colborne •Dec 10, 2016 9:37 AM
As for the CIA, it was reported at the time to be largely purged under the Dubya administration,
of consitutionalists and other dissidents to the 9-11 -->> total-war program. Stacked to the brim
with with neocon cadres. So, that's the lay of the terrain there now, that's who's running
the place. And they aren't going without a fight apparently.
Interesting times , more and more so.
66Mustanggirl •Dec 10, 2016 9:40 AM
For those of us who still have a grip on reality, here are the facts of this election:
Out of the 3,153 counties in this country, Hillary Clinton won only 480. A dismal and
pathetic 15% of this country. The worst showing EVER for a presidential candidate. Are
they really trying to blame the Russians and "fake" news for THAT?? Really??
The much vaunted 2 million vote lead in the popular vote can be attributed to exactly
4 boroughs in NYC; Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, & Brooklyn, where Hillary racked up 2 million
more votes than Trump. Should we give credit to the Russians and "fake" news for that, too?
96 MILLION Americans were either too disgusted, too lazy, or too apathetic to even
bother to go out and cast a vote for ANYONE in this election. On average 100 Million Americans
don't bother to vote.The Russians and "fake" news surely aren't responsible for THAT!
But given this is a story from WaPo, I think will just give a few days until it is thoroughly
discredited.
max2205 -> 66Mustanggirl •Dec 10, 2016 11:04 AM
And she won CA by 4 million. She hates she only gets a limited amount of electoral votes..
tough shit rules are rules bitch. Suck it
HalEPeno •Dec 10, 2016 9:43 AM
Looks like the CIA's latest candidate for regime change is the USA.
Clara Tardis •Dec 10, 2016 9:45 AM
This is a vid from the 1950's, "How to spot a Communist" all you have to do is swap out commie
for: liberal, neocon, SJW and democrat and figure out they've about won....
This is the same CIA that let Pakistan build up the Taliban in Afganistan during the 1990s
and gave Pakistan ISI (Pakistan spy agency) hundreds of millions of USD which the ISI channeled
to the Taliban and Arab freedom fighters including a very charming chap named Usama Bin Laden.
The CIA is as worthless as HRC.
Fuck them and their failed intelligence. I hope Trump guts the CIA like a fish. They need a
reboot.
Yes We Can. But... -> venturen •Dec 10, 2016 10:08 AM
Why might the Russians want Trump? If there is anything to the stuff I've been reading about
the Clintons, they are like cornered animals. Putin just may think the world is a safer, more
stable place w/o the Clintons in power.
TRM -> atthelake •Dec 10, 2016 10:44 AM
If it is "on" then those doing the "collections" should be aware that a lot of people they
will be "collecting" have read Solzhenitsyn.
"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every
Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he
would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?"
Those doing the "collections" will have to choose and choose wisely the side they are on. How
much easier would it be for them to report back "Sorry, couldn't find them" than to face the wrath
of a well armed population?
Abaco •Dec 10, 2016 9:53 AM
The clowns running the intelligence agencies for the US have ZERO credibility. Clapper
sat in front of congress and perjured himself. When confronted with his perjury he defended himself
saying he told them the "least untruthful thing" he could - admitting he had not problem whatsoever
about lying to Congress. He was not fired or reprimanded in any way. He retired with a generous
pension. He is a treasonous basrtard who should be swinging from a lamppost. These people serve
their political masters - not the people - and deserve nothing but mockery and and a noose.
mendigo •Dec 10, 2016 9:56 AM
As reported on infowars:
On Dec 9 0bomber issued executive order providing exemption to Arms Export Control Act to permit
supplying weapons (ie sams etc) to rebel groups in Syria as a matter "essential to national security
"interests"".
Be careful in viewing this report as is posted from RT - perhaps best to wait for corraboaration
on front page of rededicated nyt to be sure and avoid fratrenizing with Vlad.
Separately Gabard has introduced bill : Stop Arming Terrorists Act.
David Wooten •Dec 10, 2016 9:56 AM
There certainly is foreign meddling in US government policy but it is not coming from Russia.
The countries that have much greater influence than Russia on 'our' government are the Sunni-dominated
Persian Gulf oil states including the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and, of course, that bastion
of human rights, Saudi Arabia.
Oil money from these states has found its way into influentual think tanks including the
Brookings Institution, the Atlantic Council, the Middle East Institute and the Georgetown Center
for Strategic and International Studies and others. All of these institutions should be registered
as foriegn agents and any cleared US citizen should have his or her clearance revoked if they
do any work for these organizations, either as a contractor or employee. And these Gulf states
have all been donating oil money to UK and US universities so lets include the foreign studies
branches of universities in the registry of foreign agents, too.
And also, there are arms sales. Arm sales to Saudi/Gulf States come with training. With
training comes military ties, foreign policy ties and even intelligence ties. Saudi Arabia, with
other Gulf oil states as partners, practically owns the CIA now. Arms companies who sell
deadly weapons to the Gulf States, in turn, donate money to Congressmen and now own politicians
such as Senators Graham and McCain. It's no wonder Graham wants to help his pals - er owners.
So what we have here ('our' government) is institutionalized influence, if not outright control,
of US foreign policy by some of the most vicious states on the planet,
especially Saudi Arabia - whose religious police have been known to beat school girls fleeing
from burning buildings because they didn't have their headscarves on.
As Hillary's 2014 emails have revealed, Qatar and Saudi Arabia support ISIS and were doing
so about the same time as ISIS was sweeping through Syria and Iraq, cutting off the heads of Christians,
non-Sunnis and just about anyone else they thought was in the way. The Saudi/Gulf States are the
driving force to get rid of Assad and that is dangerous as nuclear-armed Russia protects him.
If something isn't done about this, the Gulf oil states may get US into a nuclear war with Russia
- and won't care in the least.
Richard Whitney •Dec 10, 2016 10:10 AM
So...somehow, Putin was able to affect the election one way, and the endorsements for HRC and
the slander of Trump by and from Washington Post, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, practically
every big-city newspaper, practically every newspaper in Europe, every EU mandarin, B Streisand,
Keith Olberman, Comedy Central, MSNBC, CNN, Lady Gaga, Lena Dunham and a wad of other media outlets
and PR-driven-celebs couldn't affect that election the other way.
Sounds unlikely on the face of it, but hats off to Vlad. U.S. print and broadcast media, Hollywood,
Europe...you lost.
seataka •Dec 10, 2016 10:11 AM
The Reverse Blockade
"Reverse Blockade: emphatically insisting upon something which is the opposite of the truth
blocks the average person's mind from perceiving the truth. In accordance with the dictates of
healthy common sense, he starts searching for meaning in the "golden mean" between truth and its
opposite, winding up with some satisfactory counterfeit. People who think like this do not realize
that this effect is precisely the intent of the person who subjects them to this method.
" page 104, Political Ponerology by Andrew M. Lobaczewski
more
just the tip -> northern vigor •Dec 10, 2016 11:51 AM
that car ride for the WH to the capital is going to be fun.
Arnold -> just the tip •Dec 10, 2016 12:12 PM
Your comment ticked one of my remaining Brain Cells.
I recall lots of "consensus views" that were outright lies, bullshit and/or stupidity:
"The Sun circles the Earth. The Earth is flat. Global cooling / next ice age (1970s). Global warming
(no polar ice) 1990s-00's. Weapons of mass destruction." You can keep your doctor.
The CIA, Pentagon and "intelligence" agencies need both a cleaning and culling. 50%
of the Federal govt needs to go.....now.
What is BEYOND my comprehension is how anyone would think that in Putin's mind, Trump would
be preferable to Hillary. She and her cronies are so corrupt, he would either be able to blackmail
or destroy her (through espionage and REAL leaks) any time he wanted to during her presidency.
Do TPTB think we are this fucking stupid?
madashellron •Dec 10, 2016 10:31 AM
Blacklist Promoted by the Washington Post Has Apparent Ties to Ukrainian Fascism and CIA
Spying.
I love this. Trump is not eager to "drain the swamp" and to collide with the establishment,
anyway he has no viable economic plan and promised way too much. However if they want to lead
a coup for Hilary with the full backing of most republican and democrat politicians just to get
their war against Russia, something tells me that the swamp will be drained for real when the
country falls apart in chaos.
northern vigor •Dec 10, 2016 10:36 AM
Fuckin' Obama interfered in the Canadian election last year by sending advisers up north to
corrupt our laws. He has a lot of nerve pointing fingers at the Russians.
I notice liberals love to point fingers at others, when they are the guilty ones. It must be
in the Alinsky handbook.
Pigeon -> northern vigor •Dec 10, 2016 10:38 AM
Called "projection". Everything they accuse others of doing badly, illegally, immorally, etc.
- means that is EXACTLY what they are up to.
just the tip -> northern vigor •Dec 10, 2016 11:35 AM
Trump should not only 'defund' them but should end all other 'programs' that are providing
funds to them. Drug trade, bribery, embezzelment, etc. End the CIA terror organization.
Skiprrrdog •Dec 10, 2016 10:49 AM
Putin for Secretary of State... :-)
brianshell •Dec 10, 2016 10:50 AM
Section 8, The congress shall have the power to...declare war...raise armies...navies...militia.
The National Security Act charged the CIA with coordinating the nation's intelligence activities
and correlating, evaluating and disseminating intelligence affecting national security.
Rogue members of the executive branch have overstepped their authority by ordering the CIA
to make war without congressional approval or oversight.
A good deal of the problems created by the United States, including repercussions such as terrorism
have been initiated by the CIA
Under "make America great", include demanding congress assume their responsibility regarding
war.
Rein in the executive and the CIA
DarthVaderMentor •Dec 10, 2016 10:59 AM
This whopper of a story from the CIA makes the one fabricated about WMD's in Iraq that
fooled Bush Jr. and convinced him to almost take this country down by violating the sage advice
on war strategy from Sun-Tzu and Clausewitz and opening up a second front in Iraq almost child's
play.
At least with the WMD story they had false witnesses and some made up evidence! With this
story, there is no "HUMINT (human intelligence) sources" and no physical evidence, just some alleged
traces that could have been actually produced from the ether or if they knew ahead of time of
Trump's possible win sent someone to Russia and had them actually run the IP routes for show.
Bush was misled because the CIA management was scared of some of his budgetary saber rattles
and his chasing after some CIA management. In this case, someone is really scared of what the
people will find when the swam gets drained, if ever it gets done. This includes so-called "false
flag conservatives" like Lindsey Graham and top Democrats "Cambridge 5 Admirers" salted in over
the years into the CIA
The fact that's forgotten about this is that if the story was even slightly true, it shows
how incompetent the Democrats are in running a country, how Barak Obama was an intentional incompetent
trying to drive the country into the ground and hurting its people, how even with top technologies,
coerced corrupted vendors and trillions in funding the NSA, CIA and FBI they were outflanked by
the FSB and others and why Hillary's server was more incompetent and dangerous a decision than
we think.
Maybe Hillary and Bill had their server not to hide information from the people, but maybe
to actually promote the Russian hacking?
Why should Trump believe the CIA? What kind of record and leadership do they have that anyone
other than a fool should listen to them?
small axe •Dec 10, 2016 10:55 AM
At some point Americans will need to wake up to the fact that the CIA has and does interfere
in domestic affairs, just as it has long sought to counter "subversion" overseas. The agency is
very likely completely outside the control of any administration at this point and is probably
best seen as the enforcement arm of the Deep State.
As the US loses its empire and gains Third World status, it is (sadly) fitting that the CIA
war to maintain docile populations becomes more apparent domestically.
Welcome to Zimbabwe USA.
marcusfenix •Dec 10, 2016 11:10 AM
what I don't understand is why the CIA is even getting tangled up in this three ring circus
freak show.
Trump has already signaled he is going hand them nearly unlimited power by appointing Pompeo
in the first place. I would think they would be very happy to welcome the incoming administration
with open arms.
I could see it if they were really that pissed about Trumps proposed Russian re-set and
maybe they are but even that has to be in doubt because of the rate at which Trump is militarizing
his cabinet. All these stars are not exactly going to support their president going belly
up to the bar with Putin. and since Trump has no military or civilian leadership experience (which
is why I believe he has loaded up on so much brass in the first place, to compensate) I have no
doubt they will have tremendous influence on policy.
In all reality Trump is a MIC, intelligence cabal dream come true, so why would they even
consider biting the hand that feeds so well? Perhaps their is more going on here under the surface,
maybe all the various agencies and bureaucracies are not playing nice, or together for that matter.
perhaps some have grown so large and so powerful that they have their own agendas? it's not as
if our federal government has ever really been one big happy family there have been many times
when the right hand did not know what the left hand was doing. and congress is week so oversight
of this monolithic military and intelligence entities may not be as extensive as we would like
to think.
after all the CIA and the Pentagon's proxy armies are already killing each other in Syria
so one has to wonder in what other arenas are they clashing?
and is this really all just a small glimpse of some secret war within, which every once in
a while bubbles up to the surface?
CheapBastard •Dec 10, 2016 11:34 AM
The neocons are desperate. Their war monger Hitlery lost by a landslide now they fabricate
all sorts of irrational BS.
However, there is no doubt the Russians stole my TV remote last week.
The Intel agencies have been politicized since the late 1970's; look up 'CIA Team B'
and the 'Committee on the Present Danger' and their BS 'minority report' used by the
original NeoCons to sway public opinion in favor of Ronald Reagan and the arms buildup of the
1980's, which led to the first sky-high deficits. It also led to a confrontational stance against
the Soviet Union which almost led to nuclear war in 1983: The 1983 War Scare Declassified
and For Real
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb533-The-Able-Archer-War-Scare-Decl...
The honest spook analysts were forced out, then as now, in favor of NeoCons with political
agendas that were dangerously myopic to say the least. The 'Office of Special Plans'
in the Pentagon cherry-picked or outright fabricated intel in order to justify the NeoCon/Israeli
wet-dream of total control of oil and the 'Securing the (Israeli) Realm' courtesy of invading
parts of the Middle East and destabilizing the rest, with the present mess as the wholly predictable
outcome. The honest analysts told them it would happen, and now they're gone.
This kind of organizational warping caused by agency politicization is producing the piss-poor
intel leading to asinine decisions creating untold tragedy; that the WaPo is depending upon this
intel from historically-proven tainted sources is just one more example of the incestuous nature
of the relations between Traditional Media and its handlers in the intel community.
YHC-FTSE •Dec 10, 2016 11:54 AM
This isn't a "Soft Coup". It's the groundwork necessary for a rock hard, go-for-broke, above
the barricade, tanks in the street coup d'etat. You do not get such a blatant accusation from
the CIA and establishment echo vendor, unless they are ready to back it up to the hilt with action.
The accusations are serious - treason and election fraud.
Trump is a curious fellow. I've thought about this quite a bit and tried to put myself
in his shoes. He has no friends in .gov, no real close "mates" he can depend on, especially in
his own party, so he had to start from scratch to put his cabinet together. His natural "Mistake"
is seeking people at his level of business acumen - his version of real, ordinary people - when
billionaires/multimillionaires are actually Type A personalities, usually predatory and addicted
to money. In his world, and in America in general, money equates to good social standing more
than any other facet of personal achievements. It is natural for an American to equate "Good"
with money. I'm a Brit and foreigners like me (I have American cousins I've visited since I was
a kid) who visit the States are often surprised by the shallow materialism that equates to culture.
So we have a bunch of dubious Alpha types addicted to money in transition to take charge of
government who know little or nothing about the principle of public service. Put them in a room
together and without projects they can focus on, they are going to turn on each other for supremacy.
I would not be surprised if Trump's own cabinet destroys him or uses leverage from their own power
bases to manipulate him.
Mike Pompeo, for example, is the most fucked up pick as CIA director I could have envisaged.
He is establishment to his core, a neocon torture advocate who will defend the worst excesses
of the intelligence arm of the MIC no matter what. One word from his mouth could have stopped
this bullshit about Russia helping Trump win the election. Nobody in the CIA was going to argue
with the new boss. Yet here we are, on the cusp of another attack on mulitple fronts. This is
how you manipulate an incumbent president to dial up his paranoia to the max and failing that,
launch a coup d'etat.
It could very well be that this was Trump & the establishment plan to con the American
public from the start of course. I kind of doubt it, since the efforts of the establishment to
destroy Trump was genuinely full retard from the outset and still continues. I think he was
his own man until paranoia and the enormity of his position got the better of him and he chose
his cabinet from the establishment swamp dwellers to best protect him from his enemies. Wrong
choices, granted, but understandable.
He would have done better to ignore the political divide to choose those who have spent
their lives challenging the Deep State. My ignorance of US politics does not supply me with a
complete picture, but Ron Paul, David Kucinich, Trey Gowdy, Tulsi Gabard and even turncoat Bernie
Sanders would have been better to drain the swamp than the neocon zionists he has installed in
power.
flaminratzazz ->YHC-FTSE •Dec 10, 2016 12:03 PM
I think he was his own man until paranoia and the enormity of his position got the better of
him,,
+1 I think he was just dickin around with throwin his hat in the ring, was going to go have fun
calling everyone names with outlandish attacks and lo and behold he won.. NOW he is shitting himself
on the enormity of his GREATEST fvkup in his life.
jomama ->YHC-FTSE •Dec 10, 2016 12:16 PM
Unless you can show how Trump's close ties to Wall St. (owes banks there around 350M currently
YHC-FTSE ->jomama •Dec 10, 2016 12:59 PM
My post is conjecture, obviously. The basis of my musings, as stated above, is the fact that the
establishment has tried to destroy Trump from the outset using all of their assets in his own
party, the msm, Hollyweird, intelligence and politics. A full retard attack is being perpetrated
against him as I type.
There is some merit to dividing the establishment, the Deep State, into two opposing sides.
One that lost power, priestige and funds backing Hillary and one that did not, which would make
Trump an alternative establishment candidate. But there is no proof that any establishment (MIC+Banking)
entity even likes Trump, let alone supports him. As for Israel, Hillary was their candidate of
choice, but their MO is they will always infiltrate and back both sides to ensure compliance.
blindfaith ->YHC-FTSE •Dec 10, 2016 12:36 PM
Do not underestimate Trump. I will grant that some of these picks are concerning. However, think
in terms of business, AND government is a business from top to bottom. It has been run as a dog
and pony show for years and look where we are. To me, I think his picks are strating to look like
a very efficient team to get the government efficient again. That alone must make D.C. shake in
thier boots.
YHC-FTSE ->blindfaith •Dec 10, 2016 1:08 PM
Underestimating Trump is the last thing I would do. I'm just trying to understand his motives
in my own clumsy way. Besides, he promised to "Drain the swamp", not run the swamp more efficiently.
ducksinarow •Dec 10, 2016 12:04 PM
From a non political angle, this is a divorce in the making. Then democrats have been rejected
in totallity but instead of blaming themselves for not being good enough, they are blaming a third
party which is the Russians. They are now engaging the Republican Party in a custody battle for
the "children". There are lies flying around and the older children know exactly what is going
on and sadly the younger children are confused, bewildered, angry and getting angrier by the minute.
Soon Papa(Obama) will be leaving which is symbolic of the male father figure in the African American
community. The new Papa is a white guy who is going to change the narrative, the rules of engagement
and the financial picture. The ones who were the heroes in the Obama narrative are not going to
be heroes anymore. New heroes will be formed and revered and during this process some will die
for their beliefs.
Back to reality, Trump needs to cleanse the CIA of the ones who would sell our nation to the
highest bidder. If the CIA is not on the side of America the CIA should be abolished. In a world
where mercenaries are employed all over the world, bringing together a culturally mixed agency
does not make for a very honest agency. It makes for a bunch of self involved countries trying
to influence the power of individuals. The reason Castro was never taken down is because it was
not in the interest of the CIA to do so. That is why there were some pretty hilarious non-attempts
on Castro's life over the years. It is not in the best interest of the CIA that Trump be president.
It is in the best interest of America that Trump is our President.
brane pilot •Dec 10, 2016 12:22 PM
Even the idea that people would rely on foreign governments for critical information during
an election indicates the bankruptcy of the corrupt US media establishment. So now they resort
to open sedition and defamation in the absence of factual information. The mainstream media in
the USA has become a Fifth Column against America, no different than the so-called 'social science'
departments on college campuses. Trump was America's last chance and we took it and no one is
going to take it away.
"... It appears that the globalists are scared of anything that resembles the truth that counters their incessant propaganda If there was ever a discovery process in a lawsuit against WAPO, I would imagine that all roads would lead to a Contelpro section of the CIA It's interesting that Wall Street on Parade has noted that Propornot has a double blind registration in New Mexico. ..."
"... Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. ..."
"... More and more it seems like USA, like the roman empire, needs barbarians at the gates to distract the plebs from internal structural problems. ..."
"... As long as Yeltsin allowed Wall Street to loot Russia of former soviet holdings, Russia was not "barbaric". Now that Putin has put a solid halt on said looting, Russia is again "barbarians" ..."
"... And by refusing to address the emails, other than to scream "Russian hackers," the corporate media were able to convince the Clinton cultists and other Third-Way believers that the information they contained was just another right-wing attack on The Anointed because (other than leftist, Russian-loving "fake news" sites), the right-wing media were the only ones paying it any attention. ..."
"... I am old enough to remember seeing in the news reel at my local theater in 1950 Joseph McCarthy holding up a piece of paper to the cameras and intoning in his inimitable droning voice, "I have here in my hand a list of 205 known members of the Communist Party who are working and shaping policy in the State Department." ..."
"... People's livelihoods and reputations were thereby smeared for life. Never did McCarthy back his claims with evidence, nor did he retract his scurrilous accusation. Now, tell me how what Jeff Bezos and co. are doing in this instance is in any significant way different from what McCarthy did to these people back in 1956. What finally put it squarely before the American public and finally earned McCarthy Congressional censure was when Boston attorney Joseph Welch asked McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" ..."
"... Here's the thing. Yes, RT is funded by the Russian government, and thus anything posted thereon needs to be considered with that in mind. Nevertheless, it is also where stories the corporates prefer to ignore are given attention. In other words, there is an irony that the Russians may, indeed, be trying to influence us, but if so, they appear to be doing it by subtly undermining the reliability of the corporate media. ..."
"... To put it another way, dismissing RT solely because of its funding source is no better than dismissing NC et al. as propaganda sites, and doing so is actually feeding the propaganda machine. After all, we don't know what percentage of the US media currently receives "grants" from US intelligence agencies, now, do we. ..."
"... In studying communications, there's a distinction between 'white' and 'black' propaganda. White propaganda is publishing truth that supports your cause. Black propaganda is, of course, slanderous lies. RT is white propaganda, so use it for the value it brings. ..."
"... Exactly. I'm a grown-up. I have a lot of practice reading critically and I'm quite capable of questioning sources and filtering bias. I don't need Jeff Bezos to protect me from Russkie BadThink. ..."
"... "does not itself vouch " You have to bear in mind this is not the Post talking, this is CIA CIA has blatantly used the Post as a their sockpuppet since they put Woodward in there to oust Nixon, and now they've got Bezos by the contractual balls. CIA has impunity in municipal statute and secret red tape so any answer you get from them means No fuck You. ..."
"... The NDAA legalized domestic propaganda in 2013 so when the public repudiated their chosen president Hillary Clinton, CIA immediately got to work work attacking Article 19. ..."
"... [M]aybe we should just lump them [WaPo] in with Breitbart and company. ..."
This is tantamount to an admission that not only did the Washington Post do no fact-checking,
but also that it does not consider fact-checking to be part of its job.
Another way to put it is to say that WaPoo is not in the business of investigation but instead
is in the business of regurgitation . WaPoo seems to think that reporting equals repeating.
We don't need people who repeat other people's words. We need reporters who are digging.
"This minimalist walk-back does not remedy the considerable damage [already] done to NC and
other sites." No, it certainly does not. Once the "defamatory cat" is out of the bag, you can't
exactly stuff the cat back in.
Proceed, young lady with your case. But as you move forward, do take measures to keep these
vampires from stealing your adaptive energies and health.
p.s. You know, this diminiishes WaPo to a mere "blog aggregator" when allows its "reporters"
such as Craig Timberg to merely "scrape and publish" posts from anonymous blogsites (not even
scraping from the laughable "gold standard" of truth on the internet: Wiki). These reporters aren't
writing, they are scraping. What a bunch of lazy fucks at WaPo!
And you know what I'd really like to do: kick this Craig Timberg character a new ass in a dark
alley. Yves, when you are done shredding WaPo and Timberg, I sincerely hope they won't be able
to sit down for a whole year.
p.s.s. that post (yd) about Wiki becoming the "gold standard" of 'fact-finding" and "truth"
on the internet was particularly disturbing. Even citations from academic journals (such as JAMA)
posted in Wiki are laden with flawed research suffering from poor design and methodology, draw
the wrong conclusions, reveal biases and conflicts of interest, show a lack of references etc.
Decades ago, there was a shift in much of the medical literature – a shift from "evidence-based"
to "consensus-based." The internet appears to be moving in the same direction, using various tools
and methodologies that allow "consensus-based" opinions (valued by the certain parties that be)
to be shaped as "facts" and "truth." When in fact, those opinions are anything but a truth.
. a shift from "evidence-based" to "consensus-based."
Yes. That's what I see as behind the browser flagging extensions, as if facts are subject to
majority vote, which would make them opinions, not facts. If wapoo prints an editorial opinion
on the editorial page, that's one thing. If wapoo prints editorial opinion masquerading as fact
on the front page, that is a different matter.
Wapoo's arrogant reply, in the form of an editor's note, to NC's letter isn't a surprising
first move for them. I trust NC's atty has already thought many, many steps ahead.
"The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot's
findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article purport to do so."
You couldn't get a more weassely response. They admit they didn't fact check their sources,
they cowadly now hide behind the defence of not actully naming any of the sites, and then finally
try to play the "nothing to see here" defence of pretending the article didn't mean what it quite
clearly did mean when it was published.
Increasingly, challenging western govt output is seen as a form of rebellion. As Orwell said
. telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
One day I was listening to Bloomberg News on the car radio, when they aired a critical story
on a company where I had worked. The criticism was from a third party group. And then the next
news story began.
Stunned, I phoned the reporter and asked, "Where was the company's rebuttal, or refusal to
comment?"
He replied, "It was there, you just didn't hear it."
But I had listened with full attention, and it wasn't there. Maybe an editor had removed it
to shorten the clip.
This has been my experience with the MSM. They are always right. They make no mistakes. You
should believe them, not your lying eyes and ears.
"This has been my experience with the MSM. They are always right. They make no mistakes.
You should believe them, not your lying eyes and ears."
We have always been at war with Eurasia.
The Ministry of Truth hasn't, yet, been given the power to completely silence those of us who
don't stay within the confines of The Narrative. So their tactic is to portray us all as dangerous
disinformators like Emmanuel Goldstein.
In 1975, I went to the Soviet Union with a group of American tourists. At the time, I was working
as a volunteer for Ralph Nader. A few times, some of the people in our group had a chance to talk
to Soviet people in our hotels. The other Americans would give civics book explanations about
how the US government worked. Some of the Soviet people would question these explanations, saying
that they had heard from their government that the American government worked in a way that sounded
to me much more accurate and in line with the way Nader portrayed the US. Undemocratic regimes
are often fairly accurate in describing the faults of other governments, especially those of their
perceived enemies, while ignoring their own failings. I do not know exactly what Russian propaganda
the Washington Post is referring to, but I would not be surprised if various Russian sources simply
repeat the common criticisms of the toxic activities of the neoliberal establishment – an establishment
of which the Washington Post has been a long-time supporter. Why go through all of the trouble
of fabricating stories when the reality is as damning as anything you could make up? So rather
than the US sources in question spouting Russian propaganda, the Russians might simply be repeating
the criticisms they are hearing from the US.
This is tantamount to an admission that not only did the Washington Post do no fact-checking,
but that it does not consider fact-checking to be part of its job.
Ah, the Ratings Agencies "opinions" defense. Blithely ignorant of their own legally and historically
protected positions. I suspect this is exactly the defense the WP will run with. Effectively they
will assert their constitutional right as propagandists, to broadcast whatever they please in
the national interest.
is a new, private sector-led initiative
I would say not entirely. True, large private corporations are behind a lot of this, but what
is at stake is their authority to speak for, and their connections to, the state and Deep State.
On a more emotional level, what is at stake is status. Because really that is all the big newspapers
have anymore. Social status. Do not underestimate this currency. It is probably the most precious
form of capital there is and the Post, et al, will fight with their fingernails to avoid losing
it. Things could get pretty nasty. Good luck and give the bastards hell.
Long, long time, b/c of their policies. I figure my opinion doesn't count, my vote doesn't
count, but by golly, I will make every dollar I spend count. I buy locally when possible (ideally
both locally made/grown and locally-owned retail, although there is at least one local company
I will not patronize, for policy reasons) and have found alternate sources for things I can't
get around here, eg. Powell's for books and
Lehman's for tools and kitchen stuff. As a last resort I will comparison shop on Amazon and
then ask my local supplier to order the thing in for me (as I did with my water heater). Not one
nickel of mine will go to WaPo or Amazon. And I have told rellies, pls no Amazon gifts for our
household.
Long before the current series of events happened, there were excellent reasons to avoid buying
from Amazon.com. The horrific working conditions in Amazon.com warehouses should be enough to
prevent any person from buying from the company. I suppose many people still aren't aware of how
bad it is, so here's an example article:
As much as I would love to "boycott Amazon," it's not possible for several reasons. First,
being old and crippled, I can't run out to the nearest Target to buy stuff, and I definitely don't
have time or physical capacity to hop all over town trying to find some specialty item that doesn't
sell enough for most bricks-and-mortar retailers to carry. I do buy direct when it's possible,
but the fact of life is there's stuff you can only find on Amazon.
Second, I own and operate a small digitally-based book publishing company, and Amazon is our
major source of revenue. For me, boycotting Amazon would mean pulling my authors' work from distribution
there, which isn't an option. Likewise, consider Kindle owners with extensive libraries.
Frankly, I consider these calls to boycott some huge corporation the kind of symbolic action
that allows people to feel good about themselves while avoiding doing anything actually effective.
Like writing/emailing/phoning the editorial board of the local news media should they be broadcasting/publishing
this rubbish-preferably all three and multiple times. Given that many are connected to the same
major corporations as the Big Media, that strikes me as what really needs to be done.
After all, WaPo isn't doing this in an echo chamber. Their fiction was picked up by all the
major players and more than a few of the minor. The only way to counter public discourse is publicly.
On another subject-Yves and Lambert, if you'd like someone to run over your articles pre-publication
for a quick copyedit, you know where to find me. It's one of the non-monetary things I can donate.
Agree on symbolic action. I do buy from Amazon and either go to antiwar.com first (a mixed
site, but one I want to see endure) and click so they get a commission or go to smile.amazon.com
so my favorite small charity gets it.
Buying is NOT voting. I'm a citizen and not mainly just a consumer. Not buying from amazon
would hurt me more than them (especially as I like buying obscure second-hand books). There are
much better things I can do to be politically effective, including letters to the editor and contributions.
I do buy by preference from a third-party that doesn't distribute from Amazon warehouses if
the price is close. And there are many things I do choose to get locally or from others. But I
buy a heck of a lot from them especially books.
There should be a union of sorts, among those defamed. Join forces with some other reputable
smallish websites and create a consortium that pools resources to fight this sort of thing going
forward.
I think you should take the strongest, most aggressive stance possible given the huge number
of very important issues at stake. I will continue to support naked capitalism any way that I
can.
Yves, have you contacted Bill Moyers? He initially referred to the Post article without adequate
critical comment. He could and should remedy this. His voice would carry weight with the book
bag-toting NPR folks, who will be among the last to "doubt" the Post.
Excellent suggestion. I found NC when Bill Moyers recommended it on his old tv show when he
interviewed Yves and it has continued to open my eyes big time and I haven't been the same since.
Whenever I encounter a NYTimesbot or a BostonGlobebot or a Wapoobot or NPRbot (Blindly quoting
believers) I tell them I don't have time for MSM anymore after Bill Moyers recommended this incredibly
informative site and I tell them all about NC. I am so grateful for NC and Yves and Lambert and
all the other contributors for what you all do. I would be devastated if this horror damages you
(us) all. And Net Neutrality in general – Trump will go after it. WaPoo (love that) should be
taken way out to the woodshed, shamed, and publicized for how awful they (and so many others in
the MSM) have become. I will help in any way I can. And please stay well Yves and Lambert.
I found NC through Bill Moyers as well. Since he retired, i rarely look at the website and
never the FC page anymore since the content significantly decreased in quality and originality
imo after he retired. i know his name is still attached to the website and he still occasionally
submits articles, but i wonder how much oversight and content involvement he has with the operation
these days.
That should read, "since he retired from the tv show Moyers & Co and it went off the air".
The website still lists Bill Moyers as the managing editor. But the quality of the website noticeably
changed after the show left PBS in i think 2015.
It appears that the globalists are scared of anything that resembles the truth that counters
their incessant propaganda If there was ever a discovery process in a lawsuit against WAPO, I
would imagine that all roads would lead to a Contelpro section of the CIA It's interesting that
Wall Street on Parade has noted that Propornot has a double blind registration in New Mexico.
A propaganda holding company! This is allowed by the Whappo? It's a felony masquerading as
a farce and they can't get out of this like little Judy Miller pretending to be dumb. Judy Miller
is very sophisticated and so is the Whappo. Journalism isn't journalism if it does this sleazy
stuff. Since when does a newspaper "disclaim" its own news? It's totally outrageous. And the nerve
to say that PropOrNot insists on being anonymous. PropOrNot might as well be the Whappo itself.
Only sleazy purveyors of crap disclaim it. This is just asking for satire. Whappo deserves to
be ridiculed into oblivion.
just a quick check on the net produced a a site: dab-oracl.com and an atty named Donald Burleson
– stating that New Mexico is one of 17 states that enforce criminal libel and that you can file
to lift the veil on anonymity for defamation and have the perp arrested cool
It's in Santa Fe and the U of Magonia has a channeling portal there. The channeling portal
connects to alternate universes and higher order dimensions and all sorts of weird and unusual
stuff passes thru the portal. It's where craazyman finds out about lots of stuff and he may have
bumped(if that's right word) into these other channelers?
I'm 56, I was a 9 buck an hour cook in Boston in 1988 when Dukakis came out of Labor Day with
a 17 point lead.
The campaign wizards of Bush Senior came up some kind of 'Dukakis hates America ' baloney,
because of some other baloney about The Flag!! or The Pledge!!! For days, GWB Sr. came out in
front of a bunch of flags & said the Pledge, and the craven, sycophantic, grovelling media of
the day dutifully reported –
"In order to show '__Dukakis hates America___' Vice President Bush said the pledge of allegiance."
Anyone from that era remember all the liberal cloak rending and finger waving and furrowed
brows? Anyone remember that Fairness Doctrine thing??? Seriously – having some contract mouth
piece of the WAPO question NC is a badge of honor.
rmm.
But then I sigh; and, with a piece of scripture,
Tell them that God bids us do good for evil:
And thus I clothe my naked villany
With old odd ends stolen out of holy writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.
Dukakis' loss was due to his weak response to a racist smear campaign that assigned him personal
responsibility for every poor decision made by the Massachusetts penal system.
His sin was failing to fight back with sufficient vigor. It's a good choice of anecdote for
this comments thread however. An object lesson if you will.
The Washington Post has responded, from the perspective of their own interests, in literally
the worst way possible.
They have essentially gone on record as admitting that publish articles that are defamatory
per se in a reckless manner, using a reckless (or non-existent) fact-checking and vetting process.
It's really unbelievable, and many of us in the legal community are scratching our heads, now,
wondering from whom The Washington Post is soliciting legal advice.
They wouldn't have deigned to respond at all if they weren't nervous about our attorney. But
I agree, this response is incredibly lame and not helpful to them from a legal or reputational
standpoint. They seem to think if they make a minimal gesture, NC and the other wronged sites
won't proceed. Bad assumption.
My grandfather was a political refugee. He escaped Bulgaria after being jailed one too many
times for having the audacity to disagree with the communist elites and its media organs, and
to do so in public. What I see happening here in the US, with dissent on the verge of being suppressed
or even criminalized, deeply concerns me because it reminds me of those bad old times. I respect
you guys and your willingness to stand up to power, in ways I can not adequately express. Thank
you.
Craig Timberg may be another example of the "son of more successful father" phenomenon who
in attempting to exceed their fathers, do great damage to others (other examples: G.W. Bush, Bill
Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, John McCain ).
" He was nearly 30 years old, borderline ancient for a beginning daily newspaper reporter.
Unlike other Capital staffers, he was a Naval Academy graduate with a master's degree in journalism,
and he was a Vietnam war combat veteran. And he could not type."
"I first noticed Bob's reporting talents from his incisive articles on a legal challenge to
compulsory chapel attendance at the U.S. service academies, filed by six Annapolis midshipmen
and a West Point cadet."
"The highlight of Bob's reporting was an interview with celebrated evangelist Billy Graham,
who shockingly characterized the students' lawsuit as a being "part of a planned attack against
all chaplains, to force them completely out of all services," and further suggested that the young
men were Communist dupes. Though Bob knew now that he had a good story, he still pressed on, asking
Graham if an atheist can become a good naval officer. "I can't comment on that," the preacher
answered."
So Timberg's father questioned a prominent person who was alleging "Communist dupes" against
military chaplains.
But his son does little vetting of the shadowy group PropOrNot as he goes for HIS story alleging
"Russian propagandists".
It may be too late for the son to learn from the father's example.
Good story. The son as a pale shadow of the father is, as you say, not an uncommon thing. Craig,
in this current example, doesn't seem to understand even the most basic, fundamental principles
of journalistic ethics or professional conduct. It's strange someone in the profession that long
could survive lacking that. Or maybe once you get on with a big name paper with a billionaire
owner, sucking up to the establishment is a get out of jail free card when it comes to ethics
and professional accountability.
I stopped ordering from Amazon two years ago after reading the stories about labor conditions
for warehouse employees. It is nothing more than brutal slave labor.
I used to at least read the headlines in the NYT and WaPo. Now I can not even stomach them.
So, the WaPo now admits that "journalism" is dead and stenography is the only purpose
their "platform" exists for.
The quaint institution of "journalism" existed to sort "fact" from "opinion" and made the important
distinction between the two. Opinions are like belly-buttons and assholes, everybody has one.
Facts are more difficult to discern, but are immutable and objective. As attributed to the late
Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, " Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
"
This is the death of the First Amendment - The ScAmazon model of purporting to be a "marketplace"
but refusing to vouch for the quality, safety, or authenticity of anything that they loudly and
slickly shill to profit from the work of others. It is disgusting, hollow, and amoral. It must
be brought to heel.
I suspect the MSM have always seen their ability to shape elections as their true "ring of
power." As you say this has been going on for a long time–certainly pre-internet. The fact that
Trump won despite their best efforts has likely shaken big media to the core. Which doesn't mean
Trump's election was a good thing or a bad thing but simply that they didn't get to pick.
Television will always be the most important medium when it comes to politics but the print
media now see their role as "influencers" under threat from the web. And given their financial
problems this may be the final existential threat. It's likely the Post editors knew perfectly
well what they were doing and how shoddy that story was. It was a shot across the bow.
Yves: What is going on here is deeply ingrained. We live in a country in which everyone's opinions
are now canonical, as we see with wonder about the candidate for the head of the EPA. Pruitt's
opinion counteracts years of research, because lawyers know all about science.
I was reminded of how ingrained these "narratives" are when I read the lead in the Talk of
the Town in the most recent New Yorker: Jeffrey Toobin on voting. He did a drive-by diagnosis
of Jill Stein as a narcissist. (But, but, but the New Yorker already declared Trump a narcissist.)
Then, in a couple of very curious sentences, he tries to accuse the Russians of tampering with
the U.S. election campaign while admitting it unlikely that foreigners hacked the vote count.
So you have two or three or four fake-news pieces strung together so as to assert power. That's
the long and the short of it. Just as Pruitt is an ignoramus about science, so Toobin as an ignoramus
about psychology. As Lambert often writes: Agnotology. I'd add: Agnotology to maintain the structures
of power.
We have been in this intellectual winter for a while: Liberals in denial, peddling psychobabble.
Rightwingers in denial, peddling resentment.
At the end of the 70s, we came to the US, believing western media to be the epitome of honesty
and truth (the belief itself based on plentiful pro-western propaganda, which we consumed unquestioningly).
The highly misleading anti-Soviet propaganda in the US at that time was a bit of a shock. Not
so much its existence, but its vicious nature. And the lies about "Russians are coming." Nothing
much has changed – the west still dislikes Russia, and will do all it can to discredit the country
(just watch out for the starting effort to ruin the 2018 futbal (soccer) games in Russia – anti-Sochi
hysteria was just a preview). The wapoo stunt may be crude, but it is not a demonstration of incompetence.
It does seem to be a part of concerted efforts to limit the free flow of information on the Internet.
As the "narrative" has gotten away from powers that be, a new way to censor information is needed.
Even Merkel said she'd want to address "fake news." Has everybodu forgotten operation Mockingbird
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
)? Nothing new under the sun – but the stakes are much higher now, as the west runs out of
options to maintain supremacy.
More and more it seems like USA, like the roman empire, needs barbarians at the gates to
distract the plebs from internal structural problems.
As long as Yeltsin allowed Wall Street to loot Russia of former soviet holdings, Russia
was not "barbaric". Now that Putin has put a solid halt on said looting, Russia is again "barbarians"
Want to have some fun? Next time someone starts ranting about "the Russians hacked our election,"
try tossing out "Well, we messed with theirs, so it seems only fair."
Post editorial/management probably doesn't have strong opinions - or any opinions - of the
sites impugned by PropOrNot, including Naked Capitalism, since it's unlikely these corporate drones
possess enough intellectual curiosity to actually look at them.
The problem is confirmation bias (in this case, offering an acceptable explanation for why
WaPo's Chosen Liberal lost the election, without having to look in the mirror) and shoddy careerist
journalism generally, which works so well for so many, and which can't be litigated away.
Banish Timberg, and you might as well put WaPO out of business.
I recall seeing somewhere in the initial flurry of tweets and comments on the subject that
someone had contacted Wapo and received a response from the editor or some such stating that "multiple
contacts" were made to PorNot for some sort of purpose, perhaps verification, fact checking, or
what ever it is newspapers do before breathlessly getting out the bold typeface and running a
"story". Wish I could find it again. But now it seems that was fake news.
The timing and placement of the "clarification" is rich. 14 days later slip in an "editor's
comment" buried in the old news pile. Your pet parrot wouldn't even notice.
Timburg is obviously another tool – like Judith Miller. His "editors" knew full well the story
was bullshit – "can't vouch for the validity" (because we can't be bothered to check our sources)
– and ran it anyway. So there was/is an agenda. And the media wonder why they are in such low
regard.
Yves, in your apology post with your attorney's letter, you stated this
I also hope, particularly for those of you who don't regularly visit Naked Capitalism,
that you'll check out our related pieces that give more color to how the fact the Washington
Post was taken for a ride by inept propagandists
My first reaction to this was "presumes facts not in evidence"
I don't believe the Post was taken in by anyone. They wanted to have a particular piece written
and they did. Why in the world would they back down now?
You're going to need more fundraisers because I'm guessing they'll be dragging this out. If
they can't beat you with fake news then they will drain your resources with a long-drawn out legal
process. Yes, I'm very cynical. Watched one of the bloggers I follow spend around $150,000 defending
themselves from a defamation case that never went to trail. The blogger was also a lawyer so could
help with her defense, had discounted legal assistance from an first amendment expert and an additional
attorney. They had a year of depositions with constant delays. $150,000 is not petty cash.
I know the circumstances are not the same but the Post has deep pockets. If they want to drain
NC and other independent news sources, they have the resources to go the distance.
Also please stop giving the newspapers excuses. The entire industry is pretty much consolidated.
I don't think they very much care about whether or not a newspaper makes money after they've leveraged
it with so much debt in order to purchase it in the first place. Or used their billions to simply
buy it. Either way that would seem to indicate that's about the write-off and controlling the
"narrative."
As an added bonus get rid of your workers due to "costs." Further narrowing the acceptable
narrative within the newsroom. Pretty soon, the entire industry is gutted just like other industries
in this country. (I'd argue that's most of the way done except for independent media.) That's
quite purposeful and just like other industries, it never had to be that way, even with the rise
of the Internet and "things" like Google ads and Facebook.
Stop giving them so much of the benefit of the doubt. They are engaged in a class war.
Even if somewhere down the line they were to apologize and give you a prominent byline, the
damage is already done with a good portion of their readership. Which was entirely the point.
" I don't believe the Post was taken in by anyone. "
I may wholeheartedly agree with you but there are good reasons for NC to be circumspect and
initially offer Wapoo the option of backing away and retracting gracefully; or as gracefully as
possible in this situation.
Yes, I'm in for the long haul wrt donations. Bernie's campaign showed the power of small donations.
You've put your finger on the "stupid, crazy, or evil" question.
Our esteemed hostess has chosen stupid, for reasons that seem good and sufficient. Crazy would
be apparent from past behavior, and we of the tinfoil hat legions can make a good case for evil
from the interests of the actors. But if nothing else, stupid is easily proved.
I think the main reason many here are giving the benefit of the doubt to WaPo is that it was
done so ineptly. The article reeks of carelessness and non-existent fact-checking and poor (or
non-existent) editorial overview. If it was part of a deliberate plot to smear it should have
been better written and they would have done a better job in covering themselves legally. Most
recent high profile libel claims – such as the Rolling Stones college rape hoax story – originated
from a mix of confirmation bias and incompetence, not (so far as we know) from a deliberate malign
plot.
Having said that, their refusal to come straight out and apologise when presented with the
facts is just digging themselves a deeper hole. I've no doubt the NC crew will go all the way
with this, I hope it proves deeply embarrassing for the WaPo, they are destroying their own reputation
and its entirely their fault.
I guess, on one level, it's intersting that the PTB saw the websites on the list as having
that much power and influence to sway the election to Trump due to telling the truth, frankly.
The truth clearly has no place in the US conversation anymore.
At any rate, most of here saw our main, favored websites on that McCarthyite witch hunt list
and thought: WOW. So we told the truth about Clinton and various other issues with this election,
and now we must be silenced.
Of course, it's pretty odd given the DNC hacked emails were really very revealing of many shady
(to say the least) things, and I've seen those emails quoted quite a bit by many rightwing sources.
And that info was, in fact, disseminated broadly to conservative voters. And I feel that those
emails, possibly along with Comey's last minute "reveal," probably swayed some still-on-the-fence
voters to either not vote for POTUS at all or to vote for Trump.
Frankly, it's risable in the extreme that this country has been drowning in rightwingnut propaganda
for the past 40+ years (or longer), and that's really what the rise of Trump is all about. As
opposed to others here, I frankly despise Trump and all he stands for, but I give him props where
due. He's kind of stupid but has this certain rat cunning about reading the moment and grabbing
it for his purposes. He saw that those who had lost the most in this country were ripe for the
plucking, and he went about using them for his own greedy means accordingly.
Railing against a handful of truth-telling lefty-ish blogs is amazing on one level. I doubt
that, even in the aggragate, many voters were swayed by the information provided. I think most
who read these blogs are already determined what we'll do, but we come to these sites for a breath
of fresh air, as it were.
That, for me, is what makes this attack so chilling. The last few small voices of reason and
sanity? And they have to be silenced? Brrrrrr . that's bitterly cold.
Keep up the good fight, Yves and friends. This is gonna be tough row to hoe, but I'm in it
to win it.
And by refusing to address the emails, other than to scream "Russian hackers," the corporate
media were able to convince the Clinton cultists and other Third-Way believers that the information
they contained was just another right-wing attack on The Anointed because (other than leftist,
Russian-loving "fake news" sites), the right-wing media were the only ones paying it any attention.
You have to give credit where it's due-they have had decades to perfect their method, and it
is very hard to counter it.
silicon valley does not know the meaning of trust. they have extracted it from every situation
they can, destroying everything they touch, without realizing what they have unleashed. this will
eventually be learned by all, the hard way.
I am old enough to remember seeing in the news reel at my local theater in 1950 Joseph
McCarthy holding up a piece of paper to the cameras and intoning in his inimitable droning voice,
"I have here in my hand a list of 205 known members of the Communist Party who are working and
shaping policy in the State Department."
People's livelihoods and reputations were thereby smeared for life. Never did McCarthy
back his claims with evidence, nor did he retract his scurrilous accusation. Now, tell me how
what Jeff Bezos and co. are doing in this instance is in any significant way different from what
McCarthy did to these people back in 1956. What finally put it squarely before the American public
and finally earned McCarthy Congressional censure was when Boston attorney Joseph Welch asked
McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency, sir?"
Yikes,Yves! What a lame response from them. We all need to keep up the pressure, by any means.
This is one of those MSM errors that they hope will just go away, as evidenced by their hand waving
dismissal. We can't let it! I think letters to the editor-an avalanche- might do a world of good.
Murtaza HussainVerified account Dec 5
@MazMHussain
2003: Rifle-toting Americans barge into Iraq after reading viral Fake News story about weapons
of mass destruction.
------------------------------
This fake news story ranks up there with the rifle toting Americans that barge into Viet Nam after
the Fake News story about a US Navy warship that was attacked by the North Viet Namese Naval forces
in the Gulf of Tonkin.
PolitiFact is running a poll for "Lie of the Year"
here . There's a line for write in votes. I wrote in the Post's "Russian Propaganda " story.
I suggest you can do the same.
A true fake news refusal to retract. Extraordinary that WaPo's editors also claim "not to vouch"
for the veracity of whether or not RT.com is a "conduit for Russian propaganda". Really? RT is
sponsored by the Russian state, how could it not be such a "conduit"? WaPo has all but admitted
that it will print all the fake news it chooses to print. This reply is actually worse than the
original offense. Pure confection of arrogance and cowardice as only libertarians can produce.
But of course it doesn't matter if every last one of the news sources mentioned in the WaPo
article were in fact such conduits. The issue is the neo-Cold war, neo-McCarthyite campaign launched
over the last 2 years whose center of gravity lies clearly in the Clinton liberal Democrat camp.
We can only imagine how the campaign would conduct itself if Clinton had won the Presidency.
It was predictable they would come after the Left, only now they come on with less swag, but with
a pathetic sore loser grudge. A perusal of the Liberal sphere on HuffnPuff, Alternet, Salon and
such shows these still lost in a self-induced hysterical psychosis.
Right NOW is the time to for leftists and progressives to draw a clear line, and distance,
from American Liberalism and its blame the victim rhetoric.
Here's the thing. Yes, RT is funded by the Russian government, and thus anything posted
thereon needs to be considered with that in mind. Nevertheless, it is also where stories the corporates
prefer to ignore are given attention. In other words, there is an irony that the Russians may,
indeed, be trying to influence us, but if so, they appear to be doing it by subtly undermining
the reliability of the corporate media.
To put it another way, dismissing RT solely because of its funding source is no better
than dismissing NC et al. as propaganda sites, and doing so is actually feeding the propaganda
machine. After all, we don't know what percentage of the US media currently receives "grants"
from US intelligence agencies, now, do we.
In studying communications, there's a distinction between 'white' and 'black' propaganda.
White propaganda is publishing truth that supports your cause. Black propaganda is, of course,
slanderous lies. RT is white propaganda, so use it for the value it brings.
Exactly. I'm a grown-up. I have a lot of practice reading critically and I'm quite capable
of questioning sources and filtering bias. I don't need Jeff Bezos to protect me from Russkie
BadThink.
There's a sense in which that's true, of course. But it is a useful characterization? Is there
even any point to such a broad statement about a media outlet, other than to discredit work that
can't be discredited on more direct grounds?
State sponsorship of media organizations is not all that unusual. The BBC is primarily funded
by a tax levied on any British household that uses a television to receive a broadcast signal,
for example. Is the WaPo in the habit of describing the BBC as a "conduit for British propaganda"?
Am I acting as a useful idiot for the UK government every time I rehash an old Monty Python joke?
"does not itself vouch " You have to bear in mind this is not the Post talking, this is
CIA CIA has blatantly used the Post as a
their sockpuppet
since they put Woodward in there to oust Nixon, and now they've got Bezos by the contractual
balls. CIA has impunity in municipal statute and secret red tape so any answer you get from them
means No fuck You.
The NDAA legalized domestic propaganda in 2013 so when the public repudiated their chosen
president Hillary Clinton, CIA immediately got to work work attacking Article 19. CIA is
panicking because Hillary was going to get them the war they need to preserve CIA impunity for
the crime against humanity of systematic and widespread torture and murder in their global gulag
of secret death camps.
The ICC's investigation of US crimes against humanity has reached the critical point of referral
to the pre-trial chamber . The
ICC is under intense pressure from Russia and the global south to prove it's not afraid of US
criminals. Italian courts have got torturer Sabrina de Souza, and they're going to use her to
roll up the command chain. One way or another it's going to be open season on CIA torture cowards,
in universal jurisdiction with no statute of limitations. This is a far graver threat to CIA than
the family jewels. The international community is investigating CIA crimes, not avuncular Jim
Schlesinger or some gelded congressional committee. Like Francis Boyle says, the US government
is a criminal enterprise. And since COG was imposed it's got one branch, CIA
That's the background here. You're the Op in Red Harvest. Poisonville's the USA.
May I suggest that this site no longer link to The Wapoo for stories that are available elsewhere.
I personally would prefer to not go to their site at all, but they seem to make up a lot of the
links here.
I understand that sometimes this will be unavoidable, as the Wapoo is the only one doing a particular
story, but in cases where the story is carried at other sites, can you please link to those other
sites instead?
I live in New Zealand and start every day with NC because WaPo and it's like runs an agenda.
We all know that. I feel for you Yves but the site's strength is bringing together all those speaking
truth to power. The courts won't care about that and that route can drain you personally and financially.
Stay strong and play to your strengths. You have lots of support – perhaps more than you know.
The Second Phase of the Propaganda Fake News War: Economic Strangulation. What Comes Next?
by BAR editor and columnist Dr. Marsha Adebayo
"The public has determined that the corporate media is actually the purveyor of "fake news"
and turned to media organizations, such as BAR, Truthout and other outlets for information."
So, since the W.P. won't bear responsibility for what they publish, maybe we should just lump
them in with Breitbart and company. Just out of curiosity, did W.P. contact N.C. for comment before
they tried to smear your (and, by extension, our) reputation?
It's libel per se and an avalanche of lawsuits directed at PropOrNot and WaPo should be pretty
effective. Because WaPo did not retract there is no defense.
From a legal point of view, I wonder how the Executive Editor's (Marty Baron) tweeting of the
article plays against the assertion that "The Post does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot's
findings". Is that a case where he was speaking (tweeting) his own opinion, and not necessarily
that of his employer?
So if the WaPo doesn't consider validity checking of sources to be part of its job, then that
raises the obvious question in this case: WHY the (insert expletive of your choice) did they take
this site with anonymous authors, sweeping allegations and no evidence of any kind, and choose
to make a featured story out of it? There are hundreds or thousands of other sites just like it
out there. Why PropOrNot, and not any of the others?
In other words, if (as they claim) the story boils down to "some anonymous people on the Internet
made some unsubstantiated claims which may or may not be accurate", why did they decide it was
newsworthy at all, let alone worthy of the kind of prominence they gave it?
They might actually get off the hook for libel on the grounds that the lack of fairness and
impartiality wasn't malicious intent but part of their core values.
Am I the only one who remembered an "Andrew Watts" commenting on NC? And wasn't Aug 21 the
date ProporCrap started? And isn't the exchange between 'Andrew Watts' and 'timbers' of interest
given the WaPo reporter's name is Timberg?
How hard would it be, really, for two or three people with some know-how to engage in discussion,
get replies from comments, trace/track those people. Even one person hacked (and I'm virtually
certain I was this summer) could provide a large number of sites visited or 'linked'.
And it seems to me as well I sent a story to Lambert (and I wrote to Lambert something like
"You mean this isn't real?") that I took to be a real WaPo story re a major wrinkle in the Clinton
scandals that was part of a story link I got from Global Research, a story which also had a paragraph
referenced from Breibart which I didn't notice until my comment wasn't posted, so I went back
and looked. I assumed the comment was rejected due to the Breibart (sp?) reference. But what if
WaPo/Watts were fishing at NC and saw my follow-up comment to Lambert with only the WaPo link
and my question (assuming it was posted, which I do not remember)?
I wonder if Snopes has asked to be removed from PropOrNot's list of "related projects."
I contacted them to find out if they were going to ask themselves to be removed from that list,
but I have not heard back from them. I guess we'll find out something about their reputability.
I have spent the better
part of the last 10 years working diligently to investigate and relate information on
economics and geopolitical discourse for the liberty movement. However, long before I
delved into these subjects my primary interests of study were the human mind and the
human "soul" (yes, I'm using a spiritual term).
My fascination with economics and sociopolitical events has always been rooted in the
human element.
That is to say, while economics is often treated as a
mathematical and statistical field, it is also driven by psychology.
To know
the behavior of man is to know the future of all his endeavors, good or evil.
Evil is what we are specifically here to discuss.
I have touched on
the issue in various articles in the past including
Are Globalists Evil Or Just Misunderstood
, but with extreme tensions taking shape
this year in light of the U.S. election as well as the exploding online community
investigation of "Pizzagate," I am compelled to examine it once again.
I will not be grappling with this issue from a particularly religious perspective.
Evil applies to everyone regardless of their belief system, or even their lack of
belief. Evil is secular in its influence.
The first and most important thing to understand is this - evil is NOT simply
a social or religious construct, it is an inherent element of the human psyche.
Carl Gustav Jung was one of the few psychologists in history to dare write extensively
on the issue of evil from a scientific perspective as well as a metaphysical
perspective. I highly recommend a book of his collected works on this subject titled
'Jung On Evil', edited by Murray Stein, for those who are interested in a deeper view.
To summarize, Jung found that much of the foundations of human behavior are rooted in
inborn psychological contents or "archetypes." Contrary to the position of Sigmund
Freud, Jung argued that while our environment may affect our behavior to a certain
extent, it does not make us who we are. Rather, we are born with our own individual
personality and grow into our inherent characteristics over time. Jung also found that
there are universally present elements of human psychology. That is to say, almost every
human being on the planet shares certain truths and certain natural predilections.
The concepts of good and evil, moral and immoral, are present in us from birth and
are mostly the same regardless of where we are born, what time in history we are born
and to what culture we are born. Good and evil are shared subjective experiences. It is
this observable psychological fact (among others) that leads me to believe in the idea
of a creative design - a god. Again, though, elaborating on god is beyond the scope of
this article.
To me, this should be rather comforting to people, even atheists. For if there is
observable evidence of creative design, then it would follow that there may every well
be a reason for all the trials and horrors that we experience as a species. Our lives,
our failures and our accomplishments are not random and meaningless. We are striving
toward something, whether we recognize it or not. It may be beyond our comprehension at
this time, but it is there.
Evil does not exist in a vacuum; with evil there is always good, if one looks
for it in the right places.
Most people are readily equipped to recognize evil when they see it
directly. What they are not equipped for and must learn from environment is how to
recognize evil disguised as righteousness.
The most heinous acts in
history are almost always presented as a moral obligation - a path towards some "greater
good." Inherent conscience, though, IS the greater good, and any ideology that steps
away from the boundaries of conscience will inevitably lead to disaster.
The concept of globalism is one of these ideologies that crosses the line of
conscience and pontificates to us about a "superior method" of living.
It
relies on taboo, rather than moral compass, and there is a big difference between the
two.
When we pursue a "greater good" as individuals or as a society, the means are just as
vital as the ends. The ends NEVER
justify the means. Never. For if we
abandon our core principles and commit atrocities in the name of "peace," safety or
survival, then we have forsaken the very things which make us worthy of peace and safety
and survival. A monster that devours in the name of peace is still a monster.
Globalism tells us that the collective is more important than the individual,
that the individual owes society a debt and that fealty to society in every respect is
the payment for that debt.
But inherent archetypes and conscience tell us
differently. They tell us that society is only ever as healthy as the individuals
within it, that society is only as free and vibrant as the participants. As the
individual is demeaned and enslaved, the collective crumbles into mediocrity.
Globalism also tells us that humanity's greatest potential cannot be reached without
collectivism and centralization. The assertion is that the more single-minded a society
is in its pursuits the more likely it is to effectively achieve its goals. To this end,
globalism seeks to erase all sovereignty. For now its proponents claim they only wish to
remove nations and borders from the social equation, but such collectivism never stops
there. Eventually, they will tell us that individualism represents another nefarious
"border" that prevents the group from becoming fully realized.
At the heart of collectivism is the idea that human beings are "blank
slates;" that we are born empty and are completely dependent on our environment in order
to learn what is right and wrong and how to be good people or good citizens. The
environment becomes the arbiter of decency, rather than conscience, and whoever controls
the environment, by extension, becomes god.
If the masses are convinced of this narrative then moral relativity is only a short
step away. It is the abandonment of inborn conscience that ultimately results in evil.
In my view, this is exactly why the so called "elites" are pressing for globalism in the
first place. Their end game is not just centralization of all power into a one world
edifice, but the suppression and eradication of conscience, and thus, all that is good.
To see where this leads we must look at the behaviors of the elites
themselves, which brings us to "Pizzagate."
The exposure by Wikileaks during the election cycle of what appear to be coded emails
sent between John Podesta and friends has created a burning undercurrent in the
alternative media. The emails consistently use odd and out of context "pizza"
references, and independent investigations have discovered a wide array connections
between political elites like Hillary Clinton and John Podesta to James Alefantis, the
owner of a pizza parlor in Washington D.C. called Comet Ping Pong. Alefantis, for
reasons that make little sense to me, is listed as number 49 on GQ's
Most Powerful People In Washington list
.
The assertion according to circumstantial evidence including the disturbing child and
cannibalism artwork collections of the Podestas has been that Comet Ping Pong is somehow
at the center of a child pedophilia network serving the politically connected. Both
Comet Ping Pong and a pizza establishment two doors down called Besta Pizza use symbols
in their logos and menus that are listed on the
FBI's
unclassified documentation on pedophilia symbolism
, which does not help matters.
Some of the best documentation of the Pizzagate scandal that I have seen so far has
been done by David Seaman, a former mainstream journalist gone rogue.
Here is his
YouTube page
.
I do recommend everyone at least look at the evidence he and others present. I went
into the issue rather skeptical, but was surprised by the sheer amount of weirdness and
evidence regarding Comet Pizza. There is a problem with Pizzagate that is difficult to
overcome, however; namely the fact that to my knowledge no victims have come forward.
This is not to say there has been no crime, but anyone hoping to convince the general
public of wrong-doing in this kind of scenario is going to have a very hard time without
a victim to reference.
The problem is doubly difficult now that an armed man was arrested on the premises of
Comet Ping Pong while "researching" the claims of child trafficking. Undoubtedly, the
mainstream media will declare the very investigation "dangerous conspiracy theory."
Whether this will persuade the public to ignore it, or compel them to look into it,
remains to be seen.
I fully realize the amount of confusion surrounding Pizzagate and the assertions by
some that it is a "pysop" designed to undermine the alternative media. This is a
foolish notion, in my view. The mainstream media is dying, this is unavoidable. The
alternative media is a network of sources based on the power of choice and cemented in
the concept of investigative research. The reader participates in the alternative media
by learning all available information and positions and deciding for himself what is the
most valid conclusion, if there is any conclusion to be had. The mainstream media
simply tells its readers what to think and feel based on cherry picked data.
The elites will never be able to deconstruct that kind of movement with something
like a faked "pizzagate"; rather, they would be more inclined to try to co-opt and
direct the alternative media as they do most institutions. And, if elitists are using
Pizzagate as fodder to trick the alternative media into looking ridiculous, then why
allow elitist run social media outlets like Facebook and Reddit to shut down discussion
on the issue?
The reason I am more convinced than skeptical at this stage is because this has
happened before; and in past scandals of pedophilia in Washington and other political
hotbeds, some victims DID come forward.
I would first reference the events of the Franklin Scandal between 1988 and 1991. The
Discovery Channel even produced a documentary on it complete with interviews of alleged
child victims peddled to Washington elites for the purpose of favors and blackmail.
Meant to air in 1994, the documentary was quashed before it was ever shown to the
public. The only reason it can now be found is because an original copy was released
without permission by parties unknown.
I would also reference the highly evidenced
Westminster Pedophile Ring in the U.K.
, in which the U.K. government lost or
destroyed at least 114 related files related to the investigation.
Finally, it is disconcerting to me that the criminal enterprises of former Bear
Sterns financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his "Lolita Express" are
mainstream knowledge, yet the public remains largely oblivious. Bill Clinton is
shown on flight logs
to have flown on Epstein's private jet at least a 26 times; the
same jet that he used to procure child victims as young as 12 to entertain celebrities
and billionaires on his 72 acre island called "Little Saint James". The fact that
Donald Trump was also close friends with Epstein should raise some eyebrows - funny how
the mainstream media attacked Trump on every cosmetic issue under the sun but for some
reason backed away from pursuing the Epstein angle.
Where is the vast federal investigation into the people who frequented Epstein's
wretched parties? There is none, and Epstein, though convicted of molesting a 14 year
old girl and selling her into prostitution, was only slapped on the wrist with a 13
month sentence.
Accusations of pedophilia seem to follow the globalists and elitist politicians
wherever they go. This does not surprise me. They often exhibit characteristics of
narcissism and psychopathy, but their ideology of moral relativity is what would lead to
such horrible crimes.
Evil often stems from people who are empty.
When one abandons
conscience, one also in many respects abandons empathy and love. Without these elements
of our psyche there is no happiness. Without them, there is nothing left but desire and
gluttony.
Narcissists in particular are prone to use other people as forms of
entertainment and fulfillment without concern for their humanity. They can be vicious
in nature, and when taken to the level of psychopathy, they are prone to target and
abuse the most helpless of victims in order to generate a feeling of personal power.
Add in sexual addiction and aggression and narcissists become predatory in the
extreme. Nothing ever truly satisfies them. When they grow tired of the normal, they
quickly turn to the abnormal and eventually the criminal. I would say that pedophilia
is a natural progression of the elitist mindset; for children are the easiest and most
innocent victim source, not to mention the most aberrant and forbidden, and thus the
most desirable for a psychopathic deviant embracing evil impulses.
Beyond this is the even more disturbing prospect of cultism.
It is
not that the globalists are simply evil as individuals; if that were the case then they
would present far less of a threat. The greater terror is that they are also organized.
When one confronts the problem of evil head on, one quickly realizes that evil is within
us all. There will always be an internal battle in every individual. Organized evil,
though, is in fact the ultimate danger, and it is organized evil that must be
eradicated.
For organized evil to be defeated, there must be organized good.
I believe the liberty movement in particular is that good; existing in early stages,
not yet complete, but good none the less. Our championing of the non-aggression
principle and individual liberty is conducive to respect for privacy, property and
life. Conscience is a core tenet of the liberty ideal, and the exact counter to
organized elitism based on moral relativity.
Recognize and take solace that though we live in dark times, and evil men
roam free, we are also here. We are the proper response to evil, and we have been placed
here at this time for a reason. Call it fate, call it destiny, call it coincidence, call
it god, call it whatever you want, but the answer to evil is us.
"Out of the temporary evil we are now compelled to commit will emerge the
good of an unshakable rule, which will restore the regular course of the
machinery of the national life, brought to naught by liberalism. The result
justifies the means. Let us, however, in our plans, direct our attention not
so much to what is good and moral as to what is necessary and useful."
I should also point out those alledgedly behind The Protocols
are not the people the article is referring ie: those people are
typically found in any liberal establishment.
A good article, but it fails to deliver on these key aspects of
the matter:
Everyone knows from the Godfather and its genre
that there is a connection between loyalty, criminality and
power: Once you witness someone engaging in a criminal act, you
have leverage over them and that ensures their loyalty. But what
follows from that - which healthy sane minds have trouble
contemplating - is that the greater the criminality the greater
the leverage, and that because murderous paedophilia places a
person utterly beyond any prospect of redemption in decent
society, there in NO GREATER LOYALTY than those desperate to
avoid being outed. These must be the three corners of the
triangle - Power:Loyalty:Depravity through which the evil eys
views the world.
I always beleived in an Illuminati of sorts, however they
care to self identify. Until Pizzagate, I never understood that
murderous paedophilia, luciferian in style to accentuate their
own depravity, is THE KEY TO RULING THE EARTH
And another thing. If pizzagate is 'fake news' then it it
inconceivably elaborate - they'd have had to fake Epstein 2008,
Silsby 2010, Breitbart 2011, the 2013 portugese release of
podestaesque mccann suspects, as well as the current run of
wikileaks and Alefantis' instagram account - which had an avatar
photo of the 13 yr old lover of a roman emperor.
Is that much fake news a possibility? Or has this smoke been
blowing for years and we've all been too distracted to stop and
look for fire?
What floors me about the whole pizzagate thing is the evil staring us
right in the face. And then to realize that the libtards don't even
believe in evil at all, only "mental illness"!
Lesson #1: Do not waste your time figuring some things out. Things like evil
people are probably beyond a decent persons ability to understand and let's be
honest I don't want to feel any sympathy for them anyway.
Read a book years ago by Dr. Karl Menninger, a psychiatrist, titled
'Whatever happened to Sin?'
In it he talks of murder and that it is not a natural thing for man to
do,. However, when the burden of guilt is spread over many shoulders and
government condones the action, it becomes easier to bear.
When observing the results, such as soldiers returning from war, unstable
mentally, it is evident that evil has occured. It has been decades since I
read the book, so the words I wrote may not be verbatim.
Lurked ZH for years, just started reading the comments. This is worse than
Reddit's echo chamber. Bible quotes? 3 guys 1 hammer on liveleak has more
productive comments. Why not mention methods you've used to help people reach
their own conclusion about Pizzagate?
I had two slices of pizza for dinner. I had to try not to think of the poor
children walking innocently about the store who may at any moment fall victim
to a pedo. My gf said pizza places all over now need to keep a keen eye out for
the Posdesta Brothers and their Gang after all the stuff that has come out from
WikiLeaks and other sources about them.
The bible says God created evil and loosed it on us. The correct reading of
Genesis 4;1 is from the dead sea scrolls stating :
"And Adam knew his
wife Eve,
who was pregnant by Sammael [Satan]
, and she conceived and
bare Cain,
and he was like the heavenly beings, and not like earthly
beings,
and
she
said, I have gotten a man from
the angel of
the Lord."
So in Isaiah 45:7 we have this:
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the
LORD do all these
things
.
So my research shows evil was "grafted" into humans through
the unholy alliance and 2 seedline of people resulted.
Good article but an exception: evil doesn't reside in all of us, sin does.
Evil is the expression of wanton and intentional deception, injury,
degradation, and destruction and rarely self-recognizes or admits to God as
supreme. It may be DNA encoded. Sociopathy certainly is.
But you're so
right about the organized nature of it all, and for thousands of years. The
newly formed EU didn't advertise itself as the New Babylonia for nothing on
publicty posters, heralding the coming age of one tongue out of many and
fashioning its parliament building after the Tower of Bablyon:
Secret societies are cannibalizing us, and themselves, but members won't
know till it's too late that they'll also be eaten fairly early on. Of all
"people", they should know those in the pyramid capstone won't have enough
elbow room if they let in every Tom, Dick and Harry Mason.
I am sympatico with Brandon. I have always had similar interests, about the
soul, about ethics, about human behavior.
The reality is that evil is extant
in other human beings. The thought that your property manager is going to piss
in your OJ or fuck their BFF in your bed is abhorrent to most people, but not
all. There was an article this week about a married couple that had concerns
about their rental unit manager. And what did they find? He was fucking his BFF
(yes, of course it was another dude) in their bed. The good news is they got it
on video and moved. The bad news? This kind of attitude is rampant. People
don't give a shit about other people. They think the rules don't apply to them.
That they are special. The result is renting from some asshat that fucks in
your bed or pisses in your OJ. Or parents that wonder why little Johnny or
little Janie never move out of the house and are stoned and play video games
all day.
Evil exists, in varying forms. Sadly too many people continue to make
excuses for not only bad behavior but evil behavior. I don't think that way and
I don't live my life that way but I am fully aware of all the morons stumbling
through the world that do.
I think people are misunderstanding the setup theory. Nobody believes, at
least I hope not, that all of this art and bizarre behavior on the part of
these freaks was staged for the purposes of taking down the last of our free
media, but rather, they just took advantage of a situation where they knew
people were making accusations that couldn't be sufficiently backed up or even
prosecuted, and yet caused proven or contrived damages to people. If this is
the case, their intention,
with the help of intelligence agencies
, is
to frame alt-media for starting vigilante violence and the destruction of
innocent people's lives through promoting defamation against others.
I have
no doubt that our entire system is riddled with pedophilia and likely much
worse. They have also been getting away with this forever, so when we go for
the takedown we better have our ducks in a row. To do otherwise will just give
these sickos complete immunity and more decades will pass with them continuing
to prey on our children. Not only is this at stake but the fate of all the
children of this nation is at stake if we lose our media. We are in very
dangerous and treacherous times. When you go toe to toe with the professional
trade crafters you have to play smart or they will have you every time.
Once people have had enough exposure to NPDs or psychopaths you will vibe
them after a while. I imagine this is likely the case for anyone who has
worked as a trader, finance, politics, big commodity booms are bad, etc. We
have all encountered them somewhere. People should pay attention to how they
feel (yeah I know, people hate that word) when they are around people. I have
to pretend that I don't notice them because it is so apparent to me and
immediately.
The last time I picked one out at work, a few months later the creepy
bastard walked past me at night during a -20 blizzard, with next to no
visibility, knowing that I had an hour drive, and told me in super spooky
whisper.. "Don't hit a deer on your way home now." I found out later that a
bunch of horses had mysteriously died in his care and a bunch of other things
that confirmed my suspicions. I had a long battle with him so I eventually got
to understand him pretty well. I didn't have to hear the guy state a single
sentence or watch any body language, I just knew immediately because I could
feel his malevolence and threat in my stomach where we have a large nerve
cluster. Pay attention and you will know. Also their eye contact is all wrong
and too intense.
Globalism, is designed to make you poorer slowly over decades by allowing wages
and conditions to be for ever slowly reduced under the guise of free market
competition to funnel wealth ever upwards to the 1%.
"... One of the sites PropOrNot cited as Russian-influenced was the Drudge Report. ..."
"... The piece's description of some sharers of bogus news as "useful idiots" could " theoretically include anyone on any social-media platform who shares news based on a click-bait headline ," Mathew Ingram wrote for Fortune. ..."
"... But the biggest issue was PropOrNot itself. As Adrian Chen wrote for the New Yorker , its methods were themselves suspect, hinting at counter-Russian propaganda - ostensibly with Ukrainian origins - and verification of its work was nearly impossible. Chen wrote "the prospect of legitimate dissenting voices being labeled fake news or Russian propaganda by mysterious groups of ex-government employees, with the help of a national newspaper, is even scarier." ..."
"... Now, at least, the "national newspaper" has taken some responsibility, however the key question remains: by admitting it never vetted its primary source, whose biased and conflicted "work" smeared hundreds of websites, this one included, just how is the Washington Post any different from the "fake news" it has been deriding on a daily basis ever since its endorsed presidential candidate lost the elections? ..."
In the latest example why the "mainstream media" is facing a historic crisis of confidence among
its readership, facing unprecedented blowback following Craig Timberg November 24 Washington Post
story "
Russian propaganda effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say ", on Wednesday
a lengthy editor's note appeared on top of the original article in which the editor not only distances
the WaPo from the "experts" quoted in the original article whose "work" served as the basis for the
entire article (and which became the most read WaPo story the day it was published) but also admits
the Post could not " vouch for the validity of PropOrNot's finding regarding any individual media
outlet", in effect admitting the entire story may have been, drumroll "fake news" and conceding the
Bezos-owned publication may have engaged in defamation by smearing numerous websites - Zero Hedge
included - with patently false and unsubstantiated allegations.
It was the closest the Washington Post would come to formally retracting the story, which has
now been thoroughly discredited not only by outside commentators, but by its own editor.
Editor's Note: The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four
sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine
American democracy and interests. One of them was PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity,
which issued a report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly or unwittingly
published or echoed Russian propaganda. A number of those sites have objected to being included
on PropOrNot's list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged
the group's methodology and conclusions. The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not
itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot's findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor
did the article purport to do so. Since publication of The Post's story, PropOrNot has removed
some sites from its list.
As The
Washingtonian notes , the implicit concession follows intense and rising criticism of the article
over the past two weeks. It was "
rife with obviously reckless and unproven allegations, " Intercept reporters Glenn Greenwald
and Ben Norton wrote, noting that PropOrNot, one of the groups whose research was cited in Timberg's
piece, "anonymous cowards." One of the sites PropOrNot cited as Russian-influenced was the Drudge
Report.
But the biggest issue was PropOrNot itself. As Adrian Chen
wrote for the New Yorker , its methods were themselves suspect, hinting at counter-Russian propaganda
- ostensibly with Ukrainian origins - and verification of its work was nearly impossible. Chen wrote
"the prospect of legitimate dissenting voices being labeled fake news or Russian propaganda by mysterious
groups of ex-government employees, with the help of a national newspaper, is even scarier."
Now, at least, the "national newspaper" has taken some responsibility, however the key question
remains: by admitting it never vetted its primary source, whose biased and conflicted "work" smeared
hundreds of websites, this one included, just how is the Washington Post any different from the "fake
news" it has been deriding on a daily basis ever since its endorsed presidential candidate lost the
elections?
The authors seems to miss the key observation: this is a sign of the crisis of neoliberal propaganda
model, which gave rise to Internet rumor mill. Rumor s (aka improvised news) became a prominent news
source if and only if official channels of information are not viewed as trustworthy. And blacklisting
alternative news sites does not help to return the trust. When it is gone it is gone. The same situation
in the past happened in Brezhnev's USSR. People just stopped to trust official newspapers and turned
to propaganda sites of Western =government such as BBC and voice of America for news. Soviet authorities
tried to jam them, but this did not stop Soviet people from trying to listen to then at nights, trying
to find frequencies that were not jammed.
Notable quotes:
"... Basically, everyone who isn't comfortably within the centrist Hillary Clinton/Jeb Bush spectrum is guilty. On its Twitter account, the group announced a new "plugin" that automatically alerts the user that a visited website has been designated by the group to be a Russian propaganda outlet. ..."
"... The group commits outright defamation by slandering obviously legitimate news sites as propaganda tools of the Kremlin. ..."
"... a big part of the group's definition for "Russian propaganda outlet" is criticizing U.S. foreign policy ..."
"... In sum: They're not McCarthyite; perish the thought. They just want multiple U.S. media outlets investigated by the FBI for espionage on behalf of Russia. ..."
"... PropOrNot is by no means a neutral observer. It actively calls on Congress and the White House to work "with our European allies to disconnect Russia from the SWIFT financial transaction system, effective immediately and lasting for at least one year, as an appropriate response to Russian manipulation of the election." ..."
"... In other words, this blacklisting group of anonymous cowards - putative experts in the pages of the Washington Post - is actively pushing for Western governments to take punitive measures against the Russian government and is speaking and smearing from an extreme ideological framework that the Post concealed from its readers. ..."
"... The Post itself - now posing as a warrior against "fake news" - published an article in September that treated with great seriousness the claim that Hillary Clinton collapsed on 9/11 Day because she was poisoned by Putin. ..."
"... Indeed, what happened here is the essence of fake news. The Post story served the agendas of many factions: those who want to believe Putin stole the election from Hillary Clinton; those who want to believe that the internet and social media are a grave menace that needs to be controlled, in contrast to the objective truth that reliable old media outlets once issued; those who want a resurrection of the Cold War. ..."
"... So those who saw tweets and Facebook posts promoting this Post story instantly clicked and shared and promoted the story without an iota of critical thought or examination of whether the claims were true, because they wanted the claims to be true. That behavior included countless journalists. ..."
One of the core functions of PropOrNot appears to be its compilation of a lengthy blacklist of
news and political websites that it smears as peddlers of "Russian propaganda." Included on this
blacklist of supposed propaganda outlets are prominent independent left-wing news sites such as Truthout,
Naked Capitalism, Black Agenda Report, Consortium News, and Truthdig.
Also included are popular libertarian hubs such as Zero Hedge, Antiwar.com, and the Ron Paul Institute,
along with the hugely influential right-wing website the Drudge Report and the publishing site WikiLeaks.
Far-right, virulently anti-Muslim blogs such as Bare Naked Islam are likewise dubbed Kremlin mouthpieces.
Basically, everyone who isn't comfortably within the centrist Hillary Clinton/Jeb Bush spectrum
is guilty. On its Twitter account, the group announced a new "plugin" that automatically alerts the
user that a visited website has been designated by the group to be a Russian propaganda outlet.
... ... ...
The group commits outright defamation by slandering obviously legitimate news sites as propaganda
tools of the Kremlin.
The group eschews alternative media outlets like these and instead recommends that readers rely
solely on establishment-friendly publications like NPR, the BBC, the New York Times, the Wall Street
Journal, the Washington Post, BuzzFeed, and VICE. That is becausea big part of
the group's definition for "Russian propaganda outlet" is criticizing U.S. foreign policy.
... ... ...
While blacklisting left-wing and libertarian journalists, PropOrNot also denies being McCarthyite.
Yet it simultaneously calls for the U.S. government to use the FBI and DOJ to carry out "formal investigations"
of these accused websites, "because the kind of folks who make propaganda for brutal authoritarian
oligarchies are often involved in a wide range of bad business." The shadowy group even goes so far
as to claim that people involved in the blacklisted websites may "have violated the Espionage Act,
the Foreign Agent Registration Act, and other related laws."
In sum: They're not McCarthyite; perish the thought. They just want multiple U.S. media outlets
investigated by the FBI for espionage on behalf of Russia.
... ... ...
PropOrNot is by no means a neutral observer. It actively calls on Congress and the White House
to work "with our European allies to disconnect Russia from the SWIFT financial transaction system,
effective immediately and lasting for at least one year, as an appropriate response to Russian manipulation
of the election."
In other words, this blacklisting group of anonymous cowards - putative experts in the pages
of the Washington Post - is actively pushing for Western governments to take punitive measures against
the Russian government and is speaking and smearing from an extreme ideological framework that the
Post concealed from its readers.
... ... ...
The Post itself - now posing as a warrior against "fake news" - published an article in September
that treated with great seriousness the claim that Hillary Clinton collapsed on 9/11 Day because
she was poisoned by Putin. And that's to say nothing of the paper's disgraceful history of convincing
Americans that Saddam was building non-existent nuclear weapons and had cultivated a vibrant alliance
with al Qaeda. As is so often the case, those who mostly loudly warn of "fake news" from others are
themselves the most aggressive disseminators of it.
Indeed, what happened here is the essence of fake news. The Post story served the agendas
of many factions: those who want to believe Putin stole the election from Hillary Clinton; those
who want to believe that the internet and social media are a grave menace that needs to be controlled,
in contrast to the objective truth that reliable old media outlets once issued; those who want a
resurrection of the Cold War.
So those who saw tweets and Facebook posts promoting this Post story instantly clicked and
shared and promoted the story without an iota of critical thought or examination of whether the claims
were true, because they wanted the claims to be true. That behavior included countless journalists.
"... When the narratives will become completely obsolete and incapable to persuade, except only a slightest minority, the fake democracy will become an open, brutal dictatorship. ..."
"... Many still wonder if the planet indeed slips towards a new Cold War. Despite that there is plenty of evidence that this is, unfortunately, already a fact, another incident came to verify this situation. ..."
"... The Western neoliberal establishment is exposed, revealing its real agenda: to challenge the alternative bloc driven by the Sino-Russian alliance. The 'democratic' Europe proceeded in a similar, unprecedented move recently. As reported by RT: "In a completely bonkers move this week, the EU Parliament approved a resolution to counter "Russian propaganda" and the "intrusion of Russian media" into the EU. The resolution was adopted with 304 MEPs voting in favor, 179 MEPs voting against it and 208 abstaining. The most bizarre part, however, is that the resolution lumped Russian media in with Islamist propaganda of the kind spread by terror groups like the so-called Islamic State. Thus Russian media is put on the same level with videos of ISIS beheadings and incitements to mass murder." ..."
"... In Cold War 2.0, the Western neoliberal establishment is forced to create the respective McCarthyism. Therefore, the new dogma has changed accordingly. It doesn't matter if an alternative medium provides a different view, away from the mainstream media propaganda. It doesn't matter if the Whistleblowers are telling the truth about the US dirty wars and mass surveillance of ordinary citizens. As long as the US empire and its allies are exposed by all these elements outside their Matrix control, these elements help Russia, therefore, they are doing 'Russian propaganda'. It's as simple as that. ..."
"... When the narratives will become completely obsolete and incapable to persuade, except only a slightest minority, the fake democracy will become an open, brutal dictatorship. ..."
Key insight:
When the narratives will become
completely obsolete and incapable to persuade, except only a slightest minority, the fake democracy
will become an open, brutal dictatorship.
When the narratives will become completely obsolete and incapable to persuade, except only a slightest
minority, the fake democracy will become an open, brutal dictatorship.
Many still wonder if the planet indeed slips towards a new Cold War. Despite that there is plenty
of evidence that this is, unfortunately, already a fact, another incident came to verify this situation.
The blacklist created by PropOrNot and provided to Washington Post, containing more than 200 websites
that are supposedly doing 'Russian propaganda', marks the start of a new McCarthyism era and verifies
beyond doubt the fact that we have indeed entered the Cold War 2.0.
Seeing that it's losing the battle of information, the establishment simply proceeded in one more
clumsy move that will only accelerate developments against it.
It really sounds like a joke to accuse anyone who opposes the US dirty wars and interventions
that brought so much chaos and distraction, for doing 'Russian propaganda', when you are the one
who supported and justified these wars through the most offensive propaganda, for decades.
Someone has to tell the mainstream media parrots that their dirty tricks don't work anymore. According
to a Gallup latest report, "Americans' trust and confidence in the mass media "to report the news
fully, accurately and fairly" has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history, with 32%
saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media. This is down eight percentage
points from last year."
The mainstream mouthpieces are extremely predictable. They will rush to blame internet and alternative
media that flourished over the last fifteen years, for this unprecedented situation. Of course they
will. They don't want any alternative to their propaganda monopoly which was extremely effective
in guiding the sheeple during the past decades.
The Western neoliberal establishment is exposed, revealing its real agenda: to challenge the alternative
bloc driven by the Sino-Russian alliance. The 'democratic' Europe proceeded in a similar, unprecedented
move recently. As reported by RT: "In a completely bonkers move this week, the EU Parliament approved
a resolution to counter "Russian propaganda" and the "intrusion of Russian media" into the EU. The
resolution was adopted with 304 MEPs voting in favor, 179 MEPs voting against it and 208 abstaining.
The most bizarre part, however, is that the resolution lumped Russian media in with Islamist propaganda
of the kind spread by terror groups like the so-called Islamic State. Thus Russian media is put on
the same level with videos of ISIS beheadings and incitements to mass murder."
It has been mentioned in previous article that "While the EU and US were occupied with the war
against terrorism as well as with the dead-end wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas of the planet,
Putin had all the time to build his own mechanism against Western propaganda. Being himself a man
who had come to power with the help of media, he built his own media network which includes, for
example, the TV network Russia Today, according to the Western standards, and "invaded" in millions
of homes in the Western countries using the English language, promoting however the Russian positions
as counterweight to the Western propaganda monopoly."
In Cold War 2.0, the Western neoliberal establishment is forced to create the respective McCarthyism.
Therefore, the new dogma has changed accordingly. It doesn't matter if an alternative medium provides
a different view, away from the mainstream media propaganda. It doesn't matter if the Whistleblowers
are telling the truth about the US dirty wars and mass surveillance of ordinary citizens. As long
as the US empire and its allies are exposed by all these elements outside their Matrix control, these
elements help Russia, therefore, they are doing 'Russian propaganda'. It's as simple as that.
This latest desperate move of the establishment should alarm us all. Because it shows that the
establishment is in panic and therefore, more dangerous than ever.
When the narratives will become
completely obsolete and incapable to persuade, except only a slightest minority, the fake democracy
will become an open, brutal dictatorship.
"... "Smearing is not reporting," the RootsAction petition says. "The Washington Post 's recent descent into McCarthyism - promoting anonymous and shoddy claims that a vast range of some 200 websites are all accomplices or tools of the Russian government - violates basic journalistic standards and does real harm to democratic discourse in our country. We urge the Washington Post to prominently retract the article and apologize for publishing it." ..."
"... For one thing, PropOrNot wasn't just another source for the Post 's story. As The New Yorker noted in a devastating article on Dec. 1, the story "prominently cited the PropOrNot research." The Post 's account "had the force of revelation, thanks in large part to the apparent scientific authority of PropOrNot's work: the group released a 32-page report detailing its methodology, and named names with its list of 200 suspect news outlets . But a close look at the report showed that it was a mess." ..."
"... As The New Yorker pointed out, PropOrNot's criteria for incriminating content were broad enough to include "nearly every news outlet in the world, including the Post itself." Yet "The List" is not a random list by any means - it's a targeted mish-mash, naming websites that are not within shouting distance of the U.S. corporate and foreign policy establishment. ..."
"... As The New Yorker 's writer Adrian Chen put it: "To PropOrNot, simply exhibiting a pattern of beliefs outside the political mainstream is enough to risk being labeled a Russian propagandist." And he concluded: "Despite the impressive-looking diagrams and figures in its report, PropOrNot's findings rest largely on innuendo and conspiracy thinking." ..."
"... As much as the Post news management might want to weasel out of the comparison, the parallels to the advent of the McCarthy Era are chilling. For instance, the Red Channels list, with 151 names on it, was successful as a weapon against dissent and free speech in large part because, early on, so many media outlets of the day actively aided and abetted blacklisting, as the Post has done for "The List." ..."
"... Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wisconsin, who led the "Red Scare" hearings of the 1950s. ..."
"... So far The New Yorker has been the largest media outlet to directly confront the Post 's egregious story. Cogent assessments can also be found at The Intercept , Consortium News , Common Dreams , AlterNet , Rolling Stone , Fortune , CounterPunch , The Nation and numerous other sites. ..."
"... But many mainline journalists and outlets jumped at the chance to amplify the Post 's piece of work. A sampling of the cheers from prominent journalists and liberal partisans was published by FAIR.org under the apt headline " Why Are Media Outlets Still Citing Discredited 'Fake News' Blacklist? " ..."
"... When liberals have green-lighted a witch-hunt, right wingers have been pleased to run with it. President Harry Truman issued an executive order in March 1947 to establish "loyalty" investigations in every agency of the federal government. Joe McCarthy and the era named after him were soon to follow. ..."
After publishing a McCarthyistic "black list" that smears some 200 Web sites as "Russian propagandists,"
The Washington Post refuses to apologize - and other mainstream media outlets pile on, writes
Norman Solomon.
We still don't have any sort of apology or retraction from the Washington Post for
promoting "The List" - the highly dangerous blacklist that got a huge boost from the newspaper's
fawning coverage on Nov. 24. The project of smearing 200 websites with one broad brush wouldn't
have gotten far without the avid complicity of high-profile media outlets, starting with the
Post .
On Thursday - a week after the Post published its front-page news
article hyping the blacklist that was put out by a group of unidentified people called PropOrNot
- I sent a petition statement to the newspaper's executive editor Martin Baron.
The Washington Post building in downtown Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Washington Post)
"Smearing is not reporting," the RootsAction
petition says. "The Washington Post 's recent descent into McCarthyism - promoting
anonymous and shoddy claims that a vast range of some 200 websites are all accomplices or tools
of the Russian government - violates basic journalistic standards and does real harm to democratic
discourse in our country. We urge the Washington Post to prominently retract the article
and apologize for publishing it."
After mentioning that 6,000 people had signed the petition (the number has doubled since then),
my email to Baron added: "If you skim through the comments that many of the signers added to the
petition online, I think you might find them to be of interest. I wonder if you see a basis for
dialogue on the issues raised by critics of the Post piece in question."
The reply came from the newspaper's vice president for public relations, Kristine Coratti Kelly,
who thanked me "for reaching out to us" before presenting the Post 's response, quoted
here in full:
"The Post reported on the work of four separate sets of researchers, as well as independent
experts, who have examined Russian attempts to influence American democracy. PropOrNot was one.
The Post did not name any of the sites on PropOrNot's list of organizations that it said
had - wittingly or unwittingly - published or echoed Russian propaganda. The Post reviewed
PropOrNot's findings and our questions about them were answered satisfactorily during the course
of multiple interviews."
Full of Holes
But that damage-control response was as full of holes as the news story it tried to defend.
For one thing, PropOrNot wasn't just another source for the Post 's story. As
The New Yorker noted in a
devastating article on Dec. 1, the story "prominently cited the PropOrNot research." The
Post 's account "had the force of revelation, thanks in large part to the apparent scientific
authority of PropOrNot's work: the group released a 32-page report detailing its methodology,
and named names with its list of 200 suspect news outlets . But a close look at the report showed
that it was a mess."
Contrary to the PR message from the Post vice president, PropOrNot did not merely
say that the sites on its list had "published or echoed Russian propaganda." Without a word of
the slightest doubt or skepticism in the entire story, the Post summarized PropOrNot's
characterization of all the websites on its list as falling into two categories: "Some players
in this online echo chamber were knowingly part of the propaganda campaign, the researchers concluded,
while others were 'useful idiots' - a term born of the Cold War to describe people or institutions
that unknowingly assisted Soviet Union propaganda efforts."
As The New Yorker pointed out, PropOrNot's criteria for incriminating content were
broad enough to include "nearly every news outlet in the world, including the Post
itself."
Yet "The List" is not a random list by any means - it's a targeted mish-mash, naming websites
that are not within shouting distance of the U.S. corporate and foreign policy establishment.
And so the list includes a few overtly Russian-funded outlets; some other sites generally aligned
with Kremlin outlooks; many pro-Trump sites, often unacquainted with what it means to be factual
and sometimes overtly racist; and other websites that are quite different - solid, factual, reasonable
- but too progressive or too anti-capitalist or too libertarian or too right-wing or just plain
too independent-minded for the evident tastes of whoever is behind PropOrNot.
As The New Yorker 's writer Adrian Chen put it: "To PropOrNot, simply exhibiting a
pattern of beliefs outside the political mainstream is enough to risk being labeled a Russian
propagandist." And he concluded: "Despite the impressive-looking diagrams and figures in its report,
PropOrNot's findings rest largely on innuendo and conspiracy thinking."
As for the Post vice president's defensive phrasing that "the Post did not
name any of the sites on PropOrNot's list," the fact is that the Post unequivocally promoted
PropOrNot, driving web traffic to its site and adding a hotlink to the anonymous group's 32-page
report soon after the newspaper's story first appeared. As I mentioned in my reply to her: "Unfortunately,
it's kind of like a newspaper saying that it didn't name any of the people on the Red Channels
blacklist in 1950 while promoting it in news coverage, so no problem."
Pushing McCarthyism
As much as the Post news management might want to weasel out of the comparison, the
parallels to the advent of the McCarthy Era are chilling. For instance, the Red Channels
list, with 151 names on it, was successful as a weapon against dissent and free speech in
large part because, early on, so many media outlets of the day actively aided and abetted blacklisting,
as the Post has done for "The List."
Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wisconsin, who led the "Red Scare" hearings of the 1950s.
Consider how the Post story described the personnel of PropOrNot in favorable terms
even while hiding all of their identities and thus shielding them from any scrutiny - calling
them "a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds."
But many mainline journalists and outlets jumped at the chance to amplify the Post
's piece of work. A sampling of the cheers from prominent journalists and liberal partisans was
published by FAIR.org under the apt headline "
Why Are Media Outlets Still Citing Discredited 'Fake News' Blacklist? "
FAIR's media analyst Adam Johnson cited enthusiastic responses to the bogus story from journalists
like Bloomberg's
Sahil Kupar
and MSNBC's
Joy Reid
- and such outlets as
USA Today ,
Gizmodo , the
PBS NewsHour ,
The Daily Beast ,
Slate ,
AP ,
The Verge and
NPR , which "all uncritically wrote up the Post 's most incendiary claims with little
or minimal pushback." On the MSNBC site, the Rachel Maddow Show's
blog "added another breathless write-up hours later, repeating the catchy talking point that
'it was like Russia was running a super PAC for Trump's campaign.'"
With so many people understandably upset about Trump's victory, there's an evident attraction
to blaming the Kremlin, a convenient scapegoat for Hillary Clinton's loss. But the Post
's blacklisting story and the media's amplification of it - and the overall political environment
that it helps to create - are all building blocks for a reactionary order, threatening the First
Amendment and a range of civil liberties.
When liberals have green-lighted a witch-hunt, right wingers have been pleased to run with
it. President Harry Truman issued an executive order in March 1947 to establish "loyalty" investigations
in every agency of the federal government. Joe McCarthy and the era named after him were soon
to follow.
In media and government, the journalists and officials who enable blacklisting are cravenly
siding with conformity instead of democracy.
Norman Solomon is co-founder of the online activist group RootsAction.org. His books include War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He is the executive
director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.
This idea of casting dissidents as Russian Agent is directly from McCarthy play book.
And paradoxically resembles the practive of the USSR in which dissdents were demonized as "Agent
of the Western powers." The trick is a immanent part of any war propaganda efforts. So it is clear
the Cold War II had started...
Notable quotes:
"... As George Orwell predicted, telling the truth is now regarded by Western "democratic" governments as a hostile act. A brand new website, propornot.com, has just made its appearance condemning a list of 200 Internet websites that provide news and views at variance with the presstitute media that serves the governments' agendas . Does propornot.com's funding come from the CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy, or George Soros? ..."
"... In the West those who disagree with the murderous and reckless policies of public officials are demonized as "Russian agents." ..."
"... The presstitute Washington Post played its assigned role in the claim promoted by Washington that the alternative media consists of Russian agents. Craig Timberg, who appears devoid of integrity or intelligence, and perhaps both, is the WaPo stooge who reported the fake news that "two teams of independent researchers" - none of whom are identified - found that the Russians exploited my gullibility, that of CounterPunch, Professor Michel Chossudosky of Global Researh, Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, Justin Raimondo and that of 194 other websites to help "an insurgent candidate" (Trump) "claim the White House." ..."
"... Note the term applied to Trump - "insurgent candidate." That tells you all you need to know. ..."
"... Western governments are running out of excuses. Since the Clinton regime, the accumulation of war crimes committed by Western governments exceed those of Nazi Germany. Millions of Muslims have been slaughtered, dislocated, and dispossessed in seven countries. Not a single Western war criminal has been held accountable. ..."
"... The despicable Washington Post is a prime apologist for these war criminals. The entire Western print and TV media is so heavily implicated in the worst war crimes in human history that, if justice ever happens, the presstitutes will stand in the dock with the Clintons, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Obama and their neocon operatives or handlers as the case may be. ..."
The "war on terror" has simultaneously been a war on truth. For fifteen years-from 9/11 to Saddam
Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction" and "al Qaeda connections," "Iranian nukes," "Assad's use
of chemical weapons," endless lies about Gadaffi, "Russian invasion of Ukraine"-the governments of
the so-called Western democracies have found it essential to align themselves firmly with lies in
order to pursue their agendas. Now these Western governments are attempting to discredit the truthtellers
who challenge their lies.
Russian news services are under attack from the EU and Western presstitutes as purveyors of
"fake news" . Abiding by its Washington master's orders, the EU actually passed a resolution
against Russian media for not following Washington's line. Russian President Putin said that the
resolution is a "visible sign of degradation of Western society's idea of democracy."
As George Orwell predicted, telling the truth is now regarded by Western "democratic" governments
as a hostile act. A brand new website, propornot.com, has just made its appearance condemning a list
of 200 Internet websites that provide news and views at variance with the presstitute media that
serves the governments' agendas
. Does propornot.com's funding come from the CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy, or George
Soros?
I am proud to say that paulcraigroberts.org is on the list.
What we see here is the West adopting Zionist Israel's way of dealing with critics. Anyone who
objects to Israel's cruel and inhuman treatment of Palestinians is demonized as "anti-semitic."
In the West those who disagree with the murderous and reckless policies of public officials are demonized
as "Russian agents." The president-elect of the United States himself has been designated a
"Russian agent."
This scheme to redefine truthtellers as propagandists has backfired. The effort to discredit truthtellers
has instead produced a catalogue of websites where reliable information can be found, and readers
are flocking to the sites on the list. Moreover, the effort to discredit truthtellers shows that
Western governments and their presstitutes are intolerant of truth and diverse opinion and are committed
to forcing people to accept self-serving government lies as truth.
Clearly, Western governments and Western media have no respect for truth, so how can the West
possibly be democratic?
The presstitute Washington Post played its assigned role in the claim promoted by Washington
that the alternative media consists of Russian agents. Craig Timberg, who appears devoid of integrity
or intelligence, and perhaps both, is the WaPo stooge who reported the fake news that "two teams
of independent researchers" - none of whom are identified - found that the Russians exploited my
gullibility, that of CounterPunch, Professor Michel Chossudosky of Global Researh, Ron Paul, Lew
Rockwell, Justin Raimondo and that of 194 other websites to help "an insurgent candidate" (Trump)
"claim the White House."
Note the term applied to Trump - "insurgent candidate." That tells you all you need to know.
You can read here what passes as "reliable reporting" in the presstitute
Washington Post .
Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, which somehow escaped inclusion in The 200, unloads on Timberg
and the Washington Post
here .
Western governments are running out of excuses. Since the Clinton regime, the accumulation
of war crimes committed by Western governments exceed those of Nazi Germany. Millions of Muslims
have been slaughtered, dislocated, and dispossessed in seven countries. Not a single Western war
criminal has been held accountable.
The despicable Washington Post is a prime apologist for these war criminals. The entire Western
print and TV media is so heavily implicated in the worst war crimes in human history that, if justice
ever happens, the presstitutes will stand in the dock with the Clintons, George W. Bush and Dick
Cheney, Obama and their neocon operatives or handlers as the case may be.
Which purveys more "fake news" - RT.com on the one hand, or Fox News, MSNBC and CNN on the other?
I asked that question on reddit and my post was deleted.
"... The motive is there (discredit competition), the evidence is there per the above, the legal standing is explicit, the only thing that is technically unquantifiable is the damage done. ..."
"... Both Firefox and Chrome have added the option to open in a "private" or "incognito" window or tab, which also gets you around the monthly limit. ..."
"... What NYT/WaPo lose in people not paying to read, they apparently can make up from people willing to pay to have things published. ..."
"... 'The man' who shot one round into the floor* at Comet Pizza may be an actor, Edgar Maddison Welch, who has done various jobs in media, including playing a "raver/victim". ..."
"... Yves, I would very much question your description of The Washington Post being " taken for a ride." over this story. ..."
"... It's worth pointing out that the newspapers owner Jeff Bezos was hired by the Secretary of Defense to a rather sinister sounding organisation called the " Defense Innovation Advisory Board " in July. The Boards mission statement is to .."focus on new technologies and organizational behavior and culture." Also, in addition "identify innovative private-sector practices, and technological solutions that the DoD could employ in the future." ..."
"... In short, Bezos, and his companies are now part of the MIC. I believe Googles CEO is also on the same board. ..."
"... Am I supposed to accept then that the Washington Post really thinks that the work of PropOrNot is honestly and objectively carried out? I can't. ..."
"... Dan Rather was put in an impossible position by supporters of GW Bush, despite the accuracy of the accusation. In this case, instead, the Post intentionally credits accusations for which it can offer no support (or at least declines to do so). I'll conclude that the Post acted maliciously and spitefully, as in slander, until it gives me reason to think otherwise. No person or media outlet can disseminate such shocking and potentially damaging accusations without our demanding accountability. ..."
"... If you read section 501 of this year's intelligence authorization bill, it directs the President to set up an interagency committee to 'counter active measures by Russia to exert covert influence over peoples and governments.' So that shows you that senators from both parties are clearly concerned about Russian covert influence efforts. ..."
"... "Never assume malice when incompetence will explain the behavior." unless a lengthy history of errors having the same bias suggests otherwise. ..."
"... I've been a lifelong journalist, 10 years on a daily newspaper, 20 years freelancing for magazines. The Wapo story so blatantly violated fundamental journalistic standards I cannot believe any experienced editor would not have realized that. My only possible conclusion is that irresistible pressure was placed on editors to publish the story. ..."
"... You fake a document that contains the truth. When you discredit the document, you discredit the truth. Maneuvers like that show why Karl Rove really was (in his own special way) a genius. ..."
"... I followed the Bush Texas Air National Guard story in detail at the time, and the Rather story in particular, and posted on it a good deal. So far as I know, nobody ever claimed the $10,000 reward that Gary Trudeau offered for anybody who would come forward as an eye witness to Bush performing his TANG duties. ..."
"... Your comment is heavy on speculation including the notion that Bezos is directly controlling what goes into the Post. I'd say the tight little club that is mainstream journalism doesn't require government subversion in order to represent a MIC point of view. As Gore Vidal said re the deep state: they don't need to conspire since they all think alike anyway. ..."
"... With all due respect it isn't speculation that Bezos has been hired by the secretary of defence to the Defence innovation advisory board. I think you have to be very naive if you think he has little input into the editorial running of the paper. Why else buy a newspaper these days? They hardly make much money. ..."
"... The British Guardian for example has been running articles and pushing a campaign of "The Internet we want." Which seems to consist of all critiscms of what it believes being censored. ..."
"... As to Yves point about the amateur nature of this list, and the attack on sites like NC in the article, Yves shouldn't assume that all these people are geniuses. It won't be the first or the last time that powerful people who run businesses make complete fools of themselves. ..."
"... And Bezos is too busy to have much/any input into editorial decisions. Newscycles are far too rapid. Bezos might make clear what the general priorities and tone are, but he's not going to be involved in individual stories save on a very exceptional basis, and news of that would get out to reporters and make the journalism rumor mill in a bad way. Marty Peretz, who unlike Bezos was the publisher and editor in chief of the magazine he bought (the vastly smaller The New Republic) had pet priorities (Israel) and preferences (falling in love with smart young male senior editors and then becoming disenchanted with them in a couple of years and driving them out) that were widely known. ..."
"... These guys are so ludicrous that folks like Bellingcat are denouncing them. ..."
"... Carl Bernstein has done some pretty deep reporting on decades of links bw CIA and media: http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php ..."
"... Even he says there are not really any links bw CIA and WaPo as propaganda channel. As much as it'd be fun to fantasize about Bezos being an evil operator for the MIC, I am inclined toward Yves' narrative of incompetence, and an (unhealthy) dose of confirmation bias-seeking. ..."
"... Much as I would believe anything about Bezos/WP, the article is so amateurish its very hard to believe it is part of an active top-down conspiracy. I'd be more inclined to think that it 'became known' among WP staff that certain Very Important People believe in the Russian propaganda conspiracy and that any articles highlighting this are more likely to be published than others. ..."
"... Off the top of my head, some of the worst examples of journalistic libel recently have primarily been driven not by malice or conspiracies, but because of active confirmation bias. The journalist and editor strongly believes X to be true, therefore when a source comes up to provide a potentially juicy story confirming the reality and evil of X, then they leap on the source without any professional scepticism. The Rolling Stone college rape hoax comes to mind, as does a notorious case in Ireland which nearly destroyed investigative journalism in the main TV company. ..."
"... In this exclusive report, distinguished research psychologist Robert Epstein explains the new study and reviews evidence that Google's search suggestions are biased in favor of Hillary Clinton. He estimates that biased search suggestions might be able to shift as many as 3 million votes in the upcoming presidential election in the US. ..."
"... Zerohedge was listed as a "fake news" site but, as I'm sure many here know, they do great, hard hitting economic analysis and have had their projections and theories confirmed many times with a far better track record than the mainstream sites covering the same subject. ..."
"... I'm not sure the guys behind all this mind losing the discussion in the end. As often, even if the smeared news sites, including NC, win the debate, they'll still lose the communication war. ..."
"... The background to all this, the attempt by the Clintonites to draw on Cold War stink reserves (a National Ideological Reserve, sorta like the National Petroleum Reserve) and, if not its complete failure, than its failure to be decisively effective, makes me think we are witnessing signs of a decisive weakening in elite communication control. PropOrNot advances the process. ..."
"... We fully endorse Yves Smith's efforts. ..."
"... Additionally, we note that the only reason we haven't followed up with a similar action is because i) the allegations were beyond laughable – we have rejected all of them on the record, and ii) there are simply too much other events taking place in what should otherwise be a quiet end to the year taking place to focus on what may be a lenghty, if gratifying, legal process. ..."
The thing with raising money is you have to ask, ask, ask a lot, lot, lot.
So when you need more money to continue this fight, just publish an updated case-statement
with an ask, and the lot of us will turn over our digits to support the fight. Many hands make
light work, as my mother always says.
It's refreshing to have something to support that is worthwhile in both principle and actuality.
Plus, the Post is a nasty piece of work. Same for the Times . Disgraceful and
distasteful. They are only fun to peruse for the self-parody.
Class Action libel suit against WaPo and the propornot website seems reasonable. The motive
is there (discredit competition), the evidence is there per the above, the legal standing is explicit,
the only thing that is technically unquantifiable is the damage done.
If the damages can be determined by some reasonable methodology then perhaps there is enough
to make it worth bringing a suit.
Regarding paying for the news in general, I'm assuming there aren't too many readers who who
actually want to pay WaPo or the NYT for anything at this point.
Those sites and others in recent years have imposed a monthly free article limit and I find
that sometimes after clicking on stories linked to from here I run up against the limit.
I'm sure most people here are already aware of this, but just so you are never tempted to subscribe
to their crappy organizations, all you need to do to get around the limit is use a different browser
to open the link.
My name is Choung, I'm Korean(south Korea).
Korean have experienced this kind of things many many times under the military dictatorship,
and now we were suffering from new blacklist.
Our president is daughter of the past infamous dictator.
I have visited your site and linked many good pieces. Sometimes translated them.
Korean mainstream media don't handle this story,
So, l wrote some pieces about it in public site.
I strongly express solidarity with you on behalf of many progressive Koreans.
Of tangential interest is the "news" report, if Yahoo can be so described, of the man charged
with various and sundry for threatening the pizzaria "implicated" in the pedophilia allegations
swirling around in the overheated miasma that passes for "common wisdom" today.
Of importance is the framing of the "story." The man is alleged to have gone off on his "adventure"
as the result of "fake news site" reporting. The assault on journalism is now switching from a
pure smear to a flanking maneuver. Whether real or manufactured, this act will probably be spun
to support further crackdowns on dissenting points of view. Guilt by (manufactured) association
can hurt just as badly as real guilt. All this plays out in the court of public opinion, a notoriously
rickety edifice in the best of times. \
'The man' who shot one round into the floor* at Comet Pizza may be an actor, Edgar Maddison
Welch, who has done various jobs in media, including playing a "raver/victim". Look him up on IMDB. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2625901/bio
Yves, I would very much question your description of The Washington Post being " taken
for a ride." over this story.
It's worth pointing out that the newspapers owner Jeff Bezos was hired by the Secretary
of Defense to a rather sinister sounding organisation called the " Defense Innovation Advisory
Board " in July. The Boards mission statement is to .."focus on new technologies and organizational
behavior and culture." Also, in addition "identify innovative private-sector practices, and
technological solutions that the DoD could employ in the future."
In short, Bezos, and his companies are now part of the MIC. I believe Googles CEO is also
on the same board. These so called private corporations are now part of the US govt that
works in the field of black ops. Remember also that Amazon has major contracts with the govt to
provide cloud computing storage. This is fascism in all but name. It remains to be seen how long
the new President Mr Trump will want to trust these people as they did so much to try to defeat
him.
I beg to differ. No one would want to damage their credibility above all in undermining a narrative
(in Beltway-speak) that they are tying to promote.
Remember the Dan Rather scandal? Unlike this
case, the underlying fact set about George Bush was accurate, but Dan Rather falling for bogus
evidence not only forced Rather to resign, but
diverted attention from what should have been a scandal if properly reported and
confused any attempts to discuss it (as in the Rather evidence being bad made casual observers
think the dirt on Bush was untrue).
I was also struck by the statement that the Post was 'taken for a ride'. Am I supposed
to accept then that the Washington Post really thinks that the work of PropOrNot is honestly and
objectively carried out? I can't.
Dan Rather was put in an impossible position by supporters of GW Bush, despite the accuracy
of the accusation. In this case, instead, the Post intentionally credits accusations for which
it can offer no support (or at least declines to do so). I'll conclude that the Post acted maliciously
and spitefully, as in slander, until it gives me reason to think otherwise. No person or media
outlet can disseminate such shocking and potentially damaging accusations without our demanding
accountability.
And if you look at the what the Post
said to Consortium News (hat tip UserFriendly), it apparently considers just chatting with
a source for a bit an adequate basis for validating a smear against 200 publications. They effectively
admit they did no independent verification:
The reply came from the newspaper's vice president for public relations, Kristine Coratti
Kelly, who thanked me "for reaching out to us" before presenting the Post's response, quoted
here in full:
"The Post reported on the work of four separate sets of researchers, as well as independent
experts, who have examined Russian attempts to influence American democracy. PropOrNot was
one. The Post did not name any of the sites on PropOrNot's list of organizations that it said
had - wittingly or unwittingly - published or echoed Russian propaganda. The Post reviewed
PropOrNot's findings and our questions about them were answered satisfactorily during the course
of multiple interviews."
Speaking of, do you think your inclusion on the initial "PropOrNot" list is an example of malice
or incompetence? Could it be some half-assed algorithm scanned the web for sites linking to RT
(which I can remember at least one instance popping up in Water Cooler/Links), and called it a
day? That seems the most plausible to me, but it also seems plausible that there are many organizations
which would want to discredit NC.
I haven't seen "The List", but am confident that sites like Moon of Alabama and The Saker are
on it. Saker is explicitly pro-Russia (this is not a criticism per se; I found his pieces on the
Ukraine/Donbas crisis in 2014-15 to be more illuminating than most of the very little that one
could find in the US MSM, for example) and MoA is typically skeptical of US international military
adventures.
Pieces from both of these sites have been, from time to time, linked at the NC daily
news links page. Not sure, but there may be a few links over the past couple of years to items
at Russia Insider as well. It may be that 2nd order associations were enough to "merit" NC's inclusion
on "The List."
But last week Timberg was still touting his "independent experts" in an article on a proposed
new committee mandated in the 2017 intelligence authorization bill. He quoted Wyden:
If you read section 501 of this year's intelligence authorization bill, it directs the President
to set up an interagency committee to 'counter active measures by Russia to exert covert influence
over peoples and governments.' So that shows you that senators from both parties are clearly
concerned about Russian covert influence efforts.
Linking his earlier story with this information may be self-important stupidity on Timberg's
part, but stupidity does not actually preclude malice.
In any case, if senators are treating Russian influence as fact when we have yet to be shown
any proof of its existence that is a sign this article, be it folly or malice, needs further discrediting,
so thanks and more power to you!
That's an awful aphorism. Never discount one just because the other is a potential explanation,
especially if the pattern indicates they'll abdicate their core responsibilities for access and
relish going after those they resent for calling them out on it.
Having said that, one can see how you personally wouldn't want to risk libel, but I will make
no such assumptions about the likes of the beltway press.
I've been a lifelong journalist, 10 years on a daily newspaper, 20 years freelancing for magazines.
The Wapo story so blatantly violated fundamental journalistic standards I cannot believe any experienced
editor would not have realized that. My only possible conclusion is that irresistible pressure
was placed on editors to publish the story.
"Dan Rather was put in an impossible position by supporters of GW Bush, despite the accuracy
of the accusation."
Excuse me.
Rather (and CBS) had to admit that the documents used to make those accusations were fake.
How do you have "accurate accusations" when those accusations are based on faked documents?
Rather was not put in a bad positions by supporters of GW Bush.
He was put in a bad position by Dan Rather.
BTW, the Rather incident is a perfect illustration on how fake news gets reported. The underlying
accusation so matched Rather's world view that he decided to run with them without doing any sort
of fact checking. Or checking the reliability of the one source for the story.
Doing so would have prevented Rather from reporting that story and having to resign in disgrace.
This is why fact checking and verifying stories via multiple sources is so important when reporting
news.
It prevents reporting fake news.
The reason we have so much "fake news" is that too many reporters have abandoned basic journalistic
practices.
> How do you have "accurate accusations" when those accusations are based on faked documents?
You fake a document that contains the truth. When you discredit the document, you discredit
the truth. Maneuvers like that show why Karl Rove really was (in his own special way) a genius.
I followed the Bush Texas Air National Guard story in detail at the time, and the Rather story
in particular, and posted on it a good deal. So far as I know, nobody ever claimed the $10,000
reward that Gary Trudeau offered for anybody who would come forward as an eye witness to Bush
performing his TANG duties.
Your comment is heavy on speculation including the notion that Bezos is directly controlling
what goes into the Post. I'd say the tight little club that is mainstream journalism doesn't require
government subversion in order to represent a MIC point of view. As Gore Vidal said re the deep
state: they don't need to conspire since they all think alike anyway.
More likely the Post article is an example of journo dinosaurs striking out at websites they
now regard as their rivals. Print journalism has been brought low, financially, by the internet
and television.
The people who work at the Post don't dare attack television because they all
want to be on it. However the web is likely regarded as an easy target and I've long been under
the impression that mainstream journalists know practically nothing about the internet other than
Twitter and a few favored sites like Politico.
While it's potentially the greatest communication
medium ever devised, of course people visiting the internet have to bring their own truth filter.
Which is why some of us have landed here. NC seems serious about getting to the truth, and if
you don't like what's written you get to say so. What the MSM really resents is people thinking
for themselves.
With all due respect it isn't speculation that Bezos has been hired by the secretary of defence
to the Defence innovation advisory board. I think you have to be very naive if you think he has
little input into the editorial running of the paper. Why else buy a newspaper these days? They
hardly make much money.
I suspect that this outfit PropOrNot was set up before the election of Trump. They assumed
Clinton was going to win and this was the The begining of an onslaught against the so called alternative
media that was going to be waged once Hilary was safely inside the White House. Full regulation
of the Internet is their aim. This agenda has been pushed in other so called liberal newspapers.
The British Guardian for example has been running articles and pushing a campaign of "The Internet
we want." Which seems to consist of all critiscms of what it believes being censored.
As to Yves point about the amateur nature of this list, and the attack on sites like NC in
the article, Yves shouldn't assume that all these people are geniuses. It won't be the first or
the last time that powerful people who run businesses make complete fools of themselves.
I doubt
they thought they were going to be called out on it, and if Clinton won the election it didn't
really matter because they would have the power to come after the alternative media. Trumps election
has put a spanner in the works .for now. It remains to be seen if he will try to censor the Internet
under pressure from elites.
No it wasn't. They bought the URL only in late August. The first tweet was November 5. The
site appears to have been published at the earliest as of November 9, but from what I can tell,
it was November 18.
And Bezos is too busy to have much/any input into editorial decisions. Newscycles are far too
rapid. Bezos might make clear what the general priorities and tone are, but he's not going to
be involved in individual stories save on a very exceptional basis, and news of that would get
out to reporters and make the journalism rumor mill in a bad way. Marty Peretz, who unlike Bezos
was the publisher and editor in chief of the magazine he bought (the vastly smaller The New Republic)
had pet priorities (Israel) and preferences (falling in love with smart young male senior editors
and then becoming disenchanted with them in a couple of years and driving them out) that were
widely known.
Agree that Bezos is an unlikely instigator of this farce. More likely, from what we know about
the CIA/Mockingbird history, the person responsible is most likely a CIA plant at the senior editor
level.
I have to beg to differ re CIA plant. These guys are so ludicrous that folks like Bellingcat
are denouncing them. I won't link even here to the original site since that helps them in Google,
but just go look at the FAQ on the baddie's site or their Twitter feed. No one who was a pro in
any field would see them as serious. I have no idea what the reporter was smoking. But the article
reads as if they never did the most basic verification, like a web search. They didn't recognize
that the "report" which was The List, was already up and they either double down on or try to
cover for their mistake by "updating" the article saying the "report" went up Saturday November
26, when it had been up since at least November 18.
Even he says there are not really any links bw CIA and WaPo as propaganda channel. As much
as it'd be fun to fantasize about Bezos being an evil operator for the MIC, I am inclined toward
Yves' narrative of incompetence, and an (unhealthy) dose of confirmation bias-seeking.
Much as I would believe anything about Bezos/WP, the article is so amateurish its very hard
to believe it is part of an active top-down conspiracy. I'd be more inclined to think that it
'became known' among WP staff that certain Very Important People believe in the Russian propaganda
conspiracy and that any articles highlighting this are more likely to be published than others.
Off the top of my head, some of the worst examples of journalistic libel recently have primarily
been driven not by malice or conspiracies, but because of active confirmation bias. The journalist
and editor strongly believes X to be true, therefore when a source comes up to provide a potentially
juicy story confirming the reality and evil of X, then they leap on the source without any professional
scepticism. The Rolling
Stone college rape hoax comes to mind, as does a
notorious case in Ireland
which nearly destroyed investigative journalism in the main TV company.
Having said that, I think it is strongly likely that certain elements in the establishment
(probably the Clinton part of it) was actively pushing the Putin is Goebbels line for several
months – but I doubt there is any structured conspiracy – these things tend to just become part
of received wisdom, and there are plenty of bottom feeding journalists ready to join the parade.
Well, there's negligence, and then there's wanton, feckless, scurrilous, criminal negligence.
Recompense accordingly.
They certainly know or ought to know that, with the entire left field virtually empty, the
Bill of Rights in the round hole, and because they've foreclosed global working class solidarity
with walls, laws and red tape, (if that's too much of a stretch you don't belong), all they have
to do is squirm at us and we crash.
Well, there's negligence, and then there's wanton, feckless, scurrilous, criminal negligence.
Recompense accordingly.
They certainly know or ought to know that, with the entire left field virtually empty, the
Bill of Rights in the round hole, and because they've foreclosed global working class solidarity
with walls, laws and red tape, (if that's too much of a stretch you don't belong), all they have
to do is squirm at us and we crash.
"What the MSM really resents is people thinking for themselves."
Here are other examples of undoubtedly top-down suppression of anything other than the "kingmaker"
and corrupt status quo maintainer narratives owned by the six mega-corporations that control 90%
of what we see and hear.
The stealthy, Eric Schmidt-backed startup that's working to put Hillary Clinton in the White
House – October 09, 2015
An under-the-radar startup funded by billionaire Eric Schmidt has become a major technology
vendor for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, underscoring the bonds between Silicon Valley
and Democratic politics.
The Groundwork, according to Democratic campaign operatives and technologists, is part of efforts
by Schmidt -- the executive chairman of Google parent-company Alphabet -- to ensure that Clinton has
the engineering talent needed to win the election. And it is one of a series of quiet investments
by Schmidt that recognize how modern political campaigns are run, with data analytics and digital
outreach as vital ingredients that allow candidates to find, court, and turn out critical voter
blocs.
Research Proves Google Manipulates Autocomplete Suggestions to Favor Clinton – 12 Sep 2016
In this exclusive report, distinguished research psychologist Robert Epstein explains the new
study and reviews evidence that Google's search suggestions are biased in favor of Hillary Clinton.
He estimates that biased search suggestions might be able to shift as many as 3 million votes
in the upcoming presidential election in the US.
Ironically, Sputnick News IS, I believe, a Russian supported site, but just on a hunch and
noticing search autocompletion suggestion disparities myself, I had INDEPENDENTLY confirmed what
Epstein proved a month before the topic hit the on-line news.
I even emailed a few web sites about
it, but they didn't run with it AS THEY SHOULD HAVE as they would have scooped Sputnick News.
It was easy to prove, BTW. Google Trends data which is what is normally used to create autocomplete
suggestions on Google did not match the suggestions made, but the search autocomplete suggestions
on every other search engine DID.
YouTube and Facebook censorship against political conservative video bloggers (Google owns
YouTube)
Zerohedge was listed as a "fake news" site but, as I'm sure many here know, they do great,
hard hitting economic analysis and have had their projections and theories confirmed many times
with a far better track record than the mainstream sites covering the same subject.
My heartfelt support (and contribution) will be with you as you take on one of the most egregiously
insulting to its' readers and rot-riddled collection of hacks and mouthpieces. Now a propaganda
outlet but once at least a flaky effort at journalism, today,s Washington Post has earned an encounter
of the costly kind with a good lawyer or two, many times over.
.Illegitemi non carborundum! (Don't let the bastards wear you down!).
As I noted here this weekend, I have cancelled my subscription to the WaPo and will be sending
a check to NC in the amount of what I would have paid for it.
I am embarrassed that it took me so long to do so, but having been a subscriber since 1979
[except for when I lived elsewhere], the Post was rather a habit.
I specifically mentioned the Timberg story as the reason for my cancellation, and hope this
information will work its way up the Post food chain.
Also, Amazon is as dead to me as Walmart. I refuse to buy from either of them.
The "Fake News" story was vetted by editors at the WaPo before it was published. That they
published an article that no reputable High School paper would have touched with a 10 foot pole
speaks volumes. Hubris?.
Did they think that because it was published by the WaPo that no one would question it?
It was certainly a bold thing to do ( And stupid) unless the person or persons who decided to
publish this trash thought they had the kind of powerful backing that would protect them from
the consequences.
I expect the WaPo to try to weasel their way out of this embarassment and urge you not to back
down or compromise on your demands, if they don't get their noses rubbed in it they will crap
on you again.
When the National Enquirer has become more respectable than the WaPo ( And it is!) we are living
in strange times indeed.
If this effort begins to build a stronger alliance between truth telling internet sites -- thus
promoting change from the ground up -- perhaps it will lead to quicker consequences for Wapo and
others who pull this kind of stunt. If it becomes obvious that,
not only will your bogus story increase the traffic to these sites at the very time they are pointing
out what an idiot you are, but you also reliably get sued,
maybe it won't be as much fun anymore.
I'm not sure the guys behind all this mind losing the discussion in the end.
As often, even if the smeared news sites, including NC, win the debate, they'll still lose the
communication war.
The original revelation is buzzing around, and everybody loves it. If there is a rebuttal,
it will be a boring article nobody will comment. What people will remember is : "the russians
helped Trump win, and some fake news site like NC were their mouthpieces. I distinctly remember
the articles, even if the MSM now tries to hide the truth"
Not sure how to fight that, except with an even better message like : "There is a conspiracy
by the WP to smear independent reporting."
Sadly, I'm not sure it is possible to do that in all honestly. My opinion is that stupidity and
ignorance are at work here (and everywhere), not some well organised effort. And the thoughtful
voice is just boring.
I'm not so sure. This scandal might be something of a test of your argument, which predicts
that, similar to the horrible fate of Gary Webb, the named sites will forever have a residue of
doubt to deal with. Webb's story went the way it did because it was semiforgotten, drifting off
into the collective preconscious, vaguely malodorous. Surely that can be avoided here. Opportunities
for reminding readers of the farce and the revealed intentions of its promoters are abundant.
One thing to consider might be to put the WaPo under steady critical scrutiny. For example, as
above, the WaPo Whopper of the week.
The background to all this, the attempt by the Clintonites to draw on Cold War stink reserves
(a National Ideological Reserve, sorta like the National Petroleum Reserve) and, if not its complete
failure, than its failure to be decisively effective, makes me think we are witnessing signs of
a decisive weakening in elite communication control. PropOrNot advances the process.
Keep needling outlets that picked up the Post story and demanding a prominent apology for irresponsible
reporting. Send them the FAIR link, send them this one. Ask why they haven't reaffirmed their
commitment (sic) to basic journalistic principles . Be a damn nuisance. (I've often thought what
a pity it is that "public nuisance" has a prior signification.)
I'm relieved to know that James Moody will be representing Naked Capitalism in its authentic
quest to right an egregious (and either reckless or intentional, in my opinion) wrong committed
by a major newspaper of record that purports to represent the Fourth Estate.
Mr. Moody is technically competent, deeply experienced and highly ethical.
It's critical that the establishment-driven & coordinated assault on many credible alternative
media outlets be halted if free speech and free criticism (which mainstream media sources have
not only failed in protecting, but have willingly attempted to suppress views contrary to establishment-approved
concepts) is to survive in the United States and elsewhere.
There is a coordinated attempt by long-standing establishment media sources and government
to discredit and de-legitimize very authentic, well-intentioned and thought-provoking non-mainstream
media sources, which, if successful, would amount to nothing less than basic censorship and a
wholesale de-democratization of news reporting and editorializing.
That the Washington Post allowed for and even assisted a highly questionable and anonymous
source to cast a wide net of aspersions over so many clearly legitimate alternative media sources
(such as Naked Capitalism) is nothing short of shameful McCarthy-era attempts to stifle free political
expression of substance, and must be challengers if there's any hope in preserving the very system
of a free exchange of ideas and speech.
I can't believe the unfairness of this allegation made by this propaganda watchdog website.
I mean, if I were a Hillary supporter, I would be in tears over this. But as a Bernie supporter,
I have learned to get over my butthurt.
"You identified and thus denigrated Naked Capitalism, one of the sites targeted in the "study"
as one of the "right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding
potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal
of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions
and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia."
"shadowy cabal of global financiers" ???? We always use the stock symbols GS and JPM here.
WTF is shadowy about that?????????????? You can look the symbols up in Bloomberg!
Well, I guess maybe some fake news got posted here in the comments section, but I distinctly
recall discussing real news, like when Hillary compared Putin to Hitler, or the Cookie Monster
thing in Kiev. Or NATO scattering nukes around Eastern Europe. Or Soros and the CIA funding a
long term propaganda war in Eastern Europe. Even Fox News would call that fair and balanced fake
news. But at any rate, Russia shouldn't view any of this as hostile. That would just be childish.
Confirming the impression that the Z site monitors NC closely for useful content, Tyler Durden
now has a post up titled "Fake News" Site Threatens Washington Post With Defamation Suit, Demands
Retraction .
The post includes the Scribd document of Moody's letter.
Since the Z site reportedly generates a six-figure annual profit, you'd think this deep-pocketed
site would join the suit (should litigation regrettably become necessary). Whaddya say, Tyler(s)?
He's actually quite technically expert (as in he can take apart and analyze software) which
is why I don't get the aol.com either. Although he may have been an early aol.com user, and I
am told it is a nuisance to extract your contacts from aol.com, and he may have decided it was
not worth the fuss.
Now the post is "gray boxed" (pinned) on the Z site, making it one of two lead articles that
apparently are expected to generate a high level of interest and comments.
It's not monetary support, however, the story now ends thus,
We fully endorse Yves Smith's efforts.
Additionally, we note that the only reason we haven't followed up with a similar action
is because i) the allegations were beyond laughable – we have rejected all of them on the record,
and ii) there are simply too much other events taking place in what should otherwise be a quiet
end to the year taking place to focus on what may be a lenghty, if gratifying, legal process.
Pass the popcorn! Mr. Moody is a terrific lawyer. I just hope that if Aurora Advisors winds
up owning ScAmazon, the workers and suppliers start getting treated decently!
You're too nice to WaPo Yves, maybe this was incompetence but Bezos and WaPo are terrible and
they did too many hit pieces on Trump which included false information, so this is not a coincidence.
They are the fake news, and that's terrifying. Good luck and may you destroy them.
Good luck. I agree with your demands and hope that they are satisfied.
I gave up a long time ago on either the tv or mainstream print media as a source of credible
or factual news. There are some print publications out there that do a rather decent job at reporting
the news more accurately, but the ones I know of are mostly smaller local newspapers with very
limited budgets.
All the Bigs are propaganda pure and simple. I gave up reading the NYT and the WaPoo a long
long time ago. It would embarress a parrot to have either on the bottom of their cage to catch
their sh*t.
Where's Bezos? I'm still speculating this is Bezos' answer to Trump's birthing. Annoy the press
like hell. Let them whine and sue. Then save the country.
Addressing the Whappo's "incompetence" is genius bec. it cannot shake the label. It will stick
with them now, whereas if you had gone for the throat with an accusation of malice the Whappo
could have escaped all that disgust and resentment because to prove malice you have to prove intent.
Like fraud. It's hard to do.
It has been a difficult to watch these past 8 years under the continued conversion of whatever
was left of MSM being turned to merely a propaganda arm for the Executive branch. It is absolutely
hilarious that they had the audacity to write the article in the first place since MSM is the
only "real" fake news outlet. I do believe it will be a difficult road to achieve a full retraction
or even an acknowledgement because they will hide behind the concepts of editorial content. Nothing
they write is vetted or researched because they merely conjure articles to fit their preconceptions.
If nothing else, pushing back is still the right thing to do . just remember to not let it consume
you to the detriment of your continued good work on this site.
Does the threat of civil litigation even matter to an organization with Bezos' endless resources
to draw on? They would probably love the idea of a war of monetary attrition–they can't lose that
game. It seems to me the weak link might be the creators of the website itself. Unlike a hardened
target like the WaPo, they are unlikely to have such bottomless resources. The first step may
be to use investigation or litigation to strip away the anonymity of the publishers of the site,
probably by going after the hosting company, then to attack them directly. And if it turns out
that filing website whois papers via a proxy privacy service is 100% surefire, ironclad protection
from any legal accountability, then there really is no longer anything like accountability for
web publishing. If that is the case then there is nothing stopping you from retaliating in kind,
creating an anonymous website accusing Bezos of being a child pornographer or whatever and imploring
that he and his lawyers negotiate with you to have the accusations retracted at your pleasure.
Either filing whois papers for a domain using a privacy proxy is an unbreakable defense against
litigation, or it isn't.
My experience with journalists (as an organiser of non-profit activities) has convinced me
that nowadays they do little to no fact-checking. In one particular case I know of, mainstream
UK media including the Independent and the BBC publicized a man that, if they had simply bothered
doing a Google search on his name, they'd immediately realize he had zero credibility on the field
he was claiming expertise on.
This should hardly be a surprise to anyone who has followed the story of climate change, with
dozens of so-called "climate change" experts being allowed to write opinion pieces on mainstream
media, in spite of having no credentials, and sometimes having long credentials of having lobbied
for every dubious cause known to mankind, from the health safety of tobacco to the lack of issues
with pesticides.
The real issue is that it's getting damned near impossible for anyone to find out the truth
about any controversial issue without spending a long time researching the subject. And most people
don't have the time for this, and don't even know that they should regard the news on any controversial
issue, from any source, with great suspicion.
If one is serious about pursuit of a retraction and apology from Wapo, support for NC's cautious
approach is in order. It will not help the case being advanced to overstate with inferences about
WaPo's motives. Sticking to the already known objective facts will be enough to produce the desired
result, public discredit of WaPo by its own hand.
That's said with full sympathy for the feelings on WaPo, a publication that now ranks with
W. R. Hearst's in sheer depths of vileness. And that in general is rightfully laid at the door
of its libertardian owner Jeff Bezos, a man whose enterprises mark all that is most evil about
US capitalism today. But none of this belongs in the retraction / apology effort. As I see it,
the effort is designed to produce a specific effect from specific cause. That effort is best supported
by not second-guessing it at this point and over-loading it with meanings that can't be demonstrated
within the context of the effort. Let's give it a chance to run and review / critique the result
afterward.
Finally and for the record, this is said as someone with no sympathy for the Putin regime,
one that no leftist should have any truck with, "conscious or unconscious", especially from an
"anti-imperialist" POV. The Putin regime is right wing, capitalist, neo-nationalist, revanchist,
and neo-imperialist (and not at all "wannabe"). It supports with armed force a regime in Damascus
that has destroyed "its own country" to save itself. It IS a regime ideologically congruent with
Donald Trump's tendencies. IOW Putin's Russia is a lot like the United States in political coloration
right now.
Nevertheless, residents of the USA must first and foremost act against repression conducted
by their own government and its political agents such as WaPo. We can agree to disagree on Putin
while showing solidarity against domestic repression, especially of this poisonous neo-McCarthyite
type. That is only common sense. Our main opponent is always at home.
After more than a few decades of educational decline and loss of expertise, we have arrived
at the Age of Incompetence. That the WaPo would hire such nitwits is all the proof one needs.
The most reasonable hypothesis I can see is that the PropOrNot effort is a response by the
MSM to reassert information control, having lost it so spectacularly during the election. The
alternative media's counterstory has proven to be more faithful to reality than the picture presented
by elite journalists. Elite journalists themselves have been compromised by the Wikileaks revelations.
The MSM's reputation is in tatters and SOMETHING MUST BE DONE, at least until enough time has
gone by for the public to forget how truly dismally deceptive was their coverage.
A consistently suspicious pattern of MSM behavior is their incuriousness, and in the present
situation, one of the many of the herd of interrogatory elephants in the room is, why isn't the
MSM investigating the people who make up PropOrNot? (Or asking any of the questions NS has posed).
Would that not be newsworthy?
I agree with this assessment wholeheartedly. I am afraid that the strategy of the dem establishment
and their elite media allies over the next 4 years will be to regain narrative control via censorship,
rather than make any attempts at governing like small-d democrats.
The red baiting is popping out from all sides. Last week Amy Goodman interviewed Bernie – the
first (she basically ignored him through the primary). She started off with "you were considered
a fringe candidate " and he politely reminded her he has been in congress for 25 years. Then she
said that he had been red-baited during the primary by Clinton over Castro and the Sandinistas
and "could he speak some about Castro and Latin America?" And at every opportunity she reminded
the audience he was an independent, not a Democrat, "a socialist."
I have been told that Sarah Palin blew her chance to be Sec. of Interior, or VA, or whatever
it was because she criticized Trump for "crony capitalism" over the Carrier deal.
I'm totally confused about who our friends are these days.
How has "Beall's List" of so-called "predatory" open-access academic research publishers escaped
a similar lawsuit? Some of these publishers were shut down as a direct result of being named so
the list has undeniably done damage since being published in 2013. There seem to be strong parallels
between "Fake News" and "Fake Science" censorship efforts.
It's not unreasonable the Washington Post would confuse Naked Capitalism with a Porn site.
But not a Russian porn site, that's just not credible since Naked Capitalism is English.
They should just admit it they made up fake news. They probably never read anything on the
site - or even looked at the pictures of naked animals. Naked pussys. Lots of those. With garish
flash photography. It's enough to embarrass anybody with refined aesthetic sensibilities.
But it isn't Porn and it's not Russian. I've never seen a Russian pussy here. Usually they're
American or maybe from England. Sometimes they're even guys. That's kind of confusing, but a cat
is a cat to most people. I'm not a veterinarian anyway.
Fake news is the scourge of the internet. Fake news has been around a long time, as long as
there were newspapers in fact. It started in the 1700s and it kept going. Before that it was fake
but it was only passed by word of mouth.
Now there's fake pictures. Fake news with fake pictures can sometimes be art - but only if
you see it in the movies, where some drug addled lunatic pretends they're somebody else, then
they go into rehab after the movie is made and sometimes before. News should be real, in theory,
but in reality it isn't. Somebody makes it up but you don't always know who. That's why jourmalism
is so important, because you want the person making it up to be accurate! You don't want them
making up Porn and publishing that. Why pay for that? People make that up themselves evidently
and don't even need a newspaper.
So if they fell for the fake Porn angle here - thinking that Naked meant Porn, and from Russia
of all places! - that must mean they're either making it up or they don't know what real news
is from anywhere. Since it could be from other places besides Russia. If they went to a museum
they'd see naked things but not Porn. There's a museum of things but it's not news or porn, it's
just whatever. I'm just being honest. It doesn't have to be confusing, even for somebody who writes
and takes pictures.
The tendency towards consensus has been apparent in the mainstream media for forty plus years
, long before the internet came along and upset things. What has caused mass hysteria in those
circles is the sound of these other uncontrolled and uncontrollable voices . Years ago the only
comment section of a national newspaper was ' Letters to the Editor ' which the editor had the
veto over, never mind editorial responsibility for, and he / she took their job seriously ( in
my first hand experience ) . Those days are long gone . Imagine you are a young, or even a seasoned
journalist on one of these papers and you think you have the ear of the editor , the temptation
to bring forth a story ( ' scoop ' in old – fashioned newspaper speak ) that gives umpteen internet
sites a good kicking must be hard to resist. Trouble is the story was trashed before it hit the
ground . And so another nail goes in the coffin of the mainstream press .
"... Speaking to a local radio station before the joint rally, Farage urged Americans to "go out and fight" against Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... "I am going to say to people in this country that the circumstances, the similarities, the parallels between the people who voted Brexit and the people who could beat Clinton in a few weeks time here in America are uncanny," Farage told Super Talk Mississippi. "If they want things to change they have get up out of their chairs and go out and fight for it. It can happen. We've just proved it." ..."
"... It's not for me as a foreign politician to say who you should vote for ... All I will say is that if you vote for Hillary Clinton, then nothing will change. She represents the very politics that we've just broken through the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom. ..."
...the British politician, who was invited by Mississippi governor Phil Bryant, will draw parallels
between what he sees as the inspirational story of Brexit and Trump's campaign. Farage will describe
the Republican's campaign as a similar crusade by grassroots activists against "big banks and global
political insiders" and how those who feel disaffected and disenfranchised can become involved in
populist, rightwing politics. With Trump lagging in the polls, just as Brexit did prior to the vote
on the referendum, Farage will also hearten supporters by insisting that they can prove pundits and
oddsmakers wrong as well.
This message resonates with the Trump campaign's efforts to reach out to blue collar voters who
have become disillusioned with American politics, while also adding a unique flair to Trump's never
staid campaign rallies.
The event will mark the first meeting between Farage and Trump.
Arron Banks, the businessman who backed Leave.EU, the Brexit campaign group associated with the
UK Independence party (Ukip), tweeted that he would be meeting Trump over dinner and was looking
forward to Farage's speech.
The appointment last week of Stephen Bannon, former chairman of the Breitbart website, as
"CEO" of Trump's campaign has seen the example of the Brexit vote, which Breitbart enthusiastically
advocated, rise to the fore in Trump's campaign narrative.
Speaking to a local radio station before the joint rally, Farage urged Americans to "go out
and fight" against Hillary Clinton.
"I am going to say to people in this country that the circumstances, the similarities, the
parallels between the people who voted Brexit and the people who could beat Clinton in a few weeks
time here in America are uncanny," Farage told Super Talk Mississippi. "If they want things to change
they have get up out of their chairs and go out and fight for it. It can happen. We've just proved
it."
"I am being careful," he added when asked if he supported the controversial Republican nominee.
"It's not for me as a foreign politician to say who you should vote for ... All I will say is
that if you vote for Hillary Clinton, then nothing will change. She represents the very politics
that we've just broken through the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom."
"... As Mr. Buffet so keenly said it, There is a war going on, and we are winning. ..."
"... Just type `TPP editorial' into news.google.com and watch a toxic sludge of straw men, misdirection, and historical revisionism flow across your screen. And the `objective' straight news reporting is no better. ..."
"... "Why is it afraid of us?" Because we the people are perceived to be the enemy of America the Corporation. Whistleblowers have already stated that the NSA info is used to blackmail politicians and military leaders, provide corporate espionage to the highest payers and more devious machinations than the mind can grasp from behind a single computer. 9/11 was a coup – I say that because looking around the results tell me that. ..."
"... The fourth estate (the media) has been purchased outright by the second estate (the nobility). I guess you could call this an 'estate sale'. All power to the markets! ..."
Free Trade," the banner of Globalization, has not only wrecked the world's economy, it has left Western
Democracy in shambles. Europe edges ever closer to deflation. The Fed dare not increase interest
rates, now poised at barely above zero. As China's stock market threatened collapse, China poured
billions to prop it up. It's export machine is collapsing. Not once, but twice, it recently manipulated
its currency to makes its goods cheaper on the world market. What is happening?
The following two
graphs tell most of the story. First, an overview of Free Trade.
Capital fled from developed countries to undeveloped countries with slave-cheap labor, countries
with no environmental standards, countries with no support for collective bargaining. Corporations,
like Apple, set up shop in China and other undeveloped countries. Some, like China, manipulated its
currency to make exported goods to the West even cheaper. Some, like China, gave preferential tax
treatment to Western firm over indigenous firms. Economists cheered as corporate efficiency unsurprisingly
rose. U.S. citizens became mere consumers.
Thanks to Bill Clinton and the Financial Modernization Act, banks, now unconstrained, could peddle
rigged financial services, offer insurance on its own investment products–in short, banks were free
to play with everyone's money–and simply too big to fail. Credit was easy and breezy. If nasty Arabs
bombed the Trade Center, why the solution was simple: Go to the shopping mall–and buy. That remarkable
piece of advice is just what freedom has been all about.
Next: China's export machine sputters.
China's problem is that there are not enough orders to keep the export machine going. There comes
a time when industrialized nations simply run out of cash–I mean the little people run out of cash.
CEOs and those just below them–along with slick Wall Street gauchos–made bundles on Free Trade, corporate
capital that could set up shop in any impoverished nation in the world.. No worries about labor–dirt
cheap–or environmental regulations–just bring your gas masks. At some point the Western consumer
well was bound to run dry. Credit was exhausted; the little guy could not buy anymore. Free trade
was on its last legs.
So what did China do then? As its markets crashed, it tried to revive its export model, a model
based on foreign firms exporting cheap goods to the West. China lowered its exchange rates, not once
but twice. Then China tried to rescue the markets with cash infusion of billions. Still its market
continued to crash. Manufacturing plants had closed–thousands of them. Free Trade and Globalization
had run its course.
And what has the Fed been doing? Why quantitative easy–increase the money supply and lower short
term interest rates. Like China's latest currency manipulation, both were merely stop-gap measures.
No one, least of all Obama and his corporate advisors, was ready to address corporate outsourcing
that has cost millions of jobs. Prime the pump a little, but never address the real problem.
The WTO sets the groundwork for trade among its member states. That groundwork is deeply flawed.
Trade between impoverished third world countries and sophisticated first world economies is not merely
a matter of regulating "dumping"-not allowing one country to flood the market with cheap goods-nor
is it a matter of insuring that the each country does not favor its indigenous firms over foreign
firms. Comparable labor and environmental standards are necessary. Does anyone think that a first
world worker can compete with virtual slave labor? Does anyone think that a first world nation with
excellent environmental regulations can compete with a third world nation that refuses to protect
its environment?
Only lately has Apple even mentioned that it might clean up its mess in China. The Apple miracle
has been on the backs of the Chinese poor and abysmal environmental wreckage that is China.
The WTO allows three forms of inequities-all of which encourage outsourcing: labor arbitrage,
tax arbitrage, and environmental arbitrage. For a fuller explanation of these inequities and the
"race to the bottom," see
here.
Of course now we have the mother of all Free Trade deals –the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)–
carefully wrapped in a black box so that none of us can see what finally is in store for us. Nothing
is ever "Free"–even trade. I suspect that China is becoming a bit too noxious and poisonous. It simply
has to deal with its massive environmental problems. Time to move the game to less despoiled and
maybe more impoverished countries. Meanwhile, newscasters are always careful to tout TPP.
Fast Tracking is a con man's game. Do it so fast that the marks never have a chance to watch their
wallets. In hiding negotiations from prying, public eyes, Obama, has given the con men a bigger edge:
A screen to hide the corporations making deals. Their interest is in profits, not in public good.
Consider the media. Our only defense is a strong independent media. At one time,
newsrooms were not required to be profitable. Reporting the news was considered a community service.
Corporate ownership provided the necessary funding for its newsrooms–and did not interfere.
But the 70′s and 80′s corporate ownership required its newsrooms to be profitable. Slowly but
surely, newsrooms focused on personality, entertainment, and wedge issues–always careful not to rock
the corporate boat, always careful not to tread on governmental policy. Whoever thought that one
major news service–Fox–would become a breeding ground for one particular party.
But consider CNN: It organizes endless GOP debates; then spends hours dissecting them. Create
the news; then sell it–and be sure to spin it in the direction you want.
Are matters of substance ever discussed? When has a serious foreign policy debate ever been allowed
occurred–without editorial interference from the media itself. When has trade and outsourcing been
seriously discussed–other than by peripheral news media?
Meanwhile, news media becomes more and more centralized. Murdoch now owns National Geographic!
Now, thanks to Bush and Obama, we have the chilling effect of the NSA. Just whom does the NSA
serve when it collects all of our digital information? Is it being used to ferret out the plans of
those exercising their right of dissent? Is it being used to increase the profits of favored corporations?
Why does it need all of your and my personal information–from bank accounts, to credit cards, to
travel plans, to friends with whom we chat .Why is it afraid of us?
jefemt, October 23, 2015 at 9:43 am
As Mr. Buffet so keenly said it, There is a war going on, and we are winning.
If 'they' are failing, I'd hate to see success!
Isn't it the un-collective WE who are failing?
failing to organize,
failing to come up with plausible, 90 degrees off present Lemming-to-Brink path alternative plans
and policies,
failing to agree on any of many plausible alternatives that might work
Divided- for now- hopefully not conquered ..
I gotta scoot and get back to Dancing with the Master Chefs
allan, October 23, 2015 at 10:03 am
Just type `TPP editorial' into news.google.com and watch a toxic sludge of straw men, misdirection,
and historical revisionism flow across your screen. And the `objective' straight news reporting
is no better.
Vatch, October 23, 2015 at 10:36 am
Don't just watch the toxic sludge; respond to it with a letter to the editor (LTE) of the offending
publication! For some of those toxic editorials, and contact information for LTEs, see:
A few of the editorials may now be obscured by paywalls or registration requirements, but most
should still be visible. Let them know that we see through their nonsense!
TedWa, October 23, 2015 at 10:38 am
"Why is it afraid of us?" Because we the people are perceived to be the enemy of America
the Corporation. Whistleblowers have already stated that the NSA info is used to blackmail politicians
and military leaders, provide corporate espionage to the highest payers and more devious machinations
than the mind can grasp from behind a single computer. 9/11 was a coup – I say that because looking
around the results tell me that.
TG, October 23, 2015 at 3:27 pm
The fourth estate (the media) has been purchased outright by the second estate (the nobility).
I guess you could call this an 'estate sale'. All power to the markets!
Pelham, October 23, 2015 at 8:32 pm
Even when newsrooms were more independent they probably would not, in general, have reported
on free trade with any degree of skepticism. The recent disappearance of the old firewall between
the news and corporate sides has made things worse, but at least since the "professionalization"
of newsrooms that began to really take hold in the '60s, journalists have tended to identify far
more with their sources in power than with their readers.
There have, of course, been notable exceptions. But even these sometimes serve more to obscure
the real day-to-day nature of journalism's fealty to the corporate world than to bring about any
significant change.
CHRIS HEDGES: We're going to be discussing a great Ponzi scheme that not only defines not only
the U.S. but the global economy, how we got there and where we're going. And with me to discuss this
issue is the economist Michael Hudson, author of
Killing
the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy. A professor of economics
who worked for many years on Wall Street, where you don't succeed if you don't grasp Marx's dictum
that capitalism is about exploitation. And he is also, I should mention, the godson of Leon Trotsky.
I want to open this discussion by reading a passage from your book, which I admire very much,
which I think gets to the core of what you discuss. You write,
"Adam Smith long ago remarked that profits often are highest in nations going fastest to
ruin. There are many ways to create economic suicide on a national level. The major way through
history has been through indebting the economy. Debt always expands to reach a point where it
cannot be paid by a large swathe of the economy. This is the point where austerity is imposed
and ownership of wealth polarizes between the One Percent and the 99 Percent. Today is not the
first time this has occurred in history. But it is the first time that running into debt has occurred
deliberately." Applauded. "As if most debtors can get rich by borrowing, not reduced to a condition
of debt peonage."
So let's start with the classical economists, who certainly understood this. They were reacting
of course to feudalism. And what happened to the study of economics so that it became gamed by ideologues?
HUDSON: The essence of classical economics was to reform industrial capitalism, to streamline
it, and to free the European economies from the legacy of feudalism. The legacy of feudalism was
landlords extracting land-rent, and living as a class that took income without producing anything.
Also, banks that were not funding industry. The leading industrialists from James Watt, with his
steam engine, to the railroads
HEDGES: From your book you make the point that banks almost never funded industry.
HUDSON: That's the point: They never have. By the time you got to Marx later in the 19th century,
you had a discussion, largely in Germany, over how to make banks do something they did not do under
feudalism. Right now we're having the economic surplus being drained not by the landlords
but also by banks and bondholders.
Adam Smith was very much against colonialism because that lead to wars, and wars led to public
debt. He said the solution to prevent this financial class of bondholders burdening the economy by
imposing more and more taxes on consumer goods every time they went to war was to finance wars on
a pay-as-you-go basis. Instead of borrowing, you'd tax the people. Then, he thought, if everybody
felt the burden of war in the form of paying taxes, they'd be against it. Well, it took all of the
19th century to fight for democracy and to extend the vote so that instead of landlords controlling
Parliament and its law-making and tax system through the House of Lords, you'd extend the vote to
labor, to women and everybody. The theory was that society as a whole would vote in its self-interest.
It would vote for the 99 Percent, not for the One Percent.
By the time Marx wrote in the 1870s, he could see what was happening in Germany. German banks
were trying to make money in conjunction with the government, by lending to heavy industry, largely
to the military-industrial complex.
HEDGES: This was Bismarck's kind of social – I don't know what we'd call it. It was a form
of capitalist socialism
HUDSON: They called it State Capitalism. There was a long discussion by Engels, saying, wait a
minute. We're for Socialism. State Capitalism isn't what we mean by socialism. There are two kinds
of state-oriented–.
HEDGES: I'm going to interject that there was a kind of brilliance behind Bismarck's policy
because he created state pensions, he provided health benefits, and he directed banking toward industry,
toward the industrialization of Germany which, as you point out, was very different in Britain and
the United States.
HUDSON: German banking was so successful that by the time World War I broke out, there were discussions
in English economic journals worrying that Germany and the Axis powers were going to win because
their banks were more suited to fund industry. Without industry you can't have really a military.
But British banks only lent for foreign trade and for speculation. Their stock market was a hit-and-run
operation. They wanted quick in-and-out profits, while German banks didn't insist that their clients
pay as much in dividends. German banks owned stocks as well as bonds, and there was much more of
a mutual partnership.
That's what most of the 19th century imagined was going to happen – that the world
was on the way to socializing banking. And toward moving capitalism beyond the feudal level, getting
rid of the landlord class, getting rid of the rent, getting rid of interest. It was going to be labor
and capital, profits and wages, with profits being reinvested in more capital. You'd have an expansion
of technology. By the early twentieth century most futurists imagined that we'd be living in a leisure
economy by now.
HEDGES: Including Karl Marx.
HUDSON: That's right. A ten-hour workweek. To Marx, socialism was to be an outgrowth of the reformed
state of capitalism, as seemed likely at the time – if labor organized in its self-interest.
HEDGES: Isn't what happened in large part because of the defeat of Germany in World War I?
But also, because we took the understanding of economists like Adam Smith and maybe Keynes. I don't
know who you would blame for this, whether Ricardo or others, but we created a fictitious economic
theory to praise a rentier or rent-derived, interest-derived capitalism that countered productive
forces within the economy. Perhaps you can address that.
HUDSON: Here's what happened. Marx traumatized classical economics by taking the concepts of Adam
Smith and John Stuart Mill and others, and pushing them to their logical conclusion.
Progressive
capitalist advocates – Ricardian socialists such as John Stuart Mill – wanted to tax away the land
or nationalize it. Marx wanted governments to take over heavy industry and build infrastructure to
provide low-cost and ultimately free basic services. This was traumatizing the landlord class and
the One Percent. And they fought back. They wanted to make everything part of "the market," which
functioned on credit supplied by them and paid rent to them.
None of the classical economists imagined how the feudal interests – these great vested interests
that had all the land and money – actually would fight back and succeed. They thought that the future
was going to belong to capital and labor. But by the late 19th century, certainly in America,
people like John Bates Clark came out with a completely different theory, rejecting the classical
economics of Adam Smith, the Physiocrats and John Stuart Mill.
HEDGES: Physiocrats are, you've tried to explain, the enlightened French economists.
HUDSON: The common denominator among all these classical economists was the distinction between
earned income and unearned income. Unearned income was rent and interest. Earned incomes were wages
and profits. But John Bates Clark came and said that there's no such thing as unearned income. He
said that the landlord actually earns his rent by taking the effort to provide a house and
land to renters, while banks provide credit to earn their interest. Every kind of income is thus
"earned," and everybody earns their income. So everybody who accumulates wealth, by definition, according
to his formulas, get rich by adding to what is now called Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
HEDGES: One of the points you make in
Killing
the Host which I liked was that in almost all cases, those who had the capacity to make money
parasitically off interest and rent had either – if you go back to the origins – looted and seized
the land by force, or inherited it.
HUDSON: That's correct. In other words, their income is unearned. The result of this anti-classical
revolution you had just before World War I was that today, almost all the economic growth in the
last decade has gone to the One Percent. It's gone to Wall Street, to real estate
HEDGES: But you blame this on what you call Junk Economics.
HUDSON: Junk Economics is the anti-classical reaction.
HEDGES: Explain a little bit how, in essence, it's a fictitious form of measuring the economy.
HUDSON: Well, some time ago I went to a bank, a block away from here – a Chase Manhattan bank
– and I took out money from the teller. As I turned around and took a few steps, there were two pickpockets.
One pushed me over and the other grabbed the money and ran out. The guard stood there and saw it.
So I asked for the money back. I said, look, I was robbed in your bank, right inside. And they said,
"Well, we don't arm our guards because if they shot someone, the thief could sue us and we don't
want that." They gave me an equivalent amount of money back.
Well, imagine if you count all this crime, all the money that's taken, as an addition to GDP.
Because now the crook has provided the service of not stabbing me. Or suppose somebody's held up
at an ATM machine and the robber says, "Your money or your life." You say, "Okay, here's my money."
The crook has given you the choice of your life. In a way that's how the Gross National Product accounts
are put up. It's not so different from how Wall Street extracts money from the economy. Then also
you have landlords extracting
HEDGES: Let's go back. They're extracting money from the economy by debt peonage. By raising
HUDSON: By not playing a productive role, basically.
HEDGES: Right. So it's credit card interest, mortgage interest, car loans, student loans. That's
how they make their funds.
HUDSON: That's right. Money is not a factor of production. But in order to have access to credit,
in order to get money, in order to get an education, you have to pay the banks. At New York University
here, for instance, they have Citibank. I think Citibank people were on the board of directors at
NYU. You get the students, when they come here, to start at the local bank. And once you are in a
bank and have monthly funds taken out of your account for electric utilities, or whatever, it's very
cumbersome to change.
So basically you have what the classical economists called the rentier class. The class
that lives on economic rents. Landlords, monopolists charging more, and the banks. If you have a
pharmaceutical company that raises the price of a drug from $12 a shot to $200 all of a sudden, their
profits go up. Their increased price for the drug is counted in the national income accounts as if
the economy is producing more. So all this presumed economic growth that has all been taken by the
One Percent in the last ten years, and people say the economy is growing. But the economy isn't growing
HEDGES: Because it's not reinvested.
HUDSON: That's right. It's not production, it's not consumption. The wealth of the One Percent
is obtained essentially by lending money to the 99 Percent and then charging interest on it, and
recycling this interest at an exponentially growing rate.
HEDGES: And why is it important, as I think you point out in your book, that economic theory
counts this rentier income as productive income? Explain why that's important.
HUDSON: If you're a rentier, you want to say that you earned your income by
HEDGES: We're talking about Goldman Sachs, by the way.
HUDSON: Yes, Goldman Sachs. The head of Goldman Sachs came out and said that Goldman Sachs workers
are the most productive in the world. That's why they're paid what they are. The concept of productivity
in America is income divided by labor. So if you're Goldman Sachs and you pay yourself $20 million
a year in salary and bonuses, you're considered to have added $20 million to GDP, and that's enormously
productive. So we're talking in a tautology. We're talking with circular reasoning here.
So the issue is whether Goldman Sachs, Wall Street and predatory pharmaceutical firms, actually
add "product" or whether they're just exploiting other people. That's why I used the word parasitism
in my book's title. People think of a parasite as simply taking money, taking blood out of a host
or taking money out of the economy. But in nature it's much more complicated. The parasite can't
simply come in and take something. First of all, it needs to numb the host. It has an enzyme so that
the host doesn't realize the parasite's there. And then the parasites have another enzyme that takes
over the host's brain. It makes the host imagine that the parasite is part of its own body, actually
part of itself and hence to be protected.
That's basically what Wall Street has done. It depicts itself as part of the economy. Not as a
wrapping around it, not as external to it, but actually the part that's helping the body grow, and
that actually is responsible for most of the growth. But in fact it's the parasite that is taking
over the growth.
The result is an inversion of classical economics. It turns Adam Smith upside down. It says what
the classical economists said was unproductive – parasitism – actually is the real economy. And that
the parasites are labor and industry that get in the way of what the parasite wants – which is to
reproduce itself, not help the host, that is, labor and capital.
HEDGES: And then the classical economists like Adam Smith were quite clear that unless that
rentier income, you know, the money made by things like hedge funds, was heavily taxed and put back
into the economy, the economy would ultimately go into a kind of tailspin. And I think the example
of that, which you point out in your book, is what's happened in terms of large corporations with
stock dividends and buybacks. And maybe you can explain that.
HUDSON: There's an idea in superficial textbooks and the public media that if companies make a
large profit, they make it by being productive. And with
HEDGES: Which is still in textbooks, isn't it?
HUDSON: Yes. And also that if a stock price goes up, you're just capitalizing the profits – and
the stock price reflects the productive role of the company. But that's not what's been happening
in the last ten years. Just in the last two years, 92 percent of corporate profits in America have
been spent either on buying back their own stock, or paid out as dividends to raise the price of
the stock.
HEDGES: Explain why they do this.
HUDSON: About 15 years ago at Harvard, Professor Jensen said that the way to ensure that corporations
are run most efficiently is to make the managers increase the price of the stock. So if you give
the managers stock options, and you pay them not according to how much they're producing or making
the company bigger, or expanding production, but the price of the stock, then you'll have the corporation
run efficiently, financial style.
So the corporate managers find there are two ways that they can increase the price of the stock.
The first thing is to cut back long-term investment, and use the money instead to buy back their
own stock. But when you buy your own stock, that means you're not putting the money into capital
formation. You're not building new factories. You're not hiring more labor. You can actually increase
the stock price by firing labor.
HEDGES: That strategy only works temporarily.
HUDSON: Temporarily. By using the income from past investments just to buy back stock, fire the
labor force if you can, and work it more intensively. Pay it out as dividends. That basically is
the corporate raider's model. You use the money to pay off the junk bond holders at high interest.
And of course, this gets the company in trouble after a while, because there is no new investment.
So markets shrink. You then go to the labor unions and say, gee, this company's near bankruptcy,
and we don't want to have to fire you. The way that you can keep your job is if we downgrade your
pensions. Instead of giving you what we promised, the defined benefit pension, we'll turn it into
a defined contribution plan. You know what you pay every month, but you don't know what's going to
come out. Or, you wipe out the pension fund, push it on to the government's Pension Benefit Guarantee
Corporation, and use the money that you were going to pay for pensions to pay stock dividends. By
then the whole economy is turning down. It's hollowed out. It shrinks and collapses. But by that
time the managers will have left the company. They will have taken their bonuses and salaries and
run.
HEDGES: I want to read this quote from your book, written by David Harvey, in
A Brief
History of Neoliberalism, and have you comment on it.
"The main substantive achievement of neoliberalism has been to redistribute rather than
to generate wealth and income. [By] 'accumulation by dispossession' I mean the commodification
and privatization of land, and the forceful expulsion of peasant populations; conversion of various
forms of property rights (common collective state, etc.) into exclusive private property rights;
suppression of rights to the commons; colonial, neocolonial, and the imperial processes of appropriation
of assets (including natural resources); and usury, the national debt and, most devastating
at all, the use of the credit system as a radical means of accumulation by dispossession. To
this list of mechanisms, we may now add a raft of techniques such as the extraction of rents from
patents, and intellectual property rights (such as the diminution or erasure of various forms
of common property rights, such as state pensions, paid vacations, and access to education, health
care) one through a generation or more of class struggle. The proposal to privatize all state
pension rights, pioneered in Chile under the dictatorship is, for example, one of the cherished
objectives of the Republicans in the US."
This explains the denouement. The final end result you speak about in your book is, in essence,
allowing what you call the rentier or the speculative class to cannibalize the entire society until
it collapses.
HUDSON: A property right is not a factor of production. Look at what happened in Chicago, the
city where I grew up. Chicago didn't want to raise taxes on real estate, especially on its expensive
commercial real estate. So its budget ran a deficit. They needed money to pay the bondholders, so
they sold off the parking rights to have meters – you know, along the curbs. The result is that they
sold to Goldman Sachs 75 years of the right to put up parking meters. So now the cost of living and
doing business in Chicago is raised by having to pay the parking meters. If Chicago is going to have
a parade and block off traffic, it has to pay Goldman Sachs what the firm would have made
if the streets wouldn't have been closed off for a parade. All of a sudden it's much more expensive
to live in Chicago because of this.
But this added expense of having to pay parking rights to Goldman Sachs – to pay out interest
to its bondholders – is counted as an increase in GDP, because you've created more product simply
by charging more. If you sell off a road, a government or local road, and you put up a toll booth
and make it into a toll road, all of a sudden GDP goes up.
If you go to war abroad, and you spend more money on the military-industrial complex, all this
is counted as increased production. None of this is really part of the production system of the capital
and labor building more factories and producing more things that people need to live and do business.
All of this is overhead. But there's no distinction between wealth and overhead.
Failing to draw that distinction means that the host doesn't realize that there is a parasite
there. The host economy, the industrial economy, doesn't realize what the industrialists realized
in the 19th century: If you want to be an efficient economy and be low-priced and under-sell
competitors, you have to cut your prices by having the public sector provide roads freely. Medical
care freely. Education freely.
If you charge for all of these, you get to the point that the U.S. economy is in today. What if
American factory workers were to get all of their consumer goods for nothing. All their food,
transportation, clothing, furniture, everything for nothing. They still couldn't compete with
Asians or other producers, because they have to pay up to 43% of their income for rent or mortgage
interest, 10% or more of their income for student loans, credit card debt. 15% of their paycheck
is automatic withholding to pay Social Security, to cut taxes on the rich or to pay for medical care.
So Americans built into the economy all this overhead. There's no distinction between growth and
overhead. It's all made America so high-priced that we're priced out of the market, regardless of
what trade policy we have.
HEDGES: We should add that under this predatory form of economics, you game the system. So
you privatize pension funds, you force them into the stock market, an overinflated stock market.
But because of the way companies go public, it's the hedge fund managers who profit. And it's those
citizens whose retirement savings are tied to the stock market who lose. Maybe we can just conclude
by talking about how the system is fixed, not only in terms of burdening the citizen with debt peonage,
but by forcing them into the market to fleece them again.
HUDSON: Well, we talk about an innovation economy as if that makes money. Suppose you have an
innovation and a company goes public. They go to Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street investment banks
to underwrite the stock to issue it at $40 a share. What's considered a successful float is when,
immediately, Goldman and the others will go to their insiders and tell them to buy this stock and
make a quick killing. A "successful" flotation doubles the price in one day, so that at the end of
the day the stock's selling for $80.
HEDGES: They have the option to buy it before anyone else, knowing that by the end of the day
it'll be inflated, and then they sell it off.
HUDSON: That's exactly right.
HEDGES: So the pension funds come in and buy it at an inflated price, and then it goes back
down.
HUDSON: It may go back down, or it may be that the company just was shortchanged from the very
beginning. The important thing is that the Wall Street underwriting firm, and the speculators it
rounds up, get more in a single day than all the years it took to put the company together. The company
gets $40. And the banks and their crony speculators also get $40.
So basically you have the financial sector ending up with much more of the gains. The name of
the game if you're on Wall Street isn't profits. It's capital gains. And that's something that wasn't
even part of classical economics. They didn't anticipate that the price of assets would go up for
any other reason than earning more money and capitalizing on income. But what you have had in the
last 50 years – really since World War II – has been asset-price inflation. Most middle-class families
have gotten the wealth that they've got since 1945 not really by saving what they've earned by working,
but by the price of their house going up. They've benefited by the price of the house. And they think
that that's made them rich and the whole economy rich.
The reason the price of housing has gone up is that a house is worth whatever a bank is going
to lend against it. If banks made easier and easier credit, lower down payments, then you're going
to have a financial bubble. And now, you have real estate having gone up as high as it can. I don't
think it can take more than 43% of somebody's income to buy it. But now, imagine if you're joining
the labor force. You're not going to be able to buy a house at today's prices, putting down a little
bit of your money, and then somehow end up getting rich just on the house investment. All of this
money you pay the bank is now going to be subtracted from the amount of money that you have available
to spend on goods and services.
So we've turned the post-war economy that made America prosperous and rich inside out. Somehow
most people believed they could get rich by going into debt to borrow assets that were going to rise
in price. But you can't get rich, ultimately, by going into debt. In the end the creditors always
win. That's why every society since Sumer and Babylonia have had to either cancel the debts, or you
come to a society like Rome that didn't cancel the debts, and then you have a dark age. Everything
collapses.
"... Furthermore, as Mark Kleiman sagely observes , the conventional case for trade liberalization relies on the assertion that the government could redistribute income to ensure that everyone wins - but we now have an ideology utterly opposed to such redistribution in full control of one party, and with blocking power against anything but a minor move in that direction by the other. ..."
A Protectionist Moment? : ... if Sanders were to make it to the White House, he would find
it very hard to do anything much about globalization - not because it's technically or economically
impossible, but because the moment he looked into actually tearing up existing trade agreements
the diplomatic, foreign-policy costs would be overwhelmingly obvious. ...
But it's also true
that much of the elite defense of globalization is basically dishonest: false claims of inevitability,
scare tactics (
protectionism causes depressions !), vastly exaggerated claims for the benefits of trade liberalization
and the costs of protection, hand-waving away the large distributional effects that are what standard
models actually predict. I hope, by the way, that I haven't done any of that...
Furthermore, as Mark Kleiman
sagely observes , the conventional case for trade liberalization relies on the assertion that
the government could redistribute income to ensure that everyone wins - but we now have an ideology
utterly opposed to such redistribution in full control of one party, and with blocking power against
anything but a minor move in that direction by the other.
So the elite case for ever-freer trade is largely a scam, which voters probably sense even
if they don't know exactly what form it's taking.
Ripping up the trade agreements we already have would, again, be a mess, and I would say that
Sanders is engaged in a bit of a scam himself in even hinting that he could do such a thing. Trump
might actually do it, but only as part of a reign of destruction on many fronts.
But it is fair to say that the case for more trade agreements - including TPP, which hasn't
happened yet - is very, very weak. And if a progressive makes it to the White House, she should
devote no political capital whatsoever to such things.
Again, just because automation has been a major factor in job loss doesn't mean "off shoring"
(using the term broadly and perhaps somewhat inaccurately) is not a factor.
The "free" trade deals suck. They are correctly diagnosed as part of the problem.
What would you propose to fix the problems caused by automation?
Automation frees labor to do more productive and less onerous tasks. We should expand our solar
production and our mass transit. We need to start re-engineering our urban areas. This will not
bring back the number of jobs it would take to make cities like Flint thrive once again.
Flint and Detroit have severe economic problems because they were mismanaged by road building
and suburbanization in the 1950s and 1960s. Money that should have been spent on maintaining and
improving urban infrastructure was instead plowed into suburban development that is not dense
enough to sustain the infrastructure required to support it. People moved to the suburbs, abandoned
the built infrastructure of the cities and kissed them goodbye.
Big roads polluted the cities with lead, noise, diesel particles and ozone and smog. Stroads
created pedestrian kill zones making urban areas, unwalkable, unpleasant- an urban blights to
drive through rather than destinations to drive to.
Government subsidized the white flight to the suburbs that has left both the suburbs and the
urban cores with too low revenue to infrastructure ratio. The inner suburbs have aged into net
losers, their infrastructure must be subsidized. Big Roads were built on the Big Idea that people
would drive to the city to work and play and then drive home. That Big idea has a big problem.
Urban areas are only sustainable when they have a high resident density. The future of cities
like Flint and Detroit will be tearing out the roads and replacing them with streets and houses
and renewing the housing stock that has been abandoned. It needs to be done by infill, revitalizing
inner neighborhoods and working outward. Cities like Portland have managed to protect much of
their core, but even they are challenged by demands for suburban sprawl.
Slash and burn development, creating new suburbs and abandoning the old is not a sustainable
model. Not only should we put people to work replacing the Flint lead pipes, but much of the city
should be rebuilt from the inside out. Flint is the leading edge of this problem that requires
fundamental changes in our built environment to fix. I recommend studying Flint as an object lesson
of what bad development policy could do to all of our cities.
An Interview with Frank Popper about Shrinking Cities, Buffalo Commons, and the Future of Flint
How does America's approach shrinking cities compare to the rest of the world?
I think the American way is to do nothing until it's too late, then throw everything at it
and improvise and hope everything works. And somehow, insofar as the country's still here, it
has worked. But the European or the Japanese way would involve much more thought, much more foresight,
much more central planning, and much less improvising. They would implement a more, shall we say,
sustained effort. The American way is different. Europeans have wondered for years and years why
cities like Detroit or Cleveland are left to rot on the vine. There's a lot of this French hauteur
when they ask "How'd you let this happen?"
Do shrinking cities have any advantages over agricultural regions as they face declining populations?
The urban areas have this huge advantage over all these larger American regions that are going
through this. They have actual governments with real jurisdiction. Corrupt as Detroit or Philadelphia
or Camden may be, they have actual governments that are supposed to be in charge of them. Who's
in charge of western Kansas? Who's in charge of the Great Plains? Who is in charge of the lower
Mississippi Delta or central Appalachia? All they've got are these distant federal agencies whose
past performance is not exactly encouraging.
Why wasn't there a greater outcry as the agricultural economy and the industrial economy collapsed?
One reason for the rest of the country not to care is that there's no shortage of the consumer
goods that these places once produced. All this decline of agriculture doesn't mean we're running
out of food. We've got food coming out of our ears. Likewise, Flint has suffered through all this,
but it's not like it's hard to buy a car in this country. It's not as if Flint can behave like
a child and say "I'm going to hold my nose and stop you from getting cars until you do the right
thing." Flint died and you can get zero A.P.R. financing. Western Kansas is on its last legs and,
gee, cereal is cheaper than ever.
In some sense that's the genius of capitalism - it's heartless. But if you look at the local
results and the cultural results and the environmental results you shake your head. But I don't
see America getting away from what I would call a little sarcastically the "wisdom" of the market.
I don't think it's going to change.
So is there any large-scale economic fallout from these monumental changes?
Probably not, and it hurts to say so. And the only way I can feel good about saying that is
to immediately point to the non-economic losses, the cultural losses. The losses of ways of life.
The notion of the factory worker working for his or her children. The notion of the farmer working
to build up the country and supply the rest of the world with food. We're losing distinctive ways
of life. When we lose that we lose something important, but it's not like The Wall Street Journal
cares. And I feel uncomfortable saying that. From a purely economic point of view, it's just the
price of getting more efficient. It's a classic example of Schumpeter's theory of creative destruction,
which is no fun if you're on the destruction end.
Does the decline of cities like Flint mirror the death of the middle class in the United States?
I think it's more the decline of the lower-middle class in the United States. Even when those
jobs in the auto factories paid very high wages they were still for socially lower-middle-class
people. I think there was always the notion in immigrant families and working-class families who
worked in those situations that the current generation would work hard so that the children could
go off and not have to do those kind of jobs. And when those jobs paid well that was a perfectly
reasonable ambition. It's the cutting off of that ambition that really hurts now. The same thing
has been true on farms and ranches in rural parts of the united states.
It is a much different thing to be small minded about trade than it is to be large minded about
everything else. The short story that it is all about automation and not trade will always get
a bad reception because it is small minded. When you add in the large minded story about everything
else then it becomes something entirely different from the short story. We all agree with you
about everything else. You are wrong about globalization though. Both financialization and globalization
suck and even if we paper over them with tax and transfer then they will still suck. One must
forget what it is to be a created equal human to miss that. Have you never felt the job of accomplishment?
Does not pride and self-confidence matter in your life?
While automation is part of the story, offshoring is just as important. Even when there is not
net loss in the numbers of jobs in aggregate, there is significant loss in better paying jobs
in manufacturing. It is important to look at the distributional effects within countries, as well
as between them
It would probably be cheaper and easier to just fix them. We don't need to withdraw from trade.
We just need to fix the terms of trade that cause large trade deficits and cross border capital
flows and also fix the FOREX system rigging.
What would it take to ignore trade agreements? They shouldn't be any more difficult to ignore
than the Geneva Conventions, which the US routinely flaunts.
In order to import we must export and in order to export we must import. The two are tied together.
Suppressing imports means we export less.
What free trade does is lower the price level relative to wages. It doesn't uniformly lower
the price level but rather lowers the cost of goods that are capable of being traded internationally.
It lowers the price on those goods that are disproportionately purchased by those with low incomes.
Free trade causes a progressive decline in the price level while protectionism causes a regressive
increase in the price level.
Funny rebuttal! Bhagwati probably has a model that says the opposite! But then he grew up in India
and should one day get a Nobel Prize for his contributions to international economics.
Our media needs to copy France 24, ... and have real debates about real issues. What we get is
along the lines of ignoring the problem then attacking any effort to correct. for example, the
media stayed away from the healthcare crisis, too complicated, but damn they are good at criticizing.
A seriously shameful article. Krugman has been a booster of trade & globalization for 30 years:
marginally more nuanced than the establishment, but still a booster.
Now, the establishment has what it wanted and the effects have been disastrous for those not
in the top 20 percent of the income distribution.
At this stage, comes insult to injury. Establishment economists (like Mr. Krugman) can reinvent
themselves with "brilliant new studies" showing the costs and damage of globalization. They pay
no professional costs for the grievous injuries inflicted; there is no mention of the fact that
critical outsider economists have been predicting and writing about these injuries and were right;
and they blithely say we must stay the course because we are locked-in and have few options.
Krugman is not Greg Mankiw. Most people who actually get international economics (Mankiw does
not) are not of the free trade benefits all types. Paul Samuelson certainly does not buy into
Mankiw's spin. Funny thing - Mankiw recently cited an excellent piece from Samuelson only to dishonestly
suggest Samuelson did not believe in what he wrote.
Why are you mischaracterizing what Krugman has written? That's my point. Oh wait - you misrepresent
what people write so you can "win" a "debate". Never mind. Please proceed with the serial dishonesty.
"The truth is that if Sanders were to make it to the White House, he would find it very hard to
do anything much about globalization - not because it's technically or economically impossible,
but because the moment he looked into actually tearing up existing trade agreements the diplomatic,
foreign-policy costs would be overwhelmingly obvious. In this, as in many other things, Sanders
currently benefits from the luxury of irresponsibility: he's never been anywhere close to the
levers of power, so he could take principled-sounding but arguably feckless stances in a way that
Clinton couldn't and can't."
As Dean Baker says, we need to confront Walmart and Goldman Sachs at home, who like these policies,
more than the Chinese.
The Chinese want access to our consumer market. They'd also like if we did't invade countries
like Iraq.
"so he could take principled-sounding but arguably feckless stances in a way that Clinton couldn't"
And what is that? Tear up trade deals? It is Krugman who is engaging in straw man arguments.
Krugman does indeed misrepresent Sanders' positions on trade. Sander is not against trade, he
merely insists on *Fair Trade*, which incorporates human rights and environmental protections.
His opposition is to the kinds of deals, like NAFTA and TPP, which effectively gut those (a central
element in Kruman's own critique of the latter).
Krugman has definitely backed off his (much) earlier boosterism and publicly said so. This is
an excellent piece by him, though it does rather downplay his earlier stances a bit. This is one
of the things I especially like about him.
I can get the idea that some people win, some people lose from liberalized trade. But what really
bugs me about the neoliberal trade agenda is that it has been part of a larger set of economically
conservative, laissez faire policies that have exacerbated the damages from trade rather than
offsetting them.
At the same time they were exposing US workers to greater competition from abroad and destroying
and offshoring working class jobs via both trade and liberalized capital flows, the neoliberals
were also doing things like "reinventing government" - that is, shrinking structural government
spending and public investment - and ending welfare. They have done nothing serious about steering
capital and job development efforts toward the communities devastated by the liberalization.
The neoliberal position has seem to come down to "We can't make bourgeois progress without
breaking a few working class eggs."
Agreed! "Krugman has been a booster of trade & globalization for 30 years: marginally more nuanced
than the establishment, but still a booster.'
Now he claims that he saw the light all along! "much of the elite defense of globalization
is basically dishonest: false claims of inevitability, scare tactics (protectionism causes depressions!),
vastly exaggerated claims for the benefits of trade liberalization and the costs of protection,
hand-waving away the large distributional effects that are what standard models actually predict.
I hope, by the way, that I haven't done any of that..."
You would be hard pressed to find any Krugman clips that cited any of those problems in the
past. Far from being an impartial economist, he was always an avid booster of free trade, overlooking
those very downsides that he suddenly decides to confess.
As far as I know, Sanders has not proposed ripping up the existing trade deals. His information
page on trade emphasizes (i) his opposition to these deals when they were first negotiated and
enacted, and (ii) the principles he will apply to the consideration of future trade deals. Much
of his argumentation concerning past deals is put forward to motivate his present opposition to
TPP.
Note also that Sanders connects his discussion of the harms of past trade policy to the Rebuild
America Act. That is, his approach is forward facing. We can't undo most of the past damage by
recreating the old working class economy we wrecked, but we can be aggressive about using government-directed
national investment programs to create new, high-paying jobs in the US.
You could have said the same about the 1920s
We can't undo most of the past damage by recreating the old agrarian class economy we wrecked,
but we can be aggressive about using government-directed national investment programs to create
new, high-paying jobs in the US.
The march of progress:
Mechanization of agriculture with displacement of large numbers of Ag workers.
The rise of factory work and large numbers employed in manufacturing.
Automation of Manufacturing with large displacement of workers engaged in manufacturing.
What do we want our workers to do? This question must be answered at the highest level of society
and requires much government facilitation. The absence of government facilitation is THE problem.
Memo to Paul Krugman - lead with the economics and stay with the economics. His need to get into
the dirty business of politics dilutes what he ends up sensibly writes later on.
""The truth is that if Sanders were to make it to the White House, he would find it very hard
to do anything much about globalization - not because it's technically or economically impossible,
but because the moment he looked into actually tearing up existing trade agreements the diplomatic,
foreign-policy costs would be overwhelmingly obvious. In this, as in many other things, Sanders
currently benefits from the luxury of irresponsibility: he's never been anywhere close to the
levers of power, so he could take principled-sounding but arguably feckless stances in a way that
Clinton couldn't and can't."
Yeah, it's pretty dishonest for Krugman to pretend that Sanders' position is "ripping up the trade
agreements we already have" and then say Sanders is "engaged in a bit of a scam" because he can't
do that. Sanders actual position (trying to stop new trade deals like the TPP) is something the
president has a lot of influence over (they can veto the deal). Hard to tell what Krugman is doing
here other than deliberately spreading misinformation.
Also worth noting that he decides to compare Sanders' opposition to trade deals with Trump,
and ignore the fact that Clinton has come out against the TPP as well .
Busy with real life, but yes, I know what happened in the primaries yesterday. Triumph for
Trump, and big upset for Sanders - although it's still very hard to see how he can catch Clinton.
Anyway, a few thoughts, not about the horserace but about some deeper currents.
The Sanders win defied all the polls, and nobody really knows why. But a widespread guess is
that his attacks on trade agreements resonated with a broader audience than his attacks on Wall
Street; and this message was especially powerful in Michigan, the former auto superpower. And
while I hate attempts to claim symmetry between the parties - Trump is trying to become America's
Mussolini, Sanders at worst America's Michael Foot * - Trump has been tilling some of the same
ground. So here's the question: is the backlash against globalization finally getting real political
traction?
You do want to be careful about announcing a political moment, given how many such proclamations
turn out to be ludicrous. Remember the libertarian moment? The reformocon moment? Still, a protectionist
backlash, like an immigration backlash, is one of those things where the puzzle has been how long
it was in coming. And maybe the time is now.
The truth is that if Sanders were to make it to the White House, he would find it very hard
to do anything much about globalization - not because it's technically or economically impossible,
but because the moment he looked into actually tearing up existing trade agreements the diplomatic,
foreign-policy costs would be overwhelmingly obvious. In this, as in many other things, Sanders
currently benefits from the luxury of irresponsibility: he's never been anywhere close to the
levers of power, so he could take principled-sounding but arguably feckless stances in a way that
Clinton couldn't and can't.
But it's also true that much of the elite defense of globalization is basically dishonest:
false claims of inevitability, scare tactics (protectionism causes depressions! ** ), vastly exaggerated
claims for the benefits of trade liberalization and the costs of protection, hand-waving away
the large distributional effects that are what standard models actually predict. I hope, by the
way, that I haven't done any of that; I think I've always been clear that the gains from globalization
aren't all that (here's a back-of-the-envelope on the gains from hyperglobalization *** - only
part of which can be attributed to policy - that is less than 5 percent of world GDP over a generation);
and I think I've never assumed away the income distribution effects.
Furthermore, as Mark Kleiman sagely observes, **** the conventional case for trade liberalization
relies on the assertion that the government could redistribute income to ensure that everyone
wins - but we now have an ideology utterly opposed to such redistribution in full control of one
party, and with blocking power against anything but a minor move in that direction by the other.
So the elite case for ever-freer trade is largely a scam, which voters probably sense even
if they don't know exactly what form it's taking.
Ripping up the trade agreements we already have would, again, be a mess, and I would say that
Sanders is engaged in a bit of a scam himself in even hinting that he could do such a thing. Trump
might actually do it, but only as part of a reign of destruction on many fronts.
But it is fair to say that the case for more trade agreements - including Trans-Pacific Partnership,
which hasn't happened yet - is very, very weak. And if a progressive makes it to the White House,
she should devote no political capital whatsoever to such things.
Michael Mackintosh Foot (1913 – 2010) was a British Labour Party politician and man of letters
who was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1945 to 1955 and from 1960 until 1992. He was Deputy
Leader of the Labour Party from 1976 to 1980, and later the Leader of the Labour Party and Leader
of the Opposition from 1980 to 1983.
Associated with the left of the Labour Party for most of his career, Foot was an ardent supporter
of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and British withdrawal from the European Economic Community.
He was appointed to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Employment under Harold Wilson in 1974,
and he later served as Leader of the House of Commons under James Callaghan. A passionate orator,
he led Labour through the 1983 general election, when the party obtained its lowest share of the
vote at a general election since 1918 and the fewest parliamentary seats it had had at any time
since before 1945.
There was so much wrong with Mitt Romney's Trump-is-a-disaster-whom-I-will-support-in-the-general
* speech that it may seem odd to call him out for bad international macroeconomics. But this is
a pet peeve of mine, in an area where I really, truly know what I'm talking about. So here goes.
In warning about Trumponomics, Romney declared:
"If Donald Trump's plans were ever implemented, the country would sink into prolonged recession.
A few examples. His proposed 35 percent tariff-like penalties would instigate a trade war and
that would raise prices for consumers, kill our export jobs and lead entrepreneurs and businesses
of all stripes to flee America."
After all, doesn't everyone know that protectionism causes recessions? Actually, no. There
are reasons to be against protectionism, but that's not one of them.
Think about the arithmetic (which has a well-known liberal bias). Total final spending on domestically
produced goods and services is
Total domestic spending + Exports – Imports = GDP
Now suppose we have a trade war. This will cut exports, which other things equal depresses
the economy. But it will also cut imports, which other things equal is expansionary. For the world
as a whole, the cuts in exports and imports will by definition be equal, so as far as world demand
is concerned, trade wars are a wash.
OK, I'm sure some people will start shouting "Krugman says protectionism does no harm." But
no: protectionism in general should reduce efficiency, and hence the economy's potential output.
But that's not at all the same as saying that it causes recessions.
But didn't the Smoot-Hawley tariff cause the Great Depression? No. There's no evidence at all
that it did. Yes, trade fell a lot between 1929 and 1933, but that was almost entirely a consequence
of the Depression, not a cause. (Trade actually fell faster ** during the early stages of the
2008 Great Recession than it did after 1929.) And while trade barriers were higher in the 1930s
than before, this was partly a response to the Depression, partly a consequence of deflation,
which made specific tariffs (i.e. tariffs that are stated in dollars per unit, not as a percentage
of value) loom larger.
Again, not the thing most people will remember about Romney's speech. But, you know, protectionism
was the only reason he gave for believing that Trump would cause a recession, which I think is
kind of telling: the GOP's supposedly well-informed, responsible adult, trying to save the party,
can't get basic economics right at the one place where economics is central to his argument.
The Gains From Hyperglobalization (Wonkish)
By Paul Krugman
Still taking kind of an emotional vacation from current political madness. Following up on
my skeptical post on worries about slowing trade growth, * I wondered what a state-of-the-art
model would say.
The natural model to use, at least for me, is Eaton-Kortum, ** which is a very ingenious approach
to thinking about multilateral trade flows. The basic model is Ricardian - wine and cloth and
labor productivity and all that - except that there are many goods and many countries, transportation
costs, and countries are assumed to gain productivity in any particular industry through a random
process. They make some funny assumptions about distributions - hey, that's kind of the price
of entry for this kind of work - and in return get a tractable model that yields gravity-type
equations for international trade flows. This is a good thing, because gravity models *** of trade
- purely empirical exercises, with no real theory behind them - are known to work pretty well.
Their model also yields a simple expression for the welfare gains from trade:
Real income = A*(1-import share)^(-1/theta)
where A is national productivity and theta is a parameter of their assumed random process (don't
ask); they suggest that theta=4 provides the best match to available data.
Now, what I wanted to do was apply this to the rapid growth of trade that has taken place since
around 1990, what Subramanian **** calls "hyperglobalization". According to Subramanian's estimates,
overall trade in goods and services has risen from about 19 percent of world GDP in the early
1990s to 33 percent now, bringing us to a level of integration that really is historically unprecedented.
There are some conceptual difficulties with using this rise directly in the Eaton-Kortum framework,
because much of it has taken the form of trade in intermediate goods, and the framework isn't
designed to handle that. Still, let me ignore that, and plug Subramanian's numbers into the equation
above; I get a 4.9 percent rise in real incomes due to increased globalization.
That's by no means small change, but it's only a fairly small fraction of global growth. The
Maddison database ***** gives us a 45 percent rise in global GDP per capita over the same period,
so this calculation suggests that rising trade was responsible for around 10 percent of overall
global growth. My guess is that most people who imagine themselves well-informed would give a
bigger number.
By the way, for those critical of globalization, let me hasten to concede that by its nature
the Eaton-Kortum model doesn't let us talk about income distribution, and it also makes no room
for the possible role of globalization in causing secular stagnation. ******
Still, I thought this was an interesting calculation to make - which may show more about my
warped sense of what's interesting than it does about anything else.
General Equilibrium Analysis of the Eaton-Kortum Model of International Trade
By Fernando Alvarez and Robert E. Lucas
We study a variation of the Eaton-Kortum model, a competitive, constant-returns-to-scale multicountry
Ricardian model of trade. We establish existence and uniqueness of an equilibrium with balanced
trade where each country imposes an import tariff. We analyze the determinants of the cross-country
distribution of trade volumes, such as size, tariffs and distance, and compare a calibrated version
of the model with data for the largest 60 economies. We use the calibrated model to estimate the
gains of a world-wide trade elimination of tariffs, using the theory to explain the magnitude
of the gains as well as the differential effect arising from cross-country differences in pre-liberalization
of tariffs levels and country size.
The gravity model of international trade in international economics, similar to other gravity
models in social science, predicts bilateral trade flows based on the economic sizes (often using
GDP measurements) and distance between two units. The model was first used by Jan Tinbergen in
1962.
The Hyperglobalization of Trade and Its Future
By Arvind Subramanian and Martin Kessler
Abstract
The open, rules-based trading system has delivered immense benefits-for the world, for individual
countries, and for average citizens in these countries. It can continue to do so, helping today's
low-income countries make the transition to middle-income status. Three challenges must be met
to preserve this system. Rich countries must sustain the social consensus in favor of open markets
and globalization at a time of considerable economic uncertainty and weakness; China and other
middle-income countries must remain open; and mega-regionalism must be prevented from leading
to discrimination and trade conflicts. Collective action should help strengthen the institutional
underpinnings of globalization. The world should move beyond the Doha Round dead to more meaningful
multilateral negotiations to address emerging challenges, including possible threats from new
mega-regional agreements. The rising powers, especially China, will have a key role to play in
resuscitating multilateralism.
"Furthermore, as Mark Kleiman sagely observes, the conventional case for trade liberalization
relies on the assertion that the government could redistribute income to ensure that everyone
wins"
That was never the conventional case for trade. Plus it's kind of odd that you have to add
"plus have the government redistribute" to the case your making.
Tom Pally above is correct. Krugman has been on the wrong side of this issue. He's gotten better,
but the timing is he's gotten better as the Democratic Party has moved to the left and pushed
back against corporate trade deals. Even Hillary came out late against Obama's TPP.
Sanders has nothing about ripping up trade deals. He has said he won't do any more.
As cawley predicted, once Sanders won Michigan, Krugman started hitting him again at his blog.
With cheap shots I might add. He's ruining his brand.
Tell Morning Edition: It's Not "Free Trade" Folks
by Dean Baker
Published: 10 March 2016
Hey, can an experienced doctor from Germany show up and start practicing in New York next week?
Since the answer is no, we can say that we don't have free trade. It's not an immigration issue,
if the doctor wants to work in a restaurant kitchen, she would probably get away with it. We have
protectionist measures that limit the number of foreign doctors in order to keep their pay high.
These protectionist measures have actually been strengthened in the last two decades.
We also have strengthened patent and copyright protections, making drugs and other affected
items far more expensive. These protections are also forms of protectionism.
This is why Morning Edition seriously misled its listeners in an interview with ice cream barons
Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield over their support of Senator Bernie Sanders. The interviewer repeatedly
referred to "free trade" agreements and Sanders' opposition to them. While these deals are all
called "free trade" deals to make them sound more palatable ("selective protectionism to redistribute
income upward" doesn't sound very appealing), that doesn't mean they are actually about free trade.
Morning Edition should not have used the term employed by promoters to push their trade agenda.
This has been Dean Baker's excellent theme for a very long time. And if you actually paid attention
to what Krugman said about TPP - he agreed with Dean's excellent points. But do continue to set
up straw man arguments so you can dishonestly attack Krugman.
No. That is not a sign of a faulty memory, quite the contrary.
Krugman writes column after column praising trade pacts and criticizing (rightly, I might add)
the yahoos who object for the wrong reasons.
But he omits a few salient facts like
- the gains are small,
- the government MUST intervene with redistribution for this to work socially,
- there are no (or minimal) provisions for that requirement in the pacts.
I would say his omissions speak volumes and are worth remembering.
Krugman initially wrote a confused column about the TPP, treating it as a simple free trade deal
which he said would have little impact because tariffs were already so low. But he did eventually
look into the matter further and wound up agreeing with Baker's take.
"That was never the conventional case for trade". Actually it was. Of course Greg Mankiw never
got the memo so his free trade benefits all BS confuses a lot of people. Mankiw sucks at international
trade.
David Glasner attacks Krugman from the right, but he doesn't whitewash the past as you do.
He remembers Gore versus Perot:
"Indeed, Romney didn't even mention the Smoot-Hawley tariff, but Krugman evidently forgot the
classic exchange between Al Gore and the previous incarnation of protectionist populist outrage
in an anti-establishment billionaire candidate for President:
GORE I've heard Mr. Perot say in the past that, as the carpenters says, measure twice and cut
once. We've measured twice on this. We have had a test of our theory and we've had a test of his
theory. Over the last five years, Mexico's tariffs have begun to come down because they've made
a unilateral decision to bring them down some, and as a result there has been a surge of exports
from the United States into Mexico, creating an additional 400,000 jobs, and we can create hundreds
of thousands of more if we continue this trend. We know this works. If it doesn't work, you know,
we give six months notice and we're out of it. But we've also had a test of his theory.
PEROT When?
GORE In 1930, when the proposal by Mr. Smoot and Mr. Hawley was to raise tariffs across the
board to protect our workers. And I brought some pictures, too.
[Larry] KING You're saying Ross is a protectionist?
GORE This is, this is a picture of Mr. Smoot and Mr. Hawley. They look like pretty good fellows.
They sounded reasonable at the time; a lot of people believed them. The Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley
Protection Bill. He wants to raise tariffs on Mexico. They raised tariffs, and it was one of the
principal causes, many economists say the principal cause, of the Great Depression in this country
and around the world. Now, I framed this so you can put it on your wall if you want to.
You obviously have not read Krugman. Here is from his 1997 Slate piece:
But putting Greenspan (or his successor) into the picture restores much of the classical vision
of the macroeconomy. Instead of an invisible hand pushing the economy toward full employment in
some unspecified long run, we have the visible hand of the Fed pushing us toward its estimate
of the noninflationary unemployment rate over the course of two or three years. To accomplish
this, the board must raise or lower interest rates to bring savings and investment at that target
unemployment rate in line with each other.
And so all the paradoxes of thrift, widow's cruses, and so on become irrelevant. In particular,
an increase in the savings rate will translate into higher investment after all, because the Fed
will make sure that it does.
To me, at least, the idea that changes in demand will normally be offset by Fed policy--so
that they will, on average, have no effect on employment--seems both simple and entirely reasonable.
Yet it is clear that very few people outside the world of academic economics think about things
that way. For example, the debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement was conducted almost
entirely in terms of supposed job creation or destruction. The obvious (to me) point that the
average unemployment rate over the next 10 years will be what the Fed wants it to be, regardless
of the U.S.-Mexico trade balance, never made it into the public consciousness. (In fact, when
I made that argument at one panel discussion in 1993, a fellow panelist--a NAFTA advocate, as
it happens--exploded in rage: "It's remarks like that that make people hate economists!")
Yes. But please do not interrupt PeterK with reality. He has important work do with his bash all
things Krugman agenda. BTW - it is a riot that he cites Ross Perot on NAFTA. Perot has a self
centered agenda there which Gore exposed. Never trust a corrupt business person whether it is
Perot or Trump.
Yes the model PeterK is using is unclear. He doesn't seem to have a grasp on the economics of
the issues. He seems to think that Sanders is a font of economic wisdom who is not to be questioned.
I would hate to see the left try to make a flawed candidate into the larger than life icon that
the GOP has made out of Reagan.
"Yes the model PeterK is using is unclear. He doesn't seem to have a grasp on the economics of
the issues."
Dean Baker and Jared Bernstein. Like you I want full employment and rising wages. And like
Krugman I am very much an internationalist. I want us to deal fairly with the rest of the world.
We need to cooperate especially in the face of global warming.
1. My first, best solution would be fiscal action. Like everyone else. I prefer Sanders's unicorn
plan of $1 trillion over five years rather than Hillary's plan which is one quarter of the size.
Her plan puts more pressure on the Fed and monetary policy.
a. My preference would be to pay for it with Pigouvian taxes on the rich, corporations, and
the financial sector.
b. if not a, then deficit spending like Trudeau in Canada
C. if the deficit hawks block that, then monetary-financing would be the way around them.
2. close the trade deficit. Dean Baker and Bernstein have written about this a lot. Write currency
agreements into trade deals. If we close the trade deficit and are at full employment, then we
can import more from the rest of the world.
3. If powerful interests block 1. and 2. then lean on monetary policy. Reduce the price of
credit to boost demand. It works as a last resort.
"I would hate to see the left try to make a flawed candidate into the larger than life icon
that the GOP has made out of Reagan.'
I haven't seen any evidence of this. It would be funny if the left made an old Jewish codger
from Brooklyn into an icon. Feel the Bern!!!
Sanders regularly points out it's not about him as President fixing everything, it's about
creating a movement. It's about getting people involved. He can't do it by himself. Obama would
say this too. Elizabeth Warren become popular by saying the same things Sanders is saying.
However to say that the conventional case for trade liberalization relies on the Compensation
Principle isn't quite accurate. The conventional case has traditionally relied on the assertion
that "we" are better off with trade since we could *theoretically* distribute the gains. However,
free trade boosters never seem to get around to worrying about distributing the gains *in practice*.
In practice, free trade is typically justified simply by the net aggregate gain, regardless of
how these gains are distributed or who is hurt in the process.
To my mind, before considering some trade liberalization deal we should FIRST agree to and
implement the redistribution mechanisms and only then reduce barriers. Implementing trade deals
in a backward, half-assed way as has typically been the case often makes "us" worse off than autarky.
"Krugman has at times advocated free markets in contexts where they are often viewed as controversial.
He has ... likened the opposition against free trade and globalization to the opposition against
evolution via natural selection (1996),[167]
(In fact, when I made that argument at one panel discussion in 1993, a fellow panelist--a NAFTA
advocate, as it happens--exploded in rage: "It's remarks like that that make people hate economists!")
[Thanks to electoral politics, we're all fellow panelists now.]
"To me, at least, the idea that changes in demand will normally be offset by Fed policy--so that
they will, on average, have no effect on employment--seems both simple and entirely reasonable.
Yet it is clear that very few people outside the world of academic economics think about things
that way."
As we've seen the Fed is overly fearful of inflation, so the Fed doesn't offset the trade deficit
as quickly as it should. Instead we suffer hysteresis and reduction of potential output.
"The truth is that if Sanders were to make it to the White House, he would find it very hard to
do anything much about globalization - not because it's technically or economically impossible,
but because the moment he looked into actually tearing up existing trade agreements the diplomatic,
foreign-policy costs would be overwhelmingly obvious."
Here Krugman is more honest. We're basically buying off the Chinese, etc. The cost for stopping
this would be less cooperation from the Chinese, etc.
This is new. He never used to say this kind of thing. Instead he'd go after "protectionists"
as luddites.
"This is new. He never used to say this kind of thing. Instead he'd go after "protectionists"
as luddites."
You have Krugman confused with Greg Mankiw. Most real international economics (Mankiw is not
one) recognize the distributional consequences of free trade v. protectionism. Then again - putting
forth the Mankiw uninformed spin is a prerequisite for being on Team Republican. Of course Republicans
will go protectionist whenever it is politically expedient as in that temporary set of steel tariffs.
Helped Bush-Cheney in 2004 and right after that - no tariffs. Funny how that worked.
Where is the "redistribution from government" in the TPP. There isn't any.
Even the NAFTA side agreements on labor and the environment are toothless. The point of these
corporate trade deals is to profit from the lower labor and environmental standards of poorer
countries.
The fact that you resort to calling me a professional Krugman hater means you're not interested
in an actual debate about actual ideas. You've lost the debate and I'm not participating.
One is not allowed to criticize Krugman lest one be labeled a professional Krugman hater?
Your resort to name calling just weakens the case you're making.
You of late have wasted so much space misrepresenting what Krugman has said. Maybe you don't hate
him - maybe you just want to get his attention. For a date maybe. Lord - the troll in you is truly
out of control.
Sandwichman may think Krugman changed his views but if one actually read what he has written over
the years (as opposed to your cherry picking quotes), you might have noticed otherwise. But of
course you want Krugman to look bad. It is what you do.
Sizeable numbers of Americans have seen wages decline in real terms for nearly 20 years. Many/most
parents in many communities do not see a better future before them, or for their children.
Notable quotes:
"... Democracy demands that ballot access rules be selected by referendum, not by the very legacy parties that maintain legislative control by effectively denying ballot access to parties that will pose a challenge to their continued rule. ..."
"... I think the U.S. Party system, in the political science sense, shifted to a new state during George W Bush's administration as, in Kevin Phillip's terms the Republican Party was taken over by Theocrats and Bad Money. ..."
"... My understanding is trumps support disproportionately comes from the small business owning classes, Ie a demographic similar to the petite bourgeoisie who have often been heavily involved in reactionary movements. This gets oversold as "working class" when class is defined by education level rather than income. ..."
"... Racism serves as an organizing principle. Politically, in an oppressive and stultifying hierarchy like the plantation South, racism not incidentally buys the loyalty of subalterns with ersatz status. ..."
"... For a time, the balkanization of American political communities by race, religion and ethnicity was an effective means to the dominance of an tiny elite with ties to an hegemonic community, but it backfired. Dismantling that balkanization has left the country with a very low level of social affiliation and thus a low capacity to organize resistance to elite depredations. ..."
"... Watching Clinton scoop up bankster money, welcome Republicans neocons to the ranks of her supporters does not fill me with hope. ..."
Legislators affiliated with the duopoly parties should not write the rules governing the ballot
access of third parties. This exclusionary rule making amounts to preserving a self-dealing duopoly.
Elections are the interest of the people who vote and those elected should not be able to subvert
the democratic process by acting as a cartel.
Democracy demands that ballot access rules be selected by referendum, not by the very legacy
parties that maintain legislative control by effectively denying ballot access to parties that
will pose a challenge to their continued rule.
Of course any meaningful change would require a voluntary diminishment of power of the duopoly
that now has dictatorial control over ballot access, and who will prevent any Constitutional Amendment
that would enhance the democratic nature of the process.
bruce wilder 08.02.16 at 8:02 pm
I think the U.S. Party system, in the political science sense, shifted to a new state during
George W Bush's administration as, in Kevin Phillip's terms the Republican Party was taken over
by Theocrats and Bad Money.
Ronan(rf) 08.04.16 at 10:35 pm
"I generally don't give a shit about polls so I have no "data" to evidence this claim,
but my guess is the majority of Trump's support comes from this broad middle"
My understanding is trumps support disproportionately comes from the small business owning
classes, Ie a demographic similar to the petite bourgeoisie who have often been heavily involved
in reactionary movements. This gets oversold as "working class" when class is defined by education
level rather than income.
This would make some sense as they are generally in economically unstable jobs, they tend to
be hostile to both big govt (regulations, freeloaders) and big business (unfair competition),
and while they (rhetorically at least) tend to value personal autonomy and self sufficiency ,
they generally sell into smaller, local markets, and so are particularly affected by local demographic
and cultural change , and decline. That's my speculation anyway.
bruce wilder 08.06.16 at 4:28 pm
I am somewhat suspicious of leaving dominating elites out of these stories of racism as an
organizing principle for political economy or (cultural) community.
Racism served the purposes of a slaveholding elite that organized political communities to
serve their own interests. (Or, vis a vis the Indians a land-grab or genocide.)
Racism serves as an organizing principle. Politically, in an oppressive and stultifying
hierarchy like the plantation South, racism not incidentally buys the loyalty of subalterns with
ersatz status. The ugly prejudices and resentful arrogance of working class whites is thus
a component of how racism works to organize a political community to serve a hegemonic master
class. The business end of racism, though, is the autarkic poverty imposed on the working communities:
slaves, sharecroppers, poor blacks, poor whites - bad schools, bad roads, politically disabled
communities, predatory institutions and authoritarian governments.
For a time, the balkanization of American political communities by race, religion and ethnicity
was an effective means to the dominance of an tiny elite with ties to an hegemonic community,
but it backfired. Dismantling that balkanization has left the country with a very low level of
social affiliation and thus a low capacity to organize resistance to elite depredations.
bruce wilder 08.06.16 at 4:31 pm
Watching Clinton scoop up bankster money, welcome Republicans neocons to the ranks of her
supporters does not fill me with hope.
Trump and the other illiberal populists have been benefiting from three overlapping backlashes.
The first is cultural. Movements for civil liberties have been remarkably successful over the
last 40 years. Women, ethnic and religious minorities, and the LGBTQ community have secured important
gains at a legal and cultural level. It is remarkable, for instance, how quickly same-sex marriage
has become legal in more than 20 countries when no country recognized it before 2001.
Resistance has always existed to these movements to expand the realm of civil liberties. But this
backlash increasingly has a political face. Thus the rise of parties that challenge multiculturalism
and immigration in Europe, the movements throughout Africa and Asia that support the majority over
the minorities, and the Trump/Tea Party takeover of the Republican Party with their appeals to primarily
white men.
The second backlash is economic. The globalization of the economy has created a class of enormously
wealthy individuals (in the financial, technology, and communications sectors). But globalization
has left behind huge numbers of low-wage workers and those who have watched their jobs relocate to
other countries.
Illiberal populists have directed all that anger on the part of people left behind by the world
economy at a series of targets: bankers who make billions, corporations that are constantly looking
for even lower-wage workers, immigrants who "take away our jobs," and sometimes ethnic minorities
who function as convenient scapegoats. The targets, in other words, include both the very powerful
and the very weak.
The third backlash, and perhaps the most consequential, is political. It's not just that people
living in democracies are disgusted with their leaders and the parties they represent. Rather, as
political scientists Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk
write in the Journal of Democracy , "they have also become more cynical about the value
of democracy as a political system, less hopeful that anything they do might influence public policy,
and more willing to express support for authoritarian alternatives."
Foa and Mounk are using 20 years of data collected from surveys of citizens in Western Europe
and North America – the democracies with the greatest longevity. And they have found that support
for illiberal alternatives is greater among the younger generation than the older one. In other countries
outside Europe and North America, the disillusionment with democratic institutions often takes the
form of a preference for a powerful leader who can break the rules if necessary to preserve order
and stability – like Putin in Russia or Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt or Prayuth Chan-ocha in Thailand.
These three backlashes – cultural, economic, political – are also anti-internationalist because
international institutions have become associated with the promotion of civil liberties and human
rights, the greater globalization of the economy, and the constraint of the sovereignty of nations
(for instance, through the European Union or the UN's "responsibility to protect" doctrine).
... ... ....
The current political order is coming apart. If we don't come up with a fair, Green, and internationalist
alternative, the illiberal populists will keep winning. John Feffer is the director of Foreign
Policy In Focus.
"... if neo-liberalism is partly defined by the free flow of goods, labor and capital - and that has been the Republican agenda since at least Reagan - how is Trump a continuation of the same tradition?" ..."
"... Trump is a conservative (or right populist, or whatever), and draws on that tradition. He's not a neoliberal. ..."
"... Trump is too incoherent to really represent the populist view. He's consistent w/the trade and immigration views but (assuming you can actually figure him out) wrong on banks, taxes, etc. ..."
"... But the next populists we see might be more full bore. When that happens, you'll see much more overlap w/Sanders economic plans for the middle class. ..."
"... There's always tension along the lead running between the politician and his constituents. The thing that seems most salient to me at the present moment is the sense of betrayal pervading our politics. At least since the GFC of 2008, it has been hard to deny that the two Parties worked together to set up an economic betrayal. And, the long-running saga of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also speak to elite failure, as well as betrayal. ..."
"... Trump is a novelty act. He represents a chance for people who feel resentful without knowing much of anything about anything to cast a middle-finger vote. They wouldn't be willing to do that, if times were really bad, instead of just disappointing and distressing. ..."
"... There's also the fact Reagan tapped a fair number of Nixon people, as did W years later. Reagan went after Nixon in the sense of running against him, and taking the party in a much more hard-right direction, sure. But he was repudiated largely because he got caught doing dirty tricks with his pants down. ..."
"... From what I can tell - the 1972 election gave the centrists in the democratic party power to discredit and marginalize the anti-war left, and with it, the left in general. ..."
"... Ready even now to whine that she's a victim and that the whole community is at fault and that people are picking on her because she's a woman, rather than because she has a habit of making accusations like this every time she comments. ..."
"... That is a perfect example of predatory "solidarity". Val is looking for dupes to support her ..."
"Once again, if neo-liberalism is partly defined by the free flow of goods, labor and capital
- and that has been the Republican agenda since at least Reagan - how is Trump a continuation
of the same tradition?"
You have to be willing to see neoliberalism as something different
from conservatism to have the answer make any sense. John Quiggin has written a good deal here
about a model of U.S. politics as being divided into left, neoliberal, and conservative. Trump
is a conservative (or right populist, or whatever), and draws on that tradition. He's not a neoliberal.
... ... ...
T 08.12.16 at 5:52 pm
RP @683
That's a bit of my point. I think Corey has defined the Republican tradition solely
in response to the Southern Strategy that sees a line from Nixon (or Goldwater) to Trump. But
that gets the economics wrong and the foreign policy too - the repub foreign policy view has not
been consistent across administrations and Trump's economic pans (to the extent he has a plan)
are antithetical to the Nixon – W tradition. I have viewed post-80 Dem administrations as neoliberals
w/transfers and Repub as neoliberals w/o transfers.
Trump is too incoherent to really represent the populist view. He's consistent w/the trade
and immigration views but (assuming you can actually figure him out) wrong on banks, taxes, etc.
But the next populists we see might be more full bore. When that happens, you'll see much
more overlap w/Sanders economic plans for the middle class. Populists have nothing against
gov't programs like SS and Medicare and were always for things like the TVA and infrastructure
spending. Policies aimed at the poor and minorities not so much.
T @ 685: Trump is too incoherent to really represent the populist view.
There's always tension along the lead running between the politician and his constituents.
The thing that seems most salient to me at the present moment is the sense of betrayal pervading
our politics. At least since the GFC of 2008, it has been hard to deny that the two Parties worked
together to set up an economic betrayal. And, the long-running saga of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
also speak to elite failure, as well as betrayal.
These are the two most unpopular candidates in living memory. That is different.
I am not a believer in "the fire next time". Trump is a novelty act. He represents a chance
for people who feel resentful without knowing much of anything about anything to cast a middle-finger
vote. They wouldn't be willing to do that, if times were really bad, instead of just disappointing
and distressing.
Nor will Sanders be back. His was a last New Deal coda. There may be second acts in American
life, but there aren't 7th acts.
If there's a populist politics in our future, it will have to have a much sharper edge. It
can talk about growth, but it has to mean smashing the rich and taking their stuff. There's very
rapidly going to come a point where there's no other option, other than just accepting cramdown
by the authoritarian surveillance state built by the neoliberals. that's a much taller order than
Sanders or Trump have been offering.<
Corey, you write: "It's not just that the Dems went after Nixon, it's also that Nixon had so few
allies. People on the right were furious with him because they felt after this huge ratification
that the country had moved to the right, Nixon was still governing as if the New Deal were the
consensus. So when the time came, he had very few defenders, except for loyalists like Leonard
Garment and G. Gordon Liddy. And Al Haig, God bless him."
You've studied this more than I have,
but this is at least somewhat at odds with my memory. I recall some prominent attackers of Nixon
from the Republican party that were moderates, at least one of whom was essentially kicked out
of the party for being too liberal in later years. There's also the fact Reagan tapped a fair
number of Nixon people, as did W years later. Reagan went after Nixon in the sense of running
against him, and taking the party in a much more hard-right direction, sure. But he was repudiated
largely because he got caught doing dirty tricks with his pants down.
To think that something similar would happen to Clinton (watergate like scandal) that would
actually have a large portion of the left in support of impeachment, she would have to be as dirty
as Nixon was, *and* the evidence to really put the screws to her would have to be out, as it was
against Nixon during watergate.
OTOH, my actual *hope* would be that a similar left-liberal sea change comparable to 1980 from
the right would be plausible. I don't think a 1976-like interlude is plausible though, that would
require the existence of a moderate republican with enough support within their own party to win
the nomination. I suppose its possible that such a beast could come to exist if Trump loses a
landslide, but most of the plausible candidates have already left or been kicked out of the party.
From what I can tell - the 1972 election gave the centrists in the democratic party power
to discredit and marginalize the anti-war left, and with it, the left in general. A comparable
election from the other side would give republican centrists/moderates the ability to discredit
and marginalize the right wing base. But unlike Democrats in 1972, there aren't any moderates
left in the Republican party by my lights. I'm much more concerned that this will simply re-empower
the hard-core conservatives with plausbly-deniable dog-whistle racism who are now the "moderates",
and enable them to whitewash their history.
Unfortunately, unlike you, I'm not convinced that a landslide is possible without an appeal
to Reagan/Bush republicans. I don't think we're going to see a meaningful turn toward a real left
until Democrats can win a majority of statehouses and clean up the ridiculous gerrymandering.
Val: "Similarly with your comments on "identity politics" where you could almost be seen
by MRAs and white supremacists as an ally, from the tone of your rhetoric."
That is 100% perfect Val. Insinuates that BW is a sort-of-ally of white supremacists - an infuriating
insinuation. Does this insinuation based on a misreading of what he wrote. Completely resistant
to any sort of suggestion that what she dishes out so expansively to others had better be something
she should be willing to accept herself, or that she shouldn't do it. Ready even now to whine
that she's a victim and that the whole community is at fault and that people are picking on her
because she's a woman, rather than because she has a habit of making accusations like this every
time she comments.
That is a perfect example of predatory "solidarity". Val is looking for dupes to support
her - for people to jump in saying "Why are you being hostile to women?" in response to people's
response to her comment.
"... More than a dozen Republican rivals, described as the strongest GOP field since 1980, were sent packing. This was the year Americans rose up to pull down the establishment in a peaceful storming of the American Bastille. ..."
"... If 2016 taught us anything, it is that if the establishment's hegemony is imperiled, it will come together in ferocious solidarity - for the preservation of their perks, privileges and power. All the elements of that establishment - corporate, cultural, political, media - are today issuing an ultimatum to Middle America: Trump is unacceptable. Instructions are going out to Republican leaders that either they dump Trump, or they will cease to be seen as morally fit partners in power. ..."
"... Our CIA, NGOs and National Endowment for Democracy all beaver away for "regime change" in faraway lands whose rulers displease us. How do we effect "regime change" here at home? ..."
"... Donald Trump's success, despite the near-universal hostility of the media, even much of the conservative media, was due in large part to the public's response to the issues he raised. ..."
"I'm afraid the election is going to be rigged," Donald Trump told voters
in Ohio and Sean Hannity on Fox News. And that hit a nerve.
"Dangerous," "toxic," came the recoil from the media.
Trump is threatening to "delegitimize" the election results of 2016.
Well, if that is what Trump is trying to do, he has no small point. For consider
what 2016 promised and what it appears about to deliver.
This longest of election cycles has rightly been called the Year of the Outsider.
It was a year that saw a mighty surge of economic populism and patriotism, a
year when a 74-year-old Socialist senator set primaries ablaze with mammoth
crowds that dwarfed those of Hillary Clinton.
It was the year that a non-politician, Donald Trump, swept Republican primaries
in an historic turnout, with his nearest rival an ostracized maverick in his
own Republican caucus, Senator Ted Cruz.
More than a dozen Republican rivals, described as the strongest GOP field
since 1980, were sent packing. This was the year Americans rose up to pull down
the establishment in a peaceful storming of the American Bastille.
But if it ends with a Clintonite restoration and a ratification of the same
old Beltway policies, would that not suggest there is something fraudulent about
American democracy, something rotten in the state?
If 2016 taught us anything, it is that if the establishment's hegemony
is imperiled, it will come together in ferocious solidarity - for the preservation
of their perks, privileges and power. All the elements of that establishment
- corporate, cultural, political, media - are today issuing an ultimatum to
Middle America: Trump is unacceptable. Instructions are going out to Republican
leaders that either they dump Trump, or they will cease to be seen as morally
fit partners in power.
It testifies to the character of Republican elites that some are seeking
ways to carry out these instructions, though this would mean invalidating and
aborting the democratic process that produced Trump.
But what is a repudiated establishment doing issuing orders to anyone?
Why is it not Middle America issuing the demands, rather than the other way
around?
Specifically, the Republican electorate should tell its discredited and rejected
ruling class: If we cannot get rid of you at the ballot box, then tell us how,
peacefully and democratically, we can be rid of you?
You want Trump out? How do we get you out? The Czechs had their Prague Spring.
The Tunisians and Egyptians their Arab Spring. When do we have our American
Spring? The Brits had their "Brexit," and declared independence of an arrogant
superstate in Brussels. How do we liberate ourselves from a Beltway superstate
that is more powerful and resistant to democratic change?
Our CIA, NGOs and National Endowment for Democracy all beaver away for
"regime change" in faraway lands whose rulers displease us. How do we effect
"regime change" here at home?
Donald Trump's success, despite the near-universal hostility of the media,
even much of the conservative media, was due in large part to the public's response
to the issues he raised.
He called for sending illegal immigrants back home, for securing America's
borders, for no amnesty. He called for an America First foreign policy to
keep us out of wars that have done little but bleed and bankrupt us.
He called for an economic policy where the Americanism of the people
replaces the globalism of the transnational elites and their K Street lobbyists
and congressional water carriers.
He denounced NAFTA, and the trade deals and trade deficits with China,
and called for rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
By campaign's end, he had won the argument on trade, as Hillary Clinton was
agreeing on TPP and confessing to second thoughts on NAFTA.
But if TPP is revived at the insistence of the oligarchs of Wall Street,
the Business Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce - backed by conscript
editorial writers for newspapers that rely on ad dollars - what do elections
really mean anymore?
And if, as the polls show we might, we get Clinton - and TPP, and amnesty,
and endless migrations of Third World peoples who consume more tax dollars than
they generate, and who will soon swamp the Republicans' coalition - what was
2016 all about?
Would this really be what a majority of Americans voted for in this most
exciting of presidential races?
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution
inevitable," said John F. Kennedy.
The 1960s and early 1970s were a time of social revolution in America, and
President Nixon, by ending the draft and ending the Vietnam war, presided over
what one columnist called the "cooling of America."
But if Hillary Clinton takes power, and continues America on her present
course, which a majority of Americans rejected in the primaries, there is going
to be a bad moon rising.
And the new protesters in the streets will not be overprivileged children
from Ivy League campuses.
"... the capitalist economy is more and more an asset driven one. This article does not even begin to address the issue of asset valuations, the explicit CB support for asset inflation and the effect on inequality, and especially generational plunder. ..."
"... the problem of living standards is obviously a Malthusian one. despite all the progress of social media tricks, we cannot fool nature. the rate of ecological degradation is alarming, and now irreversible. "the market" is now moving rapidly to real assets. This will eventually lead to war as all war is eventually for resources. ..."
No matter what central banks do, their actions will not be able to create the same level of
economic growth that we have become used to over the past seven decades.
Economic growth does not come from the central banks; if government sought to provide the basics
for all its citizens, including health care, education, a home, and proper food and all the infrastructure
needed to give people the basics, then you could have something akin to "growth" while at the
same time making life more pleasant for the less fortunate. There seems to be no definition of
economic growth that includes everyone.
This seems a very elaborate way of stating a simple problem, that can be summarised in three
points.
The living standards of most people have fallen over the last thirty years or so because of
the impact of neoliberal economic policies. Conventional politicians are promising only more
of the same. Therefore people are increasingly voting for non-conventional politicians.
Neoliberalism has only exacerbated falling living standards. Living standards would be falling
even without it, albeit more gradually.
Neoliberalism itself may even be nothing more than a standard type response of species that
have expanded beyond the capacity of their environment to support them. What we see as an evil
ideology is only the expression of a mechanism that apportions declining resources to the elites,
like shutting shutting down the periphery so the core can survive as in hypothermia.
I really don't have problem with this. Let the financial sector run the world into the ground
and get it over with.
In defference to a great many knowledgable commentors here that work in the FIRE sector, I
don't want to create a damning screed on the cost of servicing money, but at some point even the
most considered opinions have to acknowledge that that finance is flooded with *talent* which
creates a number of problems; one being a waste of intellect and education in a field that doesn't
offer much of a return when viewed in an egalitarian sense, secondly; as the field grows due to,
the technical advances, the rise in globilization, and the security a financial occuptaion offers
in an advanced first world country nowadays, it requires substantially more income to be devoted
to it's function.
This income has to be derived somewhere, and the required sacrifices on every facet of a global
economy to bolster positions and maintain asset prices has precipitated this decline in the well
being of peoples not plugged-in to the consumer capitalist regime and dogma.
Something has to give here, and I honestly couldn't care about your 401k or home resale value,
you did this to yourself as much as those day-traders who got clobbered in the dot-com crash.
the capitalist economy is more and more an asset driven one. This article does not even
begin to address the issue of asset valuations, the explicit CB support for asset inflation and
the effect on inequality, and especially generational plunder.
the problem of living standards is obviously a Malthusian one. despite all the progress
of social media tricks, we cannot fool nature. the rate of ecological degradation is alarming,
and now irreversible. "the market" is now moving rapidly to real assets. This will eventually
lead to war as all war is eventually for resources.
"... " It is clear a significant number of former Baathist officers have formed the professional core of Daesh [IS] in Syria and Iraq and have given that organization the military capability it has shown in conducting its operations. " ..."
"... A March 2007 JIC report warned Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which it terms AQ-I, had " no shortage of suicide bombers. AQ-I is seeking high-profile attacks. We judge AQ-I will try to expand its sectarian campaign wherever it can: suicide bombings in Kirkuk have risen sharply since October when AQ-I declared the establishment of the notional 'Islamic State of Iraq' (including Kirkuk). " ..."
"... " They claimed that the label 'jihadist' is becoming increasingly difficult to define: in many cases distinctions between nationalists and jihadists are blurred. They increasingly share common cause being drawn together in the face of Shia sectarian violence. " ..."
Intelligence reports examined and now released by the Chilcot inquiry appear to confirm Islamic State
(IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) was created by the Iraq war, a view now apparently backed by Britain's Tory
Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond. The reports from the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), which
were previously classified, tell the story of the security services' increasing concern that the
war and occupation was fuelling ever more extremism in Iraq.
The evidence also appears to debunk repeated claims by former PM Tony Blair that IS began in the
Syrian civil war and not Iraq, positioning the brutal group's rise clearly within Iraq's borders.
The Chilcot findings were backed up Thursday by serving Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond. He
told The Foreign Affairs Committee " many of the problems we see in Iraq today stem from that
disastrous decision to dismantle the Iraqi army and embark on a program of de-Baathification
."
" That was the big mistake of post-conflict planning. If we had gone a different way afterwards
we might have been able to see a different outcome, " he said.
Hammond conceded that many members of Saddam's armed forces today filled top roles in IS.
" It is clear a significant number of former Baathist officers have formed the professional
core of Daesh [IS] in Syria and Iraq and have given that organization the military capability it
has shown in conducting its operations. "
The documents show that by 2006 – three years into the occupation – UK intelligence chiefs were
increasingly concerned about the rise of Sunni jihadist resistance to the Western-backed regime of
Shia President Nouri Al-Maliki.
A March 2007 JIC report warned Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which it terms AQ-I, had " no shortage of
suicide bombers. AQ-I is seeking high-profile attacks. We judge AQ-I will try to expand its sectarian
campaign wherever it can: suicide bombings in Kirkuk have risen sharply since October when AQ-I declared
the establishment of the notional 'Islamic State of Iraq' (including Kirkuk). "
Many leading Al-Qaeda figures had been pro-regime Baathists and members of the former Iraqi Army
disbanded by the occupation. They are broadly accepted to have later formed the basis for IS.
The report describes AQ-I as being " in the vanguard. "
" Its strategic main effort is the prosecution of a sectarian campaign designed to drag Iraq
into civil war " at the head of a number of other Sunni militia groups.
" We judge its campaign has been the most effective of any insurgent group, having significant
impact in the past year, and poses the greatest immediate threat to stability in Iraq. The tempo
of mass-casualty attacks on predominantly Shia targets has been relentless, " the spies argue.
Chillingly, an earlier report from 2006 appears to echo some of the realizations made late in
the Vietnam War that there were also strong elements of nationalism driving the insurgency.
" They claimed that the label 'jihadist' is becoming increasingly difficult to define: in
many cases distinctions between nationalists and jihadists are blurred. They increasingly share common
cause being drawn together in the face of Shia sectarian violence. "
The reports appear to suggest that the conditions also somewhat echo the Afghanistan war, which
by that time was already underway, in that the anti-coalition forces displayed a mix of ideological
and economic drivers to resist the occupation.
" Their motivation is mixed: some are Islamist extremists inspired by the AQ agenda, others
are simply hired hands attracted by the money, " the spies warn.
The religious sectarianism involved, however, was distinctly Iraqi and reflected the power battle
between the deposed Sunni forces and the US-installed Shia regime which replaced it.
They also appeared to believe that AQ-I was composed of local and not, as was claimed at the time,
foreign fighters.
" We judge Al-Qaida in Iraq is the largest single insurgent network and although its leadership
retains a strong foreign element, a large majority of its fighters are Iraqi.
" Some are drawn in by the opportunity to take on Shia militias: the jihadists' media effort
stresses their role as defenders of the Sunni ," the report concludes.
Prophetically, even before IS began to germinate in Iraq, one now-declassified Foreign Office
memo from January 2003 warned "all the evidence from the region suggests that coalition forces
will not be seen as liberators for long, if at all. Our motives are regarded with huge suspicion.
"
AHHA -> Blue Car 7 Jul
No there was a documentary on the rise of IS months ago on Dutch television coming to the same
conclusion. Kicking all Baath party members (all Sunni people) out of the army, leaving only Shiite
in created IS. Baath militairy specialists did it out of revenge. One former high Baath militairy
officer even went up to the room of the American leadership on Irak to tell him that if they would
kick Baath people out he would have no other option than to start fighting America. Because what
would all those people have to live of. And they did not just kick them out of the army but out
of all government posts. But the Americans and making one group less equal to another by treating
them different, does that ring any bells. ?
AHHA -> Blue Car 8 Jul
It was not Fox, I loath them. It was a well built Dutch documentary not praising the Americans
for a change but being real True, together with Bush and the rest of their accomplices, of the
most horrific mass killings based on lies (more than a million innocent people have perished because
of their deceitful actions)! We should all demand Justice for the sake of humanity, and also because
it is the only way to deter feature self-righteous leaders like them from leading our world to
more blood sheds and catastrophic destructions! No one should be above the law!
Blue Scissors -> Red Snow 7 Jul
No, Bush and Cheney are the biggest terrorist. Blair just followed behind them, like a sheep.
Linx 7 Jul
Its clear that the U.S. government was the instigator of the war in Iraq based on 911and WMD.
Blair in his ambition to reached the top lied to his parliament because there is noway they did
not have the intelligence there not WMDs. In a stunning but little-known speech from 2007, Gen.
Wesley Clark claims America underwent a "policy coup" at the time of the 9/11 attacks. In this
video, he reveals that, right after 9/11, he was privy to information contained in a classified
memo: US plans to attack and remove governments in seven countries over five years: Iraq, Syria,
Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. He was told: "We learned that we can use our military
without being challenged . We've got about five years to clean up the Soviet client regimes before
another superpower comes along and challenges us." "This was a policy coup these people took control
of policy in the United States. The interview is still available in the internet.
Orange Tag 7 Jul
What I want to be informed about is the ICC court date set for Bush, Blair, Cheney, Rumsfeld and
the generals ordering the killings of innocent people in Iraq. It's time for the west to wake
up and provide all and every help that Syrian legitimate government needs, and for west to stop
the support of Saudis, Qatari and others alike regimes whom are the providers and are state sponsors
of terrorism as Isis and others a like called " "moderates terrorist". Look you fly the Emirates
you pay for the costs of their terrorism in Middle East.
keghamminas 7 Jul Edited
Very true about the blind destructive policy of the US-Nato that should have attacked Saudi Arabia
instead of Iraq .The same faults are committed now against Syria and it's legal government ; the
total destruction of this country will lead to more anarchy and new terrorist movements as what's
happenning in Iraq. All the puppets ,like the UK are guilty by their criminal participation.
Malcolm stark 7 Jul
Yet another problem caused by Washington and Co and yet their are still people even here who say
Russia, Russia, Russia. And will make excuses for the problems caused without blaming their own
government.
CyanDog 7 Jul
Sexton: What a surprise. An investigation designed to whitewash the criminal activities of our
beloved Western leaders turned out to be eminently successful. A playful slap on the wrist for
Mr Blair, but basically the Western criminals made to look like good guys although a few unintentional
mistakes were made. From now on the West can continue business as usual. I wonder which countries
the West has currently set its future sights on? I would suggest that Iran, Russia and China should
keep their powder dry. The Westerners are playing for keeps, and they do not care who gets hurt
on either side.
But those politicians lucky enough to win discover -- if they did not know already -- that their
capacity to affect even their own domestic environment is constrained by forces beyond their control.
Notable quotes:
"... But those politicians lucky enough to win discover -- if they did not know already -- that their capacity to affect even their own domestic environment is constrained by forces beyond their control. ..."
"... In the case of Britain, the once-powerful centralized governments of that country are now multiply constrained. As the power of Britain in international affairs has declined, so has the British government's power within its own domain. Membership of the European Union constrains British governments' ability to determine everything from the quantities of fish British fishermen can legally catch to the amount in fees that British universities can charge students from other EU countries. ..."
"... Not least, the EU's insistence on the free movement of labor caused the Conservative-dominated coalition that came to power in 2010 to renege on the Tories' spectacularly ill-judged pledge to reduce to "tens of thousands a year" the number of migrants coming to Britain. The number admitted in 2014 alone was nearer 300,000. ..."
"... On top of all that, British governments -- even more than those of some other predominantly capitalist economies -- are open to being buffeted by market forces, whose winds can acquire gale force. In a world of substantially free trade, imports and exports of goods and services are largely beyond any government's control, and the Bank of England's influence over the external value of sterling is negligible. During the present election campaign, HSBC, one of the world's largest banks, indicated that it was contemplating shifting its headquarters from the City of London to Hong Kong. For good or ill, Britain's government was, and is, effectively helpless to intervene. ..."
"... That's why we need a federal Europe. Local governments for local issues and elected by the local people and a European government for European issues elected by all Europeans. ..."
Once upon a time, national elections were -- or seemed to be -- overwhelmingly domestic affairs,
affecting only the peoples of the countries taking part in them. If that was ever true, it is so
no longer. Angela Merkel negotiates with Greece's government with Germany's voters looming in the
background. David Cameron currently fights an election campaign in the UK holding fast to the belief
that a false move on his part regarding Britain's relationship with the EU could cost his Conservative
Party seats, votes and possibly the entire election.
Britain provides a good illustration of a general proposition. It used to be claimed, plausibly,
that "all politics is local." In 2015, electoral politics may still be mostly local, but the post-electoral
business of government is anything but local. There is a misfit between the two. Voters are mainly
swayed by domestic issues. Vote-seeking politicians campaign accordingly. But those politicians
lucky enough to win discover -- if they did not know already -- that their capacity to affect even
their own domestic environment is constrained by forces beyond their control.
Anyone viewing the UK election campaign from afar could be forgiven for thinking that British
voters and politicians alike imagined they were living on some kind of self-sufficient sea-girt island.
The opinion polls indicate that a large majority of voters are preoccupied -- politically as well
as in other ways -- with their own financial situation, tax rates, welfare spending and the future
of the National Health Service. Immigration is an issue for many voters, but mostly in domestic terms
(and often as a surrogate for generalized discontent with Britain's political class). The fact that
migrants from Eastern Europe and elsewhere make a positive net contribution to both the UK's economy
and its social services scarcely features in the campaign.
... ... ...
After polling day, all that will change -- probably to millions of voters' dismay. One American
presidential candidate famously said that politicians campaign in poetry, but govern in prose. Politicians
in democracies, not just in Britain, campaign as though they can move mountains, then find that most
mountains are hard or impossible to move.
In the case of Britain, the once-powerful centralized governments of that country are now
multiply constrained. As the power of Britain in international affairs has declined, so has the British
government's power within its own domain. Membership of the European Union constrains British governments'
ability to determine everything from the quantities of fish British fishermen can legally catch to
the amount in fees that British universities can charge students from other EU countries.
Not least, the EU's insistence on the free movement of labor caused the Conservative-dominated
coalition that came to power in 2010 to renege on the Tories' spectacularly ill-judged pledge to
reduce to "tens of thousands a year" the number of migrants coming to Britain. The number admitted
in 2014 alone was nearer 300,000.
The UK's courts are also far more active than they were. The British parliament in 1998 incorporated
the European Convention on Human Rights into British domestic law, and British judges have determinedly
enforced those rights. During the 1970s, they had already been handed responsibility for enforcing
the full range of EU law within the UK.
Also, Britain's judges have, on their own initiative, exercised increasingly frequently their
long-standing power of "judicial review," invalidating ministerial decisions that violated due process
or seemed to them to be wholly unreasonable. Devolution of substantial powers to semi-independent
governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has also meant that the jurisdiction of many
so-called UK government ministers is effectively confined to the purely English component part.
On top of all that, British governments -- even more than those of some other predominantly
capitalist economies -- are open to being buffeted by market forces, whose winds can acquire gale
force. In a world of substantially free trade, imports and exports of goods and services are largely
beyond any government's control, and the Bank of England's influence over the external value of sterling
is negligible. During the present election campaign, HSBC, one of the world's largest banks, indicated
that it was contemplating shifting its headquarters from the City of London to Hong Kong. For good
or ill, Britain's government was, and is, effectively helpless to intervene.
The heirs of Gladstone, Disraeli, Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, Britain's political leaders
are understandably still tempted to talk big. But their effective real-world influence is small.
No wonder a lot of voters in Britain feel they are being conned.
ItsJustTim
That's globalization. And it won't go away, even if you vote nationalist. The issues are increasingly
international, while the voters still have a mostly local perspective. That's why we need
a federal Europe. Local governments for local issues and elected by the local people and a European
government for European issues elected by all Europeans.
"... it seems fair to say: Globalism isn't quite the Wave of the Future that most observers thought it was, even just a year ago. And so before we attempt to divide the true intentions of Clinton and Trump, we might first step back and consider how we got to this point. ..."
"... An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations . ..."
"... Clinton will say anything then she'll sell you out. I hope we never get a chance to see how she will sell us out on TPP ..."
"... What we would be headed for under Hillary Clinton is fascism--Mussolini's shorthand definition of fascism was the marriage of industry and commerce with the power of the State. That is what the plutocrats who run the big banks (to whom she owes her soul) aim to do. President, Thomas Jefferson knew the dangers of large European-style central banks. ..."
On the surface, it appears that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, for all their mutual antipathy,
are united on one big issue: opposition to new trade deals. Here's a recent headline in
The Guardian: "Trump and Clinton's free trade retreat: a pivotal moment for the world's
economic future."
And the subhead continues in that vein:
Never before have both main presidential candidates broken so completely with Washington orthodoxy
on globalization, even as the White House refuses to give up. The problem, however, goes much
deeper than trade deals.
In the above quote, we can note the deliberate use of the loaded word, "problem." As in, it's
a problem that free trade is unpopular-a problem, perhaps, that the MSM can fix. Yet in the
meantime, the newspaper sighed, the two biggest trade deals on the horizon, the well-known
Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), and the lesser-known
Trans Atlantic Trade Investment
Partnership (TTIP), aimed at further linking the U.S. and European Union (EU), are both in jeopardy.
So now we must ask broader questions: What does this mean for trade treaties overall? And what
are the implications for globalism?
More specifically, we can ask: Are we sure that the two main White House hopefuls, Clinton and
Trump, are truly sincere in their opposition to those deals? After all, as has been
widely reported, President Obama still has plans to push TPP through to enactment in the "lame
duck" session of Congress after the November elections. Of course, Obama wouldn't seek to do that
if the president-elect opposed it-or would he?
Yet on August 30, Politico reminded its Beltway readership, "How
Trump or Clinton could kill Pacific trade deal." In other words, even if Obama were to move TPP
forward in his last two months in office, the 45th president could still block its implementation
in 2017 and beyond. If, that is, she or he really wanted to.
Indeed, as we think about Clinton and Trump, we realize that there's "opposition" that's for show
and there's opposition that's for real.
Still, given what's been said on the presidential campaign trail this year, it seems fair
to say: Globalism isn't quite the Wave of the Future that most observers thought it was, even just
a year ago. And so before we attempt to divide the true intentions of Clinton and Trump, we might
first step back and consider how we got to this point.
2. The Free Trade Orthodoxy
It's poignant that the headline, "Trump and Clinton's free trade retreat", lamenting the decay
of free trade, appeared in The Guardian. Until recently, the newspaper was known as The
Manchester Guardian, as in Manchester, England. And Manchester is not only a big city, population
2.5 million, it is also a city with a fabled past: You see, Manchester was the cradle of the Industrial
Revolution, which transformed England and the world. It was that city that helped create the free
trade orthodoxy that is now crumbling.
Yes, in the 18th and 19th centuries, Manchester was the leading manufacturing city in the world,
especially for textiles. It was known as "Cottonopolis."
Indeed, back then, Manchester was so much more efficient and effective at mass production that
it led the world in exports. That is, it could produce its goods at such low cost that it could send
them across vast oceans and still undercut local producers on price and quality.
Over time, this economic reality congealed into a school of thought: As Manchester grew rich from
exports, its business leaders easily found economists, journalists, and propagandists who would help
advance their cause in the press and among the intelligentsia.
The resulting school of thought became known, in the 19th century, as "Manchester
Liberalism." And so, to this day, long after Manchester has lost its economic preeminence to
rivals elsewhere in the world, the phrase "Manchester Liberalism" is a well-known in the history
of economics, bespeaking ardent support for free markets and free trade.
More recently, the hub for free-trade enthusiasm has been the United States. In particular, the
University of Chicago, home to the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, became free trade's
academic citadel; hence the "Chicago
School" has displaced Manchesterism.
And just as it made sense for Manchester Liberalism to exalt free trade and exports when Manchester
and England were on top, so, too, did the Chicago School exalt free trade when the U.S. was unquestionably
the top dog.
So back in the 40s and 50s, when the rest of the world was either bombed flat or still under the
yoke of colonialism, it made perfect sense that the U.S., as the only intact industrial power, would
celebrate industrial exports: We were Number One, and it was perfectly rational to make the most
of that first-place status. And if scribblers and scholars could help make the case for this new
status quo, well, bring 'em aboard. Thus the Chicago School gained ascendancy in the late 20th century.
And of course, the Chicagoans drew inspiration from a period even earlier than Manchesterism,
3. On the Origins of the Orthodoxy: Adam Smith and David Ricardo
One passage in that volume considers how individuals might optimize their own production and consumption:
It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family never to attempt to make at home what it
will cost him more to make than to buy.
Smith is right, of course; everyone should always be calculating, however informally, whether
or not it's cheaper to make it at home or buy it from someone else.
We can quickly see: If each family must make its own clothes and grow its own food, it's likely
to be worse off than if it can buy its necessities from a large-scale producer. Why? Because, to
be blunt about it, most of us don't really know how to make clothes and grow food, and it's expensive
and difficult-if not downright impossible-to learn how. So we can conclude that self-sufficiency,
however rustic and charming, is almost always a recipe for poverty.
Smith had a better idea: specialization. That is, people would specialize in one line of
work, gain skills, earn more money, and then use that money in the marketplace, buying what they
needed from other kinds of specialists.
Moreover, the even better news, in Smith's mind, was that this kind of specialization came naturally
to people-that is, if they were free to scheme out their own advancement. As Smith argued, the ideal
system would allow "every man to pursue his own interest his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality,
liberty and justice."
That is, men (and women) would do that which they did best, and then they would all come together
in the free marketplace-each person being inspired to do better, thanks to, as Smith so memorably
put it, the "invisible hand." Thus Smith articulated a key insight that undergirds the whole of modern
economics-and, of course, modern-day prosperity.
A few decades later, in the early 19th century, Smith's pioneering work was expanded upon by another
remarkable British economist, David Ricardo.
Ricardo's big idea built on Smithian specialization; Ricardo called it "comparative advantage."
That is, just as each individual should do what he or she does best, so should each country.
In Ricardo's well-known illustration, he explained that the warm and sunny climate of Portugal
made that country ideal for growing the grapes needed for wine, while the factories of England made
that country ideal for spinning the fibers needed for apparel and other finished fabrics.
Thus, in Ricardo's view, we could see the makings of a beautiful economic friendship: The Portuguese
would utilize their comparative advantage (climate) and export their surplus wine to England, while
the English would utilize their comparative advantage (manufacturing) and export apparel to Portugal.
Thus each would benefit from the exchange of efficiently-produced products, as each export paid for
the other.
Furthermore, in Ricardo's telling, if tariffs and other barriers were eliminated, then both countries,
Portugal and England, would enjoy the maximum free-trading win-win.
Actually, in point of fact-and Ricardo knew this-the relationship was much more of a win for England,
because manufacture is more lucrative than agriculture. That is, a factory in Manchester could crank
out garments a lot faster than a vineyard in Portugal could ferment wine.
And as we all know, the richer, stronger countries are industrial, not agricultural. Food is essential-and
alcohol is pleasurable-but the real money is made in making things. After all, crops can be grown
easily enough in many places, and so prices stay low. By contrast, manufacturing requires a lot of
know-how and a huge upfront investment. Yet with enough powerful manufacturing, a nation is always
guaranteed to be able to afford to import food. And also, it can make military weapons, and so, if
necessary, take foreign food and croplands by force.
We can also observe that Ricardo, smart fellow that he was, nevertheless was describing the economy
at a certain point in time-the era of horse-drawn carriages and sailing ships. Ricardo realized that
transportation was, in fact, a key business variable. He wrote that it was possible for a company
to seek economic advantage by moving a factory from one part of England to another. And yet in his
view, writing from the perspective of the year 1817, it was impossible to imagine
moving a factory from England to another country:
It would not follow that capital and population would necessarily move from England to Holland,
or Spain, or Russia.
Why this presumed immobility of capital and people? Because, from Ricardo's early 19th-century
perspective, transportation was inevitably slow and creaky; he didn't foresee steamships and airplanes.
In his day, relying on the technology of the time, it wasn't realistic to think that factories, and
their workers, could relocate from one country to another.
Moreover, in Ricardo's era, many countries were actively hostile to industrialization, because
change would upset the aristocratic rhythms of the old order. That is, industrialization could turn
docile or fatalistic peasants, spread out thinly across the countryside, into angry and self-aware
proletarians, concentrated in the big cities-and that was a formula for unrest, even revolution.
Indeed, it was not until the 20th century that every country-including China, a great civilization,
long asleep under decadent imperial misrule-figured out that it had no choice other than to industrialize.
So we can see that the ideas of Smith and Ricardo, enduringly powerful as they have been, were
nonetheless products of their time-that is, a time when England mostly had the advantages of industrialism
to itself. In particular, Ricardo's celebration of comparative advantage can be seen as an artifact
of his own era, when England enjoyed a massive first-mover advantage in the industrial-export game.
Smith died in 1790, and Ricardo died in 1823; a lot has changed since then. And yet the two economists
were so lucid in their writings that their work is studied and admired to this day.
Unfortunately, we can also observe that their ideas have been frozen in a kind of intellectual
amber; even in the 21st century, free trade and old-fashioned comparative advantage are unquestioningly
regarded as the keys to the wealth of nations-at least in the U.S.-even if they are so no longer.
4. Nationalist Alternatives to Free Trade Orthodoxy
As we have seen, Smith and Ricardo were pushing an idea, free trade, that was advantageous to
Britain.
So perhaps not surprisingly, rival countries-notably the United States and Germany-soon developed
different ideas. Leaders in Washington, D.C., and Berlin didn't want their respective nations to
be mere dependent receptacles for English goods; they wanted real independence. And so they wanted
factories of their own.
In the late 18th century, Alexander Hamilton, the visionary American patriot, could see that both
economic wealth and military power flowed from domestic industry. As the nation's first Treasury
Secretary, he persuaded President George Washington and the Congress to support a system of protective
tariffs and "internal improvements" (what today we would call infrastructure) to foster US manufacturing
and exporting.
And in the 19th century, Germany, under the much heavier-handed leadership of Otto von Bismarck,
had the same idea: Make a concerted effort to make the nation stronger.
In both countries, this industrial policymaking succeeded. So whereas at the beginning of the
19th century, England had led the world in steel production, by the beginning of the 20th century
century, the U.S. and Germany had moved well ahead. Yes, the "invisible hand" of individual self-interest
is always a powerful economic force, but sometimes, the "visible hand" of national purpose, animated
by patriotism, is even more powerful.
Thus by 1914, at the onset of World War One, we could see the results of the Smith/Ricardo model,
on the one hand, and the Hamilton/Bismarck model, on the other. All three countries-Britain, the
US, and Germany, were rich-but only the latter two had genuine industrial mojo. Indeed, during World
War One, English weakness became glaringly apparent in the 1915
shell crisis-as
in, artillery shells. It was only the massive importing of made-in-USA ammunition that saved Britain
from looming defeat.
Yet as always, times change, as do economic circumstances, as do prevailing ideas.
As we have seen, at the end of World War II, the U.S. was the only industrial power left standing.
And so it made sense for America to shift from a policy of Hamiltonian protection to a policy of
Smith-Ricardian export-minded free trade. Indeed, beginning in around 1945, both major political
parties, Democrats and Republicans, solidly embraced the new line: The U.S. would be the factory
for the world.
Yet if times, circumstances, and ideas change, they can always change again.
5. The Contemporary Crack-Up
As we have seen, in the 19th century, not every country wanted to be on the passive receiving
end of England's exports. And this was true, too, in the 20th century; Japan, notably, had its own
ideas.
If Japan had followed the Ricardian doctrine of comparative advantage, it would have focused on
exporting rice and tuna. Instead, by dint of hard work, ingenuity, and more than a little national
strategizing, Japan grew itself into a great and prosperous industrial power. Its exports, we might
note, were such high-value-adds as automobiles and electronics, not mere crops and fish.
Moreover, according to the same theory of comparative advantage, South Korea should have been
exporting parasols and kimchi, and China should have settled for exporting fortune cookies and pandas.
Yet as the South Korean economist
Ha-Joon Chang has chronicled,
these Asian nations resolved, in their no-nonsense neo-Confucian way, to launch state-guided private
industries-and the theory of comparative advantage be damned.
Yes, their efforts violated Western economic orthodoxy, but as the philosopher Kant once observed,
the actual proves the possible. Indeed, today, as we all know, the Asian tigers are among the richest
and fastest-growing economies in the world.
China is not only the world's largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), but
also the world's largest manufacturing nation-producing 52 percent of color televisions, 75 percent
of mobile phones and 87 percent of the world's personal computers. The Chinese automobile industry
is the world's largest, twice the size of America's. China leads the world in foreign exchange
reserves. The United States is the main trading partner for seventy-six countries. China is the
main trading partner for 124.
In particular, we might pause over one item in that impressive litany: China makes 87 percent
of the world's personal computers.
Indeed, if it's true, as ZDNet reports, that
the Chinese have built "backdoors" into almost all the electronic equipment that they sell-that
is to say, the equipment that we buy-then we can assume that we face a serious military challenge,
as well as a serious economic challenge.
Yes, it's a safe bet that the People's Liberation Army has a good handle on our defense establishment,
especially now that the Pentagon has fully equipped itself with
Chinese-made iPhones and iPads.
Of course, we can safely predict that Defense Department bureaucrats will always say that there's
nothing to worry about, that they have the potential hacking/sabotage matter under control (although
just to be sure, the Pentagon might say, give us more money).
Yet we might note that this is the same defense establishment that couldn't keep track of lone
internal rogues such as Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden. Therefore, should we really believe that
this same DOD knows how to stop the determined efforts of a nation of 1.3 billion people, seeking
to hack machines-machines that they made in the first place?
Yes, the single strongest argument against the blind application of free- trade dogma is the doctrine
of self defense. That is, all the wealth in the world doesn't matter if you're conquered. Even Adam
Smith understood that; as he wrote, "Defense
. . . is of much more importance than opulence."
Yet today we can readily see: If we are grossly dependent on China for vital wares, then we can't
be truly independent of China. In fact, we should be downright fearful.
Still, despite these deep strategic threats, directly the result of careless importing, the Smith-Ricardo
orthodoxy remains powerful, even hegemonistic-at least in the English-speaking world.
Why is this so? Yes, economists are typically seen as cold and nerdy, even bloodless, and yet,
in fact, they are actual human beings. And as such, they are susceptible to the giddy-happy feeling
that comes from the hope of building a new utopia, the dream of ushering in an era of world harmony,
based on untrammeled international trade. Indeed, this woozy idealism among economists goes way back;
it was the British free trader Richard Cobden who declared in 1857,
Free trade is God's diplomacy. There is no other certain way of uniting people in the bonds
of peace.
And lo, so many wars later, many economists still believe that.
Indeed, economists today are still monolithically pro-fee trade; a
recent survey of economists found that 83 percent supported eliminating all tariffs and other
barriers; just 10 percent disagreed.
We might further note that others, too, in the financial and intellectual elite are fully on board
the free-trade train, including most corporate officers and their lobbyists, journalists, academics,
and, of course, the mostly for-hire think-tankers.
To be sure, there are always exceptions: As that Guardian article, the one lamenting the
sharp decrease in support for free trade as a "problem," noted, not all of corporate America is on
board, particularly those companies in the manufacturing sector:
Ford openly opposes TPP because it fears the deal does nothing to stop Japan manipulating its
currency at the expense of US rivals.
Indeed, we might note that the same Guardian story included an even more cautionary note,
asserting that support for free trade, overall, is remarkably rickety:
Some suggest a "bicycle theory" of trade deals: that the international bandwagon has to keep
rolling forward or else it all wobbles and falls down.
So what has happened? How could virtually the entire elite be united in enthusiasm for free trade,
and yet, even so, the free trade juggernaut is no steadier than a mere two-wheeled bike? Moreover,
free traders will ask: Why aren't the leaders leading? More to the point, why aren't the followers
following?
To answer those questions, we might start by noting the four-decade phenomenon of
wage stagnation-that's
taken a toll on support for free trade. But of course, it's in the heartland that wages have been
stagnating; by contrast,
incomes for
the bicoastal elites have been soaring.
We might also note that some expert predictions have been way off, thus undermining confidence
in their expertise. Remember, this spring, when all the experts were saying that the United Kingdom
would fall into recession, or worse, if it voted to leave the EU? Well, just the other day came this
New York Post headline: "Brexit
actually boosting the UK economy."
Thus from the Wall Street-ish perspective of the urban chattering classes, things are going well-so
what's the problem?
Yet the folks on Main Street have known a different story. They have seen, with their own eyes,
what has happened to them, and no fusillade of op-eds or think-tank monographs will persuade them
to change their mind.
However, because the two parties have been so united on the issues of trade and globalization-the
"Uniparty," it's sometimes called-the folks in the boonies have had no political alternative. And
as they say, the only power you have in this world is the power of an alternative. And so, lacking
an alternative, the working/middle class has just had to accept its fate.
Indeed, it has been a bitter fate, particularly bitter in the former industrial heartland. In
a 2013 paper, the
Economic Policy Institute (EPI) came to some startling conclusions:
Growing trade with less-developed countries lowered wages in 2011 by 5.5 percent-or by roughly
$1,800-for a full-time, full-year worker earning the average wage for workers without a four-year
college degree.
The paper added, "One-third of this total effect is due to growing trade with just China."
Continuing, EPI found that even as trade with low-wage countries caused a decrease in the incomes
for lower-end workers, it had caused an increase in the incomes of high-end workers-so no
wonder the high-end thinks globalism in great.
To be sure, some in the elite are bothered by what's been happening.
Peggy Noonan, writing earlier this year in The Wall Street Journal-a piece that must have
raised the hackles of her doctrinaire colleagues-put the matter succinctly: There's a wide, and widening,
gap between the "protected" and the "unprotected":
The protected make public policy. The unprotected live in it. The unprotected are starting
to push back, powerfully.
Of course, Noonan was alluding to the Trump candidacy-and also to the candidacy of Sen. Bernie
Sanders. Those two insurgents, in different parties, have been propelled by the pushing from all
the unprotected folks across America.
We might pause to note that free traders have arguments which undoubtedly deserve a fuller airing.
Okay. However, we can still see the limits. For example, the familiar gambit of outsourcing jobs
to China, or Mexico-or 50 other countries-and calling that "free trade" is now socially unacceptable,
and politically unsustainable.
Still, the broader vision of planetary freedom, including the free flow of peoples and their ideas,
is always enormously appealing. The United States, as well as the world, undoubtedly benefits from
competition, from social and economic mobility-and yes, from new blood.
As
Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, notes, "77
percent of the full-time graduate students in electrical engineering and 71 percent in computer science
at U.S. universities are international students." That's a statistic that should give every American
pause to ask: Why aren't we producing more engineers here at home?
We can say, with admiration, that Silicon Valley is the latest Manchester; as such, it's a powerful
magnet for the best and the brightest from overseas, and from a purely dollars-and-cents point of
view, there's a lot to be said for welcoming them.
So yes, it would be nice if we could retain this international mobility that benefits the U.S.-but
only if the economic benefits can be broadly shared, and patriotic assimilation of immigrants can
be truly achieved, such that all Americans can feel good about welcoming newcomers.
The further enrichment of Silicon Valley won't do much good for the country unless those riches
are somehow widely shared. In fact, amidst the ongoing outsourcing of mass-production jobs,
total employment in such boomtowns as San Francisco and San Jose has barely budged. That is,
new software billionaires are being minted every day, but their workforces tend to be tiny-or located
overseas. If that past pattern is the future pattern, well, something will have to give.
We can say: If America is to be
one nation-something Mitt "47 percent" Romney never worried about, although it cost him in the
end-then we will have to figure out a way to turn the genius of the few into good jobs for the many.
The goal isn't socialism, or anything like that; instead, the goal is the widespread distribution
of private property, facilitated, by conscious national economic development, as
I argued at the tail end of this piece.
If we can't, or won't, find a way to expand private ownership nationwide, then the populist upsurges
of the Trump and Sanders campaigns will be remembered as mere overtures to a starkly divergent future.
6. Clinton and Trump Say They Are Trade Hawks: But Are They Sincere?
So now we come to a mega-question for 2016: How should we judge the sincerity of the two major-party
candidates, Clinton or Trump, when they affirm their opposition to TPP? And how do we assess their
attitude toward globalization, including immigration, overall?
The future is, of course, unknown, but we can make a couple of points.
First, it is true that
many have questioned the sincerity of Hillary's new anti-TPP stance, especially given the presence
of such prominent free-traders as vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine and presidential transition-planning
chief Ken Salazar. Moreover, there's also Hillary's own decades-long association with open-borders
immigration policies, as well as past support for such trade bills as NAFTA, PNTR, and, of course,
TPP. And oh yes, there's the Clinton Foundation, that global laundromat for every overseas fortune;
most of those billionaires are globalists par excellence-would a President Hillary really
cross them?
Second, since there's still no way to see inside another person's mind, the best we can
do is look for external clues-by which we mean, external pressures. And so we might ask a basic question:
Would the 45th president, whoever she or he is, feel compelled by those external pressures to keep
their stated commitment to the voters? Or would they feel that they owe more to their elite friends,
allies, and benefactors?
As we have seen, Clinton has long chosen to surround herself with free traders and globalists.
Moreover, she has raised money from virtually every bicoastal billionaire in America.
So we must wonder: Will a new President Clinton really betray her own class-all those
Davos Men and Davos Women-for the sake of middle-class folks she has never met, except maybe
on a rope line? Would Clinton 45, who has spent her life courting the powerful, really stick her
neck out for unnamed strangers-who never gave a dime to the Clinton Foundation?
Okay, so what to make of Trump? He, too, is a fat-cat-even more of fat-cat, in fact, than Clinton.
And yet for more than a year now, he has based his campaign on opposition to globalism in all its
forms; it's been the basis of his campaign-indeed, the basis of his base. And his campaign policy
advisers are emphatic. According to Politico, as recently as August 30, Trump trade adviser
Peter Navarro reiterated Trump's opposition to TPP, declaring,
Any deal must increase the GDP growth rate, reduce the trade deficit, and strengthen the manufacturing
base.
So, were Trump to win the White House, he would come in with a much more solid anti-globalist
mandate.
Thus we can ask: Would a President Trump really cross his own populist-nationalist base by going
over to the other side-to the globalists who voted, and donated, against him? If he did-if he repudiated
his central platform plank-he would implode his presidency, the way that Bush 41 imploded his presidency
in 1990 when he went back on his "read my lips, no new taxes" pledge.
Surely Trump remembers that moment of political calamity well, and so surely, whatever mistakes
he might make, he won't make that one.
To be sure, the future is unknowable. However, as we have seen, the past, both recent and historical,
is rich with valuable clues.
Clinton will say anything then she'll sell you out. I hope we never get a chance to see
how she will sell us out on TPP
Ellen Bell -> HoosierMilitia
You really do not understand the primitive form of capitalism that the moneyed elites are trying
to impose on us. That system is mercantilism and two of its major tenets are to only give the
workers subsistence level wages (what they are doing to poor people abroad and attempting to do
here) and monopolistic control of everything that is possible to monopolize. The large multi-nationals
have already done that. What we would be headed for under Hillary Clinton is fascism--Mussolini's
shorthand definition of fascism was the marriage of industry and commerce with the power of the
State. That is what the plutocrats who run the big banks (to whom she owes her soul) aim to do.
President, Thomas Jefferson knew the dangers of large European-style central banks. He said:
"...The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the
Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes
for anything but Coin. If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of
their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will
grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will
wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered..."
The power to create money was given to the private banking system of the Federal Reserve in
1913. Nearly every bit of our enormous debt has been incurred since then. The American people
have become debt-slaves. In the Constitution, only Congress has the right to issue currency. That's
why the plutocrats want to do away with it--among other reasons.
"... Donald Trump is challenging the very fabric of the institutional elites in this country on both sides that have, quite frankly, just straight up screwed this country up and made the world a mess. ..."
Tom Coyne, a lifelong Democrat and the mayor of Brook Park, Ohio, spoke
about his endorsement of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump with Breitbart
News Daily SiriusXM host Matt Boyle.
Coyne said:
The parties are blurred. What's the difference? They say the same things
in different tones. At the end of the day, they accomplish nothing.
Donald Trump is challenging the very fabric of the institutional elites
in this country on both sides that have, quite frankly, just straight up
screwed this country up and made the world a mess.
Regarding the GOP establishment's so-called Never Trumpers, Coyne stated,
"If it's their expertise that people are relying upon as to advice to vote,
people should go the opposite."
In an interview last week, Coyne said that Democrats and Republicans
have failed the city through inaction and bad trade policies, key themes
Trump often trumpets.
"He understands us," Coyne said of Trump. "He is saying what we feel,
and therefore, let him shake the bedevils out of everyone in the canyons
of Washington D.C. The American people are responding to him."
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00
a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
"... Donald Trump isn't a politician -- he's a one-man wrecking ball against our dysfunctional and corrupt establishment. We're about to see the deluxe version of the left's favorite theme: Vote for us or we'll call you stupid. It's the working class against the smirking class. ..."
"... He understands that if we're ever going to get our economy back on its feet the wage-earning middle class will have to prosper along with investors ..."
"... Trump that really "gets" the idea that the economy is suffering because the middle class can't find employment at livable wages ..."
"... Ms. Coulter says it more eloquently: "The Republican establishment has no idea how much ordinary voters hate both parties." Like me, she's especially annoyed with Republicans, because we think of the Republican Party as being our political "family" that has turned against us: ..."
"... The RNC has been forcing Republican candidates to take suicidal positions forever They were happy to get 100 percent of the Business Roundtable vote and 20 percent of the regular vote. ..."
"... American companies used free trade with low-wage countries as an opportunity to close their American factories and relocate the jobs to lower-paying foreign workers. Instead of creating product and exporting it to other countries, our American companies EXPORTED American JOBS to other countries and IMPORTED foreign-made PRODUCTS into America! Our exports have actually DECLINED during the last five years with most of the 20 countries we signed free trade with. Even our exports to Canada, our oldest free trade partner, are less than what they were five years ago. ..."
"... Trade with Japan, China, and South Korea is even more imbalanced, because those countries actively restrict imports of American-made products. We run a 4x trade imbalance with China, which cost us $367 billion last year. We lost $69 billion to Japan and $28 billion to South Korea. Our exports to these countries are actually DECLINING, even while our imports soar! ..."
"... Why do Establishment Republicans join with Democrats in wanting to diminish the future with the WRONG kind of "free trade" that removes jobs and wealth from the USA? As Ms. Coulter reminds us, it is because Republican Establishment, like the Democrat establishment, is PAID by the money and jobs they receive from big corporations to believe it. ..."
"... The donor class doesn't care. The rich are like locusts: once they've picked America dry, they'll move on to the next country. A hedge fund executive quoted in The Atlantic a few years ago said, "If the transformation of the world economy lifts four people in China and India out of poverty and into the middle class, and meanwhile [that] means one American drops out of the middle class, that's not such a bad trade." ..."
"... The corporate 1% who believe that the global labor market should be tapped in order to beat American workers out of their jobs; and that corporations and the 1% who own them should be come tax-exempt organizations that profit by using cheap overseas labor to product product that is sold in the USA, and without paying taxes on the profit. Ms. Coulter calls this group of Republican Estblishmentarians "locusts: once they've picked America dry, they'll move on to the next country." ..."
"... Pretending to care about the interests of minorities. Of course, the Republican Establishment has even less appeal to minorities than to the White Middle Class (WMC) they abandoned. Minorities are no more interested in losing their jobs to foreigners or to suffer economic stagnation while the rich have their increasing wealth (most of which is earned at the expense of the middle class) tax-sheltered, than do the WMC. ..."
"... Trump has given Republicans a new lease on life. The Establishment doesn't like having to take a back seat to him, but perhaps they should understand that having a back seat in a popular production is so much better than standing outside alone in the cold. ..."
Donald Trump isn't a politician -- he's a one-man wrecking ball against our dysfunctional
and corrupt establishment. We're about to see the deluxe version of the left's favorite theme: Vote
for us or we'll call you stupid. It's the working class against the smirking class.
No pandering! The essence of Trump in personality and issues , August 23, 2016
Ms. Coulter explains the journey of myself and so many other voters into Trump's camp. It captures
the essence of Trump as a personality and Trump on the issues. If I had to sum Ms. Coulter's view
of the reason for Trump's success in two words, I'd say "No Pandering!" I've heard many people,
including a Liberal tell me, "Trump says what needs to be said."
I've voted Republican in every election going back to Reagan in 1980, except for 2012 when
I supported President Obama's re-election. I've either voted for, or financially supported many
"Establishment Republicans" like Mitt Romney and John McCain in 2008. I've also supported some
Conservative ones like Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani. In this election I'd been planning to
vote for Jeb Bush, a superb governor when I lived in Florida.
Then Trump announced his candidacy. I had seen hints of that happening as far back as 2012.
In my Amazon reviews in 2012 I said that many voters weren't pleased with Obama or the Republican
Establishment. So the question became: "Who do you vote for if you don't favor the agendas of
either party's legacy candidates?" In November 2013 I commented on the book DOUBLE DOWN: GAME
CHANGE 2012 by Mark Halperin and John Heileman:
=====
Mr. Trump occupies an important place in the political spectrum --- that of being a Republican
Populist.
He understands that if we're ever going to get our economy back on its feet the wage-earning
middle class will have to prosper along with investors, who are recovering our fortunes in
the stock market.
IMO whichever party nominates a candidate like Trump that really "gets" the idea that the
economy is suffering because the middle class can't find employment at livable wages, will
be the party that rises to dominance.
Mr. Trump, despite his flakiness, at least understood that essential fact of American economic
life.
November 7, 2013
=====
Ms. Coulter says it more eloquently: "The Republican establishment has no idea how much
ordinary voters hate both parties." Like me, she's especially annoyed with Republicans, because
we think of the Republican Party as being our political "family" that has turned against us:
===== The RNC has been forcing Republican candidates to take suicidal positions forever They were
happy to get 100 percent of the Business Roundtable vote and 20 percent of the regular vote.
when the GOP wins an election, there is no corresponding "win" for the unemployed blue-collar
voter in North Carolina. He still loses his job to a foreign worker or a closed manufacturing
plant, his kids are still boxed out of college by affirmative action for immigrants, his community
is still plagued with high taxes and high crime brought in with all that cheap foreign labor.
There's no question but that the country is heading toward being Brazil. One doesn't have to
agree with the reason to see that the very rich have gotten much richer, placing them well beyond
the concerns of ordinary people, and the middle class is disappearing. America doesn't make anything
anymore, except Hollywood movies and Facebook. At the same time, we're importing a huge peasant
class, which is impoverishing what remains of the middle class, whose taxes support cheap labor
for the rich.
With Trump, Americans finally have the opportunity to vote for something that's popular.
=====
That explains how Trump won my vote --- and held on to it through a myriad of early blunders
and controversies that almost made me switch my support to other candidates.
I'm no "xenophobe isolationist" stereotype. My first employer was an immigrant from Eastern
Europe. What I learned working for him launched me on my successful career. I've developed and
sold computer systems to subsidiaries of American companies in Europe and Asia. My business partners
have been English and Canadian immigrants. My family are all foreign-born Hispanics. Three of
my college roommates were from Ecuador, Germany, and Syria.
BECAUSE of this international experience I agree with the issues of trade and immigration that
Ms. Coulter talks about that have prompted Trump's rising popularity.
First, there is the false promise that free trade with low-wage countries would "create millions
of high-paying jobs for American workers, who will be busy making high-value products for export."
NAFTA was signed in 1994. GATT with China was signed in 2001. Since then we've signed free trade
with 20 countries. It was said that besides creating jobs for Americans, that free trade would
prosper the global economy. In truth the opposite happened:
American companies used free trade with low-wage countries as an opportunity to close their
American factories and relocate the jobs to lower-paying foreign workers. Instead of creating
product and exporting it to other countries, our American companies EXPORTED American JOBS to
other countries and IMPORTED foreign-made PRODUCTS into America! Our exports have actually DECLINED
during the last five years with most of the 20 countries we signed free trade with. Even our exports
to Canada, our oldest free trade partner, are less than what they were five years ago.
We ran trade SURPLUSES with Mexico until 1994, when NAFTA was signed. The very next year the
surplus turned to deficit, now $60 billion a year. Given that each American worker produces an
average of $64,000 in value per year, that is a loss of 937,000 American jobs to Mexico alone.
The problem is A) that Mexicans are not wealthy enough to be able to afford much in the way of
American-made product and B) there isn't much in the way of American-made product left to buy,
since so much of former American-made product is now made in Mexico or China.
Trade with Japan, China, and South Korea is even more imbalanced, because those countries
actively restrict imports of American-made products. We run a 4x trade imbalance with China, which
cost us $367 billion last year. We lost $69 billion to Japan and $28 billion to South Korea. Our
exports to these countries are actually DECLINING, even while our imports soar!
Thus, free trade, except with a few fair-trading countries like Canada, Australia, and possibly
Britain, has been a losing proposition. Is it coincidence that our economy has weakened with each
trade deal we have signed? Our peak year of labor force participation was 1999. Then we had the
Y2K collapse and the Great Recession, followed by the weakest "recovery" since WWII? As Trump
would say, free trade has been a "disaster."
Why do Establishment Republicans join with Democrats in wanting to diminish the future
with the WRONG kind of "free trade" that removes jobs and wealth from the USA? As Ms. Coulter
reminds us, it is because Republican Establishment, like the Democrat establishment, is PAID by
the money and jobs they receive from big corporations to believe it. Ms. Coulter says:
===== The donor class doesn't care. The rich are like locusts: once they've picked America dry,
they'll move on to the next country. A hedge fund executive quoted in The Atlantic a few years
ago said, "If the transformation of the world economy lifts four people in China and India
out of poverty and into the middle class, and meanwhile [that] means one American drops out
of the middle class, that's not such a bad trade."
=====
Then there is immigration. My wife, son, and extended family legally immigrated to the USA
from Latin America. The first family members were recruited by our government during the labor
shortage of the Korean War. Some fought for the United States in Korea. Some of their children
fought for us in Vietnam, and some grandchildren are fighting in the Middle East. Most have
become successful professionals and business owners. They came here LEGALLY, some waiting in
queue for up to 12 years. They were supported by the family already in America until they were
on their feet.
Illegal immigration has been less happy. Illegals are here because the Democrats want new voters
and the Republicans want cheap labor. Contrary to business propaganda, illegals cost Americans
their jobs. A colleague just old me, "My son returned home from California after five years, because
he couldn't get construction work any longer. All those jobs are now done off the books by illegals."
It's the same in technology. Even while our high-tech companies are laying off 260,000 American
employees in 2016 alone, they are banging the drums to expand the importation of FOREIGN tech
workers from 85,000 to 195,000 to replace the Americans they let go. Although the H1-B program
is billed as bringing in only the most exceptional, high-value foreign engineers, in truth most
visas are issued to replace American workers with young foreigners of mediocre ability who'll
work for much less money than the American family bread-winners they replaced.
Both parties express their "reverse racism" against the White Middle Class. Democrats don't
like them because they tend to vote Republican. The Republican Establishment doesn't like them
because they cost more to employ than overseas workers and illegal aliens. According to them the
WMC is too technologically out of date and overpaid to allow our benighted business leaders to
"compete internationally."
Ms. Coulter says "Americans are homesick" for our country that is being lost to illegal immigration
and the removal of our livelihoods overseas. We are sick of Republican and Democrat Party hidden
agendas, reverse-racism, and economic genocide against the American people. That's why the Establishment
candidates who started out so theoretically strong, like Jeb Bush, collapsed like waterlogged
houses of cards when they met Donald Trump. As Ms. Coulter explains, Trump knows their hidden
agendas, and knows they are working against the best interests of the American Middle Class.
Coulter keeps coming back to Mr. Trump's "Alpha Male" personality that speaks to Americans
as nation without pandering to specific voter identity groups. She contrasts his style to the
self-serving "Republican (Establishment) Brain Trust that is mostly composed of comfortable, well-paid
mediocrities who, by getting a gig in politics, earn salaries higher than a capitalist system
would ever value their talents." She explains what she sees as the idiocy of those Republican
Establishment political consultants who wrecked the campaigns of Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz by micromanaging
with pandering.
She says the Republican Establishment lost because it served itself --- becoming wealthy by
serving the moneyed interests of Wall Street. Trump won because he is speaking to the disfranchised
American Middle Class who loves our country, is proud of our traditions, and believes that Americans
have as much right to feed our families through gainful employment as do overseas workers and
illegal aliens.
"I am YOUR voice," says Trump to the Middle Class that until now has been ignored and even
sneered at by both parties' establishments.
I've given an overview of the book here. The real delight is in the details, told as only Anne
Coulter can tell them. I've quoted a few snippets of her words, that relate most specifically
to my views on Trump and the issues. I wish there were space to quote many more. Alas, you'll
need to read the book to glean them all!
Bruce, I would also add that the Republican Establishment chose not to represent the interests
of the White Middle Class on trade, immigration, and other issues that matter to us. They chose
to represent the narrow interests of:
1. The corporate 1% who believe that the global labor market should be tapped in order
to beat American workers out of their jobs; and that corporations and the 1% who own them should
be come tax-exempt organizations that profit by using cheap overseas labor to product product
that is sold in the USA, and without paying taxes on the profit. Ms. Coulter calls this group
of Republican Estblishmentarians "locusts: once they've picked America dry, they'll move on to
the next country."
2. Pretending to care about the interests of minorities. Of course, the Republican Establishment
has even less appeal to minorities than to the White Middle Class (WMC) they abandoned. Minorities
are no more interested in losing their jobs to foreigners or to suffer economic stagnation while
the rich have their increasing wealth (most of which is earned at the expense of the middle class)
tax-sheltered, than do the WMC.
The Republican Establishment is in a snit because Trump beat them by picking up the WMC votes
that the Establishment abandoned. What would have happened if Trump had not come on the scene?
The probable result is that the Establishment would have nominated a ticket of Jeb Bush and John
Kasich. These candidates had much to recommend them as popular governors of key swing states.
But they would have gone into the election fighting the campaign with Republican Establishment
issues that only matter to the 1%. They would have lost much of the WMC vote that ultimately rallied
around Trump, while gaining no more than the usual 6% of minorities who vote Republican. It would
have resulted in a severe loss for the Republican Party, perhaps making it the minority party
for the rest of the century.
Trump has given Republicans a new lease on life. The Establishment doesn't like having
to take a back seat to him, but perhaps they should understand that having a back seat in a popular
production is so much better than standing outside alone in the cold.
It's funny how White Men are supposed to be angry. But I've never seen any White men:
1. Running amok, looting and burning down their neighborhood, shooting police and other "angry
White men." There were 50 people shot in Chicago last weekend alone. How many of those do you
think were "angry white men?" Hint: they were every color EXCEPT white.
2. Running around complaining that they aren't allowed into the other gender's bathroom, then
when they barge their way in there complain about being sexually assaulted. No, it's only "angry
females" (of any ethnicity) who barge their way into the men's room and then complain that somebody
in there offended them.
Those "angry white men" are as legendary as "Bigfoot." They are alleged to exist everywhere,
but are never seen. Maybe that's because they mostly hang out in the quiet neighborhoods of cookie-cutter
homes in suburbia, go to the lake or bar-be-que on weekends, and take their allotment of Viagra
in hopes of occassionally "getting lucky" with their wives. If they're "angry" then at least they
don't take their angry frustrations out on others, as so many other militant, "in-your-face" activist
groups do!
"... I've tuned out Warren-she has become the "red meat" surrogate for Clinton. Just because Taibbi was excellent on exposing Wall St. doesn't mean he really knows s**t about politics. I find the depiction of Trump as some kind of monster-buffoon to be simply boring and not very helpful. ..."
"... (might be the Trump Chaos bc Hillary will strategically turn our war machine on us can't believe this is as good as it gets, sighed out) ..."
"... Having the establishment, the military-industrial complex and Wall Street against him helps Trump a lot. ..."
"... You can fool part of the people all the time, and all people part of the time, but Brexit won, so will Trump, politician extraordinaire ..."
"... Given his family, a Trump presidency may look more like JFK's, where Bobby had more power than LBJ. Also, given Trump's negotiating expertise, I would certainly not believe any assertion of support he proclaims for the VP. I expect he had little choice in the matter, and that he also plans to send the VP to the hinterlands at the first opportunity. I'm unclear why so many appear to believe the VP has any influence whatsoever; I believe GWB was the only post-WW2 president who let the VP have any power. ..."
"... What is a populist? Somebody that tries to do what the majority want. Current examples: Less wars and military spending. More infrastructure spending. Less support for banks and corps (imagine how many votes trump would gain if he said 'as pres I will jail bankers that break the law' And how that repudiates Obama and both parties.) Gun control (but not possible from within the rep party) ..."
"... What is a fascist? Somebody that supports corporations, military, and military adventures. ..."
"... Actually, it sounds a whole lot like a different candidate from a different party, doesn't it? ..."
"... Neoliberal "Goodthink" flag. What this means when neoliberals say it is not let's build a better global society for all it means Corporations and our military should be able to run roughshod over the world and the people's of other countries. Exploit their citizens for cheap Labor, destroy their environment and move on. These are the exact policies of Hillary Clinton (see TPP, increase foreign wars etc.). Hillary globalism is not about global Brotherhood it's about global economic and military exploitation. Trump is nationalist non – interventionist, which leads to less global military destruction than hillary and less global exploitation. So who is a better for those outside the US, hillary the interventionist OR trump the non-interventionist? ..."
"... Look, the Clintons are criminals, and their affiliate entities, including the DNC, could be considered criminal enterprises or co-conspirators at this point. ..."
"... The very fact that Establishment, Wall St and Koch bros are behind HRC is evidence that the current 'status quo' will be continued! I cannot stand another 4 years of Hilabama. ..."
"... The striving for American empire has so totally confused the political order of the country that up is down and down is up. The idea of government for and by the people is a distant memory. Covering for lies and contradictions of beliefs has blurred any notion of principles informing public action. ..."
"... If there is any principle that matters today, it is the pursuit of money and profit reigns supreme. Trump is populist in the sense he is talking about bringing money and wealth back to the working classes. Not by giving it directly, but by forcing businesses to turn their sights back to the US proper and return to making their profits at home. In the end, it is all nostalgia and probably impossible, but working class people remember those days so it rings true. That is hope and change in action. People also could care less if he cheats on his taxes or is found out lying about how much he is worth. Once again, fudging your net worth is something working people care little about. Having their share of the pie is all that matters and Trump is tapping into that. ..."
"... The only crime Trump has committed so far is his language. Liberals like Clinton, Blair and Obama drip blood. ..."
"... The 2016 election cannot be looked at in isolation. The wars for profit are spreading from Nigeria through Syria to Ukraine. Turkey was just lost to the Islamists and is on the road to being a failed state. The EU is in an existential crisis due to Brexit, the refugee crisis and austerity. Western leadership is utterly incompetent and failing to protect its citizens. Globalization is failing. Its Losers are tipping over the apple cart. Humans are returning to their tribal roots for safety. The drums for war with Russia are beating. Clinton / Kaine are 100% Status Quo Globalists. Trump / Pence are candidates of change to who knows what. Currently I am planning on voting for the Green Party in the hope it becomes viable and praying that the chaos avoids Maryland. ..."
I've tuned out Warren-she has become the "red meat" surrogate for Clinton. Just because
Taibbi was excellent on exposing Wall St. doesn't mean he really knows s**t about politics. I
find the depiction of Trump as some kind of monster-buffoon to be simply boring and not very helpful.
for all the run around Hillary, Trump's chosen circle of allies are Wall Street and Austerity
enablers. actually, Trump chaos could boost the enablers as easily as Hillary's direct mongering.
War is Money low hanging fruit in this cash strapped era and either directly or indirectly neither
candidate will disappoint.
So I Ask Myself which candidate will the majority manage sustainability while assembling to create
different outcomes? (might be the Trump Chaos bc Hillary will strategically turn our war machine
on us can't believe this is as good as it gets, sighed out)
War is only good for the profiteers when it can be undertaken in another territory. Bringing
the chaos home cannot be good for business. Endless calls for confidence and stability in markets
must reflect the fact that disorder effects more business that the few corporations that benefit
directly from spreading chaos. A split in the business community seems to be underway or at least
a possible leverage point to bring about positive change.
Even the splits in the political class reflect this. Those that benefit from spreading chaos are
loosing strength because they have lost control of where that chaos takes place and who is directly
effected from its implementation. Blowback and collateral damage are finally registering.
Trump may be a disaster. Clinton will be a disaster. One of these two will win. I won't vote
for either, but if you put a gun to my head and forced me to choose, I'd take Trump. He's certainly
not a fascist (I think it was either Vice or Vox that had an article where they asked a bunch
of historians of fascism if he was, the answer was a resounding no), he's a populist in the Andrew
Jackson style. If nothing else Trump will (probably) not start WW3 with Russia.
And war with Russia doesn't depend just on Hillary, it depends on us in Western Europe agreeing
with it.
A laughable proposition. The official US policy, as you may recall, is
fuck the EU .
Where was Europe when we toppled the Ukrainian govt? Get back to me when you can actually spend
2% GDP on your military. At the moment you can't even control your illegal immigrants.
The political parties that survive display adaptability, and ideological consistency isn't
a requirement for that. Look at the party of Lincoln. Or look at the party of FDR.
If the Democrats decapitate the Republican party by bringing in the Kagans of this world and
Republican suburbanites in swing states, then the Republicans will go where the votes are; the
Iron Law of Institutions will drive them to do it, and the purge of the party after Trump will
open the positions in the party for people with that goal.
In a way, what we're seeing now is what should have happened to the Republicans in
2008. The Democrats had the Republicans down on the ground with Obama's boot on their neck. The
Republicans had organized and lost a disastrous war, they had lost the legislative and executive
branches, they were completely discredited ideologically, and they were thoroughly discredited
in the political class and in the press.
Instead, Obama, with his strategy of bipartisanship - good faith or not - gave them a hand
up, dusted them off, and let them right back in the game, by treating them as a legitimate opposition
party. So the Republican day of reckoning was postponed. We got various bids for power by factions
- the Tea Party, now the Liberty Caucus - but none of them came anywhere near taking real power,
despite (click-driven money-raising) Democrat hysteria.
And now the day of reckoning has arrived. Trump went through the hollow institutional shell
of the Republican Party like the German panzers through the French in 1939. And here we are!
(Needless to say, anybody - ***cough*** Ted Cruz ***cough*** - yammering about "conservative
principles" is part of the problem, dead weight, part of the dead past.) I don't know if the Republicans
can remake themselves after Trump; what he's doing is necessary for that, but may not be sufficient.
Republicans won Congress and the states because the Democrats handed them to them on a silver
platter. To Obama and his fan club meaningful power is a hot potato, to be discarded as soon as
plausible.
Having the establishment, the military-industrial complex and Wall Street against him helps
Trump a lot.
Pro-Sanders folks, blacks, and hispanics will mostly vote for Trump.
Having Gov. Pence on the ticket, core Republicans and the silent majority will vote for Trump.
Women deep inside know Trump will help their true interests better than the Clinton-Obama rinse
repeat
Young people, sick and tired of the current obviously rigged system, will vote for change.
You can fool part of the people all the time, and all people part of the time, but Brexit
won, so will Trump, politician extraordinaire
Even Michael Moore gets it
Trump has intimated that he is not going to deal with the nuts and bolts of government,
that will be Pence's job.
Given his family, a Trump presidency may look more like JFK's, where Bobby had more power
than LBJ.
Also, given Trump's negotiating expertise, I would certainly not believe any assertion of support
he proclaims for the VP. I expect he had little choice in the matter, and that he also plans to
send the VP to the hinterlands at the first opportunity. I'm unclear why so many appear to believe
the VP has any influence whatsoever; I believe GWB was the only post-WW2 president who let the
VP have any power.
Minorities will benefit at least as much as whites with infrastructure spending, which trump
says he wants to do It would make him popular, which he likes, why not believe him? And if pres
he would be able to get enough rep votes to get it passed. No chance with Hillary, who anyway
would rather spend on wars, which are mostly fought by minorities.
What is a populist? Somebody that tries to do what the majority want. Current examples:
Less wars and military spending. More infrastructure spending. Less support for banks and corps
(imagine how many votes trump would gain if he said 'as pres I will jail bankers that break the
law' And how that repudiates Obama and both parties.) Gun control (but not possible from within
the rep party)
What is a fascist? Somebody that supports corporations, military, and military adventures.
I'm saying you have a much better chance to pressure Clinton
Sorry, but this argues from facts not in evidence and closely resembles the Correct the Record
troll line (now substantiated through the Wikileaks dump) that Clinton "has to be elected" because
she is at least responsive to progressive concerns.
Except she isn't, and the degree to which the DNC clearly has been trying to pander to disillusioned
Republicans and the amount of bile they spew every time they lament how HRC has had to "veer left"
shows quite conclusively to my mind that, in fact, the opposite of what you say is true.
Also, when NAFTA was being debated in the '90s, the Clintons showed themselves to be remarkably
unresponsive both to the concerns of organized labor (who opposed it) as well as the majority
of the members of their own party, who voted against it. NAFTA was passed only with a majority
of Republican votes.
I have no way of knowing whether you're a troll or sincerely believe this, but either way,
it needs to be pointed out that the historical record actually contradicts your premise. If you
do really believe this, try not to be so easily taken in by crafty rhetoric.
BTW, I'll take Trump's record as a husband over HRC's record as a wife. He loves a woman, then
they break up, and he finds another one. This is not unusual in the US. Hillary, OTOH, "stood
by her man" through multiple publicly humiliating infidelities, including having to settle out
of court for more than $800,000, and rape charges. No problem with her if her husband was flying
many times on the "Lolita Express" with a child molester. Could be she had no idea where her "loved
one" was at the time. Do they in fact sleep in the same bed, or even live in the same house? I
don't know.
RE: calling Donald Trump a "sociopath"-this is another one of those words that is thrown around
carelessly, like "nazi" and "fascist". In the Psychology Today article "How to Spot a Sociopath",
they list 16 key behavioral characteristics. I can't see them in Trump-you could make a case for
a few of them, but not all. For example: "failure to follow any life plan", "sex life impersonal,
trivial, and poorly integrated", "poor judgment and failure to learn by experience", "incapacity
for love"-–you can't reasonably attach these characteristics to The Donald, who, indeed, has a
more impressive and loving progeny than any other prez candidate I can think of.
"I have a sense of international identity as well: we are all brothers and sisters."
Neoliberal "Goodthink" flag. What this means when neoliberals say it is not let's build
a better global society for all it means Corporations and our military should be able to run roughshod
over the world and the people's of other countries. Exploit their citizens for cheap Labor, destroy
their environment and move on. These are the exact policies of Hillary Clinton (see TPP, increase
foreign wars etc.). Hillary globalism is not about global Brotherhood it's about global economic
and military exploitation. Trump is nationalist non – interventionist, which leads to less global
military destruction than hillary and less global exploitation. So who is a better for those outside
the US, hillary the interventionist OR trump the non-interventionist?
"And not everyone feels the same way, but for most voters there is either a strong tribal loyalty
(Dem or Repub) or a weaker sense of "us" guiding the voter on that day.
Mad as I am about the Blue Dogs, I strongly identify with the Dems."
So you recognize you are a tribalist, and assume all the baggage and irrationality that tribalism
often fosters, but instead of addressing your tribalism you embrace it. What you seem to be saying
(to me)is that we should leave critical thinking at the door and become dem tribalists like you.
"But the Repubs and Dems see Wall Street issues through different cultural prisms. Republican
are more reflexively pro-business. It matters."
Hillary Clinton's biggest donors are Wallstreet and her dem. Husband destroyed glass-steagall.
Trump wants to reinstate glass-steagall, so who is more business friendly again?
"He is racist, and so he knows how to push ugly buttons."
This identity politics trope is getting so old. Both are racist just in different ways, Trump
says in your face racist things, which ensure the injustice cannot be ignored, where hillary has
and does support racist policies, that use stealth racism to incrementaly increase the misery
of minorities, while allowing the majority to pretend it's not happening.
"First, he will govern with the Republicans. Republican judges, TPP, military spending, environmental
rollbacks, etc. Trump will not overrule Repubs in Congress."
These are literally hillarys policies not trumps.
Trump: anti TPP, stop foreign interventions, close bases use money for infrastructure.
Hillary :Pro TPP, more interventions and military spending
"And no, no great Left populist party will ride to the rescue. The populist tradition (identity)
is mostly rightwing and racist in our society.
People do not change political identity like their clothes. The left tradition in the US, such
as it is, is in the Dem party."
So what you are saying is quit being stupid, populism is bad and you should vote for hillarys
neoliberalism. The democrats were once left so even if they are no longer left, we must continue
to support them if another party or candidate that is to the left isn't a democrat? Your logic
hurts my head.
Look, the Clintons are criminals, and their affiliate entities, including the DNC, could
be considered criminal enterprises or co-conspirators at this point. Those who haven't realized
that, or worse, who shill for them are willfully ignorant, amoral, or unethical. The fact that
that includes a large chunk of the population doesn't change that. I don't vote for criminals.
The very fact that Establishment, Wall St and Koch bros are behind HRC is evidence that
the current 'status quo' will be continued! I cannot stand another 4 years of Hilabama.
I hate Hillary more than Trump. I want to protest at the Establishment, which at this represented
by Hillary.
Populism (support for popular issues) is, well, popular.
Fascism (support for corps and military adventures) is, at least after our ME adventures, unpopular.
Commenters are expressing support for the person expressing popular views, such as infrastructure
spending, and expressing little support for the candidate they believe is most fascist.
Btw, Most on this site are liberals, few are reps, so to support him they have had to buck
some of their long held antipathy regarding reps.
Right, what is changing with Trump is the Republicans are going back to, say, the Eisenhower
era, when Ike started the interstate highway system, a socialist program if there ever was one.
It's a good article; this is a general observation. Sorry!
"Hate" seems to be a continuing Democrat meme, and heck, who can be for hate? So it makes sense
rhetorically, but in policy terms it's about as sensible as being against @ssh0les (since as the
good book says, ye have the @ssh0les always with you). So we're really looking at virtue signaling
as a mode of reinforcing tribalism, and to be taken seriously only for that reason. If you look
at the political class writing about the working class - modulo writers like Chris Arnade - the
hate is plain as day, though it's covered up with the rhetoric of meritocracy, taking care of
losers, etc.
Strategic hate management is a great concept. It's like hate can never be created or destroyed,
and is there as a resource to be mined or extracted. The Clinton campaign is doing a great job
of strategic hate management right now, by linking Putin and Trump, capitalizing on all the good
work done in the press over the last year or so.
For years we have been told that government should be run like a business. In truth that statement
was used as a cudgel to avoid having the government provide any kind of a safety net to its citizenry
because there was little or no profit in it for the people who think that government largess should
only be for them.
Here's the thing, if government had been run like a business, we the people would own huge
portions of Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Chase today. We wouldn't have bailed them out without
an equity stake in them. Most cities would have a share of the gate for every stadium that was
built. And rather than paying nothing to the community Walmart would have been paying a share
of their profits (much as those have dropped over the years).
I do not like Trump's business, but he truly does approach his brand and his relationships
as a business. When he says he doesn't like the trade deals because they are bad business and
bad deals he is correct. IF the well being of the United states and his populace are what you
are interested in regarding trade deals, ours are failures. Now most of us here know that was
not the point of the trade deals. They have been a spectacular success for many of our largest
businesses and richest people, but for America as a whole they have increased our trade deficit
and devastated our job base. When he says he won't go there, this is one I believe him on.
I also believe him on NATO and on the whole Russian thing. Why, because of the same reasons
I believe him on Trade. They are not winners for America as a whole. They are bad deals. Europe
is NOT living up to their contractual agreement regarding NATO. For someone who is a believer
in getting the better of the deal that is downright disgusting. And he sees no benefit in getting
into a war with Russia. The whole reserve currency thing vs. nukes is not going to work for him
as a cost benefit analysis of doing it. He is not going to front this because it is a business
loser.
We truly have the worst choices from the main parties in my lifetime. There are many reasons
Trump is a bad candidate. But on these two, he is far more credible and on the better side of
things than the Democratic nominee. And on the few where she might reasonably considered to have
a better position, unfortunately I do not for a moment believe her to be doing more than giving
lip service based on both her record and her character.
Is it your opinion that to have globalisation we must marginalize russia to the extent that
they realize they can't have utopia and make the practical choice of allowing finance capitalism
to guide them to realistic incrementally achieved debt bondage?
The Democratic Party has been inching further and further to the right. Bernie tried to arrest
this drift, but his internal populist rebellion was successfully thwarted by party elite corruption.
The Democratic position is now so far to the right that the Republicans will marginalize themselves
if they try to keep to the right of the Democrats.
But, despite party loyalty or PC slogans, the Democrat's rightward position is now so obvious
that it can be longer disguised by spin. The Trump campaign has demonstrated, the best electoral
strategy for the Republican Party is to leapfrog leftward and campaign from a less corporate position.
This has given space for the re-evaluation of party positions that Trump is enunciating, and the
result is that the Trump is running to the
left of Hillary. How weird is this?
I meant to use right and left to refer generally to elite vs popular. The issue is too big
to discuss without some simplification, and I'm sorry it has distracted from the main issue. On
the face of it, judging from the primaries, the Republican candidates who represented continued
rightward drift were rejected. (Indications are that the same thing happened in the Democratic
Party, but party control was stronger there, and democratic primary numbers will never be known).
The main point I was trying to make is that the Democratic party has been stretching credulity
to the breaking point in claiming to be democratic in any sense, and finally the contradiction
between their statements and actions has outpaced the capabilities of their propaganda. Their
Orwellian program overextended itself. Popular recognition of the disparity has caused a kind
of political "snap" that's initiated a radical reorganization of what used to be the party of
the right (or corporations, or elites, or finance, or "your description here".)
Besides confusion between which issues are right or left for Republicans or Democrats on the
national level, internationally, the breakdown of popular trust in the elites, and the failure
of their propaganda on that scale, is leading to a related worldwide distrust and rejection of
elite policies. This distrust has been percolating in pockets for some time, but it seems it's
now become so widespread that it's practically become a movement.
I suspect, however, there's a Plan B for this situation to restore the proper order. Will be
interesting to see how this plays out.
The striving for American empire has so totally confused the political order of the country
that up is down and down is up. The idea of government for and by the people is a distant memory.
Covering for lies and contradictions of beliefs has blurred any notion of principles informing
public action.
If there is any principle that matters today, it is the pursuit of money and profit reigns
supreme. Trump is populist in the sense he is talking about bringing money and wealth back to
the working classes. Not by giving it directly, but by forcing businesses to turn their sights
back to the US proper and return to making their profits at home. In the end, it is all nostalgia
and probably impossible, but working class people remember those days so it rings true. That is
hope and change in action. People also could care less if he cheats on his taxes or is found out
lying about how much he is worth. Once again, fudging your net worth is something working people
care little about. Having their share of the pie is all that matters and Trump is tapping into
that.
Clintons arrogance is worse because the transcripts probably clearly show her secretly conspiring
with bankers to screw the working people of this country. Trumps misdeeds effect his relationship
to other elites while Clintons directly effect working people.
Such a sorry state of affairs. When all that matters is the pursuit of money and profit, moving
forward will be difficult and full of moral contradictions. Populism needs a new goal. The political
machinery that gives us two pro-business hacks and an ineffectual third party has fundamentally
failed.
The business of America must be redefined, not somehow brought back to a mythical past greatness.
Talk about insanity.
"Bill Clinton has been a disaster for the Democratic Party. Send him packing."
"There's not much the Democrats can do about Mrs. Clinton. She's got a Senate seat for six
years. But there is no need for the party to look to her for leadership. The Democrats need to
regroup, re-establish their strong links to middle-class and working-class Americans, and move
on."
"You can't lead a nation if you are ashamed of the leadership of your party. The Clintons are
a terminally unethical and vulgar couple, and they've betrayed everyone who has ever believed
in them."
"As neither Clinton has the grace to retire from the scene, the Democrats have no choice but
to turn their backs on them. It won't be easy, but the Democrats need to try. If they succeed
they'll deserve the compliment Bill Clinton offered Gennifer Flowers after she lied under oath:
"Good for you." "
Amazing how the New York Times has "evolved" from Herbert's editorial stance of 15 years ago
to their unified editorial/news support for HRC's candacy,
In my view, it is not as if HRC has done anything to redeem herself in the intervening years.
It takes liberals to create a refugee crisis.
What country are we going to bomb back into the stone age this week?
We are very squeamish about offensive language.
We don't mind dropping bombs and ripping people apart with red hot shrapnel.
We are liberals.
Liberal sensibilities were on display in the film "Apocalypse Now".
No writing four letter words on the side of aircraft.
Napalm, white phosphorous and agent orange – no problem.
Liberals are like the English upper class – outward sophistication hiding the psychopath underneath.
They were renowned for their brutality towards slaves, the colonies and the English working class
(men, women and children) but terribly sophisticated when with their own.
Are you a bad language sort of person – Trump
Or a liberal, psychopath, empire builder – Clinton
The only crime Trump has committed so far is his language. Liberals like Clinton, Blair
and Obama drip blood.
Lambert strether said: my view is that the democrat party cannot be saved, but it can be seized.
Absolutely correct.
That is why Trump must be elected. Only then through the broken remains of both Parties can the
frangible Democrat Party be seized and restored.
The 2016 election cannot be looked at in isolation. The wars for profit are spreading from
Nigeria through Syria to Ukraine. Turkey was just lost to the Islamists and is on the road to
being a failed state. The EU is in an existential crisis due to Brexit, the refugee crisis and
austerity. Western leadership is utterly incompetent and failing to protect its citizens. Globalization
is failing. Its Losers are tipping over the apple cart. Humans are returning to their tribal roots
for safety. The drums for war with Russia are beating. Clinton / Kaine are 100% Status Quo Globalists.
Trump / Pence are candidates of change to who knows what. Currently I am planning on voting for
the Green Party in the hope it becomes viable and praying that the chaos avoids Maryland.
"... Because we interpreted the end of the Cold War as the ultimate vindication of America's economic system, we intensified our push toward the next level of capitalism, called globalization. It was presented as a project that would benefit everyone. Instead it has turned out to be a nightmare for many working people. Thanks to "disruption" and the "global supply chain," many American workers who could once support families with secure, decent-paying jobs must now hope they can be hired as greeters at Walmart. Meanwhile, a handful of super-rich financiers manipulate our political system to cement their hold on the nation's wealth. ..."
"... Rather than shifting to a less assertive and more cooperative foreign policy, we continued to insist that America must reign supreme. When we declared that we would not tolerate the emergence of another "peer power," we expected that other countries would blithely obey. Instead they ignore us. We interpret this as defiance and seek to punish the offenders. That has greatly intensified tensions between the United States and the countries we are told to consider our chief adversaries, Russia and China. ..."
Because we interpreted the end of the Cold War as the ultimate vindication
of America's economic system, we intensified our push toward the next level
of capitalism, called globalization. It was presented as a project that
would benefit everyone. Instead it has turned out to be a nightmare for
many working people. Thanks to "disruption" and the "global supply chain,"
many American workers who could once support families with secure, decent-paying
jobs must now hope they can be hired as greeters at Walmart. Meanwhile,
a handful of super-rich financiers manipulate our political system to cement
their hold on the nation's wealth.
Enrique Ferro's insight:
Moments of change require adaptation, but the United States is not good
at adapting. We are used to being in charge. This blinded us to the reality
that as other countries began rising, our relative power would inevitably
decline. Rather than shifting to a less assertive and more cooperative
foreign policy, we continued to insist that America must reign supreme.
When we declared that we would not tolerate the emergence of another "peer
power," we expected that other countries would blithely obey. Instead they
ignore us. We interpret this as defiance and seek to punish the offenders.
That has greatly intensified tensions between the United States and the
countries we are told to consider our chief adversaries, Russia and China.
This is downright sickening and the people who are voting for Hillary will not even care what will
happen with the USA iif she is elected.
By attacking Trump using "Khan gambit" she risks a violent backlash (And not only via Wikileaks,
which already promised to release information about her before the elections)
People also start to understand that she is like Trump. He destroyed several hundred American lifes
by robbing them, exploiting their vanity (standard practice in the USA those days) via Trump University
scam. She destroyed the whole country -- Libya and is complicit in killing Khaddafi (who, while not
a nice guy, was keeping the country together and providing be highest standard of living in Africa for
his people).
In other words she is a monster and sociopath. He probably is a narcissist too. So there is no much
phychological difference between them. And we need tight proportions to judge this situation if we are
talking about Hillary vs Trump.
As for people voting for Trump -- yes they will. I think if Hillary goes aganst Trump, the female
neoliberal monster will be trumped. She has little chances even taking into account the level of brainwashing
in the USA (which actually is close to those that existed in the USSR).
Notable quotes:
"... The reason Trump and Sanders are doing well in the US while fascists are doing well in Europe is the same reason: neoliberalism has gutted, or is in the process of gutting, societies. Workers and other formerly "safe" white collar workers are seeing their job security, income security, retirement security all go up in smoke. Neoliberals are trying to snip and cut labor protections, healthcare, environmental regulations all for corporate profit. In Europe this is all in addition to a massive refugee crisis itself brought on by neoliberalism (neocon foreign policy is required for neoliberal social policy, they go hand-in-hand). The US and NATO destabilize countries with the intent of stealing their resources and protecting their markets, cause massive refugee flows which strain social structures in Europe (which falls right into the hands of the gutters and cutters of neoliberalism). Of course the people will lean fascist. ..."
"... U.S. Government Tried to Tackle Gun Violence in 1960s ..."
"... Another key feature of fascism is territorial expansionism. As far as I am aware, none of the nationalist parties advocate invading other countries or retaking former colonies. Once again, contemporary neoliberalism is far closer to fascism. But you are correct about both Israel and Turkey – our allies. They are much closer to the genuine article. But you won't hear those complaining about the rise of fascism in Europe complaining too much about them. ..."
"... The only way they have avoided complete revolt has been endless borrowing to fund entitlements, once that one-time fix plays out the consequences will be apparent. The funding mechanism itself (The Fed) has even morphed into a neo-liberal tool designed to enrich Capital while enslaving Labor with the consequences. ..."
"... "Every society chooses how resources are allocated between capital and labor." More specifically, isn't it a struggle between various political/economic/cultural movements within a society which chooses how resources are allocated between capital and labor. ..."
"... My objection to imprecise language here isn't merely pedantic. The leftist dismissal of right wing populists like Trump (or increasingly influential European movements like Ukip, AfD, and the Front national) as "fascist" is a reductionist rhetorical device intended to marginalize them by implying their politics are so far outside of the mainstream that they do not need to be taken seriously. ..."
"... " the gutters and cutters of neoliberalism" ..."
"... The neoliberals are all too aware that the clock is ticking. In this morning's NYT, yet more talk of ramming TPP through in the lame duck. ..."
"... The roads here are deteriorating FAST. In Price County, the road commissioner said last night that their budget allows for resurfacing all the roads on a 200 year basis. ..."
"... This Trump support seems like a form of political vandalism with Trump as the spray paint. People generally feel frustrated with government, utterly powerless and totally left out as the ranks of the precariat continue to grow. Trump appeals to the nihilistic tendencies of some people who, like frustrated teens, have decided to just smashed things up for the hell of it. They think a presidency mix of Caligula with Earl Scheib would be a funny hoot. ..."
"... Someone at American Conservative, when trying to get at why it's pointless to tell people Trump will wreck the place, described him as a "hand grenade" lobbed into the heart of government. You can't scare people with his crass-ness and destructive tendencies, because that's precisely what his voters are counting on when/if he gets into government. ..."
"... In other words, the MSM's fear is the clearest sign to these voters that their ..."
"... Your phrase "Trump is political vandalism" is great. I don't think I've seen a better description. NPR this morning was discussing Trump and his relationship with the press and the issues some GOP leaders have with him. When his followers were discussed, the speakers closely circled your vandalism point. Basically they said that his voters are angry with the power brokers and leaders in DC and regardless of whether they think Trump's statements are heartfelt or just rhetoric, they DO know he will stick it to those power brokers so that's good. Vandalism by a longer phrase. ..."
"... Meritocracy was ALWAYS a delusional fraud. What you invariably get, after a couple of generations, is a clique of elitists who define merit as themselves and reproduce it ad nauseam. Who still believes in such laughable kiddie stories? ..."
"... Campaign Finance Reform: If you can't walk into a voting booth you cannot contribute, or make all elections financed solely by government funds and make private contributions of any kind to any politician illegal. ..."
"... Re-institute Glass-Steagall but even more so. Limit the number of states a bank can operate in. Make the Fed publicly owned, not privately owned by banks. Completely revise corporate law, doing away with the legal person hood of corporations and limit of liability for corporate officers and shareholders. ..."
"... Single payer health care for everyone. Allow private health plans but do away with health insurance as a deductible for business. Remove the AMA's hold on licensing of medical schools which restricts the number of doctors. ..."
"... Do away with the cap on Social Security wages and make all income, wages, capital gains, interest, and dividends subject to taxation. Impose tariffs to compensate for lower labor costs overseas and revise industry. ..."
"... Cut the Defense budget by 50% and use that money for intensive infrastructure development. ..."
"... Raise the national minimum wage to $15 and hour. ..."
"... Severely curtail the revolving door from government to private industry with a 10 year restriction on working for an industry you dealt with in any way as a government official. ..."
"... Free public education including college (4 year degree). ..."
"... Obama and Holder, allowing the banks to be above the law have them demi-gods, many of whom are psychopaths and kleptocrats, and with their newly granted status, they are now re-shaping the world in their own image. Prosecute these demi-gods and restore sanity. Don't and their greed for our things will never end until nothings left. ..."
"... This is why Hillary is so much more dangerous than trump, because she and the demi gods are all on the same page. The TPP is their holy grail so I expect heaven and earth to be moved, especially if it looks like some trade traitors are going to get knocked off in the election, scoundrels like patty murray (dino, WA) will push to get it through then line up at the feed trough to gorge on k street dough. I plan to vote stein if it's not Bernie, but am reserving commitment until I see what kind of betrayals the dems have for me, if it's bad enough I'll go with the trump hand grenade. ..."
"... Totally agree tegnost, no more democratic neoliberals -- ..."
"... "they are now re-shaping the world in their own image" Isn't this intrinsic to bourgeois liberalism? ..."
"... Two things are driving our troubles: over-population and globalization. The plutocrats and kleptocrats have all the leverage over the rest of us laborers when the population of human beings has increased seven-fold in the last 70 years, from a little over a billion to seven billions (and growing) today. They are happy to let us freeze to death behind gas stations in order for them to compete with other oligarchs in excess consumption. ..."
"... Thank you for mentioning the third rail of overpopulation. Too often, this giant category of problems is ignored, because it makes people uncomfortable. The planet is finite, resources on the planet are finite, yet the number of people keeps growing. We need to strive for a higher quality of life, not a higher quantity of people. ..."
"... The issue goes beyond "current neoliberals up for election", it is most of our political establishment that has been corrupted by a system that provides for the best politicians money can buy. ..."
"... America has always been a country where a majority of the population has been poor. With the exception of a fifty five year(1950-2005) year period where access to large quantities of consumer debt by households was deployed to first to provide a wealth illusion to keep socialism at bay, followed by a mortgage debt boom to both keep the system afloat and strip the accumulated capital of the working class, i.e. home equity, the history of the US has been one of poverty for the masses. ..."
"... Further debt was foisted on the working class in the form of military Keynesianism, generating massive fiscal deficits which are to be paid for via austerity in a neo-feudal economy. ..."
The first comment gives a window into the hidden desperation in America that is showing up in statistics
like increasing opioid addiction and suicides, rather than in accounts of how and why so many people
are suffering. I hope readers will add their own observations in comments.
We recently took three months to travel the southern US from coast to coast. As an expat for
the past twenty years, beyond the eye opening experience it left us in a state of shock. From
a homeless man convulsing in the last throes of hypothermia (been there) behind a fuel station
in Houston (the couldn't care less attendant's only preoccupation getting our RV off his premises),
to the general squalor of near-homelessness such as the emergence of "American favelas" a block
away from gated communities or affluent ran areas, to transformation of RV parks into permanent
residencies for the foreclosed who have but their trailer or RV left, to social study one can
engage while queuing at the cash registers of a Walmart before beneficiaries of SNAP.
Stopping to take the time to talk and attempt to understand their predicament and their beliefs
as to the cause of their plight is a dizzying experience in and of itself. For a moment I felt
transposed to the times of the Cold War, when the Iron Curtain dialectics fuzzed the perception
of that other world to the west with a structured set of beliefs designed to blacken that horizon
as well as establish a righteous belief in their own existential paradigm.
What does that have to do with education? Everything if one considers the elitist trend that
is slowly setting the framework of tomorrow's society. For years I have felt there is a silent
"un-avowed conspiracy", why the seeming redundancy, because it is empirically driven as a by-product
of capitalism's surge and like a self-redeeming discount on a store shelf crystalizes a group
identity of think-alike know-little or nothing frustrated citizens easily corralled by a Fox or
Trump piper. We have re-rcreated the conditions or rather the reality of "Poverty In America"
barely half a century after its first diagnostic with one major difference : we are now feeding
the growth of the "underclass" by lifting ever higher and out of reach the upward mobility ladder,
once the banner of opportunity now fallen behind the supposedly sclerotic welfare states of Europe.
So Richard Cohen now fears American voters because of Trump. Well, on Diane Reem today (NPR)
was a discussion on why fascist parties are growing in Europe. Both Cohen and the clowns on NPR
missed the forest for the trees. The reason Trump and Sanders are doing well in the US while
fascists are doing well in Europe is the same reason: neoliberalism has gutted, or is in the process
of gutting, societies. Workers and other formerly "safe" white collar workers are seeing their
job security, income security, retirement security all go up in smoke. Neoliberals are trying
to snip and cut labor protections, healthcare, environmental regulations all for corporate profit.
In Europe this is all in addition to a massive refugee crisis itself brought on by neoliberalism
(neocon foreign policy is required for neoliberal social policy, they go hand-in-hand). The US
and NATO destabilize countries with the intent of stealing their resources and protecting their
markets, cause massive refugee flows which strain social structures in Europe (which falls right
into the hands of the gutters and cutters of neoliberalism). Of course the people will lean fascist.
In the US we don't have the refugees, but the neoliberalism is further along and more damaging.
There's no mystery here or in Europe, just the natural effects of governments failing to represent
real people in favor of useless eater rich.
Make the people into commodities, endanger their washes and job security, impose austerity,
and tale in floods of refugees. Of COURSE Europeans stay leaning fascist.
According to NPR's experts, many or most of those parties are "fascist". The fascist label
is getting tossed around a LOT right now. It is slung at Trump, at UKIP, or any others. Fascist
is what you call the opposition party to the right that you oppose. Now I don't call Trump a fascist.
A buffoon, yes, even a charlatan (I still rather doubt he really originally thought he would become
the GOP nominee. Perhaps I'm wrong but, like me, many seemed to think that he was pushing his
"brand" – a term usage of which I HATE because it IS like we are all commodities or businesses
rather than PEOPLE – and that he would drop by the wayside and profit from his publicity).
Be that as it may, NPR and Co were discussing the rise of fascist/neofascist parties and wondering
why there were doing so well. Easy answer: neoliberalism + refugee hoards = what you see in Europe.
I've also blamed a large part of today's gun violence in the USA on the fruits of neoliberalism.
Why? Same reason that ugly right-wing groups (fascist or not) are gaining ground around the Western
world. Neoliberalism destroys societies. It destroys the connections within societies (the USA
in this case). Because we have guns handy, the result is mass shootings and flashes of murder-suicides.
This didn't happen BEFORE neoliberalism got its hooks into American society. The guns were there,
always have been (when I was a teen I recall seeing gun mags advertising various "assault weapons"
for sale this was BEFORE Reagan and this was BEFORE mass shootings, etc). Machine guns were much
easier to come by BEFORE the 1980s yet we didn't have mass killings with machine guns, handguns,
or shotguns. ALL that stuff is a NEW disease. A disease rooted in neoliberalism. Neoliberalism
steals your job security, your healthcare security, your home, your retirement security, your
ability to provide for your family, your ability to send your kids to college, your ability to
BUY FOOD. Neoliberalism means you don't get to work for a company for 20 years and then see the
company pay you back for that long, good service with a pension. You'll be lucky to hold a job
at any company from month-to-month now and FORGET about benefits! Healthcare? Going by the wayside
too. Workers in the past felt a bond with each other, especially within a company. Neoliberalism
has turned all workers against each other because they have to fight to gain any of the scraps
being tossed out by the rich overlords. You can't work TOGETHER to gain mutual benefit, you need
to fight each other in a zero sum game. For ME to win you have to lose. You are a commodity. A
disposable and irrelevant widget. THAT combines with guns (that have always been available!) and
you get desperate acting out: mass shootings, murder suicides, etc.
There are actual fascist parties in Europe. To name a few in one country I've followed, Ukraine,
there's Right Sector, Svoboda, and others, and that's just one country. I don't think anyone calls
UKIP fascist.
@Praedor – Your comment that Yves posted and this one are excellent. One of the most succinct
statements of neoliberalism and its worst effects that I have seen.
As to the cause of recent mass gun violence, I think you have truly nailed it. If one thinks
at all about the ways in which the middle class and lower have been squeezed and abused, it's
no wonder that a few of them would turn to violence. It's the same despair and frustration that
leads to higher suicide rates, higher rates of opiate addiction and even decreased life expectancy.
"Machine guns were much easier to come by BEFORE the 1980s yet we didn't have mass killings
with machine guns, handguns, or shotguns. ALL that stuff is a NEW disease. A disease rooted in
neoliberalism."
Easy availability of guns was seen as a serious problem long before the advent of neoliberalism.
For one example of articles about this, see U.S. Government Tried to Tackle Gun Violence in
1960s . Other examples include 1920s and 1930s gangster and mob violence that were a consequence
of Prohibition (of alcohol). While gun violence per-capita might be increasing, the population
is far larger today, and the news media select incidents of violence to make them seem like they're
happening everywhere and that everyone needs to be afraid. That, of course, instills a sense of
insecurity and fear into the public mind; thus, a fearful public want a strong leader and are
willing to accept the inconvenience and dangers of a police state for protection.
America has plenty of refugees, from Latin America
Neo-liberal goes back to the Monroe Doctrine. We used to tame our native workers with immigrants,
and we still do, but we also tame them by globalism in trade. So many rationalizations for this,
based on political and economic propaganda. All problems caused by the same cause American predatory
behavior. And our great political choice iron fist with our without velvet glove.
Germany, Belgium, France, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Turkey, Israel, Australia come to mind
(if one is allowed to participate in a European song contest, one is supposed to be part of Europe
:) They all have more or less fascist governments.
Once you realize that the ECB creates something like 60 billion euros a month, and gives nothing
to its citizens nor its nation-states, that means the money goes to corporations, which means
that the ECB, and by extension the whole EU, is a fascist construct (fascism being defined as
a government running on behalf of the corporations).
That's a fallacy. Corporatism is a feature of fascism, not the other way around.
None of the governments you mention, with the possible exception of Israel and Turkey, can
be called fascist in any meaningful sense.
Even the anti-immigration parties in the Western European countries you mention – AfD, Front
National, Vlaams Belang – only share their nationalism with fascist movements. And they are decidedly
anti-corporatist.
The problem here is one of semantics, really. You're using "fascist" interchangeably with "authoritarian",
which is a misnomer for these groups. The EU is absolutely anti-democratic, authoritarian, and
technocratic in a lot of respects, but it's not fascist. Both have corporatist tendencies, but
fascist corporatism was much more radical, much more anti-capitalist (in the sense that the capitalist
class was expected to subordinate itself to the State as the embodiment of the will of the Nation
or People, as were the other classes/corporate units). EU technocratic corporatism has none of
the militarism, the active fiscal policy, the drive for government supported social cohesion,
the ethno-nationalism, or millenarianism of Fascism.
The emergent Right parties like UKIP, FNP, etc. share far more with the Fascists, thought I'd
say they generally aren't yet what Fascists would have recognized as other Fascists in the way
that the NSDAP and Italian Fascists recognized each other -perhaps they're more like fellow travelers.
True, I posted a few minutes ago saying roughly the same thing – but it seems to have gone
to moderation.
Another key feature of fascism is territorial expansionism. As far as I am aware, none
of the nationalist parties advocate invading other countries or retaking former colonies. Once
again, contemporary neoliberalism is far closer to fascism. But you are correct about both Israel
and Turkey – our allies. They are much closer to the genuine article. But you won't hear those
complaining about the rise of fascism in Europe complaining too much about them.
When I was young, there were 4 divisions:
* who owned the means of production (public or private entities)
* who decided what those means were used for.
If it is a 'public entity' (aka government or regime) that decides what is built, we have a totalitarian
state, which can be 'communist' (if the means also belong the public entities like the government
or regional fractions of it) or 'fascist' (if the factories are still in private hands).
If it is the private owner of the production capacity who decides what is built, you get capitalism.
I don't recall any examples of private entities deciding what to do with public means of production
(mafia perhaps).
Sheldon Wolin
introduced
us to inverted totalitarism. While it is no longer the government that decides what must be
done, the private 'owners' just buy the government, the judiciary, the press, or whatever is needed
to achieve their means.
When I cite Germany, it is not so much AfD, but the 2€/hour jobs I am worried about. When I cite
Belgium, it is not the fools of Vlaams Belang, but rather the un-taxing of corporations and the
tear-down of social justice that worries me.
But Jeff, is Wolin accurate in using the term "inverted totalitarianism" to try to capture
the nature of our modern extractive bureaucratic monolith that apparently functions in an environment
where "it is no longer the government that decides what must be done..simply.."private owners
just buy the government, the judiciary, the press, or whatever is needed to achieve their means."
Mirowski argues quite persuasively that the neoliberal ascendency does not represent the retreat
of the State but its remaking to strongly support a particular conception of a market society
that is imposed with the help of the State on our society.
For Mirowski, neoliberalism is definitely not politically libertarian or opposed to strong
state intervention in the economy and society.
Inverted totalitarianism is the mirror image of fascism, which is why so many are confused.
Fascism is just a easier term to use and more understandable by all. There is not a strict adherence
to fascism going on, but it's still totalitarian just the same.
Hi
I live in Europe as well, and what to think of Germany's AfD, Greece's Golden Dawn, the Wilder's
party in the Netherlands etc. Most of them subscribe to the freeloading, sorry free trading economic
policies of neoliberalism.
There's LePen in France and the far-right, fascist leaning party nearly won in Austria. The
far right in Greece as well. There's clearly a move to the far right in Europe. And then there's
the totalitarian mess that is Turkey. How much further this turn to a fascist leaning right goes
and how widespread remains to be seen, but it's clearly underway.
Searched 'current fascist movements europe' and got these active groups from wiki.
National Bolshevik Party-Belarus
Parti Communautaire National-Européen Belgium
Bulgarian National Alliance Bulgaria
Nova Hrvatska Desnica Croatia
Ustaše Croatia
National Socialist Movement of Denmark
La Cagoule France
National Democratic Party of Germany
Fascism and Freedom Movement – Italy
Fiamma Tricolore Italy
Forza Nuova Italy
Fronte Sociale Nazionale Italy
Movimento Fascismo e Libertŕ Italy
Pērkonkrusts Latvia
Norges Nasjonalsosialistiske Bevegelse Norway
National Radical Camp (ONR) Poland
National Revival of Poland (NOP)
Polish National Community-Polish National Party (PWN-PSN)
Noua Dreaptă Romania
Russian National Socialist Party(formerly Russian National Union)
Barkashov's Guards Russia
National Socialist Society Russia
Nacionalni stroj Serbia
Otačastveni pokret Obraz Serbia
Slovenska Pospolitost Slovakia
Espańa 2000 Spain
Falange Espańola Spain
Nordic Realm Party Sweden
National Alliance Sweden
Swedish Resistance Movement Sweden
National Youth Sweden
Legion Wasa Sweden
SPAS Ukraine
Blood and Honour UK
British National Front UK
Combat 18 UK
League of St. George UK
National Socialist Movement UK
Nationalist Alliance UK
November 9th Society UK
Racial Volunteer Force UK
"Fascism" has become the prefered term of abuse applied indiscriminately by the right thinking
to any person or movement which they want to tar as inherently objectionable, and which can therefore
be dismissed without the tedium of actually engaging with them at the level of ideas.
Most of the people who like to throw this word around couldn't give you a coherant definition
of what exactly they understand it to signify, beyond "yuck!!"
In fairness even students of political ideology have trouble teasing out a cosistent system
of beliefs, to the point where some doubt fascism is even a coherent ideology. That hardly excuses
the intellectual vacuity of those who use it as a term of abuse, however.
Precisely 3,248 angels can fit on the head of a pin. Parsing the true definition of "fascism"
is a waste of time, broadly, fascism is an alliance of the state, the corporation, and the military,
anyone who doesn't see that today needs to go back to their textbooks.
As far as the definition "neo-liberalism" goes, yes it's a useful label. But let's keep it
simple: every society chooses how resources are allocated between Capital and Labor. The needle
has been pegged over on the Capital side for quite some time, my "start date" is when Reagan busted
the air traffic union. The hideous Republicans managed to sell their base that policies that were
designed to let companies be "competitive" were somehow good for them, not just for the owners
of the means of production.
The only way they have avoided complete revolt has been endless borrowing to fund entitlements,
once that one-time fix plays out the consequences will be apparent. The funding mechanism itself
(The Fed) has even morphed into a neo-liberal tool designed to enrich Capital while enslaving
Labor with the consequences.
"Every society chooses how resources are allocated between capital and labor." More specifically,
isn't it a struggle between various political/economic/cultural movements within a society which
chooses how resources are allocated between capital and labor.
Take, for example, the late 1880s-1890s in the U.S. During that time-frame there were powerful
agrarian populists movements and the beginnings of some labor/socialist movements from below,
while from above the property-production system was modified by a powerful political movement
advocating for more corporate administered markets over the competitive small-firm capitalism
of an earlier age.
It was this movement for corporate administered markets which won the battle and defeated/absorbed
the agrarian populists.
What are the array of such forces in 2016? What type of movement doe Trump represent? Sanders?
Clinton?
fascism is an alliance of the state, the corporation, and the military, anyone who doesn't
see that today needs to go back to their textbooks
Which textbooks specifically?
The article I cited above in Vox canvasses the opinion of five serious students of fascism,
and none of them believe Trump is a fascist. I'd be most interested in knowing what you
have been reading.
As for your definition of "fascism", it's obviously so vague and broad that it really doesn't
explain anything. To the extent it contains any insight it is that public institutions (the state),
private businesses (the corporation) and the armed forces all exert significant influence on public
policy. That and a buck and and a half will get you a cup of coffee. If anything it is merely
a very crude descriptive model of the political process. It doesn't define fascism as a particular
set of beliefs that make it a distinct political ideology that can be differentiated from other
ideologies (again, see the Vox article for a discussion of some of the beliefs that are arguably
characteristic of fascist movements). Indeed by your standard virtually every state that has ever
existed has to a greater or lesser extent been "fascist".
My objection to imprecise language here isn't merely pedantic. The leftist dismissal of
right wing populists like Trump (or increasingly influential European movements like Ukip, AfD,
and the Front national) as "fascist" is a reductionist rhetorical device intended to marginalize
them by implying their politics are so far outside of the mainstream that they do not need to
be taken seriously. Given that these movements are only growing in strength as faith in traditional
political movements and elites evaporate this is likely to produce exactly the opposite result.
Right wing populism isn't going to disappear just because the left keeps trying to wish it away.
Refusing to accept this basic political fact risks condemning the left rather than "the fascists"
to political irrelevance.
I moved to a small city/town in Iowa almost 20 years ago. Then, it still had something of a
Norman Rockwell quality to it, particularly in a sense of egalitarianism, and also some small
factory jobs which still paid something beyond a bare existence.
Since 2000, many of those jobs have left, and the population of the county has declined by
about 10%. Kmart, Penney's, and Sears have left as payday/title loan outfits, pawnshops, smoke
shops, and used car dealers have all proliferated.
Parts of the town now resemble a combination of Appalachia and Detroit. Sanders easily won
the caucuses here and, no, his supporters were hardly the latte sippers of someone's imagination,
but blue collar folks of all ages.
My tale is similar to yours. About 2 years ago, I accepted a transfer from Chicagoland to north
central Wisconsin. JC Penney left a year and a half ago, and Sears is leaving in about 3-4 months.
Kmart is long gone.
I was back at the old homestead over Memorial Day, and it's as if time has stood still. Home
prices still going up; people out for dinner like crazy; new & expensive automobiles everywhere.
But driving out of Chicagoland, and back through rural Wisconsin it is unmistakeable.
2 things that are new: The roads here are deteriorating FAST. In Price County, the road
commissioner said last night that their budget allows for resurfacing all the roads on a 200 year
basis. (Yes, that means there is only enough money to resurface all the county roads if spread
out over 200 years.) 2nd, there are dead deer everywhere on the side of the road. In years past,
they were promptly cleaned up by the highway department. Not any more. Gross, but somebody has
to do the dead animal clean up. (Or not. Don't tell Snotty Walker though.)
Anyway, not everything is gloom and doom. People seem outwardly happy. But if you're paying
attention, signs of stress and deterioration are certainly out there.
This Trump support seems like a form of political vandalism with Trump as the spray paint.
People generally feel frustrated with government, utterly powerless and totally left out as the
ranks of the precariat continue to grow. Trump appeals to the nihilistic tendencies of some people
who, like frustrated teens, have decided to just smashed things up for the hell of it. They think
a presidency mix of Caligula with Earl Scheib would be a funny hoot.
You also have the more gullible fundis who have actually deluded themselves into thinking the
man who is ultimate symbol of hedonism will deliver them from secularism because he says he will.
Authoritarians who seek solutions through strong leaders are usually the easiest to con because
they desperately want to believe in their eminent deliverance by a human deus ex machina. Plus
he is ostentatiously rich in a comfortably tacky way and a TV celebrity beats a Harvard law degree.
And why not the thinking goes the highly vaunted elite college Acela crowd has pretty much made
a pig's breakfast out of things. So much for meritocracy. Professor Harold Hill is going to give
River City a boys band.
Someone at American Conservative, when trying to get at why it's pointless to tell people
Trump will wreck the place, described him as a "hand grenade" lobbed into the heart of government.
You can't scare people with his crass-ness and destructive tendencies, because that's precisely
what his voters are counting on when/if he gets into government.
In other words, the MSM's fear is the clearest sign to these voters that their
political revolution is working. Since TPTB decided peaceful change (i.e. Sanders) was a non-starter,
then they get to reap the whirlwind.
Your phrase "Trump is political vandalism" is great. I don't think I've seen a better description.
NPR this morning was discussing Trump and his relationship with the press and the issues some
GOP leaders have with him. When his followers were discussed, the speakers closely circled your
vandalism point. Basically they said that his voters are angry with the power brokers and leaders
in DC and regardless of whether they think Trump's statements are heartfelt or just rhetoric,
they DO know he will stick it to those power brokers so that's good. Vandalism by a longer phrase.
Meritocracy was ALWAYS a delusional fraud. What you invariably get, after a couple of generations,
is a clique of elitists who define merit as themselves and reproduce it ad nauseam. Who still
believes in such laughable kiddie stories?
Besides, consumers need to learn to play the long game and suck up the "scurrilous attacks"
on their personal consumption habits for the next four years. The end of abortion for four years
is not important - lern2hand and lern2agency, and lern2cutyourrapist if it comes to that. What
is important is that the Democratic Party's bourgeois yuppie constituents are forced to defend
against GOP attacks on their personal and cultural interests with wherewithal that would have
been ordinarily spent to attend to their sister act with their captive constituencies.
If bourgeois Democrats hadn't herded us into a situation where individuals mean nothing outside
of their assigned identity groups and their corporate coalition duopoly, they wouldn't be reaping
the whirlwind today. Why, exactly, should I be sympathetic to exploitative parasites such as the
middle class?
There are all good ideas. However, population growth undermines almost all of them. Population
growth in America is immigrant based. Reverse immigration influxes and you are at least doing
something to reduce population growth.
How to "reverse immigration influxes"?
Stop accepting refugees. It's outrageous that refugees from for example, Somalia,
get small business loans, housing assistance, food stamps and lifetime SSI benefits while some
of our veterans are living on the street.
No more immigration amnesties of any kind.
Deport all illegal alien criminals.
Practice "immigrant family unification" in the country of origin. Even if you have
to pay them to leave. It's less expensive in the end.
Eliminate tax subsidies to American corn growers who then undercut Mexican farmers'
incomes through NAFTA, driving them into poverty and immigration north. Throw Hillary Clinton
out on her ass and practice political and economic justice to Central America.
I too am a lifetime registered Democrat and I will vote for Trump if Clinton gets the crown.
If the Democrats want my vote, my continuing party registration and my until recently sizeable
donations in local, state and national races, they will nominate Bernie. If not, then I'm an Independent
forevermore. They will just become the Demowhig Party.
Campaign Finance Reform: If you can't walk into a voting booth you cannot contribute,
or make all elections financed solely by government funds and make private contributions of
any kind to any politician illegal.
Re-institute Glass-Steagall but even more so. Limit the number of states a bank can
operate in. Make the Fed publicly owned, not privately owned by banks.
Completely revise corporate law, doing away with the legal person hood of corporations
and limit of liability for corporate officers and shareholders.
Single payer health care for everyone. Allow private health plans but do away with
health insurance as a deductible for business. Remove the AMA's hold on licensing of medical
schools which restricts the number of doctors.
Do away with the cap on Social Security wages and make all income, wages, capital gains,
interest, and dividends subject to taxation.
Impose tariffs to compensate for lower labor costs overseas and revise industry.
Cut the Defense budget by 50% and use that money for intensive infrastructure development.
Raise the national minimum wage to $15 and hour.
Severely curtail the revolving door from government to private industry with a 10 year
restriction on working for an industry you dealt with in any way as a government official.
Free public education including college (4 year degree).
Obama and Holder, allowing the banks to be above the law have them demi-gods, many of whom
are psychopaths and kleptocrats, and with their newly granted status, they are now re-shaping
the world in their own image. Prosecute these demi-gods and restore sanity. Don't and their greed
for our things will never end until nothings left.
This is why Hillary is so much more dangerous than trump, because she and the demi gods
are all on the same page. The TPP is their holy grail so I expect heaven and earth to be moved,
especially if it looks like some trade traitors are going to get knocked off in the election,
scoundrels like patty murray (dino, WA) will push to get it through then line up at the feed trough
to gorge on k street dough. I plan to vote stein if it's not Bernie, but am reserving commitment
until I see what kind of betrayals the dems have for me, if it's bad enough I'll go with the trump
hand grenade.
Totally agree tegnost, no more democratic neoliberals -- Patty Murray (up for re-election)
and Cantwell are both trade traitors and got fast track passed.
Two things are driving our troubles: over-population and globalization. The plutocrats
and kleptocrats have all the leverage over the rest of us laborers when the population of human
beings has increased seven-fold in the last 70 years, from a little over a billion to seven billions
(and growing) today. They are happy to let us freeze to death behind gas stations in order for
them to compete with other oligarchs in excess consumption.
This deserves a longer and more thoughtful comment, but I don't have the time this morning.
I have to fight commute traffic, because the population of my home state of California has doubled
from 19M in 1970 to an estimated 43M today (if you count the Latin American refugees and H1B's).
Thank you for mentioning the third rail of overpopulation. Too often, this giant category
of problems is ignored, because it makes people uncomfortable. The planet is finite, resources
on the planet are finite, yet the number of people keeps growing. We need to strive for a higher
quality of life, not a higher quantity of people.
The issue goes beyond "current neoliberals up for election", it is most of our political
establishment that has been corrupted by a system that provides for the best politicians money
can buy.
In the 1980's I worked inside the beltway witnessing the new cadre of apparatchiks that drove
into town on the Reagan coattails full of moral a righteousness that became deviant, parochial,
absolutist and for whom bi-partisan approaches to policy were scorned prodded on by new power
brokers promoting their gospels in early morning downtown power breakfasts. Sadly our politicians
no longer serve but seek a career path in our growing meritocratic plutocracy.
America has always been a country where a majority of the population has been poor. With
the exception of a fifty five year(1950-2005) year period where access to large quantities of
consumer debt by households was deployed to first to provide a wealth illusion to keep socialism
at bay, followed by a mortgage debt boom to both keep the system afloat and strip the accumulated
capital of the working class, i.e. home equity, the history of the US has been one of poverty
for the masses.
Further debt was foisted on the working class in the form of military Keynesianism, generating
massive fiscal deficits which are to be paid for via austerity in a neo-feudal economy.
"... Money, it seems to him, has somehow changed its role. It has "increased" (is that possible, he asks?) while at the same time it has become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. It appears to seek to become an autonomous and dominating sector of economic life, functionally separated from production of real things, almost all of which seem to come from faraway places. "Real" actually begins to change its meaning, another topic more interesting still. This devotion to the world of money-making-money seems to have obsessed the lives of many of the most "important" Americans. Entire TV networks are devoted to it. They talk about esoteric financial instruments that to the ordinary citizen look more like exotically placed bets-on-credit in the casino than genuine ways to grow real-world business, jobs, wages, and family income. The few who are in position to master the game live material lives that were beyond what almost any formerly "wealthy" man or woman in Rip's prior life could even imagine ..."
"... children gone away and lost to either the relentless rootlessness of the trans-national economy or the virtual hell-world of meth and opioids and heroin and unending underemployed hopelessness. ..."
"... "If public life can suffer a metaphysical blow, the death of the labor question was that blow. For millions of working people, it amputated the will to resist." ..."
"... It's a Wonderful Life ..."
"... as educators ..."
"... OK, so I hear some of you saying, corporate America will never let this Civic Media get off the ground. My short answer to this is that corporations do what makes money for them, and in today's despairing political climate there's money to be made in sponsoring something truly positive, patriotic and constructive. ..."
"... I am paying an exorbitant subscription for the UK Financial Times at the moment. Anyway, the good news is that very regular articles are appearing where you can almost feel the panic at the populist uprisings. ..."
"... The kernel of Neoliberal Ideology: "There is no such a thing as society." (Margaret Thatcher). ..."
"... "In this postindustrial world not only is the labor question no longer asked, not only is proletarian revolution passé, but the proletariat itself seems passé. And the invisibles who nonetheless do indeed live there have internalized their nonexistence, grown demoralized, resentful, and hopeless; if they are noticed at all, it is as objects of public disdain. What were once called "blue-collar aristocrats"-skilled workers in the construction trades, for example-have long felt the contempt of the whole white-collar world. ..."
"... Or, we could replace Western liberal culture, with its tradition to consume and expand by force an unbroken chain from the Garden of Eden to Friedrich von Hayek, with the notion of maintenance and "enough". Bourgeois make-work holds no interest to me. ..."
"... My understanding of the data is that living standards increased around the world during the so-called golden age, not just in the U.S. (and Western Europe and Japan and Australia ). It could be that it was still imperialism at work, but the link between imperialism and the creation of the middle class is not straightforward. ..."
"... I thought neoliberalism was just the pogrom to make everyone – rational agents – as subscribed by our genetic / heraldic betters .. putting this orbs humans and resources in the correct "natural" order . ..."
"... Disheveled Marsupial for those thinking neoliberalism is not associated with libertarianism one only has to observe the decades of think tanks and their mouth organs roaming the planet . especially in the late 80s and 90s . bringing the might and wonders of the – market – to the great unwashed globally here libertarian priests rang in the good news to the great unwashed ..."
"... I would argue that neoliberalism is a program to define markets as primarily engaged in information processing and to make everyone into non-agents ( as not important at all to the proper functioning of markets). ..."
"... It also appears that neoliberals want to restrict democracy to the greatest extent possible and to view markets as the only foundation for truth without any need for input from the average individual. ..."
I am almost 70 years old, born and raised in New York City, still living in a near suburb.
Somehow, somewhere along the road to my 70th year I feel as if I have been gradually transported
to an almost entirely different country than the land of my younger years. I live painfully now
in an alien land, a place whose habits and sensibilities I sometimes hardly recognize, while unable
to escape from memories of a place that no longer exists. There are days I feel as I imagine a
Russian pensioner must feel, lost in an unrecognizable alien land of unimagined wealth, power,
privilege, and hyper-glitz in the middle of a country slipping further and further into hopelessness,
alienation, and despair.
I am not particularly nostalgic. Nor am I confusing recollection with sentimental yearnings
for a youth that is no more. But if I were a contemporary Rip Van Winkle, having just awakened
after, say, 30-40 years, I would not recognize my beloved New York City. It would be not just
the disappearance of the old buildings, Penn Station, of course, Madison Square Garden and its
incandescent bulb marquee on 50th and 8th announcing NYU vs. St. John's, and the WTC, although
I always thought of the latter as "new" until it went down. Nor would it be the disappearance
of all the factories, foundries, and manufacturing plants, the iconic Domino Sugar on the East
River, the Wonder Bread factory with its huge neon sign, the Swingline Staples building in Long
Island City that marked passage to and from the East River tunnel on the railroad, and my beloved
Schaeffer Beer plant in Williamsburg, that along with Rheingold, Knickerbocker, and a score of
others, made beer from New York taste a little bit different.
It wouldn't be the ubiquitous new buildings either, the Third Avenue ghostly glass erected
in the 70's and 80's replacing what once was the most concentrated collection of Irish gin mills
anywhere. Or the fortress-like castles built more recently, with elaborate high-ceilinged lobbies
decorated like a kind of gross, filthy-wealthy Versailles, an aesthetically repulsive style that
shrieks "power" in a way the neo-classical edifices of our Roman-loving founders never did. Nor
would it even be the 100-story residential sticks, those narrow ground-to-clouds skyscraper condominiums
proclaiming the triumph of globalized capitalism with prices as high as their penthouses, driven
ever upward by the foreign billionaires and their obsession with burying their wealth in Manhattan
real estate.
It is not just the presence of new buildings and the absence of the old ones that have this
contemporary Van Winkle feeling dyslexic and light-headed. The old neighborhoods have disintegrated
along with the factories, replaced by income segregated swatches of homogenous "real estate" that
have consumed space, air, and sunlight while sucking the distinctiveness out of the City. What
once was the multi-generational home turf for Jewish, Afro-American, Puerto Rican, Italian, Polak
and Bohunk families is now treated as simply another kind of investment, stocks and bonds in steel
and concrete. Mom's Sunday dinners, clothes lines hanging with newly bleached sheets after Monday
morning wash, stickball games played among parked cars, and evenings of sitting on the stoop with
friends and a transistor radio listening to Mel Allen call Mantle's home runs or Alan Freed and
Murray the K on WINS 1010 playing Elvis, Buddy Holly, and The Drifters, all gone like last night's
dreams.
Do you desire to see the new New York? Look no further than gentrifying Harlem for an almost
perfect microcosm of the city's metamorphosis, full of multi-million condos, luxury apartment
renovations, and Maclaren strollers pushed by white yuppie wife stay-at-homes in Marcus Garvey
Park. Or consider the "new" Lower East Side, once the refuge of those with little material means,
artists, musicians, bums, drug addicts, losers and the physically and spiritually broken - my
kind of people. Now its tenements are "retrofitted" and remodeled into $4000 a month apartments
and the new residents are Sunday brunching where we used to score some Mary Jane.
There is the "Brooklyn brand", synonymous with "hip", and old Brooklyn neighborhoods like Red
Hook and South Brooklyn (now absorbed into so desirable Park Slope), and Bushwick, another former
outpost of the poor and the last place I ever imagined would be gentrified, full of artists and
hipsters driving up the price of everything. Even large sections of my own Queens and the Bronx
are affected (infected?). Check out Astoria, for example, neighborhood of my father's family,
with more of the old ways than most but with rents beginning to skyrocket and starting to drive
out the remaining working class to who knows where.
Gone is almost every mom and pop store, candy stores with their egg creams and bubble gum cards
and the Woolworth's and McCrory's with their wooden floors and aisles containing ordinary blue
collar urgencies like thread and yarn, ironing boards and liquid bleach, stainless steel utensils
of every size and shape. Where are the locally owned toy and hobby stores like Jason's in Woodhaven
under the el, with Santa's surprises available for lay-away beginning in October? No more luncheonettes,
cheap eats like Nedicks with hot dogs and paper cones of orange drink, real Kosher delis with
vats of warm pastrami and corned beef cut by hand, and the sacred neighborhood "bar and grill",
that alas has been replaced by what the kids who don't know better call "dive bars", the detestable
simulacra of the real thing, slick rooms of long slick polished mahogany, a half-dozen wide screen
TV's blaring mindless sports contests from all over the world, over-priced micro-brews, and not
a single old rummy in sight?
Old Rip searches for these and many more remembered haunts, what Ray Oldenburg called the "great
good places" of his sleepy past, only to find store windows full of branded, high-priced, got-to-have
luxury-necessities (necessary if he/she is to be certified cool, hip, and successful), ridiculously
overpriced "food emporia", high and higher-end restaurants, and apparel boutiques featuring hardened
smiles and obsequious service reserved for those recognized by celebrity or status.
Rip notices too that the visible demographic has shifted, and walking the streets of Manhattan
and large parts of Brooklyn, he feels like what walking in Boston Back Bay always felt like, a
journey among an undifferentiated mass of privilege, preppy or 'metro-sexed' 20 and 30-somethings
jogging or riding bicycles like lean, buff gods and goddesses on expense accounts supplemented
by investments enriched by yearly holiday bonuses worth more than Rip earned in a lifetime.
Sitting alone on a park bench by the river, Rip reflects that more than all of these individual
things, however, he despairs of a city that seems to have been reimagined as a disneyfied playground
of the privileged, offering endless ways to self-gratify and philistinize in a clean, safe (safest
big city in U.S., he heard someone say), slick, smiley, center-of-the-world urban paradise, protected
by the new centurions (is it just his paranoia or do battle-ready police seem to be everywhere?).
Old ethnic neighborhoods are filled with apartment buildings that seem more like post-college
"dorms", tiny studios and junior twos packed with three or four "singles" roommates pooling their
entry level resources in order to pay for the right to live in "The City". Meanwhile the newer
immigrants find what place they can in Kingsbridge, Corona, Jamaica, and Cambria Heights, far
from the city center, even there paying far too much to the landlord for what they receive.
New York has become an unrecognizable place to Rip, who can't understand why the accent-less
youngsters keep asking him to repeat something in order to hear his quaint "Brooklyn" accent,
something like the King's English still spoken on remote Smith Island in the Chesapeake, he guesses
.
Rip suspects that this "great transformation" (apologies to Polanyi) has coincided, and is somehow
causally related, to the transformation of New York from a real living city into, as the former
Mayor proclaimed, the "World Capital" of financialized commerce and all that goes with it.
"Financialization", he thinks, is not the expression of an old man's disapproval but a way
of naming a transformed economic and social world. Rip is not an economist. He reads voraciously
but, as an erstwhile philosopher trained to think about the meaning of things, he often can't
get his head around the mathematical model-making explanations of the economists that seem to
dominate the more erudite political and social analyses these days. He has learned, however, that
the phenomenon of "capitalism" has changed along with his city and his life.
Money, it seems to him, has somehow changed its role. It has "increased" (is that possible,
he asks?) while at the same time it has become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. It appears
to seek to become an autonomous and dominating sector of economic life, functionally separated
from production of real things, almost all of which seem to come from faraway places. "Real" actually
begins to change its meaning, another topic more interesting still. This devotion to the world
of money-making-money seems to have obsessed the lives of many of the most "important" Americans.
Entire TV networks are devoted to it. They talk about esoteric financial instruments that to the
ordinary citizen look more like exotically placed bets-on-credit in the casino than genuine ways
to grow real-world business, jobs, wages, and family income. The few who are in position to master
the game live material lives that were beyond what almost any formerly "wealthy" man or woman
in Rip's prior life could even imagine
.
Above all else is the astronomical rise in wealth and income inequality. Rip recalls that growing
up in the 1950's, the kids on his block included, along with firemen, cops, and insurance men
dads (these were virtually all one-parent income households), someone had a dad who worked as
a stock broker. Yea, living on the same block was a "Wall Streeter". Amazingly democratic, no?
Imagine, people of today, a finance guy drinking at the same corner bar with the sanitation guy.
Rip recalls that Aristotle had some wise and cautionary words in his Politics concerning the stability
of oligarchic regimes.
Last year I drove across America on blue highways mostly. I stayed in small towns and cities,
Zanesville, St. Charles, Wichita, Pratt, Dalhart, Clayton, El Paso, Abilene, Clarksdale, and many
more. I dined for the most part in local taverns, sitting at the bar so as to talk with the local
bartender and patrons who are almost always friendly and talkative in these spaces. Always and
everywhere I heard similar stories as my story of my home town. Not so much the specifics (there
are no "disneyfied" Lubbocks or Galaxes out there, although Oxford, MS comes close) but in the
sadness of men and women roughly my age as they recounted a place and time – a way of life – taken
out from under them, so that now their years are filled with decayed and dead downtowns, children
gone away and lost to either the relentless rootlessness of the trans-national economy or the
virtual hell-world of meth and opioids and heroin and unending underemployed hopelessness.
I am not a trained economist. My graduate degrees were in philosophy. My old friends call me
an "Eric Hoffer", who back in the day was known as the "longshoreman philosopher". I have been
trying for a long time now to understand the silent revolution that has been pulled off right
under my nose, the replacement of a world that certainly had its flaws (how could I forget the
civil rights struggle and the crime of Viet Nam; I was a part of these things) but was, let us
say, different. Among you or your informed readers, is there anyone who can suggest a book or
books or author(s) who can help me understand how all of this came about, with no public debate,
no argument, no protest, no nothing? I would be very much appreciative.
I'll just highlight this line for emphasis
"there are no "disneyfied" Lubbocks or Galaxes out there, although Oxford, MS comes close) but
in the sadness of men and women roughly my age as they recounted a place and time – a way of life
– taken out from under them, so that now their years are filled with decayed and dead downtowns,
children gone away and lost to either the relentless rootlessness of the trans-national economy
or the virtual hell-world of meth and opioids and heroin and unending underemployed hopelessness."
my best friend pretty much weeps every day.
I don't have a book to recommend. I do think you identify a really underemphasized central
fact of recent times: the joint processes by which real places have been converted into "real
estate" and real, messy lives replaced by safe, manufactured "experiences." This affects wealthy
and poor neighborhoods alike, in different ways but in neither case for the better.
I live in a very desirable neighborhood in one of those places that makes a lot of "Best of"
lists. I met a new neighbor last night who told me how he and his wife had plotted for years to
get out of the Chicago burbs, not only to our city but to this specific neighborhood, which they
had decided is "the one." (This sentiment is not atypical.) Unsurprisingly, property values in
the neighborhood have gone through the roof. Which, as far as I can tell, most everyone here sees
as an unmitigated good thing.
At the same time, several families I got to know because they moved into the neighborhood about
the same time we did 15-20 years ago, are cashing out and moving away, kids off to or out of college,
parents ready (and financed) to get on to the next phase and the next place. Of course, even though
our children are all Lake Woebegoners, there are no next generations staying in the neighborhood,
except of course the ones still living, or back, at "home." (Those families won't be going anywhere
for awhile!)
I can't argue that new money in the hood hasn't improved some things. Our formerly struggling
food co-op just finished a major expansion and upgrade. Good coffee is 5 minutes closer than it
used to be. But to my wife and me, the overwhelming feeling is that we are now outsiders here
in this neighborhood where we know all the houses and the old trees but not what motivates our
new neighbors. So I made up a word for it: unsettling (adj., verb, noun).
"If public life can suffer a metaphysical blow, the death of the labor question was that
blow. For millions of working people, it amputated the will to resist."
Christopher Lash in "Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy" mentions Ray Oldenburg's
"The Great Good Places: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores,
Bars, Hangouts and How they Got You through the Day."
He argued that the decline of democracy is directly related to the disappearance of what he
called third places:,
"As neighborhood hangouts give way to suburban shopping malls, or, on the other hand private
cocktail parties, the essentially political art of conversation is replaced by shoptalk or personal
gossip.
Increasingly, conversation literally has no place in American society. In its absence how–or
better, where–can political habits be acquired and polished?
Lasch finished he essay by noting that Oldenburg's book helps to identify what is missing from
our then newly emerging world (which you have concisely updated):
"urban amenities, conviviality, conversation, politics–almost everything in part that makes
life worth living."
The best explainer of our modern situation that I have read is Wendell Berry. I suggest that
you start with "The Unsettling of America," quoted below.
"Let me outline briefly as I can what seem to me the characteristics of these opposite kinds
of mind. I conceive a strip-miner to be a model exploiter, and as a model nurturer I take the
old-fashioned idea or ideal of a farmer. The exploiter is a specialist, an expert; the nurturer
is not. The standard of the exploiter is efficiency; the standard of the nurturer is care. The
exploiter's goal is money, profit; the nurturer's goal is health - his land's health, his own,
his family's, his community's, his country's. Whereas the exploiter asks of a piece of land only
how much and how quickly it can be made to produce, the nurturer asks a question that is much
more complex and difficult: What is its carrying capacity? (That is: How much can be taken from
it without diminishing it? What can it produce dependably for an indefinite time?) The exploiter
wishes to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer expects, certainly,
to have a decent living from his work, but his characteristic wish is to work as well as possible.
The competence of the exploiter is in organization; that of the nurturer is in order - a human
order, that is, that accommodates itself both to other order and to mystery. The exploiter typically
serves an institution or organization; the nurturer serves land, household, community, place.
The exploiter thinks in terms of numbers, quantities, "hard facts"; the nurturer in terms of character,
condition, quality, kind."
I also think Prof. Patrick Deneen works to explain the roots (and progression) of decline.
I'll quote him at length here describing the modern college student.
"[T]he one overarching lesson that students receive is the true end of education: the only
essential knowledge is that know ourselves to be radically autonomous selves within a comprehensive
global system with a common commitment to mutual indifference. Our commitment to mutual indifference
is what binds us together as a global people. Any remnant of a common culture would interfere
with this prime directive: a common culture would imply that we share something thicker, an inheritance
that we did not create, and a set of commitments that imply limits and particular devotions.
Ancient philosophy and practice praised as an excellent form of government a res publica –
a devotion to public things, things we share together. We have instead created the world's first
Res Idiotica – from the Greek word idiotes, meaning "private individual." Our education system
produces solipsistic, self-contained selves whose only public commitment is an absence of commitment
to a public, a common culture, a shared history. They are perfectly hollowed vessels, receptive
and obedient, without any real obligations or devotions.
They won't fight against anyone, because that's not seemly, but they won't fight for anyone
or anything either. They are living in a perpetual Truman Show, a world constructed yesterday
that is nothing more than a set for their solipsism, without any history or trajectory."
Wow. Did this hit a nerve. You have eloquently described what was the city of hope for several
generations of outsiders, for young gay men and women, and for real artists, not just from other
places in America, but from all over the world. In New York, once upon a time, bumping up against
the more than 50% of the population who were immigrants from other countries, you could learn
a thing or two about the world. You could, for a while, make a living there at a job that was
all about helping other people. You could find other folks, lots of them, who were honest, well-meaning,
curious about the world. Then something changed. As you said, you started to see it in those hideous
80's buildings. But New York always seemed somehow as close or closer to Europe than to the U.S.,
and thus out of the reach of mediocrity and dumbing down. New York would mold you into somebody
tough and smart, if you weren't already – if it didn't, you wouldn't make it there.
Now, it seems, this dream is dreamt. Poseurs are not artists, and the greedy and smug drive
out creativity, kindness, real humor, hope.
It ain't fair. I don't know where in this world an aspiring creative person should go now,
but it probably is not there.
Americans cannot begin to reasonably demand a living wage, benefits and job security when there
is an unending human ant-line of illegals and legal immigrants willing to under bid them.
Only when there is a parity or shortage of workers can wage demands succeed, along with other
factors.
From 1925 to 1965 this country accepted hardly any immigrants, legal or illegal. We had the
bracero program where Mexican males were brought in to pick crops and were then sent home to collect
paychecks in Mexico. American blacks were hired from the deep south to work defense plants in
the north and west.
Is it any coincidence that the 1965 Great Society program, initiated by Ted Kennedy to primarily
benefit the Irish immigrants, then co-opted by LBJ to include practically everyone, started this
process of Middle Class destruction?
1973 was the peak year of American Society as measured by energy use per capita, expansion
of jobs and unionization and other factors, such as an environment not yet destroyed, nicely measured
by the The Real Progress Indicator.
Solution? Stop importing uneducated people. That's real "immigration reform".
Now explain to me why voters shouldn't favor Trump's radical immigration stands?
Maybe, but OTOH, who is it, exactly, who is recruiting, importing, hiring and training undocumented
workers to downgrade pay scales??
Do some homework, please. If businesses didn't actively go to Central and South America to
recruit, pay to bring here, hire and employ undocumented workers, then the things you discuss
would be great.
When ICE comes a-knocking at some meat processing plant or mega-chicken farm, what happens?
The undocumented workers get shipped back to wherever, but the big business owner doesn't even
get a tap on the wrist. The undocumented worker – hired to work in unregulated unsafe unhealthy
conditions – often goes without their last paycheck.
It's the business owners who manage and support this system of undocumented workers because
it's CHEAP, and they don't get busted for it.
Come back when the USA actually enforces the laws that are on the books today and goes after
big and small business owners who knowingly recruit, import, hire, train and employee undocumented
workers you know, like Donald Trump has all across his career.
This is the mechanism by which the gov't has assisted biz in destroying the worker, competition
for thee, but none for me. For instance I can't go work in canada or mexico, they don't allow
it. Policy made it, policy can change it, go bernie. While I favor immigration, in it's current
form it is primarily conducted on these lines of destroying workers (H1b etc and illegals combined)
Lucky for the mexicans they can see the american dream is bs and can go home. I wonder who the
latinos that have gained citizenship will vote for. Unlikely it'll be trump, but they can be pretty
conservative, and the people they work for are pretty conservative so no guarantee there, hillary
is in san diego at the tony balboa park where her supporters will feel comfortable, not a huge
venue I think they must be hoping for a crowd, and if she can't get one in san diego while giving
a "if we don't rule the world someone else will" speech, she can't get one anywhere. Defense contractors
and military advisors and globalist biotech (who needs free money more than biotech? they are
desperate for hillary) are thick in san diego.
I live part-time in San Diego. It is very conservative. The military, who are constantly screwed
by the GOP, always vote Republican. They make up a big cohort of San Diego county.
Hillary may not get a big crowd at the speech, but that, in itself, doesn't mean that much
to me. There is a segment of San Diego that is somewhat more progressive-ish, but it's a pretty
conservative county with parts of eastern SD county having had active John Birch Society members
until recently or maybe even ongoing.
There's a big push in the Latino community to GOTV, and it's mostly not for Trump. It's possible
this cohort, esp the younger Latino/as, will vote for Sanders in the primary, but if Clinton gets
the nomination, they'll likely vote for her (v. Trump).
I was unlucky enough to be stuck for an hour in a commuter train last Friday after Trump's
rally there. Hate to sound rude, but Trump's fans were everything we've seen. Loud, rude, discourteous
and an incessant litany of rightwing talking points (same old, same old). All pretty ignorant.
Saying how Trump will "make us great again." I don't bother asking how. A lot of ugly comments
about Obama and how Obama has been "so racially divisive and polarizing." Well, No. No, Obama
has not been or done that, but the rightwing noise machine has sure ginned up your hatreds, angers
and fears. It was most unpleasant. The only instructive thing about it was confirming my worst
fears about this group. Sorry to say but pretty loutish and very uninformed. Sigh.
part timer in sd as well, family for hillary except for nephew and niece .I keep telling my
mom she should vote bernie for their sake but it never goes over very well
Re Methland, we live in rural US and we got a not-very-well hidden population of homeless children.
I don't mean homeless families with children, I mean homeless children. Sleeping in parks in good
weather, couch-surfing with friends, etc. I think related.
Fascism is a system of political and social order intended to reinforce the unity, energy and
purity of communities in which liberal democracy stand(s) accused of producing division and decline.
. . . George Orwell reminded us, clad in the mainstream patriotic dress of their own place and
time, . . . an authentically popular fascism in the United States would be pious and anti-Black;
in Western Europe, secular and antisemitic, or more probably, these days anti-Islamic; in Russia
and Eastern Europe, religious, antisemitic, and slavophile.
Robert O. Paxton
In The Five Stages of Faschism
" that eternal enemy: the conservative manipulators of privilege who damn as 'dangerous agitators'
any man who menaces their fortunes" (maybe 'power and celebrity' should be added to fortunes)
Sinclair Lewis
It Can't Happen Here page 141
On the Boots To Ribs Front: Anyone hereabouts notice that Captain America has just been revealed
to be a Nazi? Maybe this is what R. Cohen was alluding to but I doubt it.
The four horse men are, political , social, economic and environmental collapse . Any one remember
the original Mad Max movie. A book I recommend is the Crash Of 2016 By Thom Hartmann.
From the comment, I agree with the problems, not the cause. We've increased the size and scope
of the safety net over the last decade. We've increased government spending versus GDP. I'm not
blaming government but its not neoliberal/capitalist policy either.
1. Globalization clearly helps the poor in other countries at the expense of workers in the
U.S. But at the same time it brings down the cost of goods domestically. So jobs are not great
but Walmart/Amazon can sell cheap needs.
2. Inequality started rising the day after Bretton Woods – the rich got richer everyday after
"Nixon Shock"
Hi rfam : To point 1 : Why is there a need to bring down the cost of goods? Is it because of
past outsourcing and trade agreements and FR policies? I think there's a chicken and egg thing
going on, ie.. which came first. Globalization is a way to bring down wages while supplying Americans
with less and less quality goods supplied at the hand of global corporations like Walmart that
need welfare in the form of food stamps and the ACA for their workers for them to stay viable
(?). Viable in this case means ridiculously wealthy CEO's and the conglomerate growing bigger
constantly. Now they have to get rid of COOL's because the WTO says it violates trade agreements
so we can't trace where our food comes from in case of an epidemic. It's all downhill. Wages should
have risen with costs so we could afford high quality American goods, but haven't for a long,
long time.
Globalization helps the rich here way more than the poor there. The elites get more money for
nothing (see QE before you respond, if you do, that's where the money for globalization came from)
the workers get the husk. Also the elite gets to say "you made your choices" and other moralistic
crap. The funny(?) thing is they generally claim to be atheists, which I translate into "I am
God, there doesn't need to be any other" Amazon sells cheap stuff by cheating on taxes, and barely
makes money, mostly just driving people out of business. WalMart has cheap stuff because they
subsidise their workers with food stamps and medicaid. Bringing up bretton woods means you don't
know much about money creation, so google "randy wray/bananas/naked capitalism" and you'll find
a quick primer.
The Walmart loathsome spawn and Jeff Bezos are the biggest welfare drains in our nation – or
among the biggest. They woefully underpay their workers, all while training them on how to apply
for various welfare benefits. Just so that their slaves, uh, workers can manage to eat enough
to enable them to work.
It slays me when US citizens – and it happens across the voting spectrum these days; I hear
just as often from Democratic voters as I do from GOP voters – bitch, vetch, whine & cry about
welfare abuse. And if I start to point out the insane ABUSE of welfare by the Waltons and Jeff
Bezos, I'm immediately greeted with random TRUE stories about someone who knew someone who somehow
made out like a bandit on welfare.
Hey, I'm totally sure and in agreement that there are likely a small percentage of real welfare
cheats who manage to do well enough somehow. But seriously? That's like a drop in the bucket.
Get the eff over it!!!
Those cheats are not worth discussing. It's the big fraud cheats like Bezos & the Waltons and
their ilk, who don't need to underpay their workers, but they DO because the CAN and they get
away with it because those of us the rapidly dwindling middle/working classes are footing the
bill for it.
Citizens who INSIST on focusing on a teeny tiny minority of real welfare cheats, whilst studiously
ignoring the Waltons and the Bezos' of the corporate world, are enabling this behavior. It's one
of my bugabears bc it's so damn frustrating when citizens refuse to see how they are really being
ripped off by the 1%. Get a clue.
That doesn't even touch on all the other tax breaks, tax loopholes, tax incentives and just
general all-around tax cheating and off-shore money hiding that the Waltons and Bezos get/do.
Sheesh.
"I'm immediately greeted with random TRUE stories about someone who knew someone who somehow
made out like a bandit on welfare."
is the key and a v. long term result of the application of Bernays' to political life. Its
local and hits at the gut interpersonal level 'cos the "someones" form a kind of chain of trust
esp. if the the first one on the list is a friend or a credentialed media pundit. Utterly spurious
I know but countering this with a *merely* rational analysis of how Walmart, Amazon abuse the
welfare system to gouge profits from the rest of us just won't ever, for the large majority, get
through this kind emotional wall.
I don't know what any kind of solution might look like but, somehow, we need to find a way
of seriously demonising the corporate parasites that resonates at the same emotional level as
the "welfare cheat" meme that Bill Clinton and the rest of the DLC sanctified back in the '90s.
Something like "Walmart's stealing your taxes" might work but how to get it out there in a
viral way ??
What a comment from seanseamour. And the "hoisting" of it to high visibility at the site is
a testament to the worth of Naked Capitalism.
seanseamour asks "What does that have to do with education?" and answers "Everything if one
considers the elitist trend " This question & answer all but brings tears to my eyes. It is so
utterly on point. My own experience of it, if I may say so, comes from inside the belly of the
beast. As a child and a product of America's elite universities (I have degrees from Harvard and
Yale, and my dad, Richard B. Sewall, was a beloved English prof at Yale for 42 years), I could
spend all morning detailing the shameful roles played by America's torchbearing universities –
Harvard, Yale, Stanford etc – in utterly abandoning their historic responsibility as educators
to maintaining the health of the nation's public school system.*
And as I suspect seanseymour would agree, when a nation loses public education, it loses everything.
But I don't want to spend all morning doing that because I'm convinced that it's not too late
for America to rescue itself from maelstrom in which it finds itself today. (Poe's "Maelstrom"
story, cherished by Marshall McLuhan, is supremely relevant today.)
To turn America around, I don't look to education – that system is too far gone to save itself,
let alone the rest of the country – but rather to the nation's media: to the all-powerful public
communication system that certainly has the interactive technical capabilities to put citizens
and governments in touch with each other on the government decisions that shape the futures of
communities large and small.
For this to happen, however, people like the us – readers of Naked Capitalism – need to stop
moaning and groaning about the damage done by the neoliberals and start building an issue-centered,
citizen-participatory, non-partisan, prime-time Civic Media strong enough to give all Americans
an informed voice in the government decisions that affect their lives. This Civic media would
exist to make citizens and governments responsive and accountable to each other in shaping futures
of all three communities – local, state and national – of which every one of us is a member.
Pie in the sky? Not when you think hard about it. A huge majority of Americans would welcome
this Civic Media. Many yearn for it. This means that a market exists for it: a Market of the Whole
of all members of any community, local, state and national. This audience is large enough to rival
those generated by media coverage of pro sports teams, and believe it or not much of the growth
of this Civic media could be productively modeled on the growth of media coverage of pro sports
teams. This Civic Media would attract the interest of major advertisers, especially those who
see value in non-partisan programming dedicated to getting America moving forward again. Dynamic,
issue-centered, problem-solving public forums, some modeled on voter-driven reality TV contests
like The Voice or Dancing with the Stars, could be underwritten by a "rainbow" spectrum of funders,
commericial, public, personal and even government sources.
So people take hope! Be positive! Love is all we need, etc. The need for for a saving alternative
to the money-driven personality contests into which our politics has descended this election year
is literally staring us all in the face from our TV, cellphone and computer screens. This is no
time to sit back and complain, it's a time to start working to build a new way of connecting ourselves
so we can reverse America's rapid decline.
OK, so I hear some of you saying, corporate America will never let this Civic Media get
off the ground. My short answer to this is that corporations do what makes money for them, and
in today's despairing political climate there's money to be made in sponsoring something truly
positive, patriotic and constructive. And I hear a few others saying that Americans are too
dumbed down, too busy, too polarized or too just plain stupid to make intelligent, constructive
use of a non-partisan, problem-solving Civic Media. But I would not underestimate the intelligence
of Americans when they can give their considered input – by vote, by comment or by active participation
– in public forums that are as exciting and well managed as an NFL game or a Word Series final.
I am paying an exorbitant subscription for the UK Financial Times at the moment. Anyway,
the good news is that very regular articles are appearing where you can almost feel the panic
at the populist uprisings.
Whatever system is put in place the human race will find a way to undermine it. I believe in
capitalism because fair competition means the best and most efficient succeed.
I send my children to private schools and universities because I want my own children at the
top and not the best. Crony capitalism is inevitable, self-interest undermines any larger system
that we try and impose.
Can we design a system that can beat human self-interest? It's going to be tricky.
"If that's the system, how can I take advantage of it?" human nature at work. "If that's the
system, is it working for me or not?" those at the top.
If not, it's time to change the system.
If so, how can I tweak it to get more out of it?
Neo-Liberalism
Academics, who are not known for being street-wise, probably thought they had come up with
the ultimate system using markets and numeric performance measures to create a system free from
human self-interest.
They had already missed that markets don't just work for price discovery, but are frequently
used for capital gains by riding bubbles and hoping there is a "bigger fool" out there than you,
so you can cash out with a handsome profit.
(I am not sure if the Chinese realise markets are supposed to be for price discovery at all).
Hence, numerous bubbles during this time, with housing bubbles being the global favourite for
those looking for capital gains.
If we are being governed by the markets, how do we rig the markets?
A question successfully solved by the bankers.
Inflation figures, that were supposed to ensure the cost of living didn't rise too quickly,
were somehow manipulated to produce low inflation figures with roaring house price inflation raising
the cost of living.
What unemployment measure will best suit the story I am trying to tell?
U3 – everything great
U6 – it's not so good
Labour participation rate – it hasn't been this bad since the 1970s
Anything missing from the theory has been ruthlessly exploited, e.g. market bubbles ridden
for capital gains, money creation by private banks, the difference between "earned" and "unearned"
income and the fact that Capitalism trickles up through the following mechanism:
1) Those with excess capital collect rent and interest.
2) Those with insufficient capital pay rent and interest.
I just went on a rant last week. (Not only because the judge actually LIED in court)
I left the courthouse in downtown Seattle, to cross the street to find the vultures selling
more foreclosures on the steps of the King County Administration Building, while above them, there
were tents pitched on the building's perimeter. And people were walking by just like this scene
was normal.
Because the people at the entrance of the courthouse could view this, I went over there and
began to rant. I asked (loudly) "Do you guys see that over there? Vultures selling homes rendering
more people homeless and then the homeless encampment with tents pitched on the perimeter above
them? In what world is this normal?" One guy replied, "Ironic, isn't it?" After that comment,
the Marshall protecting the judicial crooks in the building came over and tried to calm me down.
He insisted that the scene across the street was "normal" and that none of his friends or neighbors
have been foreclosed on. I soon found out that that lying Marshall was from Pierce County, the
epicenter of Washington foreclosures.
"In this postindustrial world not only is the labor question no longer asked, not only
is proletarian revolution passé, but the proletariat itself seems passé. And the invisibles who
nonetheless do indeed live there have internalized their nonexistence, grown demoralized, resentful,
and hopeless; if they are noticed at all, it is as objects of public disdain. What were once called
"blue-collar aristocrats"-skilled workers in the construction trades, for example-have long felt
the contempt of the whole white-collar world.
For these people, already skeptical about who runs things and to what end, and who are now
undergoing their own eviction from the middle class, skepticism sours into a passive cynicism.
Or it rears up in a kind of vengeful chauvinism directed at alien others at home and abroad, emotional
compensation for the wounds that come with social decline If public life can suffer a metaphysical
blow, the death of the labor question was that blow. For millions of working people, it amputated
the will to resist."
One thing I don't think I have seen addressed on this site (apologies if I have missed it!)
in all the commentary about the destruction of the middle class is the role of US imperialism
in creating that middle class in the first place and what it is that we want to save from destruction
by neo-liberalism. The US is rich because we rob the rest of the world's resources and have been
doing so in a huge way since 1945, same as Britain before us. I don't think it's a coincidence
that the US post-war domination of the world economy and the middle class golden age happened
at the same time. Obviously there was enormous value created by US manufacturers, inventors, government
scientists, etc but imperialism is the basic starting point for all of this. The US sets the world
terms of trade to its own advantage. How do we save the middle class without this level of control?
Within the US elites are robbing everyone else but they are taking what we use our military power
to appropriate from the rest of the world.
Second, if Bernie or whoever saves the middle class, is that so that everyone can have a tract
house and two cars and continue with a massively wasteful and unsustainable lifestyle based on
consumption? Or are we talking about basic security like shelter, real health care, quality education
for all, etc? Most of the stories I see seem to be nostalgic for a time when lots of people could
afford to buy lots of stuff and don't 1) reflect on origin of that stuff (imperialism) and 2)
consider whether that lifestyle should be the goal in the first place.
I went to the electronics recycling facility in Seattle yesterday. The guy at customer service
told me that they receive 20 million pounds per month. PER MONTH. Just from Seattle. I went home
and threw up.
It doesn't have to be that way. You can replace military conquest (overt and covert) with space
exploration and science expansion. Also, instead of pushing consumerism, push contentment. Don't
setup and goose a system of "gotta keep up with the Joneses!"
In the 50s(!!!) there was a plan, proven in tests and studies, that would have had humans on
the mars by 1965, out to Saturn by 72. Project Orion. Later, the British Project Daedalus was
envisioned which WOULD have put space probes at the next star system within 20 years of launch.
It was born of the atomic age and, as originally envisioned, would have been an ecological disaster
BUT it was reworked to avoid this and would have worked. Spacecraft capable of comfortably holding
100 personnel, no need to build with paper-thin aluminum skin or skimp on amenities. A huge ship
built like a large sea vessel (heavy iron/steel) accelerated at 1g (or more or slightly less as
desired) so no prolonged weightlessness and concomitant loss of bone and muscle mass. It was all
in out hands but the Cold War got in the way, as did the many agreements and treaties of the Cold
War to avoid annihilation. It didn't need to be that way. Check it out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)
All that with 1950s and 60s era technology. It could be done better today and for less than
your wars in the Middle East. Encourage science, math, exploration instead of consumption, getting
mine before you can get yours, etc.
Or, we could replace Western liberal culture, with its tradition to consume and expand
by force an unbroken chain from the Garden of Eden to Friedrich von Hayek, with the notion of
maintenance and "enough". Bourgeois make-work holds no interest to me.
My understanding of the data is that living standards increased around the world during
the so-called golden age, not just in the U.S. (and Western Europe and Japan and Australia ).
It could be that it was still imperialism at work, but the link between imperialism and the creation
of the middle class is not straightforward.
Likewise, US elites are clearly NOT robbing the manufacturing firms that have set up in China
and other low-wage locations, so it is an oversimplification to say they are "robbing everyone
else."
Nostalgia is overrated but I don't sense the current malaise as a desire for more stuff. (I
grew up in the 60s and 70s and I don't remember it as a time where people had, or craved, a lot
of stuff. That period would be now, and I find it infects Sanders' supporters less than most.)
If anything, it is nostalgia for more (free) time and more community, for a time when (many but
not all) people had time to socialize and enjoy civic life.
those things would be nice as would just a tiny bit of hope for the future, our own and the
planet's and not an expectation of things getting more and more difficult and sometimes for entirely
unnecessary reasons like imposed austerity. But being we can't have "nice things" like free time,
community and hope for the future, we just "buy stuff".
I live on the south side, in the formerly affluent south shore neighborhood. A teenager was
killed, shot in the head in a drive by shooting, at 5 pm yesterday right around the corner from
my residence. A white coworker of mine who lives in a rich northwest side neighborhood once commented
to me how black people always say goodbye by saying "be safe". More easily said than done.
I thought neoliberalism was just the pogrom to make everyone – rational agents – as subscribed
by our genetic / heraldic betters .. putting this orbs humans and resources in the correct "natural"
order .
Disheveled Marsupial for those thinking neoliberalism is not associated with libertarianism
one only has to observe the decades of think tanks and their mouth organs roaming the planet .
especially in the late 80s and 90s . bringing the might and wonders of the – market – to the great
unwashed globally here libertarian priests rang in the good news to the great unwashed
I would argue that neoliberalism is a program to define markets as primarily engaged in
information processing and to make everyone into non-agents ( as not important at all to the proper
functioning of markets).
It also appears that neoliberals want to restrict democracy to the greatest extent possible
and to view markets as the only foundation for truth without any need for input from the average
individual.
But as Mirowski argues–carrying their analysis this far begins to undermine their own neoliberal
assumptions about markets always promoting social welfare.
When I mean – agents – I'm not referring to agency, like you say the market gawd/computer does
that. I was referencing the – rational agent – that 'ascribes' the markets the right at defining
facts or truth as neoliberalism defines rational thought/behavior.
Disheveled Marsupial yes democracy is a direct threat to Hayekian et al [MPS and Friends]
paranoia due to claims of irrationality vs rationally
I have trouble understanding the focus on an emergence of fascism in Europe, focus that seems
to dominate this entire thread when, put in perspective such splinter groups bear little weight
on the European political spectrum.
As an expat living in France, in my perception the Front National is a threat to the political
establishments that occupy the center left and right and whose historically broad constituencies
have been brutalized by the financial crisis borne of unbridled anglo-saxon runaway capitalism,
coined neoliberalism. The resulting disaffection has allowed the growth of the FN but it is also
fueled by a transfer of reactionary constituencies that have historically found identity in far
left parties (communist, anti-capitalist, anarchist ), political expressions the institutions
of the Republic allow and enable in the name of plurality, a healthy exultury in a democratic
society.
To consider that the FN in France, UKIP in the UK and others are a threat to democratic values
any more that the far left is non-sensical, and I dare say insignificant compared to the "anchluss"
our conservative right seeks to impose upon the executive, legislative and judicial branches of
government.
The reality in Europe as in America is economic. The post WWII era of reconstruction, investment
and growth is behind us, the French call these years the "Trente Glorieuses" (30 glorious years)
when prosperity was felt through all societal strats, consumerism for all became the panacea for
a just society, where injustice prevailed welfare formulas provided a new panacea.
As the perspective of an unravelling of this golden era began to emerge elites sought and conspired
to consolidate power and wealth, under the aegis of greed is good culture by further corrupting
government to serve the few, ensuring impunity for the ruling class, attempting societal cohesiveness
with brash hubristic dialectics (America, the greatest this or that) and adventurism (Irak, mission
accomplished), conspiring to co-opt and control institutions and the media (to understand the
depth of this deception a must read is Jane Mayer in The Dark Side and in Dark Money).
The difference between America and Europe is that latter bears of brunt of our excess.
The 2008 Wall St / City meltdown eviscerated much of America' middle class and de-facto stalled,
perhaps definitively, the vehicle of upward mobility in an increasingly wealth-ranked class structured
society – the Trump phenomena feeds off the fatalistic resilience and "good book" mythologies
remnant of the "go west" culture.
In Europe where to varying degrees managed capitalism prevails the welfare state(s) provided the
shock absorbers to offset the brunt of the crisis, but those who locked-in on neoliberal fiscal
conservatism have cut off their nose in spite leaving scant resources to spur growth. If social
mobility survives, more vibrantly than the US, unemployment and the cost thereof remains steadfast
and crippling.
The second crisis borne of American hubris is the human tidal wave resulting from the Irak adventure;
it has unleashed mayhem upon the Middle East, Sub Saharan Africa and beyond. The current migrational
wave Europe can not absorb is but the beginning of much deeper problem – as ISIS, Boko Haram and
so many others terrorist groups destabilize the nation-states of a continent whose population
is on the path to explode in the next half century.
The icing on the cake provided by a Trump election will be a world wave of climate change refugees
as the neoliberal establishment seeks to optimize wealth and power through continued climate change
denial.
Fascism is not the issue, nationalism resulting from a self serving bully culture will decimate
the multilateral infrastructure responsible nation-states need to address today's problems.
Broadly, Trump Presidency capping the neoliberal experience will likely signal the end of the
US' dominant role on the world scene (and of course the immense benefits derived for the US).
As he has articulated his intent to discard the art of diplomacy, from soft to institutional,
in favor of an agressive approach in which the President seeks to "rattle" allies (NATO, Japan
and S. Korea for example) as well as his opponents (in other words anyone who does not profess
blind allegiance), expect that such modus operandi will create a deep schism accompanied by a
loss of trust, already felt vis-a-vis our legislature' behavior over the last seven years.
The US's newfound respect among friends and foes generated by President Obama' presidency, has
already been undermined by the GOP primaries, if Trump is elected it will dissipate for good as
other nations and groups thereof focus upon new, no-longer necessarily aligned strategic relationships,
some will form as part as a means of taking distance, or protection from the US, others more opportunist
with the risk of opponents such as Putin filling the void – in Europe for example.
Neoliberalism isn't helping, but it's a population/resource ratio thing. Impacts on social
orders occur well before raw supply factors kick in (and there is more than food supply to basic
rations). The world population has more than doubled in the last 50 years, one doesn't get that
kind of accelerated growth without profound impacts to every aspect of societies. Some of the
most significant impacts are consequent to the acceleration of technological changes (skill expirations,
automations) that are driven in no small part by the needs of a vast + growing population.
I don't suggest population as a pat simplistic answer. And neoliberalism accelerates the declining
performance of institutions (as in the CUNY article and that's been going on for decades already,
neoliberalism just picked up where neoconservatism petered out), but we would be facing issues
like homelessness, service degradation, population displacements, etc regardless of poor policies.
One could argue (I do) that neoliberalism has undertaken to accelerate existing entropies for
profit.
Thanks for soliciting reader comments on socioeconomic desperation. It's encouraging to know
that I'm not the only failure to launch in this country.
I'm a seasonal farm worker with a liberal arts degree in geology and history. I barely held
on for six months as a junior environmental consultant at a dysfunctional firm that tacitly encouraged
unethical and incompetent behavior at all levels. From what I could gather, it was one of the
better-run firms in the industry. Even so, I was watching mid-level and senior staff wander into
extended mid-life crises while our entire service line was terrorized by a badly out-of-shape,
morbidly obese, erratic, vicious PG who had alienated almost the entire office but was untouchable
no matter how many firing offenses she committed. Meanwhile I was watching peers in other industries
(especially marketing and FIRE) sell their souls in real time. I'm still watching them do so a
decade later.
It's hard to exaggerate how atrociously I've been treated by bougie conformists for having
failed/dropped out of the rat race. A family friend who got into trouble with the state of Hawaii
for misclassifying direct employees of his timeshare boiler room as 1099's gave me a panic attack
after getting stoned and berating me for hours about how I'd wake up someday and wonder what the
fuck I'd done with my life. At the time, I had successfully completed a summer job as the de facto
lead on a vineyard maintenance crew and was about to get called back for the harvest, again as
the de facto lead picker.
Much of my social life is basically my humiliation at the hands of amoral sleazeballs who presume
themselves my superiors. No matter how strong an objective case I have for these people being
morally bankrupt, it's impossible to really dismiss their insults. Another big component is concern-trolling
from bourgeois supremacists who will do awfully little for me when I ask them for specific help.
I don't know what they're trying to accomplish, and they probably don't, either. A lot of it is
cognitive dissonance and incoherence.
Some of the worst aggression has come from a Type A social climber friend who sells life insurance.
He's a top producer in a company that's about a third normal, a third Willy Loman, and a third
Glengarry Glen Ross. This dude is clearly troubled, but in ways that neither of us can really
figure out, and a number of those around him are, too. He once admitted, unbidden, to having hazed
me for years.
The bigger problem is that he's surrounded by an entire social infrastructure that enables
and rewards noxious, predatory behavior. When college men feel like treating the struggling like
garbage, they have backup and social proof from their peers. It's disgusting. Many of these people
have no idea of how to relate appropriately to the poor or the unemployed and no interest in learning.
They want to lecture and humiliate us, not listen to us.
Dude recently told me that our alma mater, Dickinson College, is a "grad school preparatory
institution." I was floored that anyone would ever think to talk like that. In point of fact,
we're constantly lectured about how versatile our degrees are, with or without additional education.
I've apparently annoyed a number of Dickinsonians by bitterly complaining that Dickinson's nonacademic
operations are a sleazy racket and that President Emeritus Bill Durden is a shyster who brainwashed
my classmates with crude propaganda. If anything, I'm probably measured in my criticism, because
I don't think I know the full extent of the fraud and sleaze. What I have seen and heard is damning.
I believe that Dickinson is run by people with totalitarian impulses that are restrained only
by a handful of nonconformists who came for the academics and are fed up with the propaganda.
Meanwhile, I've been warm homeless for most of the past four years. It's absurd to get pledge
drive pitches from a well-endowed school on the premise that my degree is golden when I'm regularly
sleeping in my car and financially dependent on my parents. It's absurd to hear stories about
how Dickinson's alumni job placement network is top-notch when I've never gotten a viable lead
from anyone I know from school. It's absurd to explain my circumstances in detail to people who,
afterwards, still can't understand why I'm cynical.
While my classmates preen about their degrees, I'm dealing with stuff that would make them
vomit. A relative whose farm I've been tending has dozens of rats infesting his winery building,
causing such a stench that I'm just about the only person willing to set foot inside it. This
relative is a deadbeat presiding over a feudal slumlord manor, circumstances that he usually justifies
by saying that he's broke and just trying to make ends meet. He has rent-paying tenants living
on the property with nothing but a pit outhouse and a filthy, disused shower room for facilities.
He doesn't care that it's illegal. One of his tenants left behind a twenty-gallon trash can full
to the brim with his own feces. Another was seen throwing newspaper-wrapped turds out of her trailer
into the weeds. They probably found more dignity in this than in using the outhouse.
When I was staying in Rancho Cordova, a rough suburb of Sacramento, I saw my next-door neighbor
nearly come to blows with a man at the light rail station before apologizing profusely to me,
calling me "sir," "man," "boss," and "dog." He told me that he was angry at the other guy for
selling meth to his kid sister. Eureka is even worse: its west side is swarming with tweakers,
its low-end apartment stock is terrible, no one brings the slumlords to heel, and it has a string
of truly filthy residential motels along Broadway that should have been demolished years ago.
A colleague who lives in Sweet Home, Oregon, told me that his hometown is swarming with druggies
who try to extract opiates from local poppies and live for the next arriving shipment of garbage
drugs. The berry farm where we worked had ten- and twelve-year-olds working under the table to
supplement their families' incomes. A Canadian friend told me that he worked for a crackhead in
Lillooet who made his own supply at home using freebase that he bought from a meathead dealer
with ties to the Boston mob. Apparently all the failing mill towns in rural BC have a crack problem
because there's not much to do other than go on welfare and cocaine. An RCMP sergeant in Kamloops
was recently indicted for selling coke on the side.
Uahsenaa's comment about the invisible homeless is spot on. I think I blend in pretty well.
I've often stunned people by mentioning that I'm homeless. Some of them have been assholes about
it, but not all. There are several cars that I recognize as regular overnighters at my usual rest
area. Thank God we don't get hassled much. Oregon is about as safe a place as there is to be homeless.
Some of the rest areas in California, including the ones at Kingsburg and the Sacramento Airport,
end up at or beyond capacity overnight due to the homeless. CalTrans has signs reminding drivers
that it's rude to hog a space that someone else will need. This austerity does not, of course,
apply to stadium construction for the Kings.
Another thing that almost slipped my mind (and is relevant to Trump's popularity): I've encountered
entrenched, systemic discrimination against Americans when I've tried to find and hold menial
jobs, and I've talked to other Americans who have also encountered it. There is an extreme bias
in favor of Mexican peasants and against Americans in the fields and increasingly in off-farm
jobs. The top quintile will be lucky not to reap the whirlwind on account of this prejudice.
"... The number one issue fueling the leave vote was immigration – a lot like Trump's wall against Mexico. The number two issue was lack of accountability of government: Leavers believe that the EU government in Brussels is unaccountable to voters. For Trump supporters, resentment towards a distant and unaccountable Washington government ranks high as well. The Brexit constituency and the Trump constituency are both motivated by the same sense of loss and vulnerability. ..."
"... In both the U.S. and the U.K., a large and growing segment of voters has not prospered in today's complex, technology-driven global economy. Their wages have stagnated and in many cases fallen. Too few good-paying jobs exist for people lacking a college degree, or even people with a college degree, if the degree is not in the right field. These people are angry, frustrated, and afraid -- and with very good reason. Both countries' governments have done little to help them adapt, and little to soothe the sting of globalization. The voter's concerns in both places are mostly the same even though these concerns have coalesced around a policy issue ("leave") in the U.K. whereas here in the U.S. they have coalesced around a candidate (Trump). ..."
"... Similarly, the elite insiders of the Republican Party and their business allies badly underestimated Trump. Establishment candidates like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush failed terribly. Now the Republican political insiders are trying to make sense of a presumptive nominee who trashes free trade, one of the fundamental principles of the party, and openly taunts one of most important emerging voting blocks. ..."
"... Perhaps the biggest reason for the impotence of today's political elites is that elites have trashed the very idea of competent and effective government for 35 years now, and the public has taken the message to heart. Ever since Reagan identified government as the problem, conservative elites have attacked the idea of government itself – rather than respecting the idea of government itself while criticizing the particular policies of a particular government. This is a crucial (and dangerous) distinction. In 1986, Reagan went on to say "the nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" ..."
In addition, the issues are similar between the two campaigns: The number
one issue fueling the leave vote was immigration – a lot like Trump's wall against
Mexico. The number two issue was lack of accountability of government: Leavers
believe that the EU government in Brussels is unaccountable to voters. For Trump
supporters, resentment towards a distant and unaccountable Washington government
ranks high as well. The Brexit constituency and the Trump constituency are both
motivated by the same sense of loss and vulnerability.
In both the U.S. and the U.K., a large and growing segment of voters
has not prospered in today's complex, technology-driven global economy. Their
wages have stagnated and in many cases fallen. Too few good-paying jobs exist
for people lacking a college degree, or even people with a college degree, if
the degree is not in the right field. These people are angry, frustrated, and
afraid -- and with very good reason. Both countries' governments have done little
to help them adapt, and little to soothe the sting of globalization. The voter's
concerns in both places are mostly the same even though these concerns have
coalesced around a policy issue ("leave") in the U.K. whereas here in the U.S.
they have coalesced around a candidate (Trump).
In both countries, political elites were caught flat-footed. Elites lost
control over the narrative and lost credibility and persuasiveness with angry,
frustrated and fearful voters. The British elites badly underestimated the intensity
of public frustration with immigration and with the EU. Most expected the vote
would end on the side of "remain," up to the very last moment. Now they are
trying to plot their way out of something they never expected would actually
happen, and never prepared for.
Similarly, the elite insiders of the Republican Party and their business
allies badly underestimated Trump. Establishment candidates like former Florida
Gov. Jeb Bush failed terribly. Now the Republican political insiders are trying
to make sense of a presumptive nominee who trashes free trade, one of the fundamental
principles of the party, and openly taunts one of most important emerging voting
blocks.
How did the elites lose control? There are many reasons: With social media
so pervasive, advertising dollars no longer controls what the public sees and
hears. With unrestricted campaign spending, the party can no longer "pinch the
air hose" of a candidate who strays from party orthodoxy.
Perhaps the biggest reason for the impotence of today's political elites
is that elites have trashed the very idea of competent and effective government
for 35 years now, and the public has taken the message to heart. Ever since
Reagan identified government as the problem, conservative elites have attacked
the idea of government itself – rather than respecting the idea
of government itself while criticizing the particular policies of a particular
government. This is a crucial (and dangerous) distinction. In 1986, Reagan went
on to say "the nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from
the government and I'm here to help.'"
Reagan booster Grover Norquist is known for saying, "I don't want to abolish
government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into
the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." Countless candidates and elected
officials slam "Washington bureaucrats" even though these "bureaucrats" were
none other than themselves. It's not a great way to build respect. Then the
attack escalated, with the aim of destroying parts of government that were actually
mostly working. This was done to advance the narrative that government itself
is the problem, and pave the way for privatization. Take the Transportation
Security Administration for example. TSA has actually done its job. No terrorist
attacks have succeeded on U.S. airplanes since it was established. But by
systematically underfunding it , Congress has made the lines painfully long,
so people hate it. Take the Post Office. Here Congress manufactured a crisis
to force service cuts, making the public believe the institution is incompetent.
But the so-called "problem" is
due almost entirely to a requirement, imposed by Congress, forcing the Postal
Service to prepay retiree's health care to an absurd level, far beyond what
a similar private sector business would have to do. A similar dynamic now threatens
Social Security. Thirty-five years have passed since Reagan first mocked the
potential for competent and effective government. Years of unrelenting attack
have sunk in. Many Americans now distrust government leaders and think it's
pointless to demand or expect wisdom and statesmanship. Today's American voters
(and their British counterparts), well-schooled in skepticism, disdain and dismiss
leaders of all parties and they are ready to burn things down out of sheer frustration.
The moment of blowback has arrived.
PK has nearly lost all of his ability to see things objectively. Ambition got him, I suppose,
or maybe he has always longed to be popular. He was probably teased and ridiculed too much in
his youth. He is something of a whinny sniveler after-all.
Then too, I doubt if PK has ever used a public restroom in the Southwest, or taken his kids
to a public park in one of the thousands of small towns where non-English speaking throngs take
over all of the facilities and parking.Or had his children bullied at school by a gang of dark-skinned
kids whose parents believe that whites took their land, or abused or enslaved their distant ansestors.
It might be germane here too... to point out that some of this anti-white sentiment gets support
and validation from the very rhetoric that Democrats have made integral to their campaigns.
As for not knowing why crime rates have been falling, the incarceration rates rose in step,
so duh, if you lock up those with propensities for crime, well, how could crime rates not fall?
And while I'm on the subject of crime, the statistical analysis that is commonly used focuses
too much on violent crime and convictions. Thus, crimes of a less serious nature, that being the
type of crimes committed by poor folks, is routinely ignored. Then too, those who are here illegally
are often transient and using assumed names, and so they are, presumably, more difficult to catch.
So, statistics are all too often not as telling as claimed.
And, though I'm not a Trump supporter, I fully understand his appeal. As would PK if he were
more travelled and in touch with those who have seen their schools, parks, towns, and everything
else turn tawdry and dysfunctional. But of course the nation that most of us live in is much different
than the one that PK knows.
> And, though I'm not a Trump supporter, I fully understand his appeal
I wonder why everybody is thinking about this problem only in terms of identity politics.
This is a wrong, self-defeating framework to approach the problem. which is pushed by neoliberal
MSM and which we should resist in this forum as this translates the problems that the nation faces
into term of pure war-style propaganda ("us vs. them" mentality). To which many posters here already
succumbed
IMHO the November elections will be more of the referendum on neoliberal globalization (with
two key issues on the ballot -- jobs and immigration) than anything else.
If so, then the key question is whether the anger of population at neoliberal elite that stole
their jobs and well-being reached the boiling point or not. The level of this anger might decide
the result of elections, not all those petty slurs that neoliberal MSM so diligently use as a
smoke screen.
All those valiant efforts in outsourcing and replacing permanent jobs with temporary to increase
profit margin at the end have the propensity to produce some externalities. And not only in the
form "over 50 and unemployed" but also by a much more dangerous "globalization of indifference"
to human beings in general.
JK Galbraith once gave the following definition of neoliberal economics: "trickle down economics
is the idea that if you feed the horse enough oats eventually some will pass through to the road
for the sparrows." This is what neoliberalism is about. Lower 80% even in so-called rich countries
are forced to live in "fear and desperation", forced to work "with precious little dignity".
Human beings are now considered consumer goods in "job market" to be used and then discarded.
As a consequence, a lot of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: "without work, without
possibilities, without any means of escape" (pope Francis).
And that inevitably produces a reaction. Which in extreme forms we saw during French and Bolsheviks
revolutions. And in less extremist forms (not involving lampposts as the placeholders for the
"Masters of the Universe" (aka financial oligarchy) and the most obnoxious part of the "creative
class" aka intelligentsia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligentsia
) in Brexit vote.
Hillary and Trump are just symbols here. The issue matters, not personalities.
An interesting warning about possible return of neocons in Hillary administration. Looks like not
much changed in Washington from 2005 and Obama more and more looks like Bush III. Both Hillary and Trump
are jingoistic toward Iran. Paradoxically Trump is even more jingoistic then Hillary.
Notable quotes:
"... That no one yet claims actually exists, has begun. Once again we seem to be heading down a highway marked "counterproliferation war." What makes this bizarre is that the Middle East today, for all its catastrophic problems, is actually a nuclear-free zone except for one country, Israel, which has a staggeringly outsized, semi-secret nuclear arsenal. ..."
"... And not much has changed since. I recommend as well a piece written even earlier by Ira Chernus on a graphic about the Israeli nuclear arsenal tucked away at the MSNBC website (and still viewable ). ..."
"... Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst and one of the founders of the group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, considers the Iranian and Israeli bombs, and Bush administration policy in relation to both below in a piece that, he writes, emerged from "an informal colloquium which has sprung up in the Washington, DC area involving people with experience at senior policy levels of government, others who examine foreign policy and defense issues primarily out of a faith perspective, and still others with a foot in each camp. We are trying to deal directly with the moral -- as well as the practical -- implications of various policy alternatives. One of our group recently was invited to talk with senior staffers in the House of Representatives about Iran, its nuclear plans, its support for terrorists, and U.S. military options. Toward the end of that conversation, a House staffer was emboldened to ask, 'What would be a moral solution?' This question gave new energy to our colloquium, generating a number of informal papers, including this one. I am grateful to my colloquium colleagues for their insights and suggestions." ..."
"... What about post-attack "Day Two?" Not to worry. Well-briefed pundits are telling us about a wellspring of Western-oriented I find myself thinking: Right; just like all those Iraqis who welcomed invading American and British troops with open arms and cut flowers. ..."
"... In 2001, the new President Bush brought the neocons back and put them in top policymaking positions. Even former Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams, convicted in October 1991 of lying to Congress and then pardoned by George H. W. Bush, was called back and put in charge of Middle East policy in the White House. In January, he was promoted to the influential post (once occupied by Robert Gates) of deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs. From that senior position Abrams will once again be dealing closely with John Negroponte, an old colleague from rogue-elephant Contra War days, who has now been picked to be the first director of national intelligence. ..."
"... Those of us who -- like Colin Powell -- had front-row seats during the 1980s are far too concerned to dismiss the re-emergence of the neocons as a simple case of déjŕ vu . They are much more dangerous now. Unlike in the eighties, they are the ones crafting the adventurous policies our sons and daughters are being called on to implement. ..."
"... So why would Iran think it has to acquire nuclear weapons? Sen. Richard Lugar, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was asked this on a Sunday talk show a few months ago. Apparently having a senior moment, he failed to give the normal answer. Instead, he replied, "Well, you know, Israel has..." At that point, he caught himself and abruptly stopped. ..."
That no one yet claims actually exists, has begun. Once again we seem to be heading down a highway
marked "counterproliferation war." What makes this bizarre is that the Middle East today, for all
its catastrophic problems, is actually a nuclear-free zone except for one country, Israel, which
has a staggeringly outsized, semi-secret nuclear arsenal.
As Los Angeles Times reporter Douglas Frantz wrote at one point, "Though Israel is a democracy,
debating the nuclear program is taboo A military censor guards Israel's nuclear secrets." And this
"taboo" has largely extended to American reporting on the subject. Imagine, to offer a very partial
analogy, if we all had had to consider the Cold War nuclear issue with the Soviet, but almost never
the American nuclear arsenal, in the news. Of course, that would have been absurd and yet it's the
case in the Middle East today, making most strategic discussions of the region exercises in absurdity.
I wrote about this subject under the title,
Nuclear Israel
, back in October 2003, because of a brief break, thanks to Frantz, in the media blackout on the
subject. I began then, "Nuclear North Korea, nuclear Iraq, nuclear Iran - of these our media has
been full for the last year or more, though they either don't exist or hardly yet exist. North Korea
now probably has a couple of crude nuclear weapons, which it may still be incapable of delivering.
But nuclear Israel, little endangered Israel? It's hard even to get your head around the concept,
though that country has either the fifth or sixth largest nuclear arsenal in the world." And
not much has changed since. I recommend as well a piece written even earlier
by Ira Chernus on a
graphic about the Israeli nuclear arsenal tucked away at the MSNBC website (and
still viewable
).
Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst and one of the founders of the group, Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity, considers the Iranian and Israeli bombs, and Bush administration policy
in relation to both below in a piece that, he writes, emerged from "an informal colloquium which
has sprung up in the Washington, DC area involving people with experience at senior policy levels
of government, others who examine foreign policy and defense issues primarily out of a faith perspective,
and still others with a foot in each camp. We are trying to deal directly with the moral -- as well
as the practical -- implications of various policy alternatives. One of our group recently was invited
to talk with senior staffers in the House of Representatives about Iran, its nuclear plans, its support
for terrorists, and U.S. military options. Toward the end of that conversation, a House staffer was
emboldened to ask, 'What would be a moral solution?' This question gave new energy to our colloquium,
generating a number of informal papers, including this one. I am grateful to my colloquium colleagues
for their insights and suggestions." Now, read on. ~ Tom
Attacking Iran: I Know It Sounds Crazy, But...
By Ray McGovern
"'This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous.'
"(Short pause)
"'And having said that, all options are on the table.'
"Even the White House stenographers felt obliged to note the result: '(Laughter).'"
For a host of good reasons -- the huge and draining commitment of U.S. forces to Iraq and Iran's
ability to stir the Iraqi pot to boiling, for starters -- the notion that the Bush administration
would mount a "preemptive" air attack on Iran seems insane. And still more insane if the objective
includes overthrowing Iran's government again, as in 1953 -- this time under the rubric of "regime
change."
But Bush administration policy toward the Middle East is being run by men -- yes, only men
-- who were routinely referred to in high circles in Washington during the 1980s as "the crazies."
I can attest to that personally, but one need not take my word for it.
According to James Naughtie, author of The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency
, former Secretary of State Colin Powell added an old soldier's adjective to the "crazies"
sobriquet in referring to the same officials. Powell, who was military aide to Defense Secretary
Casper Weinberger in the early eighties, was overheard calling them "the f---ing crazies" during
a phone call with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw before the war in Iraq. At the time, Powell
was reportedly deeply concerned over their determination to attack -- with or without UN approval.
Small wonder that they got rid of Powell after the election, as soon as they had no more use for
him.
If further proof of insanity were needed, one could simply look at the unnecessary carnage
in Iraq since the invasion in March 2003. That unprovoked attack was, in my view, the most fateful
foreign policy blunder in our nation's history...so far.
It Can Get Worse
"The crazies" are not finished. And we do well not to let their ultimate folly obscure
their current ambition, and the further trouble that ambition is bound to bring in the four years
ahead. In an immediate sense, with U.S. military power unrivaled, they can be seen as "crazy like
a fox," with a value system in which "might makes right." Operating out of that value system,
and now sporting the more respectable misnomer/moniker "neoconservative," they are convinced that
they know exactly what they are doing. They have a clear ideology and a geopolitical strategy,
which leap from papers they put out at the
Project for the New American Century
over recent years.
The very same men who, acting out of that paradigm, brought us the war in Iraq are now focusing
on Iran, which they view as the only remaining obstacle to American domination of the entire oil-rich
Middle East. They calculate that, with a docile, corporate-owned press, a co-opted mainstream
church, and a still-trusting populace, the United States and/or the Israelis can launch a successful
air offensive to disrupt any Iranian nuclear weapons programs -- with the added bonus of possibly
causing the regime in power in Iran to crumble.
But why now? After all, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency has just told Congress
that Iran is not likely to have a nuclear weapon until "early in the next decade?" The answer,
according to some defense experts, is that several of the Iranian facilities are still under construction
and there is only a narrow "window of opportunity" to destroy them without causing huge environmental
problems. That window, they say, will begin to close this year.
Other analysts attribute the sense of urgency to worry in Washington that the Iranians may
have secretly gained access to technology that would facilitate a leap forward into the nuclear
club much sooner than now anticipated. And it is, of course, neoconservative doctrine that it
is best to nip -- the word in current fashion is "preempt" -- any conceivable threats in the bud.
One reason the Israelis are pressing hard for early action may simply be out of a desire to ensure
that George W. Bush will have a few more years as president after an attack on Iran, so that they
will have him to stand with Israel when bedlam breaks out in the Middle East.
What about post-attack "Day Two?" Not to worry. Well-briefed pundits are telling us about
a wellspring of Western-oriented I find myself thinking: Right; just like all those Iraqis who
welcomed invading American and British troops with open arms and cut flowers. For me, this
evokes a painful flashback to the early eighties when "intelligence," pointing to "moderates"
within the Iranian leadership, was conjured up to help justify the imaginative but illegal arms-for-hostages-and-proceeds-to-Nicaraguan-Contras
caper. The fact that the conjurer-in-chief of that spurious "evidence" on Iranian "moderates,"
former chief CIA analyst, later director Robert Gates, was recently offered the newly created
position of director of national intelligence makes the flashback more eerie -- and alarming.
George H. W. Bush Saw Through "The Crazies"
During his term in office, George H. W. Bush, with the practical advice of his national security
adviser Gen. Brent Scowcroft and Secretary of State James Baker, was able to keep "the crazies"
at arms length, preventing them from getting the country into serious trouble. They were kept
well below the level of "principal" -- that is, below the level of secretary of state or defense.
Even so, heady in the afterglow of victory in the Gulf War of 1990, "the crazies" stirred up
considerable controversy when they articulated their radical views. Their vision, for instance,
became the centerpiece of the draft "Defense Planning Guidance" that Paul Wolfowitz, de facto
dean of the neoconservatives, prepared in 1992 for then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. It dismissed
deterrence as an outdated relic of the Cold War and argued that the United States must maintain
military strength beyond conceivable challenge -- and use it in preemptive ways in dealing with
those who might acquire "weapons of mass destruction." Sound familiar?
Aghast at this radical imperial strategy for the post-Cold War world, someone with access to
the draft leaked it to the New York Times , forcing President George H. W. Bush either
to endorse or disavow it. Disavow it he did -- and quickly, on the cooler-head recommendations
of Scowcroft and Baker, who proved themselves a bulwark against the hubris and megalomania of
"the crazies." Unfortunately, their vision did not die. No less unfortunately, there is method
to their madness -- even if it threatens to spell eventual disaster for our country. Empires always
overreach and fall.
The Return of the Neocons
In 2001, the new President Bush brought the neocons back and put them in top policymaking
positions. Even former Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams, convicted in October 1991 of
lying to Congress and then pardoned by George H. W. Bush, was called back and put in charge of
Middle East policy in the White House. In January, he was promoted to the influential post (once
occupied by Robert Gates) of deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs.
From that senior position Abrams will once again be dealing closely with John Negroponte, an old
colleague from rogue-elephant Contra War days, who has now been picked to be the first director
of national intelligence.
Those of us who -- like Colin Powell -- had front-row seats during the 1980s are far too
concerned to dismiss the re-emergence of the neocons as a simple case of déjŕ vu . They
are much more dangerous now. Unlike in the eighties, they are the ones crafting the adventurous
policies our sons and daughters are being called on to implement.
Why dwell on this? Because it is second in importance only to the portentous reality that the
earth is running out of readily accessible oil – something of which they are all too aware. Not
surprisingly then, disguised beneath the weapons-of-mass-destruction smokescreen they laid down
as they prepared to invade Iraq lay an unspoken but bedrock reason for the war -- oil. In any
case, the neocons seem to believe that, in the wake of the November election, they now have a
carte-blanche "mandate." And with the president's new "capital to spend," they appear determined
to spend it, sooner rather than later.
Next Stop, Iran
When a Special Forces platoon leader just back from Iraq matter-of-factly tells a close friend
of mine, as happened last week, that he and his unit are now training their sights (literally)
on Iran, we need to take that seriously. It provides us with a glimpse of reality as seen at ground
level. For me, it brought to mind an unsolicited email I received from the father of a young soldier
training at Fort Benning in the spring of 2002, soon after I wrote an op-ed discussing the timing
of George W. Bush's decision to make war on Iraq. The father informed me that, during the spring
of 2002, his son kept writing home saying his unit was training to go into Iraq. No, said the
father; you mean Afghanistan... that's where the war is, not Iraq. In his next email, the son
said, "No, Dad, they keep saying Iraq. I asked them and that's what they mean."
Now, apparently, they keep saying Iran ; and that appears to be what they mean.
Anecdotal evidence like this is hardly conclusive. Put it together with administration rhetoric
and a preponderance of other "dots," though, and everything points in the direction of an air
attack on Iran, possibly also involving some ground forces. Indeed, from the
New Yorker reports
of Seymour Hersh to
Washington Post articles , accounts of small-scale American intrusions on the ground as well
as into Iranian airspace are appearing with increasing frequency. In a speech given on February
18, former UN arms inspector and Marine officer Scott Ritter (who was totally on target before
the Iraq War on that country's lack of weapons of mass destruction) claimed that the president
has already "signed off" on plans to bomb Iran in June in order to destroy its alleged nuclear
weapons program and eventually bring about "regime change." This does not necessarily mean an
automatic green light for a large attack in June, but it may signal the president's seriousness
about this option.
So, again, against the background of what we have witnessed over the past four years, and the
troubling fact that the circle of second-term presidential advisers has become even tighter, we
do well to inject a strong note of urgency into any discussion of the "Iranian option."
Why Would Iran Want Nukes?
So why would Iran think it has to acquire nuclear weapons? Sen. Richard Lugar, chair of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was asked this on a Sunday talk show a few months ago.
Apparently having a senior moment, he failed to give the normal answer. Instead, he replied, "Well,
you know, Israel has..." At that point, he caught himself and abruptly stopped.
Recovering quickly and realizing that he could not just leave the word "Israel" hanging there,
Lugar began again: "Well, Israel is alleged to have a nuclear capability."
Is alleged to
have ? Lugar is chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and yet he doesn't know that
Israel has, by most estimates, a major nuclear arsenal, consisting of several hundred nuclear
weapons? (Mainstream newspapers are allergic to dwelling on this topic, but it is mentioned every
now and then, usually buried in obscurity on an inside page.)
Just imagine how the Iranians and Syrians would react to Lugar's disingenuousness. Small wonder
our highest officials and lawmakers -- and Lugar, remember, is one of the most decent among them
-- are widely seen abroad as hypocritical. Our media, of course, ignore the hypocrisy. This is
standard operating procedure when the word "Israel" is spoken in this or other unflattering contexts.
And the objections of those appealing for a more balanced approach are quashed.
If the truth be told, Iran fears Israel at least as much as Israel fears the internal security
threat posed by the thugs supported by Tehran. Iran's apprehension is partly fear that Israel
(with at least tacit support from the Bush administration) will send its aircraft to bomb Iranian
nuclear facilities, just as American-built Israeli bombers destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor
at Osirak in 1981. As part of the current war of nerves, recent statements by the president and
vice president can be
read as giving a green light to Israel to do just that; while Israeli Air Force commander Major
General Eliezer Shakedi told reporters on February 21 that Israel must be prepared for an air
strike on Iran "in light of its nuclear activity."
US-Israel Nexus
The Iranians also remember how Israel was able to acquire and keep its nuclear technology.
Much of it was stolen from the United States by spies for Israel. As early as the late-1950s,
Washington knew Israel was building the bomb and could have aborted the project. Instead, American
officials decided to turn a blind eye and let the Israelis go ahead. Now Israel's nuclear capability
is truly formidable. Still, it is a fact of strategic life that a formidable nuclear arsenal can
be deterred by a far more modest one, if an adversary has the means to deliver it. (Look at North
Korea's success with, at best, a few nuclear weapons and questionable means of delivery in deterring
the "sole remaining superpower in the world.") And Iran already has missiles with the range to
hit Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Sharon has for some time appeared eager to enlist Washington's support
for an early "pre-emptive" strike on Iran. Indeed,
American
defense officials have told reporters that visiting Israeli officials have been pressing the
issue for the past year and a half. And the Israelis are now claiming publicly that Iran could
have a nuclear weapon within six months -- years earlier than the Defense Intelligence Agency
estimate mentioned above.
In the past, President Bush has chosen to dismiss unwelcome intelligence estimates as "guesses"
-- especially when they threatened to complicate decisions to implement the neoconservative agenda.
It is worth noting that several of the leading neocons – Richard Perle, chair of the Defense Policy
Board (2001-03); Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; and David Wurmser, Middle
East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney -- actually wrote policy papers for the Israeli government
during the 1990s. They have consistently had great difficulty distinguishing between the strategic
interests of Israel and those of the US -- at least as they imagine them.
As for President Bush, over the past four years he has amply demonstrated his preference for
the counsel of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who,
as Gen. Scowcroft said publicly , has the president "wrapped around his little finger." (As
Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board until he was unceremoniously removed
at the turn of the year, Scowcroft was in a position to know.) If Scowcroft is correct in also
saying that the president has been "mesmerized" by Sharon, it seems possible that the Israelis
already have successfully argued for an attack on Iran.
When "Regime Change" Meant Overthrow For Oil
To remember why the United States is no favorite in Tehran, one needs to go back at least to
1953 when the U.S. and Great Britain overthrew Iran's democratically elected Premier Mohammad
Mossadeq as part of a plan to insure access to Iranian oil. They then emplaced the young Shah
in power who, with his notorious secret police, proved second to none in cruelty. The Shah ruled
from 1953 to 1979. Much resentment can build up over a whole generation. His regime fell like
a house of cards, when supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini rose up to do some regime change of their
own.
Iranians also remember Washington's strong support for Saddam Hussein's Iraq after it decided
to make war on Iran in 1980. U.S. support for Iraq (which included crucial intelligence support
for the war and an implicit condoning of Saddam's use of chemical weapons) was perhaps the crucial
factor in staving off an Iranian victory. Imagine then, the threat Iranians see, should the Bush
administration succeed in establishing up to 14 permanent military bases in neighboring Iraq.
Any Iranian can look at a map of the Middle East (including occupied Iraq) and conclude that this
administration might indeed be willing to pay the necessary price in blood and treasure to influence
what happens to the black gold under Iranian as well as Iraqi sands. And with four more years
to play with, a lot can be done along those lines. The obvious question is: How to deter it? Well,
once again, Iran can hardly be blind to the fact that a small nation like North Korea has so far
deterred U.S. action by producing, or at least claiming to have produced, nuclear weapons.
Nuclear Is the Nub
The nuclear issue is indeed paramount, and we would do well to imagine and craft fresh approaches
to the nub of the problem. As a start, I'll bet if you made a survey, only 20% of Americans would
answer "yes" to the question, "Does Israel have nuclear weapons?" That is key, it seems to me,
because at their core Americans are still fair-minded people.
On the other hand, I'll bet that 95% of the Iranian population would answer, "Of course Israel
has nuclear weapons; that's why we Iranians need them" -- which was, of course, the unmentionable
calculation that Senator Lugar almost conceded. "And we also need them," many Iranians would probably
say, "in order to deter 'the crazies' in Washington. It seems to be working for the North Koreans,
who, after all, are the other remaining point on President Bush's 'axis of evil.'"
The ideal approach would, of course, be to destroy all nuclear weapons in the world
and ban them for the future, with a very intrusive global inspection regime to verify compliance.
A total ban is worth holding up as an ideal, and I think we must. But this approach seems unlikely
to bear fruit over the next four years. So what then?
A Nuclear-Free Middle East
How about a nuclear-free Middle East? Could the US make that happen? We could if we had moral
clarity -- the underpinning necessary to bring it about. Each time this proposal is raised, the
Syrians, for example, clap their hands in feigned joyful anticipation, saying, "Of course such
a pact would include Israel, right?" The issue is then dropped from all discussion by U.S. policymakers.
Required: not only moral clarity but also what Thomas Aquinas labeled the precondition for all
virtue, courage. In this context, courage would include a refusal to be intimidated by inevitable
charges of anti-Semitism.
The reality is that, except for Israel, the Middle East is nuclear free. But the discussion
cannot stop there. It is not difficult to understand why the first leaders of Israel, with the
Holocaust experience written indelibly on their hearts and minds, and feeling surrounded by perceived
threats to the fledgling state's existence, wanted the bomb. And so, before the Syrians or Iranians,
for example, get carried away with self-serving applause for the nuclear-free Middle East proposal,
they will have to understand that for any such negotiation to succeed it must have as a concomitant
aim the guarantee of an Israel able to live in peace and protect itself behind secure borders.
That guarantee has got to be part of the deal.
That the obstacles to any such agreement are formidable is no excuse not trying. But the approach
would have to be new and everything would have to be on the table. Persisting in a state of denial
about Israel's nuclear weapons is dangerously shortsighted; it does nothing but aggravate fears
among the Arabs and create further incentive for them to acquire nuclear weapons of their own.
A sensible approach would also have to include a willingness to engage the Iranians directly,
attempt to understand their perspective, and discern what the United States and Israel could do
to alleviate their concerns.
Preaching to Iran and others about not acquiring nuclear weapons is, indeed, like the village
drunk preaching sobriety -- the more so as our government keeps developing new genres of nuclear
weapons and keeps looking the other way as Israel enhances its own nuclear arsenal. Not a pretty
moral picture, that. Indeed, it reminds me of the Scripture passage about taking the plank out
of your own eye before insisting that the speck be removed from another's.
Lessons from the Past...Like Mutual Deterrence
Has everyone forgotten that deterrence worked for some 40 years, while for most of those years
the U.S. and the USSR had not by any means lost their lust for ever-enhanced nuclear weapons?
The point is simply that, while engaging the Iranians bilaterally and searching for more imaginative
nuclear-free proposals, the U.S. might adopt a more patient interim attitude regarding the striving
of other nation states to acquire nuclear weapons -- bearing in mind that the Bush administration's
policies of "preemption" and "regime change" themselves create powerful incentives for exactly
such striving. As was the case with Iraq two years ago, there is no imminent Iranian strategic
threat to Americans -- or, in reality, to anyone. Even if Iran acquired a nuclear capability,
there is no reason to believe that it would risk a suicidal first strike on Israel. That, after
all, is what mutual deterrence is all about; it works both ways.
It is nonetheless clear that the Israelis' sense of insecurity -- however exaggerated it may
seem to those of us thousands of miles away -- is not synthetic but real. The Sharon government
appears to regard its nuclear monopoly in the region as the only effective "deterrence insurance"
it can buy. It is determined to prevent its neighbors from acquiring the kind of capability that
could infringe on the freedom it now enjoys to carry out military and other actions in the area.
Government officials have said that Israel will not let Iran acquire a nuclear weapon; it would
be folly to dismiss this as bravado. The Israelis have laid down a marker and mean to follow through
-- unless the Bush administration assumes the attitude that "preemption" is an acceptable course
for the United States but not for Israel. It seems unlikely that the neoconservatives would take
that line. Rather
"Israel Is Our Ally."
Or so
said
our president before the cameras on February 17, 2005. But I didn't think we had a treaty
of alliance with Israel; I don't remember the Senate approving one. Did I miss something?
Clearly, the longstanding U.S.-Israeli friendship and the ideals we share dictate continuing
support for Israel's defense and security. It is quite another thing, though, to suggest the existence
of formal treaty obligations that our country does not have. To all intents and purposes, our
policymakers -- from the president on down -- seem to speak and behave on the assumption that
we do have such obligations toward Israel. A former colleague CIA analyst, Michael Scheuer, author
of Imperial Hubris , has put it this way: "The Israelis have succeeded in lacing tight
the ropes binding the American Gulliver to Israel and its policies."
An earlier American warned:
"A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for
the favorite nation facilitates the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where
no real common interest exists, infuses into one the enmities of the other, and betrays the
former into participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement
or justification.... It also gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens, who devote
themselves to the favorite nation, facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own
country." ( George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796 )
In my view, our first president's words apply only too aptly to this administration's lash-up
with the Sharon government. As responsible citizens we need to overcome our timidity about addressing
this issue, lest our fellow Americans continue to be denied important information neglected or
distorted in our domesticated media.
Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for 27 years -- from the administration of John
F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. During the early 1980s, he was one of the writers/editors
of the President's Daily Brief and briefed it one-on-one to the president's most senior advisers.
He also chaired National Intelligence Estimates. In January 2003, he and four former colleagues
founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
The reasons for the election of Donald Trump as President of the U.S. will be analyzed and argued
about for many years to come. Undoubtedly there are U.S.-specific factors that are relevant, such
as racial divisions in voting patterns. But the election took place after the British vote to withdraw
from the European Union and the rise to power of conservative politicians in continental Europe,
so it is reasonable to ask whether globalization bears any responsibility.
Have foreign workers taken the jobs of U.S. workers? Increased trade does lead to a reallocation
of resources, as a country increases its output in those sectors where it has an advantage while
cutting back production in other sectors. Resources should flow from the latter to the former, but
in reality it can be difficult to switch employment across sectors.
Daron Acemoglu and David Autor of MIT,
David Dorn of the University of Zurich, Gordon Hanson of UC-San Diego and Brendan Price of MIT
have found that import competition from China after 2000 contributed to reductions in U.S. manufacturing
employment and weak U.S. job growth. They estimated manufacturing job losses due to Chinese competition
of 2.0 – 2.4 million.
Other studies
find similar results for workers who do not have high school degrees.
Moreover, multinational firms do shift production across borders in response to lower wages, among
other factors.
Ann E. Harrison of UC-Berkeley and Margaret S. McMillan of Tufts University looked at the hiring
practices of the foreign affiliates of U.S. firms during the period of 1977 to 1999. They found that
lower wages in affiliate countries where the employees were substitutes for U.S. workers led to more
employment in those countries but reductions in employment in the U.S. However, when employment across
geographical locations is complementary for firms that do significantly different work at home and
abroad, domestic and foreign employment rise and fall together.
Imports and foreign production, therefore, have had an impact on manufacturing employment in the
U.S. But several caveats should be raised. First, as
Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of MIT and others have pointed out, technology has had a
much larger effect on jobs. The U.S. is the second largest global producer of manufactured goods,
but these products are being made in plants that employ fewer workers than they did in the past.
Many of the lost jobs simply do not exist any more. Second, the U.S. exports goods and services as
well as purchases them. Among the manufactured goods that account for significant shares of U.S.
exports are
machines
and engines, electronic equipment and aircraft . Third, there is inward FDI as well as outward,
and the foreign-based firms hire U.S. workers. A 2013
Congressional Research Service
study by James V. Jackson reported that by year-end 2011 foreign firms employed 6.1 million Americans,
and 37% of this employment-2.3 million jobs-was in the manufacturing sector.
More recent data
shows that employment by the U.S. affiliates of multinational companies rose to 6.4 million in
2014. Mr. Trump will find himself in a difficult position if he threatens to shut down trade and
investment with countries that both import from the U.S. and invest here.
The other form of globalization that drew Trump's derision was immigration. Most of his ire focused
on those who had entered the U.S. illegally. However, in a speech in Arizona he said that he would
set up a commission that would
roll back the number of legal migrants to "historic norms."
The
current number of immigrants (42 million) represents around 13% of the U.S. population, and 16%
of the labor force. An increase in the number of foreign-born workers depresses the wages of some
native-born workers, principally high-school dropouts, as well as other migrants who arrived earlier.
But there are other, more significant reasons for the
stagnation in
working-class wages . In addition, a reduction in the number of migrant laborers would raise
the ratio of young and retired people to workers-the dependency ratio-and endanger the financing
of Social Security and Medicare. And by increasing the size of the U.S. economy,
these workers induce expansions in investment expenditures and hiring in areas that are complementary.
The one form of globalization that Trump has not criticized, with the exception of outward FDI,
is financial. This is a curious omission, as the crisis of 2008-09 arose from the financial implosion
that followed the collapse of the housing bubble in the U.S. International financial flows exacerbated
the magnitude of the crisis. But
Trump has pledged
to dismantle the Dodd-Frank legislation, which was enacted to implement financial regulatory
reform and lower the probability of another crisis. While
Trump has criticized China for undervaluing its currency in order to increase its exports to
the U.S., most economists believe that the
Chinese currency is no longer undervalued vis-ŕ-vis the U.S. dollar.
Did globalization produce Trump, or lead to the circumstances that resulted in
46.7% of the electorate voting
for him? A score sheet of the impact of globalization within the U.S. would record pluses and minuses.
Among those who have benefitted are consumers who purchase items made abroad at cheaper prices, workers
who produce export goods, and firms that hire migrants. Those who have been adversely affected include
workers who no longer have manufacturing jobs and domestic workers who compete with migrants for
low-paying jobs. Overall, most studies find evidence of
positive net benefits from trade . Similarly,
studies of the cost and benefits of immigration indicate that overall foreign workers make a
positive contribution to the U.S. economy.
Other trends have exerted equal or greater consequences for our economic welfare. First, as pointed
out above, advances in automation have had an enormous impact on the number and nature of jobs, and
advances in artificial intelligence wii further change the nature of work. The launch of driverless
cars and trucks, for example, will affect the economy in unforeseen ways, and more workers will lose
their livelihoods. Second, income inequality has been on the increase in the U.S. and elsewhere for
several decades. While those in the upper-income classes have benefitted most from increased trade
and finance, inequality reflects many factors besides globalization.
Why, then, is globalization the focus of so much discontent? Trump had the insight that demonizing
foreigners and U.S.-based multinationals would allow him to offer simple solutions-ripping up trade
deals, strong-arming CEOs to relocate facilities-to complex problems. Moreover, it allows him to
draw a line between his supporters and everyone else, with Trump as the one who will protect workers
against the crafty foreigners and corrupt elite who conspire to steal American jobs. Blaming the
foreign "other" is a well-trod route for those who aspire to power in times of economic and social
upheaval.
Globalization, therefore, should not be held responsible for the election of Donald Trump and
those in other countries who offer similar simplistic solutions to challenging trends. But globalization's
advocates did indirectly lead to his rise when they oversold the benefits of globalization and neglected
the downside. Lower prices at Wal-Mart are scarce consolation to those who have lost their jobs.
Moreover, the proponents of globalization failed to strengthen the safety networks and redistributive
mechanisms that allow those who had to compete with foreign goods and workers to share in the broader
benefits.
Dani Rodrik of Harvard's Kennedy School has described how the policy priorities were changed:
"The new model of globalization stood priorities on their head, effectively putting democracy to
work for the global economy, instead of the other way around. The elimination of barriers to trade
and finance became an end in itself, rather than a means toward more fundamental economic and social
goals."
The battle over globalization is not finished, and there will be future opportunities to adapt
it to benefit a wider section of society. The goal should be to place it within in a framework that
allows a more egalitarian distribution of the benefits and payment of the costs. This is not a new
task. After World War II, the Allied planners sought to revive international trade while allowing
national governments to use their policy tools to foster full employment. Political scientist
John
Ruggie of the Kennedy School called the hybrid system based on fixed exchange rates, regulated
capital accounts and government programs "
embedded liberalism
," and it prevailed until it was swept aside by the wave of neoliberal policies in the 1980s
and 1990s.
What would today's version of "embedded liberalism" look like? In the financial sector, the pendulum
has already swung back from unregulated capital flows and towards the use of capital control measures
as part of macroprudential policies designed to address systemic risk in the financial sector. In
addition,
Thomas Piketty of the École des hautes etudes en sciences (EHESS) and associate chair at the Paris
School of Economics , and author of Capital in the Twenty-first Century, has called
for a new focus in discussions over the next stage of globalization: " trade is a good thing, but
fair and sustainable development also demands public services, infrastructure, health and education
systems. In turn, these themselves demand fair taxation systems."
The current political environment is not conducive toward the expansion of public goods. But it
is unlikely that our new President's policies will deliver on their promise to return to a past when
U.S. workers could operate without concern for foreign competition or automation. We will certainly
revisit these issues, and we need to redefine what a successful globalization looks like. And if
we don't? Thomas Piketty warns of the consequences of not enacting the necessary domestic policies
and institutions: "If we fail to deliver these, Trump_vs_deep_state will prevail."
Since 1980, US manufacturing output has approximately doubled while manufacturing employment
fell by about a third.
Yes, globalization impacts the composition of output and it is a contributing factor in the
weaker growth of manufacturing output. but overall it has accounted for a very minor share of
the weakness in manufacturing employment since 1980. Productivity has been the dominant factor
driving manufacturing employment down.
JimH November 29, 2016 11:11 am
"Overall, most studies find evidence of positive net benefits from trade."
Of course they do! And in your world, studies always Trump real world experience.
Studies on trade can ignore the unemployed workers with a high school education or less. How
were they supposed to get an equivalent paying job? EDUCATION they say! A local public university
has a five year freshman graduation rate of 25%. Are those older students to eat dirt while attempting
to accumulate that education!
Studies on trade can ignore that illegal immigration increases competition for the those under
educated employees. Since 1990 there has been a rising demand that education must be improved!
That potential high school drop outs should be discouraged by draconian means if necessary. YET
we allow immigrants to enter this country and STAY with less than the equivalent of an American
high school education! Why are we spending so much on secondary education if it is not necessary!
"In Mexico, 34% of adults aged 25-64 have completed upper secondary education, much lower than
the OECD average of 76% the lowest rate amongst OECD countries."
See: http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/mexico/
Trade studies can ignore the fate of a small town when its major employer shuts down and leaves.
Trade studies can assume that we are one contiguous job market. They can assume that an unemployed
worker in Pennsylvania will learn of a good paying job in Washington state, submit an application,
and move within 2 weeks. Or assume that the Washington state employer will hold a factory job
open for a month! And they can assume that moving expenses are trivial for an unemployed person.
Our trade partners have not attempted anything remotely resembling balanced trade with us.
Here are the trade deficits since 1992.
Year__________US Trade Balance with the world
1992__________-39,212
1993__________-70,311
1994__________-98,493
1995__________-96,384
1996__________-104,065
1997__________-108,273
1998__________-166,140
1999__________-258,617
2000__________-372,517
2001__________-361,511
2002__________-418,955
2003__________-493,890
2004__________-609,883
2005__________-714,245
2006__________-761,716
2007__________-705,375
2008__________-708,726
2009__________-383,774
2010__________-494,658
2011__________-548,625
2012__________-536,773
2013__________-461,876
2014__________-490,176
2015__________-500,361
From:
https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/historical/gands.pdf
AND there is the loss of the income from tariffs which had been going to the federal government!
How has that effected our national debt?
"However, when employment across geographical locations is complementary for firms that do
significantly different work at home and abroad, domestic and foreign employment rise and fall
together."
And exactly how do you think that the US government could guarantee that complementary work
at home and abroad. Corporations are profit seeking, amoral entities, which will seek profit any
way they can. (Legal or illegal)
The logical conclusion of your argument is that we could produce nothing and still have a thriving
economy. How would American consumers earn an income?
Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are RUST BELT states. Were the voters
there merely ignorant or demented? You should never ever run for elected office.
Beverly Mann November 29, 2016 12:30 pm
Meanwhile, Trump today chose non-swampy Elaine Chao, Mitch McConnell's current wife and GWBush's
former Labor Secretary, as Transportation Secretary, to privatize roads, bridges, etc.
JimH November 29, 2016 12:36 pm
The trade balances are in millions of dollars in the table in my last comment.
Global trade had a chance of success beginning in 1992. But that required a mechanism which
was very difficult to game. A mechanism like the one that the Obama administration advocated in
October 2010.
"At the meeting in South Korea's southern city of Gyeongju, U.S. officials sought to set a
cap for each country's deficit or surplus at 4% of its economic output by 2015.
The idea drew support from Britain, Australia, Canada and France, all of which are running trade
deficits, as well as South Korea, which is hosting the G-20 meetings and hoping for a compromise
among the parties.
But the proposal got a cool reception from export powerhouses such as China, which has a current
account surplus of 4.7% of its gross domestic product; Germany, with a surplus of 6.1%; and Russia,
with a surplus of 4.7%, according to IMF statistics."
See:
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/24/business/la-fi-g20-summit-20101024
That cap was probably too high. But at least the Obama administration showed some realization
that global trade was exhibiting serious unpredicted problems. Too bad that Hillary Clinton could
not have internalized that realization enough to campaign on revamping problematic trade treaties.
(And persuaded a few more of the voters in the RUST BELT to vote for her.) Elections have consequences
and voters understand that, but what choice did they have?
In your world, while American corporations act out in ways that would be diagnosed as antisocial
personality disorder in a human being, American human beings are expected to wait patiently for
decades while global trade is slowly adjusted into some practical system. (As one shortcoming
after another is addressed.)
The article states almost exactly what you 'add' in your comment:
"Imports and foreign production, therefore, have had an impact on manufacturing employment
in the U.S. But several caveats should be raised. First, as Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
of MIT and others have pointed out, technology has had a much larger effect on jobs".
So, what gives? Is there an award today for who ever gets the biggest DUH??? If there is anything
worth adding, it would be a mention of the Ball St study that supports the author's claim but
is somehow overlooked. But your comment, well, DUH!!
=================================================
JimH,
Some good stuff there, your assessment of Economics and its penchant for ignoring variables,
and your insight which states that "studies can assume that we are one contiguous job market",
is all very true, and especially when it comes to immigration issues. I've lived most of my life
near the Southern border and when economists claim that undocumented workers are good for our
economy I can only chuckle and shake my head. I suppose I could also list all of the variables
which those economists ignore, and there are many to choose from, but, there is that quote by
Upton Sinclair: "You can't get a man to understand what his salary depends on his not understanding".
In all fairness though, The Dept. of Labor does of course have its JOLTS data, and so not all
such studies are based on broad assumptions, but Economics does have its blind spots, generally
speaking. And of course economists apply far too much effort and energy serving their political
and financial masters.
As for your comment in regards to the the trade deficit, you might want to read up a little
on the Triffin Dilemma. The essence of globalization has a lot to do with the US leadership choosing
to maintain the reserve-currency status and Triffin showed that an increasing amount of dollars
must supply the world's demand for dollars, or, global growth would falter. So, the trade deficit
since 1975 has been intentional, for that reason, and others. Of course the cost of labor in the
US was a factor too, and shipping and standards and so on. But, it is wise also, to remember that
these choices were made at time, during and just after the Viet Nam war, when military recruitment
was a very troubling issue for the leadership. And the option of good paying jobs for the working-class
was very probably seen as in conflict with military recruitment. Accordingly, the working-class
has been left with fewer options. This being accomplished in part with the historical anomaly
of high immigration quotas, (and by the tolerance for illegal immigration), during periods with
high unemployment, a falling participation-rate, inadequate infrastructure, and etc.
Ray LaPan-Love November 29, 2016 2:18 pm
JimH,
After posting my earlier comment it occurred to me that I should have recommended an article
by Tim Taylor that has some good info on the Triffin dilemma.
Also, it might be worth mentioning that you are making the common mistake of assigning blame
to an international undertaking that would be more accurately assigned to national shortcomings.
I'm referring here to what you quoted and said:
""Overall, most studies find evidence of positive net benefits from trade.""
"Of course they do! And in your world, studies always Trump real world experience".
My point being that "positive net benefits from trade" are based on just another half-baked
measurement as you suggest, but the problems which result from trade-related displacements are
not necessarily the fault of trade itself. There are in fact political options, for example, immigration
could have been curtailed about 40 years ago and we would now have about 40 million fewer citizens,
and thus there would almost certainly be more jobs available. Or, the laws pertaining to illegal
immigration could have been enforced, or the 'Employee Free Choice Act could have been passed,
or whatever, and then trade issues may have had much different impact.
Ray LaPan-Love November 29, 2016 3:12 pm
It seems worth mentioning here, that there are other more important goals that make globalization
valuable than just matters of money or employment or who is getting what. Let us not forget the
famous words of Immanuel Kant:
"the spirit of commerce . . . sooner or later takes hold of every nation, and is incompatible
with war."
coberly November 29, 2016 6:33 pm
Ray
the spirit of commerce did not prevent WW1 or WW2.
otherwise, thank you, and Jim H and Joseph Joyce for the first Post and Comments for grownups
we've had around here in some time.
Ray LaPan-Love November 29, 2016 7:03 pm
Hey Coberly, long time no see.
And yes, you are right, 'the spirit of commerce' theory has had some ups and downs. But, one
could easily and accurately argue that the effort which began with the League of Nations, and
loosely connects back to Kant's claim, has gained some ground since WW2. There has not, after-all,
been a major war since.
So, when discussing the pros and cons of globalization, that factor, as I said, is worthy of
mention. And it was a key consideration in the formation of the Bretton Woods institutions, and
in the globalization effort in general. This suggesting then that there are larger concerns than
the unemployment-rate, or the wage levels, of the working-class folks who may, or may not, have
been at the losing end of 'free-trade'.
I've been a 'labor-lefty' since the 1970s, but I am still capable of understanding that things
could have been much worse for the American working-class. Plus, if anyone must give up a job,
who better than those with a fairly well-constructed safety-net. History always has its winners
and losers, and progress rarely, if ever, comes in an even flow.
Meanwhile, those living in extreme poverty, worldwide, have dropped from 40% in 1981, to about
10% in 2015 (World Bank), so, progress is occurring. But of course much of that is now being ignored
by the din which has drowned out so many considerations that really do matter, and a great deal.
coberly November 29, 2016 8:25 pm
Ray
I am inclined to agree with you, but sometimes it's hard to see the forest for the trees. Especially
if one of those trees has fallen on you.
In general I am more interested in stopping predatory business models that really hurt people
than in creating cosmic justice.
as for the relative lack of big wars since WW2, I always thought that was because of mutual
assured destruction. I am sure Vietnam looked like a big enough war to the Vietnamese.
This idea of McCarthy style attack turned in promotion with some sites having large flow of
donations from outrages readers.
Notable quotes:
"... By Max Blumenthal, a senior editor of the Grayzone Project at AlterNet, and the award-winning author of Goliath and Republican Gomorrah. His most recent book is The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza. Follow him on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal. Originally published at Alternet ..."
"... it was created about three months ago when the Red baiting was already in full swing in the media. ..."
"... it now has a wikipedia page as of 15 Nov. ..."
"... Congratulations! That site is like a who's who of influential critical reporting. I suspect, as with so many of the bubble-dwellers attempts, that this slapdash but probably overpriced effort will drive traffic to those sites while reducing the credibility of its promoters. An instant classic own-goal. I look forward to the inevitable and embarassing revelations about their founders and funding. ..."
"... Under general tenets of defamation law (statutory and in common law), it is not just the original entity or person defaming (including defamation "per se") another that is liable for such torts, but others who carelessly or recklessly repeat the original defamatory statements/claims (in this case, both The Washington Post & New York Times bear similar potential liability as PropOrNot). ..."
"... Requires actual malice since it's the media you're suing – but that can be proven by reckless indifference to the truth which this might actually meet the standard of, especially since the site isn't making this claim based on anything other than the content of the views espoused by the sites. ..."
"... i vaguely thought the actual malice requirement was tied to the target being a public figure; maybe running a blog qualifies. ..."
"... Propornot is directly accusing NC and the rest of a crime (espionage), which constitutes defamation per se, so I think the only issue before the court would be whether it was done with reckless indifference. ..."
"... The MSM did such a fine job reporting the news during the campaign. (16 anti-Sanders stories in 16 hours from the WaPo. A new record.) Are small news/opinion sites cutting into their online advertising revenue. ;) ..."
"... Second, had you bothered to read the actual PropOrNot site, it accuses all of the sites listed as being "propaganda outlets" under the influence of "coordinators abroad" (#11 in its FAQ). ..."
"... And under #7, PropOrNot asserts that "some" of the sites are guilty of violating the Espionage Act and the Foreign Agent Registration Act, as in accusing them of being spies and calling for investigation (by implication of all, since how do you know which is or isn't) by the FBI and DoJ. ..."
"... Their MSM propaganda isn't working and they see it. They already heavily censor comments on their MSM sites. Other MSM sights such as Bloomberg closed down comments altogether. Expect more of that. ..."
"... what weakens people's confidence in their leaders is their not addressing people's issues and lying about their inability to do so. Despite protestations from the likes of much of our 'intelligentsia', mainstream media, and most of our political class, the majority of people are not stupid. There is a reason why terms like 'lame stream media' resonate with a large number of people. ..."
"... For instance when Obama is out there talking about a recovery and people know that there is no such thing in their lives, their communities then HE has lost their confidence – not someone giving an interview on RT. ..."
"... Or to put it another way the problem isn't someone going on RT and saying the emperor isn't wearing clothes, the problem is that the emperor isn't wearing clothes. ..."
"... Steve Keen is great, and I love his work, but it's also obvious that RT invites him on the network because he lambasts the American political establishment and weakens the public's confidence in its leaders. This is clearly a goal of Moscow, and they use people like Steve Keen to do it. I'm sure Steven Keen doesn't think of his role that way, but RT and Russian intelligence certainly do. ..."
"... How do you know any of this? how would you know would Russian intelligence's goals are, or how they think of Steve Keen? this is all just McCarthyism 2016, accusing the left of being dupes or willing agents of Russia. McCarthy had his 200 communists in the state department, this website and the Washington Post have their 200 Russian propaganda websites. Why are you catapulting this bullshit? ..."
"... James do you happen to remember when those intelligence agencies reported Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction.? How about when North Korea hacked Sony? Both of which were inaccurate and dare I say it propaganda intended to mislead the American public. ..."
"... Why does Naval Intelligence have anything to do with this investigation? ..."
"... Why were 17 agencies watching the DNC? ..."
"... The immediate claims that Russia hacked the DNC were never credible to any one with even a bit of knowledge about high level hacking. The 17 agency thing was outright laughable once you asked the simple question of what most of them had to do with this investigation. And USA Today was and is the print equivalent of the Yahoo front page. ..."
"... oh so now you're an intelligence expert, but somehow you still don't have any evidence, because the "17 intelligence agencies" don't have any evidence either. they didn't have evidence of wmd's but i bet you fell for that, too. i think the most dishonest line in your post is this: You should wander out of the alt-left echo chamber once in a while and stop thinking that any criticism of Russia is 'red-baiting' and propaganda ..."
"... If Russia is actively trying to influence American politics, then they have been far more effective than the US and get a much bigger bang for their buck. For one thing, they didn't have to drop a single bomb to effect a regime change. So assuming you are correct, the noise is just a hysterical regime change envy. ..."
"... So are RT and Sputnik propaganda outlets? Sometimes they are, but sometimes they report the truth that our MSM, having given up the last shreds of their journalistic integtity in return for access, won't report. ..."
"... Given the widespread funding of media (including government-owned media) by Western governments, I would say that US and Euro hysteria about Russian propaganda, real and imagined, is yet another off-putting display of noxious American exceptionalism. ..."
"... I grew up listening to broadcasts of RFE and VOA behind the Iron Curtain, and mixed in with honest reporting was a heavy dose of propaganda aimed at weakening Eastern European governments. Now, it is the America For Bulgaria Foundation that funds several media outlets in the country. What they all have in common is rabid Russophobia-driven editorial stances, and one can easily conclude that it is driven by the almighty dollar rather than by honest, deeply held convictions. So, America can do it but whines like a toddler when it is allegedly done to it?! What a crock. ..."
"... The worst thing is that regardless of whatever propaganda wars are going on, this list constitutes a full frontal attack on free speech in the alleged "Land of the Free." Besides NC, there are number of sites distinguished by thorough, quality reporting of the kind that WaPo and NYT no longer engage in. Having grown up behind the Iron Curtain, this is chilling to me. Dissident voices speaking against the endless wars for profit and neoliberalism are in effect being intimidated and smeared by anonymous thugs. This, while the militarized local police and federal agencies, closely coordinated by "fusion centers", have ruthlessly put down a number of citizen protests, have engaged in spying on all of us, and have gone after whistleblowers for exposing the reach and scope of the surveillance state. These are the hallmarks of dictatorships, not of the alleged "world's greatest democracy and beacon of freedom." What the eff happened to America, and why are you equating challenging the oppressive and exploitative status quo with being "unwitting Russian dupes?" Seems to me that the useful idi0t here is you, with all due respect. ..."
"... American intelligence uses exactly the same tactics, and has since at least WW1. Selling the American public on the Iraq war is a classic example. Remember that all news is biased, some much more so than others (we report, you decide.) ..."
"... The advent of the internet and the subsequent broadening of readily available news of all slants has made it much harder for any intelligence agency of any specific country to control the news( but it has made it extremely easy for them to monitor what we are reading). ..."
"... . The normal tell for this is being state sponsored, or having a big sugar daddy providing the funding, and Yves doesn't have any of that. ..."
"... Some of us happen to believe that 'lambast[ing] the American political establishment and weaken[ing] the public's confidence in its leaders' is in the best interests of everyone on the planet, including the American public. If that constitutes propaganda, I'm not about to look that gift horse in the mouth. RT isn't perfect – I personally find their relentless cheerleading for economic growth rather wearying – but it knocks spots off the competition and consistently sends me scurrying to the internet to chase up on new faces and leads. I'm grateful for that. ..."
"... Steve Keen is great, and I love his work, but it's also obvious ..."
"... It is obvious that Russia has been trying to influence American politics. The very existence of RT makes that obvious. What is not obvious is why modestly left-of-center Americans' political concerns should be subject to McCarthyite attacks in our most influential news outlets. We've been subject to internally generated far-right propaganda for decades now and have seen minimal, feeble 'mainstream' efforts to counter it. The far right has done tremendous damage to our nation and is poised to do much more now that its doyens control all branches of the federal government. ..."
"... What I interpret this as is a strike by 'think tank' grifters against those who are most likely to damage their incomes, their prestige and their exceedingly comfortable berths on the Acela corridor. It's a slightly panicky, febrile effort by a bunch of heels who are looking at losing their mid-6-figure incomes . and becoming like so many of the rest of us: over-credentialed, under-paid and unable to afford life in the charming white parts of our coastal metropolises. ..."
"... You've just libeled me. You have no evidence whatsoever to substantiate your claim. Nor do you have any evidence that Russia has been "aggressively" trying to influence US politics. This is one of many hysterical lines offered by Team Dem over the course of this election, up there with depicting all Trump voters as racist yahoos. ..."
"... "Russia is aggressively trying to influence American politics" Apparently with the help of Hillz. Was her decision to use a private email server made with the help of Putin? ..."
"... If you'd like, take a trip in the Wayback Machine to 1959. Then you'll find many criticisms of US society by the Civil Rights movement sharing the same sinister tone as criticisms made by Soviet new outlets. Then you'll also find a gaggle of US pols and their minions claiming on that basis that the Civil Rights movement is communist inspired, funded, and run. Then you'll also find many people who don't bother to distinguish source from story and end up enjoying the official Kool Aid. ..."
"... It reminds me of a story from Northern Ireland in the 1960's when the leader of a civil rights march was asked by a BBC reporter 'is it true that your organisation has been infiltrated by radicals and communists?' His reply was to sigh and say 'I f**king wish it was true'. ..."
"... @hemeantwell – This same claim of communist inspiration and connection was also thrown at the anti-war movement. I remember arguing with a friend of my parents in the summer of 1969, after my freshman year at college where I was active in the anti-war and anti-draft movements. After countering all of the arguments made by this gentleman, he was left with nothing to say but "Well, that's the Commie's line " as a final dismissal. ..."
"... Right up to his death on 4 Apr 1968, Martin Luther King was accused by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI of "knowingly, willingly and regularly cooperating with and taking guidance from communists." Now there's a US national holiday in King's honor. ..."
"... It's all propaganda of one sort or another. I exhort you to read Plato and understand that the Sophists for which Socrates held so much ire are much the same as anon and administration sources for so much of what drives journalism. ..."
"... NC separates the wheat from the chaff. ..."
"... Verdict on PropOrNot: Looks like Prop to me. Getting really sloppy, Oligarchy ..."
"... This has all the earmarks of an effort by the Nuland Neocons that joined Camp Hillary, and now in defeat constitute a portion Hillary's professional dead enders. ..."
"... Camp Hillary, as you call it, has decamped and is on the march. It has powerful allies in the intelligence community, the media and actors on the world stage who deem Trump to be an existential threat to America and world. The story of Russian inspired fake news is paving the way for regime change, an HRC specialty. The recount is the tip of the spear. If they can pull this coup off, sites like this will move from the useful idiot category to the enemy of the state category overnight. ..."
"... Manfred Keeting November 26, 2016 at 4:01 am If you weren't on the Nixon's enemies list, there was something wrong with you ..."
"... First as tragedy, then as farce. People literally killed themselves because of McCarthyism. No one is going to kill themselves over this farce. ..."
"... Aha, I have solved the mystery. It is elementary my dear Watson! The PropOrNot site is itself a Russian propaganda ploy on the part of the KGB! What? errr, ok, the FSB then. ..."
"... But Max himself is an interesting character. I've been scratching my head wondering how a guy one step removed (Sidney Blumenthal) from the Clintons' inner circles is ambitious about exposing the ludicrous claims made by those same people regarding Palestine and Syria. ..."
"... I like the idea some commenter had (too lazy to find it right now) that all these strategems were long-prepared, and in place for a Clinton victory. Now the Clinton faction in the political class is deploying them anyhow. They'd better hurry, because influence peddling at the Clinton Foundation isn't as lucrative as it once was . ..."
"... For long time readers this russian(chinese) propaganda should be obvious. And it is ok, get used to it. Great opportunity to learn "how to read between the lines", and when you understand, solidifying into a basic skill. ..."
"... Be careful NC. MSM are in panic. They see that their propaganda is less and less effective and start targeting those who offer an alternative against their obsolete narratives. Be prepared: when they will realize that these don't work at all, their fake democracy will become an open dictatorship. ..."
"... The US MSM is all propaganda all the time-every bit as bad as Pravda ever was. RT now is the "anti-propaganda." They were even carrying Jesse Ventura and other Americans who are blacklisted by the MSM. ..."
"... This is a "hail mary pass." ..."
"... A hail mary pass that was intercepted by the opposing team and run back for a touchdown. ..."
"... What exactly is the origin of the Russia bashing that's been going on as of late? I feel like I missed some important public dis somewhere that would explain it all. Condoleeza Rice's general dated anti-Soviet attitude I could understand, but that doesn't explain the escalating bigotry pouring out of Obama and Clinton (and their various surrogates). Is it a case of a bomb in search of a war? ..."
"... Looks to me like it came out of the HRC campaign. ..."
"... What exactly is the origin of the Russia bashing that's been going on as of late? I think it can be traced back to this . ..."
"... I don't think there is an easy answer to your question, but I think it goes around to the failed Ukrainian coup (well, partially failed) and the realisation within a certain element of the neocon establishment that Putin had been inadvertently strengthened by their policy failures in the Ukraine and Syria. I think there was a concerted element within the Blob to refocus on 'the Russian threat' to cover up their failures in the Middle East and the refusal of the Chinese to take the bait in the Pacific. ..."
"... This rolled naturally into concerns about cyberwar and it was a short step from there to using Russian cyberespionage to cover up the establishments embarrassment over wikileaks and multiple other failures exposed by outsiders. As always, when a narrative suits (for different reasons) the two halves of the establishment, the mainstream media is always happy to run it unquestioningly. ..."
"... So in short, I think its a mixture of genuine conspiracy, mixed in with political opportunism. ..."
"... Listen to Gore Vidal (in 1994!) and find out why: https://www.c-span.org/video/?61333-1/state-united-states ..."
"... That is very good question and it does not have a simple answer. I have been pondering this for 8 years now. The latest bout of Russia-hatred began as Putin began to re-assert their sovereignty after the disastrous Yeltsin years. This intensified after Georgia, Ukraine and Syria. In adddition the US was preprogrammed to hate Russia for historical reasons. Mostly because of the Soviet era but also when the US inherited the global empire from the Brits we also got some of their dislike of the Russian empire dating back to the 19th century. ..."
"... It all started when Putin arrested the Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, when Putin put a stop to the shock therapy looting of Russia by the Harvard mafia and Jeffrey Sachs. Didn't he know that oligarch's are above the law? They are in the US. Didn't he know that money can buy you immunity from prosecution like it does in Europe and the US? Can't have that, hence the Ukraine, deprive him of his warm water naval base. Then there was the Crimean referendum. Out smarted again! Can't have that! ..."
"... And so the Democratic Party ends, not with a bang, but with a McCarthyite lynch mob. ..."
"... Didn't we used to call "fake news" rumors? And when did newspapers stop printing rumors? ..."
"... Based on the evidence of above mentioned link, this "PropOrNot" can be part of a project of U.S. government to manipulate media to create an anti-Russia climate or more likely another method of attack on what they consider "Left" so status quo in economic policies of U.S. can be maintained. ..."
"... it scares the pants off me ..."
"... I'm with you Tom Stone. There is nothing funny about this. The MSM at this point is the greatest purveyor of fake news on the planet, I am talking about not just CNN and Fox, but the BBC, France24 and so on. ..."
"... Pretty much everything they have said and every video they has shown on east Aleppo is either a lie or a fake. As someone noted the other day (I can't remember who) if the stories about east Aleppo were actually true, then the Russians and Syrians have destroyed approximately 900 hospitals – including the 'last pediatric hospital in east Aleppo' which has been completely demolished on at least three separate occasions in the last few months. The main stream outlets don't even try to be consistent. ..."
"... It's 90 hospitals not 900, but 90 is just as ridiculous given the whole country of Syria only has 88 hospitals/clinics. ..."
"... Weapons of Mass Distraction. Another nail in the coffin of credibility of the NYT and WaPo. Recall after the Stupid War and how there were zero weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq that the NYT and Wapo declined to mention or explore their own culpability in beating the drums of war. This will be more of the same. ..."
"... I suspect that PropOrNot's outburst was developed during the campaign by well heeled and connected Hilary supporters to be unveiled after the election to muzzle increasingly influential web sites including NC. As it stands PropOrNot shot a blank. If Hilary had won the campaign against "fake news" would probably have taken on a more ominous tone. ..."
"... PropOrNot is asserting that the sites on the 'List", both right and left, were responsible for the Clinton loss by spreading false Russian propaganda. This would make more sense, as a political project, if Clinton had won. Asking the Trump DOJ and Trump's/Comey's FBI to investigate the asserted causes of Trump's win is bizarre. ..."
"... Excellent observation, preparation for a post Killery election purge of the alternate media. ..."
"... Lots of panic for the Washington regime. The clownish asshole loser that they carefully groomed proved less repulsive than their chosen Fuehrer Clinton. Now they are distraught to see that their enemy Russia sucks much less than the USA. ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... Jill Stein has embarrassed herself with this effort. I gave money to her until she made her final vp choice – Baraka called Bernie a white supremacist! I did vote for her and now feel it really was a wasted vote. 1% in the national totals. Ok. Being a useful idiot for the Clintons – no way. ..."
"... When the rot is complete and the edifice tumbles? Or when TINA wins, and the voices go silent? My bet is on the later. Collectively, the money got all 4 aces (and a few more hidden up their sleaves and a few more hidden in their boots, etc – no end of aces.) ..."
"... Charles Hugh-Smith's response to the "list": "The Washington Post: Useful-Idiot Shills for a Failed, Frantic Status Quo That Has Lost Control of the Narrative" ..."
Yves here. As indicated in Links, we'll have more to say about this in due course. Note, however,
that as Blumenthal points out, some of the sites that are listed as PropOrNot allies receive US government
funding. As Mark Ames pointed out via e-mail, "The law is still clear that US State Dept money and
probably BBG money cannot be used
to propagandize American audiences." So if these sites really are "allies" in terms of providing
hard dollars or other forms of support (shared staff, research), this site and its allies may be
in violation of US statutes.
By Max Blumenthal, a senior editor of the Grayzone Project at AlterNet, and the award-winning
author of Goliath and Republican Gomorrah. His most recent book is The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance
in Gaza. Follow him on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal. Originally published at
Alternet
A shady website that claims
"Russia is Manipulating US Opinion Through Online Propaganda" has compiled a blacklist of websites
its anonymous authors accuse of pushing fake news and Russian propaganda. The blacklist includes
over 200 outlets, from the right-wing Drudge Report and Russian government-funded Russia Today, to
Wikileaks and an array of marginal conspiracy and far-right sites. The blacklist also includes some
of the flagship publications of the progressive left, including Truthdig, Counterpunch, Truthout,
Naked Capitalism, and the Black Agenda Report, a leftist African-American opinion hub that is critical
of the liberal black political establishment.
Called PropOrNot, the blacklisting organization was described by the Washington Post's Craig Timberg
as "a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds."
The Washington Post agreed to preserve the anonymity of the group's director on the grounds that
exposure could result in their being targeted by "Russia's legions of skilled hackers." The Post
failed to explain what methods PropOrNot relied on to conclude that "stories planted or promoted
by the Russian disinformation campaign were viewed more than 213 million times." (Timberg also cited
a report co-authored by Aaron Weisburg, founder of the one-man anti-Palestinian "Internet Haganah"
operation, who has been
accused of interfering
in federal investigations, stealing the personal information of anarchists, online harassment, and
fabricating information to smear his targets.)
Despite the Washington Post's charitable description of PropOrNot as a group of independent-minded
researchers dedicated to protecting the integrity of American democracy, the shadowy group bears
many of the qualities of the red enemies it claims to be battling. In addition to its blacklist of
Russian dupes, it lists a collection of outlets funded by the U.S. State Department, NATO and assorted
tech and weapons companies as "allies." PropOrNot's methodology is so shabby it is able to peg widely
read outlets like Naked Capitalism, a leading left-wing financial news blog, as Russian propaganda
operations.
Though the supposed experts behind PropOrNot remain unknown, the site has been granted a veneer
of credibility thanks to the Washington Post, and journalists from the New York Times, including
deputy Washington editor
Jonathan
Weissman to former Obama senior advisor
Dan Pfeiffer
, are hailing Timberg's story as Pulitzer-level journalism. "Russia appears to have successfully
hacked American democracy,"
declared Sahil
Kapur, the senior political reporter for Bloomberg. The dead-enders of Hillary Clinton's campaign
for president have also seized on PropOrNot's claims as proof that the election was rigged, with
Clinton confidant and Center For American Progress president Neera Tanden
declaring
, "Wake up people," as she blasted out the Washington Post article on Russian black ops.
PropOrNot's malicious agenda is clearly spelled out on its website. While denying McCarthyite
intentions, the group is openly
attempting
to compel "formal investigations by the U.S. government, because the kind of folks who make propaganda
for brutal authoritarian oligarchies are often involved in a wide range of bad business." The group
also seeks to brand major progressive politics sites (and a number of prominent right-wing opinion
outlets) as "'gray' fake-media propaganda outlets" influenced or directly operated by Russia's Federal
Security Service (FSB). It can then compel Facebook and Google to
ban them , denying them the ad revenue they rely on to survive.
Though PropOrNot's hidden authors claim, "we do not reach our conclusions lightly," the group's
methodology leaves more than enough room to smear an outlet on political grounds. Among the criteria
PropOrNot identifies as clear signs of Russian propaganda are, "Support for policies like Brexit,
and the breakup of the EU and Eurozone" and, "Opposition to Ukrainian resistance to Russia and Syrian
resistance to Assad."
By these standards, any outlet that raises the alarm about the considerable presence of extreme
right-wing elements among the post-Maidan Ukrainian government or that questions the Western- and
Saudi-funded campaign for regime change in Syria can be designated a Russia dupe or a paid agent
of the FSB. Indeed, while admitting that they have no idea whether any of the outlets they blacklisted
are being paid by Russian intelligence or are even aware they are spreading Russian propaganda, PropOrNot's
authors concluded that any outlets that have met their highly politicized criteria "have effectively
become tools of the Russian intelligence services, and are worthy of further investigation."
Among the most ironic characteristics of PropOrNot is its claim to be defending journalistic integrity,
a rigorous adherence to the facts, and most of all, a sense of political levity. In fact, the group's
own literature reflects a deeply paranoid view of Russia and the outside world. According to PropOrNot's
website , Russia is staging a hostile takeover of America's alternative online media environment
"in order to Make Russia Great Again (as a new 'Eurasian' empire stretching from Dublin to Vladisvostok),
on the other. That means preserving Russian allies like Bashar al-Assad in Syria, breaking up the
'globalist' EU, NATO, and US-aligned trade and defense organizations, and getting countries to join
'Eurasianist' Russian equivalents Or else."
The message is clear: Stamp out the websites blacklisted by PropOrNot,or submit to the malevolent
influence of Putin's "new global empire."
Among the websites listed by PropOrNot as "allies" are a number of groups funded by the U.S. government
or NATO. They include InterpreterMag, an anti-Russian media monitoring blog
funded through
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, an arm of the U.S. government, which is edited by the hardline neoconservative
Michael Weiss. Polygraph Fact Check,
another project of Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty aimed at Russian misinformation, is listed as an "ally." So is Bellingcat, the
crowdsourced military analysis blog run by Elliot Higgins through the Atlantic Council, which receives
funding from the
U.S. State Department, various Gulf monarchies and the weapons industry. (Bellingcat is
directly funded
by Google, according to Higgins.)
Unfortunately for PropOrNot's mysterious authors, an alliance requires the consent of all parties
involved. Alerted to his designation on the website, Bellingcat's Higgins immediately disavowed it:
"Just want to note I hadn't heard of Propornot before the WP piece and never gave permission to them
to call Bellingcat 'allies,'" he
wrote .
As scrutiny of PropOrNot increases, its credibility is rapidly unraveling. But that has not stopped
Beltway media wiseguys and Democratic political operatives from hyping its claims. Fake news and
Russian propaganda have become the great post-election moral panic, a creeping Sharia-style conspiracy
theory for shell-shocked liberals. Hoping to punish the dark foreign forces they blame for rigging
the election, many of these insiders have latched onto a McCarthyite campaign that calls for government
investigations of a wide array of alternative media outlets. In this case, the medicine might be
worse than the disease.
What I meant by my sarcastic remark is that there seems to be absolutely no reason to trust
anything it says, from its content, to the fact that it was created about three months ago
when the Red baiting was already in full swing in the media.
Congratulations! That site is like a who's who of influential critical reporting. I suspect,
as with so many of the bubble-dwellers attempts, that this slapdash but probably overpriced effort
will drive traffic to those sites while reducing the credibility of its promoters. An instant
classic own-goal. I look forward to the inevitable and embarassing revelations about their founders
and funding.
The full list was a mix of really good sites and the unknown personal blogs of some whack-a
-doodles producing "content" of little value. I see the list linked to is smaller.
"Collectively, this propaganda is undermining our public discourse by providing a warped view
of the world, where Russia can do no wrong, and America is a corrupt dystopia that is tearing
itself apart."
Meanwhile publicans even they would deem credible like the L.A. times report there are 63,000
homeless youths in los angeles. Corrupt dystopia? No it can not be.
"It is vital that this effort be exposed for what it is: A coordinated attempt to deceive U.S.
citizens into acting in Russia's interests."
look idiots, the truth as I understand it is neither Russian interest NOR US government interests
are necessarily in my interest
I am an attorney. I am not soliciting or advising any entity or person, but those identified
by PropOrNot, including Naked Capitalism, should consult competent legal counsel, having appropriate
and specific experience regarding defamation law (maybe even in a "pooled," co-ordinated effort
with others' among the over 200 entities named by PropOrNot) to seek a legal opinion as to whether
there exists a viable defamation claim against The Washington Post, and also, via Weisburg, The
New York Times, as both publications repeated potentially defamatory claims made by PropOrNot.
Under general tenets of defamation law (statutory and in common law), it is not just the
original entity or person defaming (including defamation "per se") another that is liable for
such torts, but others who carelessly or recklessly repeat the original defamatory statements/claims
(in this case, both The Washington Post & New York Times bear similar potential liability as PropOrNot).
Understanding the distinction between an attorney, and *my* attorney, and as a matter of general
interest, I am curious: What about individual posters in their capacities as employees, contractors,
or just rabble?
Requires actual malice since it's the media you're suing – but that can be proven by reckless
indifference to the truth which this might actually meet the standard of, especially since the
site isn't making this claim based on anything other than the content of the views espoused by
the sites. /also an attorney but the wrong specialty. I'd be pleased to help if I can though
– all of the sites I read regularly are on the list and whoever's propaganda op the site is the
whole concept of what it represents scares the pants off me.
All private individual gets you is compensatory damages – and everyone's readership and donations
have increased.
"We hold that, so long as they do not impose liability without fault, the States may define
for themselves the appropriate standard of liability for a publisher or broadcaster of defamatory
falsehood injurious to a private individual. But this countervailing state interest extends
no further than compensation for actual injury. For the reasons stated below, we hold that
the States may not permit recovery of presumed or punitive damages, at least when liability
is not based on a showing of knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth."
Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 347-349 (1974).
Propornot is directly accusing NC and the rest of a crime (espionage), which constitutes
defamation per se, so I think the only issue before the court would be whether it was done with
reckless indifference.
Seriously, Yves, please feel free to contact me offlist – I would be delighted to pro bono
the heck out of this including at the direction of whoever you hire.
The MSM did such a fine job reporting the news during the campaign. (16 anti-Sanders stories
in 16 hours from the WaPo. A new record.) Are small news/opinion sites cutting into their online
advertising revenue. ;)
I like you and your blog, but I'm almost positive your site has been guilty of accidently publishing
Russian propaganda at some point. You've probably linked to stories that sound legit but can be
traced all the way back to some Russian operation like RT, even though the third party source
you got the story from seemed ok.
The creator of the app never said all the sites on the list knowingly did it.
First the fact that a story appeared on RT does not make it propaganda. We featured videos
from Ed Harrison on the RT program Boom/Bust, which is about the US economy and has featured respected
US and foreign academics, like Steve Keen.
What Steve Keen has to say is not suddenly propaganda by virtue of appearing on RT.
If you read Eddy Bernay's book Propaganda, he defines it as an entity or cause promoting its
case. Thus when a news organization that is government-affiliated, like Voice of America or RT,
presents a news story that is straight up reporting, that does not qualify as propaganda either
(like "Marine Le Pen Gains in French Polls"). In fact, for a government site to be seen as credible
when it does present propaganda, it has to do a fair bit of reasonably unbiased reporting.
Second, had you bothered to read the actual PropOrNot site, it accuses all of the sites
listed as being "propaganda outlets" under the influence of "coordinators abroad" (#11 in its
FAQ).
Several individuals on Twitter called this out as libel with respect to NC. And under #7,
PropOrNot asserts that "some" of the sites are guilty of violating the Espionage Act and the Foreign
Agent Registration Act, as in accusing them of being spies and calling for investigation (by implication
of all, since how do you know which is or isn't) by the FBI and DoJ.
And you defend this witch hunt? Seriously? Do you have any idea of what propaganda consists
of? Hint: it is not reporting accurately and skeptically.
Their MSM propaganda isn't working and they see it. They already heavily censor comments
on their MSM sites. Other MSM sights such as Bloomberg closed down comments altogether. Expect
more of that.
And they will take every measure to close down any other independent sites people have turned
to get some truth which millions of us know we aren't getting from the MSM.
Those of us who have a grasp on what is going on in this country will find #7 is very disturbing.
As it tells us what they have in mind to discredit and close down independent sites.
As you know, propaganda doesn't have to [be] false. It can be more about selectively reporting
certain facts or emphasizing certain facts over others to smear your target and mislead people.
Steve Keen is great, and I love his work, but it's also obvious that RT invites him on the network
because he lambasts the American political establishment and weakens the public's confidence in
its leaders. This is clearly a goal of Moscow, and they use people like Steve Keen to do it. I'm
sure Steven Keen doesn't think of his role that way, but RT and Russian intelligence certainly
do.
And the site clearly states that some sites are knowingly coordinating with Russian agents
(like RT) and some are likely unaware that they are being influenced. They likely think NC falls
into the unaware category.
I think they should be more specific as to what sites they believe fall into the 'knowingly'
and 'unknowingly' categories, but I also don't believe the app is an entirely crazy idea. Russia
is aggressively trying to influence American politics as we saw in the most recent US election
and coming up with a response is a good idea even if this particular one should be improved.
Um, James what weakens people's confidence in their leaders is their not addressing people's
issues and lying about their inability to do so. Despite protestations from the likes of much
of our 'intelligentsia', mainstream media, and most of our political class, the majority of people
are not stupid. There is a reason why terms like 'lame stream media' resonate with a large number
of people.
For instance when Obama is out there talking about a recovery and people know that there
is no such thing in their lives, their communities then HE has lost their confidence – not someone
giving an interview on RT.
Or to put it another way the problem isn't someone going on RT and saying the emperor isn't
wearing clothes, the problem is that the emperor isn't wearing clothes.
Pretending not to notice doesn't mean that no one has noticed. Considering the Washington/NY/California
bubble, most people probably have and have been screaming at their television that he needs to
get dressed.
what did we see in "the most recent election"? what is your evidence that Russia is "aggressively
trying to influence American politics?"
Steve Keen is great, and I love his work, but it's also obvious that RT invites him
on the network because he lambasts the American political establishment and weakens the public's
confidence in its leaders. This is clearly a goal of Moscow, and they use people like Steve
Keen to do it. I'm sure Steven Keen doesn't think of his role that way, but RT and Russian
intelligence certainly do.
How do you know any of this? how would you know would Russian intelligence's goals are,
or how they think of Steve Keen? this is all just McCarthyism 2016, accusing the left of being
dupes or willing agents of Russia. McCarthy had his 200 communists in the state department, this
website and the Washington Post have their 200 Russian propaganda websites. Why are you catapulting
this bullshit?
Well put. I could equally well argue that it's in Russia's interests that American leadership
not be questioned, if it's following policies that are clearly stupid and likely to weaken America's
position in the world. So the PropOrNot site might actually be a double blind backed by Russia,
using fear of Russian influence to manipulate people into uncritical acceptance of their leaders
and prevent questioning of poor decisions, thereby weakening America. (ALERT: If it's not obvious
to readers, this is sarcasm).
If your methodology is gazing into the tea leaves to figure out what Russia's position is,
then smearing anybody that advocates a similar position, then that's such a ridiculously flimsy
veneer of logic that it can be used to reach pretty much any conclusion you like (as my example
above demonstrates). Tell me again who is guilty of propaganda in this scenario?
I suppose all 17 intelligence agencies could be wrong.
And RT has a pattern of inviting dissidents that have extremely negative views of American
leadership. You can say this negative view justified but that doesn't negate the fact that Russia
wants to amplify that discontent as much as possible.
i suppose they still haven't provided any evidence whatsoever. just like you. What 17 agencies?
what evidence are they relying on? Why does Obama say the election was not fixed by Russia, that
there was no ramping up of cyber attacks?
You could be working for David Brock at correct the record. the way you blindly accept the
talking points of the Clinton campaign indicates that. you just keep repeating them, and don't
respond to the criticisms of propornot as a source, or the reporter who uncritically accepted
their little mccarthyite hit list. linking to a usa today article that blindly repeats the same
talking points, again sans evidence, does not support your argument.
I was not claiming Russia fixed the election results. I was referring to the email hacking
directed at the Clinton camp during the election campaign.
And my claim that Russia was likely involved in the email hacking is backed up by 17 intelligence
agencies and reporting from various independent news outlets. If you had bothered to read the
article, which you apparently didn't, you would know that the 17 agencies are the 'Office of the
Director of National Intelligence' plus the 16 agencies listed in the link available in the article
I provided.
If USA Today reporting is not credible to you but Russia Today's reporting is, then I'm afraid
your trust of Kremlin created propaganda outlets over independent news outlets only underscores
my point that Russian information warfare has been very successful at influencing and shaping
parts of American public opinion.
I also don't think US intelligence agencies would make this accusation publicly if they were
not confident. They could have just as easily made this accusation against China but have not
because it doesn't fit China's MO. Russia has engaged in similar types of email hacking operations
in former Eastern European countries it has been seeking to control and influence.
And comparing an app to McCarthyism is absurd. McCarthysim was the state targeting individuals
and organizations. This is private citizens compiling a list by their own accord, which they are
free to do. When a left wing blog makes a list of the top ten most right-wing and GOP influenced
websites, are they also engaging in 'McCarthism'? Is the left engaging in 'McCarthyism' when it
accuses Fox News of being GOP influenced propaganda? C'mon.
Regardless, I am done with this conversation for now. You can think what you want.
James do you happen to remember when those intelligence agencies reported Iraq had Weapons
of Mass Destruction.? How about when North Korea hacked Sony? Both of which were inaccurate and
dare I say it propaganda intended to mislead the American public.
Short of watching the hacking in real time there is no way those agencies would have been able
to trace any competent hacker.So here are some very serious questions for you. Do you think the
Russians hire script kiddies? Why does Naval Intelligence have anything to do with this investigation?
Same with at least half of those agencies?
Why were 17 agencies watching the DNC? Don't they have anything better to do, like
figuring out who hacked the State Department, the IRS and Social Security?
The immediate claims that Russia hacked the DNC were never credible to any one with even
a bit of knowledge about high level hacking. The 17 agency thing was outright laughable once you
asked the simple question of what most of them had to do with this investigation. And USA Today
was and is the print equivalent of the Yahoo front page.
You say you are done, but I sincerely hope so e of what was said here percolates in your thoughts.
Most of us here understand propaganda, misinformation, and yes confirmation bias. You seem to
need to learn to look critically at your usual sources as well as those you have warned about.
Being wrong about something in the past doesn't mean you are always wrong. In fact, the CIA
and FBI have been on the money about countless things in the past, but I'm sure you know this
and are just trying to deflect. And it's not true that NK being involved in the Sony hack has
been debunked. Opinion is mixed among independent security analysts. Look it up.
And I think you should take your own advice as far as confirmation bias and understanding propaganda
are concerned. Nobody who relies on FSB cut outs like RT for information and analysis has room
to talk about their intelligence and critical thinking. NC and other alternative 'anti-establishment'
news sources you consume are full of their own bias. You should wander out of the alt-left echo
chamber once in a while and stop thinking that any criticism of Russia is 'red-baiting' and propaganda.
Mr. Putin isn't a damsel in distress that needs your defending.
oh so now you're an intelligence expert, but somehow you still don't have any evidence,
because the "17 intelligence agencies" don't have any evidence either. they didn't have evidence
of wmd's but i bet you fell for that, too. i think the most dishonest line in your post is this:
You should wander out of the alt-left echo chamber once in a while and stop thinking that any
criticism of Russia is 'red-baiting' and propaganda
while you're searching for evidence to back up the rancid propaganda exposed by glenn greenwald's
article in the intercept, you can look for one single post expressing this conviction. just one.
after all the lies by our intelligence agencies, using the same methods as this smear, to uncritically
accept anonymous quotes betrays either a great naďveté or intellectual dishonesty.
Gee, if only there were some North American country that would try to influence foreign elections,
for example say Russian or Ukrainian ones.
But let me extend James's thought above by advocating for our leaders to obtain public encryption
keys so that we may send our grievances privately without enabling any foreign interference. Won't
that just invigorate our democracy?
If Russia is actively trying to influence American politics, then they have been far more
effective than the US and get a much bigger bang for their buck. For one thing, they didn't have
to drop a single bomb to effect a regime change. So assuming you are correct, the noise is just
a hysterical regime change envy.
So are RT and Sputnik propaganda outlets? Sometimes they are, but sometimes they report
the truth that our MSM, having given up the last shreds of their journalistic integtity in return
for access, won't report.
Given the widespread funding of media (including government-owned media) by Western governments,
I would say that US and Euro hysteria about Russian propaganda, real and imagined, is yet another
off-putting display of noxious American exceptionalism.
I grew up listening to broadcasts of RFE and VOA behind the Iron Curtain, and mixed in
with honest reporting was a heavy dose of propaganda aimed at weakening Eastern European governments.
Now, it is the America For Bulgaria Foundation that funds several media outlets in the country.
What they all have in common is rabid Russophobia-driven editorial stances, and one can easily
conclude that it is driven by the almighty dollar rather than by honest, deeply held convictions.
So, America can do it but whines like a toddler when it is allegedly done to it?! What a crock.
The worst thing is that regardless of whatever propaganda wars are going on, this list
constitutes a full frontal attack on free speech in the alleged "Land of the Free." Besides NC,
there are number of sites distinguished by thorough, quality reporting of the kind that WaPo and
NYT no longer engage in. Having grown up behind the Iron Curtain, this is chilling to me. Dissident
voices speaking against the endless wars for profit and neoliberalism are in effect being intimidated
and smeared by anonymous thugs. This, while the militarized local police and federal agencies,
closely coordinated by "fusion centers", have ruthlessly put down a number of citizen protests,
have engaged in spying on all of us, and have gone after whistleblowers for exposing the reach
and scope of the surveillance state. These are the hallmarks of dictatorships, not of the alleged
"world's greatest democracy and beacon of freedom." What the eff happened to America, and why
are you equating challenging the oppressive and exploitative status quo with being "unwitting
Russian dupes?" Seems to me that the useful idi0t here is you, with all due respect.
American intelligence uses exactly the same tactics, and has since at least WW1. Selling
the American public on the Iraq war is a classic example. Remember that all news is biased, some
much more so than others (we report, you decide.)
The advent of the internet and the subsequent broadening of readily available news of all
slants has made it much harder for any intelligence agency of any specific country to control
the news( but it has made it extremely easy for them to monitor what we are reading).
Naked capitalism uses a wide variety of sources, and obviously has no coordination with any
intelligence agency. The normal tell for this is being state sponsored, or having a big sugar
daddy providing the funding, and Yves doesn't have any of that.
As always, it's up to the reader to use their critical thinking skills and form their own opinions.
Some of us happen to believe that 'lambast[ing] the American political establishment and
weaken[ing] the public's confidence in its leaders' is in the best interests of everyone on the
planet, including the American public. If that constitutes propaganda, I'm not about to look that
gift horse in the mouth. RT isn't perfect – I personally find their relentless cheerleading for
economic growth rather wearying – but it knocks spots off the competition and consistently sends
me scurrying to the internet to chase up on new faces and leads. I'm grateful for that.
" Steve Keen is great, and I love his work, but it's also obvious "
Damning with faint praise. A dainty smear tactic noted as such since the days of .. Shakespeare.
It is obvious that Russia has been trying to influence American politics. The very existence
of RT makes that obvious. What is not obvious is why modestly left-of-center Americans' political
concerns should be subject to McCarthyite attacks in our most influential news outlets. We've
been subject to internally generated far-right propaganda for decades now and have seen minimal,
feeble 'mainstream' efforts to counter it. The far right has done tremendous damage to our nation
and is poised to do much more now that its doyens control all branches of the federal government.
And yet this libelous attack is more focused on left-leaning opinion sites than on the ultra-right.
The latter were thrown into this list almost as window dressing. Conceivably because the far right
is very adept at self-defense. But more because the prestige and financial well-being of the center-"left"
is endangered by the rise of an adversarial, econo-centric left. The insiders from this branch
of our duopoly never have been harmed by their historic "opposition" (Tea Party kooks + corrupt
Beltway Republicans).
What I interpret this as is a strike by 'think tank' grifters against those who are most
likely to damage their incomes, their prestige and their exceedingly comfortable berths on the
Acela corridor. It's a slightly panicky, febrile effort by a bunch of heels who are looking at
losing their mid-6-figure incomes . and becoming like so many of the rest of us: over-credentialed,
under-paid and unable to afford life in the charming white parts of our coastal metropolises.
I was wondering what Brock has been up to since the dissolution of "Correct the Record."
Has it been dissolved or has it morphed into something else? This looks like too seamless a
transition from the Clinton campaign strategy we have all grown to love to the revenge strategy
we have come to expect from such people. I look forward to the discovery portions of the libel
suits to come. Hopefully Yves and Lambert will be taking up a collection for so worthy an enterprise
soon.
You've just libeled me. You have no evidence whatsoever to substantiate your claim. Nor
do you have any evidence that Russia has been "aggressively" trying to influence US politics.
This is one of many hysterical lines offered by Team Dem over the course of this election, up
there with depicting all Trump voters as racist yahoos.
Ed Harrison, who is the producer of the show and replied later in this thread, is the
one who booked Keen and interviewed and other economists and firmly disputes your assertion that
his show has anything to do with promoting an anti-US line. And as a former diplomat, Harrison
would be far more sensitive than most to that sort of issue. I'm repeating his comment below:
Hi Naked Capitalism. I haven't been on this site for some time. But I felt it necessary
to comment due to an ad hominem attack from a commenter "James" regarding the show I produce
at RT called Boom Bust.
From my vantage point as producer at RT, I have been able to see the whole anti-Russia campaign
unfold in all its fury. I have a lot of thoughts on this but I want to restrict my comments
to the specific argument James makes. here:
"it's also obvious that RT invites him on the network because he lambasts the American political
establishment and weakens the public's confidence in its leaders. This is clearly a goal of
Moscow, and they use people like Steve Keen to do it. I'm sure Steven Keen doesn't think of
his role that way, but RT and Russian intelligence certainly do."
Since I produce the show that Steve Keen appears on, I am well-placed to give you a view
on this. James' comment is flat out false. What James writes is something he has fabricated
in his imagination – connecting dots he believes should be connected based on no first hand
evidence whatsoever.
What actually happens on Boom Bust is this:
Since no one I work with at RT has a sophisticated background in economics, finance or financial
reporting, they give us a wide berth in putting together content for our show with nearly no
top down dictates at all. That means we as American journalists have a pretty much free hand
to report economic news intelligently and without bias. We invite libertarian, mainstream,
non-mainstream, leftist, Democratic commentators, Republican commentators – you name it. As
for guests, they are not anti-American in any way shape or form. They are disproportionately
non-mainstream.
We have no pro-Russian agenda. And that is in part because Russia is a bit player on the
economic stage, frankly. Except for sanctions, it has mostly been irrelevant on our show since
inception.
Let me share a strange anecdote on that. We had a guest on our show about three years ago,
early in my tenure. We invited him on because he had smart things to say about the UK economy.
But he had also written some very negative things about Putin and Russia. Rather than whitewash
this we addressed it specifically in the interview and asked him an open-ended question about
Russia, so he could say his piece. I was ASTONISHED when he soft-pedaled his response and made
no forceful case as he had done literally days ago in print. This guy clearly self-censored
– for what reason I don't know. But it is something that has stayed with me ever since.
The most important goal from a managerial perspective has been that our reporting is different
i.e. covers missing and important angles of the same storyline that are missing in the mainstream
media or that it covers storylines that are missing altogether.
Neither Steve Keen nor any other guest on our show appears "because he lambasts the American
political establishment". This is false. He appears on our show because he is a credible economist
who provides a differentiated view on economics and insight that we believe will help our viewers
understand the global economy. If Paul Krugman had something to say of that nature and would
appear on our show, we would welcome him. In fact, I and other producers have reached out to
him many times to no avail, especially after we had Gerald Friedman give his take on the dust-up
surrounding Bernie Sanders' economic plan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yna275KzuDQ
Look, I understand the scepticism about RT and its motives. It IS a state-funded news outlet
with news story angles that sometimes contrast sharply with western media. And it has not been
critical of the Russian government as far as I can tell. But you can't ascribe nefarious motives
to individual economists or reporters based on inaccurate or false third hand accounts. You
are just making things up, creating a false narrative based on circumstantial evidence. This
is just adding to the building peer pressure associated with what almost seems like an orchestrated
campaign to discredit non-mainstream sources of news.
"Russia is aggressively trying to influence American politics" Apparently with the help
of Hillz. Was her decision to use a private email server made with the help of Putin?
James, we get it. We US citizens are not to be permitted to criticize our own government or
corporations as that might "weaken public confidence" in our Dear Leaders.
We cannot be trusted to think for ourselves in discerning what is and is not propaganda, for
after all we would be able to discern the same coming from the US side.
The overt stifling of dissent that was such an outrageous feature of the Clinton campaign "is
clearly a goal" of your side.
Who needs Putin when we have mindless ClintonBots to do all the dirty work here?
This is a secular trend, a great wave. If Steve Keen were going on Tass 24 hours a day, seven
days a week, Live!!! With ***Nude*** WOMBATS!!!!, undermining confidence in neoliberal economists
- let me pause to gasp in horror - it would be the merest bit of froth on that wave. Taking Jame's
view as a proxy for the views of the intelligence community, if they really believe this - and
it's not just a ploy for budget time - then the country truly is doomed.
NOTE * Note the authoritarian followership of "leaders." So my response with institutions is
not precisely on point.
The idea that banks were trusted more than organized labor was troublesome to me till I remembered
the labor leaders like Trumka and the continued betrayals of membership by the likes of the AFL
CIO. At that point I got it really was a toss up.
My revenue is suffering because my rag is bullshit, but all these alternatives are unfair competition
- please Mr Government shut them done, because I, the one and only Great Bezos (or Great Bozo),
is loosing money.
If you'd like, take a trip in the Wayback Machine to 1959. Then you'll find many criticisms
of US society by the Civil Rights movement sharing the same sinister tone as criticisms made by
Soviet new outlets. Then you'll also find a gaggle of US pols and their minions claiming on that
basis that the Civil Rights movement is communist inspired, funded, and run. Then you'll also
find many people who don't bother to distinguish source from story and end up enjoying the official
Kool Aid.
It reminds me of a story from Northern Ireland in the 1960's when the leader of a civil
rights march was asked by a BBC reporter 'is it true that your organisation has been infiltrated
by radicals and communists?' His reply was to sigh and say 'I f**king wish it was true'.
@hemeantwell – This same claim of communist inspiration and connection was also thrown
at the anti-war movement. I remember arguing with a friend of my parents in the summer of 1969,
after my freshman year at college where I was active in the anti-war and anti-draft movements.
After countering all of the arguments made by this gentleman, he was left with nothing to say
but "Well, that's the Commie's line " as a final dismissal.
'US pols and their minions claiming that the Civil Rights movement is communist inspired,
funded, and run.'
Right up to his death on 4 Apr 1968, Martin Luther King was accused by J. Edgar Hoover
and the FBI of "knowingly, willingly and regularly cooperating with and taking guidance from communists."
Now there's a US national holiday in King's honor.
That same year, my dad visited Moscow and Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring. After he
returned, we started receiving crudely mimeographed newsletters from Moscow - actual Soviet
propaganda , delivered right to our mailbox in Texas.
So laden were they with hoary old Marxist rhetoric that we started satirizing it in our underground
student newspaper, mocking the public school administration as "capitalist running dogs" and "colonialist
oppressors." (This did not go over well.)
To his regret, my dad sent one of the Soviet flyers to the FBI, but never got a reply. He suspected
that they put him on a watch list, rather than investigating how the Soviets were distributing
their crude invective through the US mail.
So laden were they with hoary old Marxist rhetoric that we started satirizing it in our underground
student newspaper, mocking the public school administration as "capitalist running dogs" and "colonialist
oppressors." (This did not go over well.)
They link American propaganda all the time. If you take off your blinders, you'll find that
most news is just propaganda, because the basis for most news stories is what person X says. What's
sad is that people like you believe there is some kind of "objective" news source in the "free
world" that is telling it like it is. There isn't and there never has been.
It's all propaganda of one sort or another. I exhort you to read Plato and understand that
the Sophists for which Socrates held so much ire are much the same as anon and administration
sources for so much of what drives journalism.
I have identified a motif that pretty much always gives away a Hillary bot- it was used about
several dozen thousand times as part of 'Correct the Record' during the runup to November 8. And
here we have it again. It goes like this: I was always in favor of – – – – – – – (fill in the
blank with the supposed offenders name) until I found out this 'truth'.
Also, why not just admit you are a Clinton Supporter who finds it convenient that a lot of
the sites could be trashed for being critical of HRC
Let me just make a list of the weasel words (setting aside the famous "I like you, but ____"
trope, which I have never yet seen used in good faith in all my many years of blogging, partly
because of the assumption that whether a random commenter "likes" the blog is important.
almost positive
guilty of accidentally
at some point
probably linked (but with no evidence)
can be traced (but not by James!)
some . operation like
The ginormous pile of steaming innuendo and faux reasonableness aside, James seems to think
that the NC readership has no critical thinking skills at all. Apparently, NC readers are little
children who need expert guidance from James and his ilk - bless their hearts! - to distinguish
crap from not crap.
If there is any take away from this foul
Bernays-inspired campaign season, it is
that fear can and will overrule reason completely.
Half of the voters (whichever lost) were set up
for a cognitive dissonance cork blowing episode.
No one should expect reason to be an effective defense against cognitive attempts to rectify that
dissonance .neither side can be unplugged
from their self-selected news matrix, without
blowing their cork. It will not matter that this list
is comical, because it is a dog whistle to the
audience preloaded with fear (and the other side would've done a variation of the thene if they
had lost).
(pretty funny of them to list your site though..I guess
the Russians must've also been quite upset by all
the American mortage fraud in housing bubble #1
and felt a need to •head explodes•)
I suppose this comment will add me to some list maintained by some very frightened but misguided
people? What's the line "lighten up, Francis"?
This has all the earmarks of an effort by the Nuland Neocons that joined Camp Hillary,
and now in defeat constitute a portion Hillary's professional dead enders.
Camp Hillary, as you call it, has decamped and is on the march. It has powerful allies
in the intelligence community, the media and actors on the world stage who deem Trump to be an
existential threat to America and world. The story of Russian inspired fake news is paving the
way for regime change, an HRC specialty. The recount is the tip of the spear. If they can pull
this coup off, sites like this will move from the useful idiot category to the enemy of the state
category overnight.
The brilliance of this move will eliminate all possibly of civil unrest since America democracy
will be saved from a Russia threat that requires a declaration of war and severe restrictions
on media freedom.
I can guarantee you Trump is looking over his shoulder and sees it coming and is working furiously
to build a case for his own legitimacy. He is doing his best to sound normal.
Obama has relegated himself to the sidelines. He hates conflict, but will back Hillary if she
can pull it off.
"Camp Hillary, as you call it, has decamped and is on the march." True that. Even a lost election
can't stop them. Heard over the holiday- Andrew Cuomo for prez. So the same people who didn't
show up to vote for Hillz can now not show up to vote for her waterboy/bagman.
For sure. The "history doesn't repeat but it rhymes" is suddenly sickeningly applicable here.
I hope they've bitten off more than they can chew in this case. There is that argument that
we are "siloing" in our little corners of the web, however – everybody read the newspapers and
listed to the radio back then. Which means a very, very small subset of the population set the
agenda. Nowadays, the "far-left" and "far-right" are only a click away from each other (and they
always did seem to have more in common with each other than the center which has gone from mushy
to absolutely rotten). A unified pushback on this is not impossible and who knows where it might
lead?
Aha, I have solved the mystery. It is elementary my dear Watson! The PropOrNot site is
itself a Russian propaganda ploy on the part of the KGB! What? errr, ok, the FSB then. By
adding sites such as the Naked Capitalism site to the list, it will be discredited in its entirety
thus letting the nefarious Russian propaganda websites be given a free pass. Mystery solved! And
sorry Max but "Naked Capitalism" a leading left-wing financial news blog"? I'd rather label it
a practical and empirical financial news blog myself.
Seriously, I am wondering if something else is going on here ("tin-foil hat" mode on) with
this piece of trash. No doubt people here have heard all the cries of "fake news" since the election.
This was on top of months of claims of Russian hacking of the election which is still ongoing
(cough cough, Jill Stein). Now Merkel is screaming blue murder of probable Russian hacking of
the German elections next year and just this week the EU Parliament has passed a resolution which
in part states that Russian media exists to "undermine the very notion of objective information
or ethical journalism," and one of its methods is to cast all other information "as biased or
as an instrument of political power."
I am given to understand that the military use the term "preparing the battlefield" and that
is what I think that we are seeing here. There have already been calls for FaceBook and Google
to implement censorship of "fake news" which will amount to censorship of social and news feeds
– the same media Trump used to bf the entire news establishment in this years election. Could
we be seeing the beginnings of calls to censor the internet? All to fight terrorism and black
propaganda of course. The Left would have absolutely no problem with this and if was used to get
rid of sites that contrasted the mainstream media's narrative, more people would be forced to
use the mainstream media for their news which would make them happy. Something to think about.
And sorry Max but "Naked Capitalism" a leading left-wing financial news blog"? I'd rather
label it a practical and empirical financial news blog myself.
While the level of discussion here is generally at a much deeper level than most sites and
commenters don't fit into neat little ideological boxes, I don't think it's a particularly egregious
generalization to call a site with readers that overwhelmingly support things like financial regulation,
single-payer health care and post-office banking "left-wing".
But Max himself is an interesting character. I've been scratching my head wondering how
a guy one step removed (Sidney Blumenthal) from the Clintons' inner circles is ambitious about
exposing the ludicrous claims made by those same people regarding Palestine and Syria.
The list of news sites on the said fact-free, unsourced, anonymous webpage are all, so far
as I can tell, news sites that have disagreed with neocon foreign policy preferences on several
occasions.
I am so tired of the use of "left" and " right" and "progressive" and "libertarian" that when
I see these words I go off into a daze. These words are bandied about in so many different ways
for so many different reasons, that they have almost become meaningless. I would rather that people
or organizations be described in detail who supposedly have these "left" "right" etc. characteristics,
then I would know what was being claimed.
yes, and one good way to that sort of detailed description is to read here regularly for a
while: there's hardly any political self-tagging or confessional drama going on, but any one person's
comments over a few months do add up to a picture of how her/his life experience, unlabelled political
principles, intellectual ( not the same as academic!) background and style of spontaneous
reaction (yes Mr Mencken, 'humor!) all fit together. And this gradually reveals a lot more than
Left-Right status updates or biographical oversharing ever could: not so much about the person
- who has a right to all the unknownness s/he wants - but about the experiences and reasoning
that might connect a statement that delights you and another that leaves you aghast when both
come from the same person and within about a dozen lines. And all this with no fuzzy-fake "consensus"
in sight: mutual respect across abyssal differences is hard-won and correspondingly cared for.
"The internet" still gets blamed for "ruining face-to-face interaction" by people who probably
flatter themselves about the richness of their past social lives. But I can't imagine when I'll
ever have a spare few years and some mysterious money (not to mention some "social skills" and
a valid passport ) with which to visit Maine, Oregon, Arizona, Buenos Aires (etc etc etc) for
extended casual conversations there. In the absence of that option, whatever you all have the
patience to write here counts as THE escape route out of political parochialism and geographical
niche.
I like the idea some commenter had (too lazy to find it right now) that all these strategems
were long-prepared, and in place for a Clinton victory. Now the Clinton faction in the political
class is deploying them anyhow. They'd better hurry, because influence peddling at the Clinton
Foundation
isn't as lucrative as
it once was .
Surely any site that accepts donations could be funded by a foreign power without knowing?
ps A couple of my students make 50p a post for challenging negative posts on travel websites by
making up how great was their experience.
And, um, so what? They can waste money anywhere they want. How much has the US spent over my
lifetime propagandizing the Middle East and how did that work out?
The Neera Tandeen tweet is revealing in that it shows how hypocritical all the pearl-clutching
was over Trump's complete lack of discretion in pushing bogus and fabricated stories. A cursory
glance through the rest of her feed shows a bunch of equally thoroughly scrutinized claims that
the Putin/Comey/Deplorables triumvirate conspired to steal the election from the forces of Good.
For long time readers this russian(chinese) propaganda should be obvious. And it is ok,
get used to it. Great opportunity to learn "how to read between the lines", and when you understand,
solidifying into a basic skill.
"The only way to get smarter is by playing a smarter opponent." and now you have a good ones,
not a cheap wapo columnist but organised, educated, trained information warfare hacks.
we are on the early days, more to come, much worse to come.
Be careful NC. MSM are in panic. They see that their propaganda is less and less effective
and start targeting those who offer an alternative against their obsolete narratives. Be prepared:
when they will realize that these don't work at all, their fake democracy will become an open
dictatorship.
I loved naked capitalism's election coverage, but here is an anecdote of how it angered conventional
liberals.
I read a particle physics blog by Columbia mathematician Peter Woit, who wrote an election
post-mortem (he occasionally writes about politics). Not Even Wrong is one of the most popular
blogs in theoretical physics, I've several excellent physicists post in the comments to previous
entries. I was very surprised to see Woit blame naked capitalism (and others) for the electoral
defeat of Hillary Clinton, he's a very conventional thinker normally so I would have expected
him to not even know about naked capitalism. I'm still surprised he knew about it.
My guess? There is a lot of communication in the country between people who do read some of
these 200 news media organizations, with the vast majority who stick to conventional sources such
as the NYT, the WSJ, and who think that Vox and The Atlantic are intellectual sources. When people
get exposed to alternative media for the first time, even educated people, their most likely response
is some combination of anger, laughter, and asking if the writer also believes that 9/11 is an
inside job.
I hate to get tin foily, but that blog is typical of a few I've seen – expressing real anger
at the amorphous 'left' for not getting on board the Hilary train. There is an element of vengefulness
in some of the writing and combined with the evidence of the article above, it seems there is
an element within the establishment (the losing half) who are in full on McCarthy mode – and of
course the first stage of a purge is to accuse the targets of being traitors and in the pay of
foreign interests. Trump and the people around him are dangerous of course, but I think a defeated
neolib/neocon establishment is equally dangerous. We are in worrying times, and its not just the
far right we have to be worried about.
Woit also includes the NYT in his list of culprits so I don't know what planet he resides.
Also interesting to note his jetting off to Paris as tonic. Oh the humanity!!
It's incredible how many otherwise smart people can't think for themselves.
Once a newspaper touches a story the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonist. -Norman
Mailer
I am unable to understand how a man of honor can take a newspaper in his hand without a
shudder of disgust. -Charles Baudelaire
The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but
newspapers. -Thomas Jeffereson
Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper. -Thomas Jefferson
If you're not careful, the newspaper will have you hating people being oppressed and loving
the people doing the oppressing -Malcolm X
Journalism is organized gossip. -Edward Egglestone
If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read it, you are misinformed.
-Mark Twain (allegedly, but it could be misinformation)
It's hard to know what to believe! You can believe your own eyes, but even your mind connects
the dots without you knowing it.
This is not the Washington Post's finest hour - although they probably haven't had one of those
for years at this point. I'm down to the Redskins coverage in the WaPo, which is still quite good
actually.
I used to be a Washington Post paper boy, so I'l put one last quote from Charles Osgood
It was while making newspaper deliveries, trying to miss the bushes and hit the porch, that
I first learned about accuracy in journalism
-Charles Osgood
I notice that Woit has disabled comments on this particular post (all other posts have comments
enabled). Probably he justifies it by telling himself that he is running a physics related blog
and isn't interested in promoting discussion on non-physics related matters like politics (but
he still wants to promote his own political opinions on his physics blog!). It's typical of the
fingers-in-the-ears reaction that ivory tower liberals to Trump's win.
Calling Susan out by name, misrepresenting her viewpoints, and then turning of comments is
completely indefensible.
I always felt he has needlessly politicized string theory research l by making his case against
it primarily in popular science books and on his blog rather than in peer-reviewed journals and
academic papers. Since when is it a good idea to let public perception influence our scientific
whims? Whether or not his arguments are valid is beside the point, it wasn't the right way to
go about attempting to influence the field.
I am re-posting the following from an insightful comment on the Liberty Blitzkrieg report on
this scam site:
"The anonymous "executive director" of the Propornot website, quoted by the Washington Post,
was mostly a likely a "senior military intelligence" impostor cum serial teen pornographer named
Joel Harding. He is facing a lawsuit over the copyright infringement of Internet-distributed (teen)
pornography (Case No. 1:16-cv-00384-AJT-TCB) in the US District Court for the eastern district
of Virginia, Alexandria division. This is in the public domain.
BTW, Harding's fellow trolls have been known to ascribe the rank of Brig Gen to their pathetic
troll leader in private messages to the unsuspecting.
No wonder Joel Harding wished to remain the anonymous "executive director" whose laughably
scientific work was quoted by Washington Post. But why didn't Washington Post's Craig Timberg
check this up? Basic journalistic checks thrown out of the mixed gender bathroom window? Details
of Harding's trolling activities are available on the very Internet that is trolled by Joel Harding
through his 3,000-odd troll sites.
And to think that I used to be an avid reader of Washington Post's science and Technology reports
now galls me.
There is a growing assumption that the patriotic paranoid activities of Joel Harding and associates
are a cover for their Ukrainian teen pornography distribution business."
The US MSM is all propaganda all the time-every bit as bad as Pravda ever was. RT now is
the "anti-propaganda." They were even carrying Jesse Ventura and other Americans who are blacklisted
by the MSM.
A hail mary pass that was intercepted by the opposing team and run back for a touchdown.
Methinks the WaPo, "PropOrNot", and the rest of the MSM involved with this stunt are going
to have a lesson in The Streisand Effect. Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg (whom I greatly
admire BTW) has said he already has many new followers and donors.
What exactly is the origin of the Russia bashing that's been going on as of late? I feel
like I missed some important public dis somewhere that would explain it all. Condoleeza Rice's
general dated anti-Soviet attitude I could understand, but that doesn't explain the escalating
bigotry pouring out of Obama and Clinton (and their various surrogates). Is it a case of a bomb
in search of a war?
Looks to me like it came out of the HRC campaign. LOL James Carville was talking about
the KGB tampering with the vote tally .not knowing they've been out of business since 1991. The
whole thing makes absolutely no sense, and it won't fly with the American public, many of whom
watch RT, or may be married to or dating Russians. Even Randy Newman likes Putin enough to write
a song about him.
The funny thing is it's been an open secret that the Democratic party has known about electronic
voting fraud (always swinging to the Right) for years but refuses to go near the subject publicly
supposedly because they didn't want people to lose faith in election results and stop voting.
The Obama administration said on Friday that despite Russian attempts to undermine the
presidential election , it has concluded that the results "accurately reflect the will of the
American people."
From the NYT article you mention. It is now axiomatic that the Putin government was actively
attempting to subvert our election. This despite the fact that absolutely no compelling evidence
has ever been given.
After the nineties opening foreign influence was accepted and russia started integrating into
the western world. Some years later the resurged nationalist kicked out western companies, broke
cultural-social contacts.
West is made on free trade-free business-free ideas flow. if russia not trading on common terms,
west gonna take it by force. and russia holds one-fourth of fresh water, one-fifth of world forests,
one sixth of arable but never before used land, and never before properly explored mineral wealth.
All these can help to secure a prosperous 21.century for the west.
Same like before the american conquest, only difference now local indigenous people wield nuclear
weapons and have unlimited chinese support, so no rush let them make mistakes. (and they do, ukraine-syria-azerbaijan
just the latest)
I don't think there is an easy answer to your question, but I think it goes around to the
failed Ukrainian coup (well, partially failed) and the realisation within a certain element of
the neocon establishment that Putin had been inadvertently strengthened by their policy failures
in the Ukraine and Syria. I think there was a concerted element within the Blob to refocus on
'the Russian threat' to cover up their failures in the Middle East and the refusal of the Chinese
to take the bait in the Pacific.
This rolled naturally into concerns about cyberwar and it was a short step from there to
using Russian cyberespionage to cover up the establishments embarrassment over wikileaks and multiple
other failures exposed by outsiders. As always, when a narrative suits (for different reasons)
the two halves of the establishment, the mainstream media is always happy to run it unquestioningly.
So in short, I think its a mixture of genuine conspiracy, mixed in with political opportunism.
Don't forget Snowden and Assange. The intelligence community is, I'm sure, furious about those
two. With Snowden still in Russia, it's basically a weeping sore on the intelligence community's
face. Those people do not like exposure at all.
I remember that, shortly after Snowden's revelations, the war drums really started to beat
for Syria.
In all success* is the seeds of failure. Once upon a time, the "beating of war drums" was a
great distraction from whatever ill's were currently affecting a nation. But the US now has such
an overwhelming military that not only is there absolutely no threat to the US land mass, but
for a given person there are at least two degrees of freedom between them and anybody actually
involved in these wars themselves. We lost a soldier – ONE soldier – on Thanksgiving day and sure
it was all over the news but how many USians actually know even a member of his family, let alone
him? About zero to a first approximation.
So it just isn't working as a distraction. TPTB I don't think really get that yet.
*the word success here is used in a morally neutral sense
Likewise don't forget Chelsea/Bradley Manning! He was the one who put WikiLeaks on the map
and is now paying a horrible price for his courage and love of humanity. His name is constantly
dropped from the list of whistle blower heroes. Why? Because of his gender ambiguity? Whatever
his gender Manning is an American hero worth remembering.
I think that's about right PlutoniumKun but I would add your moniker – the US is gonna spend
a FORTUNE (I TRILLION dollars using Austin Powers voice) updating our nuclear arsenal. Can't really
justify using ISIS, so the Soviet boogyman has to be resurrected .
A friend of mine is convinced that Obama and the Beltway crowd have never gotten over Russia
giving asylum to Edward Snowden. If you look at the timing between Snowden's revelations and the
U.S. ginning up its anti-Russia talk and activities, there is some correlation.
What exactly is the origin of the Russia bashing that's been going on as of late?
That is very good question and it does not have a simple answer. I have been pondering
this for 8 years now. The latest bout of Russia-hatred began as Putin began to re-assert their
sovereignty after the disastrous Yeltsin years. This intensified after Georgia, Ukraine and Syria.
In adddition the US was preprogrammed to hate Russia for historical reasons. Mostly because of
the Soviet era but also when the US inherited the global empire from the Brits we also got some
of their dislike of the Russian empire dating back to the 19th century.
It all started when Putin arrested the Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, when Putin
put a stop to the shock therapy looting of Russia by the Harvard mafia and Jeffrey Sachs. Didn't
he know that oligarch's are above the law? They are in the US. Didn't he know that money can buy
you immunity from prosecution like it does in Europe and the US? Can't have that, hence the Ukraine,
deprive him of his warm water naval base. Then there was the Crimean referendum. Out smarted again!
Can't have that!
Yes. There was a Michael Hudson piece posted here in 2014 that lays it all out. Apparently
those wanting to bring "democratic institutions" to Russia haven't given up yet.
This Propornot outfit has all the makings of a National Endowment for Democracy scam, including
its sudden appearance in the Post, which has been publishing crazy regime-change-esque editorials
on Russia for more than two years now.
It's all my fault. I studied Russian in high school (4 years) and college (1 year), and even
subscribed to Pravda briefly in college (as did all of my classmates) to improve reading skills.
I also spent a month in Russia in 1971. This is how I became a dirty commie. By commenting on
NC a half dozen times in the past, I have forever tainted it. Sorry!
BTW, what is the W3C approved sarcasm tag? /sarc or /s?
I also took 4 years of Russian in HS. When in the Cold War, it is best to understand your opponents
(not enemies), rather than be ignorant. That is how one can play chess and win and yes, it is
as much a matter of intimidation and annoyance, as it is cold calculation. Bobby Fischer vs Boris
Spassky. States have no enemies. Former allies become opponents and vice versa pragmatism rules.
Well Joe McCarthy was a Republican so this is yet another example of Democrats taking on that
mantle of paranoid fear and war-mongering. Flipping Clintons, the best Republican President and
candidate the Dems could come up with.
The MSM can no longer fool the people that there has been an economic recovery, that is why
nobody believes the media anymore and that is why Donald Trump won the election. Watching news
today is like watching a bad puppet show. The masses are finally waking up to the fact that their
government has sold them down the river to big corporations and predatory bankers. Took the sheeple
long enough.
It's an idiotic new red scare, and I can tell you the well credentialed, supposedly smart liberals
in my circles will eat it right up. Their critical thinking is completely out the window at this
point, and they'll accept apparently anything to avoid coming to terms with Clinton having lost
to Trump. It's terrifying.
9. Investigate. Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time with long articles. Subsidize
investigative journalism by subscribing to print media. Realize that some of what is on your
screen is there to harm you. Bookmark PropOrNot and other sites that investigate foreign propaganda
pushes.
It was so jarring I kept reading that last sentence, thinking I'd missed the snark. Fully expected
it to end with "as an example," not to lend it cred.
The article you mention in In These Times is by Timothy Snyder :), who despite being a well-known
historian is no mean propagandist himself, having suggested that the Ukrainians not the Soviets
liberated Auschwitz.
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/03/07/crimea-putin-vs-reality/
Timothy Snyder is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. That he would recommend PoN
is at least a small indication of who stands behind it. Snyder is has given bad odor to the term
"historian" over the past three years. He is to objective history what Bernays was to objective
journalism.
Snyder: "The army group that liberated Auschwitz was called the First Ukrainian Front." The
NYR of Books has suppressed the comment section on its blog, probably to spare Snyder the embarrassment
of having his howlers pointed out by readers.
Ah so, thanks to you both. Two tells made me suspicious: lots of apparently good advice, then
the little drop of poison just nonchalantly dropped in the mix; and Yale historian ;) .
My comment there hasn't made it out of moderation yet. But someone else tore into him for the
same reason I did, recommending PoN:
Because you have no idea who the hell they are, anymore than anyone else does, they've just
released a list of non-MSM news sites that they disagree with. They smear long running and
well trusted sites as "propaganda" outlets without offering any evidence or stating any sort
of methodology. You have litereally abandoned the professional ethic which ought to go along
with being a published.historian and University professor purely because it makes you FEEL
BETTER.
I just asked him, as a Yale historian, to please tell us how the list was compiled, or at least
give some reason for his unqualified recommendation. I went on to say that I read several of the
sites listed, esp. Counterpunch and of course, NC. Even helpfully provided a link to this article,
saying the idea that NC pushes foreign propaganda is ludicrous, and the WaPo article was being
thoroughly debunked here.
Ended with "I call upon the author to explain! (h/t Nick Cave)"
More likely, what "truth" 'they' are trying to manufacture. (When did the new 'owners' take
up the reins at WaPo? There might be a correlation, and a causation involved)
This is why I'm looking forward to any legal cases that may arise out of this - I plan to follow
such *very* closely. Would love to see discovery documents upon the editorial and ownership staff
. the legal equivalent of a public enema, "you shall have no more secrets "
After all, didn't Fox News win a case essentially stating that it was OK to flat out lie and
fabricate from whole cloth? Then why can't Democrat media organs do likewise?
Why didn't I think of that earlier? "Political Infotainment." If my reading serves me right,
I was under the impression that newspapers of a hundred years ago and earlier displayed their
political allegiances openly. A reader could easily work out the underlying story from separating
"story" from "interpretation." Now, news outlets are supposedly impartial and pure of heart. Yet
another cherished myth bites the dust. Perhaps it is better this way.
Based on the evidence of above mentioned link, this "PropOrNot" can be part of a project
of U.S. government to manipulate media to create an anti-Russia climate or more likely another
method of attack on what they consider "Left" so status quo in economic policies of U.S. can be
maintained.
What is going on with the press/MSM lately? It is like one big game of mind control. Is that
what journalism is for – to persuade people to do what the system wants them to do and I hope
I am not stretching here but a la Bernays? I mean when I think about this it is really sort of
terrifying as the MSM has done little else but constantly broadcast to people that life in America
is just fine and everyone is happy when in fact the opposite is true – there is a lot of hardship
out there since the financial crisis, a lot of people never recovered, millions or tens of millions.
So how can people not be drawn to alternative news sites which thankfully are quite abundant now
and want political change? It just seems like the WaPo, NYT are living in this one little sliver
of opulence and prosperity while the rest of us just shake our heads and wonder what has happened
to this country, especially as we see their darling was not voted in as President. So now they
are striking out and attempting to smear the reputations of good sites, And what is this fake
news thing – I am not on social media and have no idea what the fake news is – is it about the
pizza places? And why are the social media sites being censored – I had read on zh that when the
Comey story hit before the election that that news was not trending at all which was very strange
according to those who would know better.
I don't know where all this fear is coming from in the MSM but I imagine they have lost their
grasp of the American mind. I worry every time I tune in that I am being lied to and misled for
a reason. A political reason. I grew up in the 50's and remember real journalism and I want it
back. I want to know what is really going on. Everywhere.
It has worked for a hundred years, since WWI and the Creel Commission, the destruction of a
vibrant American Left. Imagine the panic in the boardroom suites, the millennials no longer think
that socialism is a bad word, and supported an aging leftist for president. OMFG! It's all Russia's
fault providing an alternate plausible narrative. Can't have that. Outsourcing jobs to Asia, burdening
college students with immense debts, incredible corruption personified by the Queen of Wall Street
couldn't have anything to do with it. All power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It's finally happened, they have over reached and are about to fall off the edge. Relish the panic.
When everything hits the fan, I'll be glad to have you other filthy propagandists in the FEMA
camp alongside me, breaking rocks, eating gruel, and discussing the path to insanity.
I really wish that reporters like those at the Post and the Times had done us all a favor and
walked into the ocean after their abysmal election coverage. Why anyone listens to these outlets
anymore is a question that I ponder at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering what the hell
happened to my country.
On PropOrNot's list is usslibertyveterans.org, which might be an indication its neocon origins.
The site has few articles, no comments and its visit counter shows under 3,800 hits. It looks
like it was created 4 months ago. It is propaganda because?
Their
stats page shows that ProOrNot's strategy might backfire. Yesterday was a record day for hits.
Or maybe usslibertyveterans.org is a fishing lure.
Who could possibly have a problem with a site on the USS Liberty? Certainly narrows down the
list of suspects considerably, assuming it wasn't a deliberate false track. For those not familiar
with the USS Liberty, it was the USN ship attacked, nearly sunk with heavy casualties, by Israel
in 1967. A lot of military still have bitterness towards Israel and the American leadership due
to the lack of justice and cover-up over that incident.
The surrounding of "Russian propaganda" with the letter 'y' reminds me a bit of
this :
(((Echo))) is a symbol used by anti-Semitic members of the alt-right to identify certain
individuals as Jewish by surrounding their names with three parentheses on each side. The symbol
became a subject of online discussions and media scrutiny in June 2016 after Google removed
a browser extension that automatically highlights Jewish surnames in the style.
Note that Israel has a lot to lose if Trump pulls the US out of the Middle East. Here's some
Russian propaganda on the issue:
Tila Tequila's Descent Into Nazism Is A Long Time Coming
The self-proclaimed "alt-reich queen" has a long history of anti-Semitism, and an even longer
one of internet trolling.
Again unless this is a false lead, these guys are looking more and more Israeli or Israeli
sympathizers. Other tweets per Greenwald at same link also suggest a pretty low maturity level.
Possibly kids or college level??
This is a lot worse than "Yellow Cake" and it scares the pants off me. This is the "Official
line", signed off on by the editors of WaPo. Think about that for a minute. And then think about
the campaign to get the EC to enthrone HRC.
Trump dissed the MSM and they are pissed off, so are their masters who wanted Obama to slide
through TPP in the period between Hillary's win and the inauguration. They blew more than $1Billion
on a loser and they may have decided that losing is not acceptable and that it will be HRC on
the throne, whatever it takes. The recklessness displayed by the MSM here is breathtaking at a
moment when the USA is more divided than it has been since the election of 1860.
I'm with you Tom Stone. There is nothing funny about this. The MSM at this point is the
greatest purveyor of fake news on the planet, I am talking about not just CNN and Fox, but the
BBC, France24 and so on.
Pretty much everything they have said and every video they has shown on east Aleppo is
either a lie or a fake. As someone noted the other day (I can't remember who) if the stories about
east Aleppo were actually true, then the Russians and Syrians have destroyed approximately 900
hospitals – including the 'last pediatric hospital in east Aleppo' which has been completely demolished
on at least three separate occasions in the last few months. The main stream outlets don't even
try to be consistent.
The people who run things here and in Europe are apparently desperate – and this latest
move is an indication of how desperate they actually are. It is indeed scary.
I am publicly apologizing to Sarah Palin who I used to think was a dingbat for all of her criticism
of the MSM aka Lame stream media. She was far, far more correct than I ever thought possible.
But look at the silver lining – how many people like me who thought that the large media got
the essential facts correct can now see how much we're being fed pure propaganda .how much of
what you see depends on what your looking for .
Weapons of Mass Distraction. Another nail in the coffin of credibility of the NYT and WaPo.
Recall after the Stupid War and how there were zero weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq
that the NYT and Wapo declined to mention or explore their own culpability in beating the drums
of war. This will be more of the same.
"Some critics of our coverage during that time have focused blame on individual reporters.
Our examination, however, indicates that the problem was more complicated. Editors at several
levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps
too intent on rushing scoops into the paper. Accounts of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed
against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted. Articles based on dire claims about
Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into
question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all."
So the Times DID admit some culpability, but it wasn't as if the Times volunteered to donate
a portion of their profits(deepen their losses?) to help Iraqi victims or US soldiers and their
families.
And given the Times Syria coverage, where even the sanctimonious Nick Kristof (August 28, 2013)
called on for Obama to bomb Syria for credibility reasons, nothing has changed at the Times.
"Yet there is value in bolstering international norms against egregious behavior like genocide
or the use
of chemical weapons. Since President Obama established a "red line" about chemical weapons use,
his
credibility has been at stake: he can't just whimper and back down."
The Times playbook is to parrot what TPTB wants to do and then if the readers subsequently
revolt in disgust, apologize later.
After I quit my digital subscription to the Times, it seems I'm limited to 10 articles/month.
This might be more than the safely recommended monthly dose of the NYTimes.
The dissimulation, the feigned ignorance (the irony). During the 1930s, the New York Times
actually acted as propaganda agents for Stalin. They collaborated with the Soviet Security Services
to prevent the rescue of millions of Ukrainian peasants (deplorables).
"In 1932 Duranty received a Pulitzer Prize for a series of reports about the Soviet Union,
11 of them published in June 1931. He was criticized then and later for his denial of widespread
famine (1932–33) in the USSR, most particularly the mass starvation in Ukraine. Years later, there
were calls to revoke his Pulitzer; The New York Times, which submitted his work for the prize
in 1932, wrote that his articles constituted "some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper."
Editors were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper.
And there you have it, boys and girls, the one driving force behind journalism as practiced
in the corporate media. If I had been paid for every time I was told to fudge a story lest the
local broadcast stations break it first, I would have been able to pay my mortgage.
This whole Russian propaganda campaign is nothing more then elites attempting to slam shut
the Overton Window that the Trump campaign has pried open a bit this year. This article explains
why they will most likely fail:
I suspect that PropOrNot's outburst was developed during the campaign by well heeled and
connected Hilary supporters to be unveiled after the election to muzzle increasingly influential
web sites including NC. As it stands PropOrNot shot a blank. If Hilary had won the campaign against
"fake news" would probably have taken on a more ominous tone.
Wolf mentioned that the list will function as a dog-whistle for money - that is, advertisers
- telling them about the dangerous places. Maybe not shooting a blank in the short run. In the
long run, of course, advertisers will follow the eyeballs anywhere.
The MSM became so biased during the Presidential election, it drove many Americans toward social
media where you could at least view campaign speaches unfiltered. The same process is now being
applied in the support of manmade climate change alarmism with hopefully the same result
i think you meant the same process is applied in the support of oil company propaganda. the
msm slavishly supported the pro fracking clinton, slavishly acted for years as if there were an
actual scientific debate, instead of fossil fuel shills vs scientists.
I really hope this doesn't get buried in the comments, because it's important to note that
Ames is actually incorrect. He would have been right as recently as 3 years ago but no longer
is.
The provisions of the Smith-Mundt act that prevented materials produced by the BGG from being
used for domestic purposes were repealed by the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 (actually
passed in 2013, when incorporated into the NDAA), which states:
The Secretary and the Broadcasting Board of Governors are authorized to use funds appropriated
or otherwise made available for public diplomacy information programs to provide for the preparation,
dissemination, and use of information intended for foreign audiences abroad about the United
States, its people, and its policies, through press, publications, radio, motion pictures,
the Internet, and other information media, including social media, and through information
centers, instructors, and other direct or indirect means of communication.
It also contains a provision that supposedly prevents the BBG from influencing domestic public
opinion, yet also says the following.
Nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit the Department of State or the Broadcasting
Board of Governors from engaging in any medium or form of communication, either directly or
indirectly, because a United States domestic audience is or may be thereby exposed to program
material, or based on a presumption of such exposure.
Worth noting: passed under Obama and discounted at the time but venues such as Mother Jones,
who did the heavy lifting of telling progressives they were paranoid.
I am guessing the proviso you quote may have been intended to cover the possibility of people
in places like Florida hearing broadcasts aimed at Cuba or other targets, but it certainly raises
questions.
What I find most despicable in all this is the cowardice of these people making up their accusations
and refusing to say who they are. Beneath contempt.
As a loophole it's not perfect (the intent of the primary provision it qualifies seems rather
clear on its face), but we're talking about people who wrote elaborate memos justifying torture
and extra judicial murder, and who went before Congress (i.e. Holder) to claim that "due process"
does not necessarily mean "judicial process." A loophole like that is more than enough to judge
such activities legal enough. I certainly can't imagine anyone in the current administration prosecuting
it.
In regards to all this 'fake news' and 'Russian propaganda' hysteria, one potential problem
I keep seeing mentioned is that certain sites could be banned from FleeceBook thereby destroying
these sites' page hits and ad revenue.
I don't use the FleeceBook so I guess I don't understand how this works. I can come to this
or any other website any time I want so why would I care that it's been banned by FleeceBook?
I don't remember exactly how I first heard of NC but I'm guessing I followed a link from one of
the other left-leaning sites I read regularly (which coincidentally also are authored by Boris
Badinov according to the WaPo). Is FB sort of like AOL back in the day where AOL users thought
they were surfing the intertubes but in reality were in some sort of AOL-approved pen? And if
that's the case I have to wonder how long it will be before FB becomes just like AOL is today,
ie mainly used by the less internet savvy. I already hear rumors that the youngsters consider
FB something only old people use.
I am genuinely interested if anyone can explain this – would it really hurt websites that much
to be banned by FB? Wouldn't there be a backlash against FB for doing so?
PS: The thing that made me start using NC as my go-to source for news besides the excellent
original financial reporting was the fact that you guys started including regular links to sites
like BAR, Counetrpunch, etc that I was already reading anyway. I feel like I can read here without
missing out on what was going on elsewhere – there's only so much one can read in a day. Keep
up the great work!
I would assume that's how they intend to hurt these sites, but we get virtually no traffic
from Facebook. However, being banned from FB would seriously dent out policy influence.
Unfortunately, Faceborg is the best way for me to stay in touch with certain people. For example,
it has a closed group called FDL-LLN which is limited to former commenters on FireDogLake. (LLN
stands for Late Late Night, which was a subforum for people to post music and discuss musical
artists; the LLN heading was used for the FB group out of, I believe, both nostalgia and the friendships
that many formed as FDL "pups".)
In addition, if you post an NC link on FB, it gets seen by many people who might not otherwise
become aware of the site.
Ah Jess I miss LLN and Suz an Tut and all the rest. But not enough to go Faceborg. Somethings
are lost some remain. I still have a phone which i use every so often.
Bob.
After a few years of FB econ sites, hashing things out with the usual suspects, things began
to increasingly change as the primaries got to the wire. Once solid commenters replete with knowlage
and experience began to mimic the very people and camps they once railed against.
It was on then when I took on these people for such actions that I started to get the FB treatment,
ending in privacy washing.
Disheveled Marsupial . especially when noting Hillary's history and bad side, sad to think
it might have been one of the old gang that put in a complaint to FB.
There is something bizarre about this whole scenario.
PropOrNot is asserting that the sites on the 'List", both right and left, were responsible
for the Clinton loss by spreading false Russian propaganda. This would make more sense, as a political
project, if Clinton had won. Asking the Trump DOJ and Trump's/Comey's FBI to investigate the asserted
causes of Trump's win is bizarre.
It only makes sense, IMHO, if this project was already in the works pre-election anticipating
a Clinton win, where it would have had the benefit of targeting both the right and the left and
continuing the drum beat for war. If that is the case, the losers appear to be too shell-shocked
or committed, financially or ideologically, to think through the implications of letting this
go forward.
I do like the idea of NC, and other left-wing sites, forming a coalition with right-wing sites
to take legal action. Ralph Nader's "Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle
the Corporate State" comes to mind.
Wasn't the reality of Russia intervention in Syria well underway by that time as well? Wasn't
the whole US Syrian ploy dependent on everybody selling the people a clear distinction between
evil Assad, evil ISIS, and good moderates (ahem al-quaeda)?
That narrative was clearly no longer believed even by the journalists writing it. Why? Sites
like this one and others. Why does it matter? Because aim was to get rid of Assad to cut Russia
out of Mideast, having failed to achieve that goal two years earlier in Ukraine. Cui bono?
Good points. Also, IIRC, internet governance is due to be turned over to a non-governmental
organization in the not too distant future. Might this not be a way of achieving the elimination
of net neutrality during a Democratic Administration that would not want to be seen as sticking
the knife in themselves?
In that scenario, it would look a lot like the present Administration is secretly working the
refs in the same way that they tried to push the TPP and its' associated ISDS provisions before
the whistle was blown on them.
This whole bizarre "fake news" meme along with the and the Russians are coming is getting widespread
media traction including Vanity Fair. It's getting repeated in Canadian media too.
Now PropOrNot not is not credited as the source but the more plausible sounding Foreign Policy
Research Institute and lots of references to the Washington Post's "reporting".
I think this is a deliberate campaign to discredit progressive and independent news sources.
God forbid that citizens should read a variety of sources and make up their own minds.
I have wondered for about a year now if someone is handing out anti-Russian story quotas –
or maybe anti-Russian story cash, with a bonus for anything that goes viral. I'm not sure how
else you explain
stuff like this from a Gawker site that was mainly focused on minimum wage law and whether
the Tilted Kilt could legally fire you for being too fat.
This current listicle feels very much the same, except with less professionalism and more credulity.
Either someone is getting paid enough not to care how asinine this looks, or the inmates really
are running the media asylum.
Naked Capitalism is in great company: BAR, Counterpunch, Antiwar, Consortium News. I didn't
need to read these sites to come to my views though, all they did is to confirm what I had come
to believe all on my own: that Hillary is a corrupt warmonger, that the American government has
been captured by the moneyed elites, that the Democrat Party is a rat nest of neoliberal infestation.
And while I was naturally predisposed toward Russia by virtue of where I was born and by Bulgarian
history, my college career was marked by my support for all of the bad policies that brought us
the new Cold War with Russia: NATO expansion, the bombing of Serbia, the economic ruin of Russia,
the unipolar world order. I was young, stupid, and ambitious. Later on I simply settled into profound
indifference toward Russia and a general anti-war attitude brought about by my own service. It
wasn't until the hysterical MSM crapstorm of breathless smears about Sochi that I began to notice
the US policies against Russia. So for me, the most effective pro-Russia propaganda outlets proved
to be US MSM, WaPo and NYT being the most effective of all. Just one of life's little ironies.
So WaPo wants to sling mud and go on a witch hunt? I suggest that they indict themselves first
and foremost, for being a mindless disseminators of US government propaganda.
"a new 'Eurasian' empire stretching from Dublin to Vladisvostok"
Why Dublin? With a flick of the finger, they could have had the flyover terrain between there
and Shannon.
And why Vladivostock? You can go a lot farther East than that and still be in Russia.
For Pete's sake, why have they not included Sapporo and the rest of Japan. Aren't they vulnerable
too?
And the Aleutians; for that matter, why not the rest of Alaska too? After all, we only bought
it from them at a knock-down price. Anyone knows they got
a raw deal. Shouldn't they want that back too?
Shannon Airport would have been appropriate as during the Cold War it was Aeroflots main base
for flying on to Cuba. Its now only a short drive from Trumps Irish golf course.
Conflicted. On the one hand, as a long time reader of a diversity of listed websites (on the
lefty side mostly), this comes across as ham fisted and, frankly, bizarre. Not only the laughable
story itself, but that it has been picked up and reposted by a host of other rather mainstream
and 'liberal' surrogates.
It is *bizarre* because Russia today is nothing of what the boogeyman USSR was in times past:
an alternative political-economic arrangement to then industrial capitalism. Russia Today (wink,
wink) is as capitalist and as democratic as any of the other players on this particular stage
(plenty of the former, not so much of the latter). An economic competitor, sure, but no USSR.
So the anti-Russia/Putin propaganda just consistently reads hollow to anyone who spends any time
just reading run of the mill reporting of goings on in the world (reporting aside from propaganda
stories). In other words, if you are a relatively informed reader of diverse sources and traveler,
the anti-Russia stuff just comes across as contrived from the get go.
But then again, I got a chance to visit with some 1000s of academic colleagues at a national
convention recently. This is where the 'conflicted' point comes from. As Good Liberals, academics
dine daily on a strict NYT, WAPO, NPR diet, with the more 'edgy' types hanging at VOX and HuffPo.
And they BELIEVE everything their beloved media tells them through these sources, without reservation
(and with the requisite snark and smirk). The academy is nearly completely captured and now so
deeply immersed in its echo chamber that any information that might challenge its perception of
the world is immediately dismissed as nefarious propaganda (either paid for by the Koch bros,
or Putin). Of course, since the elite academy is overwhelmingly Ivy educated, their worldview
loops back to their Ivy educated friends at said media outlets. Creating a bubble that is increasingly
impenetrable to reason and critical analysis.
Lots of panic for the Washington regime. The clownish asshole loser that they carefully
groomed proved less repulsive than their chosen Fuehrer Clinton. Now they are distraught to see
that their enemy Russia sucks much less than the USA.
Russians get a much better deal than the US subject population. The Russian head of state has
approval ratings that US politicians scarcely dream of. Russia complies with the Paris Principles,
the gold standard for institutionalized human rights protection under international review. The
USA does not. Russia's incorruptible President keeps kleptocrats in check, while the US banana
republic installs them in high office. Russia complies with the rule of law: they refrain from
use or threat of force and rely on pacific dispute resolution, using proportional and necessary
force in compliance with UN Charter Chapter VII. The US shits on rule of law, interpreting human
rights instruments in bad faith and flouting jus cogens to maintain impunity for the gravest crimes.
In the precise terms of Responsibility to Protect, the US government does not even meet the minimal
test for state sovereignty: compliance with the International Bill of Human Rights, the Rome Statute,
and the UN Charter. Naturally the US is bleeding legitimacy and international standing, and Russia
is going from strength to strength. If Russia invaded, we would strew flowers and sweets.
The collapse of the USSR did Russia a world of good. Now it's time for the USA to collapse
and free America.
it boils down to Soros vs Putin. Anyone who is not with Soros is with Putin, according to Soros.
Soros cannot digest the death threat he was given by Putin, to stay away from Russia or else.
Since Soros was born in old communist europe, he seems to believe he has the right to regime change
there. And he has been very successful – primarily because he is in bed with the CIA and the Russians
are just now waking up again.
So sorry! I am a foreign "propagandist" reader, commenter and contributer from Spain, and I
am just shoked to see this! How sad is this, it pretty much looks like McCarthysm again!!!!
Hi Naked Capitalism. I haven't been on this site for some time. But I felt it necessary to
comment due to an ad hominem attack from a commenter "James" regarding the show I produce at RT
called Boom Bust.
From my vantage point as producer at RT, I have been able to see the whole anti-Russia campaign
unfold in all its fury. I have a lot of thoughts on this but I want to restrict my comments to
the specific argument James makes. here:
"it's also obvious that RT invites him on the network because he lambasts the American political
establishment and weakens the public's confidence in its leaders. This is clearly a goal of Moscow,
and they use people like Steve Keen to do it. I'm sure Steven Keen doesn't think of his role that
way, but RT and Russian intelligence certainly do."
Since I produce the show that Steve Keen appears on, I am well-placed to give you a view on
this. James' comment is flat out false. What James writes is something he has fabricated in his
imagination – connecting dots he believes should be connected based on no first hand evidence
whatsoever.
What actually happens on Boom Bust is this:
Since no one I work with at RT has a sophisticated background in economics, finance or financial
reporting, they give us a wide berth in putting together content for our show with nearly no top
down dictates at all. That means we as American journalists have a pretty much free hand to report
economic news intelligently and without bias. We invite libertarian, mainstream, non-mainstream,
leftist, Democratic commentators, Republican commentators – you name it. As for guests, they are
not anti-American in any way shape or form. They are disproportionately non-mainstream.
We have no pro-Russian agenda. And that is in part because Russia is a bit player on the economic
stage, frankly. Except for sanctions, it has mostly been irrelevant on our show since inception.
Let me share a strange anecdote on that. We had a guest on our show about three years ago,
early in my tenure. We invited him on because he had smart things to say about the UK economy.
But he had also written some very negative things about Putin and Russia. Rather than whitewash
this we addressed it specifically in the interview and asked him an open-ended question about
Russia, so he could say his piece. I was ASTONISHED when he soft-pedaled his response and made
no forceful case as he had done literally days ago in print. This guy clearly self-censored –
for what reason I don't know. But it is something that has stayed with me ever since.
The most important goal from a managerial perspective has been that our reporting is different
i.e. covers missing and important angles of the same storyline that are missing in the mainstream
media or that it covers storylines that are missing altogether.
Neither Steve Keen nor any other guest on our show appears "because he lambasts the American
political establishment". This is false. He appears on our show because he is a credible economist
who provides a differentiated view on economics and insight that we believe will help our viewers
understand the global economy. If Paul Krugman had something to say of that nature and would appear
on our show, we would welcome him. In fact, I and other producers have reached out to him many
times to no avail, especially after we had Gerald Friedman give his take on the dust-up surrounding
Bernie Sanders' economic plan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yna275KzuDQ
Look, I understand the scepticism about RT and its motives. It IS a state-funded news outlet
with news story angles that sometimes contrast sharply with western media. And it has not been
critical of the Russian government as far as I can tell. But you can't ascribe nefarious motives
to individual economists or reporters based on inaccurate or false third hand accounts. You are
just making things up, creating a false narrative based on circumstantial evidence. This is just
adding to the building peer pressure associated with what almost seems like an orchestrated campaign
to discredit non-mainstream sources of news.
You are in good company with that suspicion of a campaign to "sanitize" the public's sources
of information. If one were to consider the Corporate sector as the equivalent of a state, then
almost all news sources are liable to extra strong scrutiny. Going back to Bernays, the "shepherding"
of the news sources used by the majority of the population is crucial to maintaining control of
public perceptions. In that sense, the present struggle for control of the news narrative is understandable.
Keep up the good work.
Isn't that a compliment? I mean it does say "leading" (and I have to agree).
As for "left-wing", well NC does frequently feature articles by Bill Black & others associated
with the University of Mo. Kansas City; and UMKC has long been known for its lefty, socialist/commie
leanings – I know because my 81 y.o. mother told me so (and I had a prof. there teaching "History
of Economic Thought" who came right out & claimed to be a Socialist – horrors!)
Lambert foresaw that there would be a witch hunt after the election. He indicated that it would
come from the Democratic Party and the conserva-Dem establishment. And, ecco!, a witch hunt. So
what could possibly be the source?
I am noticing on my Facebook feeds that the ooshy liberals are in a feeding frenzy: They believe
that they are victims of some breakdown in information. The shocker was that the news being passed
around in DemPartyLandia was that the Democrats were on the verge of retaking both houses of Congress
and the presidency. Meanwhile, Water Cooler showed that the neither house of Congress was truly
in play and the presidential race was a dead heat. After the election, various lists began to
circulate. The one cited by Yves isn't the first. I saw one list that included The Onion, The
Daily Currant, and Duffel Blog. You mean Duffel Blog's story on U.S. soldiers trying en masse
to join the Canadian army isn't true?
Further, much of liberaldom is now deep into trying to flip the Electoral College or amend
the Constitution immediately, as well as the Trump as Fascist meme.
Yes, America, land of self-proclaimed bad-asses, turns out to be the realm of panic. And many
policies and stances are going to have to be suddenly revised: Ooshy liberals, who supported charter
schools for years, are suddenly shocked that DeVos of Amway is a charter-school addict. The disastrous
foreign-policy adventures of the last few years have to be offloaded very soon on Trump, so that
Obama can be thanked for being scandal-free.
And, evidently, the conspiracy is now so big that it can't be blamed solely on Al-Jazeera.
This means we need more outlets besides Google and Facebook; outlets impervious to witch hunts
– maybe offshore enterprises, after all that's the trend. The more the merrier for manufacturing
dissent – in a good sense. What Russia does cannot harm us but it is always good to hear their
take; and China is interesting as well. We get such gobbledegook from MSM we would never understand
a single issue without alternative news. It's a little late for them to be all hysterical about
losing their grip – they've been annoying us and boring us to death for 5 decades; and selling
us down the river. I'm amazed they have a following at all.
The military industrial complex and all the elites are behind all this massive propaganda stuff
and fake news. They want war and nothing is going to stand in their way – not the democrats, not
the republicans, no one. HRC knew this – hence her "paranoia" about Russia. It's crazy. I hope
Trump has the balls to stand up against them. Thanks NC for being here --
With the Washington Post at least, there is a pretty handy avenue of response. Namely that
its CEO Jeff Bezos, who clearly approves of the editorial policy, is also owner of Amazon.com
If you don't approve of Mr. Bezos using his media platform to revive McCarthyism and Yellow Journalism,
keep that in mind when doing your holiday shopping, and when you see that item you were thinking
of buying on amazon, take a moment to see about buying it elsewhere, even if it costs a bit more
to do so. If Mr. Bezos want to use the Washington Post to promote censorship of media control,
make him pay for it in a drop in Amazon's stock price.
"Information globalism is a free flow of information across the world irrespective of race,
source geography. Its up to a competent reader being selective- choosing what sort of information
they want consuming. Its the bases of choice, a basic human right."
The Clinton campaign announced today they'll be joining the recount effort. Greens start a
recount effort, Friday WaPo prints vile rumors, Saturday Clinton campaign announces it is joining
the Wisc recount effort. This is banana republic stuff.
One of the most egregious examples is the group's inclusion of Naked Capitalism, the widely
respected left-wing site run by Wall Street critic Yves Smith. That site was named by Time
Magazine as one of the best 25 Best Financial Blogs in 2011 and by Wired Magazine as a crucial
site to follow for finance, and Smith has been featured as a guest on programs such as PBS'
Bill Moyers Show. Yet this cowardly group of anonymous smear artists, promoted by the Washington
Post, has now placed them on a blacklist of Russian disinformation.
From the propornot website (deliberately not linking it) the YYY thing is really creepy.
The YYYcampaignYYY is an effort to crowdsource identifying Russian propaganda outlets and
sympathizers. To participate, when you see a social-media account, commenter, or outlet echoing
Russian propaganda themes, highlight it with YYYs accordingly!
Reminds me of the (((name of jewish person))) thing that popped up very briefly in the right
wing fever swamp only to be instantly proudly self-added by a ton of jewish liberals.
I have come to the conclusion, based on personal observation, that anyone who includes the
words "our leaders" in their narrative is not to be trusted. Granted, it's a personal thing, as
I have been advocating whenever possible that we should under no circumstances apply that label
to our elected officials but should instead always use their proper designation: "public servants."
Anyone want to wager a thorough check of the MSM for the last fifty years or more would eventually
uncover the first one of their ilk to refer to elected officials as "our leaders"? To then be
followed by all of the others?
Because how better to persuade the voting public that they should just fill in the bubble or
push the button without asking a lot of silly questions about issues than by subtly brainwashing
them with the implication the people they're voting for are better equipped to deal with the important
stuff? Because "our leaders" are clearly better qualified to make the decisions than we are.
Interesting. Google's n-gram viewer shows that "our leaders" is much more prevalent
in books during and after wartime, peaking in 1942-44, with a somewhat steady rise between
just before WW1 and the end of WW2 (upon which each war is superimposed), and an odd reversal
upward around 1996 whose incline isn't much deflected by 9/11, and which levels off around 2005.
It's almost like looking at the Third Way made flesh.
My ex husband told me that back in the 70s when he was applying for a government job, he had
to undergo an extensive FBI check. The fibbies found out he had a subscription to "Soviet Life"
(a magazine about cultural, economic stuff in the USSR). As a result, his neighbors, family, past
co-workers were all interviewed to see if he was a "subversive." The Russophobia has a long history.
I agree with many commenters that Pravda's ProPorNet's listing is heading somewhere scary.
The MSM got the message that they have no credibility anymore, and they're in a panic, as are
the neocons/neolibs. I think after the US backed Ukrainian coup failed to nudge Russia into a
war, this "Russian aggression" meme started in earnest. Now that the election is over and the
"favored one" lost, it is quite telling to me that the panicked establishment isn't going to go
quietly. They were planning on having WWIII, and are furious now.
I'm too young to remember McCarthyism, but this stuff is frightening.
[..]Also included are popular libertarian hubs such as Zero Hedge, Antiwar.com and the Ron
Paul Institute, along with the hugely influential right-wing website the Drudge Report and the
publishing site WikiLeaks.
[..]One of the most egregious examples is the group's inclusion of Naked Capitalism, the widely
respected left-wing site run by Wall Street critic Yves Smith. That site was named by Time Magazine
as one of the best 25 Best Financial Blogs in 2011 and by Wired Magazine as a crucial site to
follow for finance, and Smith has been featured as a guest on programs such as PBS' Bill Moyers
Show. Yet this cowardly group of anonymous smear artists, promoted by the Washington Post, has
now placed them on a blacklist of Russian disinformation.[..]
Key line from Greenwald IMO: "The Post story served the agendas of many factions: those who
want to believe Putin stole the election from Hillary Clinton; those who want to believe that
the internet and social media are a grave menace that needs to be controlled, in contrast to the
objective truth which reliable old media outlets once issued; those who want a resurrection of
the Cold War."
me: The only way the mainstream media can get its power back is by killing or at least crippling
the internet.
A bunch of people in the U.S. got fed up, and now it means that a lot of people who were used
to only having contact with other people like themselves and hanging out at fancy parties are
being told they need to start interacting with the general public or get a different job, and
they're not happy about it.
Just last week I made my first ever reader contribution to NC–now I wish I had waited a few
days so my donation could be interpreted as an "FU" to ProporNot. :)
This Washington Post piece is so insidious as to make my blood run cold. We've seen
in "education reform" how the Gates Foundation and Walton Foundation would place un-sourced propaganda
in articles by friendly reporters in the WaPost and the NYTimes and then reference
the news outlets as proving their propaganda to be "fact."
As some know, I am a professional conspiracy theorist, having served as a local-level
criminal prosecutor for over 32 years. I see a grave threat to the First Amendment when
an anonymous source suspected to have ties to the military-industrial complex calls for the government
to investigate news sources for espionage.
I also find it interesting that The Intercept didn't make the list, despite the presence
of Glenn Greenwald. Given Pierre Omidyar's closeness to the current administration (was FirstLook
created to take Greenwald and Taibbi out of circulation during the 2012 election?), is there some
sort of "tell" here about where this attack on Free Speech is coming from?
Those on this blacklist should pool resources to pursue retraction, repudiation, and an admission
by the Post editorial board that Timberg's outrageously un-sourced "reporting" is libelous
and was published with an at best reckless and at worst intentional disregard for the truth.
Probably true, though also worth noting that (as has been observed frequently here), the Intercept's
regular reporting on Ukraine and Syria was often little better than mainstream outlets.
What is even more alarming, this seems to be coordinated with Jane Harmon's recent advocacy
of a FISA drone court which also targets "enemy" web sites. Is this a prelude to shutting down
dissenting web sites based on their status as foreign agents of our arch enemy "Russia" which
the European Parliament has equated with Daesh. There is a sense of impending revolution world
wide, is this the first step to preempt such? Is martial law the next step? There seemed to be
a lot of projection involved when the neo-libs accused Trump of fascism and not accepting election
results. Who is now not accepting election results and who are the real fascists calling for the
shutting down of news outlets?
Yet another reason why political establishment got what it deserved this election cycle. They
still think that a bit of propaganda denied them a victory and there is nothing wrong with their
policies
WaPo is now too vile to read.
McClatchy is still a fairly good news source. And, oh, look at this: Clinton campaign will join
recount effort in Wisconsin. Not surprising.
Jill Stein has embarrassed herself with this effort. I gave money to her until she made
her final vp choice – Baraka called Bernie a white supremacist! I did vote for her and now feel
it really was a wasted vote. 1% in the national totals. Ok. Being a useful idiot for the Clintons
– no way.
Ah yes, one more chance to steal the election. Syria must fall and be partitioned. Russia must
be driven from the Ukraine, the internet must be cleansed of dissent. Patent and Copyright monopolies
must be imposed on the world. This election took TPTB by surprise, they are surprised no longer.
Trump does not want to be President, he's scared to death. The consensus is that the results will
not change. Don't be so sure. There may yet be a coronation and then the shit will hit the proverbial
fan. Apparently it was not enough for TPTB to control both parties, they also control the minor
parties. Et tu Jill Stein!
Hillary and her handlers had the choice to lose to Bernie or to Trump. They chose Trump.
(OK, maybe not consciously.)
Now, they are are NOT happy with the result but please notice that Bernie is looking better,
has more news coverage, even appearing on The View, for crying out loud! Yes veal pen, "outreach",
whatever. Doesn't matter what they Think They are crafting.
If they keep up the Rooskie angle they will be amazed how good Bernie starts to look.
A little FB censorship. Ditto! Shut down some international protests. (In North Dakota) Bingo!
Drive people into the street! Whoooee!
They, DNC, Bezos et al, will pine for him before this is all over. Because he is the symbol
for what could have happened if they had followed the law and had gone peacefully.
They can't see it yet.
BTW, RT has a 30 minute segment with Chris Hedges at Standing Rock circulating now.
Seems legit to me. Decide for yourself.
Yves stand up and take a bow. You have been noticed by the filth. One of the many reassuring
signs to come from the corridors of power lately. Is it possible change really is coming?
I have just learned of a group in the European Parliament led by a Polish MEP and member of
the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformers in Europe that is likewise attempting to create a
fear of "fake news" from those sites that don't follow the MSM Editors' example of restraint in
publication.
It has this week received a huge injection of public money to extend its work. It seems that
North America and Europe are in lockstep on the need to keep the people ignorant.
If this site is seriously trying to help snowflakes create information-safe-places, then it
needs to protect them from my blog, too.
Fair is fair. I deserve recognition.
I also think Ilargi @ The Automatic Earth is being snubbed through their non-inclusion of that
site.
Everybody should email them and demand that all worthy blogs get included in their precious list.
When the rot is complete and the edifice tumbles? Or when TINA wins, and the voices go silent?
My bet is on the later. Collectively, the money got all 4 aces (and a few more hidden up their
sleaves and a few more hidden in their boots, etc – no end of aces.)
Then the silence reigns and TINA is happy. Despair is walled offed into its own echo chamber
and silence is taken for acquiescence and indifference.
Until it doesn't.
Human history just keeps playing the same music. Mind you, big nature might be adding a new
wrinkle to march-of-death tune. Interesting times, very interesting.
Charles Hugh-Smith's response to the "list": "The Washington Post: Useful-Idiot Shills for
a Failed, Frantic Status Quo That Has Lost Control of the Narrative"
"... Over on CNN, contributor David Gregory (a onetime rising star at NBC) on November 18 slapped Trump's pick for National Security advisor, General Michael Flynn, for his allegedly "short-sighted, ignorant thinking." Two days later, on NBC's Sunday Today , Bloomberg's John Heilemann said Trump's Cabinet was shaping up to be a "really, really old white group of old white men." ..."
"... Trump's election itself was cause for mourning. New York Times columnist Tom Friedman , on HBO's Real Time on November 11, equated it with the bloodiest day in U.S. history since the Battle of Antietam: "This is a moral 9/11. Only 9/11 was done to us from the outside and we did this to ourselves." ..."
During the campaign, the liberal news media did everything they could to prevent Donald Trump's election
- including
91% negative coverage from the broadcast networks - but he won anyway. Now, journalists are trashing
the way Trump is handling his transition, as well as his early Cabinet picks.
But eight years ago, viewers heard a very different tone coming from the media, as journalists
celebrated the election of Barack Obama, cheered the "brain power" of the "team of geniuses" he was
assembling for his Cabinet, and tingled over how "cool" Obama seemed as he assumed the responsibilities
of office.
With Trump, the media are touting the "continuing turmoil" in his transition, as ABC's Tom Llamas
claimed on the November 16 Good Morning America . "No one really knows who's in charge,"
correspondent Hallie Jackson echoed that evening on NBC's Nightly News . The selection of
Steve Bannon on November 13 as a top White House advisor was
greeted by the broadcast networks with phrases such as "white nationalist," "white supremacist,"
"extremist," "racist" and "anti-Semitic."
Over on CNN, contributor
David Gregory (a onetime rising star at NBC) on November 18 slapped Trump's pick for National
Security advisor, General Michael Flynn, for his allegedly "short-sighted, ignorant thinking." Two
days later, on NBC's Sunday Today , Bloomberg's
John Heilemann said Trump's Cabinet was shaping up to be a "really, really old white group of
old white men."
Trump's election itself was cause for mourning. New York Times columnist
Tom Friedman , on HBO's Real Time on November 11, equated it with the bloodiest day
in U.S. history since the Battle of Antietam: "This is a moral 9/11. Only 9/11 was done to us from
the outside and we did this to ourselves."
On MSNBC the day after the election, host
Lawrence O'Donnell bitterly griped: "There is the stench of the Trumpian vulgarity in the air
now. Half the country is reeling under the hard to accept realization that they're going be hearing
that voice every day for four years."
But when liberal icon Barack Obama was preparing to assume power, the media took a very different
approach. Here are a few examples, from the archives of the Media Research Center:
Signing Up for Obama's Revolution
MSNBC's Chris Matthews: "You know what? I want to do everything I can to make this thing work,
this new presidency work, and I think that-"
Host Joe Scarborough: "Is that your job? You just talked about being a journalist."
Matthews: "Yeah, it is my job. My job is to help this country....This country needs a successful
presidency more than anything right now."
- Exchange on MSNBC's Morning Joe , November 6, 2008.
We Just Can't Wait One Minute More
"If I had my druthers right now, we would convene a special session of Congress, amend the Constitution
and move up the inauguration from Jan. 20 to Thanksgiving Day....Just get me a Supreme Court justice
and a Bible, and let's swear in Barack Obama right now - by choice - with the same haste we did -
by necessity - with L.B.J. in the back of Air Force One. "
- New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, November 23, 2008.
Obama's Cabinet: Excellence, Brain Power, a "Team of Geniuses"
Host Keith Olbermann: "Is there going to be an overarching theme in the appointments? We discussed
this last night, competency, bipartisanship, diversity, newness, where are they going?" Newsweek 's Howard Fineman: "Well, it's going to be all of those. But I think, if you had
to pick one, it would be excellence."
- MSNBC's Countdown , November 5, 2008.
Co-host Robin Roberts: "Some would say it's a team of rivals, a la President Lincoln, or is a
better comparison a team of geniuses as FDR did?"
ABC's George Stephanopoulos: "Well, one Obama advisor told me what they like is a combination of
team of rivals and The Best and the Brightest , which is the David Halberstam book about
the incoming Kennedy administration.... We have not seen this kind of combination of star power and
brain power and political muscle this early in a cabinet in our lifetimes."
- ABC's Good Morning America , November 24, 2008.
"It's also a meritocracy. These are superstars, not afraid of strong personalities - Larry Summers
inside the White House - but people with so much brain power, and so much education, and a combination
of talents here."
- NBC's Andrea Mitchell on Obama's cabinet, December 21, 2008 Meet the Press .
Of course, the media will get little sympathy from the public, with a favorable rating sitting
at an all-time low in the latest Gallup survey. Only 32 percent of Americans say they have a
great deal or fair amount of trust in the press.
And Trump's allies believe all of their moves to beat back at what they view as a hopelessly
biased liberal media are justified.
They're fuming over what they see as a press corps that has dropped any pretense of objectivity
in covering Trump, and they're sick of what they view as breathless coverage of frivolous
stories...
President-elect Donald Trump recently had an 'off the record' meeting with members of the American
press, aka mainstream media. Such events are not unusual for presidents and future presidents, but
according to a variety anonymous sources, Donald Trump has not extended an olive branch to media
figures who displayed their open bias against him throughout the campaign. >
According to The Hill, Trump said that being in front of the mainstream media was like, "Being
in front of a fucking firing squad". Other sources claim he repeatedly said that he was in a
"room full of liars". If he indeed said either of those things, it is difficult to disagree
with such an assessment. He also claimed that he "hated" CNN, feelings which seem self-evidently
mutual.
According to the generally anti-Trump Politico, the President-elect blasted NBC for using unflattering
photographs of him throughout their coverage.
Whether or not these reports are fully accurate is beside the point. Frankly, why would one trust
off the record comments from people who publicly slandered Trump on the record and did so without
a hint of shame.
What is more significant is what Trump said about his use of social media during his lengthy interview
on CBS's 60 Minutes. Here, Trump said that social media is an effective way to bypass big-media
and speak directly to the public. He also stated that it is a quick, cheap and effective way to clarify
misstatements made by the mainstream media.
This is unequivocally true and it is heartening. To think that a small smartphone has the ability
to reach as many and at times even more people than the mainstream media with their millions of dollars
worth of cameras, microphones, lights, sets, drivers, vehicles, offices and staff, is a sign that
the world is no longer beholden to the arrogant gatekeepers of news, perhaps better referred to as
"fake news".
Donald Trump was indeed given a very unfair time by the media and he has no reason to forget nor
forgive. He also has no reason to placate them, and frankly due to the power of new-media, online
media and his own highly effective use of social media, he doesn't need them.
They are relics of the past and he is a symbol of the future.
Steven Barry
The alt-media is the samizdat (google it) of the internet age. The genie is out of the
bottle and there is no putting it back.
Simon
Excellent. Yet even 'IF' the reports of this meeting are exaggerated, there is a fact that
is undeniable; The new President is holding Court in his own palace, on top of his own castle,
in New York.
All the supplicants are coming to him. Even the Japanese Prime minister. He sits there in the
economic capital of the USA rather than being in Washington - where presumably something like
the HQ of the Republican Party would be the more normal venue for a president-elect.
Far away in the DC Swamp (which voted 94% Hillary) the politicians, the hacks, the lobbyists
the 'professionals' are in panic - there's no way to meet him, no way to do lunch at 30mins
notice. All they have is the tragic ghost of BHO wandering around the White House, but the
glitz the zeitgeist the locus is now at Trump Tower. Every day we see its lobby and the golden
lift in the news.
Many believe nothing will change, but so far there are plenty signs that it has.
tom > Simon
Let's hope the Trump Tower doesn't get 9/11'd.
le-DeplorableFroggy > tom
As long as the Mossad terrorists are kept OUT of the US from now on, and every zionist
stooge is either locked up or thrown OUT of this country, NO more israHell/Mossad false flags
in the US.
● How Ehud Barak Pulled Off 9-11 - (bollyn dot com/how-ehud-barak-pulled-off-9-11-2)
● MADE IN ISRAEL - 9-11 and the Jewish Plot Against America PDF - (shop.americanfreepress dot
net/store/c/25-Israel.html)
● 9-11 EVIL - Israel's Central Role in the September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks - (shop.americanfreepress
dot net/store/c/25-Israel.html)
● Get the Hell Out of Our Country! Parts 1 to 5 - (veteranstoday dot
com/2015/02/05/get-the-hell-out-of-our-country/)
● Israel a cornered rat - "In 10 years there will be no more Israel" - Henry 'Balloonie'
Kizzinger - (darkmoon dot me/2014/israel-a-cornered-rat/)
● Netanyahu tells ministers not to talk to Trump's people - (theuglytruth.wordpress dot
com/2016/11/21/netanyahu-tells-ministers-not-to-talk-to-trumps-people/#more-162166)
7.62x54r • 3 days ago
US media ( and other NATO media ) are propagandists. The US Big 6 should have their
licenses yanked for putting forth a flawed and wholly dishonest product. Screw them.
"... If Trump hadn't settled on Make America Great Again for a slogan, he could have easily run on "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it any more!" ..."
"... Nobody wants news any more, says Christensen, as she ruthlessly lays out a template for the coming age of "disinfotainment" and canned news-porn. ..."
Network at 40: the flawed satire that predicted Trump and cable 'news porn'. Prescient and powerful,
the film foreshadowed the likes of Bill O'Reilly with its 'mad as hell' protagonists and the climate
of American anger that birthed Trump
Does this sound familiar? "The American people are turning us off. They've been clobbered by Vietnam,
Watergate, the inflation, the depression. They've turned off, shot up the American people want
someone to articulate their rage." And how about this? "There is no America. There is no democracy.
There is only IBM and ITT, and ATT and DuPont, Dow, Union-Carbide and Exxon. The world is a business
it has been ever since man crawled up out of the slime."
Change the historical events, change the names of the conglomerates, and these speeches could
have been written yesterday morning about, or by, President-elect Donald J Trump. He is Network screenwriter
Paddy Chayefsky's nightmare made real, his blistering satire come completely true just in time for
the film's 40th anniversary this week. If Trump hadn't settled on Make America Great Again for
a slogan, he could have easily run on "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it any more!"
Network is like a time machine: when it was released four decades ago this week it more or less
accurately predicted the state of media as it is 40 years later. It mourns the original golden age
of television – the 1950s – of which Paddy Chayefsky was a major and emblematic figure, but it partakes
of all that era's shortcomings, too: overstatement, speechifying, ranting, self-indulgent writing,
sledgehammer subtlety.
Trump could have easily run on a slogan of 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it any
more!'
It also, nonetheless, looks startlingly like a work that would fit snugly into the current golden
age of television alongside shows like The Newsroom and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. The creator
of those shows, Aaron Sorkin, even went so far as to invoke Chayefsky when he received his screenwriting
Oscar for The Social Network.
Network's most famous virtue is its extreme and eerie prescience about where the news media
would go in the next decades. Howard Beale, "the mad prophet of the airwaves", lurks behind
any number of real-life media ranters and screamers of our own time, from Bill O'Reilly to Sean Hannity,
Glenn Beck to Alex Jones.
Faye Dunaway's carnivorous network suit Diana Christensen – Sammy Glick via Tracy Flick – is derived
from young TV execs of the 1970s who were accused of infantilizing the medium. People like NBC daytime
programmer Lin Bolen and Fred Silverman, who serially headed all three networks, in particular. Network
takes the side of the old against the young, seeing youth as a destructive, insatiable, Darwinian
force that will ultimately usurp William Holden's ageing newsroom chief Max Schumacher.
Nobody wants news any more, says Christensen, as she ruthlessly lays out a template for the
coming age of "disinfotainment" and canned news-porn. The first step of which is to bring the
independent news division under the heel of network entertainment programming. What Shumacher dreams
up in a drunken haze as a joke, she makes reality – or reality television, as it had yet to be known.
'It is a pre-digital realm of rotary phones, filing cabinets, steno pads and typewriters; the
newsroom is an exact match for the newsroom in All the President's Men '
Another of Network's accidental byproducts is the nostalgia one feels right from its opening shot
of four TV network news anchors – three real, one fictional. In those pre-Fox years, of course, there
were only three networks, and they underpinned what was left of the American consensus after Goldwater
and Nixon, Vietnam and Watergate. It is a pre-digital realm of rotary phones, filing cabinets, steno
pads and typewriters; the newsroom is an exact match for the newsroom in All the President's Men,
also released during the bicentennial, and the idealistic yin to Network's pessimistic yang.
And the mid-1970s was almost insane enough to obviate satire entirely. Network is embedded in
the very real world of 1975, satire notwithstanding. We hear of "the Lennon deportation", the two
recent assassination attempts on President Gerald Ford, the Opec price hike, and the Patty Hearst
kidnapping. Indeed, the movie mentions multiple heiress-terrorists and offers us one of its own,
played by Kathy Cronkite, daughter of Walter, America's most trusted anchorman.
Forty years later, Network is half a masterpiece. At more or less the one-hour mark, right after
the mad-as-hell speech and 60 minutes of very sure-footed satire, it loses all steam and caves in
on itself. Chayefsky falls prey to all the spell-it-out vices of the golden age of television, and
one can imagine it all in black-and-white, being broadcast in 1956. Character names aren't exactly
subtle: Robert Duvall's shark-like executive, prone to budget-slashing, is named Hackett, while the
affair between Dunaway and Holden plays like bad Philco Playhouse dross.
Everybody gets a chance to yell at great length, and with the exception of Duvall (who is here
turned up to maximum Charlie-Don't-Surf!), few of them carry it off well. Even Mr Jensen's apocalyptic
bollocking of Peter Finch ("Valhalla, Mr Beale, Please sit down ") seems faintly risible now. And
the dialogue betrays a working-class autodidact's over-fondness for Big Words: "multivariant", "auspicatory",
"eraculate", "intractable and adamantine"!
Chayefsky, a creature of postwar television, despises what it has become (he'd quit TV in disgust
in 1960). The young are all vacant, amoral gargoyles. The black characters are near-racist caricatures
puking up demented Marxist-Leninist verbiage while eating fried chicken and cradling machine guns.
Satire repeatedly merges with spite and contempt – for characters and audience – putting Network
up there with A Face in the Crowd in the never-ending war between Hollywood and upstart television.
But still, there is that breathtaking, unnerving prescience, which makes one sorry that three
of Network's principal architects – Chayefsky, Finch and Holden – were dead long before it became
apparent. And there is this, from Finch-Beale, a line that reaches straight across 40 years of time
and grabs us by the throat: " This tube is the most awesome goddamn force in the whole godless
world, and woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people! " Perhaps it's
too late.
From a bonanza of free airtime to an overt media campaign against him, Donald Trump was a candidate
covered like no other. But were journalists unwitting accomplices in his election? And where does
the industry go from here?
"... That being the case I'm sorry I voted for Stein and question her honesty and the Green Party itself. Since the allegations of hacked voting machines sound shaky at best, one starts to wonder whether the allegations that Stein was in fact a vaxxer are true. But more to the point one wonders whether she has HRC on the speed dial. ..."
So Jill Stein, who said on the campaign trail that Clinton is more dangerous than Trump, is
filing for a recount with the specific aim of overturning the result and making Clinton president–at
least according to your link.
That being the case I'm sorry I voted for Stein and question her honesty and the Green Party
itself. Since the allegations of hacked voting machines sound shaky at best, one starts to wonder
whether the allegations that Stein was in fact a vaxxer are true. But more to the point one wonders
whether she has HRC on the speed dial.
"... In the last 100+ years, there has never been an alternative world that wasn't thoroughly infiltrated by the mainstream world. ..."
"... the Russians remain the scappiest goat of all http://theduran.com/war-with-russia-us-politicians-close-to-approving-no... ..."
"... You mean Hillary didn't win? Pre-election night Woof Bitzer said 98% chance.... wtf?! ..."
"... This "fake news" bullshit isn't going to gain any traction. As soon as folks find their favorite alt site on the list, it'll just confirm what most already know. ..."
"... Presstitute lamestream media ..."
"... I've found the inverse also applies, that is, when something peculiar or seemingly significant is reported then quickly sent 'down the memory hole' it usually has great importance. ..."
They kept telling the American people Hillary Clinton was going to win the election; and in every
way they could think of, they told the American people this was a good idea.
Then, on election night, they, the media, crashed.
The results came in.
The media went into deep shock.
As protests and riots then spread across America, the media neglected to mention a) they'd been
bashing Trump because he said he might not accept the outcome of the vote, and b) here were large
numbers of people on the Democrat side who weren't accepting the outcome of the vote.
A new campaign had to be launched.
Suddenly, on cue, it was: Hillary Clinton lost because "fake news" about her had been spread around
during the campaign.
Fake news sites. That was the reason.
These "fake sites" had to be punished. Somehow. They had to be defamed. Blocked. Censored.
Here is an excerpt from a list of "fake news" sites suggested by one professor. The list is circulating
widely on the Web: Project Veritas; Infowars; Breitbart; Coast To Coast AM; Natural News; Zero Hedge;
The Daily Sheeple; Activist Post; 21st Century Wire.
Free speech? Bill of Rights? Never heard of it.
Excuse me. "We won't know what to protect?" Meaning what to favor, what to promote, what to lie
about? Meaning only some speech is free?
Obama is way, way behind the curve. Thousands of websites and blogs have been exposing major media
as fake for years. I started nomorefakenews.com
in 2001.
If Google, Facebook, and Twitter keep expanding their censorship of "disfavored messages," they're
going to pay a price. More and more users will go elsewhere.
The facade of the major media is getting thinner. You can see a glow of rage and resentment behind
it. They're desperately looking for revenge on the millions and millions of people who are deserting
them and laughing at them.
They presumed too much. They presumed they had us in the palm of their hand. We were their property.
We were transfixed by their authority.
All that is going away. Bye, bye.
The big shift is accelerating. Independent media are in the ascendance. Understand that. Recognize
it.
The impossible is happening.
Fake news sites? Please. The major media are the biggest fakes the world has ever seen. Their
anchors and star reporters are bloviating cranks. They're dinner-theater actors.
Over the years, I've talked to some of them. I've warned them of their coming troubles. They were
miles away from believing me. Now, they're starting to sweat blood.
Major media news for America is still basically manufactured in New York and Washington-plus occasional
outbursts from Hollywood creatures who bemoan the decline of inclusive liberalism, as they expand
their gun-toting security staffs and dig deeper bunkers. The New York-Washington axis exists in a
self-serving bubble, which has now taken serious punctures. The delusional attacks against "fake
sites" underlines how out of touch these elites are with the rest of the country.
Independent media outlets are winning. They won't be stopped.
When the people who now head the tech giants were growing up, they were heralding the Internet
as a new era of free information-exchange. But now that they find themselves working with the government
in the Surveillance State, they're fronting for censorship. In fact, they're showing they were never
for freedom. That was a pose all along. They were, from the beginning, agents of repression. They
can try to stop independent media now, but they will fail.
Fake web sites? What about fake companies? What about Google, Facebook, Twitter? Behind their
happy-happy messages, they were built to propagandize, profile, and control.
Understand this: major media have a rock-bottom article of faith. It is: "We own the news."
They can't give it up. They'll never give it up. It fuels everything they do. It's the substance
and core of their attitude.
As their ship goes down below the waves, they'll be chanting it. "We own the news."
But they don't. In truth, they never did. For a time, they managed to sell that delusion to the
people.
That time is drawing to a close.
The elite political class and their media minions fear more than independent news countering their
own news. For obvious reasons, every civilization down through history has had its own monopolistic
media, its central "broadcasting system." Its controlled outlet. But now, The One has become Many.
That is the threat.
The rapid proliferation of The Many is an unpredictable X-factor.
The population is waking up to decentralized media. Instead of the hypnotic attachment to one
basic information source - the habit of a lifetime - the public is learning to handle multiple sources.
Therefore, the hypnotic spell is being broken and dissolved.
This is the basic problem for the elites.
How can they reinstate the trance?
By trying to censor the Internet? By creating a sudden war or other disaster, briefly "unifying"
the country? These are not permanent solutions, particularly since more and more people understand
such maneuvers and their true aims.
Awake is awake. Putting the genie back in the bottle - particularly when major media denizens
aren't very bright, as evidenced by their latest "fake news" scam - is on the order of trying to
perform a piece of stage magic after the audience has already learned how it's done.
Of course, the media clowns will try. And in the process, they'll further expose themselves and
actually assist in the awakening.
Here is how bad the prog media SUCKS and they say nary a word. Obama tweeted out "I'm extremely
proud of the fact that over 8 years we have not had the kinds of scandals that have plagued other
administrations."
This "fake news" bullshit isn't going to gain any traction. As soon as folks find their favorite
alt site on the list, it'll just confirm what most already know.
I would rather have a 1,000 points of light than the MSM --
the proliferation of news, fact - editorial based news sites will usher in a new age of education
for the American public - it does not matter if they are fake or not - sooner or later they will
figure it out what is real - the lack of concentration and focus on the MSM will produce ..........more
and deeper truth
The best part of Nov 8th was watching Wolf Blitzer proving himself an idiot on live television.
The degree of certitude, the degree of distrust of facts his own people were putting forward,
was a great bit of theater. I was waiting for him to say why he was so convinced that things would
somehow swing back to his version of reality. What did he think it meant when 40k people waited
in the cold at 1 am in Grand Rapids? what a maroon. There is no recovering your reputation as
an expert after such an epic fail.
Alternatives do mature and go through cycles. Lean/raw to fat/lazy. There's always new alternatives.
You can't wait for the alternative to find you. It starts with high quality education and non-stop
desire for knowledge. Dig for the alternative.
"The fact that we will not reestablish [another] Walter Cronkite, because of technology... does
not mean we can't have people who are trusted. Brian Williams is sitting here, Charlie Gibson
and Katie Couric..."
-- Rockefeller/CFR media control roundtable, Sep 2009, sponsored by Time-Warner and moderated
by Christiane Amanpour
They'll find some way to place the blame. If nothing else, all the losers in the MSM stick
together. Informed individuals will always be informed individuals. The "Snowflakes" are an entire
issue unto themselves.
The very first filter I apply to the MSM is the degree to which the same voice and story is being
repeated. The more they speak in unison, the more likely what I'm hearing is a lie.....or at best
a severely distorted 'truth '.
Trayvon the thug - only showing a picture taken when he was 12 instead of a recent one (which
they had access to) when he was 18 showing a muscled up tatted up thug
Actually EDITING the 911 call to make it appear the "White Hispanic" was a raging psycho racist
I find it funny in a way people will allow the media to shit in their mouth repeatedly - and
I've no tolerance for them. Far as I'm concerned they're garbage.
Oh, and I made sweet sweet money betting on Trump to win the election from a bunch of libtards
- some gave me odds!!!
And more than one said "are you really going to take my money?"
Yes, friend DO YOU UNDERSTAND HOW A BET WORKS? Do you have any honor at all?!
I've found the inverse also applies, that is, when something peculiar or seemingly significant
is reported then quickly sent 'down the memory hole' it usually has great importance.
Bonus situation for the Establishment ... Only we hard core tin foil types are aware of the
info at all, thus easily ridiculed and dismissed.
Charlie Rose is a member of the Rockefeller/CFR along with Margaret Warner (CFR director), Jim
Lehrer, and Judy Woodruff to name a few. See member lists at cfr dot org.
"... the media is not in competition with talking about disenchantment over globalisation and de-industrialisation, but a complement to it. ..."
"... This piece is right on the money and nails the ultimate failure of our modern corporate media. ..."
"... Modern corporate media is in existence to make more money, not to serve society. Whatever makes (the collective) us more likely to pay attention to the media is what the media will serve up. With the failure of old style media we have to be concerned whether an actual informed political discourse will be possible. ..."
"... These 6 Corporations Control 90% Of The Media In America http://www.morriscreative.com/6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america/ ..."
"... People are looking for scapegoats and the corrupt corporate media are misleading them, along with politicians. Why are they looking for scapegoats? Not simply because they're wealthy racist Trump supporters who long for the good old days, as the center-left is telling us. ..."
"... The corrupt corporate media was incredibly unfair to both Bernie Sanders and Jeremby Corbyn but the Blairites and Clinton supporters were okay with that. Sanders was quite good on calling out the media. We need more of that. ..."
"... "We know that erecting trade barriers is harmful: the only question is whether in this case it will be pretty harmful or very harmful"...to whom? To the elites? Or to those who voted for Brexit? ..."
"... Instead of constantly harping on the illusory 'free trade is a free lunch for all,' 'liberal' economists need to start taking responsibility for not emphasizing or even acknowledging that free trade is not a panacea...it has real downsides for many...and real benefits mostly for elites that negotiated the deals. ..."
"... Too many were severely harmed by off shoring and illegal immigration. ..."
This could be the subtitle of the
talk
I will be giving later today. I will have more to say in later posts, plus a link to the
full text..., but I thought I would make this important point here about why I keep going on about
the media. In thinking about Brexit and Trump, talking about the media is not in competition with
talking about disenchantment over globalisation and de-industrialisation, but a complement to it.
I don't blame the media for this disenchantment, which is real enough, but for the fact that it is
leading people to make choices which are clearly bad for society as a whole, and in many cases will
actually make them worse off. They are choices which in an important sense are known to be wrong.
Modern corporate media is in existence to make more money, not to serve society. Whatever
makes (the collective) us more likely to pay attention to the media is what the media will serve
up. With the failure of old style media we have to be concerned whether an actual informed political
discourse will be possible.
Case in Point: Fake Media. As documented in the WaPo yesterday, two unemployed restaurant workers (McDonalds?) made a
fortune with their fake news website that collected ad revenue from the likes of Facebook. They
didn't bother with any facts; just published stories they knew would attract right wing extremists.
They really worked at their craft using specific language and formats to draw in eyeballs.
It worked beyond their wildest expectations and they won't even discuss how much money they made.
Something tells me there might be a bit of "fake news" creation going on in those shops, eh? But
no, let's pull out our hair over some 20-year-old with a Facebook feed. And -- censor! For the
greater good, naturally.
"In thinking about Brexit and Trump, talking about the media is not in competition with talking
about disenchantment over globalisation and de-industrialisation, but a complement to it."
People are looking for scapegoats and the corrupt corporate media are misleading them, along
with politicians. Why are they looking for scapegoats? Not simply because they're wealthy racist Trump supporters
who long for the good old days, as the center-left is telling us.
The corrupt corporate media was incredibly unfair to both Bernie Sanders and Jeremby Corbyn
but the Blairites and Clinton supporters were okay with that. Sanders was quite good on calling
out the media. We need more of that.
The SyFy Channel has a new series called Incorporated about a dystopian America set in 2074 where
global climate change has wrecked havoc on politics and society. Giant multinational corporations
have stepped in and taken over for governments as America's class divisions have sharpened between
the haves and the have-nots. You can watch the first episode online.
Globalization is not Pareto improving. Maybe it could be done in a way that is, but until then,
the "media" is correct to paint a disenchanting picture
Pareto improving assumes we compensates those who lose from globalization. This is well known.
What else is well known is we have a terrible track record on this score.
"We know that erecting trade barriers is harmful: the only question is whether in this case it
will be pretty harmful or very harmful"...to whom? To the elites? Or to those who voted for Brexit?
Instead of constantly harping on the illusory 'free trade is a free lunch for all,' 'liberal'
economists need to start taking responsibility for not emphasizing or even acknowledging that
free trade is not a panacea...it has real downsides for many...and real benefits mostly for elites
that negotiated the deals.
Why do 'liberal' economists insist on invalidating the life experience of so many?
Wisdom implies giving a good look to the consequences, and taking measures to ameliorate those
negative. Too many were severely harmed by off shoring and illegal immigration. These weren't
without consequences and maybe not even, on balance, gainful.
In the future, let those best able to make any necessary sacrifices and adjustments.
As my old Bronx doctor, Seymour Tenzer, put it: "All these histories are bullshit -- I got punched
in the chest; that's why I've got a lump."
Trump's victory is down to the disappearance of the $800 [a week] job for the $400 job. That subtracted
from the vote in the black ghettos – and added to the vote in the white ghettos -- both ghettos
being far off the radar screen of academic liberals like Hill and O.
I notice the white ghettos because that is me. My old taxi job (much too old now at 72 3/4)
was "in-sourced" all over the world to drivers who would work for remarkably less (than the not
so great incomes we native born eked out). Today's low skilled jobs go to native and foreign born
who willing to show up for $400 (e.g., since Walmart gutted supermarket contracts). Fast food
strictly to foreign born who will show up for $290 a week (min wage $400, 1968 -- when per cap
income half today's).
Don't expect the 100,000 out of maybe 200,000 Chicago gang age males to show up for a life
time of $400/wk servitude. Did I mention, manufacturing was down to 6% of employment 15 years
ago -- now 4% (disappearing like farm labor, mostly robo; look to health care for the future?)?
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gang-wars-at-the-root-of-chicagos-high-murder-rate/
6% union density at private employers = 20/10 BP which starves every healthy process in the
social body = disappearance of collective bargaining and its institutional concomitants which
supply political funding and lobbying equal to oligarchs plus most all the votes ...
... votes: notice? 45% take 10% of overall income -- 45% earn $15/hr or less -- a lot of votes.
"... The above is based on factual knowledge and experience, not on political agendas or paid "analyst" propaganda. One hopes that younger journalists will learn from it. ..."
"... The keyword here is 'paid'. If journalist is actually doing his job, he is fired. Everyone you see on the Wests mass media is a paid mouthpiece, regardless if he/she likes it or not, they have no choice, thats the reality of "independent press" nowadays. ..."
"... My view: Fake News is an American Tradition. ..."
"... The fake news regarding Syria and Iraq, the omission of news regarding Daesh and al-Qaeda atrocities and the complete silence as to why the Americans refuse to join with the Russians in eradicating the terrorist threat all stem from the fact that 90% of the US media is controlled by six mega-corporations, whose ownership and editorial direction are pro-Zionist. ..."
"... Any journalist or opinion writer who refuses to toe the editorial line is banished and becomes a pariah. ..."
While I am still knocked out somewhat by a nasty influenza let me recommend Elijah Magnier's most
recent piece on the "fake news" and "fake analyst" media:
The wars in Syria and Iraq celebrated the unfortunate end of the "free and independent press"
and the rise of the "neo-analysts". They sit in far-off lands, with no ground knowledge of the
war, collecting information and analysing the colourful bin of social networking sites.
They have even the temerity to believe they can dictate to the US administration what measures
should be taken, who to support and, as if they had mastered the "art of war", they even push
for a nuclear war with Russia.
On Syria:
According to the US State Department and to the western press, over 90 hospitals were totally
destroyed in eastern Aleppo in the last months at the rate of almost one destroyed hospital per
day. And every day we hear "the last hospital has been totally destroyed". The only problem with
this figure is the statistic released by the Syrian Ministry of Health stating that "on the entire
Syrian territory, there are only 88 hospitals".
...
[W]hen jihadists and rebels start a large scale attack against Syrian Army forces and their allies,
the media stand by, waiting for results. If the regime begins a military operation hospitals are
destroyed and civilians are killed in the first hour of the battle. Rarely do militants die in
mainstream media.
The above is based on factual knowledge and experience, not on political agendas or
paid "analyst" propaganda. One hopes that younger journalists will learn from it.
The keyword here is 'paid'. If journalist is actually doing his job, he is fired. Everyone
you see on the Wests mass media is a paid mouthpiece, regardless if he/she likes it or not, they
have no choice, thats the reality of "independent press" nowadays.
My view: Fake News is an American Tradition. "American Blood on American Soil" was trumpeted
loudly to justify the Mexican War; "Battleship Maine Sunk In Cuban Harbor" was the media call
for war with the crumbling Spanish Empire; "Pearl Harbor Bombed" was the catalyst for going to
war in 1941. Each of them were false flag events to justify war.
Nothing has changed
EXCEPT
That now people do not need to have outfits like the NYTimes, NBC, CBS, CNN, et al trumpet
the news to cause people to support the empire ... . Alternatives exist ... until the guv'ment
of the 1% and the media they own make the alternatives hard, if not impossible, to learn from.
Yeah, despite the flu, B continues to make the world aware ...
The fake news regarding Syria and Iraq, the omission of news regarding Daesh and al-Qaeda
atrocities and the complete silence as to why the Americans refuse to join with the Russians in
eradicating the terrorist threat all stem from the fact that 90% of the US media is controlled
by six mega-corporations, whose ownership and editorial direction are pro-Zionist.
Any journalist or opinion writer who refuses to toe the editorial line is banished and
becomes a pariah.
Pretty interesting that Trump had to go off the record to talk about how to stop the craziness
in Syria, in fear of betraying some "secret" issue".
JOSEPH KAHN, managing editor: On Syria, would you mind, you said you have a very strong idea about
what to do with the Syria conflict, can you describe that for us?
TRUMP: I can only say this: We have to end that craziness that's going on in Syria. One of
the things that was told to me - can I say this off the record, or is everything on the record?
SULZBERGER: No, if you want to
TRUMP: I don't want to violate, I don't want to violate a
SULZBERGER: If you want to go off the record, we have agreed you can go off the record. Ladies
and gentlemen, we are off the record for this moment.
thanks b! i always appreciate the articles from elijah magnier... i was looking at his site just
the other day, but it was before this was posted.. it is an excellent article, but i doubt any
mainstream media type will try to aspire to this level of journalism... as @1 harry points out
- they would be fired if they actually reported anything other then propaganda!
@5 mina... did i miss something? has s. power been removed from her role as usa propaganda
mouthpiece at the un?
Mina@4 - "...can I say this off the record, or is everything on the record?..."
I kind of wish some journalist would act like one someday and flat out say,
"Look, you don't get to suspend reality, not even for a second. Everything your say is on the
record 100% of the time - that's my damn job. If you say something to me 'off the record' and
I agree, then you are making me complicit in a corruption of the public trust. I'll either
be deceptive or lying by reporting only part of the truth. What idiot would ever read a news
article and believe its contents if they knew that some information was being withheld from
them for some unknown reason? If you need to 'adjust' the facts I present as complete with
secret, off-the-record facts, then that wouldn't be journalism - it would be propaganda or
tabloid garbage."
Their problem has been that the alt news has gained more attention from the MSM goons. And with
that attention has come more scrutiny of MSM and more credibility for the alt news. It's not just
the MSM that has received more scrutiny but the powers behind the thrones. They don't like that
and hence the attacks on the messengers.
Magnier hit the nail on the head of the coverage of Syria. No real war news and any attacks
on our favored rebels are attacks on hospitals and children ... when they're not barrel bombs
... which in turn had replaced chemical weapons attacks. That last one ended with Russian/Syrian
efforts to get rid of the weapons.
More manufactured dissent for all examples than wishful thinking, but yes, they wished for their
puppet dupe HRC as POTUS, their trepidation towards America First and Donald Trump seems so far
well founded.
He is now announcing women and women minorities for his cabinet, further defanging the ziomonsters
poison pen against him.
The snake is in the grass; Guardian says votes in 3 states troublesome.
They never sleep.
2;Stop the nonsensical America hatred huh? Yeah, its possible the Mexican War was a fraud,
but would the citizens there(MN,AZ,Cal) wish to live in Mexico? I highly highly doubt that. And
the evidence for or against MW causastion is very flimsy and vague(1846 was like that).
The Maine did sink, and however it was sunk is the issue, but I agree it was most definitely
used as propaganda for war, a war that stared US on the road to imperial perdition.
And Pearl harbor a false flag?
No, it might have been provoked, but it was Japan who jumped headlong and perilously into the
maelstrom that Yamamoto warned against. They were a warlord cult who needed to be curbed, btw,
although the end result was terrible.
"Why you fool, it's the educated reader who CAN be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others.
When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they're all
propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the
little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is
our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow
weeklies, don't need reconditioning. They're all right already. They'll believe anything." --
C.S. Lewis
I was in the news business for several years, having been a newspaper reporter, editor, managing
editor and publisher. Over many years I worked for five different newspapers in five different
states.
I started out many, many years ago. During all that time the reporter's "creed" that you simulated
was in fact the way that we were required to operate.
I constantly have difficulty believing what passes for "reporting" these days. I have not watched
network news nor read newspapers for years now, and keep searching the interwebs for more and
more reliable information sources. The numbers of those who do the same will grow, and as they
do the power of the presstitutes will fade further and further into forgotten history.
Good riddance -- though I'm sad for the good old days when I got my start as a journalist.
A big part of the problem with the MSM is that with so many newspapers and TV stations falling
under the control of huge media corporation giants like News Corporation whose objectives and
goals are nothing more than profit, profit and more profit, what used to be half-decent institutions
like The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Guardian - well, one assumes they were half-decent
to begin with - have been under pressure to increase sales revenues and profits, and cut costs
to their utmost.
The result is that good journalists, analysts and editors have been sacked and replaced by
cheap stenographers, and the culture that used to exist in newsrooms that valued the pursuit of
truth and facts and teaching the next generation of reporters the same and carry on with valued
traditions and ethics has been destroyed. In its place is a voracious competitive pseudo-culture
with no ethics and rewarding and encouraging a mercenary spirit, at once apparently submissive
yet bullying and voracious.
The cost-cutting extends to removing reporters from the frontline in Lebanon and Syria or wherever
else things are happening and changing rapidly, and sticking them in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem where
they are fed Israeli propaganda and told to repeat it.
@8 mina.. thanks... sounds like they have the usual wonderful selection to choose from.. erik
princes sister - yikes! when will the usa change it's name to blackwater or academie group as
the case may be? i guess when a country is so in bed with the military industrial complex / banks
- it is only a matter of time where they have to do a name change!
Last winter the Asian flu was *really* bad. Thought I would die. Of course, if you HAVE any thoughts
with the flu, then you're not going to die. Two folks I know got the Asian flu this winter, one
is on a respirator and heart-lung machine, friends. Flu shots only help spread the plague. Isolation,
rest and exercise is the remedy.
The doctors say it's 'avian flu', but we know that 'flu' was really due to GMO corn dumping
to Russia and Central America and Viet Nam, the GMO corn destroying the gut of chickens it was
fed too, as GMO corn was DESIGNED to do, (just like it did with 'swine flu') then the chickens
became host to human influenza in their weakened state, now we have a real killer. Go ahead, match
the GMO corn dumping countries to their reports of avian flu. The match is a 100% correlation.
So, of course, the first announcement after the Kiev Coup by the Israeli junta leaders was
a massive ag lands privatization contract to Israel's Monsanto Seed, for GMO, which means plans
for the coup and lands privatization was planned well before Maidan, you don't just write
a big contract like that one week after a coup. If they can plan a takeover like that, think of
what they're doing now.
Probably all that Monsanto GMO corn (maize) being fed to Ukrainian chickens is migrating the
avian flu into Germany for this winter's flu season, and they'll call it some 'H342X' label, so
nobody puts two and two together on the back-trace genomics, and folks will get sicker than sh*t
and wonder why the 'flu' is so bad, so some division of Bayer can launch another influenza vaccination
program, lol.
Monsanto GMO is the cause, flu the vector, and Bayer is the for-profit 'solution'.
No laughing matter, folks. This winter protect yourself. Eat well, rest, exercise. And for
gods sake, wear your rubbers when you go out, lol. An associate in China high up in the medical
research establishment has found prostate and ovarian (and esophageal) cancers are all related
and are probably spread by a virus. Nice. So some division of Bayer can launch another cervical
warts vaccination program, neh?
They really don't give a f*ck about you, at least until next April 15th comes due.
Back to topic: it still amazes me than with the hundred thousands of Syrians in Europe and
in Lebanon/Turkey/Jordan etc. we don't see ANY documentaries where representative number of ppl
are interviewed to tell what happened in their area. It seems that this might be part of the new
"Putin-makes-the-winner" effect on elections (Fillon had said he would talk with Syria/Iran/Russia
to solve the conflict and he instantly jumped and won the first round). Ppl are not stupid and
they know in many generations of DNA that the first think is to stop the war, because that costs
and spreads.
"... Flynn: "I don't know if they turned a blind eye. I think it was a decision, a willful decision." ..."
"... Hasan (Interviewer): "A willful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafists, Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood?" ..."
"... Flynn: "A willful decision to do what they're doing, You have to really ask the President what is it that he actually is doing with the policy that is in place, because it is very, very confusing." ..."
Hasan (Interviewer) (From 11.15 onwards into the interview): "In 2012, your agency was
saying, quote: "The Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda in Iraq [(which ISIS arose
out of)], are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria." In 2012, the US was helping coordinate
arms transfers to those same groups. Why did you not stop that if you're worried about the rise
of Islamic extremism?"
Flynn: "Well I hate to say it's not my job, but my job was to ensure that the accuracy
of our intelligence that was being presented was as good as it could be, and I will tell you,
it goes before 2012. When we were in Iraq, and we still had decisions to be made before there
was a decision to pull out of Iraq in 2011, it was very clear what we were going to face."
Hasan (Interviewer): You are basically saying that even in government at the time, you
knew those groups were around, you saw this analysis, and you were arguing against it, but who
wasn't listening?"
Flynn: "I think the administration."
Hasan (Interviewer): "So the administration turned a blind eye to your analysis?"
Flynn: "I don't know if they turned a blind eye. I think it was a decision, a willful
decision."
Hasan (Interviewer): "A willful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafists, Al-Qaeda
and the Muslim Brotherhood?"
Flynn: "A willful decision to do what they're doing, You have to really ask the President
what is it that he actually is doing with the policy that is in place, because it is very, very
confusing."
Former US Intelligence Chief Admits Obama Took "Willful Decision" to Support ISIS Rise
Neoliberal MSM campaign against Trump didn't stop at all after the election. Important to monitor
that. So much at stake.
Notable quotes:
"... The amount of libtard hystericals getting about is unbelievable. They really were under a deep, deep [neoliberal] MSM spell. The denial and anger phase looks very nasty. ..."
"... the usa state dept is so knee high in bullshit, along with the majority of media related people, right on down to the gutter as expressed thru the NYT, WAPO and WSJ - they can't see straight, even if it's pointed out to them.. ..."
"... yes - begin with the wmds of saddam and continue on in that rut - it is what American presidents do now.. is there a chance trump will be different? he is going against the grain and it will be an uphill slog, but it would be good if the naysayers gave the guy as chance. ..."
"... The finance sector and the medias that they support are having problems digesting the 105 millions wasted on Hillary. Then how many readers have decided that MSM was a waste of money and cancelled their subscriptions? Who takes seriouly CNN or the NYT or the Guardian who have hysterically supported their pathetic candidate by demonizing Trump? ..."
"... People have become highly suspicious of news and 'analysis' from the MSM... Trump has opened the eyes of the americans to the manipulation of information that the MSM commonly practiced and is not usually exposed. It has now been exposed and the relation with the media will never be the same anymore. They have lost their credibility for a long long time ..."
"... Interesting alternative news search engine www.goodgopher.com ..."
"... I once counted on a very liberal and heavily viewed liberal website 26 anti-Trump stories. One or two positive Hillary stories all claiming support for her because she had a vagina. AT the end of the day, more people knew more about Trump than Clinton. ..."
"... One position that people probably knew about Hillary was that she hated Putin (and China). ..."
"... And apparently on the one position she really staked her election, people who voted didn't give a shit. The voters in WI, PA, MI, Ohio, and FL certainly did not seem to care. ..."
"... Klein was unsurprised to see Mrs. Clinton playing the blame game after the election. "Have you ever known Hillary to take responsibility for anything?" he asked ..."
"... The US has voted against global hegemony. That was their choices. A do or die effort for global hegemon under Clinton, or a controlled descent to a regional power/world power among others under Trump. Though the neo-con passengers are in a panic and may cause the aircraft to crash rather than glide in for a controlled landing. Either way I don't care, so long as the US goes down. ..."
Hey, calm down there buddy. Deep breaths, in with the good, out with the bad. The votes are
in. The Don won. Rigged MSM polls didn't hurt The Don, they hurt Hillary - no one got out of bed
to go to the races. Game over.
You gotta lighten up a little there old soldier... If Trump could win, against all odds, against
the money, against the media collusion, against the establishment, against the neocons, against
rampant neoliberalism, against the bookies, against his own party...then surely that is a sign
that democracy is alive and kicking, right...? Go grab a beer.
The amount of libtard hystericals getting about is unbelievable. They really were under
a deep, deep [neoliberal] MSM spell. The denial and anger phase looks very nasty.
thanks b, for hammering away at this.. it bears repeating.. as @3 karlof1 points out and which
i pointed out on the previous thread - the usa state dept is so knee high in bullshit, along
with the majority of media related people, right on down to the gutter as expressed thru the NYT,
WAPO and WSJ - they can't see straight, even if it's pointed out to them..
yes - begin with the wmds of saddam and continue on in that rut - it is what American presidents
do now.. is there a chance trump will be different? he is going against the grain and it will
be an uphill slog, but it would be good if the naysayers gave the guy as chance.
@6 perimetr.. indeed, if you've seen one jackass, you've seen them all.. our local resident
troll ron showalter fits the bill plaguing moa for the time being..
The finance sector and the medias that they support are having problems digesting the 105
millions wasted on Hillary. Then how many readers have decided that MSM was a waste of money and
cancelled their subscriptions? Who takes seriouly CNN or the NYT or the Guardian who have hysterically
supported their pathetic candidate by demonizing Trump?
People have become highly suspicious of news and 'analysis' from the MSM... Trump has opened
the eyes of the americans to the manipulation of information that the MSM commonly practiced and
is not usually exposed. It has now been exposed and the relation with the media will never be
the same anymore. They have lost their credibility for a long long time
Yes, b. It is very frustrating when the media (which brags about being "most trusted news source")
takes things Trump has said and then twists them. He said that some illegals bring crime (and
some are good people) and this has been twisted to him saying illegal immigrants (as in ALL) are
bad guys. And they're still doing it.
But now Google and Facebook have said they're going after fake news as in their own version
of censorship. And youre right that real bad news on Clinton has been ignored or minimized like
her accomplishment with Libya or that industry gave her campaign 25 times as much as to Trump's.
"...is there a chance trump will be different? he is going against the grain and it will
be an uphill slog, but it would be good if the naysayers gave the guy as chance..."
There is every chance. This is because the MSM is operating against Trump in a way that the
MSM should have been operating against G.W.Bush, against Obama's covert war abroad and
upon his own people.
Where was the MSM in collective outcry when Barry'O signed the NDAA into effect a minute before
midnight one New Years Eve...? Indefinite detention without charge for all...!! What a greasy
fukker...but not a peep from the MSM. All very hush-hush...all very fascist. Corporate media...corporate
anything...all on board. And liberals are proud of this guy...? What a snake.
But The Don won't be able to get away with that in his 1st term. No no. Only today it was reported
he took a dump before eating a ham sandwich instead of talking to the press at lunchtime. This
is news. (?)
The 4th Estate retain special freedoms that are meant to be a check upon power. Over the years
they have been slowly eroded. Obama's war on whistle-blowers' was pretty sadistic... but, under
Hillary the medsubversion of the MSM would have been complete.
Hysterical libtards don't understand the bullet they just dodged... and the MSM will either
have total faith lost or find it's adversarial balance on power.
Good point Maddie. I too reckon Don will have to allow the spirits to calm down a bit to create
some space for some real chistkas behind the curtains.
Hiring an "ex" Goldman Sachs bitch boy or two for a couple of top spots might create such an
environment of plausible revolution denial, while keeping the banksterim calm, at least for a
while. Everything needs to look legit for the first year or two. I'd personally start with cleaning
up the supreme court - that Ginsburg lizard needs to be replaced with someone a bit less foreign
loyalty-ish, dual citizen-ish let's say.
The only downsides is that the most short-fused among the Tea Party-ists might get the cold
feet real early, even feel betrayed. Which, as long as kept under check with symbolic anti-illegal
moves, and going a bit tougher on the Saudis (is there anyone with half a working brain that genuinely
believes Trump has anything against Latinos, even "illegal" ones, in general?).
In the short to medium run, even support for Bibi's fascist day to day excesses might increase.
The Zio frog must be calmed down first, and only then slowly microwaved.
Manta 11.18.16 at 10:39 am
If a news source get some confidential information, the criterion on whether to publish it or
not should be: "1) is it true? 2) is it (reasonably) complete? 3) is it of interest to the public?"
The identity of the source is relevant only to decide 1) and 2) (for instance, if a candidate
campaign passes some information about the opponent, the news source should investigate more carefully
about 1) and 2) )
On that score, Wikileaks did the right thing in publishing the Clinton email dump.
It fitted the criteria: as far as I know, Hillary never tried to claim that they were forged (but
see the bbc article linked below), and if some emails that would have given more background were
missing , she could have released them.
The alternative for Wikileaks would have been "we got a ton of information about a candidate,
but we will not publish it because it may damage her".
"Rather than face up to the fact that Hillary Clinton has little appeal outside of Goldman
Sachs and whatever the Project for a New American Century is called these days, Democrats are
cursing Sanders fans, third-party voters, and non-voters with a hatred usually reserved for vegans.
Since they can only imagine their own upper-middle class lives orbiting major urban centers, the
loudest Democrats think that everyone who's not exactly like them is a racist, woman-hating cretin,
and hope " that
they be educated and moved to the vicinity of the major hubs in the northeast and western
parts, that they die off [or] that a country would attack the United States and obliterate them."
Those leftist critiques of Obama or Clinton that do manage to penetrate this fantasy-world
get angrily dismissed as right-wing media conspiracy theories or Kremlin propaganda. And finally,
as with any good whitewash, liberals are going to pretend that Donald Trump represents something
totally alien and uniquely menacing, as though Obama hasn't done everything Trump says he will.
And now, as soon as humanity has its first shot at finally being rid of the Clintons, and taking
a small step back from the brink of ultimate atomic horror, these people want to gnash their teeth
about America finally becoming fascist.
Fuck them.
If Trump is a fascist, them countless prominent American liberals are too, chief among them
the widely beloved Barack Obama. Contemporary America doesn't look like Nazi Germany for the simple
reason that it isn't Nazi Germany (J. Sakai argues that "
Settlerism filled
the space that fascism normally occupies"). What the Democrats offer is a slightly more "woke
fascism," in which the slave-owning settlers are remade in entertainment media
as cool black guys , with all the "problematic" racist history elided via a harmonious multi-ethnic
makeover.
It's worth noting that Donald Trump makes overtures to the same woke fascism as Obama and Clinton:
after the Pulse nightclub massacre, Trump promised to defend "
the LGBTQ
community " from foreign attackers. In other words, Trump and Clinton alike promise a typically
colonialist defense of liberal values like gay rights from the swarthy hordes.
So color me unim-fucking-pressed that now that a blatantly villainous Republican is headed
for the White House, everyone is talking about a united front against fascism. Of course, given
that the vast majority of the newly radicalized loved and still love the child-murdering
white supremacist Barack Obama, what we're talking about is a just another united front against
the GOP.
I know it's ancient history to be talking about the Bush years, just like it's hopelessly passé
to unironically talk about "imperialism" in 2016, but please indulge me. I remember back when
George W. Bush was president, torturing people around the world, "shredding the Constitution,"
attacking Iraq and Afghanistan and threatening Iran with nukes. At the time, it was pretty common,
even popular and fashionable, to call the president a fascist. Even on TV! Everyone who wasn't
a Republican was radical: it seemed like Democrats and communists alike could gripe over everything
from a stolen Florida election to the invasion of Iraq.
Then sometime around 2007, a neoliberal and fundamentally conservative mediocrity named Barack
Obama showed up, and while he made a lot of noise about how different he was, there was almost
nothing of substance to back it up. Once he was president, all the stuff that was proof of George
W.'s fascism became a trifling issue, a simple mistake, or a regrettable necessity when Obama
did it. As Obama continued George Bush's legacy, and as Dick Cheney came out in support of Hillary
Clinton, liberals stopped thinking of the Bush administration as a fascist criminal enterprise
and started seeing it through Sorkin-colored glasses, with a
George Bush-Michelle Obama hug at the twilight of the Obama presidency marking the decisive
transition."
At least with Trump I expect him to talk crap but
Obama talks crap as well when he should know better:
The values that we talked about -- the values of democracy, and free speech, and international
norms, and rule of law, respecting the ability of other countries to determine their own destiny
and preserve their sovereignty and territorial integrity -- those things are not something
that we can set aside.
The unbridled hypocrisy makes me want to puke.
Erelis | Nov 17, 2016 11:09:40 PM | 50
Ironically, major mass media play a critical role in the Clinton loss even though it was fully
in for Clinton. In attacking literally everything Trump said 24/7, people learned about his positions.
But this did not leave much oxygen left in the room for Clinton's (phony) positions. Sort of an
archetypal news day was how terrible Trump was on cutting taxes. Well, there, you know what Trump
stood for. The countervailing stories were that Trump and his followers were sexist, racist, and
Putin puppets, so vote for Hillary. What did she stand for again? I once counted on a very
liberal and heavily viewed liberal website 26 anti-Trump stories. One or two positive Hillary
stories all claiming support for her because she had a vagina. AT the end of the day, more people
knew more about Trump than Clinton.
One position that people probably knew about Hillary was that she hated Putin (and China).
Wikileaks counted the most mentioned subjects in the debates and it was Putin and Russia.
That was on Clinton. And apparently on the one position she really staked her election, people
who voted didn't give a shit. The voters in WI, PA, MI, Ohio, and FL certainly did not seem to
care.
likklemore | Nov 18, 2016 12:00:07 AM | 56
@ jawbonw 52 I posted another comment that ended up a no show. It could be the link to the piece
at Breitbart. In this radio interview Ed Klein is with b. He had 5 top reasons for HRC's lost:
[.] Klein laid out his top five reasons for why Hillary Clinton lost the election: "Number
one, Hillary. Number two, Hillary. Number three, Hillary. Number four, Hillary. Number five,
Hillary."[.]
Klein was unsurprised to see Mrs. Clinton playing the blame game after the election.
"Have you ever known Hillary to take responsibility for anything?" he asked.[.]
"At every turn of her life, she's pointed accusing fingers at other people for her own self-made
problems. This certainly, this campaign, she was the general of the campaign. She lost the
war. She should take the responsibility," he said.
And Ed Klein does not see Chelsea continuing the dynasty. She doubled down on her mother's dna.
Peter AU | Nov 18, 2016 2:14:46 AM | 59
The US has voted against global hegemony. That was their choices. A do or die effort for global
hegemon under Clinton, or a controlled descent to a regional power/world power among others under
Trump. Though the neo-con passengers are in a panic and may cause the aircraft to crash rather
than glide in for a controlled landing. Either way I don't care, so long as the US goes down.
"... Why doesn't the White House just shut the fuck up ..."
"... And as one of its sources, dear old Aunty BBC quotes "a volunteer with the White Helmets Civil Defence force" who told the AFP news agency that he had "never heard such intense artillery bombardments". ..."
"... Recycling the same bullshit as used to justify the first Iraq war. Every time there is a war, babies are trotted out to justify escalation and slaughter. By the million. This baby ploy works on the suckers every time... ..."
Premature babies in Aleppo have been removed from their incubators after air strikes destroyed
hospitals across the city, prompting condemnation of the Syrian government and Russia by the US
and the UN.
Harrowing video footage shows tiny babies being removed from their incubators in a smoke-filled
ward, with nurses reduced to tears as they detach the tubing providing support and wrap the babies
in blankets.
Now where have I heard a similar story before? .
Why doesn't the White House just shut the fuck up or, failing that, send a drone flying off
to Moscow so as to zap the Evil One and any bystanders in his vicinity?
"The Syrian regime and its allies, Russia in particular, bear responsibility for the immediate
and long-term consequences these actions have caused in Syria and beyond" - said Susan Rice, of
course.
And as one of its sources, dear old Aunty BBC quotes "a volunteer with the White Helmets Civil
Defence force" who told the AFP news agency that he had "never heard such intense artillery bombardments".
Aleppo must be one of the most intensely scrutinized area on earth – drones, satellites, radars
and electronic sensors of every type by both US and Russia. Yet, the DOS (Department of Shit?)
exclusively relies on the "Observer" dude in London and other miscreants for their claims of sinister
Russian air strikes. The DOS needs a 'tard wrangler for these various groups.
The other possibility is that Russia has perfected stealth on every wavelength including visible
light and have zero-noise jet engines.
Recycling the same bullshit as used to justify the first Iraq war. Every time there is a war,
babies are trotted out to justify escalation and slaughter. By the million. This baby ploy works
on the suckers every time...
It is the end of neoliberalism and the start of the era of authoritarian nationalism, and we all
need to come together to stamp out the authoritarian part.
Notable quotes:
"... Neoliberalism has been disastrous for the Rust Belt, and I think we need to envision a new future for what was once the country's industrial heartland, now little more than its wasteland ..."
"... The question of what the many millions of often-unionized factory workers, SMEs which supplied them, family farmers (now fully industrialized and owned by corporations), and all those in secondary production and services who once supported them are to actually do in future to earn a decent living is what I believe should really be the subject of debate. ..."
"... two factors (or three, I guess) have contributed to this state of despair: offshoring and outsourcing, and technology. ..."
"... Medicaid, the CHIP program, the SNAP program and others (including NGOs and private charitable giving) may alleviate some of the suffering, but there is currently no substitute for jobs that would enable men and women to live lives of dignity – a decent place to live, good educations for their children, and a reasonable, secure pension in old age. Near-, at-, and below-minimum wage jobs devoid of any benefits don't allow any of these – at most, they make possible a subsistence life, one which requires continued reliance on public assistance throughout one's lifetime. ..."
"... In the U.S. (a neoliberal pioneer), poverty is closely linked with inequality and thus, a high GINI coefficient (near that of Turkey); where there is both poverty and a very unequal distribution of resources, this inevitably affects women (and children) and racial (and ethnic) minorities disproportionately. The economic system, racism, sexism, and xenophobia are not separate, stand-alone issues; they are profoundly intertwined. ..."
"... But really, if you think about it, slavery was defined as ownership, ownership of human capital (which was convertible into cash), and women in many societies throughout history were acquired as part of a financial transaction (either through purchase or through sale), and control of their capital (land, property [farmland, herds], valuables and later, money) often entrusted to a spouse or male guardian. All of these practices were economically-driven, even if the driver wasn't 21st-century capitalism. ..."
"... Let it be said at once: Trump's victory is primarily due to the explosion in economic and geographic inequality in the United States over several decades and the inability of successive governments to deal with this. ..."
"... Both the Clinton and the Obama administrations frequently went along with the market liberalization launched under Reagan and both Bush presidencies. At times they even outdid them: the financial and commercial deregulation carried out under Clinton is an example. What sealed the deal, though, was the suspicion that the Democrats were too close to Wall Street – and the inability of the Democratic media elite to learn the lessons from the Sanders vote. ..."
"... Regional inequality and globalization are the principal drivers in Japanese politics, too, along with a number of social drivers. ..."
"... The tsunami/nuclear meltdown combined with the Japanese government's uneven response is an apt metaphor for the impact of neo-liberalism/globalization on Japan; and on the US. I then explained that the income inequality in the US was far more severe than that of Japan and that many Americans did not support the export of jobs to China/Mexico. ..."
"... I contend that in some hypothetical universe the DNC and corrupt Clinton machine could have been torn out, root and branch, within months. As I noted, however, the decision to run HRC effectively unopposed was made several years, at least, before the stark evidence of the consequences of such a decision appeared in sharp relief with Brexit. ..."
"... Just as the decline of Virginia coal is due to global forces and corporate stupidity, so the decline of the rust belt is due to long (30 year plus) global forces and corporate decisions that predate the emergence of identity politics. ..."
"... It's interesting that the clear headed thinkers of the Marxist left, who pride themselves on not being distracted by identity, don't want to talk about these factors when discussing the plight of their cherished white working class. ..."
"... The construction 'white working class' is a useful governing tool that splits poor people and possible coalitions against the violence of capital. Now, discussion focuses on how some of the least powerful, most vulnerable people in the United States are the perpetrators of a great injustice against racialised and minoritised groups. Such commentary colludes in the pathologisation of the working class, of poor people. Victims are inculpated as the vectors of noxious, atavistic vices while the perpetrators get off with impunity, showing off their multihued, cosmopolitan C-suites and even proposing that their free trade agreements are a form of anti-racist solidarity. Most crucially, such analysis ignores the continuities between a Trumpian dystopia and our satisfactory present. ..."
"... Race-thinking forecloses the possibility of the coalitions that you imagine, and reproduces ideas of difference in ways that always, always privilege 'whiteness'. ..."
"... Historical examples of ethnic groups becoming 'white', how it was legal and political decision-making that defined the present racial taxonomy, suggest that groups can also lose or have their 'whiteness' threatened. CB has written here about how, in the UK at least, Eastern and Southern Europeans are racialised, and so refused 'whiteness'. JQ has written about southern white minoritisation. Many commentators have pointed that the 'white working class' vote this year looked a lot like a minority vote. ..."
"... Given the subordination of groups presently defined as 'white working class', I wonder if we could think beyond ethnic and epidermal definition to consider that the impossibility of the American Dream refuses these groups whiteness; i.e the hoped for privileges of racial superiority, much in the same way that African Americans, Latin Americans and other racialised minorities are denied whiteness. Can a poor West Virginian living in a toxified drugged out impoverished landscape really be defined as a carrier of 'white privilege'? ..."
"... I was first pointed at this by the juxtapositions of racialised working class and immigrants in Imogen Tyler's Revolting Subjects – Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain but this below is a useful short article that takes a historical perspective. ..."
"... In a 1990 essay, the late Yale political scientist Juan Linz observed that "aside from the United States, only Chile has managed a century and a half of relatively undisturbed constitutional continuity under presidential government - but Chilean democracy broke down in the 1970s." ..."
"... Linz offered several reasons why presidential systems are so prone to crisis. One particularly important one is the nature of the checks and balances system. Since both the president and the Congress are directly elected by the people, they can both claim to speak for the people. When they have a serious disagreement, according to Linz, "there is no democratic principle on the basis of which it can be resolved." The constitution offers no help in these cases, he wrote: "the mechanisms the constitution might provide are likely to prove too complicated and aridly legalistic to be of much force in the eyes of the electorate." ..."
"... In a parliamentary system, deadlocks get resolved. A prime minister who lacks the backing of a parliamentary majority is replaced by a new one who has it. If no such majority can be found, a new election is held and the new parliament picks a leader. It can get a little messy for a period of weeks, but there's simply no possibility of a years-long spell in which the legislative and executive branches glare at each other unproductively.' ..."
"... In any case, as I pointed out before, given that the US is increasingly an urbanised country, and the Electoral College was created to protect rural (slave) states, the grotesque electoral result we have just seen is likely to recur, which means more and more Presidents with dubious democratic legitimacy. Thanks to Bush (and Obama) these Presidents will have, at the same time, more and more power. ..."
"... To return to my original question and answer it myself: I'm forced to conclude that the Democrats did not specifically address the revitalization – rebirth of the Rust Belt in their 2016 platform. Its failure to do so carried a heavy cost that (nearly) all of us will be forced to pay. ..."
"... This sub seems to have largely fallen into the psychologically comfortable trap of declaring that everyone who voted against their preferred candidate is racist. It's a view pushed by the neoliberals, who want to maintain he stranglehold of identity politics over the DNC, and it makes upper-class 'intellectuals' feel better about themselves and their betrayal of the filthy, subhuman white underclass (or so they see it). ..."
"... You can scream 'those jobs are never coming back!' all you want, but people are never going to accept it. So either you come up with a genuine solution (instead of simply complaining that your opponents solutions won't work; you're partisan and biased, most voters won't believe you), you may as well resign yourself to fascism. Because whining that you don't know what to do won't stop people from lining up behind someone who says that they do have one, whether it'll work or not. Nobody trusts the elite enough to believe them when they say that jobs are never coming back. Nobody trusts the elite at all. ..."
"... You sound just like the Wiemar elite. No will to solve the problem, but filled with terror at the inevitable result of failing to solve the problem. ..."
"... One brutal fact tells us everything we need to know about the Democratic party in 2016: the American Nazi party is running on a platform of free health care to working class people. This means that the American Nazi Party is now running to the left of the Democratic party. ..."
"... Back in the 1930s, when the economy collapsed, fascists appeared and took power. Racists also came out of the woodwork, ditto misogynists. Fast forward 80 years, and the same thing has happened all over again. The global economy melted down in 2008 and fascists appeared promising to fix the problems that the pols in power wouldn't because they were too closely tied to the existing (failed) system. Along with the fascists, racists gained power because they were able to scapegoat minorities as the alleged cause of everyone's misery. ..."
"... None of this is surprising. We have seen it before. Whenever you get a depression in a modern industrial economy, you get scapegoating, racism, and fascists. We know what to do. The problem is that the current Democratic party isn't doing it. ..."
"... . It is the end of neoliberalism and the start of the era of authoritarian nationalism, and we all need to come together to stamp out the authoritarian part. ..."
"... This hammered people on the bottom, disproportionately African Americans and especially single AA mothers in America. It crushed the blue collar workers. It is wiping out the savings and careers of college-educated white collar workers now, at least, the ones who didn't go to the Ivy League, which is 90% of them. ..."
"... Calling Hillary an "imperfect candidate" is like calling what happened to the Titanic a "boating accident." Trump was an imperfect candidate. Why did he win? ..."
"... "The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang. The political triumph of Donald Trump shattered the establishments in the Democratic and Republican parties – both wedded to the rule of Big Money and to the reign of meretricious politicians." ..."
"... "It is not an exaggeration to say that the Democratic Party is in shambles as a political force. Not only did it just lose the White House to a wildly unpopular farce of a candidate despite a virtually unified establishment behind it, and not only is it the minority party in both the Senate and the House, but it is getting crushed at historical record rates on the state and local levels as well. Surveying this wreckage last week, party stalwart Matthew Yglesias of Vox minced no words: `the Obama years have created a Democratic Party that's essentially a smoking pile of rubble.' ..."
"... "One would assume that the operatives and loyalists of such a weak, defeated and wrecked political party would be eager to engage in some introspection and self-critique, and to produce a frank accounting of what they did wrong so as to alter their plight. In the case of 2016 Democrats, one would be quite mistaken." ..."
"... Foreign Affairs ..."
"... "At the end of World War II, the United States and its allies decided that sustained mass unemployment was an existential threat to capitalism and had to be avoided at all costs. In response, governments everywhere targeted full employment as the master policy variable-trying to get to, and sustain, an unemployment rate of roughly four percent. The problem with doing so, over time, is that targeting any variable long enough undermines the value of the variable itself-a phenomenon known as Goodhart's law. (..) ..."
"... " what we see [today] is a reversal of power between creditors and debtors as the anti-inflationary regime of the past 30 years undermines itself-what we might call "Goodhart's revenge." In this world, yields compress and creditors fret about their earnings, demanding repayment of debt at all costs. Macro-economically, this makes the situation worse: the debtors can't pay-but politically, and this is crucial-it empowers debtors since they can't pay, won't pay, and still have the right to vote. ..."
"... "The traditional parties of the center-left and center-right, the builders of this anti-inflationary order, get clobbered in such a world, since they are correctly identified by these debtors as the political backers of those demanding repayment in an already unequal system, and all from those with the least assets. This produces anti-creditor, pro-debtor coalitions-in-waiting that are ripe for the picking by insurgents of the left and the right, which is exactly what has happened. ..."
"... "The global revolt against elites is not just driven by revulsion and loss and racism. It's also driven by the global economy itself. This is a global phenomenon that marks one thing above all. The era of neoliberalism is over. The era of neonationalism has just begun." ..."
"... They want what their families have had which is secure, paid, benefits rich, blue collar work. ..."
"... trump's campaign empathized with that feeling just by focusing on the factory jobs as jobs and not as anachronisms that are slowly fading away for whatever reason. Clinton might have been "correct", but these voters didn't want to hear "the truth". And as much as you can complain about how stupid they are for wanting to be lied to, that is the unfortunate reality you, and the Democratic party, have to accept. ..."
"... trump was offering a "bailout" writ large. Clinton had no (good) counteroffer. It was like the tables were turned. Romney was the one talking about "change" and "restructuring" while Obama was defending keeping what was already there. ..."
"... "Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html ..."
"... Clinton toward the end offered tariffs. But the trump campaign hit back with what turned out to be a pretty strong counter attack – ""How's she going to get tough on China?" said Trump economic advisor Peter Navarro on CNN's Quest Means Business. He notes that some of Clinton's economic advisors have supported TPP or even worked on it. "" ..."
The question is no longer her neoliberalism, but yours. Keep it or throw it away?
I wish this issue was being seriously discussed. Neoliberalism has been disastrous for
the Rust Belt, and I think we need to envision a new future for what was once the country's industrial
heartland, now little more than its wasteland (cf. "flyover zone" – a pejorative term which
inhabitants of the zone are not too stupid to understand perfectly, btw).
The question of what the many millions of often-unionized factory workers, SMEs which supplied
them, family farmers (now fully industrialized and owned by corporations), and all those in secondary
production and services who once supported them are to actually do in future to earn a decent
living is what I believe should really be the subject of debate.
As noted upthread, two factors (or three, I guess) have contributed to this state of despair:
offshoring and outsourcing, and technology. The jobs that have been lost will not return,
and indeed will be lost in ever greater numbers – just consider what will happen to the trucking
sector when self-driving trucks hit the roads sometime in the next 10-20 years (3.5 million truckers;
8.7 in allied jobs).
Medicaid, the CHIP program, the SNAP program and others (including NGOs and private charitable
giving) may alleviate some of the suffering, but there is currently no substitute for jobs that
would enable men and women to live lives of dignity – a decent place to live, good educations
for their children, and a reasonable, secure pension in old age. Near-, at-, and below-minimum
wage jobs devoid of any benefits don't allow any of these – at most, they make possible a subsistence
life, one which requires continued reliance on public assistance throughout one's lifetime.
In the U.S. (a neoliberal pioneer), poverty is closely linked with inequality and thus,
a high GINI coefficient (near that of Turkey); where there is both poverty and a very unequal
distribution of resources, this inevitably affects women (and children) and racial (and ethnic)
minorities disproportionately. The economic system, racism, sexism, and xenophobia are not separate,
stand-alone issues; they are profoundly intertwined.
I appreciate and espouse the goals of identity politics in all their multiplicity, and also
understand that the institutions of slavery and sexism predated modern capitalist economies.
But really, if you think about it, slavery was defined as ownership, ownership of human capital
(which was convertible into cash), and women in many societies throughout history were acquired
as part of a financial transaction (either through purchase or through sale), and control of their
capital (land, property [farmland, herds], valuables and later, money) often entrusted to a spouse
or male guardian. All of these practices were economically-driven, even if the driver wasn't 21st-century
capitalism.
Also: Faustusnotes@100
For example Indiana took the ACA Medicaid expansion but did so with additional conditions that
make it worse than in neighboring states run by democratic governors.
And what states would those be? IL, IA, MI, OH, WI, KY, and TN have Republican governors. Were
you thinking pre-2014? pre-2012?
To conclude and return to my original point: what's to become of the Rust Belt in future? Did
the Democratic platform include a New New Deal for PA, OH, MI, WI, and IA (to name only the five
Rust Belt states Trump flipped)?
" Let it be said at once: Trump's victory is primarily due to the explosion in economic
and geographic inequality in the United States over several decades and the inability of successive
governments to deal with this.
Both the Clinton and the Obama administrations frequently went along with the market liberalization
launched under Reagan and both Bush presidencies. At times they even outdid them: the financial
and commercial deregulation carried out under Clinton is an example. What sealed the deal, though,
was the suspicion that the Democrats were too close to Wall Street – and the inability of the
Democratic media elite to learn the lessons from the Sanders vote. "
What should have been one comment came out as 4, so apologies on that front.
I spent the last week explaining the US election to my students in Japan in pretty much the
terms outlined by Lilla and PIketty, so I was delighted to discover these two articles.
Regional inequality and globalization are the principal drivers in Japanese politics, too,
along with a number of social drivers. It was therefore very easy to call for a show of hands
to identify students studying here in Tokyo who are trying to decide whether or not to return
to areas such as Tohoku to build their lives; or remain in Kanto/Tokyo – the NY/Washington/LA
of Japan put crudely.
I asked students from regions close to Tohoku how they might feel if the Japanese prime minister
decided not to visit the region following Fukushima after the disaster, or preceding an election.
The tsunami/nuclear meltdown combined with the Japanese government's uneven response is an
apt metaphor for the impact of neo-liberalism/globalization on Japan; and on the US. I then explained
that the income inequality in the US was far more severe than that of Japan and that many Americans
did not support the export of jobs to China/Mexico.
I then asked the students, particularly those from outlying regions whether they believe Japan
needed a leader who would 'bring back Japanese jobs' from Viet Nam and China, etc. Many/most agreed
wholeheartedly. I then asked whether they believed Tokyo people treated those outside Kanto as
'inferiors.' Many do.
Piketty may be right regarding Trump's long-term effects on income inequality. He is wrong,
I suggest, to argue that Democrats failed to respond to Sanders' support. I contend that in
some hypothetical universe the DNC and corrupt Clinton machine could have been torn out, root
and branch, within months. As I noted, however, the decision to run HRC effectively unopposed
was made several years, at least, before the stark evidence of the consequences of such a decision
appeared in sharp relief with Brexit.
Also worth noting is that the rust belts problems are as old as Reagan – even the term dates
from the 80s, the issue is so uncool that there is a dire straits song about it. Some portion
of the decline of manufacturing there is due to manufacturers shifting to the south, where the
anti Union states have an advantage. Also there has been new investment – there were no Japanese
car companies in the us in the 1980s, so they are new job creators, yet insufficient to make up
the losses. Just as the decline of Virginia coal is due to global forces and corporate stupidity,
so the decline of the rust belt is due to long (30 year plus) global forces and corporate decisions
that predate the emergence of identity politics.
It's interesting that the clear headed thinkers of the Marxist left, who pride themselves
on not being distracted by identity, don't want to talk about these factors when discussing the
plight of their cherished white working class. Suddenly it's not the forces of capital and
the objective facts of history, but a bunch of whiny black trannies demanding safe spaces and
protesting police violence, that drove those towns to ruin.
And what solutions do they think the dems should have proposed? It can't be welfare, since
we got the ACA (watered down by representatives of the rust belt states). Is it, seriously, tariffs?
Short of going to an election promising w revolution, what should the dems have done? Give us
a clear answer so we can see what the alternative to identity politics is.
basil 11.19.16 at 5:11 am
Did this go through?
Thinking with WLGR @15, Yan @81, engels variously above,
The construction 'white working class' is a useful governing tool that splits poor people
and possible coalitions against the violence of capital. Now, discussion focuses on how some of
the least powerful, most vulnerable people in the United States are the perpetrators of a great
injustice against racialised and minoritised groups. Such commentary colludes in the pathologisation
of the working class, of poor people. Victims are inculpated as the vectors of noxious, atavistic
vices while the perpetrators get off with impunity, showing off their multihued, cosmopolitan
C-suites and even proposing that their free trade agreements are a form of anti-racist solidarity.
Most crucially, such analysis ignores the continuities between a Trumpian dystopia and our satisfactory
present.
I get that the tropes around race are easy, and super-available. Privilege confessing is very
in vogue as a prophylactic against charges of racism. But does it threaten the structures that
produce this abjection – either as embittered, immiserated 'white working class' or as threatened
minority group? It is always *those* 'white' people, the South, the Working Class, and never the
accusers some of whom are themselves happy to vote for a party that drowns out anti-war protesters
with chants of USA! USA!
Race-thinking forecloses the possibility of the coalitions that you imagine, and reproduces
ideas of difference in ways that always, always privilege 'whiteness'.
--
Historical examples of ethnic groups becoming 'white', how it was legal and political decision-making
that defined the present racial taxonomy, suggest that groups can also lose or have their 'whiteness'
threatened. CB has written here about how, in the UK at least, Eastern and Southern Europeans
are racialised, and so refused 'whiteness'. JQ has written about southern white minoritisation.
Many commentators have pointed that the 'white working class' vote this year looked a lot like
a minority vote.
Given the subordination of groups presently defined as 'white working class', I wonder
if we could think beyond ethnic and epidermal definition to consider that the impossibility of
the American Dream refuses these groups whiteness; i.e the hoped for privileges of racial superiority,
much in the same way that African Americans, Latin Americans and other racialised minorities are
denied whiteness. Can a poor West Virginian living in a toxified drugged out impoverished landscape
really be defined as a carrier of 'white privilege'?
I was first pointed at this by the juxtapositions of racialised working class and immigrants
in Imogen Tyler's Revolting Subjects – Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain but
this below is a useful short article that takes a historical perspective.
The 'racialisation' of class in Britain has been a consequence of the weakening of 'class'
as a political idea since the 1970s – it is a new construction, not an historic one.
.
This is not to deny the existence of working-class racism, or to suggest that racism is
somehow acceptable if rooted in perceived socio-economic grievances. But it is to suggest that
the concept of a 'white working class' needs problematizing, as does the claim that the British
working-class was strongly committed to a post-war vision of 'White Britain' analogous to the
politics which sustained the idea of a 'White Australia' until the 1960s.
Yes, old, settled neighbourhoods could be profoundly distrustful of outsiders – all outsiders,
including the researchers seeking to study them – but, when it came to race, they were internally
divided. We certainly hear working-class racist voices – often echoing stock racist complaints
about over-crowding, welfare dependency or exploitative landlords and small businessmen, but
we don't hear the deep pathological racial fears laid bare in the letters sent to Enoch Powell
after his so-called 'Rivers of Blood' speech in 1968 (Whipple, 2009).
But more importantly, we also hear strong anti-racist voices loudly and clearly. At Wallsend
on Tyneside, where the researchers were gathering their data just as Powell shot to notoriety,
we find workers expressing casual racism, but we also find eloquent expressions of an internationalist,
solidaristic perspective in which, crucially, black and white are seen as sharing the same
working-class interests.
Racism is denounced as a deliberate capitalist strategy to divide workers against themselves,
weakening their ability to challenge those with power over their lives (shipbuilding had long
been a very fractious industry and its workers had plenty of experience of the dangers of internal
sectarian battles).
To be able to mobilize across across racialised divisions, to have race wither away entirely
would, for me, be the beginning of a politics that allowed humanity to deal with the inescapable
violence of climate change and corporate power.
*To add to the bibliography – David R. Roediger, Elizabeth D. Esch – The Production of Difference
– Race and the Management of Labour, and Denise Ferreira da Silva – Toward a Global Idea of Race.
And I have just been pointed at Ian Haney-López, White By Law – The Legal Construction of Race.
FWIW 'merica's constitutional democracy is going to collapse.
Some day - not tomorrow, not next year, but probably sometime before runaway climate change
forces us to seek a new life in outer-space colonies - there is going to be a collapse of the
legal and political order and its replacement by something else. If we're lucky, it won't be violent.
If we're very lucky, it will lead us to tackle the underlying problems and result in a better,
more robust, political system. If we're less lucky, well, then, something worse will happen .
In a 1990 essay, the late Yale political scientist Juan Linz observed that "aside from
the United States, only Chile has managed a century and a half of relatively undisturbed constitutional
continuity under presidential government - but Chilean democracy broke down in the 1970s."
Linz offered several reasons why presidential systems are so prone to crisis. One particularly
important one is the nature of the checks and balances system. Since both the president and the
Congress are directly elected by the people, they can both claim to speak for the people. When
they have a serious disagreement, according to Linz, "there is no democratic principle on the
basis of which it can be resolved." The constitution offers no help in these cases, he wrote:
"the mechanisms the constitution might provide are likely to prove too complicated and aridly
legalistic to be of much force in the eyes of the electorate."
In a parliamentary system, deadlocks get resolved. A prime minister who lacks the backing
of a parliamentary majority is replaced by a new one who has it. If no such majority can be found,
a new election is held and the new parliament picks a leader. It can get a little messy for a
period of weeks, but there's simply no possibility of a years-long spell in which the legislative
and executive branches glare at each other unproductively.'
Given that the basic point is polarisation (i.e. that both the President and Congress have
equally strong arguments to be the the 'voice of the people') and that under the US appalling
constitutional set up, there is no way to decide between them, one can easily imagine the so to
speak 'hyperpolarisation' of a Trump Presidency as being the straw (or anvil) that breaks the
camel's back.
In any case, as I pointed out before, given that the US is increasingly an urbanised country,
and the Electoral College was created to protect rural (slave) states, the grotesque electoral
result we have just seen is likely to recur, which means more and more Presidents with dubious
democratic legitimacy. Thanks to Bush (and Obama) these Presidents will have, at the same time,
more and more power.
nastywoman @ 150
Just study the program of the 'Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschland' or the Program of 'Die
Grünen' in Germany (take it through google translate) and you get all the answers you are looking
for.
No need to run it through google translate, it's available in English on their site. [Or one
could refer to the Green Party of the U.S. site/platform, which is very similar in scope and overall
philosophy. (www.gp.org).]
I looked at several of their topic areas (Agricultural, Global, Health, Rural) and yes, these
are general theses I would support. But they're hardly policy/project proposals for specific regions
or communities – the Greens espouse "think global, act local", so programs and projects must be
tailored to individual communities and regions.
To return to my original question and answer it myself: I'm forced to conclude that the
Democrats did not specifically address the revitalization – rebirth of the Rust Belt in their
2016 platform. Its failure to do so carried a heavy cost that (nearly) all of us will be forced
to pay.
This sub seems to have largely fallen into the psychologically comfortable trap of declaring
that everyone who voted against their preferred candidate is racist. It's a view pushed by the
neoliberals, who want to maintain he stranglehold of identity politics over the DNC, and it makes
upper-class 'intellectuals' feel better about themselves and their betrayal of the filthy, subhuman
white underclass (or so they see it).
I expect at this point that Trump will be reelected comfortably. If not only the party itself,
but also most of its activists, refuse to actually change, it's more or less inevitable.
You can scream 'those jobs are never coming back!' all you want, but people are never going
to accept it. So either you come up with a genuine solution (instead of simply complaining that
your opponents solutions won't work; you're partisan and biased, most voters won't believe you),
you may as well resign yourself to fascism. Because whining that you don't know what to do won't
stop people from lining up behind someone who says that they do have one, whether it'll work or
not. Nobody trusts the elite enough to believe them when they say that jobs are never coming back.
Nobody trusts the elite at all.
You sound just like the Wiemar elite. No will to solve the problem, but filled with terror
at the inevitable result of failing to solve the problem.
One brutal fact tells us everything we need to know about the Democratic party in 2016:
the American Nazi party is running on a platform of free health care to working class people.
This means that the American Nazi Party is now running to the left of the Democratic party.
Folks, we have seen this before. Let's not descend in backbiting and recriminations, okay?
We've got some commenters charging that other commenters are "mansplaining," meanwhile we've got
other commenters claiming that it's economics and not racism/misogyny. It's all of the above.
Back in the 1930s, when the economy collapsed, fascists appeared and took power. Racists
also came out of the woodwork, ditto misogynists. Fast forward 80 years, and the same thing has
happened all over again. The global economy melted down in 2008 and fascists appeared promising
to fix the problems that the pols in power wouldn't because they were too closely tied to the
existing (failed) system. Along with the fascists, racists gained power because they were able
to scapegoat minorities as the alleged cause of everyone's misery.
None of this is surprising. We have seen it before. Whenever you get a depression in a
modern industrial economy, you get scapegoating, racism, and fascists. We know what to do. The
problem is that the current Democratic party isn't doing it.
Instead, what we're seeing is a whirlwind of finger-pointing from the Democratic leadership
that lost this election and probably let the entire New Deal get rolled back and wiped out. Putin
is to blame! Julian Assange is to blame! The biased media are to blame! Voter suppression is to
blame! Bernie Sanders is to blame! Jill Stein is to blame! Everyone and anyone except the current
out-of-touch influence-peddling elites who currently have run the Democratic party into the ground.
We need the feminists and the black lives matter groups and we also need the green party people
and the Bernie Sanders activists. But everyone has to understand that this is not an isolated
event. Trump did not just happen by accident. First there was Greece, then there was Brexit, then
there was Trump, next it'll be Renzi losing the referendum in Italy and a constitutional crisis
there, and after that, Marine Le Pen in France is going to win the first round of elections. (Probably
not the presidency, since all the other French parties will band together to stop her, but the
National Front is currently polling at 40% of all registered French voters.) And Marine LePen
is the real deal, a genuine full-on out-and-out fascist. Not a closet fascist like Steve Bannon,
LePen is the full monty with everything but a Hugo Boss suit and the death's heads on the cap.
Does anyone notice a pattern here?
This is an international movement. It is sweeping the world . It is the end of neoliberalism
and the start of the era of authoritarian nationalism, and we all need to come together to stamp
out the authoritarian part.
Feminists, BLM, black bloc anarchiest anti-globalists, Sandernistas, and, yes, the former Hillary
supporters. Because it not just a coincidence that all these things are happening in all these
countries at the same time. The bottom 90% of the population in the developed world has been ripped
off by a managerial and financial and political class for the last 30 years and they have all
noticed that while the world GDP was skyrocketing and international trade agreements were getting
signed with zero input from the average citizen, a few people were getting very very rich but
nobody else was getting anything.
This hammered people on the bottom, disproportionately African Americans and especially
single AA mothers in America. It crushed the blue collar workers. It is wiping out the savings
and careers of college-educated white collar workers now, at least, the ones who didn't go to
the Ivy League, which is 90% of them.
And the Democratic party is so helpless and so hopeless that it is letting the American Nazi
Party run to the left of them on health care, fer cripes sake! We are now in a situation
where the American Nazi Party is advocating single-payer nationalized health care, while the former
Democratic presidential nominee who just got defeated assured everyone that single-payer "will
never, ever happen."
C'mon! Is anyone surprised that Hillary lost? Let's cut the crap with the "Hillary
was a flawed candidate" arguments. The plain fact of the matter is that Hillary was running mainly
on getting rid of the problems she and her husband created 25 years ago. Hillary promised criminal
justice reform and Black Lives Matter-friendly policing policies - and guess who started the mass
incarceration trend and gave speeches calling black kids "superpredators" 20 years ago? Hillary
promised to fix the problems with the wretched mandate law forcing everyone to buy unaffordable
for-profit private insurance with no cost controls - and guess who originally ran for president
in 2008 on a policy of health care mandates with no cost controls? Yes, Hillary (ironically, Obama's
big surge in popularity as a candidate came when he ran against Hillary from the left, ridiculing
helath care mandates). Hillary promises to reform an out-of-control deregulated financial system
run amok - and guess who signed all those laws revoking Glass-Steagal and setting up the Securities
Trading Modernization Act? Yes, Bill Clinton, and Hillary was right there with him cheering the
whole process on.
So pardon me and lots of other folks for being less than impressed by Hillary's trustworthiness
and honesty. Run for president by promising to undo the damage you did to the country 25 years
ago is (let say) a suboptimal campaign strategy, and a distinctly suboptimal choice of presidential
candidate for a party in the same sense that the Hiroshima air defense was suboptimal in 1945.
Calling Hillary an "imperfect candidate" is like calling what happened to the Titanic a
"boating accident." Trump was an imperfect candidate. Why did he win?
Because we're back in the 1930s again, the economy has crashed hard and still hasn't recovered
(maybe because we still haven't convened a Pecora Commission and jailed a bunch of the thieves,
and we also haven't set up any alphabet government job programs like the CCC) so fascists and
racists and all kinds of other bottom-feeders are crawling out of the political woodwork to promise
to fix the problems that the Democratic party establishment won't.
Rule of thumb: any social or political or economic writer virulently hated by the current Democratic
party establishment is someone we should listen to closely right now.
Cornel West is at the top of the current Democratic establishment's hate list, and he has got
a great article in The Guardian that I think is spot-on:
"The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang. The political triumph
of Donald Trump shattered the establishments in the Democratic and Republican parties – both wedded
to the rule of Big Money and to the reign of meretricious politicians."
Glenn Greenwald is another writer who has been showered with more hate by the Democratic establishment
recently than even Trump or Steve Bannon, so you know Greenwald is saying something important.
He has a great piece in The Intercept on the head-in-the-ground attitude of Democratic
elites toward their recent loss:
"It is not an exaggeration to say that the Democratic Party is in shambles as a political
force. Not only did it just lose the White House to a wildly unpopular farce of a candidate despite
a virtually unified establishment behind it, and not only is it the minority party in both the
Senate and the House, but it is getting crushed at historical record rates on the state and local
levels as well. Surveying this wreckage last week, party stalwart Matthew Yglesias of Vox minced
no words: `the Obama years have created a Democratic Party that's essentially a smoking pile of
rubble.'
"One would assume that the operatives and loyalists of such a weak, defeated and wrecked
political party would be eager to engage in some introspection and self-critique, and to produce
a frank accounting of what they did wrong so as to alter their plight. In the case of 2016 Democrats,
one would be quite mistaken."
Last but far from least, Scottish economist Mark Blyth has what looks to me like the single
best analysis of the entire global Trump_vs_deep_state tidal wave in Foreign Affairs magazine:
"At the end of World War II, the United States and its allies decided that sustained mass
unemployment was an existential threat to capitalism and had to be avoided at all costs. In response,
governments everywhere targeted full employment as the master policy variable-trying to get to,
and sustain, an unemployment rate of roughly four percent. The problem with doing so, over time,
is that targeting any variable long enough undermines the value of the variable itself-a phenomenon
known as Goodhart's law. (..)
" what we see [today] is a reversal of power between creditors and debtors as the anti-inflationary
regime of the past 30 years undermines itself-what we might call "Goodhart's revenge." In this
world, yields compress and creditors fret about their earnings, demanding repayment of debt at
all costs. Macro-economically, this makes the situation worse: the debtors can't pay-but politically,
and this is crucial-it empowers debtors since they can't pay, won't pay, and still have the right
to vote.
"The traditional parties of the center-left and center-right, the builders of this anti-inflationary
order, get clobbered in such a world, since they are correctly identified by these debtors as
the political backers of those demanding repayment in an already unequal system, and all from
those with the least assets. This produces anti-creditor, pro-debtor coalitions-in-waiting that
are ripe for the picking by insurgents of the left and the right, which is exactly what has happened.
"In short, to understand the election of Donald Trump we need to listen to the trumpets blowing
everywhere in the highly indebted developed countries and the people who vote for them.
"The global revolt against elites is not just driven by revulsion and loss and racism.
It's also driven by the global economy itself. This is a global phenomenon that marks one thing
above all. The era of neoliberalism is over. The era of neonationalism has just begun."
You don't live here, do you? I'm really asking a genuine question because the way you are framing
the question ("SPECIFICS!!!!!!) suggests you don't. (Just to show my background, born and raised
in Australia (In the electoral division of Kooyong, home of Menzies) but I've lived in the US
since 2000 in the midwest (MO, OH) and currently in the south (GA))
If this election has taught us anything it's no one cared about "specifics". It was a mood,
a feeling which brought trump over the top (and I'm not talking about the "average" trump voter
because that is meaningless. The average trunp voter was a republican voter in the south who the
Dems will never get so examining their motivations is immaterial to future strategy. I'm talking
about the voters in the Upper Midwest from places which voted for Obama twice then switched to
trump this year to give him his margin of victory).
trump voters have been pretty clear they don't actually care about the way trump does (or even
doesn't) do what he said he would do during the campaign. It was important to them he showed he
was "with" people like them. They way he did that was partially racialized (law and order, islamophobia)
but also a particular emphasis on blue collar work that focused on the work. Unfortunately these
voters, however much you tell them they should suck it up and accept their generations of familial
experience as relatively highly paid industrial workers (even if it is something only their fathers
and grandfathers experienced because the factories were closing when the voters came of age in
the 80s and 90s) is never coming back and they should be happy to retrain as something else, don't
want it. They want what their families have had which is secure, paid, benefits rich, blue
collar work.
trump's campaign empathized with that feeling just by focusing on the factory jobs as jobs
and not as anachronisms that are slowly fading away for whatever reason. Clinton might have been
"correct", but these voters didn't want to hear "the truth". And as much as you can complain about
how stupid they are for wanting to be lied to, that is the unfortunate reality you, and the Democratic
party, have to accept.
The idea they don't want "government help" is ridiculous. They love the government. They just
want the government to do things for them and not for other people (which unfortunately includes
blah people but also "the coasts", "sillicon valley", etc.). Obama won in 2008 and 2012 in part
due to the auto bailout.
trump was offering a "bailout" writ large. Clinton had no (good) counteroffer. It was like
the tables were turned. Romney was the one talking about "change" and "restructuring" while Obama
was defending keeping what was already there.
"Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the
automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable
labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses.
Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html
So yes. Clinton needed vague promises. She needed something more than retraining and "jobs
of the future" and "restructuring". She needed to show she was committed to their way of life,
however those voters saw it, and would do something, anything, to keep it alive. trump did that
even though his plan won't work. And maybe he'll be punished for it. In 4 years. But in the interim
the gop will destroy so many things we need and rely on as well as entrench their power for generations
through the Supreme Court.
But really, it was hard for Clinton to be trusted to act like she cared about these peoples'
way of life because she (through her husband fairly or unfairly) was associated with some of the
larger actions and choices which helped usher in the decline.
Clinton toward the end offered tariffs. But the trump campaign hit back with what turned
out to be a pretty strong counter attack – ""How's she going to get tough on China?" said Trump
economic advisor Peter Navarro on CNN's Quest Means Business. He notes that some of Clinton's
economic advisors have supported TPP or even worked on it. ""
"... " Like [Andrew] Jackson's populism, we're going to build an entirely new political movement ," he says. "It's everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I'm the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it's the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We're just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks . It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution - conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement." ..."
"... Nobody in the Democratic party listened to his speeches, so they had no idea he was delivering such a compelling and powerful economic message. He shows up 3.5 hours late in Michigan at 1 in the morning and has 35,000 people waiting in the cold. When they got [Clinton] off the donor circuit she went to Temple University and they drew 300 or 400 kids." ..."
"... Bannon on Murdoch: "Rupert is a globalist and never understood Trump" ..."
"... " The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f-ed over . If we deliver-" by "we" he means the Trump White House "-we'll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we'll govern for 50 years. That's what the Democrats missed, they were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people. It's not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about ." ..."
"... ... I'd say, IMO, Steve Bannon is more than an excellent choice for President Trump's team ... Bannon's education, business, work and military experience speaks highly of his abilities ... I wish the MSM would stop labelling him a white nationalist and concentrate on his successful accomplishments and what he could contribute to Trump's cabinet. ..."
Bannon next discusses the "battle line" inside America's great divide.
He absolutely - mockingly - rejects the idea that this is a racial line. "I'm not a white nationalist,
I'm a nationalist. I'm an economic nationalist, " he tells me. " The globalists gutted the American
working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to
not get f-ed over . If we deliver-" by "we" he means the Trump White House "-we'll get 60 percent
of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we'll govern for 50 years.
That's what the Democrats missed, they were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion
market cap employing nine people. It's not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about
."
Bannon's vision: an "entirely new political movement", one which drives the conservatives crazy.
As to how monetary policy will coexist with fiscal stimulus, Bannon has a simple explanation: he
plans to "rebuild everything" courtesy of negative interest rates and cheap debt throughout the world.
Those rates may not be negative for too long.
" Like [Andrew] Jackson's populism, we're going to build an entirely new political movement
," he says. "It's everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I'm the
guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the
world, it's the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all
jacked up. We're just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks . It will be
as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution - conservatives, plus populists,
in an economic nationalist movement."
How Bannon describes Trump: " an ideal vessel"
It is less than obvious how Bannon, now the official strategic brains of the Trump operation,
syncs with his boss, famously not too strategic. When Bannon took over the campaign from Paul
Manafort, there were many in the Trump circle who had resigned themselves to the inevitability
of the candidate listening to no one . But here too was a Bannon insight: When the campaign seemed
most in free fall or disarray, it was perhaps most on target. While Clinton was largely absent
from the campaign trail and concentrating on courting her donors, Trump - even after the leak
of the grab-them-by-the-pussy audio - was speaking to ever-growing crowds of thirty-five or forty
thousand. "He gets it, he gets it intuitively," says Bannon, perhaps still surprised he has found
such an ideal vessel. "You have probably the greatest orator since William Jennings Bryan, coupled
with an economic populist message and two political parties that are so owned by the donors that
they don't speak to their audience. But he speaks in a non-political vernacular, he communicates
with these people in a very visceral way. Nobody in the Democratic party listened to his speeches,
so they had no idea he was delivering such a compelling and powerful economic message. He shows
up 3.5 hours late in Michigan at 1 in the morning and has 35,000 people waiting in the cold. When
they got [Clinton] off the donor circuit she went to Temple University and they drew 300 or 400
kids."
Bannon on Murdoch: "Rupert is a globalist and never understood Trump"
At that moment, as we talk, there's a knock on the door of Bannon's office, a temporary, impersonal,
middle-level executive space with a hodgepodge of chairs for constant impromptu meetings. Sen.
Ted Cruz, once the Republican firebrand, now quite a small and unassuming figure, has been waiting
patiently for a chat and Bannon excuses himself for a short while. It is clear when we return
to our conversation that it is not just the liberal establishment that Bannon feels he has triumphed
over, but the conservative one too - not least of all Fox News and its owners, the Murdochs. "They
got it more wrong than anybody," he says. " Rupert is a globalist and never understood Trump.
To him, Trump is a radical. Now they'll go centrist and build the network around Megyn Kelly."
Bannon recounts, with no small irony, that when Breitbart attacked Kelly after her challenges
to Trump in the initial Republican debate, Fox News chief Roger Ailes - whom Bannon describes
as an important mentor, and who Kelly's accusations of sexual harassment would help topple in
July - called to defend her. Bannon says he warned Ailes that Kelly would be out to get him too
.
Finally, Bannon on how he sees himself in the administration:
Bannon now becomes part of a two-headed White House political structure, with Reince Priebus
- in and out of Bannon's office as we talk - as chief of staff, in charge of making the trains
run on time, reporting to the president, and Bannon as chief strategist, in charge of vision,
goals, narrative and plan of attack, reporting to the president too. Add to this the ambitions
and whims of the president himself, and the novel circumstance of one who has never held elective
office, the agenda of his highly influential family and the end runs of a party significant parts
of which were opposed to him, and you have quite a complex court that Bannon will have to finesse
to realize his reign of the working man and a trillion dollars in new spending.
"I am," he says, with relish, "Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors."
" The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia.
The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f-ed over . If we deliver-" by "we" he
means the Trump White House "-we'll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the
black and Hispanic vote and we'll govern for 50 years. That's what the Democrats missed, they
were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people.
It's not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about ."
... I'd say, IMO, Steve Bannon is more than an excellent choice for President Trump's team
... Bannon's education, business, work and military experience speaks highly of his abilities
... I wish the MSM would stop labelling him a white nationalist and concentrate on his successful
accomplishments and what he could contribute to Trump's cabinet.
........ from wiki ...
Stephen Kevin Bannon was born on November 27, 1953, in Norfolk, Virginia into a working-class,
Irish Catholic, pro-Kennedy, pro-union family of Democrats. He graduated from Virginia Tech in
1976 and holds a master's degree in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. In 1983,
Bannon received an M.B.A. degree with honors from Harvard Business School.
Bannon was an officer in the United States Navy, serving on the destroyer USS Paul F. Foster
as a Surface Warfare Officer in the Pacific Fleet and stateside as a special assistant to the
Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon.
After his military service, Bannon worked at Goldman Sachs as an investment banker in the Mergers
& Acquisitions Department. In 1990, Bannon and several colleagues from Goldman Sachs launched
Bannon & Co., a boutique investment bank specializing in media. Through Bannon & Co., Bannon negotiated
the sale of Castle Rock Entertainment to Ted Turner. As payment, Bannon & Co. accepted a financial
stake in five television shows, including Seinfeld. Société Générale purchased Bannon & Co. in
1998.
In 1993, while still managing Bannon & Co., Bannon was made acting director of Earth-science
research project Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona. Under Bannon, the project shifted emphasis from
researching space exploration and colonization towards pollution and global warming. He left the
project in 1995.
After the sale of Bannon & Co., Bannon became an executive producer in the film and media industry
in Hollywood, California. He was executive producer for Julie Taymor's 1999 film Titus. Bannon
became a partner with entertainment industry executive Jeff Kwatinetz at The Firm, Inc., a film
and television management company. In 2004, Bannon made a documentary about Ronald Reagan titled
In the Face of Evil. Through the making and screening of this film, Bannon was introduced to Peter
Schweizer and publisher Andrew Breitbart. He was involved in the financing and production of a
number of films, including Fire from the Heartland: The Awakening of the Conservative Woman, The
Undefeated (on Sarah Palin), and Occupy Unmasked. Bannon also hosts a radio show (Breitbart News
Daily) on a Sirius XM satellite radio channel.
Bannon is also executive chairman and co-founder of the Government Accountability Institute,
where he helped orchestrate the publication of the book Clinton Cash. In 2015, Bannon was ranked
No. 19 on Mediaite's list of the "25 Most Influential in Political News Media 2015".
Bannon convinced Goldman Sachs to invest in a company known as Internet Gaming Entertainment.
Following a lawsuit, the company rebranded as Affinity Media and Bannon took over as CEO. From
2007 through 2011, Bannon was chairman and CEO of Affinity Media.
Bannon became a member of the board of Breitbart News. In March 2012, after founder Andrew
Breitbart's death, Bannon became executive chairman of Breitbart News LLC, the parent company
of Breitbart News. Under his leadership, Breitbart took a more alt-right and nationalistic approach
towards its agenda. Bannon declared the website "the platform for the alt-right" in 2016. Bannon
identifies as a conservative. Speaking about his role at Breitbart, Bannon said: "We think of
ourselves as virulently anti-establishment, particularly 'anti-' the permanent political class."
The New York Times described Breitbart News under Bannon's leadership as a "curiosity of the
fringe right wing", with "ideologically driven journalists", that is a source of controversy "over
material that has been called misogynist, xenophobic and racist." The newspaper also noted how
Breitbart was now a "potent voice" for Donald Trump's presidential campaign.
Bannon: " The globalists gutted the American working class ..the Democrats were talking
to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people. It's not reality.
They lost sight of what the world is about ."
Well said. Couldn't agree more.
Bannon: " Like [Andrew] Jackson's populism, we're going to build an entirely new political
movement I'm the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan.
Dear Mr. Bannon, it has to be way more than $1trillion in 10 years. Obama's $831 billion American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) didn't make up the difference for all the job lost
in 2007/08. Manufacturing alone lost about 9 million jobs since 1979, when it peaked.
Trump needs to go Ronald Reagan 180% deficit spending. If Trump runs 100% like Obama, Trump
will fail as well.
Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make
the Rich Richer
By Dean Baker
Introduction: Trading in Myths
In winter 2016, near the peak of Bernie Sanders' bid for the Democratic presidential
nomination, a new line became popular among the nation's policy elite: Bernie Sanders is
the enemy of the world's poor. Their argument was that Sanders, by pushing trade policies
to help U.S. workers, specifically manufacturing workers, risked undermining the well-being
of the world's poor because exporting manufactured goods to the United States and other
wealthy countries is their path out of poverty. The role model was China, which by
exporting has largely eliminated extreme poverty and drastically reduced poverty among its
population. Sanders and his supporters would block the rest of the developing world from
following the same course.
This line, in its Sanders-bashing permutation, appeared early on in Vox, the
millennial-oriented media upstart, and was quickly picked up elsewhere (Beauchamp 2016).
After all, it was pretty irresistible. The ally of the downtrodden and enemy of the rich
was pushing policies that would condemn much of the world to poverty.
The story made a nice contribution to preserving the status quo, but it was less
valuable if you respect honesty in public debate.
The problem in the logic of this argument should be apparent to anyone who has taken an
introductory economics course. It assumes that the basic problem of manufacturing workers
in the developing world is the need for someone who will buy their stuff. If people in the
United States don't buy it, then the workers will be out on the street and growth in the
developing world will grind to a halt. In this story, the problem is that we don't have
enough people in the world to buy stuff. In other words, there is a shortage of demand. But
is it really true that no one else in the world would buy the stuff produced by
manufacturing workers in the developing world if they couldn't sell it to consumers in the
United States? Suppose people in the developing world bought the stuff they produced
raising their living standards by raising their own consumption.
That is how the economics is supposed to work. In the standard theory, general shortages
of demand are not a problem. Economists have traditionally assumed that economies tended
toward full employment. The basic economic constraint was a lack of supply. The problem was
that we couldn't produce enough goods and services, not that we were producing too much and
couldn't find anyone to buy them. In fact, this is why all the standard models used to
analyze trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership assume trade doesn't affect
total employment. Economies adjust so that shortages of demand are not a problem.
In this standard story (and the Sanders critics are people who care about textbook
economics), capital flows from slow-growing rich countries, where it is relatively
plentiful and so gets a low rate of return, to fast-growing poor countries, where it is
scarce and gets a high rate of return.
[Figure 1-1] Theoretical and actual capital flows.
So the United States, Japan, and the European Union should be running large trade
surpluses, which is what an outflow of capital means. Rich countries like ours should be
lending money to developing countries, providing them with the means to build up their
capital stock and infrastructure while they use their own resources to meet their people's
basic needs.
This wasn't just theory. That story accurately described much of the developing world,
especially Asia, through the 1990s. Countries like Indonesia and Malaysia were experiencing
rapid annual growth of 7.8 percent and 9.6 percent, respectively, even as they ran large
trade deficits, just over 2 percent of GDP each year in Indonesia and almost 5 percent in
Malaysia.
These trade deficits probably were excessive, and a crisis of confidence hit East Asia
and much of the developing world in the summer of 1997. The inflow of capital from rich
countries slowed or reversed, making it impossible for the developing countries to sustain
the fixed exchange rates most had at the time. One after another, they were forced to
abandon their fixed exchange rates and turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for
help.
Rather than promulgating policies that would allow developing countries to continue the
textbook development path of growth driven by importing capital and running trade deficits,
the IMF made debt repayment a top priority. The bailout, under the direction of the Clinton
administration Treasury Department, required developing countries to switch to large trade
surpluses (Radelet and Sachs 2000, O'Neil 1999).
The countries of East Asia would be far richer today had they been allowed to continue
on the growth path of the early and mid-1990s, when they had large trade deficits. Four of
the five would be more than twice as rich, and the fifth, Vietnam, would be almost 50
percent richer. South Korea and Malaysia would have higher per capita incomes today than
the United States.
[Figure 1-2] Per capita income of East Asian countries, actual vs. continuing on 1990s
growth path.
In the wake of the East Asia bailout, countries throughout the developing world decided
they had to build up reserves of foreign exchange, primarily dollars, in order to avoid
ever facing the same harsh bailout terms as the countries of East Asia. Building up
reserves meant running large trade surpluses, and it is no coincidence that the U.S. trade
deficit has exploded, rising from just over 1 percent of GDP in 1996 to almost 6 percent in
2005. The rise has coincided with the loss of more than 3 million manufacturing jobs,
roughly 20 percent of employment in the sector.
There was no reason the textbook growth pattern of the 1990s could not have continued.
It wasn't the laws of economics that forced developing countries to take a different path,
it was the failed bailout and the international financial system. It would seem that the
enemy of the world's poor is not Bernie Sanders but rather the engineers of our current
globalization policies.
There is a further point in this story that is generally missed: it is not only the
volume of trade flows that is determined by policy, but also the content. A major push in
recent trade deals has been to require stronger and longer patent and copyright protection.
Paying the fees imposed by these terms, especially for prescription drugs, is a huge burden
on the developing world. Bill Clinton would have much less need to fly around the world for
the Clinton Foundation had he not inserted the TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual
Property Rights) provisions in the World Trade Organization (WTO) that require developing
countries to adopt U.S.-style patent protections. Generic drugs are almost always cheap -
patent protection makes drugs expensive. The cancer and hepatitis drugs that sell for tens
or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year would sell for a few hundred dollars in a free
market. Cheap drugs would be more widely available had the developed world not forced TRIPS
on the developing world.
Of course, we have to pay for the research to develop new drugs or any innovation. We
also have to compensate creative workers who produce music, movies, and books. But there
are efficient alternatives to patents and copyrights, and the efforts by the elites in the
United States and other wealthy countries to impose these relics on the developing world is
just a mechanism for redistributing income from the world's poor to Pfizer, Microsoft, and
Disney. Stronger and longer patent and copyright protection is not a necessary feature of a
21st century economy.
In textbook trade theory, if a country has a larger trade surplus on payments for
royalties and patent licensing fees, it will have a larger trade deficit in manufactured
goods and other areas. The reason is that, in theory, the trade balance is fixed by
national savings and investment, not by the ability of a country to export in a particular
area. If the trade deficit is effectively fixed by these macroeconomic factors, then more
exports in one area mean fewer exports in other areas. Put another way, income gains for
Pfizer and Disney translate into lost jobs for workers in the steel and auto industries....
It includes this interesting piece on international trade:
"I'll start with my favorite, the complaint that the trade policy advocating by Warren
and Sanders would hurt the poor in the developing world, or to use their words:
"And their ostensible protection of American workers leaves no room to consider the welfare
of poor people elsewhere in the world."
I like this one because it turns standard economic theory on its head to advance the
interests of the rich and powerful. In the economic textbooks, rich countries like the
United States are supposed to be exporting capital to the developing world. This provides
them the means to build up their capital stock and infrastructure, while maintaining the
living standards of their populations. This is the standard economic story where the
problem is scarcity.
But to justify trade policies that have harmed tens of millions of U.S. workers, either
by costing them jobs or depressing their wages, the Post discards standard economics and
tells us the problem facing people in the developing world is that there is too much stuff.
If we didn't buy the goods produced in the developing world then there would just be a
massive glut of unsold products.
In the standard theory the people in the developing world buy their own stuff, with rich
countries like the U.S. providing the financing. It actually did work this way in the
1990s, up until the East Asian financial crisis in 1997. In that period, countries like
Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia were growing very rapidly while running large trade
deficits. This pattern of growth was ended by the terms of the bailout imposed on these
countries by the U.S. Treasury Department through the International Monetary Fund.
The harsh terms of the bailout forced these and other developing countries to reverse
the standard textbook path and start running large trade surpluses. This post-bailout
period was associated with slower growth for these countries. In other words, the poor of
the developing world suffered from the pattern of trade the Post advocates. If they had
continued on the pre-bailout path they would be much richer today. In fact, South Korea and
Malaysia would be richer than the United States if they had maintained their pre-bailout
growth rate over the last two decades. (This is the topic of the introduction to my new
book, Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make
the Rich Richer, it's free.)"
Not sure that I fully agree with him, but I do agree that trade imbalances and
mercantilism is a large part of the problem.
The Washington Post editorial page decided to lecture readers * on the meaning of
progressivism. Okay, that is nowhere near as bad as a Trump presidency, but really, did we
need this?
The editorial gives us a potpourri of neo-liberal (yes, the term is appropriate here)
platitudes, all of which we have heard many times before and are best half true. For
framing, the villains are Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren who it tells us "are
embracing principles that are not genuinely progressive."
I'll start with my favorite, the complaint that the trade policy advocating by Warren
and Sanders would hurt the poor in the developing world, or to use their words:
"And their ostensible protection of American workers leaves no room to consider the
welfare of poor people elsewhere in the world."
I like this one because it turns standard economic theory on its head to advance the
interests of the rich and powerful. In the economic textbooks, rich countries like the
United States are supposed to be exporting capital to the developing world. This provides
them the means to build up their capital stock and infrastructure, while maintaining the
living standards of their populations. This is the standard economic story where the
problem is scarcity.
But to justify trade policies that have harmed tens of millions of U.S. workers, either
by costing them jobs or depressing their wages, the Post discards standard economics and
tells us the problem facing people in the developing world is that there is too much stuff.
If we didn't buy the goods produced in the developing world then there would just be a
massive glut of unsold products.
In the standard theory the people in the developing world buy their own stuff, with rich
countries like the U.S. providing the financing. It actually did work this way in the
1990s, up until the East Asian financial crisis in 1997. In that period, countries like
Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia were growing very rapidly while running large trade
deficits. This pattern of growth was ended by the terms of the bailout imposed on these
countries by the U.S. Treasury Department through the International Monetary Fund.
The harsh terms of the bailout forced these and other developing countries to reverse
the standard textbook path and start running large trade surpluses. This post-bailout
period was associated with slower growth for these countries. In other words, the poor of
the developing world suffered from the pattern of trade the Post advocates. If they had
continued on the pre-bailout path they would be much richer today. In fact, South Korea and
Malaysia would be richer than the United States if they had maintained their pre-bailout
growth rate over the last two decades. (This is the topic of the introduction to my new
book, "Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to
Make the Rich Richer," ** it's free.)
It is also important to note that the Post is only bothered by forms of protection that
might help working class people. The United States prohibits foreign doctors from
practicing in the United States unless they complete a U.S. residency program. (The total
number of slots are tightly restricted with only a small fraction open to foreign trained
doctors.) This is a classic protectionist measure. No serious person can believe that the
only way for a person to be a competent doctor is to complete a U.S. residency program. It
costs the United States around $100 billion a year ($700 per family) in higher medical
expenses. Yet, we never hear a word about this or other barriers that protect the most
highly paid professionals from the same sort of international competition faced by
steelworkers and textile workers.
Moving on, we get yet another Post tirade on Social Security.
"You can expand benefits for everyone, as Ms. Warren favors. Prosperous retirees who
live mostly off their well-padded 401(k)s will appreciate what to them will feel like a
small bonus, if they notice it. But spreading wealth that way will make it harder to find
the resources for the vulnerable elderly who truly depend on Social Security.
"But demographics - the aging of the population - cannot be wished away. In the 1960s,
about five taxpayers were helping to support each Social Security recipient, and the
economy was growing about 6 percent annually. Today there are fewer than three workers for
each pensioner, and the growth rate even following the 2008 recession has averaged about 2
percent . On current trends, 10 years from now the federal government will be spending
almost all its money on Medicare, Social Security and other entitlements and on interest
payments on the debt, leaving less and less for schools, housing and job training. There is
nothing progressive about that."
There are all sorts of misleading or wrong claims here. First, the economy did not grow
"about 6 percent annually" in the 1960s. There were three years in which growth did exceed
6.0 percent, and it was a very prosperous decade, but growth only averaged 4.6 percent from
1960 to 1970.
I suppose we should be happy that the Post is at least getting closer to the mark. A
2007 editorial *** praising The North American Free Trade Agreement told readers that
Mexico's GDP "has more than quadrupled since 1987." The International Monetary Fund data
**** put the gain at 83 percent. So by comparison, they are doing pretty good with the 6
percent growth number for the sixties.
But getting to the demographics, we did go from more than five workers for every retiree
to less than three today, and this number is projected to fall further to around 2.0
workers per retiree in the next fifteen years. This raises the obvious question, so what?
The economy did not collapse even as we saw the fall from 5 workers per retiree to less
than 3, so something really really bad happens when it falls further? We did raise taxes to
cover the additional cost and we will probably have to raise taxes in the future.
We get that the Post doesn't like tax increases (no one does), but this hardly seems
like the end of the world. The Social Security Trustees project ***** that real wages will
rise on average by more than 34 percent over the next two decades. Suppose we took back
5–10 percent of these projected wage gains through tax increases (still leaving workers
with wages that are more than 30 percent higher than they are today), what is the big
problem?
Of course most workers have not seen their wages rise in step with the economy's growth
over the last four decades. This is a huge issue which is the sort of thing that
progressives should be and are focusing on. But the Post would rather distract us with the
possibility that at some point in the future we may be paying a somewhat higher Social
Security tax.
The Post's route for savings is also classic misdirection. It tells how about
high-living seniors who get so much money from their 401(k)s they don't even notice their
Social Security checks. Only a bit more than 4.0 percent of the over 65 population has
non-Social Security income of more than $80,000 a year. If the point is to have substantial
savings from means-testing it would be necessary to hit people with incomes around $40,000
a year or even lower. That is not what most people consider wealthy.
We could have substantial savings on Medicare by pushing down the pay of doctors and
reducing the prices of drugs and medical equipment. The latter could be done by
substituting public financing for research and development for government granted patent
monopolies (also discussed in Rigged). These items would almost invariably be cheap in a
free market. But the Post seems uninterested in ways to save money that could affect the
incomes of the rich.
One can quibble with whether the current benefits for middle income people are right or
should be somewhat higher or lower, but it is ridiculous to argue that raising them $50 a
month, as proposed by Senator Warren, will break the bank.
Then we have the issue of free college. The Post raises the issue, pushed by Senator
Sanders in his presidential campaign, and then tells readers:
"Our answer - we would argue, the progressive answer - is that there are people in
society with far greater needs than that upper-middle-class family in Fairfax County that
would be relieved of its tuition burden at the College of William & Mary if Mr. Sanders got
his wish."
There are two points to be made here. First there is extensive research ****** showing
that many children from low- and moderate-income families hugely over-estimate the cost of
college, failing to realize that they would be eligible for financial aid that would make
it free or nearly free. This means that the current structure is preventing many relatively
disadvantaged children from attending college. Arguably better education on the
opportunities to get aid would solve this problem, but the problem has existed for a long
time and better education has not done much to change the picture thus far.
The second point is that the process of determining eligibility for aid is itself
costly. Many children have divorced parents, with a non-custodial parent often not anxious
to pay for their children's college. Perhaps it is appropriate that they should pay, but
forcing payment is not an easy task and it doesn't make sense to make the children in such
situations suffer.
In many ways, the free college solution is likely to be the easiest, with the tax coming
out of the income of higher earners, the vast majority of whom will be the beneficiaries of
this policy. There are ways to save on paying for college. My favorite is limiting the pay
of anyone at a public school to the salary of the president of the United States ($400,000
a year). We can also deny the privilege of tax exempt status to private universities or
other non-profits that don't accept a similar salary cap. These folks can pay their top
executives whatever they want, but they shouldn't ask the taxpayers to subsidize their
exorbitant pay packages.
There is one final issue in the column worth noting. At one point it makes a pitch for
the virtues of economic growth then tells readers:
"It's not in conflict with the goal of redistribution."
At least some of us progressive types are not particularly focused on "redistribution."
The focus of my book and much of my other writing is on the way that the market has been
structured to redistribute income upward, compared with the structures in place in the
quarter century after World War II. Is understandable that people who are basically very
satisfied with this upward redistribution of market income would not want this rigging of
the market even to be discussed, but serious progressives do.
Although I like much of what
Dean Baker, I don't like his term "loser liberalism", nor do I think his de-emphasis on
redistribution useful. Au contraire, I think talking about redistribution is absolutely
essential if we are to move to sustainable world. We can no longer be certain that per
person GDP growth will be sufficient to be able to ignore distribution or to rely on
"predistribution".
The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive
By Dean Baker
Upward Redistribution of Income: It Didn't Just Happen
Money does not fall up. Yet the United States has experienced a massive upward
redistribution of income over the last three decades, leaving the bulk of the workforce
with little to show from the economic growth since 1980. This upward redistribution was not
the result of the natural workings of the market. Rather, it was the result of deliberate
policy, most of which had the support of the leadership of both the Republican and
Democratic parties.
Unfortunately, the public and even experienced progressive political figures are not
well informed about the key policies responsible for this upward redistribution, even
though they are not exactly secrets. The policies are so well established as conventional
economic policy that we tend to think of them as incontrovertibly virtuous things, but each
has a dark side. An anti-inflation policy by the Federal Reserve Board, which relies on
high interest rates, slows growth and throws people out of work. Major trade deals hurt
manufacturing workers by putting them in direct competition with low-paid workers in the
developing world. A high dollar makes U.S. goods uncompetitive in world markets.
Almost any economist would acknowledge these facts, but few economists have explored
their implications and explained them to the general public. As a result, most of us have
little understanding of the economic policies that have the largest impact on our jobs, our
homes, and our lives. Instead, public debate and the most hotly contested legislation in
Congress tend to be about issues that will have relatively little impact.
This lack of focus on crucial economic issues is a serious problem from the standpoint
of advancing a progressive agenda....
President Barack Obama's former press secretary Robert Gibbs faulted Hillary Clinton's
presidential campaign for failing to have a dynamic economic message that applied to working
class voters, and ridiculed the suggestion that voters voted for Donald Trump because they were
racists.
"The truth is, the party didn't have an economic message," Gibbs said. "The party didn't fight
in places that it should have."
Gibbs, who now works for McDonalds as the Global Chief Communications officer, explained that
his biggest surprise was that Clinton failed so badly in Michigan, pointing out that Obama won
the state by 16 points in 2008 and 10 points in 2012.
"We have a lot of people that are going through economic strife and turmoil and the truth is we
were going to elect a president who was going to represent all of those people so you got to go
to those places," Gibbs said.
He made his remarks as part of an ongoing post-election therapy session held by former Obama
speechwriter Jon Favreau and former senior adviser Dan Pfieffer on their Keepin' it 1600 podcast.
Gibbs cited Bay County, Michigan - a county that was 95 percent white with a median household
income of $45,000 and only four out of five people didn't have a college degree. He reminded the
audience that Obama won the country by 3,000 votes in 2008, but that Clinton lost the county by
7,000 votes.
"There's all this kind of, I think, commentary devoid of real reality that somehow there's
this big racist vote that came out for Donald Trump," Gibbs said. "You talk about a 95 percent
white county that voted twice for Barack Hussein Obama. They didn't become racist in the last
four years."
President Barack Obama said Wednesday that America's election of Donald Trump and the U.K.'s
vote to leave the European Union reflect a political uprising in the West over economic
inequities spawned by leaders' mishandling of globalization.
"... Already, motor-vehicle manufacturers ship an automotive transmission back and forth across the US-Mexican border several times in the course of production. At some point, unpacking that production process still further will reach the point of diminishing returns. ..."
"... The story for cross-border flows of financial capital is even more dramatic. Gross capital flows – the sum of inflows and outflows – are not just growing more slowly; they are down significantly in absolute terms from 2009 levels. ..."
"... ... cross-border bank lending and borrowing that have fallen. Foreign direct investment – financial flows to build foreign factories and acquire foreign companies – remains at pre-crisis levels. ..."
"... This difference reflects regulation. Having concluded, rightly, that cross-border bank lending is especially risky, regulators clamped down on banks' international operations. ..."
Does Donald Trump's election as United States president mean that globalization is dead, or are
reports of the process' demise greatly exaggerated? If globalization is only partly incapacitated,
not terminally ill, should we worry? How much will slower trade growth, now in the offing, matter
for the global economy?
World trade growth would be slowing down, even without Trump in office. Its growth was already
flat in the first quarter of 2016, and it fell
by nearly 1% in the second quarter. This continues a prior trend: since 2010, global trade has
grown at an annual rate of barely 2%. Together with the fact that worldwide production of goods and
services has been rising by more than 3%, this means that the trade-to-GDP ratio has been falling,
in contrast to its steady upward march in earlier years.
... the resurgent protectionism manifest in popular opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership
(TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP),
Causality in economics may be elusive, but in this case it is clear. So far, slower trade growth
has been the result of slower GDP growth, not the other way around.
This is particularly evident in the case of investment spending, which has
fallen sharply since
the global financial crisis. Investment spending is trade-intensive, because countries rely disproportionately
on a relatively small handful of producers, like Germany, for technologically sophisticated capital
goods.
In addition, slower trade growth reflects China's economic deceleration. Until 2011 China was
growing at double-digit rates, and Chinese exports and imports were growing even faster. China's
growth has now slowed by a third, leading to slower growth of Chinese trade.
China's growth miracle, benefiting a fifth of the earth's population, is the most important economic
event of the last quarter-century. But it can happen only once. And now that the phase of catch-up
growth is over for China, this engine of global trade will slow.
The other engine of world trade has been global supply chains. Trade in parts and components has
benefited from falling transport costs, reflecting containerization and related advances in logistics.
But efficiency in shipping is unlikely to continue to improve faster than efficiency in the production
of what is being shipped. Already, motor-vehicle manufacturers ship an automotive transmission
back and forth across the US-Mexican border several times in the course of production. At some point,
unpacking that production process still further will reach the point of diminishing returns.
The story for cross-border flows of financial capital is even more dramatic. Gross capital
flows – the sum of inflows and outflows – are not just growing more slowly; they are down significantly
in absolute terms from 2009 levels.
... cross-border bank lending and borrowing that have fallen. Foreign direct investment –
financial flows to build foreign factories and acquire foreign companies – remains at pre-crisis
levels.
This difference reflects regulation. Having concluded, rightly, that cross-border bank lending
is especially risky, regulators clamped down on banks' international operations.
In response, many banks curtailed their cross-border business. But, rather than alarming anyone,
this should be seen as reassuring, because the riskiest forms of international finance have been
curtailed without disrupting more stable and productive forms of foreign investment.
We now face the prospect of the US government revoking the Dodd-Frank Act and rolling back the
financial reforms of recent years. Less stringent financial regulation may make for the recovery
of international capital flows. But we should be careful what we wish for.
Hasan (Interviewer) (From 11.15 onwards into the interview): "In 2012, your agency was
saying, quote: "The Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda in Iraq [(which ISIS arose
out of)], are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria." In 2012, the US was helping
coordinate arms transfers to those same groups. Why did you not stop that if you're worried
about the rise of Islamic extremism?"
Flynn: "Well I hate to say it's not my job,
but my job was to ensure that the accuracy of our intelligence that was being presented was
as good as it could be, and I will tell you, it goes before 2012. When we were in Iraq, and
we still had decisions to be made before there was a decision to pull out of Iraq in 2011,
it was very clear what we were going to face."
Hasan (Interviewer): You are basically saying that even in government at the time,
you knew those groups were around, you saw this analysis, and you were arguing against it,
but who wasn't listening?"
Flynn: "I think the administration."
Hasan (Interviewer): "So the administration turned a blind eye to your analysis?"
Flynn: "I don't know if they turned a blind eye. I think it was a decision, a willful
decision."
Hasan (Interviewer): "A willful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafists,
Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood?"
Flynn: "A willful decision to do what they're doing You have to really ask the President
what is it that he actually is doing with the policy that is in place, because it is very,
very confusing."
Former US Intelligence Chief Admits Obama Took "Willful Decision" to Support ISIS Rise
"... The New Deal did not seek to overthrow the plutocracy, but it did seek to side-step and disable
their dominance. ..."
"... It seems to me that while neoliberalism on the right was much the same old same old, the neoliberal
turn on the left was marked by a measured abandonment of this struggle over the distribution of income
between the classes. In the U.S., the Democrats gradually abandoned their populist commitments. In Europe,
the labour and socialist parties gradually abandoned class struggle. ..."
"... When Obama came in, in 2008 amid the unfolding GFC, one of the most remarkable features of
his economic team was the extent to which it conceded control of policy entirely to the leading money
center banks. Geithner and Bernanke continued in power with Geithner moving from the New York Federal
Reserve (where he served as I recall under a Chair from Goldman Sachs) to Treasury in the Obama Administration,
but Geithner's Treasury was staffed from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Citibank. The crisis served
to concentrate banking assets in the hands of the top five banks, but it seemed also to transfer political
power entirely into their hands as well. Simon Johnson called it a coup. ..."
"... Here's the thing: the globalization and financialization of the economy from roughly 1980 drove
both increasingly extreme distribution of income and de-industrialization. ..."
"... It was characteristic of neoliberalism that the policy, policy intention and policy consequences
were hidden behind a rhetoric of markets and technological inevitability. Matt Stoller has identified
this as the statecraft of neoliberalism: the elimination of political agency and responsibility for
economic performance and outcomes. Globalization and financialization were just "forces" that just happened,
in a meteorological economics. ..."
"... This was not your grandfather's Democratic Party and it was a Democratic Party that could aid
the working class and the Rust Belt only within fairly severe and sometimes sharply conflicting constraints.
..."
"... No one in the Democratic Party had much institutional incentive to connect the dots, and draw
attention to the acute conflicts over the distribution of income and wealth involved in financialization
of the economy (including financialization as a driver of health care costs). And, that makes the political
problem that much harder, because there are no resources for rhetorical and informational clarity or
coherence. ..."
"... If Obama could not get a very big stimulus indeed thru a Democratic Congress long out of power,
Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen spending on pork barrel projects is popular and gets Congressional
critters re-elected. So, again, if the stimulus is small and the Democratic Congress doesn't get re-elected,
Obama isn't really trying. ..."
"... Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism, because
it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference. ..."
At the center of Great Depression politics was a political struggle over the distribution of
income, a struggle that was only decisively resolved during the War, by the Great Compression.
It was at center of farm policy where policymakers struggled to find ways to support farm incomes.
It was at the center of industrial relations politics, where rapidly expanding unions were seeking
higher industrial wages. It was at the center of banking policy, where predatory financial practices
were under attack. It was at the center of efforts to regulate electric utility rates and establish
public power projects. And, everywhere, the clear subtext was a struggle between rich and poor,
the economic royalists as FDR once called them and everyone else.
FDR, an unmistakeable patrician in manner and pedigree, was leading a not-quite-revolutionary
politics, which was nevertheless hostile to and suspicious of business elites, as a source of
economic pathology. The New Deal did not seek to overthrow the plutocracy, but it did seek
to side-step and disable their dominance.
It seems to me that while neoliberalism on the right was much the same old same old, the
neoliberal turn on the left was marked by a measured abandonment of this struggle over the distribution
of income between the classes. In the U.S., the Democrats gradually abandoned their populist commitments.
In Europe, the labour and socialist parties gradually abandoned class struggle.
In retrospect, though the New Deal did use direct employment as a means of relief to good effect
economically and politically, it never undertook anything like a Keynesian stimulus on a Keynesian
scale - at least until the War.
Where the New Deal witnessed the institution of an elaborate system of financial repression,
accomplished in large part by imposing on the financial sector an explicitly mandated structure,
with types of firms and effective limits on firm size and scope, a series of regulatory reforms
and financial crises beginning with Carter and Reagan served to wipe this structure away.
When Obama came in, in 2008 amid the unfolding GFC, one of the most remarkable features
of his economic team was the extent to which it conceded control of policy entirely to the leading
money center banks. Geithner and Bernanke continued in power with Geithner moving from the New
York Federal Reserve (where he served as I recall under a Chair from Goldman Sachs) to Treasury
in the Obama Administration, but Geithner's Treasury was staffed from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan
Chase and Citibank. The crisis served to concentrate banking assets in the hands of the top five
banks, but it seemed also to transfer political power entirely into their hands as well. Simon
Johnson called it a coup.
I don't know what considerations guided Obama in choosing the size of the stimulus or its composition
(as spending and tax cuts). Larry Summers was identified at the time as a voice of caution, not
"gambling", but not much is known about his detailed reasoning in severely trimming Christina
Romer's entirely conventional calculations. (One consideration might well have been worldwide
resource shortages, which had made themselves felt in 2007-8 as an inflationary spike in commodity
prices.) I do not see a case for connecting stimulus size policy to the health care reform. At
the time the stimulus was proposed, the Administration had also been considering whether various
big banks and other financial institutions should be nationalized, forced to insolvency or otherwise
restructured as part of a regulatory reform.
Here's the thing: the globalization and financialization of the economy from roughly 1980
drove both increasingly extreme distribution of income and de-industrialization. Accelerating
the financialization of the economy from 1999 on made New York and Washington rich, but the same
economic policies and process were devastating the Rust Belt as de-industrialization. They were
two aspects of the same complex of economic trends and policies. The rise of China as a manufacturing
center was, in critical respects, a financial operation within the context of globalized trade
that made investment in new manufacturing plant in China, as part of globalized supply chains
and global brand management, (arguably artificially) low-risk and high-profit, while reinvestment
in manufacturing in the American mid-west became unattractive, except as a game of extracting
tax subsidies or ripping off workers.
It was characteristic of neoliberalism that the policy, policy intention and policy consequences
were hidden behind a rhetoric of markets and technological inevitability. Matt Stoller has identified
this as the statecraft of neoliberalism: the elimination of political agency and responsibility
for economic performance and outcomes. Globalization and financialization were just "forces" that
just happened, in a meteorological economics.
It is conceding too many good intentions to the Obama Administration to tie an inadequate stimulus
to a Rube Goldberg health care reform as the origin story for the final debacle of Democratic
neoliberal politics. There was a delicate balancing act going on, but they were not balancing
the recovery of the economy in general so much as they were balancing the recovery from insolvency
of a highly inefficient and arguably predatory financial sector, which was also not incidentally
financing the institutional core of the Democratic Party and staffing many key positions in the
Administration and in the regulatory apparatus.
This was not your grandfather's Democratic Party and it was a Democratic Party that could
aid the working class and the Rust Belt only within fairly severe and sometimes sharply conflicting
constraints.
No one in the Democratic Party had much institutional incentive to connect the dots, and
draw attention to the acute conflicts over the distribution of income and wealth involved in financialization
of the economy (including financialization as a driver of health care costs). And, that makes
the political problem that much harder, because there are no resources for rhetorical and informational
clarity or coherence.
The short version of my thinking on the Obama stimulus is this: Keynesian stimulus spending is
a free lunch; it doesn't really matter what you spend money on up to a very generous point, so
it seems ready-made for legislative log-rolling. If Obama could not get a very big stimulus
indeed thru a Democratic Congress long out of power, Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen
spending on pork barrel projects is popular and gets Congressional critters re-elected. So, again,
if the stimulus is small and the Democratic Congress doesn't get re-elected, Obama isn't really
trying.
Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism,
because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference.
Great comment. Simply great. Hat tip to the author !
Notable quotes:
"… The New Deal did not seek to overthrow the plutocracy, but it did seek to side-step and
disable their dominance. …"
"… It seems to me that while neoliberalism on the right was much the same old same old, the
neoliberal turn on the left was marked by a measured abandonment of this struggle over the distribution
of income between the classes. In the U.S., the Democrats gradually abandoned their populist
commitments. In Europe, the labour and socialist parties gradually abandoned class struggle. …"
"… When Obama came in, in 2008 amid the unfolding GFC, one of the most remarkable features
of his economic team was the extent to which it conceded control of policy entirely to the leading
money center banks. Geithner and Bernanke continued in power with Geithner moving from the
New York Federal Reserve (where he served as I recall under a Chair from Goldman Sachs) to Treasury
in the Obama Administration, but Geithner's Treasury was staffed from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan
Chase and Citibank. The crisis served to concentrate banking assets in the hands of the top
five banks, but it seemed also to transfer political power entirely into their hands as well.
Simon Johnson called it a coup. … "
"… Here's the thing: the globalization and financialization of the economy from roughly 1980
drove both increasingly extreme distribution of income and de-industrialization. …"
"… It was characteristic of neoliberalism that the policy, policy intention and policy consequences
were hidden behind a rhetoric of markets and technological inevitability. Matt Stoller has identified
this as the statecraft of neoliberalism: the elimination of political agency and responsibility
for economic performance and outcomes. Globalization and financialization were just "forces"
that just happened, in a meteorological economics. …"
"… This was not your grandfather's Democratic Party and it was a Democratic Party that could
aid the working class and the Rust Belt only within fairly severe and sometimes sharply conflicting
constraints. …"
"… No one in the Democratic Party had much institutional incentive to connect the dots, and
draw attention to the acute conflicts over the distribution of income and wealth involved in financialization
of the economy (including financialization as a driver of health care costs). And, that makes
the political problem that much harder, because there are no resources for rhetorical and informational
clarity or coherence. …"
"… If Obama could not get a very big stimulus indeed thru a Democratic Congress long out of
power, Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen spending on pork barrel projects is popular
and gets Congressional critters re-elected. So, again, if the stimulus is small and the Democratic
Congress doesn't get re-elected, Obama isn't really trying. …"
"… Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism,
because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference.
…"
"... The revulsion towards Trump is strongest among those with little to no work or life experience. Just about everything they know about the world has been programmed into them by electronic media. Their entire lives, from how they stand or walk to their barely audible interior monologues, are molded by electronic media. Their skulls are electronic media echo chambers. ..."
According to a Nielsen study, the average American adult consumes 10:39 hours of electronic media
per day in 2016, up a full hour from 2015. Each year, it increases. At 13:17 hours, blacks expose
themselves to the most, with Asians the least at 5:31 hours.
During many cross-country train trips,
I've always noticed that the calmest and most content people in the lounge car were the Amish, those
with no cravings for electronic media. Their children, in particular, were always impressively serene.
Instead of hunching over a private movie, or being plugged to detonating beats that irritated everyone
nearby, the Amish enjoyed each other's company. Not wedded to gadgets, they bantered or sat in silence
while contemplating this earth, unfurling outside the window.
Minus sleep and work, you only have about eight hours for all other activities. If someone spends
all his available time watching TV, listening to music or staring at his stupid phone, he'll act
and react according to his programming, wouldn't you think?
After Trump won the presidency, young Americans all over the country hit the streets in protest.
High school students walked out of class en masse to march. Colleges organized counseling sessions
and even cry-ins. It's quite telling, this uniform dismay. Schools indoctrinate, and colleges teach
you how to self-censor.
The revulsion towards Trump is strongest among those with little to no work or life experience.
Just about everything they know about the world has been programmed into them by electronic media.
Their entire lives, from how they stand or walk to their barely audible interior monologues, are
molded by electronic media. Their skulls are electronic media echo chambers.
If it's cool, they're hooked. Who cares about contradictions? In 2012, Lady Gaga visited Julian
Assange at his de facto London prison. In 2013, she performed at an inaugural ball for Obama's campaign
staff. Gaga is also a long-time supporter of the Clintons. Gaga's fans, then, can admire her for
siding with both Assange and his vicious persecuters. Hillary on Assange, "Can't we just drone this
guy?"
Doped up with songs and slogans, the media-drugged can't even register contradictions in real
time.
In 2011, the Clintons threw a bash for themselves at the Hollywood Bowl. With an all-star lineup,
the Decade of Difference Concert celebrated their tremendous role in improving the world. No doubt
thinking of NAFTA, Kenny Chesney sang "Beer in Mexico."
The United States should threaten Russia with military force in order to contain the Kremlin's growing
power on the international stage, a top candidate to become Donald Trump's Secretary of State has
said.
Rudy Giuliani, the former New York Mayor
who is believed to be the front runner to head Mr Trump's
State Department, made the comments at a Washington event sponsored by the
Wall Street Journal
.
In
quotes | The Trump - Putin relationship
Putin on Trump:
"He is a very flamboyant man, very talented, no doubt about
that He is an absolute leader of the presidential race, as we see it today. He says that
he wants to move to another level of relations, to a deeper level of relations with Russia.
How can we not welcome that? Of course we welcome it." -
December 2015
Trump on Putin:
"It is always a great honour to be so nicely complimented by a
man so highly respected within his own country and beyond." -
December 2015
"I think I would just get along very well with Putin. I just
think so. People say what do you mean? I just think we would." -
July 2015
"I have no relationship with [Putin] other than he called me a
genius. He said Donald Trump is a genius and he is going to be the leader of the party and
he's going to be the leader of the world or something. He said some good stuff about me I
think I'd have a good relationship with Putin, who knows." -
February 2016
"I have nothing to do with Putin, I have never spoken to him, I
don't know anything about him, other than he will respect me." -
July 2016
"I would treat Vladimir Putin firmly, but there's nothing I can
think of that I'd rather do than have Russia friendly as opposed to how they are right now
so that we can go and knock out Isis together with other people. Wouldn't it be nice if we
actually got along?" -
July 2016
"The man has very strong control over a country. It's a very
different system and I don't happen to like the system, but certainly, in that system, he's
been a leader." -
September 2016
"Well I think when [Putin] called me brilliant, I'll take the
compliment, okay?" -
September 2016
"... News that Trump might work 4 days a week as President, or at least work the same work week as Congress does, would suggest he plans on running a lean government. ..."
"... A counter-argument that could be put forward is that the Presidency doesn't (and shouldn't) define the office-holder's life and the Clintons themselves are an example of what can happen if the Presidency consumes their lives ..."
"... If it's Trump's intention to reform the political culture in Washington and make it more accountable to the public, and bring the Presidency closer to the public, then defining the maximum limits of the position on his time and sticking to them, perhaps through delegating roles and functions to his cabinet secretaries, is one path to reform. ..."
My impression is that Donald Trump is planning or at least thinking of running the government
as a business, choosing people as cabinet secretaries on the basis of past experience and on what
they would bring to the position, as opposed to choosing cabinet secretaries because they have
been loyal yes-people (as Hillary Clinton would have done)
News that Trump might work 4 days a week as President, or at least work the same work week
as Congress does, would suggest he plans on running a lean government. At present the prevailing
attitude among Washington insiders and the corporate media is that Trump is not really that interested
in being President and isn't committed to the job 24/7.
A counter-argument that could be put forward is that the Presidency doesn't (and shouldn't)
define the office-holder's life and the Clintons themselves are an example of what can happen
if the Presidency consumes their lives: it can damage the individuals and in Hillary Clinton's
case, cut her off so much from ordinary people that it disqualifies her from becoming President
herself.
If it's Trump's intention to reform the political culture in Washington and make it more accountable
to the public, and bring the Presidency closer to the public, then defining the maximum limits
of the position on his time and sticking to them, perhaps through delegating roles and functions
to his cabinet secretaries, is one path to reform.
"... Alexei Ulyukayev is a well-known economic liberal, with a career dating back to the turbulent market reforms of the 1990s ..."
"... "The arrest was big news on Russia's state-run TV channels." ..."
"... Yesterday RBK economic channel (pro-liberast independent one) could not shut up – they were talking only about this. Ekho Moscvy was hysterical, as if it was not the crook arrested, but Lucavichev rabbi robbed and killed in his synagogue. ..."
"... "News of the minister's arrest sparked a mixture of shock and bewilderment." ..."
"... "Alexei Ulyukayev is a well-known economic liberal, with a career dating back to the turbulent market reforms of the 1990s." ..."
"... So… to become a "liberal victim of the Regime" instead of "Regime's lackey" you must steal lots of money and get caught? A-okey! ..."
"... It's also charming when the article uses the tired cliché "some think" or "some people consider this" as a way of legitimizing their own speculations. ..."
The arrest was big news on Russia's state-run TV channels.
However, sources told the Novaya Gazeta website that Mr Ulyukayev himself did not take any
money, contradicting earlier reports, and there was no video footage of his arrest. [Novaya Gazeta
said that? Well what a surprise! - ME]
The economy ministry described the arrest as "strange and surprising".
Show of state strength or payback? By Sarah Rainsford, BBC News, Moscow
News of the minister's arrest sparked a mixture of shock and bewilderment.
A stream of commentators on state TV have been telling viewers that this means that
no-one is untouchable, or above the law. Even ministers.
So on one level, the FSB operation is a clear show of state strength. A message to senior officials
and far beyond.
But elsewhere there are doubts, and questions about the possible politics behind this.
Alexei Ulyukayev is a well-known economic liberal, with a career dating back to the turbulent
market reforms of the 1990s.
He's against increasing state-control of the economy and opposed the Bashneft privatisation
deal which was led by a close and powerful ally of President Putin.
So some suggest this could be a dramatic form of payback. More effective, than simply sacking
him.
Others see a symbolic blow to the liberal camp in government.
[my stress]
State TV! State TV! State TV!
D'ya hear me? - State TV!!!!!!!
Unlike the British Broadcasting Corporation, of course.
"The arrest was big news on Russia's state-run TV channels."
Yesterday RBK economic channel (pro-liberast independent one) could not shut up – they were
talking only about this. Ekho Moscvy was hysterical, as if it was not the crook arrested, but
Lucavichev rabbi robbed and killed in his synagogue.
"News of the minister's arrest sparked a mixture of shock and bewilderment."
Mainly a good cheer and hope that other liberal ministers will soon follow in his steps.
"Alexei Ulyukayev is a well-known economic liberal, with a career dating back to the turbulent
market reforms of the 1990s."
So… to become a "liberal victim of the Regime" instead of "Regime's lackey" you must steal
lots of money and get caught? A-okey!
It's also charming when the article uses the tired cliché "some think" or "some people consider
this" as a way of legitimizing their own speculations.
...In fact, the entire Democratic Party has mainly ceased to campaign on issues-choosing instead
to invest heavily in identity politics. The message to black voters is: vote for us because you are
black, not because of anything we are going to do. Ditto for Hispanics. And women. And the LGBT community.
And others. Hillary does have an agenda. More on that in a future post. But she didn't campaign on
it.
As for the mainstream media, I have never seen an election in which the media was so biased. And
not just biased. The media's entire view of the election was Hillary Clinton's view. Even on Fox
News, the entire focus on election night and in the days that followed was on identity politics.
How many blacks were voting? How many Hispanics? How many women?
As if demography were destiny.
Now, as it turns out, a greater percentage of blacks voted for Trump than voted for Romney. The
same thing is true of Hispanics. In fact, Trump did better among minorities than any Republican since
Ronald Reagan. He even got a majority of white female votes.
Why were all these people doing something they weren't supposed to do? On network television and
even on cable television, no one had an answer.
Putting the media aside for the moment, do you know what Hillary's position is on trade deals
with other countries? Of course, you don't. And neither does anyone else. When she spoke about the
issue at all, she said one thing behind closed doors and another in public. The reason this doesn't
matter on Wall Street (or to the editors of the New York Times ) is that they assume she
has no real convictions and that money and special interest influence will always win out.
What about Hillary's solution to the problem of illegal immigration? Do you know what that is?
How about her position on corporate tax reform? Or school choice? Or Obamacare? Or opportunities
for blacks in inner cities?
I bet you don't know her positions on any of these topics. But I bet you do know Donald Trump's.
Not in detail, of course. But I bet you know the general way in which he differs from Obama administration
policies.
While focusing on preserving ObamaCare and other achievements of the Obama administration that are
threatened by a Donald Trump presidency, the DA's agenda includes panels on rethinking polling and
the left's approach to winning the working-class vote. The group will also stress funneling cash
into state legislative policy initiatives and races where Republicans took over last week.
President-elect Donald Trump has said his first 100 days will be dedicated to restoring "honesty,
accountability and change to Washington" through the following seven steps:
A Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress
A hiring freeze on all federal employees to reduce federal workforce through attrition (exempting
military, public safety, and public health)
A requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated
A five year ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave
government service
A lifetime ban on the White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government
A complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections
Cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to fix America's
water and environmental infrastructure
Billionaire George Soros immediately had fingers of blame pointing at him for the anti-Trump riots
and protests that swept the nation since Nov. 9, as
his group MoveOn.org has organized most of them .
The billionaire committed
$25 million to boosting the Clinton campaign and other Democratic candidates and causes in 2016.
"... The affluent and rich voted for Clinton by a much broader margin than they had voted for the Democratic candidate in 2012. Among those with incomes between $100,000 and $200,000, Clinton benefited from a 9-point Democratic swing. Voters with family incomes above $250,000 swung toward Clinton by 11 percentage points. The number of Democratic voters amongst the wealthiest voting block increased from 2.16 million in 2012 to 3.46 million in 2016-a jump of 60 percent. ..."
"... Clinton's electoral defeat is bound up with the nature of the Democratic Party, an alliance of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus with privileged sections of the upper-middle class based on the politics of race, gender and sexual orientation ..."
"... Over the course of the last forty years, the Democratic Party has abandoned all pretenses of social reform, a process escalated under Obama. Working with the Republican Party and the trade unions, it is responsible for enacting social policies that have impoverished vast sections of the working class, regardless of race or gender. ..."
The elections saw a massive shift in party support among the poorest and wealthiest voters. The share
of votes for the Republicans amongst the most impoverished section of workers, those with family
incomes under $30,000, increased by 10 percentage points from 2012. In several key Midwestern states,
the swing of the poorest voters toward Trump was even larger: Wisconsin (17-point swing), Iowa (20
points), Indiana (19 points) and Pennsylvania (18 points).
The swing to Republicans among the $30,000 to $50,000 family income range was 6 percentage points.
Those with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000 swung away from the Republicans compared to 2012
by 2 points.
The affluent and rich voted for Clinton by a much broader margin than they had voted for the
Democratic candidate in 2012. Among those with incomes between $100,000 and $200,000, Clinton benefited
from a 9-point Democratic swing. Voters with family incomes above $250,000 swung toward Clinton by
11 percentage points. The number of Democratic voters amongst the wealthiest voting block increased
from 2.16 million in 2012 to 3.46 million in 2016-a jump of 60 percent.
Clinton was unable to make up for the vote decline among women (2.1 million), African Americans
(3.2 million), and youth (1.2 million), who came overwhelmingly from the poor and working class,
with the increase among the rich (1.3 million).
Clinton's electoral defeat is bound up with the nature of the Democratic Party, an alliance
of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus with privileged sections of the upper-middle
class based on the politics of race, gender and sexual orientation.
Over the course of the last forty years, the Democratic Party has abandoned all pretenses
of social reform, a process escalated under Obama. Working with the Republican Party and the trade
unions, it is responsible for enacting social policies that have impoverished vast sections of the
working class, regardless of race or gender.
"... Because the following talking points prevent a (vulgar) identity politics -dominated Democrat Party from owning its loss, debunking them is then important beyond winning your Twitter wars. I'm trying to spike the Blame Cannons! ..."
"... Remember, Trump won Wisconsin by a whisker. So for this talking point to be true, we have to believe that black voters stayed home because they were racist, costing Clinton Wisconsin. ..."
"... These former Obama strongholds sealed the election for Trump. Of the nearly 700 counties that twice sent Obama to the White House, a stunning one-third flipped to support Trump . ..."
"... The Obama-Trump counties were critical in delivering electoral victories for Trump. Many of them fall in states that supported Obama in 2012, but Trump in 2016. In all, these flipped states accounted for 83 electoral votes. (Michigan and New Hampshire could add to this total, but their results were not finalized as of 4 p.m. Wednesday.) ..."
"... And so, for this talking point to be true, we have to believe that counties who voted for the black man in 2012 were racist because they didn't vote for the white women in 2016. Bringing me, I suppose, to sexism. ..."
"... These are resilient women, often working two or three jobs, for whom boorish men are an occasional occupational hazard, not an existential threat. They rolled their eyes over Trump's unmitigated coarseness, but still bought into his spiel that he'd be the greatest job producer who ever lived. Oh, and they wondered why his behaviour was any worse than Bill's. ..."
"... pink slips have hit entire neighbourhoods, and towns. The angry white working class men who voted in such strength for Trump do not live in an emotional vacuum. They are loved by white working class women – their wives, daughters, sisters and mothers, who participate in their remaindered pain. I t is everywhere in the interviews. "My dad lost his business", "My husband hasn't been the same since his job at the factory went away" . ..."
"... So, for this talking point to be true, you have to believe that sexism simultaneously increased the male vote for Trump, yet did not increase the female vote for Clinton. Shouldn't they move in opposite directions? ..."
"... First, even assuming that the author's happy but unconscious conflation of credentials with education is correct, it wasn't the "dunces" who lost two wars, butchered the health care system, caused the financial system to collapse through accounting control fraud, or invented the neoliberal ideology that was kept real wages flat for forty years and turned the industrial heartland into a wasteland. That is solely, solely down to - only some , to be fair - college-educated voters. It is totally and 100% not down to the "dunces"; they didn't have the political or financial power to achieve debacles on the grand scale. ..."
"... Second, the "dunces" were an important part of Obama's victories ..."
"... Not only has polling repeatedly underplayed the importance of white voters without college degrees, it's underplayed their importance to the Obama coalition: They were one-third of Obama votes in 2012. They filled the gap between upper-class whites and working-class nonwhites. Trump gained roughly 15 percentage points with them compared to Romney in 2012. ..."
"... "No, you are ignorant! You threw away the vote and put Trump in charge." Please, it will be important to know what derogatory camp you belong in when the blame game swings into full gear. *snark ..."
"... 'Stupid' was the word I got very tired of in my social net. Two variant targets: ..."
"... 1) Blacks for not voting their interests. The responses included 'we know who our enemies are' and 'don't tell me what to think.' ..."
"... Mostly it was vs rural, non-college educated. iirc, it was the Secretary of Agriculture, pleading for funds, who said the rural areas were where military recruits came from. A young fella I know, elite football player on elite non-urban HS team, said most of his teammates had enlisted. So they are the ones getting shot at, having relatives and friends come back missing pieces of body and self. ..."
"... My guy in the Reserves said the consensus was that if HRC got elected, they were going to war with Russia. Not enthused. Infantry IQ is supposedly average-80, but they know who Yossarian says the enemy is, e'en if they hant read the book. ..."
This post is not an explainer about why and how Clinton lost (and Trump won). I think we're going
to be sorting that out for awhile. Rather, it's a simple debunking of common talking points by Clinton
loyalists and Democrat Establishment operatives; the sort of talking point you might hear on Twitter,
entirely shorn of caveats and context. For each of the three talking points, I'll present an especially
egregious version of the myth, followed by a rebuttals.
How Trump won the presidency with razor-thin margins in swing states
Of the more than 120 million votes cast in the 2016 election, 107,000 votes in three states
[Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania] effectively decided the election.
Of course, America's first-past-the-post system and the electoral college amplify small margins
into decisive results. And it was the job of the Clinton campaign to find those 107,000 votes and
win them;
the Clinton operation turned out to be weaker than anyone would have imagined when
it counted . However, because Trump has what might be called an institutional mandate - both
the executive and legislative branches and soon, perhaps, the judicial - the narrowness of his margin
means he doesn't have a popular mandate. Trump has captured the state, but by no means civil society;
therefore, the opposition that seeks to delegitimize him is in a stronger position than it may realize.
Hence the necessity for reflection; seeking truth from facts, as the saying goes. Because
the following talking points prevent a
(vulgar) identity politics -dominated Democrat Party from owning its loss, debunking them is
then important beyond winning your Twitter wars. I'm trying to spike the Blame Cannons!
Trump's win is a reminder of the incredible, unbeatable power of racism
The subtext here is usually that if you don't chime in with vehement agreement, you're a racist
yourself, and possibly a racist Trump supporter. There are two reasons this talking point is false.
First, voter caring levels dropped from 2012 to 2016, especially among black Democrats
.
Carl
Beijer :
From 2012 to 2016, both men and women went from caring about the outcome to not caring.
Among Democratic men and women, as well as Republican women, care levels dropped about 3-4
points; Republican men cared a little less too, but only by one point. Across the board, in
any case, the plurality of voters simply didn't care.
Beijer includes the following chart (based on Edison exit polling cross-referenced with total
population numbers from the US Census):
Beijer interprets:
White voters cared even less in 2016 then in 2012, when they also didn't care; most of that
apathy came from white Republicans compared to white Democrats, who dropped off a little less.
Voters of color, in contrast, continued to care – but their care levels dropped even more,
by 8 points (compared to the 6 point drop-off among white voters). Incredibly, that drop was
driven entirely by a 9 point drop among Democratic voters of color which left Democrats
with only slim majority 51% support; Republicans, meanwhile, actually gained support
among people of color.
Urban areas, where black and Hispanic voters are concentrated along with college-educated
voters, already leaned toward the Democrats, but Clinton did not get the turnout from these
groups that she needed. For instance, black voters did not show up in the same numbers they
did for Barack Obama, the first black president, in 2008 and 2012.
Remember, Trump won Wisconsin by a whisker. So for this talking point to be true, we have to
believe that black voters stayed home because they were racist, costing Clinton Wisconsin.
Second, counties that voted for Obama in 2012 voted for Trump in 2016 .
The Washington Post :
These former Obama strongholds sealed the election for Trump. Of the nearly 700 counties that twice sent Obama to the White House,
a stunning one-third flipped to support Trump
.
The Obama-Trump counties were critical in delivering electoral victories for Trump. Many
of them fall in states that supported Obama in 2012, but Trump in 2016. In all, these flipped
states accounted for 83 electoral votes. (Michigan and New Hampshire could add to this total,
but their results were not finalized as of 4 p.m. Wednesday.)
Here's the chart:
And so, for this talking point to be true, we have to believe that counties who voted for the
black man in 2012 were racist because they didn't vote for the white women in 2016. Bringing me,
I suppose, to sexism.
Talking Point: Clinton was Defeated by Sexism
Here's an article showing the talking point from
Newsweek :
This often vitriolic campaign was a national referendum on women and power.
(The subtext here is usually that if you don't join the consensus cluster, you're a sexist
yourself, and possibly a sexist Trump supporter). And if you only look at the averages this claim
might seem true :
On Election Day, women responded accordingly, as Clinton beat Trump among women 54 percent
to 42 percent. They were voting not so much for her as against him and what he brought to the
surface during his campaign: quotidian misogyny.
There are two reasons this talking point is not true. First, averages conceal, and what
they conceal is class . As you read further into the article, you can see it fall apart:
In fact, Trump beat Clinton among white women 53 percent to 43 percent, with
white women without college degrees going for [Trump]
two to one .
So, taking lack of a college degree as a proxy for being working class, for Newsweek's claim
to be true, you have to believe that working class women don't get a vote in their referendum,
and for the talking point to be true, you have to believe that working class women are sexist.
Which leads me to ask: Who died and left the bourgeois feminists in Clinton's base in charge of
the definition of sexism, or feminism? Class traitor
Tina Brown is worth repeating:
Here's my own beef. Liberal feminists, young and old, need to question the role they played
in Hillary's demise. The two weeks of media hyperventilation over grab-her-by-the-pussygate,
when the airwaves were saturated with aghast liberal women equating Trump's gross comments
with sexual assault, had the opposite effect on multiple women voters in the Heartland.
These are resilient women, often working two or three jobs, for whom boorish men are an
occasional occupational hazard, not an existential threat. They rolled their eyes over Trump's
unmitigated coarseness, but still bought into his spiel that he'd be the greatest job producer
who ever lived. Oh, and they wondered why his behaviour was any worse than Bill's.
Missing this pragmatic response by so many women was another mistake of Robbie Mook's campaign
data nerds. They computed that America's women would all be as outraged as the ones they came
home to at night. But pink slips have hit entire neighbourhoods, and towns. The angry white
working class men who voted in such strength for Trump do not live in an emotional vacuum.
They are loved by white working class women – their wives, daughters, sisters and mothers,
who participate in their remaindered pain. I t is
everywhere in the interviews. "My dad lost his business", "My husband hasn't been the same
since his job at the factory went away" .
Second, Clinton in 2016 did no better than Obama in 2008 with women (although she did
better than Obama in 2012). From
the New York Times analysis of the exit polls, this chart...
So, for this talking point to be true, you have to believe that sexism simultaneously increased
the male vote for Trump, yet did not increase the female vote for Clinton. Shouldn't they move
in opposite directions?
Talking Point: Clinton was Defeated by Stupidity
Here's an example of this talking point from
Foreign Policy , the heart of The Blob. The headline:
Trump Won Because Voters Are Ignorant, Literally
And the lead:
OK, so that just happened. Donald Trump always enjoyed massive support from uneducated,
low-information white people. As Bloomberg Politics reported back in August, Hillary Clinton
was enjoying a giant 25 percentage-point lead among college-educated voters going into the
election. (Whether that trend held up remains to be seen.) In contrast, in the 2012 election,
college-educated voters just barely favored Barack Obama over Mitt Romney. Last night we saw
something historic: the dance of the dunces. Never have educated voters so uniformly rejected
a candidate. But never before have the lesser-educated so uniformly supported a candidate.
The subtext here is usually that if you don't accept nod your head vigorously, you're stupid,
and possibly a stupid Trump supporter. There are two reasons this talking point is not true.
First, even assuming that the author's happy but unconscious conflation of credentials with
education is correct, it wasn't the "dunces" who lost two wars, butchered the health care
system, caused the financial system to collapse through accounting control fraud, or invented
the neoliberal ideology that was kept real wages flat for forty years and turned the industrial
heartland into a wasteland. That is solely, solely down to - only some , to be fair
- college-educated voters. It is totally and 100% not down to the "dunces"; they didn't have the
political or financial power to achieve debacles on the grand scale.
Second, the "dunces" were an important part of Obama's victories. From
The Week :
Not only has polling repeatedly underplayed the importance of white voters without college
degrees, it's underplayed their importance to the Obama coalition: They were one-third of Obama
votes in 2012. They filled the gap between upper-class whites and working-class nonwhites.
Trump gained roughly 15 percentage points with them compared to Romney in 2012.
So, to believe this talking point, you have to believe that voters who were smart when they
voted for Obama suddenly became stupid when it came time to vote for Clinton. You also have to
believe that credentialed policy makers have an unblemished record of success, and that only they
are worth paying attention to.
By just about every metric imaginable, Hillary Clinton led one of the worst presidential campaigns
in modern history. It was a profoundly reactionary campaign, built entirely on rolling back the
horizons of the politically possible, fracturing left solidarity, undermining longstanding left
priorities like universal healthcare, pandering to Wall Street oligarchs, fomenting nationalism
against Denmark and Russia, and rehabilitating some of history's greatest monsters – from Bush
I to Kissinger. It was a grossly unprincipled campaign that belligerently violated FEC Super PAC
coordination rules and conspired with party officials on everything from political attacks to
debate questions. It was an obscenely stupid campaign that all but ignored Wisconsin during the
general election, that pitched Clinton to Latino voters as their abuela, that centered an entire
high-profile speech over the national menace of a few thousand anime nazis on Twitter, and that
repeatedly deployed Lena Dunham as a media surrogate.
Which is rather like running a David Letterman ad in a Pennsylvania steel town. It must have seemed
like a good idea in Brooklyn. After all, they had so many celebrities to choose from.
* * *
All three talking points oversimplify. I'm not saying racism is not powerful; of course it is.
I'm not saying that sexism is not powerful; of course it is. But monocausal explanations in an election
this close - and in a country this vast - are foolish. And narratives that ignore economics and erase
class are worse than foolish; buying into them will cause us to make the same mistakes over and over
and over again.[1] The trick will be to integrate multiple causes, and that's down to the left; identity
politics liberals don't merely not want to do this; they actively oppose it. Ditto their opposite
numbers in America's neoliberal fun house mirror, the conservatives.
NOTES
[1] For some, that's not a bug. It's a feature.
NOTE
You will have noticed that I haven't covered economics (class), or election fraud at all. More
myths are coming.
Lambert Strether has been blogging, managing online communities, and doing system administration
24/7 since 2003, in Drupal and WordPress. Besides political economy and the political scene, he blogs
about rhetoric, software engineering, permaculture, history, literature, local politics, international
travel, food, and fixing stuff around the house. The nom de plume "Lambert Strether" comes from Henry
James's The Ambassadors: "Live all you can. It's a mistake not to." You can follow him on Twitter
at @lambertstrether. http://www.correntewire.com
"No, you are ignorant! You threw away the vote and put Trump in charge." Please, it will be
important to know what derogatory camp you belong in when the blame game swings into full gear.
*snark
'Stupid' was the word I got very tired of in my social net. Two variant targets:
1) Blacks
for not voting their interests. The responses included 'we know who our enemies are' and 'don't
tell me what to think.'
2) Mostly it was vs rural, non-college educated. iirc, it was the Secretary of Agriculture,
pleading for funds, who said the rural areas were where military recruits came from. A young fella
I know, elite football player on elite non-urban HS team, said most of his teammates had enlisted.
So they are the ones getting shot at, having relatives and friends come back missing pieces of
body and self.
My guy in the Reserves said the consensus was that if HRC got elected, they were going
to war with Russia. Not enthused. Infantry IQ is supposedly average-80, but they know who Yossarian
says the enemy is, e'en if they hant read the book.
"... There are some who believe the elites are actually splintered into numerous groups and that domestic US elites have positioned themselves against the banking elites in London's City. ..."
"... US elites are basically in the employ of a handful of families, individuals and institutions in our view. It is confusing because it is hard to tell if Hillary, for instance, is operating on her own accord or at the behest of higher and more powerful authorities. ..."
"... It is probably a combination of both but at root those who control central banks are managing the world's move towards globalism. ..."
"... The vote to propel Trump to the US presidency reflects a profound backlash against open markets and borders, and the simmering anger of millions of blue-collar white and working-class people who blame their economic woes on globalisation and multiculturalism. ..."
"... If indeed Trump's election has damped the progress of TPP, and TTIP, this is a huge event. As we've pointed out, both agreements effectively substituted technocratic corporatism for the current sociopolitical model of "democracy." ..."
"... one of the elite's most powerful, operative memes today is "populism vs. globalism" ..."
"... No matter what, the reality of these two events, the victories of both Trump and Brexit, stand as signal proof that elite stratagems have been defeated, at least temporarily. Though whether these defeats have been self-inflicted as part of a change in tactics remains to be seen. ..."
Was Trump's victory actually created by the very globalist elites that Trump is supposed to have
overcome? There are some who believe the elites are actually splintered into numerous groups and
that domestic US elites have positioned themselves against the banking elites in London's City.
We
see no fundamental evidence of this.
The world's real elites in our view may have substantive histories in the hundreds and
thousands of years. US elites are basically in the employ of a handful of families,
individuals and institutions in our view. It is confusing because it is hard to tell if Hillary,
for instance, is operating on her own accord or at the behest of higher and more powerful
authorities.
It is probably a combination
of both but at root those who control central banks are managing the world's move towards globalism.
History easily shows us who these groups are – and they are not located in America.
This is a cynical perspective to be sure, and certainly doesn't remove the impact of Trump's victory
or his courage in waging his election campaign despite what must surely be death threats to himself
and his family..
But if true, this perspective corresponds to predictions that we've been making for nearly a decade
now, suggesting that sooner or later elites – especially those in London's City – would have to "take
a step back."
More:
The vote to propel Trump to the US presidency reflects a profound backlash against open markets
and borders, and the simmering anger of millions of blue-collar white and working-class people
who blame their economic woes on globalisation and multiculturalism.
"There are a few parallels to Switzerland – that the losers of globalisation find somebody
who is listening to them," said Swiss professor and lawyer Wolf Linder, a former director of the
University of Bern's political science institute.
"Trump is doing his business with the losers of globalisation in the US, like the Swiss People's
Party is doing in Switzerland," he said. "It is a phenomenon which touches all European nations."
... ... ...
If indeed Trump's election has damped the progress of TPP, and TTIP, this is a huge event. As
we've pointed out, both agreements effectively substituted technocratic corporatism for the current
sociopolitical model of "democracy." The elites were trying to move toward a new
model of world control with these two agreements. ...
Additionally, one of the elite's most powerful, operative memes today is "populism vs. globalism"
that seeks to contrast the potentially freedom-oriented events of Trump and Brexit to the discarded
wisdom of globalism. See
here and
here.
No matter what, the reality of these two events, the victories of both Trump and Brexit, stand
as signal proof that elite stratagems have been defeated, at least temporarily. Though whether these
defeats have been self-inflicted as part of a change in tactics remains to be seen.
Conclusion: But the change has come. One way or another the Internet and tens of millions or people
talking, writing and acting has forced new trends. This can be hardly be emphasized enough. Globalism
has been at least temporarily redirected.
Editor's Note: The Daily Bell is giving away a silver coin and a silver "white paper" to subscribers.
If you enjoy DB's articles and want to stay up-to-date for free, please subscribe
here .
The analysis is flawed in that it fails to understand the context for power and influence in the
western alliance. The Crowns in contest are seeking coordinated domination through political proxy,
i.e. the force behind the EU and the UN. The problem is the most influential crown was not in
a mind to destroy the fabric of their civilization and more importantly to continue to bail-out
the "socialist" paradises in the continent and beyond. Britannia has its own socialism to support
much less that of the world.
Trump represents keeping the Colony in line with a growing interest in keeping traditions intact
and in more direct control of Anglo values. Europe has this insane multi-culturalism that is fundamentally
incompatible with a "free" and robust civilization. The whole goal of detente with China was to
convert them to our values via proxy institutions and that is working in the long-run. In the
short-run, the Empire must reunite and solidify its value bulwark against the coming storm from
China and to a lesser extend from the expanded EU states. Russia is playing out on its own.
"... Elite fragmentation is the core dynamic in play in America. The Neoliberal class, personified by the Clintons and the rest of the incestuous Washington Elite (Demopublicans), has used the self-serving corporate media to whip up a frenzy of hysteria that is ultimately aimed at the Elite camp that opposes their self-aggrandizement at the expense of the nation. ..."
"... The financial coup d'etat occurred in the presidency of Democrat Bill Clinton , when the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed, freeing the predatory financial elites to plunder the nation. ..."
"... Presidents G.W. Bush and Obama institutionalized the coup by bailing out the banks post-2008. ..."
"... The mainstream media in America is a corporate-owned media, or in the case of PBS, corporate-funded via sponsorships. Advertising rates are set by the size of the audience and the number of hours they consume the broadcast/feed. ..."
If you want to stop being played as a chump, turn off the CNN/MSM and disengage from the self-referential
social media distraction.
Let's start by asking: if Trump had lost and his supporters had angrily taken to the streets,
destroying private property and threatening police officers while proclaiming "not my president,"
would the mainstream media have characterized the rioters differently than it has the pro-Clinton
rioters?
Any fair-minded observer knows the answer is yes: the CNN/MSM would have lambasted the "rioting
deplorables" as "what's wrong with America."
Substitution is a useful tool to expose bias. How come the CNN/mainstream corporate media isn't
declaring the pro-Clinton rioters "deplorables"?
This tells us something else is going on here. I want to explain what's really going on, but first
we need to run a simple experiment:
Turn off CNN, PBS, CBS et al., your Twitter and Facebook feeds, etc. for seven days, and live
solely in the media-free real world for a week. If you're truly interested in understanding what's
really going on in America, then come back in a week and read the rest of the essay.
Have you pulled out the CNN/MSM/social media fearmongering/propaganda dripline for a few days?
This is a necessary step, as we shall soon see.
Everyone who is consuming CNN/MSM/ self-referential social media every waking hour is being played
as chumps. Start by asking yourself: cui bono --to whose benefit? Who is benefiting from the ceaseless
fearmongering of the CNN/social-media-parroting mainstream corporate media?
(Longtime readers know I start any analysis by asking cui bono .)
Two Power Elites have benefited enormously from the ceaseless media fearmongering: the owners
of the corporate media spewing the fearmongering, and the Neoliberal camp of the Ruling Elite.
The hysterical tone of the fearmongering serves the agenda of the Neoliberals, who are desperate
to maintain their grip on power.
As I have endeavored to explain over the past few years, America's Deep State no longer enjoys
a monolithic unity of world-view and narrative. The Deep State has fragmented into two conflicted
camps: the Neonconservatives, who espouse the globalist, interventionist foreign policy manifestation
of Neoliberalism, and a smaller, more forward-looking camp that understands Neoliberalism is actively
undermining our national security and our core national interests.
This split in the Deep State extends into the entire Ruling Elite. Thus we have the currently
dominant globalist Neoliberal camp personified by the Clintons, the Corporatocracy that has funded
them, the clubby Washington Elites (Demopublicans) and the Neocon camp of the Deep State.
The opposing camp of Elite "outsiders" is viewed as the enemy which threatens the wealth and power
of the self-serving Neoliberal Elites. Longtime readers have seen many accounts here over the years
that explain the key dynamic of Elite fragmentation: as self-serving personal aggrandizement poisons
the values of public service, the Elite splinters into a parasitic, predatory self-serving majority
and an Elite minority that sees the inevitable dissolution of the empire should the self-serving
few continue their predation of the many.
Here are a few of the many essays I've posted on this key dynamic. Please read a few of these
for context if you missed them the first time around:
Elite fragmentation is the core dynamic in play in America. The Neoliberal class, personified
by the Clintons and the rest of the incestuous Washington Elite (Demopublicans), has used the self-serving
corporate media to whip up a frenzy of hysteria that is ultimately aimed at the Elite camp that opposes
their self-aggrandizement at the expense of the nation.
This war within America's Power Elite is for all the marbles. This explains the absurd urgency
of the CNN/MSM fearmongering propaganda.
Let's deconstruct one of the many hysterical claims of the CNN/MSM: Trump's victory is a coup
d'etat. This absurd claim is akin to "the Martians are coming!" Right out of the gate, it is a clueless
mis-use of the term coup d'etat. If you actually want to understand the term, as opposed to using
it to whip up hysteria that profits the Corporate owners of CNN/MSM, then start by reading the 1968
classic
Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook by Edward Luttwak, and then move on to
The Quiet Coup by Simon Johnson (2010).
The financial coup d'etat occurred in the presidency of Democrat Bill Clinton , when the Glass-Steagall
Act was repealed, freeing the predatory financial elites to plunder the nation.
Presidents G.W. Bush and Obama institutionalized the coup by bailing out the banks post-2008.
So who does all the fearmongering benefit? The CNN/MSM, which profited immensely, and the Neoliberal
Elite, which distracted the populace from the fatal consequences of its dominance.
The mainstream media in America is a corporate-owned media, or in the case of PBS, corporate-funded
via sponsorships. Advertising rates are set by the size of the audience and the number of hours they
consume the broadcast/feed.
The MSM's fearmongering propaganda greatly expanded the number of eyeballs glued to their product
and increased the duration of consumers' time spent online. This increase in audience/duration has
been immensely profitable to the corporate media, which has relied on fearmongering to drive audience
since 9/11.
Consider this email from correspondent M.K. on his family's media consumption:
"I was struck awake this morning at 4 am with the realization that the left tried to win by selling
fear. I don't mean this in a hyperbolic way... I mean they purposefully, willfully planned to sell
fear as a tool to get the vote out. At first I didn't see the connection, but my subconscious did...
I'm a Agorist/Voluntarist and don't vote, because I don't wish to consent to my own enslavement...
you know the drill. On the day of voting my father (76) texted me to urge me to vote, because "my
children's future was at stake". This seemed odd to me, because it had never happened before and
he followed up with some more fearful statement.
The day after the election, my daughter, who tends to also be level headed, texted me the following:
"Uh oh... what does this mean for our country?". I tried to calm them both, but they were exceedingly
fearful.
I watched in amazement at the "cry ins", demonstrations other outward pouring of sadness, hate
and fear. Thus, I awoke and realized that both my father and daughter watch CNN. I really do believe
that they were programmed.... This was planned and executed exceedingly well.
As you realize, "fear is the enemy" or "fear is the opposite of love". Pick your quote, but it's
a powerful tool and it has been used to club my loved ones."
We can summarize the fanning of mass hysteria thusly: hyper-connectedness to a self-referential
corporate/elite-controlled media produces a fear-based mass hysteria.
This fear-based mass hysteria is the perfect mechanism to distract a populace from the reality
of a self-serving Elite that profits from their serfdom. Please glance at these four charts, which
tell a simple but profound truth:
Productivity has risen for 36 years, but the gains from that massive increase in wealth has been
captured by the few at the top of the wealth/power pyramid. If you want to understand who benefited
from the CNN/MSM fearmongering propaganda distraction, study these four charts.
The income of the bottom 95% has stagnated while productivity/wealth soared.
The gains flowed to the top .1% in wealth and the top 5% in income:
The self-serving Neoliberal Elite's CNN/mainstream media did a magnificent job of profiting from
fearmongering while distracting the serfs from their immiseration. If you want to stop being played
as a chump, turn off the CNN/MSM and disengage from the self-referential social media distraction.
After having ignored my facebook account virtually since I created it, I have finally gotten around
to having it removed. I have never sent a single "tweet" since most originate from people who
are plainly twits. Which is to say the like of narcissistic Hlllary voters.
The echo chamber in the funhouse should be left to snowflakes who need safespaces for lack
of accommodation by the real world, which is rapidly passing them by as they continue to indulge
their delusional group trance.
"As one lobbyist told me (in 2007), "Twenty-five years ago… it was 'just keep the government
out of our business, we want to do what we want to,' and gradually that's changed to 'how can
we make the government our partners?' It's gone from 'leave us alone' to 'let's work on this together
.'" Another corporate lobbyist recalled,"When they started, [management] thought government relations
did something else. They thought it was to manage public relations crises, hearing inquiries...
My boss told me, you've taught us to do things we didn't know could ever be done."
As companies became more politically active and comfortable during the late 1980s and the 1990s,
their lobbyists became more politically visionary. For example, pharmaceutical companies had long
opposed the idea of government adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, on the theory that
this would give government bargaining power through bulk purchasing, thereby reducing drug industry
profits. But sometime around 2000, industry lobbyists dreamed up the bold idea of proposing and
supporting what became Medicare Part D-a prescription drug benefit, but one which explicitly forbade
bulk purchasing-an estimated
$205 billion benefit
to companies over a 10-year period.
What makes today so very different from the 1970s is that corporations now have the resources
to play offense and defense simultaneously on almost any top-priority issue. When I surveyed corporate
lobbyists on the reasons why their companies maintained a Washington office, the top reason was
"to protect the company against changes in government policy." On a one-to-seven scale, lobbyists
ranked this reason at 6.2 (on average). But closely behind, at 5.7, was "Need to improve ability
to compete by seeking favorable changes in government policy."
Most commenters do not realise that it is neoliberalism that caused the current suffering of
working people in the USA and elsewhere...
Notable quotes:
"... Working class wages destroyed. The wages of the low paid lowered. Ordinary people robbed of holiday and sickness pay. Working people priced out of ever owning their own home. Our city centers socially cleansed of the working class. Poor people forced to fight like rats in sacks with even poorer foreigners for jobs, housing, school places and social and health services. ..."
"... Keep going mate. Continue to pump out that snobbish attitude because every time you do you've bagged Mr Trump, Mr Farage and Ms LePen another few votes. ..."
"... I recall a time when any suggestion that immigration may be too high was silenced by cries of racism, eventually that label was misused so often that it lost its potency, one gets the sense that this trend for dubbing those who hold certain opinions as somehow unintelligent will go the same way. People are beginning to see through this most hateful tactic of the Modern Left. ..."
"... Which is why I think Mr D'Ancona and many others are wrong to say that Farage and Trump will face the whirlwind when voters realise that their promises were all unachievable. The promises were much less important than the chance to slap the political world in the face. Given another chance, a lot of voters will do the same again. ..."
"... I think the author completely misses the most salient point from the two events he cites: simply that the *vast* majority of people have become completely disenfranchised with the utter corruption that is mainstream politics today. ..."
"... It doesn't matter who is voted in, the status quo [big business and the super-rich get wealthier whilst the middle is squeezed and the poorest are destroyed] remains. ..."
"... The votes for Brexit and Trump are as much a rejection of "establishment" as anything else. Politicians in both countries heed these warnings at their peril... ..."
"... The majority of the people are sick and tired of PC ism and the zero hour, minimum wage economy that both Britain and America have suffered under "globalisation". And of the misguided "[neo]liberal" agenda of much of the media which simply does not speak to or for society. ..."
"... People in western democracies are rising up through the ballot box to defeat PC [neo]liberalism and globalisation that has done so much to impoverish Europe and America morally and economically. To the benefit of the tax haven corporates. ..."
"... Globalisation disembowelled American manufacturing so the likes of Blair and the Clintons could print money. The illimitable lives they destroyed never entered their calculus. ..."
"... I have stood in the blue lane in Atlanta waiting for my passport to be processed; in the adjoining lane was a young British female student (so she said to the official). The computer revealed she had overstayed her visa by 48 hours the last time she visited. She was marched out by two armed tunics to the next plane home. That's how Europeans get treated if they try to enter America illegally. Why the demented furor over returning illegal Hispanics or anyone else? ..."
Surely the people who voted for Trump and Farage are too stupid to realise the sheer,
criminal folly of their decision...
thoughtcatcher -> IanPitch 12h ago
Working class wages destroyed. The wages of the low paid lowered. Ordinary people
robbed of holiday and sickness pay. Working people priced out of ever owning their own home.
Our city centers socially cleansed of the working class. Poor people forced to fight like rats
in sacks with even poorer foreigners for jobs, housing, school places and social and health
services.
But yeah, they voted against the elite because they are "stupid".
attila9000 -> IanPitch 11h ago
I think at some point a lot of them will realize they have been had, but then they will
probably just blame immigrants, or the EU. Anything that means they don't have to take
responsibility for their own actions. It would appear there is a huge pool of people who can
be conned into acting against their own self interest.
jonnyoyster -> IanPitch 11h ago
Keep going mate. Continue to pump out that snobbish attitude because every time you do
you've bagged Mr Trump, Mr Farage and Ms LePen another few votes. Most people don't
appreciate being talked down to and this arrogant habit of calling those who hold views
contrary to your own 'stupid' is encouraging more and more voters to ditch the established
parties in favour of the new.
I recall a time when any suggestion that immigration may be too high was silenced by
cries of racism, eventually that label was misused so often that it lost its potency, one gets
the sense that this trend for dubbing those who hold certain opinions as somehow unintelligent
will go the same way. People are beginning to see through this most hateful tactic of the
Modern Left.
DilemmataDocta -> IanPitch 11h ago
A lot of the people who put their cross against Brexit or Trump weren't actually voting for
anything. They were just voting against this, that or the other thing about the world that
they disliked. It was voting as a gesture.
Which is why I think Mr D'Ancona and many others are wrong to say that Farage and Trump
will face the whirlwind when voters realise that their promises were all unachievable. The
promises were much less important than the chance to slap the political world in the face.
Given another chance, a lot of voters will do the same again.
Sproggit 12h ago
I think the author completely misses the most salient point from the two events he
cites: simply that the *vast* majority of people have become completely disenfranchised with
the utter corruption that is mainstream politics today.
It doesn't matter who is voted in, the status quo [big business and the super-rich get
wealthier whilst the middle is squeezed and the poorest are destroyed] remains.
The votes for Brexit and Trump are as much a rejection of "establishment" as anything
else. Politicians in both countries heed these warnings at their peril...
NotoBlair 11h ago
OMG, the lib left don't Geddit do they?
The majority of the people are sick and tired of PC ism and the zero hour, minimum wage
economy that both Britain and America have suffered under "globalisation". And of the
misguided "[neo]liberal" agenda of much of the media which simply does not speak to or for
society.
People in western democracies are rising up through the ballot box to defeat PC [neo]liberalism
and globalisation that has done so much to impoverish Europe and America morally and
economically. To the benefit of the tax haven corporates.
The sour grapes bleating of the lib left who refuse to accept the democratic will of the
people is a movement doomed failure.
Frankincensedabit 11h ago
Malign to whom? Wall Street and people who want us all dead?
Globalisation disembowelled American manufacturing so the likes of Blair and the Clintons
could print money. The illimitable lives they destroyed never entered their calculus.
I have stood in the blue lane in Atlanta waiting for my passport to be processed; in the
adjoining lane was a young British female student (so she said to the official). The computer
revealed she had overstayed her visa by 48 hours the last time she visited. She was marched
out by two armed tunics to the next plane home. That's how Europeans get treated if they try
to enter America illegally. Why the demented furor over returning illegal Hispanics or anyone
else?
I likely wouldn't have voted at all. But all my life the occupants of the White House
represented the interests of those nobody could ever identify. The owners of the media and the
numbered accounts who took away the life-chances of U.S. citizens by the million and called
any of them who objected a thick white-trash bigot. Whatever Trump is, he will be different.
That is why watching President-elect Trump's choices for his foreign policy team is so important.
If he chooses primarily alumni of the Bush administration, we can be fairly certain that there
will be few, if any, beneficial changes in Washington's security strategy. Indeed, it could conceivably
be even more interventionist than that pursued by the Clinton, Bush or Obama administrations.
The main difference might be that it would be conducted unilaterally rather than multilaterally,
especially if someone like John Bolton gets a key position.
If on the other hand, Trump begins to pick advisers who have little or no previous government
service, it would be an encouraging step. Watch for appointments from realist enclaves like Defense
Priorities, the Independent Institute and others. Also watch for the appointment of individual unorthodox
or "rogue" scholars from such places as Notre Dame University, George Mason University, the Lyndon
B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, and (ironically) the Bush School
at Texas A&M University. Such moves would indicate that Trump was choosing new blood and really intending
to make a meaningful change in the direction of U.S. foreign policy.
"... It's not just corporate lobbyists who are playing early, visible roles in the new power structure. Some of Trump's biggest political donors are shaping the incoming administration, including Rebekah Mercer, a daughter of billionaire Robert Mercer, who is figuring prominently in behind-the-scenes discussions, according to people familiar with the transition. ..."
"... Mercer is among four major donors appointed by Trump Friday to a 16-person executive committee overseeing his transition. The others are campaign finance chairman Steven Mnuchin, New York financier Anthony Scaramucci and Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel. ..."
The chant echoed through Donald Trump's boisterous rallies leading up to Election Day: "Drain the swamp! Drain the swamp! Drain
the swamp!"
"We are fighting for every citizen that believes that government should serve the people, not the donors and not the special interests,"
the billionaire real estate developer promised exuberant supporters at his last campaign rally in Manchester, N.H.
But just days later, there is little evidence that the president-elect is seeking to restrain wealthy interests from having access
and influence in his administration.
It's not just corporate lobbyists who are playing early, visible roles in the new power structure. Some of Trump's biggest political
donors are shaping the incoming administration, including Rebekah Mercer, a daughter of billionaire Robert Mercer, who is figuring
prominently in behind-the-scenes discussions, according to people familiar with the transition.
Mercer is among four major donors appointed by Trump Friday to a 16-person executive committee overseeing his transition. The
others are campaign finance chairman Steven Mnuchin, New York financier Anthony Scaramucci and Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel.
Meanwhile, top campaign fundraisers and a raft of lobbyists tied to some of the country's wealthiest industries have been put
in charge of hiring and planning for specific federal agencies. They include J. Steven Hart, chairman of the law and lobbying shop
Williams & Jensen; Michael McKenna, an energy company lobbyist who is overseeing planning for the Energy Department; and Dallas fundraiser
Ray Washburne, was has been tapped to oversee the Commerce Department.
Billionaires who served as Trump's policy advisers, such as Oklahoma oil executive Harold Hamm, are under consideration for Cabinet
positions.
LOL .
LOL
. So how about a new chant for protesters: DRAIN THE SWAP!?
... ... ...
UPDATE:
Asked about the tensions, and about Kushner's role in the leadership change at the transition team, Trump spokesman Jason Miller
said, "Anybody seeing today's news about the appointment of Vice President-elect Mike Pence to run the Presidential Transition
Team realizes that President-elect Donald J. Trump is serious about changing Washington whether the town likes it or not. This
might ruffle the delicate sensitivities of the well-heeled two-martini lunch set, but President-elect Trump isn't fighting for
them, he's fighting for the hard-working men and women outside the Beltway who don't care for insider bickering."
It's not uncommon for rivalries to emerge inside campaigns and administrations as advisers jockey to place allies in key roles
and advance their policy priorities. But the level of internecine conflict during Trump's drive toward the GOP nomination was
so extreme that it sometimes resulted in conflicting directives for even simple hiring and spending decisions.
Eight years ago, President Obama had a chance to change the warmongering direction that outgoing
President Bush and the U.S. national-security establishment had led America for the previous eight
years. Obama could have said, "Enough is enough. America has done enough killing and dying. I'm going
to lead our country in a different direction - toward peace, prosperity, and harmony with the people
of the world." He could have ordered all U.S. troops in the Middle East and Afghanistan to return
home. He could have ended U.S. involvement in the endless wars that Bush, the Pentagon, and the CIA
spawned in that part of the world. He could have led America in a new direction.
Instead, Obama decided to stay Bush's course, no doubt believing that he, unlike Bush, could win
the endless wars that Bush had started. It was not to be. He chose to keep the national-security
establishment embroiled in Afghanistan and Iraq. Death and destruction are Obama's legacy, just as
they were Bush's.
Obama hoped that Hillary Clinton would protect and continue his (and Bush's) legacy of foreign
death and destruction. Yesterday, a majority of American voters dashed that hope.
Will Trump change directions and bring U.S. troops home? Possibly not, especially given he is
an interventionist, just as Clinton, Bush, and Obama are. But there is always that possibility, especially
since Trump, unlike Clinton, owes no allegiance to the U.S. military-industrial complex, whose survival
and prosperity depends on endless wars and perpetual crises.
If Clinton had been elected, there was never any doubt about continued U.S. interventionism in
Afghanistan and the Middle East. Not only is she a died-in-the-wool interventionist, she would have
been owned by the national-security establishment. She would have done whatever the Pentagon, CIA,
and NSA wanted, which would have automatically meant endless warfare - and permanent destruction
of the liberty and prosperity of the American people.
It's obvious that Americans want a new direction when it comes to foreign policy. That's partly
what Trump's election is all about. Americans are sick and tired of the never-ending wars in Afghanistan,
Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere. That includes military families, especially the many who
supported Trump, Gary Johnson, or Jill Stein. Americans are also tired of the out of control spending
and debt that come with these wars. By electing Trump, it is obvious that Americans are demanding
a change on foreign policy.
Imagine the benefits to American society if Trump were to change directions on foreign policy.
No more anti-American terrorist blowback, which would mean no more war on terrorism. That means the
restoration of a sense of normality to American lives. No more TSA checkpoints at airports. No more
mass surveillance schemes to "keep us safe." No more color coded warnings. No more totalitarian power
to round up Americans, put them into concentration camps or military dungeons, and torture them.
No more power to assassinate people, including Americans. In other words, the restoration of American
civil liberties and privacy.
The Middle East is embroiled in civil wars - wars that have been engendered or magnified by U.S.
interventionism. Continued interventionism in an attempt to fix the problems only pours gasoline
on the fires. The U.S. government has done enough damage to Afghanistan and the Middle East. It has
already killed enough people, including those in wedding parties, hospitals, and neighborhoods. Enough
is enough.
Will Trump be bad on immigration and trade? Undoubtedly, but Clinton would have been bad in
those areas too. Don't forget, after all, that Obama has become America's greatest deporter-in-chief,
deporting more illegal immigrants than any U.S. president in history. Clinton would have followed
in his footsteps, especially in the hope of protecting his legacy. Moreover, while Trump will undoubtedly
begin trade wars, Clinton would have been imposing sanctions on people all over the world whose government
failed to obey the commands of the U.S. government. A distinction without a difference.
Another area for hope under a Trump presidency is with respect to the drug war, one of the most
failed, destructive, and expensive government programs in history. Clinton would have followed in
Bush's and Obama's footsteps by keeping it in existence, if for no other reason than to cater to
the army of DEA agents, federal and state judges, federal and state prosecutors, court clerks, and
police departments whose existence depends on the drug war.
While Trump is a drug warrior himself, he doesn't have the same allegiance to the vast drug-war
bureaucracy that Clinton has. If we get close to pushing this government program off the cliff -
and I am convinced that it is on the precipice - there is a good chance that Trump will not put much
effort into fighting its demise. Clinton would have fought for the drug war with every fiber of her
being.
There is another possible upside to Trump's election: The likelihood that Cold War II will
come to a sudden end. With Clinton, the continuation of the new Cold War against Russia was a certainty.
In fact, Clinton's Cold War might well have gotten hot very quickly, given her intent to establish
a no-fly zone over Syria where she could show how tough she is by ordering U.S. warplanes to shoot
down Russian warplanes. There is no telling where that would have led, but it very well might have
led to all-out nuclear war, something that the U.S. national-security establishment wanted with the
Soviet Union back in the 1960s under President Kennedy.
The danger of war with Russia obviously diminishes under a President Trump, who has said that
he favors friendly relations with Russia, just as Kennedy favored friendly relations with the Soviet
Union and Cuba in the months before he was assassinated.
Indeed, given Trump's negative comments about NATO, there is even the possibility of a dismantling
of that old Cold War dinosaur that gave us the crisis in Ukraine with Russia.
How about it, President-Elect Trump? While you're mulling over your new Berlin Wall on the Southern
(and maybe Northern) border and your coming trade wars with China, how about refusing to follow
the 16 years of Bush-Obama when it comes to U.S. foreign interventionism? Bring the troops home.
Lead America in a different direction, at least insofar as foreign policy is concerned - away from
death, destruction, spending, debt, loss of liberty and privacy, and economic impoverishment and
toward freedom, peace, prosperity, and harmony.
"
TRYING" ???...That's a JOKE, Right? Gingrich, Giuliani, etc, etc, These Neocons
already have a lot of the wild cards and 'Trump Cards'...Closet Globalists, even though they
probably wouldn't admit it.
Reference Carroll Quigley and Craig Hulet if you really want to get the REAL skinny!
The chant echoed through Donald Trump's boisterous rallies leading up to Election Day: "Drain
the swamp! Drain the swamp! Drain the swamp!"
"We are fighting for every citizen that believes that government should serve the people, not
the donors and not the special interests," the billionaire real estate developer promised exuberant
supporters at his last campaign rally in Manchester, N.H.
But just days later, there is little evidence that the president-elect is seeking to restrain
wealthy interests from having access and influence in his administration.
It's not just corporate lobbyists who are playing early, visible roles in the new power structure.
Some of Trump's biggest political donors are shaping the incoming administration, including Rebekah
Mercer, a daughter of billionaire Robert Mercer, who is figuring prominently in behind-the-scenes
discussions, according to people familiar with the transition.
Mercer is among four major donors appointed by Trump Friday to a 16-person executive committee
overseeing his transition. The others are campaign finance chairman Steven Mnuchin, New York financier
Anthony Scaramucci and Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel.
Meanwhile, top campaign fundraisers and a raft of lobbyists tied to some of the country's wealthiest
industries have been put in charge of hiring and planning for specific federal agencies. They
include J. Steven Hart, chairman of the law and lobbying shop Williams & Jensen; Michael McKenna,
an energy company lobbyist who is overseeing planning for the Energy Department; and Dallas fundraiser
Ray Washburne, was has been tapped to oversee the Commerce Department.
Billionaires who served as Trump's policy advisers, such as Oklahoma oil executive Harold Hamm,
are under consideration for Cabinet positions.
LOL .
LOL . So how about a new chant for protesters: DRAIN THE SWAP!?
... ... ...
UPDATE:
Asked about the tensions, and about Kushner's role in the leadership change at the transition
team, Trump spokesman Jason Miller said, "Anybody seeing today's news about the appointment of
Vice President-elect Mike Pence to run the Presidential Transition Team realizes that President-elect
Donald J. Trump is serious about changing Washington whether the town likes it or not. This might
ruffle the delicate sensitivities of the well-heeled two-martini lunch set, but President-elect
Trump isn't fighting for them, he's fighting for the hard-working men and women outside the Beltway
who don't care for insider bickering."
It's not uncommon for rivalries to emerge inside campaigns and administrations as advisers
jockey to place allies in key roles and advance their policy priorities. But the level of internecine
conflict during Trump's drive toward the GOP nomination was so extreme that it sometimes resulted
in conflicting directives for even simple hiring and spending decisions.
That is why watching President-elect Trump's choices for his foreign policy team is so important.
If he chooses primarily alumni of the Bush administration, we can be fairly certain that there
will be few, if any, beneficial changes in Washington's security strategy. Indeed, it could conceivably
be even more interventionist than that pursued by the Clinton, Bush or Obama administrations.
The main difference might be that it would be conducted unilaterally rather than multilaterally,
especially if someone like John Bolton gets a key position.
If on the other hand, Trump begins to pick advisers who have little or no previous government
service, it would be an encouraging step. Watch for appointments from realist enclaves like Defense
Priorities, the Independent Institute and others. Also watch for the appointment of individual unorthodox
or "rogue" scholars from such places as Notre Dame University, George Mason University, the Lyndon
B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, and (ironically) the Bush School
at Texas A&M University. Such moves would indicate that Trump was choosing new blood and really intending
to make a meaningful change in the direction of U.S. foreign policy.
Looks like Secretary of State shortlist is dominated by neocons. A couple of candidates would make
Hillary Clinton proud... the head of CIA is an informal head of shadow government and as such
is also very important. Allen Dulles example should still be remembered by all presidents, if
they do not want to repeat the face of JFK ....
(There are 5 women on the list, including Sarah Palin & NH's Kelly Ayotte, demonstrating that
ilsm has some influence.
For Sec/Defense - seriously. Alternatively for UN Ambassador. Right.)
Thomas Barrack Jr. Founder, chairman and executive chairman of Colony Capital; private equity
and real estate investor
Jeb Hensarling Representative from Texas and chairman of the House Financial Services Committee
Steven Mnuchin Former Goldman Sachs executive and Mr. Trump's campaign finance chairman
Tim Pawlenty Former Minnesota governor
Defense Secretary
Kelly Ayotte Departing senator from New Hampshire and member of the Senate Armed Services
Committee
Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn Former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (he would need
a waiver from Congress because of a seven-year rule for retired officers)
Stephen J. Hadley National security adviser under George W. Bush
Jon Kyl Former senator from Arizona
Jeff Sessions Senator from Alabama who is a prominent immigration opponent
Attorney General
Chris Christie New Jersey governor
Rudolph W. Giuliani Former New York mayor
Jeff Sessions Senator from Alabama
Interior Secretary
Jan Brewer Former Arizona governor
Robert E. Grady Gryphon Investors partner
Harold G. Hamm Chief executive of Continental Resources, an oil and gas company
Forrest Lucas President of Lucas Oil Products, which manufactures automotive lubricants, additives
and greases
Sarah Palin Former Alaska governor
Agriculture Secretary
Sam Brownback Kansas governor
Chuck Conner Chief executive officer of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives
Sid Miller Texas agricultural commissioner
Sonny Perdue Former Georgia governor
Commerce Secretary
Chris Christie New Jersey governor
Dan DiMicco Former chief executive of Nucor Corporation, a steel production company
Lewis M. Eisenberg Private equity chief for Granite Capital International Group
Labor Secretary
Victoria A. Lipnic Equal Employment Opportunity commissioner and work force policy counsel
to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce
Health and Human Services Secretary
Dr. Ben Carson Former neurosurgeon and 2016 presidential candidate
Mike Huckabee Former Arkansas governor and 2016 presidential candidate
Bobby Jindal Former Louisiana governor who served as secretary of the Louisiana Department
of Health and Hospitals
Rick Scott Florida governor and former chief executive of a large hospital chain
Energy Secretary
James L. Connaughton Chief executive of Nautilus Data Technologies and former environmental
adviser to President George W. Bush
Robert E. Grady Gryphon Investors partner
Harold G. Hamm Chief executive of Continental Resources, an oil and gas company
Education Secretary
Dr. Ben Carson Former neurosurgeon and 2016 presidential candidate
Williamson M. Evers Education expert at the Hoover Institution, a think tank
Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Jeff Miller Retired chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee
Homeland Security Secretary
Joe Arpaio Departing sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz.
David A. Clarke Jr. Milwaukee County sheriff
Michael McCaul Representative from Texas and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee
Jeff Sessions Senator from Alabama
White House Chief of Staff
Stephen K. Bannon Editor of Breitbart News and chairman of Mr. Trump's campaign
Reince Priebus Chairman of the Republican National Committee
E.P.A. Administrator
Myron Ebell A director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a prominent climate change
skeptic
Robert E. Grady Gryphon Investors partner who was involved in drafting the Clean Air Act Amendments
of 1990
Jeffrey R. Holmstead Lawyer with Bracewell L.L.P. and former deputy E.P.A. administrator in
the George W. Bush administration
U.S. Trade Representative
Dan DiMicco Former chief executive of Nucor Corporation, a steel production company, and
a critic of Chinese trade practices
U.N. Ambassador
Kelly Ayotte Departing senator from New Hampshire and member of the Senate Armed Services
Committee
Richard Grenell Former spokesman for the United States ambassador to the United Nations during
the George W. Bush administration
CIA Director / Director of National Intelligence
Michael T. Flynn Former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Peter Hoekstra Former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee
Mike Rogers Former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee
Frances Townsend Former homeland security adviser under George W. Bush
National Security Adviser
Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn Former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Trump's Hires Will Set Course of His Presidency
http://nyti.ms/2eNUfRg
NYT - MARK LANDLER =- Nov 12
WASHINGTON - "Busy day planned in New York," President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Twitter
on Friday morning, two days after his astonishing victory. "Will soon be making some very important
decisions on the people who will be running our government!"
If anything, that understates the gravity of the personnel choices Mr. Trump and his transition
team are weighing.
Rarely in the history of the American presidency has the exercise of choosing people to fill
jobs had such a far-reaching impact on the nature and priorities of an incoming administration.
Unlike most new presidents, Mr. Trump comes into office with no elective-office experience, no
coherent political agenda and no bulging binder of policy proposals. And he has left a trail of
inflammatory, often contradictory, statements on issues from immigration and race to terrorism
and geopolitics.
In such a chaotic environment, serving a president who is in many ways a tabula rasa, the appointees
to key White House jobs like chief of staff and cabinet posts like secretary of state, defense
secretary and Treasury secretary could wield outsize influence. Their selection will help determine
whether the Trump administration governs like the firebrand Mr. Trump was on the campaign trail
or the pragmatist he often appears to be behind closed doors. ...
"... Washington insiders attempt to capture Trump and influence his positions, policies and decisions. ..."
"... Trump will likely form a very small team of offshoots of himself, people whom he trusts implicitly, in order to extend his capacity to choose people who will adhere to and execute his agenda. ..."
"... The presidency is an establishment and Washington is another. By being elected, Trump struck a blow at the members of the establishment who will be packing their bags while weeping over their losses (see here and here .) ..."
"... The Obama establishment is dead. The Democratic establishment is dead, at least for 4 years. There was a time, a very brief time under the Articles of Confederation, when Americans recognized the evils of the establishment and avoided instituting one. ..."
What happens next in Washington? Trump fills out his administration.
At the same time, Washington insiders attempt to capture Trump and influence his positions,
policies and decisions. The presidency is an institution, not a man, not a president. The presidency
is a network of enormous power with Trump now at its center.
Washington insiders who live and breathe politics are now in a race for positions of power and
influence. They hanker and vie for appointments. Trump must make appointments. He cannot operate
alone. He must delegate power to make decisions. He cannot monitor all information pertinent to every
issue in which the government has a hand.
The presidency is not 100 percent centralized. Decision-making power is allocated to levels below
the president himself and to levels surrounding him. It also lies outside the presidency in Congress.
Trump has his ideas and desires for actions, but their realization depends on the people he appoints.
He loses control and locks himself in with every appointment that he makes. People around him want
his power and want to influence him. They have a heavy influence on what he hears, whom he sees,
the options presented to him, and the evaluations of competing personnel. Trump will likely form
a very small team of offshoots of himself, people whom he trusts implicitly, in order to extend his
capacity to choose people who will adhere to and execute his agenda.
Power in Washington is not simply the apparatus of administering the presidency that will take
up headlines for the next few months. After the U.S. Treasury robs the tax-paying Americans, new
robbers (the Lobby) appear to rob the Treasury using every device they can get away with. There is
a second contingent, the power-seekers. Those who covet the exercise of power unceasingly work toward
their own narrow aims. As long as Washington remains the place that concentrates unbelievably large
amounts of money and powers, it will remain the swamp that Trump has promised to drain but won't.
He cannot drain it, not without destroying Washington's power and he cannot accomplish that, nor
does he even hint that he wants to accomplish that. His stated aims are the redirection of money
and powers, not their elimination for the sake of a greater justice, a greater right, and a truly
greater people and country.
The presidency is an establishment and Washington is another. By being elected, Trump struck
a blow at the members of the establishment who will be packing their bags while weeping over their
losses (see
here and
here .)
But elections do not strike the roots of the presidency, the establishment or Washington. Neither
will demonstrations against Trump.
The Obama establishment is dead. The Democratic establishment is dead, at least for 4 years.
There was a time, a very brief time under the Articles of Confederation, when Americans recognized
the evils of the establishment and avoided instituting one.
This gave way almost immediately (in 1787) to the constitutional seed that planted the enormous
tree that now cuts out the sun of justice from American lives. A domestic war failed to uproot that
tree. Long live the establishment, the Union, the American state, and may they be possessed of immense
powers over our lives - these became the social and political reality. Trump isn't going to change
it. He's a president administering a presidency. He's at the top of the heap. His credo is still
"Long Live the Establishment!"
"... The media and Clinton campaign created some sympathy for Donald Trump because the message was not subtle, it was an avalanche, indeed, an unprecedented deluge of negative, caustic, burn-it-to-the-ground anti-Trump messaging, and people don't respond to that ..."
"The media and Clinton campaign created some sympathy for Donald Trump because the message
was not subtle, it was an avalanche, indeed, an unprecedented deluge of negative, caustic,
burn-it-to-the-ground anti-Trump messaging, and people don't respond to that," Conway said.
By John Cassidy conviniently forget that Hillary was/is a neocon warmonger, perfectly
cable of unleashing WWIII. Instead he pushes "Comey did it" bogeyman"...
EMichael and im1dc would rather have their head in the sand. We were told confidently by Clinton
surrogates like Krugman and DeLong that Brexit wouldn't happen again.
Since Tuesday night, there has been a lot of handwringing about how the media, with all its fancy
analytics, failed to foresee Donald Trump's victory. The Times alone has published three articles
on this theme, one of which ran under the headline "How Data Failed Us in Calling an Election." On
social media, Trump supporters have been mercilessly haranguing the press for getting it wrong.
Clearly, this was a real issue. It's safe to say that most journalists, myself included, were
surprised by Tuesday's outcome. That fact should be acknowledged. But journalists weren't the only
ones who were shocked. As late as Tuesday evening, even a senior adviser to Trump was telling the
press that "it will take a miracle for us to win."
It also shouldn't be forgotten that, in terms of the popular vote, Clinton didn't lose on Tuesday.
As of 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday, a tally by CNN showed that Hillary Clinton had received 60,617,062
votes, while Trump got 60,118,567. The margin in her favor-now at 498,495-is likely to grow as the
remaining votes are counted in California. At the end of the day, Clinton may end up ahead by two
per cent of the total votes cast. If the United States had a direct system of voting, Clinton would
have been the one at the White House on Thursday meeting with President Obama. But, of course, Trump
won the Electoral College. If the final count in Michigan remains in his favor, Trump will end up
with three hundred and six Electoral College votes, to Clinton's two hundred and twenty-six.
Still, as journalists and commentators, we all knew the rules of the game: if Trump got to two
hundred and seventy votes in the Electoral College, he'd be President. Why did so few observers predict
he'd do it? Many Trump supporters insist it was East Coast insularity and ideological bias, and many
in the media are now ready to believe that. To be sure, it's easy to get sucked into the media bubble.
But there are also strong professional incentives for journalists to get things right. Why did that
prove so difficult this year?
It wasn't because journalists weren't legging it to Michigan or Wisconsin or West Virginia. In
this magazine alone, a number of writers-including Larissa MacFarquhar, Evan Osnos, George Packer,
and George Saunders-published long, reported pieces about the Trump phenomenon in different parts
of the country. Many other journalists spent a lot of time talking with Trump supporters. I'd point
you to the work of ProPublica's Alec MacGillis and the photojournalist Chris Arnade, but they were
just two among many. So many, in fact, that some Clinton supporters, such as Eric Boehlert, of Media
Matters, regularly complained about it on social media.
To the extent that there was a failure, it was a failure of analysis, rather than of observation
and reporting. And when you talk about how the media analyzed this election, you can't avoid the
polls, the forecasting models, and the organizing frames-particularly demographics-that people used
to interpret the incoming data.
It was clear from early in the race that Trump's electoral strategy was based on appealing
to working-class whites, particularly in the Midwest. The question all along was whether, in the
increasingly diverse America of 2016, there were enough alienated working-class whites to propel
Trump to victory.
Some analysts did suggest that there might be. Immediately after the 2012 election, Sean Trende,
of Real Clear Politics, pointed out that one of the main reasons for Mitt Romney's defeat was that
millions of white voters stayed home. Earlier this year, during the Republican primaries, Trende
returned to the same theme, writing, "The candidate who actually fits the profile of a 'missing white
voter' candidate is Donald Trump."
The Times' Nate Cohn was another who took Trump's strategy seriously. In June, pointing to
a new analysis of Census Bureau data and voter-registration files, Cohn wrote, "a growing body of
evidence suggests that there is still a path, albeit a narrow one, for Mr. Trump to win without gains
among nonwhite voters." As recently as Sunday, Cohn repeated this point, noting that Trump's "strength
among the white working class gives him a real chance at victory, a possibility that many discounted
as recently as the summer."
Among analysts and political demographers, however, the near-consensus of opinion was that Trump
wouldn't be able to turn back history. Back in March, I interviewed Ruy Teixeira, the co-author of
an influential 2004 book, "The Emerging Democratic Majority," which highlighted the growing number
of minority voters across the country, particularly Hispanics. Drawing on his latest data, Teixeira,
who is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and the Center for American Progress, offered some
estimates of how many more white working-class voters Trump would need to turn out to flip states
like Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. "It's not crazy," he said. "But I think it would be very hard
to pull off."
Trump managed it, though. He enjoyed a thirty-nine-point advantage among whites without college
degrees, according to the network exit poll, compared to the twenty-six-point advantage Romney saw
in 2012. "What totally tanked the Democrats was the massive shift in the white non-college vote against
them, particularly in some of the swing states," Teixeira told me by telephone on Thursday. "And
that by itself is really enough to explain the outcome."
In the lead-up to the election, the possibility of Clinton winning the popular vote while losing
the Electoral College was well understood but, in hindsight, not taken seriously enough. In mid-September,
David Wasserman, an analyst at the Cook Political Report, laid out a scenario in which turnout among
white non-college voters surged and turnout among some parts of the Democratic coalition, particularly
African-Americans, fell. "Clinton would carry the popular vote by 1.5 percentage points," Wasserman
wrote. "However, Trump would win the Electoral College with 280 votes by holding all 24 Romney states
and flipping Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Maine's 2nd Congressional District."
In the days and weeks leading up to the election, FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver also considered
the possibility of Clinton winning the popular vote and losing the election. But he, Wasserman, and
others who looked at the matter believed this was an unlikely outcome. On Tuesday, the FiveThirtyEight
forecasting model estimated that the probability of such a scenario happening was about one in ten.
There was a straightforward reason for all the skepticism about Trump's chances: when you looked
at the state-level polling, it looked like Clinton's "blue wall" was holding. Take Wisconsin, which
turned out to be a state that Trump won. The Huffington Post's polling database lists the results
of more than thirty polls that were taken in the Badger State since June: Trump didn't lead in any
of them. Three of the final four surveys showed Clinton ahead by six points or more, and the Huffpollster
poll average put her lead at 6.3 percentage points. Trump carried the state by one point. In other
key states, the pattern was similar. The final Huffington Post poll averages showed Trump losing
by nearly six points in Michigan, and by four points in Pennsylvania.
In a public statement issued on Wednesday, the American Association for Public Opinion Research
said bluntly, "The polls clearly got it wrong this time." The organization announced that it had
already put together a panel of "survey research and election polling experts" tasked with finding
some answers. Several possible explanations have already been floated.
First, it's possible there was a late swing to Trump among undecided voters, which the state polls,
in particular, failed to pick up. Another possibility is that some Trump voters didn't tell the pollsters
about their preferences-the "shy Trump supporter" hypothesis.
A third theory, which I suspect may be the right one, is that a lot of Trump voters refused
to answer the pollsters' calls in the first place, because they regarded them as part of the same
media-political establishment that Trump was out railing against on the campaign trail. Something
like this appears to have happened in Britain earlier this year, during the run-up to the Brexit
referendum. Turnout wound up being considerably higher than expected among lower-income voters in
the north of England, particularly elderly ones, and that swung the result.
Whatever went wrong with the polls in this country, they inevitably colored perceptions. "The
reason it surprised me was because, like everyone else, I was taken in by those pesky polls," Teixeira
told me. "It didn't look like, by and large, that he was running up as big a margin as he needed
among non-college whites."
The prediction models didn't help things. On Tuesday morning, FiveThirtyEight's "polls-only"
prediction model put the probability of Clinton winning the presidency at 71.4 per cent. And that
figure was perhaps the most conservative one. The Times' Upshot model said Clinton had an eighty-five
per cent chance of winning, the Huffington Post's figure was ninety-eight per cent, and the Princeton
Election Consortium's estimate was ninety-nine per cent.
These numbers had a big influence on how many people, including journalists and political professionals,
looked at the election. Plowing through all the new polls, or even keeping up with all the state
and national poll averages, can be a time-consuming process. It's much easier to click on the latest
update from the model of your choice. When you see it registering the chances of the election going
a certain way at ninety per cent, or ninety-five per cent, it's easy to dismiss the other outcome
as a live possibility-particularly if you haven't been schooled in how to think in probabilistic
terms, which many people haven't.
The problem with models is that they rely so much on the polls. Essentially, they aggregate
poll numbers and use some simulation software to covert them into unidimensional probabilistic forecasts.
The details are complicated, and each model is different, but the bottom line is straightforward:
when the polls are fairly accurate-as they were in 2008 and 2012-the models look good. When the polls
are off, so are the models.
Silver, to his credit, pointed this out numerous times before the election. His model also allowed
for the possibility that errors in the state polls were likely to be correlated-i.e., if the polls
in Wisconsin got it wrong, then most likely the Michigan polls would get it wrong, too. This was
a big reason why FiveThirtyEight's model consistently gave Trump a better chance of winning than
other models did. But the fact remains that FiveThirtyEight, like almost everyone else, got the result
wrong.
I got it wrong, too. Unlike in 2012, I didn't make any explicit predictions this year. But based
on the polls and poll averages-I didn't look at the models much-I largely accepted the conventional
wisdom that Clinton was running ahead of Trump and had an enduring advantage in the Electoral College.
In mid-October, after the "Access Hollywood" tape emerged, I suggested that Trump was done.
Clearly, he wasn't. In retrospect, the F.B.I. Director James Comey's intervention ten days before
the election-telling Congress that his agency was taking another look at e-mails related to Clinton's
private server-may have proved decisive. The news seems to have shifted the national polls against
Clinton by at least a couple of points, and some of the state polls-in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina,
and other places-also moved sharply in Trump's direction. Without any doubt, it energized Republicans
and demoralized Democrats.
One thing we know for sure, however, is that in mid-October, even some of the indicators that
the Trump campaign relied on were sending out alarm signals. "Flash back three weeks, to October
18," Bloomberg News's Joshua Green and Sasha Issenberg reported on Thursday. "The Trump campaign's
internal election simulator, the 'Battleground Optimizer Path to Victory,' showed Trump with a 7.8
percent chance of winning. That's because his own model had him trailing in most of the states that
would decide the election, including the pivotal state of Florida."
Of course, neither the Battleground Optimizer Path to Victory software nor I knew that fate, in
the form of Comey, was about to take a hand.
"... What happened? Why is this clique's triumphant return to power erupting in massive scandal this time around? Probably because we are living in an era during which much that was mysterious is suddenly becoming clear. Probably because Trump's "silent majority" suddenly saw before them someone they had been waiting for for a long time – a man ready to defend their interests. ..."
"... Perhaps also it is because the middle class is choking on its growing exasperation with the "elite caste" occupying its native country. And it finally became clear to the sober-minded American patriots in law enforcement that the return to power of the people responsible for the current global chaos could be a big threat to the US and rest of the world. Because, in the end, everyone has children and no one wants a new world war. ..."
Today Trump represents an entirely new party made up of half of the American electorate, and they
are ready for action. And whatever the eventual political structure of this new model, this is what
is shaping America's present reality. Moreover, this does not seem like such a unique situation.
It rather appears to be the final chapter of some ancient story, in which the convoluted plotlines
finally take shape and find resolution.
The circumstances are increasingly reminiscent of 1860, when Lincoln's election so enraged the
South that those states began agitating for secession. Trump is today symbolic of a very real American
tradition that during
the Civil War (1860-1865) ran headlong into American revolutionary liberalism for the first time.
Right up until World War I traditional American conservatism wore the guise of "isolationism."
Prior to WWII it was known as "non-interventionism." Afterward, that movement attempted to use
Sen. Joseph
McCarthy to battle the left-liberal stranglehold. And in the 1960s it became the primary target
of the "counter-cultural revolution."
Its last bastion was
Richard
Nixon , whose fall was the result of an unprecedented attack from the left-liberal press in 1974.
And this is perhaps the example against which we should compare the present-day Trump and his current
fight.
And by the way, the crimes of Hillary Clinton, who has failed to protect state secrets and has
repeatedly been caught lying under oath, clearly outweigh the notorious Watergate scandal that led
to Nixon's forced resignation under threat of impeachment. But the liberal American media remains
silent, as if nothing has happened.
By all indications it is clear that we are standing before a truly epochal moment. But before
turning to the future that might await us, let's take a quick glance at the history of conflict between
revolutionary liberalism and traditional white conservatism in the US.
***
Immediately after WWII, an attack on two fronts was launched by the party of "expansionism" (we'll
call it that). The Soviet Union and Communism were designated the number one enemy. Enemy number
two (with less hype) was traditional American conservatism. The war against traditional "Americanism"
was waged by several intellectual fringe groups simultaneously.
The country's cultural and intellectual life was under the absolute control of a group known as
the " New York
Intellectuals ." Literary criticism as well as all other aspects of the nation's literary life
was in the hands of this small group of literary curators who had emerged from the milieu of a Trotskyist-communist
magazine known as the
Partisan Review (PR). No one could become a professional writer in the America of the 1950s and
1960s without being carefully screened by this sect.
The foundational tenets of American political philosophy and sociology were composed by militants
from the Frankfurt School
, which had been established during the interwar period in Weimar Germany and which moved to
the US after the National Socialists took power. Here, retraining their sights from communist to
liberal, they set out to design a "theory of totalitarianism" in addition to their concept of an
"authoritarian personality" – both hostile to "democracy."
The "New York Intellectuals" and representatives of the Frankfurt School became friends, and
Hannah Arendt , for example, was an
authoritative representative of both sects. This is where future neocons (Norman Podhoretz, Eliot
A. Cohen, and Irving Kristol) gained their experience. The former leader of the Trotskyist Fourth
International and godfather of the neocons,
Max Shachtman , held a place
of honor in the "family of intellectuals."
The anthropological school of Franz Boas and Freudianism reigned over the worlds of psychology
and sociology at that time. The Boasian approach in psychology argued that genetic, national, and
racial differences between individuals were of no importance (thus the concepts of "national culture"
and "national community" were meaningless).
Psychoanalysis also became fashionable, which primarily aimed to supplant traditional church institutions
and become a type of quasi-religion for the middle class.
The common denominator linking all these movements was anti-fascism. Did something look fishy
in this? But the problem was that the traditional values of the nation, state, and family were all
labeled "fascist." From this standpoint, any white Christian man aware of his cultural and national
identity was potentially a "fascist."
Kevin MacDonald, a professor of psychology at California State University, analyzed in detail
the seizure of America's cultural, political, and mental landscape by these "liberal sects" in his
brilliant book The Culture
of Critique , writing:
"The New York Intellectuals, for example, developed ties with elite universities, particularly
Harvard, Columbia, the University of Chicago, and the University of California-Berkeley, while
psychoanalysis and anthropology became well entrenched throughout academia.
"The moral and intellectual elite established by these movements dominated intellectual
discourse during a critical period after World War II and leading into the countercultural revolution
of the 1960s."
It was precisely this intellectual milieu that spawned the countercultural revolution of the 1960s.
Riding the wave of these sentiments, the new
Immigration and Nationality Act was passed in 1965, encouraging this phenomenon and facilitating
the integration of immigrants into US society. The architects of the law wanted to use the celebrated
melting pot to "dilute" the "potentially fascist" descendants of European immigrants by making use
of new ethno-cultural elements.
The 60s revolution opened the door to the American political establishment to representatives
from both wings of the expansionist "party" – the neo-liberals and the neo-conservatives.
Besieged by the left-liberal press in 1974, Richard Nixon resigned under threat of impeachment.
In the same year the US Congress passed the
Jackson-Vanik
Amendment (drafted by Richard
Perle ), which emerged as a symbol of the country's "new political agenda" – economic war against
the Soviet Union using sanctions and boycotts.
At that same time the "hippie generation" was joining the Democratic Party on the coattails of
Senator George McGovern's campaign . And that was when Bill Clinton's smiling countenance first
emerged on the US political horizon.
And the future neo-conservatives (at that time still disciples of the Democratic hawk Henry "Scoop"
Jackson) began to slowly edge in the direction of the Republicans.
In 1976, Mr. Rumsfeld and his fellow neo-conservatives resurrected the
Committee
on the Present Danger , an inter-party club for political hawks whose goal became the launch
of an all-out propaganda war against the USSR.
Former Trotskyists and followers of Max Shachtman (Kristol, Podhoretz, and Jeane Kirkpatrick)
and advisers to Sen. Henry Jackson (Paul Wolfowitz, Perle, Elliott Abrams, Charles Horner, and Douglas
Feith) joined Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and other "Christian" politicians with the intention
of launching a "campaign to transform the world."
This is where the neocons' "nonpartisan ideology" originated. And eventually today's "inalterable
US government" hatched from this egg.
American politics began to acquire its current shape during the Reagan era. In economics this
was seen in the policy of neoliberalism (politics waged in the interests of big financial capital)
and in foreign policy – in a strategy consisting of "holy war against the forces of evil." The Nixon-Kissinger
tradition of foreign policy (which viewed the Soviet Union and China as a normal countries with which
is essential to find common ground) was entirely abandoned.
The collapse of the USSR was a sign of the onset of the final phase of the "neocon revolution."
At that point their protégé, Francis Fukuyama, announced the "end of history."
***
As the years passed, the influence of the neo-conservatives (in politics) and neoliberals (in
economics) only expanded. Through all manner of committees, foundations, "think tanks," etc., the
students of Milton Friedman and Leo Strauss (from the departments of economics and political science
at the University of Chicago) penetrated ever more deeply into the inner workings of the Washington
power machine. The apotheosis of this expansion was the presidency of George W. Bush, during which
the neocons, having seized the primary instruments of power in the White House, were able to plunge
the country into the folly of a war in the Middle East.
By the end of the Bush presidency this clique was the object of universal hatred throughout the
US. That's why the middle-ground, innocuous figure of Barack Obama, a Democrat, was able to move
into the White House for the next eight years. The neocons stepped down from their central rostrums
of power and returned to their "influential committees." It is likely that this election was intended
to facilitate the triumphant return of the neoconservative-neoliberal paradigm all wrapped up in
"new packaging." For various reasons, the decision was made to assign this role to Hillary Clinton.
But it seems that at the most critical moment the flimsy packaging ripped open
What happened? Why is this clique's triumphant return to power erupting in massive scandal this
time around? Probably because we are living in an era during which much that was mysterious is suddenly
becoming clear. Probably because Trump's "silent majority" suddenly saw before them someone they
had been waiting for for a long time – a man ready to defend their interests.
Perhaps also it is because the middle class is choking on its growing exasperation with the "elite
caste" occupying its native country. And it finally became clear to the sober-minded American patriots
in law enforcement that the return to power of the people responsible for the current global chaos
could be a big threat to the US and rest of the world. Because, in the end, everyone has children
and no one wants a new world war.
How will this new conservative revolt against the elite end? Will Trump manage to "drain the swamp
of Washington, DC" as he has promised, or he will end up as the system's next victim? Very soon we
can finally get an answer to these questions.
Donald Trump's success or failure as the next US president will
largely depend on his ability to keep his independence from the "shadow government" and elite
structures that shaped the policies of previous administrations, former presidential candidate
Ron Paul told RT.
[...]
"
Unfortunately, there has been several neoconservatives that
are getting closer to Trump. And if gets his advice from them then I do not think that is a good
sign,
" Paul told the host of RT's Crosstalk show Peter Lavelle.
The retired Congressman said that people voted for Trump because
he stood against the deep corruption in the establishment, that was further exposed during the
campaign by WikiLeaks, and because of his disapproval of meddling in the wider Middle East.
"
During the campaign, he did talk a little bit about backing
off and being less confrontational to Russia and I like that. He criticized some the wars in the
Middle East at the same time. He believes we should accelerate the war against ISIS and terrorism,
"
Paul noted.
[...]
"
But quite frankly there is an outside source which we refer
to as the 'deep state' or the 'shadow government'. There is a lot of influence by people which
are actually more powerful than our government itself, our president,
" the congressman said.
"
Yes, Trump is his own guy, more so than most of those who
have ever been in before. We hope he can maintain an independence and go in the right direction.
But I fear the fact that there is so much that can be done secretly, out of control of our apparent
government and out of the view of so many citizens,
" he added.
More:
https://www.rt.com/usa/366404-trump-ron-paul-crosstalk/
"... No sooner had Trump been declared the 45th president of the United States, Soros-funded political operations launched their activities to disrupt Trump during Obama's lame-duck period and thereafter. The swiftness of the Purple Revolution is reminiscent of the speed at which protesters hit the streets of Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, in two Orange Revolutions sponsored by Soros, one in 2004 and the other, ten years later, in 2014. ..."
"... The Soros-financed Russian singing group "Pussy Riot" released on YouTube an anti-Trump music video titled "Make America Great Again". The video went "viral" on the Internet. The video, which is profane and filled with violent acts, portrays a dystopian Trump presidency. Following the George Soros/Gene Sharp script to a tee, Pussy Riot member Nadya Tolokonnikova called for anti-Trump Americans to turn their anger into art, particularly music and visual art. The use of political graffiti is a popular Sharp tactic. The street protests and anti-Trump music and art were the first phase of Soros's Purple Revolution in America ..."
" No sooner had Trump been declared the 45th president of the United States, Soros-funded political
operations launched their activities to disrupt Trump during Obama's lame-duck period and thereafter.
The swiftness of the Purple Revolution is reminiscent of the speed at which protesters hit the
streets of Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, in two Orange Revolutions sponsored by Soros, one in 2004
and the other, ten years later, in 2014.
As the Clintons were embracing purple in New York, street demonstrations, some violent, all
coordinated by the Soros-funded Moveon.org and "Black Lives Matter", broke out in New York, Los
Angeles, Chicago, Oakland, Nashville, Cleveland, Washington, Austin, Seattle, Philadelphia, Richmond,
St. Paul, Kansas City, Omaha, San Francisco, and some 200 other cities across the United States.
The Soros-financed Russian singing group "Pussy Riot" released on YouTube an anti-Trump music
video titled "Make America Great Again". The video went "viral" on the Internet. The video, which
is profane and filled with violent acts, portrays a dystopian Trump presidency. Following the
George Soros/Gene Sharp script to a tee, Pussy Riot member Nadya Tolokonnikova called for anti-Trump
Americans to turn their anger into art, particularly music and visual art. The use of political
graffiti is a popular Sharp tactic. The street protests and anti-Trump music and art were the
first phase of Soros's Purple Revolution in America."
He will be staging them as long as he has enough health to try. Of course he is not the only player.
Soros is just one of the agents of western imperialism.
Reply
"... No sooner had Trump been declared the 45th president of the United States, Soros-funded political operations launched their activities to disrupt Trump during Obama's lame-duck period and thereafter. The swiftness of the Purple Revolution is reminiscent of the speed at which protesters hit the streets of Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, in two Orange Revolutions sponsored by Soros, one in 2004 and the other, ten years later, in 2014. ..."
"... One of Trump's political advertisements, released just prior to Election Day, stated that George Soros, Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, and Goldman Sachs chief executive officer Lloyd Blankfein, are all part of "a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities". Soros and his minions immediately and ridiculously attacked the ad as "anti-Semitic". President Trump should be on guard against those who his campaign called out in the ad and their colleagues. Soros's son, Alexander Soros, called on Trump's daughter, Ivanka, and her husband Jared Kushner, to publicly disavow Trump. Soros's tactics not only seek to split apart nations but also families. Trump must be on guard against the current and future machinations of George Soros, including his Purple Revolution. ..."
Defeated Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is not about to "go quietly into that good night". On the morning
after her surprising and unanticipated defeat at the hands of Republican Party upstart Donald Trump, Mrs. Clinton and her husband,
former President Bill Clinton, entered the ball room of the art-deco New Yorker hotel in midtown Manhattan and were both adorned
in purple attire. The press immediately noticed the color and asked what it represented. Clinton spokespeople claimed it was to represent
the coming together of Democratic "Blue America" and Republican "Red America" into a united purple blend. This statement was a complete
ruse as is known by citizens of countries targeted in the past by the vile political operations of international hedge fund tycoon
George Soros.
The Clintons, who both have received millions of dollars in campaign contributions and Clinton Foundation donations from Soros,
were, in fact, helping to launch Soros's "Purple Revolution" in America. The Purple Revolution will resist all efforts by the Trump
administration to push back against the globalist policies of the Clintons and soon-to-be ex-President Barack Obama. The Purple Revolution
will also seek to make the Trump administration a short one through Soros-style street protests and political disruption.
It is doubtful that President Trump's aides will advise the new president to carry out a diversionary criminal investigation of
Mrs. Clinton's private email servers and other issues related to the activities of the Clinton Foundation, especially when the nation
faces so many other pressing issues, including jobs, immigration, and health care. However, House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz said he will continue hearings in the Republican-controlled Congress on Hillary Clinton, the
Clinton Foundation, and Mrs. Clinton's aide
Huma Abedin
. President Trump should not allow himself to be distracted by these efforts. Chaffetz was not one of Trump's most loyal supporters.
America's globalists and interventionists are already pushing the meme that because so many establishment and entrenched national
security and military "experts" opposed Trump's candidacy, Trump is "required" to call on them to join his administration because
there are not enough such "experts" among Trump's inner circle of advisers.
Discredited neo-conservatives from George W. Bush's White House, such as Iraq war co-conspirator Stephen Hadley, are being mentioned
as someone Trump should have join his National Security Council and other senior positions. George H. W. Bush's Secretary of State
James Baker, a die-hard Bush loyalist, is also being proffered as a member of Trump's White House team.
There is absolutely no reason for Trump to seek the advice from old Republican fossils like Baker, Hadley, former Secretaries
of State Rice and Powell, the lunatic former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, and others. There are plenty of Trump
supporters who have a wealth of experience in foreign and national security matters, including those of African, Haitian, Hispanic,
and Arab descent and who are not neocons, who can fill Trump's senior- and middle-level positions.
Trump must distance himself from sudden well-wishing neocons, adventurists, militarists, and interventionists and not permit them
to infest his administration. If Mrs. Clinton had won the presidency, an article on the incoming administration would have read as
follows:
"Based on the militarism and foreign adventurism of her term as Secretary of State and her husband Bill Clinton's two terms
as president, the world is in store for major American military aggression on multiple fronts around the world. President-elect
Hillary Clinton has made no secret of her desire to confront Russia militarily, diplomatically, and economically in the Middle
East, on Russia's very doorstep in eastern Europe, and even within the borders of the Russian Federation. Mrs. Clinton has dusted
off the long-discredited 'containment' policy ushered into effect by Professor George F. Kennan in the aftermath of World War.
Mrs. Clinton's administration will likely promote the most strident neo-Cold Warriors of the Barack Obama administration, including
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, a personal favorite of Clinton".
President-elect Trump cannot afford to permit those who are in the same web as Nuland, Hadley, Bolton, and others to join his
administration where they would metastasize like an aggressive form of cancer. These individuals would not carry out Trump's policies
but seek to continue to damage America's relations with Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, and other nations.
Not only must Trump have to deal with Republican neocons trying to worm their way into his administration, but he must deal with
the attempt by Soros to disrupt his presidency and the United States with a Purple Revolution
No sooner had Trump been declared the 45th president of the United States, Soros-funded political operations launched their
activities to disrupt Trump during Obama's lame-duck period and thereafter. The swiftness of the Purple Revolution is reminiscent
of the speed at which protesters hit the streets of Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, in two Orange Revolutions sponsored by Soros, one
in 2004 and the other, ten years later, in 2014.
As the Clintons were embracing purple in New York, street demonstrations, some violent, all coordinated by the Soros-funded Moveon.org
and "Black Lives Matter", broke out in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Oakland, Nashville, Cleveland, Washington, Austin, Seattle,
Philadelphia, Richmond, St. Paul, Kansas City, Omaha, San Francisco, and some 200 other cities across the United States.
The Soros-financed Russian singing group "Pussy Riot" released on YouTube an anti-Trump music video titled "Make America Great
Again". The video went "viral" on the Internet. The video, which is profane and filled with violent acts, portrays a dystopian Trump
presidency. Following the George Soros/Gene Sharp script to a tee, Pussy Riot member Nadya Tolokonnikova called for anti-Trump Americans
to turn their anger into art, particularly music and visual art. The use of political graffiti is a popular Sharp tactic. The street
protests and anti-Trump music and art were the first phase of Soros's Purple Revolution in America.
President-elect Trump is facing a two-pronged attack by his opponents. One, led by entrenched neo-con bureaucrats, including former
Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency director Michael Hayden, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff,
and Bush family loyalists are seeking to call the shots on who Trump appoints to senior national security, intelligence, foreign
policy, and defense positions in his administration. These neo-Cold Warriors are trying to convince Trump that he must maintain the
Obama aggressiveness and militancy toward Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and other countries. The second front arrayed against
Trump is from Soros-funded political groups and media. This second line of attack is a propaganda war, utilizing hundreds of anti-Trump
newspapers, web sites, and broadcasters, that will seek to undermine public confidence in the Trump administration from its outset.
One of Trump's political advertisements, released just prior to Election Day, stated that George Soros, Federal Reserve chair
Janet Yellen, and Goldman Sachs chief executive officer Lloyd Blankfein, are all part of "a global power structure that is responsible
for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets
of a handful of large corporations and political entities". Soros and his minions immediately and ridiculously attacked the ad as
"anti-Semitic". President Trump should be on guard against those who his campaign called out in the ad and their colleagues. Soros's
son, Alexander Soros, called on Trump's daughter, Ivanka, and her husband Jared Kushner, to publicly disavow Trump. Soros's tactics
not only seek to split apart nations but also families. Trump must be on guard against the current and future machinations of George
Soros, including his Purple Revolution.
"... He overcame all the odds, beat back both political parties, jumped around all the powerful special interest industries that own Washington and scored an unprecedented victory for the people. ..."
"... And he did it all while circumventing the massive media machine that worked in lockstep unison to block him at every turn. Every mainstream newspaper and television outlet - after months of gorging themselves at the profit trough of his monster ratings - shirked all pretense of covering the election fairly. ..."
"... Mr. Trump - excuse me, President-elect Trump - was smeared as a racist, xenophobic misogynist with tiny hands and a small bank account. ..."
"... these people have no one to blame but themselves and the outgoing current President, Barack Obama, who promised them the world and promised all of us a healed country. "Post-racial" they were calling it in 2008. ..."
"... Well, he has surely failed on that score. Race relations in this country have not been this ugly and strained in decades. The president's divisive, racialist language and posture throughout his presidency has set the country back many, many painful years. ..."
He overcame all the odds, beat back both political parties, jumped around all the powerful special
interest industries that own Washington and scored an unprecedented victory for the people.
And he did it all while circumventing the massive media machine that worked in lockstep unison
to block him at every turn. Every mainstream newspaper and television outlet - after months of gorging
themselves at the profit trough of his monster ratings - shirked all pretense of covering the election
fairly.
Mr. Trump - excuse me, President-elect Trump - was smeared as a racist, xenophobic misogynist
with tiny hands and a small bank account.
Then he beat the last GOP standard-bearer among blacks and Hispanics. Even Hillary Clinton's much
ballyhooed appeal to women shrank a bit from President Obama's levels in the past two elections.
Those right there are the single most devastating statistics out of the whole election. The mainstream
media has cried wolf for the last time. Nobody is listening to any of them anymore.
The only people left believing these liars and slime artists are these melting snowflakes calling
in sick and hovering in safe places under their beds - the dopes marching in the streets demanding
civility as they shout threats to grab Trump by his genitals.
Or these thug criminals beating the tar out of a Trump voter at a street intersection.
These snowflakes need to tread very, very carefully because these kinds of wild and violent and
ugly demonstrations will only strengthen President-elect Trump and his now-vocal majority.
Anyway, these people have no one to blame but themselves and the outgoing current President, Barack
Obama, who promised them the world and promised all of us a healed country. "Post-racial" they were
calling it in 2008.
Well, he has surely failed on that score. Race relations in this country have not been this ugly
and strained in decades. The president's divisive, racialist language and posture throughout his
presidency has set the country back many, many painful years.
Now we have a new president. He sweeps into office with a clear and bold mandate from the people.
"... Mark Leibovich of the Times magazine gave the Clinton campaign significant input and review into a fawning profile of the candidate. "Pleasure doing business!" campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri wrote him at the conclusion of the process. ..."
"... Ezra Klein, the boy wonder editor-in-chief of Vox, is considered to be the campaign's most reliable mouthpiece, as seen in a March 23, 2015 email in which Clintonistas were wondering which journalist it could call upon to push out a campaign storyline they were then concocting. "I think that person…is Ezra Klein," wrote Palmieri. "And we can do it with him today." ..."
"... In a July email, Neera Tanden, Hillary's longtime friend, aide, and attack puppet, strategized with Podesta about "recruiting brown and women pundits" and pushing pro-Hillary media figures such as MSNBC's Joan Walsh and Klein's colleague at Vox, Matthew Yglesias, to be even more faithful stenographers. "They can be emboldened," she wrote, as if these two loyalist PR assets needed any further encouragement. ..."
"... Trump's threats to expand libel laws and to sue journalists are genuinely scary, but Hillary displays similar contempt for journalists. In September, she gave her first formal press conference in more than nine months - virtually this entire presidential campaign. And as the Podesta emails show, the Clintonistas happily work hand in glove with pliant surrogates but operate in quite a different, and dishonest, way with critics. ..."
"... The Clinton-Giustra partnership had been written about but no U.S. journalists had traveled to Colombia to see what the Foundation has done there. In fact, with few exceptions, the Clinton Foundation's claims about the good it has done overseas have been unexamined. ..."
"... Furthermore, I had "misled" the Foundation in the past so "we have every reason to be suspicious of his intentions and doubt he would give our facts a fair hearing," he wrote. "Other news organizations have handled this material differently, always checking with us prior to publication, giving us an opportunity to respond." (Giving us the opportunity to edit and approve, is what he should have written.) In the end, Fusion updated the story and posted an editorial note saying that it had not met its standards. ..."
"... Second, of course I'm biased against the Clinton Foundation and the Clintons, on the basis of evidence and reporting. I've never bothered to hide my feelings, in public, on social media, or in my articles, because I believe that all reporters are biased and readers are smart enough to know that, and that the pretense of objectivity is itself dishonest. What makes a journalist honest is holding all sides to the same standard of criticism, no matter what your own views. ..."
"... Third, and most important, I repeatedly sought comment from the Clinton Foundation. This may seem like a minor matter but the fact that the foundation lied about that shows that it not only seeks out well-trained pet reporters as surrogates, but keeps tabs on and actively seeks to undermine its "enemies." ..."
The destruction of the industrial heartland due to Democratic-driven trade policies, shrinking salaries that force many Americans to work two and three jobs to support their families, the staggering rise in health care costs under Obamacare, widespread economic insecurity that has fueled a national opioid epidemic, and Hillary's trigger-happy views are highly rational reasons for any voter to consider casting a ballot for Trump. So, too, are fears that Clinton's election would lead to an entrenchment of institutionalized corruption and corporate political power. (If Hillary wins and Chuck Schumer takes over as Senate Majority Leader, Wall Street will get its every dream through Congress.)
There's nothing secret about the media's anti-Trump stance. A formal declaration of war was launched on August 7, when Jim Rutenberg, the New York Times media columnist, wrote a story under the headline, "Trump Is Testing the Norms of Objectivity in Journalism." Rutenberg wrote that journalists were in a terrible bind trying to stay objective because Trump, among other things, "cozies up to anti-American dictators," has "put financial conditions on the United States defense of NATO allies," and that his foreign policy views "break with decades-old …consensus."
And worst of all is Rutenberg's statement about the role of journalists. "All governments are
run by liars and nothing they say should be believed," I.F. Stone once wrote. "Journalism is printing
what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations," said George Orwell.
For those two self-evident reasons, being "oppositional" is the only place political journalists
should ever be, no matter who is in power or who is campaigning.
But for Rutenberg and the New York Times being oppositional is only "uncomfortable" when it comes
to covering Hillary Clinton. It didn't seem uncomfortable at all when it came to running a story
about Trump's taxes based on three pages of a decades-old tax return that was sent anonymously or
when it ran another story with the headline, "The 282 People, Places and Things Donald Trump Has
Insulted on Twitter: A Complete List."
All during the campaign we have watched Hillary Clinton rehearse campaign themes and, almost as
if by magic, the media amplifying those themes in seeming lockstep. The hacked emails from Clinton
campaign chairman John Podesta have demonstrated that this was not mere happenstance, but, at least
in part, resulted from direct coordination between the Clintonistas and the press.
Mark Leibovich of the Times magazine gave the Clinton campaign significant input and review into
a fawning profile of the candidate. "Pleasure doing business!" campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri
wrote him at the conclusion of the process.
The Clintonistas had an equally pleasurable relationship with the Times's Maggie Haberman, who,
it was said in one email, "We have had… tee up stories for us before and have never been disappointed."
Haberman even apparently read Palmieri an entire story prior to publication "to further assure me,"
Palmieri wrote.
Ezra Klein, the boy wonder editor-in-chief of Vox, is considered to be the campaign's most reliable
mouthpiece, as seen in a March 23, 2015 email in which Clintonistas were wondering which journalist
it could call upon to push out a campaign storyline they were then concocting. "I think that person…is
Ezra Klein," wrote Palmieri. "And we can do it with him today."
In a July email, Neera Tanden, Hillary's longtime friend, aide, and attack puppet, strategized
with Podesta about "recruiting brown and women pundits" and pushing pro-Hillary media figures such
as MSNBC's Joan Walsh and Klein's colleague at Vox, Matthew Yglesias, to be even more faithful stenographers.
"They can be emboldened," she wrote, as if these two loyalist PR assets needed any further encouragement.
In the same email, Tanden wrote that when New York mayor Michael Bloomberg was "having problems"
with the Times he called publisher Arthur Schulzburger [sic] to arrange a coffee to complain about
the newspaper's reporting and that their chat "changed the coverage moderately but also aired the
issues in the newsroom so people were more conscious of it."
Unfortunately, she added, "Arthur is
a pretty big wuss" so he wouldn't do more to help out Bloomberg without additional prodding.
To get real results to change the Times's coverage of the 2016 campaign, "Hillary would have to
be the one to call" Sulzberger - a rather astonishing remark that begs a million questions about
the Times' election reporting.
Politico reporter Glenn Thrush apologized to Podesta for writing a story draft that he feared
was too critical. "I have become a hack I will send u the whole section that pertains to u," he wrote.
"Please don't share or tell anyone I did this Tell me if I fucked up anything." On bended knee would
have been more dignified.
Trump's threats to expand libel laws and to sue journalists are genuinely scary, but Hillary displays
similar contempt for journalists. In September, she gave her first formal press conference in more
than nine months - virtually this entire presidential campaign. And as the Podesta emails show, the
Clintonistas happily work hand in glove with pliant surrogates but operate in quite a different,
and dishonest, way with critics.
Which leads me to my own recent experience writing about the Clinton Foundation's abysmal programs
in Colombia, where it has worked closely with Frank Giustra, reportedly the foundation's largest
donor. Giustra, a Canadian stock market manipulator who was known as the "Poison Dwarf" because of
his tiny stature - he's a little north of 5 feet- and tendency to make tons of money at the expense
of small investors, invested heavily in Colombia in oil, gold, and
timber. He made a fortune while companies he was affiliated with ruthlessly exploited workers
and
reportedly raped and pillaged the environment.
The Clinton-Giustra partnership had been written about but no U.S. journalists had traveled to
Colombia to see what the Foundation has done there. In fact, with few exceptions, the Clinton Foundation's
claims about the good it has done overseas have been unexamined.
I spent 10 days in Colombia last May and spoke to unionists, workers, environmentalists, Afro-Colombians
and entrepreneurs - exactly the people who the foundation brags about helping on its website- as
well as three left-leaning senators who champion the poor. They were overwhelmingly negative, and
in many cases disparaging, about the Clinton Foundation and Giustra, who was deeply involved with
an oil company, Pacific Rubiales, that recently went spectacularly bankrupt and which worked with
the Army to smash a strike after workers revolted over miserable pay and working conditions.
Bill Clinton had a friendly relationship with Pacific Rubiales too, and in 2012 the two men golfed
together at a charitable event for the foundation sponsored by the oil company. Colombia's president,
whose niece got a plush job as "Sustainability
Manager" for Pacific Rubiales, golfed with Bill.
I had wanted to write the Colombia story for months but, as is often the case in journalism today,
couldn't find a media outlet to pay for the trip. A friend steered me to the American Media Institute
(AMI), a conservative non-profit, which funded the trip.
AMI arranged for the story to run in Politico, but it killed an early version. I then pitched
it to Fusion,
which ran it on October 13. It immediately generated a furious reaction from the Clinton camp,
starting off with a series of tweets by Angel Urena, Bill Clinton's spokesman. Then the Foundation
tried to get Fusion to take the story off its website.
On October 14, Craig Minassian, a Clinton Foundation spokesman, sent a 14-page letter to Fusion,
CC-ing foundation officials, Urena and Mark Gunton of the Clinton-Giustra Enterprise Partnership.
The first few pages attacked me, citing past articles about the Clinton Foundation and a series of
"vulgar" tweets I'd posted about Hillary Clinton and her supporters, including Clinton's long-time
surrogate Joe Conason, author of
Man of the World, a rapturous book about Bill Clinton's post-presidency. (Conason is also former
executive editor of the Observer.)
It also complained about factual errors and cited the funding from AMI as being evidence that
the story was a right wing plot. In fact, I set up the trip with the help of fixer in Colombia, picked
people to interview, and there was no political intrusion into the story. Ironically, a conservative
non-profit paid for a piece that defended unions, the poor, women, and Afro-Colombians.
Mostly the dossier contained unverifiable Clinton Foundation propaganda and references to positive
press stories about the foundation, like one in pro-Hillary Vox titled "The key question on the Clinton
Foundation is whether it saved lives. The answer is clearly yes." A central component of the foundation's
attack - which Urena played heavily on his Twitter feed -was that I had never attempted to reach
the Clinton Foundation or campaign for comment.
Furthermore, I had "misled" the Foundation in the past so "we have every reason to
be suspicious of his intentions and doubt he would give our facts a fair hearing," he wrote. "Other
news organizations have handled this material differently, always checking with us prior to publication,
giving us an opportunity to respond." (Giving us the opportunity to edit and approve, is what he
should have written.) In the end, Fusion updated the story and posted an editorial note saying that
it had not met its standards.
OK, let me acknowledge my mistakes and provide a little further information. First off, the Fusion
story did contain a number of errors. My name is on the story so I have to take responsibility.
Fine. None of the mistakes was intentional and I spent endless hours prior to publication trying
to ensure everything was accurate. There is nothing more embarrassing as a journalist than having
to make corrections. I screwed up. But I stand by the story's on-the-ground reporting from Colombia
and the conclusions about the Clinton Foundation's meager results there.
Second, of course I'm biased against the Clinton Foundation and the Clintons, on the basis of
evidence and reporting. I've never bothered to hide my feelings, in public, on social media, or in
my articles, because I believe that all reporters are biased and readers are smart enough to know
that, and that the pretense of objectivity is itself dishonest. What makes a journalist honest is
holding all sides to the same standard of criticism, no matter what your own views.
I'm equally biased against Donald Trump and have written a number of critical articles about him
and described him in equally vulgar and unflattering terms. The only reasons I haven't written about
Trump more is that I had pitches about him turned down - including one about his revolting comments
about women, which I shopped around unsuccessfully last spring during the GOP primaries - and because
I believed (and still do) that Hillary Clinton is likely to be elected president, which makes her
a bigger target.
Third, and most important, I repeatedly sought comment from the Clinton Foundation. This may seem
like a minor matter but the fact that the foundation lied about that shows that it not only seeks
out well-trained pet reporters as surrogates, but keeps tabs on and actively seeks to undermine its
"enemies."
In August, when the piece was at Politico, I sent a detailed email to the foundation, to Hillary's
campaign and to the CGEP seeking comment. There was nothing coy about it. I wrote, in part:
I'm currently writing a piece about the foundations' activities in Colombia, where I recently
spent 10 days, and interviewed dozens of people…I truly want to hear your side of this story,
which thus far appears to be utterly appalling. While the Foundation and presidential candidate
Hilary Clinton have effusively and repeatedly expressed their concerns for the poor and organized
labor - and in Colombia specifically mention a deep concern for Afro-Colombians - I found no evidence
of that on the ground.
Unionists, Afro-Colombians, elected officials and impoverished people in the slums of Bogota
and Cartagena are unanimous: the Clinton Foundation…has played no role at all in helping Colombia's
poor or even worse, it has played a negative role.
I've tried unsuccessfully to get comment from you in the past about other stories but wanted
to reach out once again in the hopes that you might be able to reply to some simple straightforward
questions.
In fact, this was the fifth time in the past year that I wrote about the foundation and it only
replied once, prior to publication of the first story. Furthermore, I sought comment at the Clinton
Foundation in Colombia and at several of its projects in Bogota and Cartagena, and no one could talk
to me or provide even minimal information. (For example, why does the Clinton Foundation run a private
equity fund out of its Bogota office? What does that have to do with its charitable efforts?)
Should I have reached out to the foundation again after the story moved to Fusion? Perhaps, but
another reporter who had been working on the Colombia story had attempted to get comment from the
foundation and received no reply. The foundation (and the Clinton campaign) was given ample opportunity
to reply and chose not to. I have a strong suspicion that if Thrush or Klein or Haberman or one of
its other pet journalists had asked for comment they would have had no problem.
The 2016 election has exposed like nothing in modern times the desperate need for political reform
in this country.
It is January 20th, 2017. President Donald J. Trump is presiding over his very first meeting with
his national security team.
Trump : We must destroy ISIS immediately. No delays.
CIA : We cannot do that, sir. We created them.
Trump : The Democrats created them.
CIA : We created ISIS, sir. You need them or else you would lose funding from the natural gas lobby.
Trump : Stop funding Pakistan. Let India deal with them.
CIA : We can't do that.
Trump : Why is that?
CIA : India will cut Balochistan out of Pak.
Trump : I don't care.
CIA : India will have peace in Kashmir. They will stop buying our weapons. They will become a superpower.
We have to fund Pakistan to keep India busy in Kashmir.
Trump : But you have to destroy the Taliban.
CIA : Sir, we can't do that. We created the Taliban to keep Russia in check during the 80s. Now they
are keeping Pakistan busy and away from their nukes.
Trump : We have to destroy terror sponsoring regimes in the Middle East. Let us start with the
Saudis.
Pentagon : Sir, we can't do that. We created those regimes because we wanted their oil. We can't
have democracy there, otherwise their people will get that oil - and we cannot let their people own
it.
Trump : Then, let us invade Iran.
Pentagon : We cannot do that either, sir.
Trump : Why not?
CIA : We are talking to them, sir.
Trump : What? Why?
CIA : We want our Stealth Drones back. If we attack them, Russia will obliterate us as they did to
our buddy ISIS in Syria. Besides we need Iran to keep Israel in check.
Trump : Then let us invade Iraq again.
CIA : Sir, our friends (ISIS) are already occupying 1/3rd of Iraq.
Trump : Why not the whole of Iraq?
CIA : We need the Shi'ite govt of Iraq to keep ISIS in check.
Trump : I am banning Muslims from entering the US.
Homeland Security : We can't do that.
Trump : Why not?
Homeland Security : Then our own population will stop fearing terrorism and be harder to control.
Trump : I am deporting all illegal immigrants to south of the border.
Border patrol : You can't do that, sir.
Trump : Why not?
Border patrol : If they're gone, who will build the wall?
Trump : I am banning H1B visas.
USCIS : You cannot do that.
Trump : Why?
Chief of Staff : If you do so, we'll have to outsource White House operations to Bangalore. Which
is in India.
Trump (sweating profusely by now): What the hell should I do as President???
CIA : Enjoy the White House, sir! We'll take care of the rest!
"... What's bought [sic] us to this stage is a policy – whether it's been intentional or unintentional or a mixture of both – of divide and rule, where society is broken down into neat little boxes and were told how to behave towards the contents of each one rather than, say, just behaving well towards all of them. ..."
"... And this right here is why neoliberalism = identity politics and why both ought to be crushed ruthlessly. ..."
Well, that makes a lot of sense for a very good reason: racism was essentially created in the
British colonies first in the Americas (read: Virginia) in the 17th and 18th centuries. Slavery
became synomous with race, i.e., only Africans and their colonial descendants could be legally
enslaved. Before, pretty much anyone could be a slave, including the destitute, or religious "others"
(Irish, especially), or war captives (Native peoples, Muslims, etc.). In the colonies, this new
racialized legal definition of slavery created a very real divide in the lower orders and working
classes – specifically, race was a way to divide enslaved people away from indentured servants
and landless peasants. (you could say it also created what is now called "white privilege," putting
white people one notch above black slaves, in legal terms). Look into the Virginia slave codes,
Bacon's Rebellion, etc. They literally invented race-thinking to divide the lower classes and
protect the colonial social hierarchy and its economy. It's where "racism" began, arguably.
This was the British empire we're talking about here. And you mentioned India…under British
colonial rule. If interested, the classic text on this is Edward Morgan's "American Slavery, American
Freedom." It's a must-read for all Americans and those interested in US/imperial history, or the
history of slavery writ large. Must read, as in top ten histories of all time. Not coincidentally,
the British became more interested in Asia after their American colonists got all uppity, demanded
their political autonomy, and created their own empire in the Americas. British historians of
empire call this the empire's "swing to the east." This happened in the latter part of the 18th
century.
The old divide and conquer. A cynic might suggest this is exactly the strategy of the corporate
Dems. Assimilation–what used to be called "the melting pot"–is their enemy.
What's bought [sic] us to this stage is a policy – whether it's been intentional
or unintentional or a mixture of both – of divide and rule, where society is broken down into
neat little boxes and were told how to behave towards the contents of each one rather than,
say, just behaving well towards all of them.
And this right here is why neoliberalism = identity politics and why both ought to be crushed
ruthlessly.
It also remains to be seen how the Oligarchy will respond to Trump's victory. Wall Street and
the Federal Reserve can cause an economic crisis in order to put Trump on the defensive, and they
can use the crisis to force Trump to appoint one of their own as Secretary of the Treasury. Rogue
agents in the CIA and Pentagon can cause a false flag attack that would disrupt friendly relations
with Russia. Trump could make a mistake and retain neoconservatives in his government.
With Trump there is at least hope. Unless Trump is obstructed by bad judgment in his appointments
and by obstacles put in his way, we should expect an end to Washington's orchestrated conflict
with Russia, the removal of the US missiles on Russia's border with Poland and Romania, the end
of the conflict in Ukraine, and the end of Washington's effort to overthrow the Syrian government.
However, achievements such as these imply the defeat of the US Oligarchy. Although Trump defeated
Hillary, the Oligarchy still exists and is still powerful.
Trump said that he no longer sees the point of NATO 25 years after the Soviet collapse. If he sticks
to his view, it means a big political change in Washington's EU vassals. The hostility toward Russia
of the current EU and NATO officials would have to cease. German Chancellor Merkel would have to
change her spots or be replaced. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg would have to be dismissed.
We do not know who Trump will select to serve in his government. It is likely that Trump is unfamiliar
with the various possibilities and their positions on issues. It really depends on who is advising
Trump and what advice they give him. Once we see his government, we will know whether we can be hopeful
for the changes that now have a chance.
If the oligarchy is unable to control Trump and he is actually successful in curbing the power
and budget of the military/security complex and in holding the financial sector politically accountable,
Trump could be assassinated.
"... Oh, what does anyone know about Pence? Folks have been saying he's going to be Trump's Cheney (and apparently Cheney is a Pence's avowed role model and personal hero). Cheney had a lifetime of insider experience and I'm guessing is both ambitious and intelligent (if evil). ..."
"... Did anyone catch Peter Thiel's speech to the National Press Club? Listen to this and tell me it is not spot on. His is actually on Rumps transition team. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfYLEPRiIyE ..."
"... "The deep state ushered in Trump because he's clearly their most useful decoy. As the country hopes in vain, the crooked men behind the curtain will go on with business as usual. Trump is simply an Obama for a different demographic. Nothing will change for the better." ..."
"... So is Trump Hope and Change for the Angry White Male demographic? ..."
"... I doubt very much that the Obama is providing "continuity". IMO this is a naive reading. Obama has just created a smokescreen that allows for preparing to 'facts on the ground' that will force Trump to respond accordingly. ..."
"... To claim the trump is more powerful and has more influence over the US deep state on day one is just ludicrous. ..."
"...the paradox problem is they'll have to charge Clinton before da boy can pardon her..."
That's one of those facts that sounds right but isn't true. If the law was logical that might
be correct, but then mathematicians would get the highest scores on the Law School Admission Test
(which supposedly tests aptitude to "think like a lawyer.")
The President of the U.S. can't pardon someone in advance for possible later crimes, but can give
a pardon for any and all past crimes without specifying those crimes. That's how Ford was able to
pardon Nixon, who had not been indicted, for any crimes "he might have committed."
If Obama wants he can pardon the Clintons for everything and anything they MIGHT have done up
to the final minutes of swearing in Trump. In that case they would never need to concede they had
ever broken any laws at all.
Remember, the U.S. Constitution was written by aristocrats who were still in many ways monarchists
who didn't want to give up all their power. That mindset also put the electoral college process into
the constitution.
Are you saying that Obama could pardon Bill Clinton and his entire foundation for financial crimes
(apparently) being investigated in New York wrt New York's laws regarding charitable foundation
practices? That seems like it would be "bigger than Marc Rich" demonstration of Democratic misuse
/ abuse of power, cronyism, etc.
If he can do it, he might do it ... if the punishment/threat for not doing it was sufficient.
I've not been impressed by Obama's "brilliance" or "vision" ... I have been impressed rather by
his self-promotion and self-interest -- Neither Bush or Bill Clinton had the sort of job opportunities
that GHWB enjoyed.
Oh, what does anyone know about Pence? Folks have been saying he's going to be Trump's
Cheney (and apparently Cheney is a Pence's avowed role model and personal hero). Cheney had a
lifetime of insider experience and I'm guessing is both ambitious and intelligent (if evil).
Does Pence have genuine potential as Cheney II ... and where does the awkward relationship
between the GOP establishment and Trump put "Pence as a new Cheney" ... The GOP might love it.
Is Trump ideologically consistent enough (don't laugh) to recognize the contradictions?
Did anyone catch Peter Thiel's speech to the National Press Club? Listen to this and tell
me it is not spot on. His is actually on Rumps transition team. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfYLEPRiIyE
Early days indeed. An alternative view of the recent events, by someone who said more or less
the same about Obama when he was selected.
"The deep state ushered in Trump because he's clearly their most useful decoy. As the country
hopes in vain, the crooked men behind the curtain will go on with business as usual. Trump is
simply an Obama for a different demographic. Nothing will change for the better."
I agree with Hoarsewhisperer @11: ... it's a crock and a trick.
I doubt very much that the Obama is providing "continuity". IMO this is a naive reading.
Obama has just created a smokescreen that allows for preparing to 'facts on the ground' that will
force Trump to respond accordingly.
We are at a very very dangerous point in time.
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Also, giving ANY credence to 'Obama legacy' BS is misguided in the extreme. His 'legacy'
is dissembling and treachery. Anything thing beyond that is just BS meant to keep adversary's
off-balance.
@22 Where do you get the idea that those countries are somehow bad for USA? If we ramp up industries
in USA it will cost substantially more than in those countries. They've benefitted USA immensely.
If the industries come back to USA it won't go over too well, unless slave wages are truly instituted
I don't know if Trump can take credit ... but rather that the Clinton wing of the Pentagon
and CIA, etc. has been defanged and the threat of a coup (if Obama acted in ways contrary to Clinton
and the General's plans) is now neutralized ... Clinton's loss, I hope, will mean future books
will be more candid than might have been possible if she were in office... yes, I wanna know how
bad it's been these last 8 years.
Obama's personal stock wrt his future as a consultant, motivational speaker and all around
leader fell dramatically both with Clinton's campaign (and anticipated sharp turn from Obama's
foreign policy) but also with her defeat (now his legacy). He was spared the ongoing shaming by
a Clinton administration. Likely too little, too late ... when does Kerry get back from the Antarctica?
He's got a chance at some legacy mending as well.
I believe reports that the Clintons and the Obamas loathe each other ... particularly since
the Clintons hate everyone/anyone who does not grovel perfectly. Did Obama sell-out to the DLC
Democrats to secure his future $$$ with all their and the foundation's friends... it will be fun
to watch and look for breadcrumbs, particularly if the foundation implodes under scrutiny.
I think your worst case senario is now off the table. I believe Turkey has been told to keep
its planes out of Syria, and the US only conducts missions within reach of the Russian air defences
with Russian approval.
Turkey using only ground forces to achieve its aims? I suspect this is part of the reason the
Russian naval force is loitering off the Syrian coast (apart from securing the area prior to constructing
the naval base at Tartus).
Cruise missiles would decimate any conventional ground forces, and I believe the Granit anti
ship missiles have a land strike capability, also the S-300 S-400 may also have a ground strike
capability.
That would be as part of the carveup that we are not supposed to talk about because it is a
wicked "conspiracy theory"...
Posted by: paul | Nov 11, 2016 12:12:44 PM | 17
That's a mini-conspiracy compared with the one that the Fake War Of Terror has distracted people's
attention from. The Privatisation of almost every Publicly-owned asset and piece of infrastructure
in the West. The Neolib takeover was well-advanced in 1999 but slipped into overdrive in 2001.
Banks, Insurance Cos, Telcos, Airlines, Childcare, Hospitals, Health Clinics (preventative), Roads,
Rail, Electrical Generation and distribution.
In Oz the Govt/people used to own all of the above, or a competitive participant in the 'market'
in the case of banking, insurance, health clinics, airlines etc. In 2016 the govt owns only unprofitable
burdens. Public Education is currently under extreme pressure to be Privatised for Profit.
(The Yanks call it Anti-Communism but consumers call it an Effing Expensive way to get much
crappier service than in the Good Old Days).
I think you give Barrack Obongo way too much credit. He is a "selfishly concerned" narcissist
alright but that's about it. All his years at the bathhouses and public lavatories with his wookie-in-drag
in Chicago, has not made him particularly smarter you know, rather the opposite...
Dropping AQ means dropping KSA, i.e. the 9/11 enquiry will probably go ahead. As for the MB/Qatar
who run a bunch of other groups, this is left to the EU to decide what it want to do with Turkey.
You bet the Eurocrats are having a headache. And Hollande shows his muscles (sic) and claims he
will talk with Trump on the phone and gets some "clarifications" about his programme.
MSM are reporting on a daily basis of the huge problems with the "Syrian refugees" crossing
the Mediterranean Sea although there is just a handful of Syrians compared to Eritreans, Sudanese,
Gambians etc.
According to the report, the last time Turkish jets participated in airstrikes against terrorists
in Syria was on October 23, three days after around 200 PKK/PYD terrorists were killed.
Ash Carter is, together with John Brennan, the major anti-Russian force in the Obama administration.
He is a U.S. weapon industry promoter and the anti-Russia campaign, which helps to sell U.S. weapons
to NATO allies in Europe, is largely of his doing.
BTW, I do believe he re-won his senate seat, against the true patriot Arpaio there.
Hence his absence from the public scene these months.
So things have not changed much if at all, since still 70 days to Jan20, except for appearances
as they've rearranged some furniture & color-matched the curtains to the upholstery in the act/play
is all.
@11 Hoarsewhisperer - I think it's unrealistic to expect the US simply to leave..
...
Posted by: Grieved | Nov 11, 2016 12:33:02 PM | 27
Today, your guess is as good as mine (at least).
But I regard FrUKUS as Ter'rism Central and if Russia & China et al think they can put a stop
to TerCent without dislodging some teeth and kneecapping them, they're pissing into the wind/dreaming.
It's a bit ambiguous but China, according to CCTV Nov 12, during a chat about Sun Yat Sen and
China/Taiwan unity, seems to be issuing a Global reminder to Loyal Chinese Citizens overseas similar
to the one that Russia issued a month ago.
Saudi Arabia's government has set aside 100 billion riyals ($26.7 billion) to pay debts that
it owes to private sector companies after payment delays that have lasted months, an official
document seen by Reuters shows.
To help curb a huge budget deficit caused by low oil prices, the government of the world's
largest oil exporter has slashed spending and reduced or suspended payments that it owes to
construction firms, medical establishments and even some of the foreign consultants who helped
to design its economic reforms.
But the payment delays have seriously damaged some companies, slowing the economy,
and earlier this week the government said it would make all delayed payments by the end
of this year.
This seems to suggest that Saudi mismanagement is or is about to cost citizens their paychecks
even jobs ... KSA is such a black box police state, it's dangerous to speculate what public opinion
"might be."
I figured the "rebels" in Syria would keep fighting until the paychecks stopped coming,
but I've wondered how many "rebels" were dislodged from relatively personally safe "rebel strongholds"
recently and decided they'd rather quit than die.
Contra Obama's attempt to cleanse his legacy by using the US military to actually attack ISIS,
Russian media report that Ass Carter has warned the president not to cooperate with Russia in
Syria until they are sure Moscow will 'do the right thing'. The report is based on data avaialable
at the af.mil website
Disgusting as it is, yes, my understanding is Obama can do exactly that. My guess is, want
to or not, he probably will come under so much pressure he will have to pass out plenty of pardons.
Or maybe Lynch will give everyone involved in the Clinton Foundation immunity to testify and then
seal the testimony -- or never bother to get any testimony. So many games.
For Obama, it might not even take all that much pressure. From about his second day in office,
from his body language, he's always looked like he was scared.
Instead of keeping his mouth shut, which he would do, being the lawyer he is, Giuliani has
been screaming for the Clintons' scalps. That's exactly what a sharp lawyer would do if he was
trying to force Obama to pardon them. If he really meant to get them he would be agreeing with
the FBI, saying there doesn't seem to be any evidence of wrong doing, and then change his mind
once (if) he's AG and it's too late for deals.
With so many lawyers, Obama, the Clintons, Lynch, Giuliani, Comey, no justice is likely to
come out of this.
@ Posted by: Ken Nari | Nov 11, 2016 2:51:53 PM | 55
I heard a podcast on Batchelor with Charles Ortel which explained some things -- even if
there are no obvious likely criminal smoking guns -- given that foundations get away with a lot
of "leniency" because they are charities, incomplete financial statements and chartering documents,
as I recall. I was most interested in his description of the number of jurisdictions the Foundation
was operating under, some of whom, like New York were already investigating; and others, foreign
who might or might be, who also have very serious regulations, opening the possibility that if
the Feds drop their investigation, New York (with very very strict law) might proceed, and that
they might well be investigated (prosecuted/banned??) in Europe.
The most recent leak wrt internal practices was just damning ... it sounded like a playground
of favors and sinecures ... no human resources department, no written policies on many practices
...
This was an internal audit and OLD (2008, called "the Gibson Review") so corrective action
may have been taken, but I thought was damning enough to deter many donors (even before Hillary's
loss removed that incentive) particularly on top of the Band (2011) memo. Unprofessional to the
extreme.
It's part of my vast relief that Clinton lost and will not be in our lives 24/7/365 for the
next 4 years. (I think Trump is an unprincipled horror, but that's as may be, I'm not looking
for a fight). After the mess Clinton made of Haiti (and the accusations/recriminations) I somehow
thought they'd have been more careful with their "legacy" -- given that it was founded in 1997,
2008 is a very long time to be operating without written procedures wrt donations, employment
"... HiIlary Clinton is a perfect enemy of Trump. She has become rich in office, and as Harry Truman said "anyone who gets rich in politics is a crook". She has dedicated her life to political power at the top while growing ever wealthier from its use. And she loves foreign wars. She has supported a long line of eco-genocidal attacks and bombings of Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine, all of them still in motion and waiting for her to be escalated further. ..."
"... Know a man by his enemies. Trump has countless enemies, but most of them march to the drums of endless wars of aggression and care less about the casualties of tens of millions of lost good jobs in America. Most are neo-liberals in fact, the bipartisan doctrine of dispossession of citizens and foreign wars to grow the system further. The worst have been Washington servants of the world corporate machine looting the world. They above all condemn his peace overtures to Russia and his promise to repeal NAFTA – both unspeakable heresies on the US public stage until Trump's movement against them. ..."
"... Where Trump agrees with the US money-and-war party is on Israel and Iran. He started with a policy of more neutrality towards the Israel-Palestine conflict, but soon backed out when the attack-dogs went into action with a $50 million gift for his campaign from a wealthy Zionist at the same time. Then he declared " Israel is America". So Trump can proclaim opposite positions without a blink, including on the continuous war crimes of Israel supported by the US. ..."
"... When you join the dots to Trump preaching a policy revolt against the insatiable corporate jaws feeding on trillions of dollars of public budgets in Washington, the underlying meaning emerges. He wants to stop the non-productive transnational corporations from feasting on the public purse. At the beginning after 2008, he even dared to recognize that Wall Street should be nationalized, as it once was by the American Revolution, Abraham Lincoln and FDR's Federal Reserve. This would be as big a turn of US government in the people's interests as stopping ruinous foreign wars. ..."
"... Trump also once said that the US "must be neutral, an honest broker" on the Israel-Palestine conflict – as unspeakable as it gets in US politics. Big Pharma was also called out with "$400 billion to be saved by government negotiation of prices". He even confronted the more powerful HMO's with the possibility of a "one-payer system" far better than the Obamacare pork-barrel for ever higher insurance premiums. ..."
HiIlary Clinton is a perfect enemy of Trump. She has become rich in office, and as Harry Truman
said "anyone who gets rich in politics is a crook". She has dedicated her life to political power
at the top while growing ever wealthier from its use. And she loves foreign wars. She has supported
a long line of eco-genocidal attacks and bombings of Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine,
all of them still in motion and waiting for her to be escalated further.
Know a man by his enemies. Trump has countless enemies, but most of them march to the drums of
endless wars of aggression and care less about the casualties of tens of millions of lost good jobs
in America. Most are neo-liberals in fact, the bipartisan doctrine of dispossession of citizens and
foreign wars to grow the system further. The worst have been Washington servants of the world corporate
machine looting the world. They above all condemn his peace overtures to Russia and his promise to
repeal NAFTA – both unspeakable heresies on the US public stage until Trump's movement against them.
HiIlary Clinton is a perfect enemy of Trump. She has become rich in office, and as Harry Truman
said "anyone who gets rich in politics is a crook". She has dedicated her life to political power
at the top while growing ever wealthier from its use. And she loves foreign wars. She has supported
a long line of eco-genocidal attacks and bombings of Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine,
all of them still in motion and waiting for her to be escalated further.
She wants a return to this bombing in Syria as a "free-fly zone" – free for US and NATO bombers
– just as she led Libya's destruction from 2011 on. She abuses Russia and slanders Putin at every
opportunity and she supported the neo-Nazi coup overthrowing the elected government of Ukraine and
the civil war since. She has done nothing but advocate or agree to endless US-led war crimes without
any life gain but only mass murder, social ruin and terror which she ignores. Like her mentor Madeleine
Allbright , even the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children in Iraq by Clinton-led bombing are
"worth the price".
Where Trump agrees with the US money-and-war party is on Israel and Iran. He started with
a policy of more neutrality towards the Israel-Palestine conflict, but soon backed out when the attack-dogs
went into action with a $50 million gift for his campaign from a wealthy Zionist at the same time.
Then he declared " Israel is America". So Trump can proclaim opposite positions without a blink,
including on the continuous war crimes of Israel supported by the US.
Trump also bellows against on the giveaway of many billions of US money to Iran and prefers to
bomb their nuclear facilities as Israel wants, and has already done in Syria. He does not tell his
audience that all of this US money is Iran's money being returned to it from its US seizure
in exchange for its nuclear disarmament never suggested for Israel which has enough nuclear weaponry
to blow up the whole Middle East and beyond. Trump too is not to be trusted when it suits his run
to be US President. Yet even here Trump still holds to his position that use of nuclear weapons means
"game over". Clinton and the bipartisan money-and-war party express no such constraint.
Why the Establishment Hates Trump, But Will Accept Him
All of them have reason to hate Trump for a more basic reason. He is seemingly alone in the money-media-military
establishment to publicly deplore the rigged electoral system in which big money and media rule –
formerly unspeakable in the press and political discussion on stage. Trump has even voiced suspicion
of the 9-11 killing spectacle and the "six-trillion- dollar" haemorrhage of US money on Middle East
and Afghanistan wars propelled and justified by 9-11 from 2001 on.
Yet here again the problem is that Trump backs off as soon as he thinks he will not be able to
sell it. This is the art of political lying at which Trump, like Reagan, is a master. But the hard-line
difference between Trump and Reagan and neo-con-lib rulers over the last 30 years is deep – Trump's
denunciation of NAFTA and willingness to have peace with other nations not bowing to Uncle Sam.
Before Trump, job-destroying edicts of transnational global corporations and captive states called
'free trade' have been anathema to oppose in official society. But Trump sticks to his heretical
position. Right up to the election he has promised a "35% tariff" on products of US factories that
disemploy workers to get cheaper labor elsewhere. No-one in the US political establishment has risked
such a position, or blamed these corporate-rights treaties for hollowing out American society itself.
It is apostasy in the corporate 'free press'.
Trump is still hated for such deviations from the official corporate-state line. But the haters
cannot say this. They stick to the politically correct repudiations, and call him "racist", "sexist",
"bigot" and so on even if the conclusion does follow from what he says or does. Selected instances
are the ruling fallacy here.
Trump and the Media-Lie System
Trump is unique in calling out the major mass media as continuous purveyors of lies and propaganda
– although he centers it on himself and not global corporate rule across borders which they worship.
Anyone not doing so is excommunicated from the press. This profound disorder is never allowed into
the mass media as an issue, and Trump never raises it. He too is a believer, but one who sees the
life costs of the sacrifice-workers rule inside the US. He also advocates job-creating public spending
on physical infrastructure which is as crucial to his movement as it was to FDR. It is no longer
taboo inside the dumkopfen party
Trump is a first. Never before has anyone been able to denounce the mass media framing, half-truths
and fabrications and still come out stronger The onslaught of ideological assassination by
a hireling intelligentsia and media of record like the New York Times has always succeeded
before. Trump reacts only as it affects his own position, but his raw defiance right into the cameras
has been eye-popping and unique in America.
This may be Trump's most remarkable achievement. He has been slandered and demonized more than
Russia's Putin, and Russia-baiting him with McCarthy-like accusations of collaboration with Putin
has been part of the attack by Hillary and the press. Yet passionate voter support of Trump has still
grown in the face of all this denunciation by the political establishment.
An underlying revolution in thinking has occurred. Trump has tapped the deep chords of worker
rage at dispossession by forced corporate globalization, criminally disastrous Middle East wars,
and trillions of dollars of bailouts to Wall Street. He never connects the dots on stage. But by
Clinton's advocacy of all of them, she has made them her own and will go down because of it.
Trump's unflinching vast ego and media savvy have been what she and the political establishment
are too corrupted to defeat, The underlying contradiction that now raises its head pits the mass
media against the President of the United States himself – against the long sacred office of the
commander-in-chief of US power across the world, precisely what he is proposing to pacify with friendly
relations instead of ruinous war invasions as in Iraq. Many observers think that Wall Street and
big money won't let it happen. Or that Trump will like others before him will be determined by the
office. Or that Clinton's billion dollars of PAC money will succeed work in the end. But the meaning
is out and cannot be reversed out of sight.
Whatever happens next in this saga it will be ground-shaking. The worst that can happen to Trump's
enemies is that he wins despite the all-fronts attack. They define his underlying meaning, just as
the Enemy they construct abroad defines them. If he loses, there will be a carnival of the money-war-media
party pretending a healing of the great division that has come to view. But this is not a Republican-Democrat
division. It is as deep as all the lost jobs and lives since 2001, and it is ultimately grounded
in the tens of millions of dispossessed people which the life-blind global market system and its
wars have imposed on America too.
The Great Division Will Not Go Away
Trump is the closest to an egomaniac that has ever run for the presidential office. If he were
not, he could not have withstood the public shaming heaped upon him by the political establishment
and dominant media everywhere.
But the tens of millions of Americans for whom Trump speaks tend to have one thing in common more
than anything else. They have been dispossessed and smeared by the neo-con/ neo-liberal alliance
that has taken or traded away their life security and belittled them with political correctness –
the establishment's patronizing diversion from their fallen state.
All the while, the ruling money party behind the media and the wars is system-driven to seek limitlessly
more money under masks of 'free trade' and "America's interests abroad'. The majority is left behind
as the sacrificial living dead. Multiplying transnational money sequences of the very rich have bled
the world into a comatose state, and perpetual wars against the next Enemy of the cancerous system
have sown chaos across the world.
Trump at least starts remission by seeing a criminally blind rule and chaos inside America itself.
Before his campaign, there was helplessness against the invading wars and money sequences always
profiting from the global ruin. The reality has been taboo to see in public. Only entertainments
have appeared in ever new guises as the corporate money-and-war machine has rolled and careened on
across all borders, now marching East through Ukraine into Russia, Brazil to Venezuela to the Caribbean,
from the Congo to the South China Sea.
The Trump entertainment, the most watched in the world, may be the long bridge to taking down
the neo-liberal pillars of majority dispossession and war-criminal state.
Trump is the Opposite to Reagan in Policy Directions
On the face of it, Trump is an ideal leader for US empire. He is like Ronald Reagan on steroids.
His long practiced camera image, his nativist US supremacism, his down-home talk, and his reality-show
confidence all go one better. He is America come to meet itself decades down the road as its pride
slips away in third-world conditions.
But unlike Reagan and Bush who spoke to the rich becoming richer, Trump speaks to the losing white
working class and those who have come to hate the money-corrupted Washington forging the policies
of dispossession Reagan started.
Washington has since ignored and patronized their plight over 30 years. Trump's constituency has
been the disposable rejects from the corporate global system that it is rigged from top to bottom
with rights only for the profits of transnational abroad and bought politicians at home.
The Trump constituency may have no clear idea of this inner logic of the system. But they directly
experience the unemployment, underemployment, ever lower pay, deprived pensions, degraded living
conditions, public squalor, contempt from official society, and no future for their children.
At the surface level, what drives them mad is the 'political correctness' that diverts all attention
from their plight to pant-suit 'feminists' getting a leg up, racial rights with no life substance,
sexual queers they had been conditioned to abhor, and other symbols of oppression changed as the actually ruling system of dispossession becomes inexorably worse all the
way down to their grand children.
Here too Hillary Clinton has been an embodiment of the smug ideology of the system that bleeds
the unseen job-deprived into powerless humiliation: an existential crisi where the secure jobs and
goods of US life have been stripped from them in continuous eviction from the American way with no
notice.
While Trump's narrative is that the American Dream seeks recovery again, the dominant media and
political elite relentlessly denounce him for his message. He gives lots of ammunition to them. His
most popular line is "build the wall", "build the great wall" between Mexico and the US. No political
correctness cares that the biggest source of near-slave labor for the big businesses of the US South
is Mexican 'illegals', and Trump himself never mentions this. He prefers to blame the Mexican illegals
themselves for drugs, rape and violence, the standard lie of blame-the-poorer for your problems.
Trump also wants to tax their slim earnings to pay for the wall. This is the still running sore of
America beneath the lost jobs.
Trump has thus attracted lots of votes. But many non-ignorant people too recognise that the tens
of millions of illegal migrants seeking work in the richer USA cannot continue in any country with
borders, or any nation that seeks to keep worker wages up not down by lower priced labor flooding
in. The legal way must be the only way if the law of nations is to exist and working people are to
be secure from dispossession by starvation wages illegal migrants can be hired for. Borders are,
few notice, the very target of the carcinogenic neo-liberal program.
Of course the political discourse never gets to this real and complex economic base of the problem.
Nor does Trump. His choral promise is "'l'll fix it. Believe me". But something deeper than demagoguery
and blaming the weak is afoot here. An untapped historic resentment is boiling up from underneath
which has long been unspeakable on the political stage. Trump has mined it and proposed a concrete
solution – one grand gate through which immigrants must pass.
Is this really racist? It is rather that Trump is very good at bait and switch. From his now deserted
promise to halve the Pentagon's budget to getting the Congress off corporate-donation payrolls, now
by fixed congressional terms, the public wealth that the politicians and corporate lobbies stand
to lose from a Trump presidency is very disturbing to them. The Mexican wall does not fit the borderless
neo-liberal program either. But all of it is welcome to citizens' ears. That is why the establishment
hates Trump for exposing all these issues long kept in the closet and covered over by politically
correct identity politics.
On the other hand, Trump leaves the halving of the Pentagon's budget behind as soon as he sees
the massive private money forces against it. It is Reagan in reverse. He now promises hundreds of
billions more to the military – but he still opposes foreign wars. That might even do it. But this
most major issue of the election has been completely ignored by the media and opposing politicians
alike. It is the historic core of his bid for the presidency.
Yet the US political establishment across parties cannot yet even conceive it so used are they
to the Reagan-led war state, the military corporate lobbies paying them off in every Senate seat,
anti-union policies at macro as well as micro levels, and always designated foreign enemies to bomb
for resistance. "Say Uncle" said Reagan to the Sandinistas when they asked what could stop the mercenary
killers paid by US covert drug running from bombing their harbours, schools and clinics.
Trump is going the opposite direction in foreign affairs, but the establishment commentators call
it "isolationist" to discredit it. Clinton talks of overcoming the divisions in America, but has
never mentioned holding back on foreign wars. On the contrary, she approves more war power against
Russia and in Syria and in the Ukraine. This is the biggest danger that no media covers – ever more
ruinous US wars on other continents. The formula is old and Reagan exemplified it. Russia is portrayed
as the evil threat to justify pouring up to two billion dollars-a-day of public money into the US
war-for-profit machine occupying across the world, now prepping for China.
But the bipartisan war party backed by Wall Street is going down if Trump's policy can prevail.
This may be the salvation of America and the world, but it is silenced up to election day.
Trump Against the Special Interests
At the beginning g of his public campaign, Trump's policy claims threatened almost every big lobby
now in control of US government purse strings. And these policies grounded in no more foreign wars
which have already cost over 'six trillion dollars' of US public money. At the same time, the country's
physical infrastructures degrade on all levels, and its people's lives are increasingly impoverished
and insecure for the majority. Trump promises to rebuild them all.
Yet the cut-off of hundreds of billions of public giveaways to the Big Corps that Trump advocated
did not end here. It hit almost every wide-mouthed transnational corporate siphon into the US Treasury,
taxpayers' pockets and the working majority of America. Masses of American citizens increasingly
without living wages and benefits and in growing insecurity listened to what the political establishment
and corporate media had long silenced.
Trump raised the great dispossession into the establishment's face, and this is why he will win.
"In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for
the vintage"."The grapes of wrath have risen from the long painful stripping of the people's livelihoods,
their social substance and their cities by corporate globalization selecting for the limitless enrichment
of the few living off an ever-growing takes from public coffers and the impoverishment of America's
working citizens. A primal rage has united them across party lines in the public person of Donald
Trump.
Can he deliver? Well he certainly has shown the guts necessary to do so, most uniquely in facing
down the corporate media and Washington politicians.
Looking Past the Victory
The issue still remains that Trump does not promise any fixing of the greatest transfer of wealth
to the very rich in history that Reagan started. This great transfer of wealth includes his own.
We may recall that his model Ronald Reagan started this Great Dispossession to "make America great
again" too.
Now Trump has promised a massive tax cut to the rich and private capital gains as Reagan did.
In the meantime nothing has been less talked about in election commentary than the globally powerful
interests Trump promised to rein back from the public troughs bleeding the country's capacities to
build for and to employ its people. On this topic, there has been only silence from the media and
politicians, and retreating vague generalizations from Trump.
At the beginning, he not only went after the foreign wars, but the sweetheart deals of the government
with Big Pharma, the health insurance racket, lobby-run foreign policy, off-shore tax evasion, and
global trade taking jobs in the tens of millions from home workers. This is why the establishment
so universally hated him. Most of their private interests in looting public wealth were named. He
reversed the tables on the parasite rich in Washington lobbying and gobbling up public money faster
than it could be bribed, printed and allocated to their schemes – except on real estate, his own
big money 'special interest' not centered in Washington. Indeed Trump loves 'eminent domain', state
seizure of people's private property for big developers like him.
This is where Trump joins hands with those depending on the deep system corruptions he has promised
to reverse. He even asked, in his loud way, how these huge private interests go on getting away with
a corporate-lobby state transferring ever more public wealth and control to them at the expense of
the American working majority and their common interest as Americans. But it had all pretty well
slid away by election day except the hatred of self-enriching Washington fixers like Hillary, Mexican
illegals, the Obamacare new charges (with no mention of the HMO's doing it), and the disrespect for
people bearing arms by the second-amendment right.
Do we have here the familiar positional determinism where political and economic class
leaders desert what they promised as they enter into elected office or have sold the goods?
Yet the victory Trump is about to reap is far from empty for America and the world if he keeps
to the promises he made. The money-and media-rigged elections have stayed front and center where
no-one in official politics dared say it before. The black-hole of US foreign wars has above all
has remained his historic target.
His entire strategy has been based on getting public attention, and he is a master at it. He is
unbuyably rich, has energy beyond a rock star, and is the most watched person in America across the
country and the world for months on end. He can't be shut up. Media stigmatization and slander without
let-up do not work as always before.
Trump is also capable of meeting perhaps the world's most important challenges, holding back the
global US war machine from perpetual eco-genocidal aggression and investing back into public infrastructure
and workers' productive jobs.
Most importantly, Trump challenges "the Enemy" cornerstone of US ideology when he says "wouldn't
it be nice to get along with Russia and China for a change?" And as he said to Canada whose branch-plant
corporate state still plays minion to its US corporate masters, "congratulations. You have become
independent".
As for Trump's much publicized 'denial of climate change, it is not really accurate. He has said
little on the topic, but has expressed his opposition to "bullshit government spending" on preventing
climate. So does James Lovelock, the famous global ecologist behind 'the Gaia hypothesis '. Certainly
the green-wash hoaxes of the private corporations (and Al Gore) becoming much richer than before
on solutions that do not work to prevent the global market-led climate destabilization do need more
astute appraisal.
When you join the dots to Trump preaching a policy revolt against the insatiable corporate
jaws feeding on trillions of dollars of public budgets in Washington, the underlying meaning emerges.
He wants to stop the non-productive transnational corporations from feasting on the public purse.
At the beginning after 2008, he even dared to recognize that Wall Street should be nationalized,
as it once was by the American Revolution, Abraham Lincoln and FDR's Federal Reserve. This would
be as big a turn of US government in the people's interests as stopping ruinous foreign wars.
Trump also once said that the US "must be neutral, an honest broker" on the Israel-Palestine
conflict – as unspeakable as it gets in US politics. Big Pharma was also called out with "$400 billion
to be saved by government negotiation of prices". He even confronted the more powerful HMO's with
the possibility of a "one-payer system" far better than the Obamacare pork-barrel for ever higher
insurance premiums.
Trump is no working-class hero. He has long been a predatory capitalist with all the furies of
greed, egoism and self-promotion that the ruling system selects for. But he is not rich from foreign
wars of aggression, or from exporting the costs of labor to foreign jurisdictions with subhuman standards.
He has not been getting richer or more smug by seeking high office in a context of saturating slander
and denunciation from official society. He has initiated a long overdue recognition of parasite capitalism
eating out and wasting the life capacities of the US itself as well as the larger world.
Trump has now won the first major step that his enemies declared inconceivable, and he can now
do what he has promised 'in the place where the buck stops'.
Prof. John McMurtry is author of The Cancer Stage of Capitalism: From Crisis to Cure (available
from University of Chicago Press) and an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Ah, yes, The Nation! I have had a subscription for decades (it was much better in Cockburn's
day) and have long marveled that they raise money by having cruises where wealthy donors can schmooze
with columnists or special contributors, and apparently see no conflict between this and their
professed political values. (Come cruise the Caribbean and see the dear natives and talk about
social justice? Ugh!) They do still sometimes produce good articles, but their lack of connection
with the world outside their bubble seems to be growing.
As for the amazingly stupid "whiteness" article (and I did not vote for Trump), Vanden Heuvel
should hang her head in shame. Her own husband has styled the neocon (and therefore HIllary) policy
toward Russia as something close to lunacy. Which is to say there were plenty of reasons to vote
against Hillary other than "whiteness." In fact a more accurate statement about most white people
and race is that they probably don't think about it much at all. Call this insensitive if you
like, but ignoring a problem and contributing to it are not the same things. After all the author
of the Nation article clearly hasn't spent a lot of time thinking about Russia, Syria, Libya,
or Hillary's victims. Nevertheless I'll refrain from calling him a bigot.
Nor did I, but given his thesis, that doesn't matter. I'm still complicit. Another interesting
consequence of his thesis is that Hillary Clinton is also complicit. But 'complicity' implies
agency – one cannot be unconsciously complicit since 'being complicit' means 'knowingly helping
helping others to commit a crime or other wrong doing'.
Speaking of extending the sense of a term, the 'white supremacy' trope is suffering from overuse.
First of all, there really are white supremacists. You can Google it. But like 'antisemitic' once
it is applied generally as a term of abuse it loses its force – it suffers semantic inflation.
Jill Stein's running mate, Ajamu Baraka suggested in a blog post that Bernie Sanders had a commitment
to Eurocentrism and normalized white supremacy . Calling Bernie Sanders a white supremacist
is really rendering the term meaningless.
"... As open-minded and tolerant [neo]liberals purport to be, they are more moralistic than they realize. They can't for the life of them understand why enlightened California should not count more than degenerate Texas; their contempt towards the heartland and jokes about withdrawing the franchise from the rednecks is revealing of their vacuous elitism. Their willingness to flee the country and protest now that their chosen political instrument was rejected is a testament to their complete political flaccidity. As much as a broad coalition must be built to push the world to the Left, these people deserved to lose and hurt. The problem is they won't learn, and the world will be a disaster by the time they are forced to realize their errors. ..."
I was talking to my parents (not very well-versed in political theory) about how liberals really
have no true convictions other than their fragile faith in the universality of moral values. My
friends are literally convulsing from having to resolve the following contradictions in their
minds:
a) their hatred and misunderstanding of Trump's victory,
b) straight up animosity towards anyone perceived to have supported Trump or not supported Hillary
(the latter being the same as the former for them), and
c) reiterating their faith in democracy and "respecting" everyone's right to democratic expression.
As open-minded and tolerant [neo]liberals purport to be, they are more moralistic than
they realize. They can't for the life of them understand why enlightened California should not
count more than degenerate Texas; their contempt towards the heartland and jokes about withdrawing
the franchise from the rednecks is revealing of their vacuous elitism. Their willingness to flee
the country and protest now that their chosen political instrument was rejected is a testament
to their complete political flaccidity. As much as a broad coalition must be built to push the
world to the Left, these people deserved to lose and hurt. The problem is they won't learn, and
the world will be a disaster by the time they are forced to realize their errors.
As a non-American in America, this election has been supremely clarifying to me about the true
nature of the educated, enlightened West[en elite]. But I am also thankful for having come closer
to my true convictions mostly because of the coverage and comments at NC. You guys rock!
Apparently, the Donald's victory on Tuesday is 'on' white people whether they voted for him
or not! In voting for DT, white people did not vote against their interests; rather they voted
for the one thing they value above all else – their whiteness. At the Nation:
And please note that I am not including any qualifiers. For working-class whites. Or whites
from Rust Belt cities. Or white men. Or white people who didn't graduate from college-or rural
whites, or Midwestern whites, or Southern whites. Or whites disillusioned with Washington.
Or whites who hate Clinton. Or whites who felt ignored by politicians. This is on all white
people-who are complicit even if they didn't vote for Trump.
Does this mean I would not be a white supremacist if Hillary had won? Seems to me that if we
had elected Hillary a whole rainbow coalition of people would have been complicit in bringing
to power a white, neo-liberal war hawk who have shortly launched attacks both economic and military
both here and abroad.
Naw, "white supremacist" is a thing, an indelible genetic Magic Marker evidenced by having
skin tones that are actually cream, tan, peach and an assortment of pastels, shading to gray-green
as death approaches or fiery red if overexposed to the cleansing power of natural (or tanning-bed)
light, and any such creature who voted Democrat did so purely out of fear of retribution… /s
Exactly. Except I'd expand that to say the complicity extends far beyond Trump voters, to those
whites who voted against Sanders in the primary, and indeed to *everyone* who did. Yes, those
black church ladies voting lockstep in the early primaries for the only candidate who could lose
to Trump did their part for the white supremacist cause as well, albeit as unwittingly as many
of the others.
Thus, the author of that piece, Damon Young, who I'll assume from reading it was a Clinton
supporter, was it turns out equally complicit as well but obviously lacking in sufficient self-awareness
to see it.
"Yes, there exists a difference between allies and racial antagonists. They are not the
same. But those allies obviously haven't done enough collectively to repudiate the mindsets
existing in their families and among their friends…
"Millions of white voters have shown us that nothing existing on earth or in heaven or hell
matters more to them than being white , and whichever privileges-real or fabricated, concrete
or spiritual-existing as White in America provides."
First, such exit polling as I have seen indicates it is not that white people turned out in
droves to vote for Trump; it is rather the case that people of color DIDN'T turn out in droves
to vote for Clinton. Second. it is rather a tall order for us "allies" to convince other
folks' friends and family of anything – not always but mostly within one's own circle values
are largely shared. Although I certainly have had my share of exchanges affirming the legitimacy
of Black Lives Matter with commenters here who would deny it.
But heavens, all the snark on this site about Van Jones yesterday? Folks, this stuff is heartfelt.
See Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me. The seemingly hysterical outcry of fear
above has to be understood within the context of the history of this country. Can anyone seriously
doubt that as the demographics change the fight to preserve power/status for those who traditionally
held it will intensify? Who gives up power voluntarily?
We are going through a seismic change and it could well get ugly, and those who have been on
the receiving end of ugly for generations are terrified, truly terrified. I got quite the dressing
down from an African American friend who is furious I didn't vote for Clinton. I stood my ground,
but with compassion. In the end, the browns inevitably will prevail, and let us hope they are
kinder to whites than whites have been to them over the centuries.
Just wondering, is there anywhere a source of reliable media writers that we can rely on?
A small list to start with:
– Glenn Greenwald
– Naomi Klein
– Thomas Frank
– Chris Hedges
Need a full list of people that we can trust to give us an honest breakdown.
What is the quality of coverage at the Al Jaazera English network and RT? Any alt media sites
you guys trust?
This election has a been a serious eye opener. A lot of supposedly left leaning sites proved
to be little more than Clinton bots – the Daily Kos being the most visible example but there have
been others.
Everybody on your list is usually pretty good, but no one is on all the time. It's totally
possible to be right about a lot things and woefully blind to others. See Matt Taibbi, Christopher
Hitchens, etc. It's always important to not assume someone knows what they're talking about just
because that's been the case in the past. No matter the source, you always gotta think it through
yourself.
That said, this site (obviously) and anything by Bill Black, Michael Hudson, The Real News
Network, or Laura Flanders is a good bet for real news. And that's just for starters….
Chris Arnade, Michael Tracey, Carl Beijer, Stephanie Kelton, Francis McKenna, Adolph Reed,
Corey Robin, Jimmy Dore, Benjamin Dixon, Erica Garner, Dan Froomkin.
Mmm…. these days it's a rare type of journalist who won't fall on earth void of sense, nor
drop to earth dead of mind! Agree with those listed by NC commenters but would also include the
following below. Why?
None of them (rarely?) prostrate themselves upon the ground………they instead bravely choose to behold
the earth in all its' darkest extremities. For they are a crazy bunch of hellacious mortals piercing
our gloom with much added sparkle and stars….
International Business Times – David Sirota and his colleagues
The Young Turks – Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian (a formidable young lady!) et al
The Empire Files with Abby Martin (another formidable young lady!)
Watching the Hawks – Tabetha Wallace (as with Ana and Abby!), Tyrel Ventura etc.
The Intercept – Lee 'BIG' Fang, Jeremy Scahill, and the rest of the team
There are also a few typically labeled right-wingers IMHO who are good too, not least because
they remain sane and surprisingly impartial for the most part compared to their batty brethren!
Otherwise I'd suggest the non-English language media for a decent lay of the USA…
While Cenk can be hard on the ears when in all caps rants, TYT is really quite informative
and entertaining. Dore on a tear complete with parenthetical remarks manages to compress a lot
of detail in a short time. He makes comedy central look sick/dead.
I don't know, just watched a few of their recent videos. Michael Shure is the epitome of the
clueless identity politics liberal, sneering about all the 'people in overalls with pitchforks'
who voted for Trump, and John Iadarola seems convinced the only possible reason non-college educated
white men under 45 could have voted for Trump is because they hate women. Pathetic.
Both the WSJ and the National Review appear to thankfully give some out-of-the-box latitude
to their teams at times to present some impartial, well-researched and well-written journalism.
Don't read everything in either journal but I haven't seen any "sneering of people in overalls
with pitchforks" from either journal.
Is there really an answer to this? I mean, everyone we "ostensibly" seem to trust seems to
have a blind spot somewhere.
Glenn Greenwald is great, but has some issues with releasing Snowden documents (which I think
Cryptome has discussed), plus there's always the issue of what angle Pierre Omydar is pushing.
Chris Hedges seems to have a an overly soft heart for religion in general and was overly apologetic
in my mind to Islam after 9/11, which I think Sam Harris did a good job of pointing out the flaws
in his, not logic, but rather "faith."
But then Sam Harris has some serious issues with wanting to use nuclear weapons against religious
fundamentalists too… (There's a good podcast interview between Dan Carlin and Sam on you tube
where Dan I think exposes some of Sam's blind spots.)
Chomsky, of course, has the problem of LOTE-ism by telling everyone to hold their noses and
vote for Hillary.
I say something along the lines of trust, but verify…or trust no one (at the heart of it all)
when it comes to journalistic sources, experts or other thinkers.
I don't think it could ever be a matter of just following "trusted" sources as you might not
always be able to know when they've been compromised or change their viewpoints and subtly/slowly
alter their reporting to fit their new perspective or paradigm.
Sometimes it's not even subtle, like when Christopher Hitchens went all in with Shrub on invading
Iraq & Middle East adventurism.
It's mostly about critical thinking skills and putting pieces together using varied sources,
even those that might disgust you simply because they force your to look at issues from other
perspectives.
I wonder if it isn't a bit risky to create such lists, though I admit my daily reading implicitly
relies on one. Nobody, even well-intentioned, can be guaranteed always reliable, nor is someone
who really annoys you sometimes always going to be wrong. Facts matter, with sources if they are
not in the category of general knowledge, and clear reasoning, and a willingness to consider other
points of view when they are offered with some substantiation–all the sorts of things that characterize
our hosts and some of the most knowledgeable and thoughtful commenters here.
When I was in seventh or eighth grade we had "current events" in which you had to bring in
a news article from one of the newspapers, present its information, and give your preliminary
critique, which opened up discussion from the floor, with questions about whether the article
was giving all the information or seemed to give inappropriate weight to one point of view without
factual support, etc. Judging by letters in my local paper, I suspect this practice died long
ago, as many people don't understand that opinion and bias on the editorial page are both permissible
and to be expected, but yet others fail to see them in articles.
Sometimes for kicks or because of recent developments, I look for news sources in another area
or country, for which I have sometimes found this site useful:
Either use advanced browsing or scroll down to the map and pick your area. You can quickly
find out which papers you're capable of reading and then apply your critical thinking skills to
try to assess the target audience, possible backing, bias, etc. It's an interesting exercise,
and sometimes preferable to getting the "expert" opinion of someone in this country who really
doesn't know the subject as well as he claims to.
holy cow, i wrote the longest reply i've written in years and it went poof!
anywho…Thank You Kathrine for the reminder that skills that seem to come naturally, can always
use a bit of dusting off. Thanks for the link, luv aby.
Chris Savage, Ellen Nakashima, Carol Rosenberg, Mark Ames, John Dolan aka Gary Brecher aka
The War Nerd, James Risen, Ray MacGovern, Robert Parry, Michael Winship, Bill Moyers, Charles
P. Piece.
Various good suggestions have certainly been made by other posters, but I should like to commend
the value of visiting other sites where you may encounter views that are not homogeneous with
yours. If I may, I would submit that this very narrowness of field of vision was part and parcel
of the collapse of the Democrat party's fortunes; when one lives in an echo chamber, where all
that is on offer is confirmation bias, and all other viewpoints are believed to
"... EXCELLENT article on the "unbearable smugness" of the media from a CBS political correspondent/managing director: ..."
"... great piece, and the comments are scathing. what I don't get is why they don't mention that beyond being insular and smug, the journos are also corporate-owned agents of the 1%. ..."
"... Yesterday I watched Rachel Maddow patronizingly begin a lesson on what things make America America – how we know we're here and nowhere else in the world. I had to turn it off toot sweet when she with a completely straight face enumerated a "free" press as one of those things. ..."
"... Not state owned, eh? But you are corporate owned, same difference. Why did MSNBC not report at all on opposition to the TPP – wouldn't have anything to do with being owned by ComCast now, would it? ..."
"... Years ago I liked her, now she is the poster child for smug. ..."
Personally, this tin-foil hatter believes the rating is -19%.
To get that number, one has to rig the poll though (by including people not longer living or
not born yet)…e.g. 1,000 people live in this town, and of them, 1,190 disapprove.
great piece, and the comments are scathing. what I don't get is why they don't mention that
beyond being insular and smug, the journos are also corporate-owned agents of the 1%.
I broke my ban on MSM the night of the election and have been "slipping" a bit.
Yesterday I
watched Rachel Maddow patronizingly begin a lesson on what things make America America – how we
know we're here and nowhere else in the world. I had to turn it off toot sweet when she with a
completely straight face enumerated a "free" press as one of those things.
Not state owned, eh? But you are corporate owned, same difference. Why did MSNBC not report
at all on opposition to the TPP – wouldn't have anything to do with being owned by ComCast now,
would it?
Years ago I liked her, now she is the poster child for smug.
"... I watched the election coverage over at R/T. I haven't watched a lamestream media broadcast of any kind for about 15 years, other than being a captive audience member at the airport, but toward the end of the night I tuned in to MSNBC and CNN. The funereal mood at these two "networks" was pretty over-the-top. The smug look on Rachel Maddow's face was priceless. ..."
I watched the election coverage over at R/T. I haven't watched a lamestream media broadcast
of any kind for about 15 years, other than being a captive audience member at the airport, but
toward the end of the night I tuned in to MSNBC and CNN. The funereal mood at these two "networks"
was pretty over-the-top. The smug look on Rachel Maddow's face was priceless.
I really thought
all of the talking heads were going to break out into tears. It was quite a disturbing scene.
They all looked like special little snowflakes who had just had something stolen from them. The
hubris was unbelievable. The coverage over at R/T was a breath of fresh air, in comparison. The
anchors were professional, they understand clearly and with articulation described how and why
the election went the way it did. R/T clearly "gets it" and did a bang-up job on election night
2016. Good job,, R/T.
Yet the mainstream media will persist in explaining the Trump disaster in terms of race or
gender issues, never in terms of economic class.
This is how they keep us divided.
"... The origins of Daesh, known commonly as the Islamic State or ISIS, tie back directly to Obama and Clinton policy delusions and half measures of the Iraq and Syria conflicts. ..."
"... The FSA exerted zero control over the dozens of rival militias fighting each other and the Assad regime in Damascus. The Syrian Rebel groups were like dozens of hungry baby vultures in a nest all competing for resources, and the worst and meanest destroyed their counterparts using the aid given them by their misguided American benefactors. ..."
"... The Sunni Arab Gulf states piled on behind the U.S. government to help their Sunni brethren with more arms and cash. The result was a true race to the bottom of Syrian Rebel groups. ..."
"... The chaos sewn globally by ISIS today grew directly from the bad seeds planted by the Clinton/Obama failures in the basics of statecraft. ..."
"... Obama/Clinton continued to approach the Middle East with the same naivety that led the Bush Administration into Iraq in the first place. For all of the criticism that Obama levied on Bush, he continued to apply a deeply delusional Washington perspective to Middle Eastern politics and culture - ignoring all we should have learned in 13 years of Iraq conflict and warfare. ..."
The origins of Daesh, known commonly as the Islamic State or ISIS, tie back directly to Obama
and Clinton policy delusions and half measures of the Iraq and Syria conflicts.
With the recent release of an August 2012
classified intelligence memo to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton detailing the presence
of the organization that became ISIS among the Syrian oppositional forces supported by the West,
it's important to remember the history of exactly how the Islamic State arose from the ashes of a
failed Obama/Clinton foreign policy.
The Syrian "Arab Spring" agitations that began in March 2011, where majority Sunnis rebelled against
an Assad run Alawite Shia Ba'th Party, quickly dissolved into a multi sided proxy war. Clinton State
Department policy grew into helping these Sunni rebels under the banner of the "Free Syrian Army
(FSA)" with weapons, money and diplomatic support.
However, the reality is that the FSA existed only in the minds of the State Department leadership.
The FSA exerted zero control over the dozens of rival militias fighting each other and the Assad
regime in Damascus. The Syrian Rebel groups were like dozens of hungry baby vultures in a nest all
competing for resources, and the worst and meanest destroyed their counterparts using the aid given
them by their misguided American benefactors.
The Sunni Arab Gulf states piled on behind the U.S. government to help their Sunni brethren
with more arms and cash. The result was a true race to the bottom of Syrian Rebel groups. All
the while the Assad regime's traditional allies of Russia and Iran provided weapons, training, and
even thousands of fighters themselves to combat the U.S. supported Sunni rebels. The Obama/Clinton
team couldn't even do a proxy war correctly.
The chaos sewn globally by ISIS today grew directly from the bad seeds planted by the Clinton/Obama
failures in the basics of statecraft.
... ... ...
Obama/Clinton continued to approach the Middle East with the same naivety that led the Bush
Administration into Iraq in the first place. For all of the criticism that Obama levied on Bush,
he continued to apply a deeply delusional Washington perspective to Middle Eastern politics and culture
- ignoring all we should have learned in 13 years of Iraq conflict and warfare.
Erik Prince is a former Navy SEAL, founder of Blackwater, and currently a frontier market
investor and concerned parent.
"... If one "fact" is known to be false then one is inclined to think those "facts" one is unfamiliar with are also false. I'll always think of Clinton's behavior on hearing of Gadaffi's death. That's the thing you want running the most powerful corporation on earth. ..."
"... I don't remember Krugman saying that Bush Sr. spent his days at the CIA so he trained as a professional assassin. ..."
If one "fact" is known to be false then one is inclined to think those "facts" one is unfamiliar
with are also false. I'll always think of Clinton's behavior on hearing of Gadaffi's death. That's
the thing you want running the most powerful corporation on earth.
The election was rigged by Russian intelligence, which was almost surely behind the hacking of
Democratic emails, which WikiLeaks then released with great fanfare. Nothing truly scandalous
emerged, but the Russians judged, correctly, that the news media would hype the revelation that
major party figures are human beings, and that politicians engage in politics, as somehow damning....
-- Paul Krugman
[ A wildly speculative, purposely inflaming even dangerous passage. And in keeping with previously
expressed, inflaming Krugman stereotypes.
I know, I know, the Russians are going to eat our children for breakfast but I am in no mood
for another era of Cold War McCarthyism. Children for what? OMG. ]
OMG, the Russians not being satisfied with eating the children of Cleveland are also going to
eat the Baltics and we all know that Baltics are already endangered (climate change and all).
Who knew?
"Save the Baltics from hungry Russians," must be the cry through the land. Save the Baltics,
I am ready.
I'm hearing is simply a recognition that Putin is a problem and that his agents are trying to
influence the election, which they sure appear to be doing and have done in many other cases in
many countries. It's SOP for this guy....
[ I know, I have no idea how to portray this as absurd as it actually is. Remember though,
I am always ready to go to the Baltics when called to battle. ]
What is important and saddening is the wild Cold War prejudice, a prejudice that extends to China
and would readily descend to name-naming. I get this, fortunately I get the prejudice.
No matter, when called as I have made clear I will be naming-names from A to Z, but I get this.
That's why a British court has effectively overturned the results of the Brexit vote – in
a lawsuit brought by a hedge fund manager and former model – and thrown the fate of the country
into the hands of pro-EU Tories, and their Labor and Liberal Democrat collaborators.
This stunning reversal was baked in to the legislation that enabled the referendum to begin
with, and is par for the course as far as EU referenda are concerned: in 1992,
Danish voters rejected the EU, only to have the Euro-crats demand a rematch with a "modified"
EU treaty which won narrowly. There have been repeated attempts to modify the modifications,
which have all failed. Ireland voted against both the Lisbon Treaty and the Nice Treaty, only
to have the issue brought up again until the "right" result was achieved.
"... "Yet commentators who have been ready and willing to attribute Donald Trump's success to anger, authoritarianism, or racism rather than policy issues have taken little note of the extent to which Mr. Sanders's support is concentrated not among liberal ideologues but among disaffected white men." ... ..."
"... poor pk a leader of the Stalinist press ..."
"... the surprising success of Bernie Sanders -- a Brooklyn-born, Jewish socialist -- in the primaries is solid proof that the electorate was open to a coherent argument for genuine progressive change, and that a substantial portion of that electorate is not acting on purely racist and sexist impulses, as so many progressive commentators say. ..."
"... "I will live my life calmly and my children will be just fine. I will live my life calmly and my children will be just fine." That assumes you're about 85 years old...and don't have long to live! ..."
"... Laid out by whom? By the commercial "media" hype machine that has 12-16 hours of airtime to fill every day with the as sensationalized as possible gossip (to justify the price for the paid advertisements filling the remaining hours). ..."
"... Killary Clinton got no closer than Ann Arbor this weekend, a message! ..."
"... Mr. Krugman forgot to list the collusion of the DNC and the Clinton campaign to work against Sanders. ..."
"... putting crooked in the same sentence as Clinton or DNC is duplicative wording. This mortification is brought to US by the crooked and the stalinist press that calls crooked virtue. ..."
"... Krugman did so much to help create the mass of white working class discontent that is electing Trump. Krugman and co cheering on NAFTA/PNTR/WTO etc, US deindustrialization, collapse of middle class... ..."
"... Hopefully the working class masses will convince our rulers to abandon free trade before every last factory is sold off or dismantled and the US falls to the depths of a Chad or an Armenia. ..."
The Truth About the Sanders Movement
By Paul Krugman
In short, it's complicated – not all bad, by any means, but not the pure uprising of idealists
the more enthusiastic supporters imagine.
The political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels have an illuminating discussion
of Sanders support. The key graf that will probably have Berniebros boiling is this:
"Yet commentators who have been ready and willing to attribute Donald Trump's success to
anger, authoritarianism, or racism rather than policy issues have taken little note of the extent
to which Mr. Sanders's support is concentrated not among liberal ideologues but among disaffected
white men." ...
[ Yes, I do find defaming people by speculation or stereotype to be beyond saddening. ]
The fact that Obama either won, or did so much better than Hillary appears to be doing with, the
white working-class vote in so many key battleground states, as well as the surprising success
of Bernie Sanders -- a Brooklyn-born, Jewish socialist -- in the primaries is solid proof that
the electorate was open to a coherent argument for genuine progressive change, and that a substantial
portion of that electorate is not acting on purely racist and sexist impulses, as so many progressive
commentators say.
And her opponent was/is incapable of debating on substance, as there was/is neither coherence
nor consistency in any part of his platform -- nor that of his party....
Question is, will Krugman be able to move on after the election...and talk about something useful?
Like how to get Hillary to recognize and deal with inequality...
Barbara Ehrenreich: "Forget fear and loathing. The US election inspires projectile vomiting. The
most sordid side of our democracy has been laid out for all to see. But that's only the beginning:
whoever wins, the mutual revulsion will only intensify... With either Clinton or Trump, we will
be left to choke on our mutual revulsion."
"I will live my life calmly and my children will be just fine. I will live my life calmly
and my children will be just fine." That assumes you're about 85 years old...and don't have long
to live!
Laid out by whom? By the commercial "media" hype machine that has 12-16 hours of airtime to
fill every day with the as sensationalized as possible gossip (to justify the price for the paid
advertisements filling the remaining hours).
Something interesting today.... President Obama came to Michigan. I fully expected him to speak
in Detroit with a get out the vote message. Instead he is in Ann Arbor, speaking to an overwhelmingly
white and white-collar audience. On a related note, the Dems have apparently written off
the white blue collar vote in Michigan, even much of the union vote. the union leaders are pro
Clinton, but the workers not so much. Strange year.
The real danger of serious election-rigging: electronic voting machines. How do we know the machine
*really* recorded everyone's votes correctly? (Did any Florida county ever give Al Gore negative
something votes?)
That's a big subject but you are right, that is the biggest risk of significant fraud. Not just
the voting machines, but the automatic counting systems. Other forms of possible election fraud
are tiny by comparison.
Here is the transcript from 60 Minutes about the Luntz focus group rancor. Instructive to read
about the depth of feeling in case you didn't see the angry, disgusted faces of citizens.
putting crooked in the same sentence as Clinton or DNC is duplicative wording. This mortification
is brought to US by the crooked and the stalinist press that calls crooked virtue.
Before the 1970s the US was both rich and protectionist - no look at our horrible roads and hopeless
people - the miracle of free trade! : ,
November 07, 2016 at 07:13 PM
Krugman did so much to help create the mass of white working class discontent that is electing
Trump. Krugman and co cheering on NAFTA/PNTR/WTO etc, US deindustrialization, collapse of
middle class...
Hopefully the working class masses will convince our rulers to abandon free trade before
every last factory is sold off or dismantled and the US falls to the depths of a Chad or an Armenia.
"... I also read other written and printed media because I think it is important to expose yourself to points of view you find uncomfortable – and how can you tell other people their newspapers etc are lying to them and misleading them if you do not dip into them from time to time to confirm that is indeed the case? ..."
"... The Economist has thrown any semblance of impartiality out the window the last couple years. Sign of the times, I guess. ..."
"... One angle is how feckless Democrats sought to give up regulatory power because they wanted to duck responsibility for mistaken decisions. ..."
In this context, abuse is a positive thing. Both Jebbie and the mainstream press needed abusing!
Now look at them! They're earning it more than ever! In other news….RealClear give some space to a pro-ColoradoCare writer. Very nice to see!
I still read both the FT and Economist. The FT still has some good pieces in it, even if it
is diminished from pre-Crash days when Gillian Tett was the person to read. And the book reviews
in the Economist can be worth reading, though it is a pale shadow of the journal it used to be.
I also read other written and printed media because I think it is important to expose yourself
to points of view you find uncomfortable – and how can you tell other people their newspapers
etc are lying to them and misleading them if you do not dip into them from time to time to confirm
that is indeed the case?
Are the Economist's reviews of the 'an important work' type that get featured on the cover,
even though the publication continues to ignore every insight and alternative idea presented in
the book reviewed?
Stoller is paraphrasing his review of Greta Krippner's Capitalizing on Crisis, which
sounds well worth a read.
It is. One angle is how feckless Democrats sought to give up regulatory power because they
wanted to duck responsibility for mistaken decisions. Why run risks ironing out business cycles
when you can collect campaign contributions for venerating Alan Greenspan?
"... What America objects to in Russia is that Americans couldn't buy control of their oil, couldn't buy control of their natural resources, couldn't buy control of their public utilities and charge economic rents and continue to make Russia the largest stock market boom in the world as it was from 1994 through 1998 when there was the crisis. ..."
"... So the conflict is not one of economic systems. It's simply that America wants to control other countries and keep other countries within the dollar orbit. And what that means is that if the whole world saves in the form of dollars, that means saving by buying Treasury bonds. ..."
"... And other countries are trying to withdraw from this and America says, "Well, we can smash you." ..."
"... There really is no alternative, and that's the objective of control: to create a society in which there is no choice. That's what a free market [myth] is really all about: preventing any choice by the people except what the government gives them. ..."
"... has the illusion of choice in choosing either between which is the lesser evil. They get to vote for the lesser evil when it's all really the same process. ..."
> Ashcroft: What sort of president then will Hillary Clinton be?
> Hudson: A dictator. She… a vindictive dictator, punishing her enemies, appointing neocons in the secretary
of state, in the defense department, appointing Wall Street people in the Treasury and the Federal Reserve,
and the class war will really break out very explicitly. And she'll-as Warren Buffet said, there is
a class war and we're winning it.
> Ashcroft: As in the one percent are winning it.
> Hudson: The one percent are winning it. And she will try to use the rhetoric to tell people: "Nothing
to see here folks. Keep on moving," while the economy goes down and down and she cashes in as she's
been doing all along, richer and richer, and if she's president, there will not be an investigator of
the criminal conflict of interest of the Bill Clinton Foundation, of pay-to-play. You'll have a presidency
in which corporations who pay the Clintons will be able to set policy. Whoever has the money to buy
the politicians will buy control of policy because elections have been privatized and made part of the
market economy in the United States. That's what the Citizens United Supreme Court case was all about.
> Hudson: Well, after 1991 when the Soviet Union broke up, it really went neoliberal. And Putin is basically
a neoliberal. So there's not a clash of economic systems as there was between capitalism and communism.
What America objects to in Russia is that Americans couldn't buy control of their oil, couldn't buy
control of their natural resources, couldn't buy control of their public utilities and charge economic
rents and continue to make Russia the largest stock market boom in the world as it was from 1994 through
1998 when there was the crisis.
So the conflict is not one of economic systems. It's simply that America
wants to control other countries and keep other countries within the dollar orbit. And what that means
is that if the whole world saves in the form of dollars, that means saving by buying Treasury bonds.
And that means lending all of the balance-of-payments surplus that Russia or China or other countries
look at, by lending it to the U.S. Treasury, which will use that money to militarily encircle these
countries and threaten to do to any country that seeks to withdraw from the dollar system exactly what
they did to Iraq or Libya or Afghanistan, or now Syria.
And other countries are trying to withdraw from
this and America says, "Well, we can smash you." No country's going to invade any other country. There's
not going to be a military draft in any country 'cause the students; the population would rise up. Nobody's
going to invade, and you can't control or occupy a country if you don't have an army. So the only thing
that America can do-or any country can do militarily-is drop bombs.
And that's sort of the equivalent
of, just like the European Central Bank told Greece, "We'll close down your banks and the ATM machines
will be empty," America will say, "Well, we'll bomb you, make you look like Syria and Libya if you don't
turn over your oil, your pipelines, your utilities to American buyers so we can charge rents; we can
be the absentee landlords. We can conquer the world financially instead of militarily. We don't need
an army; we can use finance. And the threat of military warfare and bombing you to achieve things."
Other countries are trying to stay free of the mad bomber, and it's all about who's going to control
the world's natural resources: water, real estate, utilities-not a question of economic systems so much
anymore.
> Well, President Obama, even though he's a tool of Wall Street, at least he says, "It's not worth blowing
up the world to fight in the near east." Hillary says, "It is worth pushing the world back to the Stone
Age if they don't let us and me, Hillary, tell the world how to behave." That's a danger of the world
and that's why the Europeans should be terrified of a Hillary presidency and terrified of the direction
that America is doing, saying, "We want to control the world." It's not control the world through a
different economic philosophy. It's to control the world through ownership of their land, natural resources
and essentially, governments and monetary systems. That's really what it's all about. And the popular
press is not doing a good job of explaining that context, but I can assure you, that's what they're
talking about in Russia, China and South America.
> There really is no alternative, and that's the objective of control: to create a society in which
there is no choice. That's what a free market [myth] is really all about: preventing any choice by the people
except what the government gives them. That's what the Austrian school was all about in the 1920s, waging
war and assassination against the labor leaders and the socialists in Vienna, and that's what the free
marketers in Chile were all about in the mass assassinations of labor leaders, university professors,
intellectuals, and that's exactly the situation in America today without the machine guns, because the
population doesn't really feel that it has any alternative, but has the illusion of choice in choosing
either between which is the lesser evil. They get to vote for the lesser evil when it's all really the
same process.
> Ashcroft: What sort of president then will Hillary Clinton be?
> Hudson: A dictator. She… a vindictive dictator, punishing her enemies, appointing neocons in the secretary
of state, in the defense department, appointing Wall Street people in the Treasury and the Federal Reserve,
and the class war will really break out very explicitly. And she'll-as Warren Buffet said, there is
a class war and we're winning it.
> Ashcroft: As in the one percent are winning it.
> Hudson: The one percent are winning it. And she will try to use the rhetoric to tell people: "Nothing
to see here folks. Keep on moving," while the economy goes down and down and she cashes in as she's
been doing all along, richer and richer, and if she's president, there will not be an investigator of
the criminal conflict of interest of the Bill Clinton Foundation, of pay-to-play. You'll have a presidency
in which corporations who pay the Clintons will be able to set policy. Whoever has the money to buy
the politicians will buy control of policy because elections have been privatized and made part of the
market economy in the United States. That's what the Citizens United Supreme Court case was all about.
"... political correctness functions like a despotic regime. It is an oppressiveness that spreads its edicts further and further into the crevices of everyday life. ..."
"... Mr. Steele, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is the author of "Shame: How America's Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country" (Basic Books, 2015). ..."
The current election-regardless of its outcome-reveals something tragic in the way modern conservatism
sits in American life. As an ideology-and certainly as a political identity-conservatism is less
popular than the very principles and values it stands for. There is a presumption in the culture
that heartlessness and bigotry are somehow endemic to conservatism, that the rigors of freedom and
capitalism literally require exploitation and inequality - this despite the fact that so many liberal
policies since the 1960s have only worsened the inequalities they sought to overcome.
In the broader American culture-the mainstream media, the world of the arts and entertainment,
the high-tech world, and the entire enterprise of public and private education-conservatism suffers
a decided ill repute.
...And this is oppressive for conservatives because it puts them in the position of being a bit
embarrassed by who they really are and what they really believe.
Deference has been codified in American life as political correctness. And political correctness
functions like a despotic regime. It is an oppressiveness that spreads its edicts further and further
into the crevices of everyday life. We resent it, yet for the most part we at least tolerate
its demands. But it means that we live in a society that is ever willing to cast judgment on us,
to shame us in the name of a politics we don't really believe in. It means our decency requires a
degree of self-betrayal.
And into all this steps Mr. Trump, a fundamentally limited man but a man with overwhelming charisma,
a man impossible to ignore. The moment he entered the presidential contest America's long simmering
culture war rose to full boil. Mr. Trump was a non-deferential candidate. He seemed at odds with
every code of decency. He invoked every possible stigma, and screechingly argued against them all.
He did much of the dirty work that millions of Americans wanted to do but lacked the platform to
do.
Thus Mr. Trump's extraordinary charisma has been far more about what he represents than what he
might actually do as the president. He stands to alter the culture of deference itself.
... ... ...
Societies, like individuals, have intuitions. Donald Trump is an intuition. At least on the level
of symbol, maybe he would push back against the hegemony of deference-if not as a liberator then
possibly as a reformer...
Mr. Steele, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is the author of
"Shame: How America's Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country" (Basic Books, 2015).
"... Bush I and II, Mitt Romney, the neocons and the GOP commentariat all denounced Trump as morally and temperamentally unfit. Yet, seven of eight Republicans are voting for Trump, and he drew the largest and most enthusiastic crowds of any GOP nominee. ..."
"... How could the Republican establishment advance anew the trade and immigration policies that their base has so thunderously rejected? ..."
"... Do mainstream Republicans think that should Trump lose a Bush Restoration lies ahead? The dynasty is as dead as the Romanovs. ..."
"... The media, whose reputation has sunk to Congressional depths, has also suffered a blow to its credibility. ..."
"... Its hatred of Trump has been almost manic, and WikiLeaks revelations of the collusion between major media and Clintonites have convinced skeptics that the system is rigged and the referees of democracy are in the tank. ..."
"... But it is the national establishment that has suffered most. The Trump candidacy exposed what seems an unbridgeable gulf between this political class and the nation in whose name it purports to speak. ..."
"... Middle America believes the establishment is not looking out for the nation but for retention of its power. And in attacking Trump it is not upholding some objective moral standard but seeking to destroy a leader who represents a grave threat to that power. ..."
"... Moreover, they see the establishment as the quintessence of hypocrisy. Trump is instructed to stop using such toxic phrases as "America First" and "Make America Great Again" by elites... ..."
"... While a Trump victory would create the possibility of a coalition of conservatives, populists, patriots and nationalists governing America, should he lose, America's future appears disunited and grim. ..."
Herewith, a dissent. Whatever happens Tuesday, Trump has made history and has forever changed American
politics.
Though a novice in politics, he captured the Party of Lincoln with the largest turnout
of primary voters ever, and he has inflicted wounds on the nation's ruling class from which it may
not soon recover.
Bush I and II, Mitt Romney, the neocons and the GOP commentariat all denounced Trump as morally
and temperamentally unfit. Yet, seven of eight Republicans are voting for Trump, and he drew the
largest and most enthusiastic crowds of any GOP nominee.
Not only did he rout the Republican elites, he ash-canned their agenda and repudiated the wars
into which they plunged the country.
Trump did not create the forces that propelled his candidacy. But he recognized them, tapped into
them, and unleashed a gusher of nationalism and populism that will not soon dissipate.
Whatever happens Tuesday, there is no going back now.
How could the Republican establishment advance anew the trade and immigration policies that
their base has so thunderously rejected?
How can the GOP establishment credibly claim to speak for a party that spent the last year cheering
a candidate who repudiated the last two Republican presidents and the last two Republican nominees?
Do mainstream Republicans think that should Trump lose a Bush Restoration lies ahead? The
dynasty is as dead as the Romanovs.
The media, whose reputation has sunk to Congressional depths, has also suffered a blow to
its credibility.
Its hatred of Trump has been almost manic, and WikiLeaks revelations of the collusion between
major media and Clintonites have convinced skeptics that the system is rigged and the referees of
democracy are in the tank.
But it is the national establishment that has suffered most. The Trump candidacy exposed what
seems an unbridgeable gulf between this political class and the nation in whose name it purports
to speak.
Consider the litany of horrors it has charged Trump with.
He said John McCain was no hero, that some Mexican illegals are "rapists." He mocked a handicapped
reporter. He called some women "pigs." He wants a temporary ban to Muslim immigration. He fought
with a Gold Star mother and father. He once engaged in "fat-shaming" a Miss Universe, calling her
"Miss Piggy," and telling her to stay out of Burger King. He allegedly made crude advances on a dozen
women and starred in the "Access Hollywood" tape with Billy Bush.
While such "gaffes" are normally fatal for candidates, Trump's followers stood by him through
them all.
Why? asks an alarmed establishment. Why, in spite of all this, did Trump's support endure? Why
did the American people not react as they once would have? Why do these accusations not have the
bite they once did?
Answer. We are another country now, an us-or-them country.
Middle America believes the establishment is not looking out for the nation but for retention
of its power. And in attacking Trump it is not upholding some objective moral standard but seeking
to destroy a leader who represents a grave threat to that power.
Trump's followers see an American Spring as crucial, and they are not going to let past boorish
behavior cause them to abandon the last best chance to preserve the country they grew up in.
These are the Middle American Radicals, the MARs of whom my late friend Sam Francis wrote.
They recoil from the future the elites have mapped out for them and, realizing the stakes, will
overlook the faults and failings of a candidate who holds out the real promise of avoiding that future.
They believe Trump alone will secure the borders and rid us of a trade regime that has led to
the loss of 70,000 factories and 5 million manufacturing jobs since NAFTA. They believe Trump is
the best hope for keeping us out of the wars the Beltway think tanks are already planning for the
sons of the "deplorables" to fight.
Moreover, they see the establishment as the quintessence of hypocrisy. Trump is instructed
to stop using such toxic phrases as "America First" and "Make America Great Again" by elites...
... ... ...
While a Trump victory would create the possibility of a coalition of conservatives, populists,
patriots and nationalists governing America, should he lose, America's future appears disunited and
grim.
But, would the followers of Donald Trump, whom Hillary Clinton has called "racist, sexist, homophobic,
xenophobic, Islamophobic … bigots," to the cheers of her media retainers, unite behind her should
she win?
No. Win or lose, as Sen. Edward Kennedy said at the Democratic Convention of 1980, "The work goes
on, the cause endures."
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book "The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon
Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority."
"... it's easy to imagine a President Trump refusing to heed our own highest court, which, as President Andrew Jackson observed, has no way, other than respect of institutions, to enforce its decisions. ..."
"... It's easy to carp like this but the sclerotic elite in charge of the country has failed to address demographic concerns, and has stamped out any politically incorrect thoughts as being signs of baseness. ..."
"... Now they are so upset that a challenger has arisen. It's unfortunate that this particular challenger has no background in government and will probably harm our economic growth with his lack of skill, but the elites will have to eat the cake they baked. ..."
"... Economists told us that free trade deals and open borders would make us prosperous and yet that hasn't happens. ..."
"... The technicians running trade policy, monetary policy and fiscal policy haven't held up their end of the bargain. ..."
"... Wealth and power has been redistributed upwards. ..."
"... The union movement has been destroyed in outright class war. ..."
"... The corporate media spread lies and distraction. It induces both apathy and a rat race/dog-eat-dog mentality. ..."
"... Consider how far we've moved right, so that Nixon e.g. would be considered hopelessly and radically leftist today. Given that, moving left should be one of the first things you consider. ..."
"... Yes, we've seen right wing policies killing jobs and steering wealth to the wealthy, and that's bad policy. But unfortunately it seems it's always possible to do *worse*. ..."
"... Trump's policies would double down on wealth transfer, while he spouts the typical RW mantra of "(my dopey policy which would destroy jobs) would be good for jobs." ..."
"... Economic growth fueled by foreign oil is nice while it lasts but what will happen to the country when the oil runs out or we are forced to fight a war that disrupts the supply? ..."
More Jobs, a Strong Economy, and a Threat to Institutions : ...Institutions are significant
to economists, who have come to see that countries become prosperous not because they have bounteous
natural resources or an educated population or the most advanced technology but because they have
good institutions. Crucially, formal structures are supported by informal, often unstated, social
agreements. A nation not only needs courts; its people need to believe that those courts can be
fair. ...
Over most of history, a small élite confiscated wealth from the poor. Subsistence farmers lived
under rules designed to tax them so that the rulers could live in palaces and pay for soldiers
to maintain their power. Every now and then, though, a system appeared in which leaders were forced
to accommodate the needs of at least some of their citizens. ... The societies with the most robust
systems for forcing the powerful to accommodate some of the needs of the powerless became wealthier
and more peaceful. ... Most nations without institutions to check the worst impulses of the rich
and powerful stay stuck in poverty and dysfunction. ...
This year's Presidential election has alarmed economists for several reasons. No economist,
save one , supports Donald J. Trump's stated economic plans, but an even larger concern is
that, were he elected, Trump would attack the very institutions that have provided our economic
stability. In his campaign, Trump has shown outright contempt for courts, free speech, international
treaties, and many other pillars of the American way of life. There is little reason to think
that, if granted the Presidency, Trump would soften his stand. ...
...it's easy to imagine a President Trump refusing to heed our own highest court, which, as
President Andrew Jackson observed, has no way, other than respect of institutions, to enforce
its decisions. No one knows what Trump would do as President, but, based on his statements on
the campaign trail, it's possible to imagine a nation where people have less confidence in the
courts, the military, and their rights to free speech and assembly. When this happens, history
tells us, people stop dreaming about what they could have if they invest in education, new businesses,
and new ideas. They focus, instead, on taking from others and holding tightly to what they've
already amassed. Those societies, without the institutions that protect us from our worst impulses,
become poorer, uglier, more violent. That is how nations fail.
It's easy to carp like this but the sclerotic elite in charge of the country has failed to address
demographic concerns, and has stamped out any politically incorrect thoughts as being signs of
baseness.
Now they are so upset that a challenger has arisen. It's unfortunate that this particular
challenger has no background in government and will probably harm our economic growth with his
lack of skill, but the elites will have to eat the cake they baked.
"No one knows what Trump would do as President, but, based on his statements on the campaign trail,
it's possible to imagine a nation where people have less confidence in the courts, the military,
and their rights to free speech and assembly. When this happens, history tells us, people stop
dreaming about what they could have if they invest in education, new businesses, and new ideas.
They focus, instead, on taking from others and holding tightly to what they've already amassed.
Those societies, without the institutions that protect us from our worst impulses, become poorer,
uglier, more violent. That is how nations fail."
This is all true but let's provide a little more context than the totebaggers' paint-by-numbers
narrative.
Economists told us that free trade deals and open borders would make us prosperous and
yet that hasn't happens.
The technicians running trade policy, monetary policy and fiscal policy haven't held up
their end of the bargain.
Wealth and power has been redistributed upwards.
The union movement has been destroyed in outright class war.
The corporate media spread lies and distraction. It induces both apathy and a rat race/dog-eat-dog
mentality.
The Democratic Party has been moved to right as the middle class has struggled.
And more and more people become susceptible to demagogues like Trump as Democrats try to play
both sides of the fence, instead of standing foresquarely behind the job class.
Let's hope we don't find out what Trump does if elected. My guess is that he'd delegate foreign
and domestic policy to Mike Pence as Trump himself would be free to pursue his own personal grudges
via whatever means are available.
Alex S -> Peter K.... , -1
As we can see here, through leftist glasses, the only possible remedy for solving a problem is
moving left.
Consider how far we've moved right, so that Nixon e.g. would be considered hopelessly and radically
leftist today.
Given that, moving left should be one of the first things you consider.
Consider how far we've moved right, so that Nixon e.g. would be considered hopelessly and radically
leftist today.
Given that, moving left should be one of the first things you consider.
Yes, we've seen right wing policies killing jobs and steering wealth to the wealthy, and that's
bad policy. But unfortunately it seems it's always possible to do *worse*.
Trump's policies would
double down on wealth transfer, while he spouts the typical RW mantra of "(my dopey policy which
would destroy jobs) would be good for jobs."
Tim Harford made a good case for trust accounting
for 99% of the difference in per capita GNP between the US and Somalia.
""If you take a broad enough definition of trust, then it would explain basically all the difference
between the per capita income of the United States and Somalia," ventures Steve Knack, a senior
economist at the World Bank who has been studying the economics of trust for over a decade. That
suggests that trust is worth $12.4 trillion dollars a year to the U.S., which, in case you are
wondering, is 99.5% of this country's income (2006 figures). If you make $40,000 a year, then
$200 is down to hard work and $39,800 is down to trust.
How could that be? Trust operates in all sorts of ways, from saving money that would have to
be spent on security to improving the functioning of the political system. But above all, trust
enables people to do business with each other. Doing business is what creates wealth." goo.gl/t3OqHc
Presidents and the US Economy: An Econometric Exploration
By Alan S. Blinder and Mark W. Watson
Abstract
The US economy has performed better when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather
than a Republican, almost regardless of how one measures performance. For many measures, including
real GDP growth (our focus), the performance gap is large and significant. This paper asks why.
The answer is not found in technical time series matters nor in systematically more expansionary
monetary or fiscal policy under Democrats. Rather, it appears that the Democratic edge stems mainly
from more benign oil shocks, superior total factor productivity (TFP) performance, a more favorable
international environment, and perhaps more optimistic consumer expectations about the near-term
future.
Economic growth fueled by foreign oil is nice while it lasts but what will happen to the country
when the oil runs out or we are forced to fight a war that disrupts the supply?
I was in college in the mid 1970's and we asked this question a lot. Some think this worry has
gone away. I don't agree with those types. Which is why a green technology investment drive makes
a lot of sense for so many reasons.
Quote from the paper you linked to: "Arguably, oil shocks have more to do with US foreign policy
than with US economic policy-the two Gulf Wars being prominent examples. That said, several economists
have claimed that US monetary policy played an important role in bringing on the oil shocks. See,
for example, Barsky and Kilian (2002)."
Do We Really Know that Oil Caused the Great Stagflation? A Monetary Alternative
By Robert B. Barsky and Lutz Kilian
Abstract
This paper argues that major oil price increases were not nearly as essential a part of the
causal mechanism that generated the stagflation of the 1970s as is often thought. There is neither
a theoretical presumption that oil supply shocks are stagflationary nor robust empirical evidence
for this view. In contrast, we show that monetary expansions and contractions can generate stagflation
of realistic magnitude even in the absence of supply shocks. Furthermore, monetary fluctuations
help to explain the historical movements of the prices of oil and other commodities, including
the surge in the prices of industrial commodities that preceded the 1973/74 oil price increase.
Thus, they can account for the striking coincidence of major oil price increases and worsening
stagflation.
My quote dragged on too long. I should have ended it with the first sentence. Monetary policy
could play a role but foreign policy could still be the biggest factor.
"Former Fed Vice Chairman Alan Blinder said he's skeptical that fiscal policy will be loosened
a great deal if Clinton wins the election, as seems likely based on recent voter surveys.
"She is promising not to make budget deficits bigger by her programs," said Blinder, who is
now a professor at Princeton University. "Whatever fiscal stimulus there is ought to be small
enough for the Fed practically to ignore it."
PGL told us that Hillary's fiscal program would be YUGE.
Dean Baker in "Rigged" * reminds me of the lasting limits to growth that appear to follow the
sacrifice of growth, especially to the extent of allowing a recession, for the sake of budget
balancing during a time of surrounding economic weakness:
Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich
Richer
By Dean Baker
Introduction: Trading in Myths
In winter 2016, near the peak of Bernie Sanders' bid for the Democratic presidential nomination,
a new line became popular among the nation's policy elite: Bernie Sanders is the enemy of the
world's poor. Their argument was that Sanders, by pushing trade policies to help U.S. workers,
specifically manufacturing workers, risked undermining the well-being of the world's poor because
exporting manufactured goods to the United States and other wealthy countries is their path out
of poverty. The role model was China, which by exporting has largely eliminated extreme poverty
and drastically reduced poverty among its population. Sanders and his supporters would block the
rest of the developing world from following the same course.
This line, in its Sanders-bashing permutation, appeared early on in Vox, the millennial-oriented
media upstart, and was quickly picked up elsewhere (Beauchamp 2016). After all, it was pretty
irresistible. The ally of the downtrodden and enemy of the rich was pushing policies that would
condemn much of the world to poverty.
The story made a nice contribution to preserving the status quo, but it was less valuable if
you respect honesty in public debate.
The problem in the logic of this argument should be apparent to anyone who has taken an introductory
economics course. It assumes that the basic problem of manufacturing workers in the developing
world is the need for someone who will buy their stuff. If people in the United States don't buy
it, then the workers will be out on the street and growth in the developing world will grind to
a halt. In this story, the problem is that we don't have enough people in the world to buy stuff.
In other words, there is a shortage of demand. But is it really true that no one else in the world
would buy the stuff produced by manufacturing workers in the developing world if they couldn't
sell it to consumers in the United States? Suppose people in the developing world bought the stuff
they produced raising their living standards by raising their own consumption.
That is how the economics is supposed to work. In the standard theory, general shortages of
demand are not a problem. Economists have traditionally assumed that economies tended toward full
employment. The basic economic constraint was a lack of supply. The problem was that we couldn't
produce enough goods and services, not that we were producing too much and couldn't find anyone
to buy them. In fact, this is why all the standard models used to analyze trade agreements like
the Trans-Pacific Partnership assume trade doesn't affect total employment. Economies adjust so
that shortages of demand are not a problem.
In this standard story (and the Sanders critics are people who care about textbook economics),
capital flows from slow-growing rich countries, where it is relatively plentiful and so gets a
low rate of return, to fast-growing poor countries, where it is scarce and gets a high rate of
return....
It is yuuuuge - and no I did not say anything of the sort. Rather I noted it would be less than
1% of GDP. This is what I get for trying to get the facts right. It gets too complicated for you
even when we simplify things so you get angry and start screaming "liar". Grow up.
Per capta GDP grew from $51,100 to $51,400 between July 1 2015 and July 1 2016. This 0.6% growth
does not seem to me to be a statistic supporting claims of improving employment and improving
wage growth.
Dean has suggested in one of his commentaries that wage growth may be an artifact of a decline
in the quality of health insurance coverage. Wage growth is not figured net of increased outlays
for deductibles and copays related to changes in health insurance. PPACA discourages low deductible
and low copay health plans by placing a "Cadillac tax" on them, or at least threatening to do
so. The consequent rise in wage workers' outlays for copays and deductibles are not captured in
the statistics that claim to measure wage gains. This results in an income transfer from the well
to the sick, but can produce statistics that can be interpreted in politically convenient ways
by those so inclined
I get why the plans are taxed. I don't believe that the results of that policy have been beneficial
for the bulk of the population. Most of the good done by PPACA was done by the expansion of Medicaid
eligibility. I believe that requiring the working poor people to settle for high deductible high
copay policies has had the practical effect of requiring them to choose between adequate medical
and further impoverishment. I do not believe that the PPACA could not have been financed in a
way less injurious to the working poor. As the insurers have been unable to make money in this
deal, the hospital operators seem to have been the only winners in that their bad debt problems
have been ameliorated.
"people stop dreaming about what they could have if they invest in education, new businesses,
and new ideas"
And this is entirely rational, as in the situation described, the fruits of their efforts will
likely be siphoned from their pockets by the elites and generally rent-seekers with higher social
standing and leverage, or at best their efforts will amount to too little to be worth the risk
(including the risk of wasting one's time i.e. opportunity cost). It also becomes correspondingly
harder to convince and motivate others to join or fund any worthwhile efforts. What also happens
(and has happened in "communism") is that people take their interests private, i.e. hidden from
the view of those who would usurp or derail them.
"Those who witness extreme social collapse at first hand seldom describe any deep revelation about
the truths of human existence. What they do mention, if asked, is their surprise at how easy it
is to die.
The pattern of ordinary life, in which so much stays the same from one day to the next, disguises
the fragility of its fabric. How many of our activities are made possible by the impression of
stability that pattern gives? So long as it repeats, or varies steadily enough, we are able to
plan for tomorrow as if all the things we rely on and don't think about too carefully will still
be there. When the pattern is broken, by civil war or natural disaster or the smaller-scale tragedies
that tear at its fabric, many of those activities become impossible or meaningless, while simply
meeting needs we once took for granted may occupy much of our lives.
What war correspondents and relief workers report is not only the fragility of the fabric,
but the speed with which it can unravel. As we write this, no one can say with certainty where
the unraveling of the financial and commercial fabric of our economies will end. Meanwhile, beyond
the cities, unchecked industrial exploitation frays the material basis of life in many parts of
the world, and pulls at the ecological systems which sustain it.
Precarious as this moment may be, however, an awareness of the fragility of what we call civilisation
is nothing new.
'Few men realise,' wrote Joseph Conrad in 1896, 'that their life, the very essence of their
character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in
the safety of their surroundings.' Conrad's writings exposed the civilisation exported by European
imperialists to be little more than a comforting illusion, not only in the dark, unconquerable
heart of Africa, but in the whited sepulchres of their capital cities. The inhabitants of that
civilisation believed 'blindly in the irresistible force of its institutions and its morals, in
the power of its police and of its opinion,' but their confidence could be maintained only by
the seeming solidity of the crowd of like-minded believers surrounding them. Outside the walls,
the wild remained as close to the surface as blood under skin, though the city-dweller was no
longer equipped to face it directly.
Bertrand Russell caught this vein in Conrad's worldview, suggesting that the novelist 'thought
of civilised and morally tolerable human life as a dangerous walk on a thin crust of barely cooled
lava which at any moment might break and let the unwary sink into fiery depths.' What both Russell
and Conrad were getting at was a simple fact which any historian could confirm: human civilisation
is an intensely fragile construction. It is built on little more than belief: belief in the rightness
of its values; belief in the strength of its system of law and order; belief in its currency;
above all, perhaps, belief in its future.
Once that belief begins to crumble, the collapse of a civilisation may become unstoppable.
That civilisations fall, sooner or later, is as much a law of history as gravity is a law of physics.
What remains after the fall is a wild mixture of cultural debris, confused and angry people whose
certainties have betrayed them, and those forces which were always there, deeper than the foundations
of the city walls: the desire to survive and the desire for meaning."
Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich
Richer By Dean Baker
Introduction: Trading in Myths
In winter 2016, near the peak of Bernie Sanders' bid for the Democratic presidential nomination,
a new line became popular among the nation's policy elite: Bernie Sanders is the enemy of the
world's poor. Their argument was that Sanders, by pushing trade policies to help U.S. workers,
specifically manufacturing workers, risked undermining the well-being of the world's poor because
exporting manufactured goods to the United States and other wealthy countries is their path out
of poverty. The role model was China, which by exporting has largely eliminated extreme poverty
and drastically reduced poverty among its population. Sanders and his supporters would block the
rest of the developing world from following the same course.
This line, in its Sanders-bashing permutation, appeared early on in Vox, the millennial-oriented
media upstart, and was quickly picked up elsewhere (Beauchamp 2016). After all, it was pretty
irresistible. The ally of the downtrodden and enemy of the rich was pushing policies that would
condemn much of the world to poverty.
The story made a nice contribution to preserving the status quo, but it was less valuable if
you respect honesty in public debate.
The problem in the logic of this argument should be apparent to anyone who has taken an introductory
economics course. It assumes that the basic problem of manufacturing workers in the developing
world is the need for someone who will buy their stuff. If people in the United States don't buy
it, then the workers will be out on the street and growth in the developing world will grind to
a halt. In this story, the problem is that we don't have enough people in the world to buy stuff.
In other words, there is a shortage of demand. But is it really true that no one else in the world
would buy the stuff produced by manufacturing workers in the developing world if they couldn't
sell it to consumers in the United States? Suppose people in the developing world bought the stuff
they produced raising their living standards by raising their own consumption.
That is how the economics is supposed to work. In the standard theory, general shortages of
demand are not a problem. Economists have traditionally assumed that economies tended toward full
employment. The basic economic constraint was a lack of supply. The problem was that we couldn't
produce enough goods and services, not that we were producing too much and couldn't find anyone
to buy them. In fact, this is why all the standard models used to analyze trade agreements like
the Trans-Pacific Partnership assume trade doesn't affect total employment. Economies adjust so
that shortages of demand are not a problem.
In this standard story (and the Sanders critics are people who care about textbook economics),
capital flows from slow-growing rich countries, where it is relatively plentiful and so gets a
low rate of return, to fast-growing poor countries, where it is scarce and gets a high rate of
return....
More Jobs, a Strong Economy, and a Threat to Institutions : ...Institutions are significant
to economists, who have come to see that countries become prosperous not because they have bounteous
natural resources or an educated population or the most advanced technology but because they have
good institutions. Crucially, formal structures are supported by informal, often unstated, social
agreements. A nation not only needs courts; its people need to believe that those courts can be
fair. ...
Over most of history, a small élite confiscated wealth from the poor. Subsistence farmers lived
under rules designed to tax them so that the rulers could live in palaces and pay for soldiers
to maintain their power. Every now and then, though, a system appeared in which leaders were forced
to accommodate the needs of at least some of their citizens. ... The societies with the most robust
systems for forcing the powerful to accommodate some of the needs of the powerless became wealthier
and more peaceful. ... Most nations without institutions to check the worst impulses of the rich
and powerful stay stuck in poverty and dysfunction. ...
This year's Presidential election has alarmed economists for several reasons. No economist,
save one , supports Donald J. Trump's stated economic plans, but an even larger concern is
that, were he elected, Trump would attack the very institutions that have provided our economic
stability. In his campaign, Trump has shown outright contempt for courts, free speech, international
treaties, and many other pillars of the American way of life. There is little reason to think
that, if granted the Presidency, Trump would soften his stand. ...
...it's easy to imagine a President Trump refusing to heed our own highest court, which, as
President Andrew Jackson observed, has no way, other than respect of institutions, to enforce
its decisions. No one knows what Trump would do as President, but, based on his statements on
the campaign trail, it's possible to imagine a nation where people have less confidence in the
courts, the military, and their rights to free speech and assembly. When this happens, history
tells us, people stop dreaming about what they could have if they invest in education, new businesses,
and new ideas. They focus, instead, on taking from others and holding tightly to what they've
already amassed. Those societies, without the institutions that protect us from our worst impulses,
become poorer, uglier, more violent. That is how nations fail.
It's easy to carp like this but the sclerotic elite in charge of the country has failed to address
demographic concerns, and has stamped out any politically incorrect thoughts as being signs of
baseness. Now they are so upset that a challenger has arisen. It's unfortunate that this particular
challenger has no background in government and will probably harm our economic growth with his
lack of skill, but the elites will have to eat the cake they baked.
"No one knows what Trump would do as President, but, based on his statements on the campaign trail,
it's possible to imagine a nation where people have less confidence in the courts, the military,
and their rights to free speech and assembly. When this happens, history tells us, people stop
dreaming about what they could have if they invest in education, new businesses, and new ideas.
They focus, instead, on taking from others and holding tightly to what they've already amassed.
Those societies, without the institutions that protect us from our worst impulses, become poorer,
uglier, more violent. That is how nations fail."
This is all true but let's provide a little more context than the totebaggers' paint-by-numbers
narrative.
Economists told us that free trade deals and open borders would make us prosperous and
yet that hasn't happens.
The technicians running trade policy, monetary policy and fiscal policy haven't held up
their end of the bargain.
Wealth and power has been redistributed upwards.
The union movement has been destroyed in outright class war.
The corporate media spread lies and distraction. It induces both apathy and a rat race/dog-eat-dog
mentality.
The Democratic Party has been moved to right as the middle class has struggled.
And more and more people become susceptible to demagogues like Trump as Democrats try to play
both sides of the fence, instead of standing foresquarely behind the job class.
Let's hope we don't find out what Trump does if elected. My guess is that he'd delegate foreign
and domestic policy to Mike Pence as Trump himself would be free to pursue his own personal grudges
via whatever means are available.
As Bernie Sanders's campaign demonstrated, there is still hope. In fact hope is growing.
Lucky for us Sanders campaigned hard for Hillary, knowing what the stakes are.
Given the way people like PGL treated Sanders during the campaign and given what Wikileaks
showed, I doubt the reverse would have been true had Sanders won the primary.
The reverse would have been true, because we Democrats would have voted party above all else and
especially in this election year. Remember "party" the thing that Bernie supporters and Bernie
himself denigrated? I believe the term
"elites" was used more than once to describe the party faithful.
Alex S -> Peter K.... , -1
As we can see here, through leftist glasses, the only possible remedy for solving a problem is
moving left.
Consider how far we've moved right, so that Nixon e.g. would be considered hopelessly and radically
leftist today.
Given that, moving left should be one of the first things you consider.
Does the Right Hold the Economy Hostage to Advance Its Militarist Agenda?
That's one way to read Tyler Cowen's New York Times column * noting that wars have often been
associated with major economic advances which carries the headline "the lack of major wars may
be hurting economic growth." Tyler lays out his central argument:
"It may seem repugnant to find a positive side to war in this regard, but a look at American
history suggests we cannot dismiss the idea so easily. Fundamental innovations such as nuclear
power, the computer and the modern aircraft were all pushed along by an American government eager
to defeat the Axis powers or, later, to win the Cold War. The Internet was initially designed
to help this country withstand a nuclear exchange, and Silicon Valley had its origins with military
contracting, not today's entrepreneurial social media start-ups. The Soviet launch of the Sputnik
satellite spurred American interest in science and technology, to the benefit of later economic
growth."
This is all quite true, but a moment's reflection may give a bit different spin to the story.
There has always been substantial support among liberals for the sort of government sponsored
research that he describes here. The opposition has largely come from the right. However the right
has been willing to go along with such spending in the context of meeting national defense needs.
Its support made these accomplishments possible.
This brings up the suggestion Paul Krugman made a while back (jokingly) that maybe we need
to convince the public that we face a threat from an attack from Mars. Krugman suggested this
as a way to prompt traditional Keynesian stimulus, but perhaps we can also use the threat to promote
an ambitious public investment agenda to bring us the next major set of technological breakthroughs.
1. Baker's peaceful spending scenario is not likely because of human nature.
2. Even if Baker's scenario happened, a given dollar will be used more efficiently in a war.
If there is a threat of losing, you have an incentive to cut waste and spend on what produces
results.
3. The United States would not exist at all if we had not conquered the territory.
US Budgetary Costs of Wars through 2016: $4.79 Trillion and Counting
Summary of Costs of the US Wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan and Homeland Security
By Neta C. Crawford
Summary
Wars cost money before, during and after they occur - as governments prepare for, wage, and
recover from them by replacing equipment, caring for the wounded and repairing the infrastructure
destroyed in the fighting. Although it is rare to have a precise accounting of the costs of war
- especially of long wars - one can get a sense of the rough scale of the costs by surveying the
major categories of spending.
As of August 2016, the US has already appropriated, spent, or taken on obligations to spend
more than $3.6 trillion in current dollars on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria
and on Homeland Security (2001 through fiscal year 2016). To this total should be added the approximately
$65 billion in dedicated war spending the Department of Defense and State Department have requested
for the next fiscal year, 2017, along with an additional nearly $32 billion requested for the
Department of Homeland Security in 2017, and estimated spending on veterans in future years. When
those are included, the total US budgetary cost of the wars reaches $4.79 trillion.
But of course, a full accounting of any war's burdens cannot be placed in columns on a ledger....
Yes, we've seen right wing policies killing jobs and steering wealth to the wealthy, and that's
bad policy. But unfortunately it seems it's always possible to do *worse*. Trump's policies would
double down on wealth transfer, while he spouts the typical RW mantra of "(my dopey policy which
would destroy jobs) would be good for jobs." Tim Harford made a good case for trust accounting
for 99% of the difference in per capita GNP between the US and Somalia.
""If you take a broad enough definition of trust, then it would explain basically all the difference
between the per capita income of the United States and Somalia," ventures Steve Knack, a senior
economist at the World Bank who has been studying the economics of trust for over a decade. That
suggests that trust is worth $12.4 trillion dollars a year to the U.S., which, in case you are
wondering, is 99.5% of this country's income (2006 figures). If you make $40,000 a year, then
$200 is down to hard work and $39,800 is down to trust.
How could that be? Trust operates in all sorts of ways, from saving money that would have to
be spent on security to improving the functioning of the political system. But above all, trust
enables people to do business with each other. Doing business is what creates wealth." goo.gl/t3OqHc
Presidents and the US Economy: An Econometric Exploration
By Alan S. Blinder and Mark W. Watson
Abstract
The US economy has performed better when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather
than a Republican, almost regardless of how one measures performance. For many measures, including
real GDP growth (our focus), the performance gap is large and significant. This paper asks why.
The answer is not found in technical time series matters nor in systematically more expansionary
monetary or fiscal policy under Democrats. Rather, it appears that the Democratic edge stems mainly
from more benign oil shocks, superior total factor productivity (TFP) performance, a more favorable
international environment, and perhaps more optimistic consumer expectations about the near-term
future.
Economic growth fueled by foreign oil is nice while it lasts but what will happen to the country
when the oil runs out or we are forced to fight a war that disrupts the supply?
I was in college in the mid 1970's and we asked this question a lot. Some think this worry has
gone away. I don't agree with those types. Which is why a green technology investment drive makes
a lot of sense for so many reasons.
Economic growth fueled by foreign oil is nice while it lasts but what will happen to the country
when the oil runs out or we are forced to fight a war that disrupts the supply?
[ Having read and reread this question, I do not begin to understand what it means. There is
oil here, there is oil all about us, there is oil in Canada and Mexico and on and on, and the
supply of oil about us is not about to be disrupted by any conceivable war and an inconceivable
war is never going to be fought. ]
Economic growth fueled by foreign oil is nice while it lasts but what will happen to the country
when the oil runs out or we are forced to fight a war that disrupts the supply?
[ My guess is that this is a way of scarily pitching for fracking for oil right in my garden,
but I like my azealia bushes and mocking birds. ]
Quote from the paper you linked to: "Arguably, oil shocks have more to do with US foreign policy
than with US economic policy-the two Gulf Wars being prominent examples. That said, several economists
have claimed that US monetary policy played an important role in bringing on the oil shocks. See,
for example, Barsky and Kilian (2002)."
Do We Really Know that Oil Caused the Great Stagflation? A Monetary Alternative
By Robert B. Barsky and Lutz Kilian
Abstract
This paper argues that major oil price increases were not nearly as essential a part of the
causal mechanism that generated the stagflation of the 1970s as is often thought. There is neither
a theoretical presumption that oil supply shocks are stagflationary nor robust empirical evidence
for this view. In contrast, we show that monetary expansions and contractions can generate stagflation
of realistic magnitude even in the absence of supply shocks. Furthermore, monetary fluctuations
help to explain the historical movements of the prices of oil and other commodities, including
the surge in the prices of industrial commodities that preceded the 1973/74 oil price increase.
Thus, they can account for the striking coincidence of major oil price increases and worsening
stagflation.
My quote dragged on too long. I should have ended it with the first sentence. Monetary policy
could play a role but foreign policy could still be the biggest factor.
"Former Fed Vice Chairman Alan Blinder said he's skeptical that fiscal policy will be loosened
a great deal if Clinton wins the election, as seems likely based on recent voter surveys.
"She is promising not to make budget deficits bigger by her programs," said Blinder, who is
now a professor at Princeton University. "Whatever fiscal stimulus there is ought to be small
enough for the Fed practically to ignore it."
PGL told us that Hillary's fiscal program would be YUGE.
Dean Baker in "Rigged" * reminds me of the lasting limits to growth that appear to follow the
sacrifice of growth, especially to the extent of allowing a recession, for the sake of budget
balancing during a time of surrounding economic weakness:
Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich
Richer
By Dean Baker
Introduction: Trading in Myths
In winter 2016, near the peak of Bernie Sanders' bid for the Democratic presidential nomination,
a new line became popular among the nation's policy elite: Bernie Sanders is the enemy of the
world's poor. Their argument was that Sanders, by pushing trade policies to help U.S. workers,
specifically manufacturing workers, risked undermining the well-being of the world's poor because
exporting manufactured goods to the United States and other wealthy countries is their path out
of poverty. The role model was China, which by exporting has largely eliminated extreme poverty
and drastically reduced poverty among its population. Sanders and his supporters would block the
rest of the developing world from following the same course.
This line, in its Sanders-bashing permutation, appeared early on in Vox, the millennial-oriented
media upstart, and was quickly picked up elsewhere (Beauchamp 2016). After all, it was pretty
irresistible. The ally of the downtrodden and enemy of the rich was pushing policies that would
condemn much of the world to poverty.
The story made a nice contribution to preserving the status quo, but it was less valuable if
you respect honesty in public debate.
The problem in the logic of this argument should be apparent to anyone who has taken an introductory
economics course. It assumes that the basic problem of manufacturing workers in the developing
world is the need for someone who will buy their stuff. If people in the United States don't buy
it, then the workers will be out on the street and growth in the developing world will grind to
a halt. In this story, the problem is that we don't have enough people in the world to buy stuff.
In other words, there is a shortage of demand. But is it really true that no one else in the world
would buy the stuff produced by manufacturing workers in the developing world if they couldn't
sell it to consumers in the United States? Suppose people in the developing world bought the stuff
they produced raising their living standards by raising their own consumption.
That is how the economics is supposed to work. In the standard theory, general shortages of
demand are not a problem. Economists have traditionally assumed that economies tended toward full
employment. The basic economic constraint was a lack of supply. The problem was that we couldn't
produce enough goods and services, not that we were producing too much and couldn't find anyone
to buy them. In fact, this is why all the standard models used to analyze trade agreements like
the Trans-Pacific Partnership assume trade doesn't affect total employment. Economies adjust so
that shortages of demand are not a problem.
In this standard story (and the Sanders critics are people who care about textbook economics),
capital flows from slow-growing rich countries, where it is relatively plentiful and so gets a
low rate of return, to fast-growing poor countries, where it is scarce and gets a high rate of
return....
It is yuuuuge - and no I did not say anything of the sort. Rather I noted it would be less than
1% of GDP. This is what I get for trying to get the facts right. It gets too complicated for you
even when we simplify things so you get angry and start screaming "liar". Grow up.
Per capta GDP grew from $51,100 to $51,400 between July 1 2015 and July 1 2016. This 0.6% growth
does not seem to me to be a statistic supporting claims of improving employment and improving
wage growth.
Dean has suggested in one of his commentaries that wage growth may be an artifact of a decline
in the quality of health insurance coverage. Wage growth is not figured net of increased outlays
for deductibles and copays related to changes in health insurance. PPACA discourages low deductible
and low copay health plans by placing a "Cadillac tax" on them, or at least threatening to do
so. The consequent rise in wage workers' outlays for copays and deductibles are not captured in
the statistics that claim to measure wage gains. This results in an income transfer from the well
to the sick, but can produce statistics that can be interpreted in politically convenient ways
by those so inclined
I get why the plans are taxed. I don't believe that the results of that policy have been beneficial
for the bulk of the population. Most of the good done by PPACA was done by the expansion of Medicaid
eligibility. I believe that requiring the working poor people to settle for high deductible high
copay policies has had the practical effect of requiring them to choose between adequate medical
and further impoverishment. I do not believe that the PPACA could not have been financed in a
way less injurious to the working poor. As the insurers have been unable to make money in this
deal, the hospital operators seem to have been the only winners in that their bad debt problems
have been ameliorated.
"people stop dreaming about what they could have if they invest in education, new businesses,
and new ideas"
And this is entirely rational, as in the situation described, the fruits of their efforts will
likely be siphoned from their pockets by the elites and generally rent-seekers with higher social
standing and leverage, or at best their efforts will amount to too little to be worth the risk
(including the risk of wasting one's time i.e. opportunity cost). It also becomes correspondingly
harder to convince and motivate others to join or fund any worthwhile efforts. What also happens
(and has happened in "communism") is that people take their interests private, i.e. hidden from
the view of those who would usurp or derail them.
"Those who witness extreme social collapse at first hand seldom describe any deep revelation about
the truths of human existence. What they do mention, if asked, is their surprise at how easy it
is to die.
The pattern of ordinary life, in which so much stays the same from one day to the next, disguises
the fragility of its fabric. How many of our activities are made possible by the impression of
stability that pattern gives? So long as it repeats, or varies steadily enough, we are able to
plan for tomorrow as if all the things we rely on and don't think about too carefully will still
be there. When the pattern is broken, by civil war or natural disaster or the smaller-scale tragedies
that tear at its fabric, many of those activities become impossible or meaningless, while simply
meeting needs we once took for granted may occupy much of our lives.
What war correspondents and relief workers report is not only the fragility of the fabric,
but the speed with which it can unravel. As we write this, no one can say with certainty where
the unraveling of the financial and commercial fabric of our economies will end. Meanwhile, beyond
the cities, unchecked industrial exploitation frays the material basis of life in many parts of
the world, and pulls at the ecological systems which sustain it.
Precarious as this moment may be, however, an awareness of the fragility of what we call civilisation
is nothing new.
'Few men realise,' wrote Joseph Conrad in 1896, 'that their life, the very essence of their
character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in
the safety of their surroundings.' Conrad's writings exposed the civilisation exported by European
imperialists to be little more than a comforting illusion, not only in the dark, unconquerable
heart of Africa, but in the whited sepulchres of their capital cities. The inhabitants of that
civilisation believed 'blindly in the irresistible force of its institutions and its morals, in
the power of its police and of its opinion,' but their confidence could be maintained only by
the seeming solidity of the crowd of like-minded believers surrounding them. Outside the walls,
the wild remained as close to the surface as blood under skin, though the city-dweller was no
longer equipped to face it directly.
Bertrand Russell caught this vein in Conrad's worldview, suggesting that the novelist 'thought
of civilised and morally tolerable human life as a dangerous walk on a thin crust of barely cooled
lava which at any moment might break and let the unwary sink into fiery depths.' What both Russell
and Conrad were getting at was a simple fact which any historian could confirm: human civilisation
is an intensely fragile construction. It is built on little more than belief: belief in the rightness
of its values; belief in the strength of its system of law and order; belief in its currency;
above all, perhaps, belief in its future.
Once that belief begins to crumble, the collapse of a civilisation may become unstoppable.
That civilisations fall, sooner or later, is as much a law of history as gravity is a law of physics.
What remains after the fall is a wild mixture of cultural debris, confused and angry people whose
certainties have betrayed them, and those forces which were always there, deeper than the foundations
of the city walls: the desire to survive and the desire for meaning."
Newly released emails from WikiLeaks suggest that the Democratic National Committee colluded
with CNN in devising questions in April to be asked of then-Republican primary candidate Donald
Trump in an upcoming interview.
In an email to DNC colleagues on April 25 with the headline "Trump Questions for CNN," a DNC
official with the email username [email protected] asked for ideas for an interview to be conducted
by CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer.
"Wolf Blitzer is interviewing Trump on Tues ahead of his foreign policy address on Wed. ...
Please send me thoughts by 10:30 AM tomorrow."
The sender of the email would seem to be DNC Research Director Lauren Dillon, who was identified
in previous reports of DNC emails released by WikiLeaks in July.
Twitter has gone ballistic - anyone posting anything reasonably credible related to Clintons/Pedophilia/Lolita
Express/Epstein have their accounts deleted. 0HOUR1___ was blown away minutes after posting Bill
Clinton's Secret Service agent's connection to pedophilia/human trafficking. Any hashtags that associate
the Clintons with their circle of occult friends or pedophilia are removed from the 'Trending' statistics,
e.g., #spiritcooking
@0HOUR1__'s re-tweets can still be found (for now) using this Twitter
search .
And @0HOUR1__ has created yet another account and is posting again under
https://twitter.com/0hour . 2,200 followers
for an account 38 minutes old. His/her recently deleted account had 15k followers. I don't care if
this person is just making stuff up or not - CENSORSHIP = EVIL.
Whether the Clintons have real connections to Satanism/pedophilia or not can't be determined with
what little information has come out so far. What IS interesting is how aggressively Twitter and
Facebook are censoring rumors and innuendo based on a growing number of verifiable connections. I
have never seen them delete accounts as fast as they are now. So instead of allowing the conversations
to develop and the facts to unfold (or reason and critical thinking come into play), the message
Twitter and Facebook are sending to U.S. citizens is that you are not allowed to think for yourselves.
You must be protected from 'dangerous' thoughts. The MSM will decide if something is newsworthy or
not. You should go out and vote, but you are not allowed to base that decision on anything but MSM-approved
opinions. No 'little-people opinions' are welcome or permitted (unless they're anti-Trump).
And, oh yeah... the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Stazi warnings about Al Qaeda attacks
next week are rumors and innuendo based on 'secret information' they have that has constantly proven
to be wrong (unless DHS/FBI were the ones behind the fake attacks). So any re-reporting of DHS terrorizing
the population to 'keep them safe' is OK - you should heed their warnings. But any information/rumors
that the peons have that they could use to keep from electing a not-so-safe Satanist/pedophile/child-trafficker
should be censored. You must not have this opinion because it is not approved.
No Independent Thoughts - Obey - Believe - Consume - Conform - Vote
Here's something you probably never saw or heard about in the west. This is Putin answering questions
regarding ISIS from a US journalist at the Valdai International Discussion Club in late 2014.
from the U.S.. much love for you Putin. you really opened the eyes of many, even in our country.
this man is the definition of president and the u.s hasnt had one for over 40 years... smh.
As an American I can say that all of this is very confusing. However, one thing I believe is
true, Obama and Hillary are the worst thing to ever happen to my country !!!! Average Americans
don't want war with Russia. Why would we ?? The common people of both countries don't deserve
this !!!!
+Emanuil Penev Obama is a human puppet who chose to be controlled, He is therefore culpable
for his action of supporting Islamic terrorists. Right now Islamic invasion of western countries
is the real problem. The USA is now under the control of Obama the Muslim Trojan horse who wants
the world to be under the rule of an Islamic empire. USA's military action in the Middle East
is the result of USA being under occupation by a Muslim Trojan horse that wants to create tidal
waves of Muslim refugees harboring Muslim radicals and terrorists for invading Europe and the
USA. Watch video (copy and paste for search) *From Europe to America The Caliphate Muslim Trojan
Horse The USA is a victim, not a culprit, in the Muslim invasion of western counties. Obama and
his cohorts are the culprits.
basically Russia wants to be friends with America again and America ain't having it. they have
the capabilities to set up shop all around the world. it's like putting guard towers in everyone's
lawn just in case somebody wants commit crime. but you never see inside the towers or know who
is in them but they have giant guns mounted on them ready to kill. that's how Putin feels. I mean
I get it but every other country has nukes. get rid of the nukes and the missile defense will
go away. if the situation were reversed it would be out president voicing this frustration. but
Putin said it, America is a good example of success that's what Russia needs to do is be more
like America. they have been doing it in the last year or so. I think America will come around
and we will have good relations with Russia again. so wait... did we support isis as being generally
isis or support all Qaeda / Saddam's regime which lead to isis??
The US supported multiple Rebel Groups that fought against Syria, they armed them, gave them
money, and members of those groups split up and formed more Rebel groups or joined different ones.
ISIS (at the time, not as large) was supported by the rebel groups the US armed and they got weapons
and equipment from said Rebel Groups, even manpower as well.. That is how ISIS came to be the
threat it is today.
putin doesnt view the us as a threat to russia..?? he has said countless times that he considers
the us as a threat.. and that russian actions are a result of us aggression
US people are a threat for all the world because they are not interested in politics, they
don't want to know truth, they believe to their one-sided media and allow their government and
other warmongers in the US military industry to do whatever they wish all over the world. US politics
are dangerous and lead to a new big war where US territory won't stay away this time. It''s time
for Americans to understand it. If you allow your son to become a criminal, don't be surprised
that your house will be burned some day.
Obama and Clinton are progressive evil cunts funded by Soros. Their decision making is calculated
and they want these horrendous results because it weakens the US and benefits globalism. Putin
kicked the globalists the fuck out, and when Trump wins he will do the same! They are scared shitless.
TRUMP/PENCE 2016
With a stupid and warmongering opponent such as the USA, Russia do not need to construct a
narrative or think out some elaborate propaganda. Russia simply needs to speak the truth. And
this is why the US and its puppets hates Russia and Putin so much.
"... An awful lot of people out there think we live in a one-party state-that we're ruled by what is coming to be called the "Uniparty." ..."
"... There is a dawning realization, ever more widespread among ordinary Americans, that our national politics is not Left versus Right or Republican versus Democrat; it's we the people versus the politicians. ..."
"... Donald Trump is no nut. If he were a nut, he would not have amassed the fortune he has, nor nurtured the capable and affectionate family he has. ..."
"... To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss. ..."
"... Trump has all the right instincts. And he's had the guts and courage-and, just as important, the money -to do a thing that has badly needed doing for twenty years: to smash the power of the real nuts in the GOP Establishment. ..."
A couple of remarks in
Professor Susan
McWillams' recent Modern Age piece celebrating the 25th anniversary of Christopher Lasch's
1991 book
The True and Only Heaven , which analyzed the cult of progress in its American manifestation,
have stuck in my mind. Here's the first one:
McWilliams adds a footnote to that: The 19 percent figure is from 2012, she says. Then she tells
us that in 1964, 64 percent of Americans agreed with the same statement.
Wow. You have to think that those two numbers, from 64 percent down to 19 percent in two generations,
tell us something important and disturbing about our political life.
Second McWilliams quote:
In 2016 if you type the words "Democrats and Republicans" or "Republicans and Democrats" into
Google, the algorithms predict your next words will be "are the same".
I just tried this, and she's right. These guesses are of course based on the frequency with which
complete sentences show up all over the internet. An awful lot of people out there think we live
in a one-party state-that we're ruled by what is
coming to be called the "Uniparty."
There is a dawning realization, ever more widespread among ordinary Americans, that our national
politics is not Left versus Right or Republican versus Democrat; it's we the people
versus the politicians.
Which leads me to a different lady commentator: Peggy Noonan, in her October 20th Wall Street
Journal column.
The title of Peggy's piece was:
Imagine
a Sane Donald Trump . [
Alternate link ]Its gravamen:
Donald Trump has shown up the Republican Party Establishment as totally out of touch with their base,
which is good; but that he's bat-poop crazy, which is bad. If a sane Donald Trump had done
the good thing, the showing-up, we'd be on course to a major beneficial correction in our national
politics.
It's a good clever piece. A couple of months ago on Radio Derb I offered up one and a half cheers
for Peggy, who gets a lot right in spite of being a longtime Establishment Insider. So it
was here. Sample of what she got right last week:
Mr. Trump's great historical role was to reveal to the Republican Party what half of its
own base really thinks about the big issues. The party's leaders didn't know! They were shocked,
so much that they indulged in sheer denial and made believe it wasn't happening.
The party's leaders accept more or less open borders and like big trade deals. Half the base
does not! It is longtime GOP doctrine to cut entitlement spending. Half the base doesn't want
to, not right now! Republican leaders have what might be called assertive foreign-policy impulses.
When Mr. Trump insulted George W. Bush and nation-building and said he'd opposed the Iraq invasion,
the crowds, taking him at his word, cheered. He was, as they say, declaring that he didn't want
to invade the world and invite the world. Not only did half the base cheer him, at least half
the remaining half joined in when the primaries ended.
End of pause. OK, so Peggy got some things right there. She got a lot wrong, though
Start with the notion that Trump is crazy. He's a nut, she says, five times. His brain is "a TV
funhouse."
Well, Trump has some colorful quirks of personality, to be sure, as we all do. But he's no nut.
A nut can't be as successful in business as Trump has been.
I spent 32 years as an employee or contractor, mostly in private businesses but for two years
in a government department. Private businesses are intensely rational, as human affairs go-much more
rational than government departments. The price of irrationality in business is immediate and plainly
financial. Sanity-wise, Trump is a better bet than most people in high government positions.
Sure, politicians talk a good rational game. They present as sober and thoughtful on the Sunday
morning shows.
Look at the stuff they believe, though. Was it rational to respond to the collapse of the U.S.S.R.
by moving NATO right up to Russia's borders? Was it rational to expect that post-Saddam Iraq would
turn into a constitutional democracy? Was it rational to order insurance companies to sell healthcare
policies to people who are already sick? Was the Vietnam War a rational enterprise? Was it rational
to respond to the 9/11 attacks by massively increasing Muslim immigration?
Make your own list.
Donald Trump displays good healthy patriotic instincts. I'll take that, with the personality quirks
and all, over some earnest, careful, sober-sided guy whose head contains fantasies of putting the
world to rights, or flooding our country with unassimilable foreigners.
I'd add the point, made by many commentators, that belongs under the general heading: "You don't
have to be crazy to work here, but it helps." If Donald Trump was not so very different from run-of-the-mill
politicians-which I suspect is a big part of what Peggy means by calling him a nut-would he have
entered into the political adventure he's on?
Thor Heyerdahl sailed across the Pacific on a hand-built wooden raft to prove a point, which
is not the kind of thing your average ethnographer would do. Was he crazy? No, he wasn't. It was
only that some feature of his personality drove him to use that way to prove the point he
hoped to prove.
And then there is Peggy's assertion that the Republican Party's leaders didn't know that half
the party's base were at odds with them.
Did they really not? Didn't they get a clue when the GOP lost in 2012, mainly because millions
of Republican voters didn't turn out for Mitt Romney? Didn't they, come to think of it, get the glimmering
of a clue back in 1996, when Pat Buchanan won the New Hampshire primary?
Pat Buchanan is in fact a living counter-argument to Peggy's thesis-the "sane Donald Trump" that
she claims would win the hearts of GOP managers. Pat is Trump without the personality quirks. How
has the Republican Party treated him ?
Our own
Brad Griffin , here at VDARE.com on October 24th, offered a couple more "sane Donald Trumps":
Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee. How did they fare with the GOP Establishment?
Donald Trump is no nut. If he were a nut, he would not have amassed the fortune he
has, nor nurtured the capable and affectionate family he has. Probably he's less well-informed
about the world than the average pol. I doubt he could tell you what
the capital of Burkina Faso is. That's secondary, though. A President has people to look up that
stuff for him. The question that's been asked more than any other about Donald Trump is not, pace
Peggy Noonan, "Is he nuts?" but, "
Is he conservative? "
I'm sure he is. But my definition of "conservative" is temperamental, not political. My touchstone
here is the sketch of the conservative temperament given to us by the English political philosopher
Michael Oakeshott :
To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried
to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the
near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present
laughter to utopian bliss.
That fits Trump better than it fits any liberal you can think of-better also than many senior
Republicans.
For example, it was one of George W. Bush's senior associates-probably Karl Rove-who scoffed at opponents
of Bush's delusional foreign policy as "the reality-based community." It would be hard to think of
a more un -Oakeshottian turn of phrase.
Trump has all the right instincts. And he's had the guts and courage-and, just as important,
the money -to do a thing that has badly needed doing for twenty years: to smash the power
of the real nuts in the GOP Establishment.
I thank him for that, and look forward to his Presidency.
doublespeak (noun): deliberately ambiguous or obscure language designed to
mislead, for example the military expression collateral damage instead of civilian
deaths and injuries
"... I'll be interested to see how much Hillary tries to "work with Republicans" when it comes to foreign or domestic policy, as she's promising on the campaign trail. ..."
"... In a recent interview Biden was talking about how his "friends" in the Senate like McCain, Lindsy Graham, etc. - the sane ones who hate Trump - have to come out in support of the Republican plan to block Clinton from nominating a Supreme Court judge, because of if they don't, the Koch brothers will primary them. ..."
"... While I agree that the Republican party has been interested in whatever argument will win elections and benefit their donor class, doesn't the Democratic Party also have a donor class? Haven't Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton had a close relationship with some business interests? Did anyone go to jail after the asset bubble? Did welfare reform work or simply shift the problem out of view? How complicit are the Democrats in the great risk shift? ..."
"... I would think the scorched earth politics of the neoliberals required Democrats to shift to the right if they ever hoped to win an election, again. That is what it has looked like to me. The American equivalent of New Labor in Britain. So, we have a more moderate business-interest group of Democrats and a radical business-interest group of Republicans during the past 40 years. I think Kevin Phillips has made this argument. ..."
"... Our grand experimental shift back to classical theory involved supply side tax cuts, deregulation based on the magic of new finance theory, and monetarist pro-financial monetary policy. All of which gave us the masquerade of a great moderation that ended in the mother of all asset bubbles. While we shredded the safety net. ..."
"... Now the population is learning the arguments about free trade magically lifting all boats up into the capitalist paradise has blown up. We've shifted the risk onto the working population and they couldn't bear it. ..."
"... Economists lied to the American people about trade and continue to lie about the issue day in and day out. Brainwashing kids with a silly model called comparative advantage. ..."
This is all true but Krugman always fails to tell the other side of the story.
I'll be interested to see how much Hillary tries to "work with Republicans" when it comes
to foreign or domestic policy, as she's promising on the campaign trail.
The centrists always do this to push through centrist, neoliberal "solutions" which anger the
left.
In a recent interview Biden was talking about how his "friends" in the Senate like McCain,
Lindsy Graham, etc. - the sane ones who hate Trump - have to come out in support of the Republican
plan to block Clinton from nominating a Supreme Court judge, because of if they don't, the Koch
brothers will primary them.
Let's hope Hillary does something about campaign finance reform and Citizen United and takes
a harder line against obstructionist Republicans.
While I agree that the Republican party has been interested in whatever argument will win
elections and benefit their donor class, doesn't the Democratic Party also have a donor class?
Haven't Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton had a close relationship with some business
interests? Did anyone go to jail after the asset bubble? Did welfare reform work or simply shift
the problem out of view? How complicit are the Democrats in the great risk shift?
I would think the scorched earth politics of the neoliberals required Democrats to shift
to the right if they ever hoped to win an election, again. That is what it has looked like to
me. The American equivalent of New Labor in Britain. So, we have a more moderate business-interest
group of Democrats and a radical business-interest group of Republicans during the past 40 years.
I think Kevin Phillips has made this argument.
Our grand experimental shift back to classical theory involved supply side tax cuts, deregulation
based on the magic of new finance theory, and monetarist pro-financial monetary policy. All of
which gave us the masquerade of a great moderation that ended in the mother of all asset bubbles.
While we shredded the safety net.
Now the population is learning the arguments about free trade magically lifting all boats
up into the capitalist paradise has blown up. We've shifted the risk onto the working population
and they couldn't bear it.
Perhaps the less partisan take-way would be - is it possible for any political candidate to
get elected in this environment without bowing to the proper interests? How close did Bernie get?
And, how do we fix it without first admitting that the policies of both political parties have
not really addressed the social adjustments necessary to capture the benefits of globalization?
We need an evolution of both political parties - not just the Republicans. If we don't get it,
we can expect the Trump argument to take even deeper root.
Economists lied to the American people about trade and continue to lie about the issue day
in and day out. Brainwashing kids with a silly model called comparative advantage. East Asian
economists including Ha Joon Chang among others debunked comparative advantage and Ricardianism
long ago.
Manufacturing is everything. It is all that matters. We needed tariffs yesterday. Without them
the country is lost.
"... 46 percent of likely voters believe the news media is "the primary threat that might try to change the election results." ..."
"... Our news is all manipulation of facts, distortions, ommissions and outright lies. All set to serve an official narrative created by some cabal. ..."
These are some pretty damning results for the mainstream media. Not only does the American public
see the media as a bigger threat to election results than Russian hackers, it's not even close.
Voters fear the media far more than Russian hackers when it comes to tampering with election
results.
According to a
Suffolk
University/USA Today poll , 46 percent of likely voters believe the news media is "the primary
threat that might try to change the election results."
The national political establishment was the second most-suspected group at 21 percent, and
another 13 percent were undecided.
Foreign interests, including "Russian hackers," ranked fourth with 10 percent and "local political
bosses" came in last with 9 percent of likely voters as the main threat to truthful election results.
With all the controversy and scandal on Hillary emerging from Wikileaks and the new FBI investigation
of the Clinton Foundation this is what Fox News was focused on yesterday; the poll numbers and
defending Hillary and slamming Donald J. Trump.
Fuck the crooked MSM and I am officially vowing to become a dedicated RT viewer. Our news is
all manipulation of facts, distortions, ommissions and outright lies. All set to serve an
official narrative created by some cabal. Fuck them all!!!
Just look at this partial list of major Clinton donors below. Fuck Hillary she deserves to
be in jail not running for president!
The list of donors to the Clinton campaign includes many of the most powerful media institutions
in the country - among the donors:
Comcast (which owns NBC, and its cable sister channels, such
as MSNBC);
James Murdoch of News Corporation (owner of Fox News and its sister stations, among
many other media holdings);
Time Warner (CNN, HBO, scores of other channels);
Bloomberg;
Reuters;
Viacom;
Howard Stringer (of CBS News);
AOL (owner of Huffington Post);
Google;
Twitter;
The Washington
Post Company;
George Stephanopoulos (host of ABC News' flagship Sunday show);
Further to throwing Comey under the bus yesterday, Obama had this to say:
"I trust her," Obama said. "I know her. And I wouldn't be supporting her if I didn't have absolute
confidence in her integrity."
No amount of Bleach-bit can remove that yellow streak running down his back and straight through
the entirety of his 'legacy'. Not once did he come down on the side opposite entrenched power
– in fact, we can now add major 'obstruction of justice' to his prior litany of failures to prosecute
white collar criminals as the basis for its own section, splitting criminal activity into two
parts, one domestic, the other for a raft of war crimes.
"... If elected Hillary would have as much contempt for the electorate as she had for her staff. ..."
"... In an e-mail sent from Comcast after Clinton was interviewed by NBC's Matt Lauer, Lauer came under fire after questioning Hillary on the e-mails, according to the technical crew after the show Hillary proceeded to pick up a full glass of water and throw it at the face of her assistant and then the screaming started, she was in full meltdown, she came apart literally unglued, she is the most foul mouthed woman I've ever heard, and that voice at screech level…"If that f-ing bastard wins we all hang from nooses! Lauer's finished and if I lose its all on your heads for screwing this up". She screamed "she'd get that f-ing Lauer fired for this". ..."
"... Donna Brazile was singled out by Clinton.."I'm so sick of your face, you stare at the wall like a brain dead buffalo while letting that fucking Lauer get away with this. What are you good for really? Get the f–k to work janitoring this mess.. do I make myself clear". ..."
If elected Hillary would have as much contempt for the electorate as she had for her staff.
In
an e-mail sent from Comcast after Clinton was interviewed by NBC's Matt Lauer, Lauer came under
fire after questioning Hillary on the e-mails, according to the technical crew after the show
Hillary proceeded to pick up a full glass of water and throw it at the face of her assistant and
then the screaming started, she was in full meltdown, she came apart literally unglued, she is
the most foul mouthed woman I've ever heard, and that voice at screech level…"If that f-ing bastard
wins we all hang from nooses! Lauer's finished and if I lose its all on your heads for screwing
this up". She screamed "she'd get that f-ing Lauer fired for this".
Donna Brazile was singled out by Clinton.."I'm so sick of your face, you stare at the wall like
a brain dead buffalo while letting that fucking Lauer get away with this. What are you good for
really? Get the f–k to work janitoring this mess.. do I make myself clear". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NfFAaPZqs8
"... When Hillary was Secretary of State, she convinced Obama to authorize a covert operation in Libya (which included sending in special forces and arming terrorist groups) in preparation for a US/Nato aeronaval attack. ..."
"... Clinton's emails that subsequently came to light, prove what the real motive for war might be: blocking Gaddafi's plan to harness Libya's sovereign funds to establish independent financial organizations, located within the African Union and an African currency that could serve as an alternative to the dollar and the CFA franc. ..."
"... Immediately after razing the State of Libya, the US and Nato brought in the Gulf Monarchies and set about a covert operation to destroy the State of Syria by infiltrating it with special forces and terrorist groups that gave birth to Isis. ..."
"... "the best way to help Israel is to help the rebellion in Syria that has now lasted for more than a year" (i.e. from 2011). How? By mounting the case that the use of force is a sina qua non to make Basshar Assad fold, so as to endanger his life and that of his family". ..."
"... "wrecking Assad would not only be a huge advantage for the security of the State of Israel, but would also go a long way to reducing Israel's justifiable fear that it will lose its nuclear monopoly". ..."
From time to time, it is in the interests of the Western media and political establishment to
do a bit of "political cleansing".
Thus the West pulls out some skeleton from the closet. A British Parliamentary Committee has criticized
David Cameron for authorizing the use of force in Libya when he was Prime Minister in 2011. However
the basis for criticism was not the war of aggression per se (even though it erased from the map
a sovereign state) but rather the fact that war was entered into without an adequate "intelligence"
foundation and also because there was no plan for "reconstruction" [
1 ].
The same mistake was made by President Obama: thus he declared last April that Libya was his "biggest
regret", not because he used US-led Nato forces to reduce it to smithereens but because he had failed
to plan for "the day after". At the same time, Obama has confirmed his support for Hillary Clinton
who is now running for president. When Hillary was Secretary of State, she convinced Obama to authorize
a covert operation in Libya (which included sending in special forces and arming terrorist groups)
in preparation for a US/Nato aeronaval attack.
Clinton's emails that subsequently came to light, prove what the real motive for war might be:
blocking Gaddafi's plan to harness Libya's sovereign funds to establish independent financial organizations,
located within the African Union and an African currency that could serve as an alternative to the
dollar and the CFA franc.
Immediately after razing the State of Libya, the US and Nato brought in the Gulf Monarchies and
set about a covert operation to destroy the State of Syria by infiltrating it with special forces
and terrorist groups that gave birth to Isis.
An e mail from Clinton, one of the many the Department of State was compelled to de-classify following
the uproar triggered by the disclosures on Wikileaks, proves what one of the key objectives of the
operation still underway. In an e mail dated 31 December 2012, declassified as "case no: F – 2014
– 20439, Doc No. CO5794998", Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, wrote [
2 ]:
"It is Iran's strategic relationship with the Bashar Assad regime that allows Iran to threaten Israel's
security – not through a direct attack but through its allies in Lebanon such as the Hezbollah."
She then emphasizes that:
"the best way to help Israel is to help the rebellion in Syria that has now lasted for more than
a year" (i.e. from 2011). How? By mounting the case that the use of force is a sina qua non to make
Basshar Assad fold, so as to endanger his life and that of his family".
And Clinton concludes:
"wrecking Assad would not only be a huge advantage for the security of the State of Israel, but would
also go a long way to reducing Israel's justifiable fear that it will lose its nuclear monopoly".
So, the former Secretary of State admits what officially is not said. That Israel is the only
country in the Middle East to possess nuclear weapons [
3 ].
The support given by the Obama Administration to Israel over and above some disagreements (more
formal than substantive) is confirmed by the agreement signed on 14 September at Washington under
which the United States agrees to supply Israel over a ten year period with weapons of the latest
design for a value of 38 billion dollars through an annual financing of 3.3 billion dollars plus
half a million for "missile defense".
In the meantime, after the Russian intervention scuppered the plan to engage in war to demolish
Syria from within, the US obtains a "truce" (which it immediately violated), launching at the same
time a fresh attack in Libya, in the sheepskin of humanitarian operations that Italy participates
in with its "para-medics".
Meanwhile Israel, lurking in the background, strengthens its nuclear monopoly so precious to Clinton.
REPORTERS RSVP (28) 1. ABC – Liz Kreutz 2. AP – Julie Pace 3. AP - Ken Thomas 4. AP - Lisa Lerer 5. Bloomberg - Jennifer Epstein
6. Buzzfeed - Ruby Cramer 7. CBS – Steve Chagaris 8. CNBC - John Harwood 9. CNN - Dan Merica 10. Huffington Post - Amanda Terkel
11. LAT - Evan Handler 12. McClatchy - Anita Kumar 13. MSNBC - Alex Seitz-Wald 14. National Journal - Emily Schultheis 15. NBC
– Mark Murray 16. NPR - Mara Liassion 17. NPR – Tamara Keith 18. NYT - Amy Chozik 19. NYT - Maggie Haberman 20. Politico - Annie
Karni 21. Politico - Gabe Debenedetti 22. Politico - Glenn Thrush 23. Reuters - Amanda Becker 24. Washington Post - Anne Gearan
25. Washington Post – Phil Rucker 26. WSJ - Colleen McCain Nelson 27. WSJ - Laura Meckler 28. WSJ - Peter Nicholas
Pigeon •Nov 3, 2016 9:49 AM
It bothers me these stories are constantly prefaced with the idea that Wikileaks is saving Trump's bacon. Hillary wouldn't
even be close if the press weren't in the tank for her. How about Wikileaks evening the playing field with REAL STORIES AND
FACTS?
Speeches does not matter much, especially in case of Hillary, who will forget about her election
promises sooner then Obama and like Obama is able to turn around on a dime. But still there is some
truth to that. Looks like the elite is slip. Look into
NYPost -- it is strongly pro-Trump.
Since 1993, Post has been owned by ,
Rupert Murdoch News Corporation and its
successor, News Corp , which had
owned it previously from 1976 to 1988. In 1976,
Rupert Murdoch bought
Post for US$30.5 million
Not sure. And neither are u. As the proportion of red pillers increases, exponentially now perhaps,
TPTB may change tact. Donald gave a great speech a couple of weeks or so ago, and clearly is not
the kind of puppet who has been instilled into high political office thus far.
However, is it not possible that TPTB realise all of this populism and moreover the insightful
but significant minority is becoming an issue. And perhaps Trump can either placate or give them
a scapegoat.
It is also possible he's either an elaborately cloaked puppet or they think they can manipulate
him eventually or worse. He is good, or rather better than what has come before. But is he the
real deal? Possibly. Worth a try of course. He may save us. Economy will tank on the next POTUS.
She will undoubtedly make it worse. He may make it better. Ron Paul would have saved us if
we/they let him. That chance has gone. Am waiting for one of the new wave of populist anti-politicians
to really lift the curtain. Trump has threatened to do it. Perhaps even the good ones realize
that if they dish out red pills like smartest then it's game over...
"... The roster of retired military officers endorsing Hillary Clinton in September glittered with decoration and rank. One former general led the American surge in Anbar, one of the most violent provinces in Iraq. Another commanded American-led allied forces battling the Taliban in Afghanistan . Yet another trained the first Iraqis to combat Islamic insurgents in their own country. ..."
"... After 15 years at war, many who served in Iraq or Afghanistan are proud of their service but exhausted by its burdens. They distrust the political class that reshaped their lives and are frustrated by how little their fellow citizens seem to understand about their experience. ..."
"... "When we jump into wars without having a real plan, things like Vietnam and things like Iraq and Afghanistan happen," said William Hansen, a former Marine who served two National Guard tours in Iraq. "This is 16 years. This is longer than Vietnam." ..."
The roster of retired military officers endorsing
Hillary Clinton in September glittered with decoration and rank. One former general led the American
surge in Anbar, one of the most violent provinces in Iraq. Another commanded American-led allied
forces battling the Taliban in
Afghanistan . Yet another trained the first Iraqis to combat Islamic insurgents in their own
country.
But as Election Day approaches, many veterans are instead turning to
Donald
J. Trump , a businessman who avoided the Vietnam draft and has boasted of gathering foreign policy
wisdom by watching television shows.
Even as other voters abandon Mr. Trump, veterans remain among his most loyal supporters, an unlikely
connection forged by the widening gulf they feel from other Americans.
After 15 years at war, many who served in Iraq or Afghanistan are proud of their service but
exhausted by its burdens. They distrust the political class that reshaped their lives and are frustrated
by how little their fellow citizens seem to understand about their experience.
Perhaps most strikingly, they welcome Mr. Trump's blunt attacks on America's entanglements overseas.
"When we jump into wars without having a real plan, things like Vietnam and things like Iraq
and Afghanistan happen," said William Hansen, a former Marine who served two National Guard tours
in Iraq. "This is 16 years. This is longer than Vietnam."
In small military towns in California and North Carolina, veterans of all eras cheer Mr. Trump's
promises to fire officials at the
Department of Veterans Affairs . His attacks on political correctness evoke their frustrations
with tortured rules of engagement crafted to serve political, not military, ends. In Mr. Trump's
forceful assertion of strength, they find a balm for wounds that left them broken and torn.
"He calls it out," said Joshua Macias, a former Navy petty officer and fifth-generation veteran
who lives in the Tidewater region of Virginia, where he organized a "Veterans for Trump" group last
year. "We have intense emotion connected to these wars. The way it was politicized, the way they
changed the way we fight in a war setting - it's horrible how they did that."
"... Never before have so many media organizations, old and new, abandoned all pretense of fairness to take sides and try to pick a president. It is unbelievable. ..."
Trump called integrity in journalism an important issue, but then denounced the media as "dishonest"
and cited
a New York Post piece by Michael Goodwin.
"Another important issue for Americans his integrity in journalism," Trump said. "These people
are among the most dishonest people I have ever met, spoken to, done business with. These are
the most dishonest people. There has never been dishonesty – there has never been dishonesty like
we have seen in this election. There has never been anywhere near the media dishonesty like we
have seen in this election. Don't worry, they won't spin the cameras to show the massive crowds.
They won't do that.
The very talented Michael Goodwin of the New York Post just wrote today that 2016 presidential
race will mark the low watermark of journalism that is worthy, if you think of it, of the First
Amendment. Never before have so many media organizations, old and new, abandoned all pretense
of fairness to take sides and try to pick a president. It is unbelievable. Honestly. for
instance, a great story given out to the media they'll make it look as bad as possible – as bad
possible.
"... A survey covering 12 weeks of the campaign after the summer conventions found that 91 percent of Trump coverage on the three largest broadcast networks was "hostile." The Media Research Center also found that much of the focus was on Trump's personal life, while the networks downplayed investigations into Clinton's emails and her family foundation. ..."
"... Thanks to WikiLeaks, we have irrefutable evidence that none of this is based on journalism standards. Rather, it reflects the incestuous relationship between liberal members of elite media organizations and the Democratic Party. The alliance mocks any claims that the media are independent. ..."
"... John Podesta, Clinton's campaign chairman, was caught fielding flattering comments from reporters and columnists and guiding coverage. One Politico reporter, Glenn Thrush, sent Podesta a story to review before it was published, calling himself a "hack" and pleading, "Please don't share or tell anyone I did this." ..."
"... CNN proved that its nickname, the Clinton News Network, is deserved. Only after WikiLeaks showed that Democratic Party honcho Donna Brazile, a paid commentator, twice gave Clinton debate questions in advance did the network sever its ties with her. ..."
"... Tellingly, Clinton never rejected the insider advantage against rival Bernie Sanders, nor seemed surprised by it. And CNN still shows no curiosity about whether anyone else participated in the scam. ..."
"... When the New York Times crossed the Rubicon by allowing reporters to express their opinions in so-called news stories, the floodgates opened across the country as imitators followed suit. ..."
"... The decision by editor Dean Baquet to dismantle the standards of the Times to try to elect Clinton will not be easy to reverse after the campaign. The standards were developed over decades to build public trust, and removing them elevates the editor's bias to policy. ..."
In his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned America about the "unwarranted
influence" of a "military-industrial complex." Were he speaking today, Ike might be warning about
a media-political complex.
And for the same reason - the dangers to democracy and liberty of "the disastrous rise of misplaced
power."
However it ends, the 2016 presidential race will mark the low-water mark of journalism that is
worthy of the First Amendment. Never before have so many media organizations, old and new, abandoned
all pretense of fairness to take sides and try to pick a president.
Their cozy confederacy with the incumbent political faction is largely in opposition to public
will. Although polls show a tight race for the White House, studies find staggeringly lopsided coverage,
with Donald Trump getting far more negative coverage than Hillary Clinton.
A survey covering 12 weeks of the campaign after the summer conventions found that 91 percent
of Trump coverage on the three largest broadcast networks was "hostile." The Media Research Center
also found that much of the focus was on Trump's personal life, while the networks downplayed investigations
into Clinton's emails and her family foundation.
Thanks to WikiLeaks, we have irrefutable evidence that none of this is based on journalism
standards. Rather, it reflects the incestuous relationship between liberal members of elite media
organizations and the Democratic Party. The alliance mocks any claims that the media are independent.
John Podesta, Clinton's campaign chairman, was caught fielding flattering comments from reporters
and columnists and guiding coverage. One Politico reporter, Glenn Thrush, sent Podesta a story to
review before it was published, calling himself a "hack" and pleading, "Please don't share or tell
anyone I did this."
CNN proved that its nickname, the Clinton News Network, is deserved. Only after WikiLeaks
showed that Democratic Party honcho Donna Brazile, a paid commentator, twice gave Clinton debate
questions in advance did the network sever its ties with her.
Tellingly, Clinton never rejected the insider advantage against rival Bernie Sanders, nor
seemed surprised by it. And CNN still shows no curiosity about whether anyone else participated in
the scam.
It is hard to escape the conclusion that playing favorites, while pretending to be neutral, is
business-as-usual. The only difference is that WikiLeaks exposed the ugly truth. Much of the media
world has long tilted left, but this year, the bias became open and notorious war because the liberal
bell cow decided that Trump was not deserving of basic fairness.
When the New York Times crossed the Rubicon by allowing reporters to express their opinions
in so-called news stories, the floodgates opened across the country as imitators followed suit.
The decision by editor Dean Baquet to dismantle the standards of the Times to try to elect
Clinton will not be easy to reverse after the campaign. The standards were developed over decades
to build public trust, and removing them elevates the editor's bias to policy.
As such, the decision establishes a political litmus test for hiring, and new employees likely
will be expected to echo the party line in their "reporting." Let's see how many conservatives or
even moderates get promoted, and whether religiously observant employees feel discriminated against.
This "disastrous rise of misplaced power" is visible each and every day as the Times' front-page
headlines read like editorials in slamming Trump and boosting Clinton. Tuesday's was a classic, with
the top story accusing Trump of a "tax dodge" 30 years ago.
"... That is the takeaway from the Trump candidacy. They fired every gun they could muster at him, and he's still standing. Standing, and even winning, if some polls are to be believed. ..."
"... It's kind of disappointing that it took an outsized personality like Trump to bring straightforwardness into the mainstream. Ron Paul was straightforward, and did amazingly well, but he wasn't glitzy enough to avoid being marginalized. Bernie Sanders was straightforward, but he wasn't glamorous enough to avoid being steamrollered by a political machine. Nope, it took a guy with cutthroat business savvy and TV experience to let America in on the Big Secret. ..."
"... Any hour now the NYT, WaPo, LAT, and Atlantic are going to publish poll results showing that among their selected samples, the Mainstream Media are viewed as the same MiniTru banners-flying young crusaders as liberated the people of the United States in the 1970s from marriage, ethics, societal trust, and the horror of a life lived without STDs, divorce, multiracial offspring, and stoner grandparents. ..."
"... "Only one major newspaper has endorsed Donald Trump. Only one. And this is a man whom the American people might choose as their president. What better proof could we have of the stark difference between printed opinion and public opinion, between what Americans think and what our rulers want us to think? Donald Trump has ripped away whatever was left of the pretense of media objectivity." ..."
"... "Despite the concerted shrieking of virtually the entire American ruling class" ..."
"... Ironically, the same potential outcome the discredited mainstream media bloviates and fear mongers about. ..."
"... Race is big issue in the US, since it is a country that had a 90%+ majority of people of white European ancestry as recently as the 1950′s, with an accompanying European foundation and Constitution. ..."
"... Yeah, the stupidity of it all offends me more than the content sometimes. Fortunately things are improving and sites like Breitbart are promoting the message while dropping this stupidity. ..."
"... On Unz.com, let me suggest reading Sailer, Mercer, Reed, and Derbyshire. Ron Unz also co-founded the more highbrow AmConMag.com. ..."
The demonization campaign has backfired. By trying to
hang racial dissidents around Donald Trump's neck, the media have given American Renaissance
and other organizations far more publicity than ever before. At the same time,
constant shouts of "racist" and "bigot" don't seem to hurt Mr. Trump: instead they are wrecking
what is left of media credibility. The biggest irony, though, is that Donald Trump is probably not
one of us at all. But even
small deviations from the
cast-iron orthodoxy of race are enough to plunge our rulers into
dark fantasies about Donald Trump as a secret
David Duke fan.
These articles had a simpleminded purpose: discredit Mr. Trump by parading before the reader any
Nazi, Kluxer, or racially conscious white person who had anything nice to say about the candidate.
The implication was that if "racists" were going to vote for Donald Trump
he must be "racist," too.
It is true that Mr. Trump gave the media just enough of an excuse to pretend he really is a closet
"bigot" because he did not repudiate "racists" with the snorts of indignation respectability requires.
There was the famous exchange in February when a reporter pushed Mr. Trump to disavow an endorsement
from David Duke. As
The Hill reported it: " 'David Duke endorsed me? OK, alright. I disavow, OK?' Trump said, seeking
to quickly move on to another question."
Tapper: Will you unequivocally condemn David Duke and say that you don't want his vote or that
of other white supremacists in this election?
Donald Trump: Well just so you understand, I don't know anything about David Duke, OK? I don't
know anything about what you're even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists.
So, I don't know. I don't know, did he endorse me, or what's going on? Because, you know, I know
nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists.
There are far better explanations. First, Donald Trump is a pugnacious man. He doesn't like being
pushed around by anyone, especially not by
journalists who hate him . If Mr. Tapper had belligerently demanded that Mr. Trump agree that
the sky is blue, Mr. Trump would have bridled at that.
Second, Donald Trump probably doesn't know anything about David Duke or white supremacy.
I would be astonished if he has ever looked into the thinking of David Duke or any other alleged
"white supremacist." It is his feistiness and his ignorance of white advocacy that explain his answers,
not some carefully concealed racial consciousness.
The press has also pounced on Donald Trump's retweets of "racist" material, which is
supposed to be yet more proof that he is a secret supremacist. Business Insider, for example,
published this shocking story: " 5 times Donald
Trump has engaged with alt-right racists on Twitter ." Not one of these tweets is obviously
"racist," and it would be surprising if Mr. Trump or his
skeleton staff took the time to vet the sources of the thousands of tweets
@realDonaldTrump has sent
during the campaign.
Now the press is working on another smear-Trump angle. Recently, I have been contacted by journalists
from such places as Bloomberg News, Reuters, and the New York Times , who clearly want to
write that Donald Trump is
"mainstreaming hate," that he is responsible for a huge surge in the Alt-Right. They want to
know about all the people who have been flocking to
AmRen.com because of what Donald Trump says.
They want me to tell them about people who have been "emboldened" to "speak out against minorities"
because Donald Trump has led the way. They would love to find someone who now thinks he is free to
run down the street shouting "nigger!" because Mr. Trump wants to take a
hard look at
Muslim immigrants.
I have explained to them as patiently as I can that they have it the wrong way around. No one
comes looking for AmRen.com because Donald Trump
wants to build a wall. They come looking for us because the media have written about us in
their attempt to convince the world that Mr. Trump is a "racist." They come looking for us because
Mrs. Clinton kindly called attention to us by
complaining about the Alt-Right and her
"basket of deplorables." I also try to explain that if the media had not launched its malicious
campaign of trying to hold Donald Trump responsible for the views of certain people who support him,
few people would have heard of the Alt-Right. In their zeal to paint their enemy in the darkest colors,
they are promoting the Alt-Right, not Donald Trump.
I explain that racial dissent has been growing like never before, for reasons that have nothing
to do with the campaign. It is
Trayvon Martin , Michael
Brown ,
Black Lives Matter, and
black rioters who are sending hundreds of thousands of frustrated white people our way– not
Donald Trump. This will not change whether Mr. Trump wins or loses. The top landing pages on
AmRen.com are analyses of race and crime–something Mr. Trump never talks about.
I also explain to reporters that it is idiotic to think Mr. Trump has mainstreamed "hate," by
which they mean sensible observations about race. I ask them to name a single person who has been
"emboldened" to say something "racist" just because Donald Trump is the GOP nominee. Of course, they
can't. If anything, it is the opposite. Mr. Trump has been called
every name under the sun for the
mildest, most common-sense observations about Muslims and immigration. Anyone tempted to come
out of the closet is likely to hesitate more than ever. Things could change if Mr. Trump becomes
president, but the candidate himself has done very little to spread our ideas.
What Donald Trump has done is spark an
unprecedented interest in politics among disaffected young people who recognize that Mitt Romney
and John McCain are no different from Barack Obama when it comes to preserving whites, their society,
and their culture. I know a number of millennials who never bothered to vote before but who certainly
will in November. I know some who have made their first political contribution or who have spent
weekends volunteering for the Trump campaign.
I point out to reporters that this is what elections are supposed to be all about: giving the
voters real choices. I note that the Trump/Clinton contest will almost certainly produce a record
voter turnout for a modern election. Haven't our rulers been wringing their hands over a lack of
political engagement, especially among the young? Well, now they have engagement, alright, but they
don't like it. They don't like it because so many people are stumping for the candidate they love
to call a "
threat
to democracy ." Liberals are such transparent hypocrites. They claim to love democracy, but suddenly
start worrying about its health if the people refuse vote the way they tell them to.
The whole Trump-is-a-racist fracas shows just how painfully fragile orthodoxy has become. I may
be wrong, but I have no reason to think Donald Trump thinks at all as we do. He has never said or
done anything to suggest he is anything more than an ordinary American with normal instincts: He
doesn't want criminals sneaking across the border, he thinks sanctuary cities for illegals are crazy,
he doesn't see why we need more Muslims, and he is angry when immigrants go on welfare. Millions
of ordinary Americans clearly agree with him, and not because they are racially aware. It is
because they are decent, fair-minded people who also have a nagging sense that the country is changing
in unwelcome ways.
I am convinced that Mr. Trump does not have a sophisticated understanding of race. So far as I
can tell, he doesn't have a sophisticated understanding of much of anything. He has stumbled by instinct
onto a few sensible policies that white advocates have been promoting for a long time, but not because
he is one of us.
Maybe–just maybe–he will move in our direction. It's not impossible to imagine a President Trump
asking, in an offhand way, "What's wrong with white people wanting to
remain a majority in the United States?" Or he might casually note that you can't expect as
many blacks as Asians in AP classes because they don't have the
same levels of intelligence. But I can imagine the opposite, too: President Trump so bogged down
in Beltway baloney that he never even builds the wall.
There is one thing that Donald Trump has changed. He has proven that Republican bromides
about taxes and small government don't excite people. He has proven that there is tremendous anger
against political insiders of both parties. He has proven that Americans do want their country
to come first. They don't want it to try to save the world or to be a dumping ground for people who
have wrecked their own countries.
And even if he has not "mainstreamed racism," he has shown that if you have a backbone you can
withstand what is surely the most intense and concentrated program of hate ever directed at an American.
On October 11, Roger Cohen wrote in the
New York Times that Donald Trump is a "phony, liar, blowhard, cheat, bully, misogynist, demagogue,
predator, bigot, bore, egomaniac, racist, sexist, sociopath," and a "dictator-in-waiting with a brat's
temper and a prig's scowl." [
Trump_vs_deep_state After Trump ] This must be one of the most unhinged, hysterical outbursts in the
history of American political journalism. And it is unusual only for its wordiness, not its tone.
Don't the editors of the Times realize that this kind of frothing explains why more Americans
believe in
Bigfoot (29 percent) than
trust newspapers (20 percent)? Virtually the entire industry is so consumed with rage at Donald
Trump and contempt for his supporters that it cannot control itself. Open, petulant bias is driving
more and more Americans to social media and to sites like
AmRen.com for their news.
Despite the concerted shrieking of virtually the entire American ruling class, Donald Trump is
going to get close to half of the vote on November 8. Some 60 million people are going to vote for
a man for whom Roger Cohen [
Email him ] has emptied
his dictionary trying to insult. Only
one major
newspaper has endorsed Donald Trump. Only one . And this is a man whom the American people
might choose as their president. What better proof could we have of the stark difference between
printed opinion and public opinion, between what Americans think and what our rulers want us to think?
Donald Trump has ripped away whatever was left of the pretense of media objectivity.
Whether he wins or not, whether he is one of us or not, Donald Trump has laid bare the collusion
between big media and a political system in which both parties collaborate to run the country in
their interests and those of their big donors. Voters–finally–have a chance to vote against the entire
corrupt system. On November 8th they could bring it crashing down, but even if it still stands, it
is visibly weakened, badly discredited. These are the perfect conditions in which our ideas will
flourish as never before.
And even if he has not "mainstreamed racism," he has shown that if you have a backbone you
can withstand what is surely the most intense and concentrated program of hate ever directed
at an American.
That is the takeaway from the Trump candidacy. They fired every gun they could muster at
him, and he's still standing. Standing, and even winning, if some polls are to be believed.
(I suspect that this kind of determination resonates well with Mr. Taylor. Taylor is one of
the most inoffensive men to have ever put pen to paper, but his ideas and honor have been attacked
for years. Yet still he stands.)
It's kind of disappointing that it took an outsized personality like Trump to bring straightforwardness
into the mainstream. Ron Paul was straightforward, and did amazingly well, but he wasn't glitzy
enough to avoid being marginalized. Bernie Sanders was straightforward, but he wasn't glamorous
enough to avoid being steamrollered by a political machine. Nope, it took a guy with cutthroat
business savvy and TV experience to let America in on the Big Secret.
The Big Secret is:
1) For all the fait accompli chatter on TV, this is still America, and Americans still
get to vote.
2) America really is the land of the free and the home of the brave, and we defined those aspects
in the first two Amendments to the Constitution.
3) When you're free enough to be brave, some people are brave enough to be free.
The media make fun of conspiracy theories, but the more they lie, the more they are adding
fuel to fire to alternative media.
I still believe Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy.
But there have been so many lies about so many things that I wonder if future generations will
trust anything. And if I were a millennial today, I wouldn't trust that Lee Oswald killed Kennedy
either since the media are so surreal about everything. The 'new cold war' is the most ridiculous
thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8MsA9xZJok
Ah yes, the magic bullet.
And how's your Big Foot fantasy coming along?
• Replies:
@Olorin Interesting you mention we PNWers' favorite evolutionary atavism. (Well, second-favorite,
in Seattle and Portland.)
I read somewhere in these pages (Derb?) recently that more Americans now believe in Bigfoot
(29 percent) than believe the MSM are doing a good job (20 percent).
You know what this means.
Any hour now the NYT, WaPo, LAT, and Atlantic are going to publish poll results
showing that among their selected samples, the Mainstream Media are viewed as the same MiniTru
banners-flying young crusaders as liberated the people of the United States in the 1970s from
marriage, ethics, societal trust, and the horror of a life lived without STDs, divorce, multiracial
offspring, and stoner grandparents.
Trust in US Media at All-Time High!
Americans Praise NYT for Leading the Truth and Justice Vanguard against Fuhrer Trump and
Generalissimo Pepe!
Chocolate Rations Up 127%!
Only Hillary Can Supply HerTurn Singularity!
Coming Soon: Free Huma Abedin Action Figure!
Turn in Your Parents for Likes, Upthumbs, and Game Upgrades!
"…. it (the MSM) is visibly weakened, badly discredited."
This has to be one of the best articles on Unz.
"Only one major newspaper has endorsed Donald Trump. Only one. And this is a man whom
the American people might choose as their president. What better proof could we have of the
stark difference between printed opinion and public opinion, between what Americans think and
what our rulers want us to think? Donald Trump has ripped away whatever was left of the pretense
of media objectivity."
And this,
"Despite the concerted shrieking of virtually the entire American ruling class"
"...whether he is one of us or not, Donald Trump has laid bare the collusion between big media
and a political system in which both parties collaborate to run the country in their interests
and those of their big donors."
Momentarily accurate, but this isn't the way the hands of the clock point after that:
"These are the perfect conditions in which our ideas will flourish as never before."
Ironically, the same potential outcome the discredited mainstream media bloviates and fearmongers
about.
Ironically, the same potential outcome the discredited mainstream media bloviates and
fear mongers about.
Well, they could have tried having an open and frank discussion about RACE rather than just
using it as a propaganda tool.
Race is big issue in the US, since it is a country that had a 90%+ majority of people of
white European ancestry as recently as the 1950′s, with an accompanying European foundation and
Constitution. Now, as an open borders state, it is fast heading towards a country with a
non-European racial majority. with the Establishment pushing them towards multiculturalism, identity
politics and non-integration, probably to build a permanently fractured nation that they can easily
dominate with their highly effective private system of patronage.
• Replies:
@Fran Macadam It's not skin color or ethnicity that counts, it's character and beliefs. I've
no confidence in judging what policies or who to support by virtue of "race." I'd rather interact
with a community of another ethnicity, which has compatible beliefs, than one whose individual
physical characteristics most resemble mine, but reviles all I believe in. The fact is, there
is a lot of the latter.
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I'm one of those people who never paid any attention to the "alt-right" or any of the websites
associated with it until the obviously-biased msm made such a fuss.
"It is because they are decent, fair-minded people who also have a nagging sense that the country
is changing in unwelcome ways." I like to believe I belong to this group and will remain in it,
although with a somewhat harsher perspective than was previously the case. These sites have led
me to read books I'd never considered reading and at 70, I've read a great deal.
All things considered, I find the nazi stuff over the top, the racial slur stuff undignified,
but much of the message spot on: the country (and not just the USA) has changed in "unwelcome
ways", continues to do so based on observations from afar, and will continue to change for the
worse for as long as falsely conscious folks of European origin play into the hands of their openly
hostile enemies. I suggest visiting these sites to widen one's perspective if nothing else. One
can discover literature effectively censored by the thought police for many years now, literature
of far greater worth than much of what is promoted as "great" by others.
...literature of far greater worth than much of what is promoted as "great" by others.
For sure. The garbage gets front page, Nobel prizes and Pulitzer prizes while tons of good stuff
never sees the light of day or gets trashed. ,
@Lot Welcome aboard Montefrio! Please keep commenting. Since you are 70, I think this site's
mostly under-40 readers will appreciate your perspective. Keep in mind though half of us have
ADHD, so keep it brief too!
I find the nazi stuff over the top, the racial slur stuff undignified, but much of the message
spot on
Yeah, the stupidity of it all offends me more than the content sometimes. Fortunately things
are improving and sites like Breitbart are promoting the message while dropping this stupidity.
On Unz.com, let me suggest reading Sailer, Mercer, Reed, and Derbyshire. Ron Unz also co-founded
the more highbrow AmConMag.com.
AmConMag is nice too because you can email article links to potential converts without
having embarrassing anti-Semite crap all over the rest of the site that make you look like a nut.
,
@Schlock Trooper
All things considered, I find the nazi stuff over the top
"….he has shown that if you have a backbone you can withstand what is surely the most intense
and concentrated program of hate ever directed at an American."
It ain't just Trump. The continuous blizzard of hate is directed at me. Joe sixpack. Imperial
Washington is a steaming heap of excrement. Theft, lies, treason and murder are it's stock in
trade. Yet it is Trump who is vulgar and I who am deplorable. All I need to know about Trump is
he stands up to these dirtbags.
The continuous blizzard of hate is directed at me. Joe sixpack.
Actually it's also directed at anyone who smells a rat, and there are plenty of mangy rodents
in the steaming heaps of excrement in D.C., New Yawk and Chicago to name a few.And it appears
to be an inviolable rule that "Sixpackians" smell rats long before the masses of White Collar
Princes do.
Theft, lies, treason and murder are it's stock in trade.
And they always have been and shall continue, despite the silly mythology to the contrary. There's
a reason Patrick Henry boycotted the cornstitutional convention in Philly in 1787, giving as a
reason that he "smelt a rat." The rats have been spreading their droppings for centuries, and
it will take a true Hercules to clean up the Augean cesspool they've made of the world, and it
won't be done in one day, if ever.
I may be wrong, but I have no reason to think Donald Trump thinks at all as we do. He has
never said or done anything to suggest he is anything more than an ordinary American with normal
instincts: He doesn't want criminals sneaking across the border, he thinks sanctuary cities
for illegals are crazy, he doesn't see why we need more Muslims, and he is angry when immigrants
go on welfare. Millions of ordinary Americans clearly agree with him, and not because they
are racially aware. It is because they are decent, fair-minded people who also have a nagging
sense that the country is changing in unwelcome ways.
This seems to me to be a reasonable assessment of the man and his broad politics.
Maybe–just maybe–he will move in our direction. It's not impossible to imagine a President
Trump asking, in an offhand way, "What's wrong with white people wanting to remain a majority
in the United States?" Or he might casually note that you can't expect as many blacks as Asians
in AP classes because they don't have the same levels of intelligence. But I can imagine the
opposite, too: President Trump so bogged down in Beltway baloney that he never even builds
the wall.
This, too, seems to be a reasonable assessment of the prospects were Trump to win.
Though I have a general interest in the politics of identity and a more immediate interest
in the ongoing demonization and criminalisation of traditionalist dissent by the dominant left,
my primary interest in the US presidential election is in relation to foreign policy, and the
extent to which the next president is likely to continue the bipartisan interventionist idiocies
of the past 20 years. Clinton clearly will, having played a big part in driving said idiocies
in her career to date. Trump, though, is an unknown quantity. Much as Taylor sees the possibilities
in relation to his own area of particular interest, so it goes for my own area. It's possible
to imagine a President Trump presiding over a draw back from the aggressive confrontation of Russia
and China, and if not actually shutting down then at least deprioritising the various US "democracy
promotion" and other programs designed to try to spread US ideology around the world. But it's
also possible to imagine him going the other way, either leaving foreign policy to the US "experts"
while he concentrates on the pressing domestic issues he would undoubtedly have in dealing with
implacable sabotage of his time in office by the media, judicial and legislative branches of the
US regime, or worse, letting himself be convinced by the same interventionist lobbyists as filled
George W Bush's empty head after he took office.
Sill, for both of us an unknown with at least the possibility of sensible policy is clearly
better than the certainty of disaster the world would get with Clinton.
Trump is 'Hope an Change,' v 2.o. Or, if you like, Obama in 'white-face' to give the rubes
some entertainment while their world collapses around them and Wall Street pickpockets are nicking
what money they have left while watching the show.
The TBTF banks really run the show. Do you seriously think they'd let someone get into the
WH who might actually do their job of protecting the USA and not Wall Street casinos?
This is the only way to handle this distorted issue : DT and his folks must turn it around
on them, as they are the real racists, but nobody dares to say it out loud.
Detroit is a result of their racism.
Authenticjazzman, "Mensa" society member of forty-plus years.
I think the best response to the assertion that one is a racist is to reply: "And?", and to
make the case that being racist is not necessarily a bad thing, if all the things that antiracists
claim are racist are to be included in the definition.
Nope it won't work, because agreeing with them, would be construed as a "Confession" and would
simply turn potential allies against us.
I would, if I had a say in campaign policy , I would accuse them, the leftists, the democrats
right back of every fucking thing they have accused us of, and I would be right, as they in reality
are the fucking racists, mysogenists, even the homophobes,as they now claim that a gay person
cannot bonafibably ever be a Republican,which simply indicates that they have no respect for the
self-determination of gay folks.
The dumb-ass nice-guy Republicans have taken everything sitting down for the last half century
and we see the results, and I am convinced that most of the turn-coats have done so because they
are terrified of being hit with the "Racist" label.
We need more allies and not a tedious redefinition of various labels.
Authenticjazzman, "Mensa" society member of forty-plus years, and pro jazz performer. ,
@RadicalCenter You know that most people aren't ready for that, especially "swing voters".
If trump said that, he would surely lose. Counterproductive, if satisfying momentarily.
But trump should call Dems racist for treating black Americans like serfs, and he absolutely
should call out Clinton et al. on their fomenting racial hatred and division, and their apologism
for widespread racially-targeted violence and intimidation against white and Asian people.
in their current state, the MSM are just evangelists pushing their religions, the crazy unfounded
irrational beliefs that racism is evil and egalitarians are good. where are the independently
verifiable clinical tests? just like all the other myriad religions, creating gods in their own
image.
The attack on Iraq, the attack on Libya, the attack on Syria happened because the leader in each
of these countries was not a puppet of the West. The human rights record of a Saddam or a Gaddafi
was irrelevant. They did not obey orders and surrender control of their country.
The same fate awaited Slobodan Milosevic once he had refused to sign an "agreement" that demanded
the occupation of Serbia and its conversion to a market economy. His people were bombed, and he was
prosecuted in The Hague. Independence of this kind is intolerable.
As WikLeaks has revealed, it was only when the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in 2009 rejected
an oil pipeline, running through his country from Qatar to Europe, that he was attacked.
From that moment, the CIA planned to destroy the government of Syria with jihadist fanatics –
the same fanatics currently holding the people of Mosul and eastern Aleppo hostage.
Why is this not news? The former British Foreign Office official Carne Ross, who was responsible
for operating sanctions against Iraq, told me: "We would feed journalists factoids of sanitised intelligence,
or we would freeze them out. That is how it worked."
The West's medieval client, Saudi Arabia – to which the US and Britain sell billions of dollars'
worth of arms – is at present destroying Yemen, a country so poor that in the best of times, half
the children are malnourished.
Or the racism of the middle class. People are tribal and arguably it is baked into our DNA.
That doesn't excuse the mental laziness of trafficking in stereotypes but one could make a case
that racism is as much a matter of ignorance as of evil character.
Obama with his "bitter clingers" and HIllary with her "deplorables" are talking about people
about whom they probably know almost nothing.
One of the long ago arguments for school integration was that propinquity fosters mutual understanding.
This met with a lot of resistance. And for people like our Pres and would be Pres a broader view
of the electorate would be inconvenient.
Bill and Hillary Clinton failed to get required permits for a
rushed renovation of the house and grounds they recently bought next to
their original Westchester home, it was reported Friday.
Records show that the Clintons' contractors filled in an in-ground pool,
covering it with gravel, and extensively remodeled the interior of the
property - all without applying for permits and paying the required fees to
the town of New Castle.
Building Inspector William Maskiell inspected the Chappaqua property
after getting the tip about the pool work and then discovered the other
renovations that were underway.
Attached to the building inspector's letter was a document titled Clinton
Violation Inspection Report in which Maskiell said the contractor told him
the Clintons "were quite adamant about [the Thanksgiving deadline] and what
had started as a paint job turned into this," meaning the major renovation.
Crazy - there are more problems than just the lack of building permits:
The Clintons also have outstanding zoning and Building Department
problems at their residence next door at 15 Old House Lane,
They obtained variances in 2000 for a guard house on the property, for
a higher fence and for "lot coverage," or the amount of space buildings
take up on the property.
The variances must be renewed every five years - but the Clintons
never showed up before the Zoning Board of Appeals.
"Consequently, they are null and void. They should have come back in
2005, 2010 and 2015. So the variances have expired and they have to start
from scratch" and reapply, said the inspector.
The original home and a combination library and gym in an outbuilding
still have outstanding building permit issues as well, including a
sprinkler "sign off" by the town engineer and an electrical inspection in
the library/gym
I'm not seeing much basic competency here in executing home ownership
responsibilities. Next I'll hear Bill steals the neigbor's Sunday newspaper
off their porch.
"... Remember back when President Bill Clinton got into all that trouble molesting the young intern in his Oral Office? Remember the first thing the lying, conniving, dissembling commander-in-cheek did? ..."
"... In the latest batch of leaked emails, one top Democratic operative is still grappling with "WJC Issues." "How is what Bill Clinton did different from what Bill Cosby did?" Ron Klain asks in a list of questions worth posing to Mrs. Clinton. "You said every woman should be believed. Why not the women who accused him?" And, perhaps the best: "Will you apologize to the women who were wrongly smeared by your husband and his allies?" ..."
"... Never apologize. Never admit. And always keep lying. ..."
"... That is the very heart of the ethos of Hillary Clinton's campaign. Lie about everything. Lie all the time. ..."
"... Lie about emails. Lie about servers. Lie about national security. Lie about who knew what when. Lie about spilling classified secrets. Lie about dead soldiers. ..."
...l each batch of stolen emails is worse than the last.
Hillary Clinton is a liar. She has terrible instincts. She doesn't believe in anything. Her head
is broken. She doesn't know why she should be president. She is pathological. And she is psychotic.
Just ask everybody who works for her. Just ask campaign chairman John Podesta. Just ask the people
working the hardest to get her elected president.
I mean, in her most rabid streak of attacks on Donald Trump's alleged unfitness for office, Mrs.
Clinton doesn't call him "psychotic."
Psychotic! That is what her campaign chairman called her.
Remember back when President Bill Clinton got into all that trouble molesting the young intern
in his Oral Office? Remember the first thing the lying, conniving, dissembling commander-in-cheek
did?
Take a poll. And he found out that he could skate by on even this - even this! But first - the
poll told him - he had to stall for time. He had to lie about it for as long as he possibly could
before coming clean.
And that was exactly what he did. And he survived.
And good thing he survived so he could go on to haunt America another 15 years later.
In the latest batch of leaked emails, one top Democratic operative is still grappling with "WJC
Issues." "How is what Bill Clinton did different from what Bill Cosby did?" Ron Klain asks in a list of
questions worth posing to Mrs. Clinton. "You said every woman should be believed. Why not the women who accused him?" And, perhaps the best: "Will you apologize to the women who were wrongly smeared by your husband
and his allies?"
Answer: Not likely.
Never apologize. Never admit. And always keep lying.
That is the very heart of the ethos of Hillary Clinton's campaign. Lie about everything. Lie all
the time.
Lie about emails. Lie about servers. Lie about national security. Lie about who knew what when.
Lie about spilling classified secrets. Lie about dead soldiers.
Exhaust the people with lies. And then, very flippantly, after months or years of lying, say whatever
you have to say to make the press go away.
"I am sorry you were confused."
"I have already said I wish I had done it differently."
"What difference, at this point, does it make?"
It is all so shameless and dirty and befuddling that it would make Niccolo Machiavelli blush.
when bloomberg was having problems w the times he called Arthur schulzburger and asked
for coffee. He made the case that they were treating him like a billionaire dilettante instead
of Third term mayor. It changed the coverage moderately but also aired the issues in the newsroom
so people were more conscious of it. But Arthur is a pretty big wuss so he's not going to do
a lot more than that.
Hillary would have to be the one to call.
He also thinks the brown and women pundits can shame the times and others on social
media. So cultivating Joan Walsh, Yglesias, Allen, perry bacon, Greg Sargent , to
defend her is helpful. They can be emboldened. Fwiw - I pushed pir to do this a yr ago.
I'm guessing Harvard graduate Matt Yglesias is thrilled to find out that Clintonland views
his usefulness primary through the prism of his skin color, particularly given that his family
background not actually all that "brown."
"... Hillary has suggested on several occasions publicly that Trump cannot be trusted with the 'Nuclear Codes' because he is erratic and unstable. Now that most people agree that no matter where they came from the Wikileaks is telling the truth we can see how Hillary's own people are scared of her 'mood swings' and her health problems.... ..."
"... She is the one who should not have access to the Nuclear Codes much less be running for President ..."
"... Hillary's own campaign team is waging a war on women. ..."
"... The American media, nothing but despicable State Sycophant Propaganda Ministry runt traitors! ..."
"... Whether Russia is behind it or not is irrelevant. Its not like the USA is an innocent player in hacking other countries. What's of importance is the contents of the emails. Whoever hacked them - if any at all (they were most likely provided by disgruntled DNC insiders) did not alter them (as proven by security checks). HRC, the DNC and her campaign team are deeply corrupt, hence she is unqualified to lead the USA. ..."
"... So here's the REAL story. Amb. Stevens was sent to Benghazi post haste in order to retrieve US made Stinger missiles supplied to Ansar al Sharia without Congressional oversight or permission. Hillary brokered the deal through Stevens and a private arms dealer named Marc Turi. Then some of the shoulder fired missiles ended up in Afghanistan used against our own military. It was July 25th, 2012 when a Chinook helicopter was taken down by one of our own Stingers, but the idiot Taliban didn't arm the missile and the Chinook didn't explode, but had to land anyway. An ordnance team recovered the serial number off the missile which led back to a cache of Stingers being kept in Qatar by the CIA Obama and Hillary were now in full panic mode and Stevens was sent in to retrieve the rest of the Stingers. This was a "do-or-die" mission, which explains the stand down orders given to multiple commando teams. ..."
"... It was the State Dept, not the CIA that supplied them to our sworn enemies, because Petraeus wouldn't supply these deadly weapons due to their potential use on commercial aircraft. Then, Obama threw Gen. Petraeus under the bus after he refused to testify that he OK'd the BS talking points about a spontaneous uprising due to a Youtube video. ..."
"... Obama and Hillary committed treason...and THIS is what the investigation is all about, why she had a private server, (in order to delete the digital evidence), and why Obama, two weeks after the attack, told the UN that the attack was because of a Youtube video, even though everyone knew it was not. Further...the Taliban knew that this administration aided and abetted the enemy without Congressional approval when Boehner created the Select Cmte, and the Taliban began pushing the Obama Administration for the release of 5 Taliban Generals. Bowe Bergdahl was just a pawn...everyone KNEW he was a traitor. ..."
Hillary has suggested on several occasions publicly that Trump cannot be trusted with the 'Nuclear
Codes' because he is erratic and unstable. Now that most people agree that no matter where they came
from the Wikileaks is telling the truth we can see how Hillary's own people are scared of her 'mood
swings' and her health problems....
She is the one who should not have access to the Nuclear
Codes much less be running for President because she also is a Criminal and belongs in Federal
Prison.
This is coded speech microaggression. They are discriminating against her because she is a
woman, implying she is 'moody' you know 'hysterical'... hysterectomy... its sexist, its misogynist
its harassment, its abuse, its hate speech.
Come on Liberal media, where are you ... call it out... this is your bread and butter...
Hillary's own campaign team is waging a war on women.
They did it to Sarah Palin and Barbara Bachman... You know they'd do it if Trump said Hillary
was 'moody'.
The American media, nothing but despicable State Sycophant Propaganda Ministry runt traitors!
Whether Russia is behind it or not is irrelevant. Its not like the USA is an innocent player
in hacking other countries. What's of importance is the contents of the emails. Whoever hacked
them - if any at all (they were most likely provided by disgruntled DNC insiders) did not alter
them (as proven by security checks). HRC, the DNC and her campaign team are deeply corrupt, hence
she is unqualified to lead the USA.
Wikileaks needs to get this out (I have not verified the info sent to me last night):
So here's the REAL story. Amb. Stevens was sent to Benghazi post haste in order to retrieve
US made Stinger missiles supplied to Ansar al Sharia without Congressional oversight or permission.
Hillary brokered the deal through Stevens and a private arms dealer named Marc Turi. Then some
of the shoulder fired missiles ended up in Afghanistan used against our own military. It was July
25th, 2012 when a Chinook helicopter was taken down by one of our own Stingers, but the idiot
Taliban didn't arm the missile and the Chinook didn't explode, but had to land anyway. An ordnance
team recovered the serial number off the missile which led back to a cache of Stingers being kept
in Qatar by the CIA Obama and Hillary were now in full panic mode and Stevens was sent in to
retrieve the rest of the Stingers. This was a "do-or-die" mission, which explains the stand down
orders given to multiple commando teams.
It was the State Dept, not the CIA that supplied them to our sworn enemies, because Petraeus
wouldn't supply these deadly weapons due to their potential use on commercial aircraft. Then,
Obama threw Gen. Petraeus under the bus after he refused to testify that he OK'd the BS talking
points about a spontaneous uprising due to a Youtube video.
Obama and Hillary committed treason...and THIS is what the investigation is all about,
why she had a private server, (in order to delete the digital evidence), and why Obama, two weeks
after the attack, told the UN that the attack was because of a Youtube video, even though everyone
knew it was not. Further...the Taliban knew that this administration aided and abetted the enemy
without Congressional approval when Boehner created the Select Cmte, and the Taliban began pushing
the Obama Administration for the release of 5 Taliban Generals. Bowe Bergdahl was just a pawn...everyone
KNEW he was a traitor.
So we have a traitor as POTUS that is not only corrupt, but compromised...and a woman that
is a serial liar, perjured herself multiple times at the Hearing whom is running for POTUS. Only
the Dems, with their hands out, palms up, will support her. Perhaps this is why no military aircraft
was called in…because the administration knew our enemies had Stingers.
Tim Kaine: "I don't think we can dignify documents dumped by WikiLeaks and just assume that they're
all accurate and true,"
They were confirmed true when John Podesta's Twitter password was distributed in one of the
WikiLeaks email releases and his Twitter account was hijacked the same day by a troll saying,
"Trump 2016! Hi pol". Checkmate b!tch. see more DNC Russian Hacker Pepe
Regular Guy •
12 minutes ago The way they parse words, the Kaine statement still doesn't state the documents
are not accurate. He makes an editorial statement to mislead the listener into thinking there
is some reason to question the facts.
Sounds pretty much like poor temperament to me when you have mood problems. Can we please put
national security on hold for now, we have to check her mood ring. It is imperative for the best
outcome that we check her head space. WOW! That's a real dumb explanation. Maybe if we use the
word mood instead of temperament that will be better than telling people she has health problems
in her head.
The American journalist, Edward Bernays, is often described as the man who invented modern propaganda.
Trends
The nephew of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psycho-analysis, it was Bernays who coined the term
"public relations" as a euphemism for spin and its deceptions.
In 1929, he persuaded feminists to promote cigarettes for women by smoking in the New York Easter
Parade – behavior then considered outlandish. One feminist, Ruth Booth, declared, "Women! Light
another torch of freedom! Fight another sex taboo!"
Bernays' influence extended far beyond advertising. His greatest success was his role in convincing
the American public to join the slaughter of the First World War. The secret, he said, was "engineering
the consent" of people in order to "control and regiment [them] according to our will without
their knowing about it."
He described this as "the true ruling power in our society" and called it an "invisible
government."
Today, the invisible government has never been more powerful and less understood. In my career
as a journalist and film-maker, I have never known propaganda to insinuate our lives and as it does
now and to go unchallenged.
Imagine two cities.
Both are under siege by the forces of the government of that country. Both cities are occupied
by fanatics, who commit terrible atrocities, such as beheading people.
But there is a vital difference. In one siege, the government soldiers are described as liberators
by Western reporters embedded with them, who enthusiastically report their battles and air strikes.
There are front page pictures of these heroic soldiers giving a V-sign for victory. There is scant
mention of civilian casualties.
In the second city – in another country nearby – almost exactly the same is happening. Government
forces are laying siege to a city controlled by the same breed of fanatics.
The difference is that these fanatics are supported, supplied and armed by "us" – by the United
States and Britain. They even have a media center that is funded by Britain and America.
Another difference is that the government soldiers laying siege to this city are the bad guys,
condemned for assaulting and bombing the city – which is exactly what the good soldiers do in the
first city.
Confusing? Not really. Such is the basic double standard that is the essence of propaganda. I
am referring, of course, to the current siege of the city of Mosul by the government forces of Iraq,
who are backed by the United States and Britain and to the siege of Aleppo by the government forces
of Syria, backed by Russia. One is good; the other is bad.
What is seldom reported is that both cities would not be occupied by fanatics and ravaged by war
if Britain and the United States had not invaded Iraq in 2003. That criminal enterprise was launched
on lies strikingly similar to the propaganda that now distorts our understanding of the civil war
in Syria.
Without this drumbeat of propaganda dressed up as news, the monstrous ISIS and Al-Qaeda and al-Nusra
and the rest of the jihadist gang might not exist, and the people of Syria might not be fighting
for their lives today.
Some may remember in 2003 a succession of BBC reporters turning to the camera and telling us that
Blair was "vindicated" for what turned out to be the crime of the century. The US television
networks produced the same validation for George W. Bush. Fox News brought on Henry Kissinger to
effuse over Colin Powell's fabrications.
The same year, soon after the invasion, I filmed an interview in Washington with Charles Lewis,
the renowned American investigative journalist. I asked him, "What would have happened if the
freest media in the world had seriously challenged what turned out to be crude propaganda?"
He replied that if journalists had done their job, " there is a very, very good chance we would
not have gone to war in Iraq."
It was a shocking statement, and one supported by other famous journalists to whom I put the same
question - Dan Rather of CBS, David Rose of the Observer and journalists and producers in the BBC,
who wished to remain anonymous.
In other words, had journalists done their job, had they challenged and investigated the propaganda
instead of amplifying it, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children would be alive today,
and there would be no ISIS and no siege of Aleppo or Mosul.
There would have been no atrocity on the London Underground on 7th July 2005. There would have
been no flight of millions of refugees; there would be no miserable camps.
When the terrorist atrocity happened in Paris last November, President Francoise Hollande immediately
sent planes to bomb Syria – and more terrorism followed, predictably, the product of Hollande's bombast
about France being "at war" and "showing no mercy." That state violence and jihadist
violence feed off each other is the truth that no national leader has the courage to speak.
"When the truth is replaced by silence," said the Soviet dissident Yevtushenko, "the
silence is a lie."
The attack on Iraq, the attack on Libya, the attack on Syria happened because the leader in each
of these countries was not a puppet of the West. The human rights record of a Saddam or a Gaddafi
was irrelevant. They did not obey orders and surrender control of their country.
The same fate awaited Slobodan Milosevic once he had refused to sign an "agreement" that demanded
the occupation of Serbia and its conversion to a market economy. His people were bombed, and he was
prosecuted in The Hague. Independence of this kind is intolerable.
As WikiLeaks has revealed, it was only when the Syrian leader Bashar Assad in 2009 rejected an
oil pipeline, running through his country from Qatar to Europe, that he was attacked.
From that moment, the CIA planned to destroy the government of Syria with jihadist fanatics –
the same fanatics currently holding the people of Mosul and eastern Aleppo hostage.
Why is this not news? The former British Foreign Office official Carne Ross, who was responsible
for operating sanctions against Iraq, told me: "We would feed journalists factoids of sanitized
intelligence, or we would freeze them out. That is how it worked."
The West's medieval client, Saudi Arabia – to which the US and Britain sell billions of dollars'
worth of arms – is at present destroying Yemen, a country so poor that in the best of times, half
the children are malnourished.
Look on YouTube and you will see the kind of massive bombs – "our" bombs – that the Saudis
use against dirt-poor villages, and against weddings, and funerals.
The explosions look like small atomic bombs. The bomb aimers in Saudi Arabia work side-by-side
with British officers. This fact is not on the evening news.
Propaganda is most effective when our consent is engineered by those with a fine education – Oxford,
Cambridge, Harvard, Columbia - and with careers on the BBC, the Guardian, the New York Times, the
Washington Post.
These organizations are known as the liberal media. They present themselves as enlightened, progressive
tribunes of the moral zeitgeist. They are anti-racist, pro-feminist and pro-LGBT.
And they love war.
While they speak up for feminism, they support rapacious wars that deny the rights of countless
women, including the right to life.
In 2011, Libya, then a modern state, was destroyed on the pretext that Muammar Gaddafi was about
to commit genocide on his own people. That was the incessant news; and there was no evidence. It
was a lie.
In fact, Britain, Europe and the United States wanted what they like to call "regime change" in
Libya, the biggest oil producer in Africa. Gaddafi's influence in the continent and, above all, his
independence were intolerable.
So he was murdered with a knife in his rear by fanatics, backed by America, Britain and France.
Hillary Clinton cheered his gruesome death for the camera, declaring, "We came, we saw, he died!"
The destruction of Libya was a media triumph. As the war drums were beaten, Jonathan Freedland
wrote in the Guardian: "Though the risks are very real, the case for intervention remains strong."
Intervention - what a polite, benign, Guardian word, whose real meaning, for Libya, was death
and destruction.
According to its own records, NATO launched 9,700 "strike sorties" against Libya, of which
more than a third were aimed at civilian targets. They included missiles with uranium warheads. Look
at the photographs of the rubble of Misrata and Sirte, and the mass graves identified by the Red
Cross. The UNICEF report on the children killed says, "most [of them] under the age of ten."
As a direct consequence, Sirte became the capital of ISIS.
Ukraine is another media triumph. Respectable liberal newspapers such as the New York Times, the
Washington Post and the Guardian, and mainstream broadcasters such as the BBC, NBC, CBS, CNN have
played a critical role in conditioning their viewers to accept a new and dangerous cold war.
All have misrepresented events in Ukraine as a malign act by Russia when, in fact, the coup in
Ukraine in 2014 was the work of the United States, aided by Germany and NATO.
This inversion of reality is so pervasive that Washington's military intimidation of Russia is
not news; it is suppressed behind a smear and scare campaign of the kind I grew up with during the
first cold war. Once again, the 'Ruskies' are coming to get us, led by another Stalin, whom
The Economist depicts as the devil.
The suppression of the truth about Ukraine is one of the most complete news blackouts I can remember.
The fascists who engineered the coup in Kiev are the same breed that backed the Nazi invasion of
the Soviet Union in 1941. Of all the scares about the rise of fascist anti-Semitism in Europe, no
leader ever mentions the fascists in Ukraine – except Vladimir Putin, but he does not count.
Many in the Western media have worked hard to present the ethnic Russian-speaking population of
Ukraine as outsiders in their own country, as agents of Moscow, almost never as Ukrainians seeking
a federation within Ukraine and as Ukrainian citizens resisting a foreign-orchestrated coup against
their elected government.
There is almost the joie d'esprit of a class reunion of warmongers. The drum-beaters of the Washington
Post inciting war with Russia are the very same editorial writers who published the lie that Saddam
Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
To most of us, the American presidential campaign is a media freak show, in which Donald Trump
is the arch villain. But Trump is loathed by those with power in the United States for reasons that
have little to do with his obnoxious behavior and opinions. To the invisible government in Washington,
the unpredictable Trump is an obstacle to America's design for the 21st century.
This is to maintain the dominance of the United States and to subjugate Russia, and, if possible,
China.
To the militarists in Washington, the real problem with Trump is that, in his lucid moments, he
seems not to want a war with Russia; he wants to talk with the Russian president, not fight him;
he says he wants to talk with the president of China.
In the first debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump promised not to be the first to introduce nuclear
weapons into a conflict. He said, "I would certainly not do first strike. Once the nuclear alternative
happens, it's over." That was not news.
Did he really mean it? Who knows? He often contradicts himself. But what is clear is that Trump
is considered a serious threat to the status quo maintained by the vast national security machine
that runs the United States, regardless of who is in the White House.
The CIA wants him beaten. The Pentagon wants him beaten. The media wants him beaten. Even his
own party wants him beaten. He is a threat to the rulers of the world – unlike Clinton who has left
no doubt she is prepared to go to war with nuclear-armed Russia and China.
Clinton has the form, as she often boasts. Indeed, her record is proven. As a senator, she backed
the bloodbath in Iraq. When she ran against Obama in 2008, she threatened to "totally obliterate"
Iran. As Secretary of State, she colluded in the destruction of governments in Libya and Honduras
and set in train the baiting of China.
She has now pledged to support a no-fly zone in Syria - a direct provocation for war with Russia.
Clinton may well become the most dangerous president of the United States in my lifetime –a distinction
for which the competition is fierce.
Without a shred of evidence, she has accused Russia of supporting Trump and hacking her emails.
Released by WikiLeaks, these emails tell us that what Clinton says in private, in speeches to the
rich and powerful, is the opposite of what she says in public.
That is why silencing and threatening Julian Assange is so important. As the editor of WikiLeaks,
Assange knows the truth. And let me assure those who are concerned, he is well, and WikiLeaks is
operating on all cylinders.
Today, the greatest build-up of American-led forces since World War Two is under way – in the
Caucasus and Eastern Europe, on the border with Russia, and in Asia and the Pacific, where China
is the target.
Keep that in mind when the presidential election circus reaches its finale on November 8th, if
the winner is Clinton, a Greek chorus of witless commentators will celebrate her coronation as a
great step forward for women. None will mention Clinton's victims: the women of Syria, the women
of Iraq, the women of Libya. None will mention the civil defense drills being conducted in Russia.
None will recall Edward Bernays' "torches of freedom".
George Bush's press spokesman once called the media "complicit enablers." Coming from a
senior official in an administration whose lies, enabled by the media, caused such suffering, that
description is a warning from history.
In 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal prosecutor said of the German media: "Before every major aggression,
they initiated a press campaign calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people
psychologically for the attack. In the propaganda system, it was the daily press and the radio that
were the most important weapons."
"... These are accurate, statistically sound statements. But they are something else, too. Declarations that Trump is highly unlikely to win also serve as counters to the Republican nominee's warning that the "rigged" election could be " stolen from us ." ..."
Callum Borchers, author at the Washington Post blog The Fix, admits that the press is
declaring victory for Hillary Clinton - to discredit claims that the election is rigged.
Since the final presidential debate last week, many news outlets have been delivering an unvarnished
message to Donald Trump supporters: Your candidate is virtually certain to lose the election Nov.
8.
These are accurate, statistically sound statements. But they are something else, too. Declarations
that Trump is highly unlikely to win also serve as counters to the Republican nominee's warning that
the "rigged" election could be "
stolen from us ."
I thought I'd never say this, but Glenn Beck gave a very
thoughtful interview with Charley Rose last night. He
raised a lot of issues that the other Glenn (Glenn
Greenwald) has been raising--the moral bankruptcy of each
political party and the tendency of each to attack the
other for things that they themselves would deny, excuse,
and say that it doesn't
matter when their own party does it.
Glenn is not
supporting Trump. But he gives the example of the many
Republicans who viciously attacked Bill Clinton for his
sexual behavior but now deny, excuse and say that it
doesn't matter when Trump does it.
The flip side, of course, is found with the many
Democrats who viciously attack Trump but denied, excused,
and said that it didn't matter when Bill Clinton did it.
Glenn says that to restore trust with the American
people, both parties need to clean their houses and become
parties that put laws and principles first, which implies
criticizing their own instead of shielding them when
they misbehave.
This sounds like another attempt to claim the two parties
are equivalent. Your claim that "many
Democrats...viciously attack Trump but denied, excused,
and said that it didn't matter when Bill Clinton did it,"
would be a bit more credible if you actually named a few
of the alleged "many Democrats."
Most of the attacks on Trump are the result of Trump
boasting about sexually assaulting women, which Clinton
has not done. In any case, to claim that the Democratic
party needs to "clean its house" you need evidence that
there is a problem today, not merely one two decades ago
when Bill Clinton was in office.
Thanks for providing a great example of a Democrat trying
to deny, explain away, and say that Bill Clinton's
behavior in the 1990s didn't matter!
Of course, Bill
Clinton's radical deregulation of the 1990s (ending
Glass-Steagall, commodities deregulation, etc.) and ending
welfare as we knew it doesn't matter either...because it
was done by a Democrat.
Nor did his attack on Serbia, which set the precedent
for the pointless and futile war in Iraq. It's OK when
Democrats wage war, as long as it's papered over with
claims of 'humanitarian bombing.'
And Barack Obama's refusal to prosecute bankers and
torturers doesn't matter, though Democrats would have
cried 'bloody murder' if a Republican had behaved this
way. Nor does his embrace of NSA spying really matter. Nor
his proposed cuts to Social Security and social programs
in general...because his is a Democrat.
This is why economic elites love to have Democrats in
power...because they can push through horrible
reforms...and rest confident that many of the party
faithful will deny, excuse, and even claim that it didn't
matter...because a Democrat did it.
John, speaking only for myself, the defense of Bill
Clinton in the 1990's had nothing to do with excusing his
atrocious behavior -- it had to do with the opposition
engaging in a witch hunt to destroy a sitting president.
and exploiting the vehicle of a special prosecutor's
authority, granted to look into entirely different and
unrelated matters, to do so. This was a gross misuse of
official power. Clinton's mistake was in refusing to
answer questions unrelated to the authorized inquiry.
As to the other items on your list of objections to
Bill Clinton's actions, a few I'd agree with, and others
I'd disagree with; but they are all unrelated to the issue
of equivalence that you and Beck raise.
I'd agree that Democrats never organized a witch hunt
against any sitting Republican since Nixon.
Problem is,
they never organized a serious opposition either, and
readily bought into the opposition's tax cuts, budget
cuts, and pointless and futile wars.
If Democrats won't organize a serious opposition to the
likes of Cheney/Bush43, how can you take them seriously as
an opposition party?
Kenneth Almquist claims that Bill Clinton never assaulted
anyone, which provides yet more evidence of a Democratic
denial of charges against their guy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juanita_Broaddrick
Did
Juanita Brodderick's name ever register among the
Democratic faithful, staunch defenders of Bill Clinton,
right or wrong?
Brodderick's claim of rape was met with the typical
denial and disbelief, which is still commonplace
today...particularly when rape might have been done by
someone rich or powerful...
Yes the big difference is that Clinton never ran around
and said that sexual assault is OK, and he could get away
with it. He was accused but never convicted of sexual
assaults. You don't condemn a person for being accused of
something. The only actual sex was consensual sex with a
young woman.
The for-profit media thrive and depend on controversy and
generally content that is emotionally engaging. Racism is
only a small part of it, it is much more broadly appealing
- it is essentially "addressing", channeling, amplifying,
and redirecting existing grievances of a large part of the
public. If economy and society would be doing great and a
large majority of people would be happy/contented, these
anger-based media formats wouldn't find an audience.
The
same underlying causes as the success of Trump. The reason
why he can maintain considerable success despite of grave
shortcomings is because he continues to be a channel for
the anger that is not disappearing. (With the support of
the media, who are also interested in an ongoing
controversy with details as scandalous as possible.)
This "anger that is not disappearing" has
been based on racism for decades. None of these Trump
supporters are newly minted Rep voters; they have voted
Rep their entire lives.
This is not so new group based on outrage over the
problems of our "rigged system", this is the base that has
voted consistently against their economic well being for
decades.
"But holy hell, Republicans still refuse to be
convinced.
According to a new NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll,
seventy-two percent of registered Republicans "still
doubt" the President's place of birth. Forty-one percent
outright disagreed with the statement, "Barack Obama was
born in the United States," while only twenty-seven
percent of Republicans agree.
As NBC News blatantly states in the poll's findings,
"Only slightly more than one in four Republican voters
agreed that the president was born in the United States."
The main area where Faux needs to make a decision, is how
far it will move with the GOP base on closed borders. The
interest of the corporates is for open borders, whereas
the xenophobe GOP base is strongly against. If Faux decide
to remain on the corporates side of that issue, a Trump/Breibart
media would have a chance. The GOP will face the same
choice, but there is no way they split from the corporates
that owns them. So the question is whether Faux will split
with GOP on the issues that divide the GOP corporates from
the GOP base. Their business office would say yes (hold on
to the viewers), but they are not just a business.
I'd love to know exactly how pgl 'read' the video that our
host provided...transcript please!
The left needs media
that
1) Does not need Hillary
2) Does not engage in cold war fearmongering
3) Becomes less establishment and more progressive.
Will Krugman talk about that?
BTW Here's an address on inequality by Stiglitz, given
two weeks ago. When was the last time that Krugman, whose
day job at CUNY is allegedly about studying inequality,
even talked about the subject?
The trade deficit will continue to explode; the US will
lose most of its remaining industrial base over the next
few years and the population of new poor and unemployed
will grow sharply. Trump will be in a strong position to
say "I told you so" and pick up the pieces of our broken
society in 2020. You can't destroy the livelihood of
150-300 million people without some kind of political
movement emerging to restore the economy to its industrial
age prosperity.
reason
-> forgotten ghost of American
protectionism...
, -1
Where does 150-300 million people come from? And why
aren't you looking at what is happening in finance which
is just as important in driving the demise of US industry
(an overvalued currency is exactly the same as a cut in
tariffs).
"... Geithner's comments about his sacrifices in public service did not elicit any outcry from the media at the time because his perspective was widely shared. The implicit assumption is that the sort of person who is working at a high level government job could easily be earning a paycheck that is many times higher if they were employed elsewhere. In fact, this is often true. When he left his job as Treasury Secretary, Geithner took a position with a private equity company where his salary is likely several million dollars a year. ..."
"... The CEOs who are paid tens of millions a year would like the public to think that the market is simply compensating them for their extraordinary skills. A more realistic story is that a broken corporate governance process gives corporate boards of directors - the people who largely determine CEO pay -little incentive to hold down pay. Directors are more closely tied to top management than to the shareholders they are supposed to represent, and their positions are lucrative, usually paying six figures for very part-time work. Directors are almost never voted out by shareholders for their lack of attention to the job or for incompetence. ..."
"... We also have done little to foster medical travel. This could lead to enormous benefits to patients and the economy, since many high cost medical procedures can be performed at a fifth or even one-tenth the U.S. price in top quality medical facilities elsewhere in the world. In this context, it is not surprising that the median pay of physicians is over $250,000 a year and some areas of specialization earn close to twice this amount. In the case of physicians alone, if pay were reduced to West European-levels the savings would be close to $100 billion a year (@ 0.6 percent of GDP). ..."
"... As a technical matter, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is a private bank. It is owned by the banks that are members of the Federal Reserve System in the New York District. ..."
Yves here. We are delighted to feature an excerpt from Dean Baker's new book
Rigged , which you can find at
http://deanbaker.net/books/rigged.htm via either a free download
or in hard copy for the cost of printing and shipping. The book argues that policy in five areas, macroeconomics, the financial sector,
intellectual property, corporate governance, and protection for highly paid professionals, have all led to the upward distribution
of income. The implication is that the yawning gap between the 0.1% and the 1% versus everyone else is not the result of virtue ("meritocracy")
but preferential treatment, and inequality would be substantially reduced if these policies were reversed.
I urge you to read his book in full and encourage your friends, colleagues, and family to do so as well.
By Dean Baker, Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy Research
Chapter 1: Introduction: Trading in myths
In winter 2016, near the peak of Bernie Sanders' bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, a new line became popular among
the nation's policy elite: Bernie Sanders is the enemy of the world's poor. Their argument was that Sanders, by pushing trade policies
to help U.S. workers, specifically manufacturing workers, risked undermining the well-being of the world's poor because exporting
manufactured goods to the United States and other wealthy countries is their path out of poverty. The role model was China, which
by exporting has largely eliminated extreme poverty and drastically reduced poverty among its population. Sanders and his supporters
would block the rest of the developing world from following the same course.
This line, in its Sanders-bashing permutation, appeared early on in Vox, the millennial-oriented media upstart, and was quickly
picked up elsewhere (Beauchamp 2016).
[1] After all, it was pretty irresistible. The ally of the downtrodden and enemy of the rich was pushing policies that would
condemn much of the world to poverty.
The story made a nice contribution to preserving the status quo, but it was less valuable if you respect honesty in public debate.
The problem in the logic of this argument should be apparent to anyone who has taken an introductory economics course. It assumes
that the basic problem of manufacturing workers in the developing world is the need for someone who will buy their stuff. If people
in the United States don't buy it, then the workers will be out on the street and growth in the developing world will grind to a
halt.
In this story, the problem is that we don't have enough people in the world to buy stuff. In other words, there is a shortage
of demand. But is it really true that no one else in the world would buy the stuff produced by manufacturing workers in the developing
world if they couldn't sell it to consumers in the United States? Suppose people in the developing world bought the stuff they produced
raising their living standards by raising their own consumption.
That is how the economics is supposed to work. In the standard theory, general shortages of demand are not a problem.
[2] Economists have traditionally assumed that economies tended toward full employment. The basic economic constraint was a lack
of supply. The problem was that we couldn't produce enough goods and services, not that we were producing too much and couldn't find
anyone to buy them. In fact, this is why all the standard models used to analyze trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership
assume trade doesn't affect total employment.
[3] Economies adjust so that shortages of demand are not a problem.
In this standard story (and the Sanders critics are people who care about textbook economics), capital flows from slow-growing
rich countries, where it is relatively plentiful and so gets a low rate of return, to fast-growing poor countries, where it is scarce
and gets a high rate of return (Figure 1-1).
So the United States, Japan, and the European Union should be running large trade surpluses, which is what an outflow of capital
means. Rich countries like ours should be lending money to developing countries, providing them with the means to build up their
capital stock and infrastructure while they use their own resources to meet their people's basic needs.
This wasn't just theory. That story accurately described much of the developing world, especially Asia, through the 1990s. Countries
like Indonesia and Malaysia were experiencing rapid annual growth of 7.8 percent and 9.6 percent, respectively, even as they ran
large trade deficits, just over 2 percent of GDP each year in Indonesia and almost 5 percent in Malaysia.
These trade deficits probably were excessive, and a crisis of confidence hit East Asia and much of the developing world in the
summer of 1997. The inflow of capital from rich countries slowed or reversed, making it impossible for the developing countries to
sustain the fixed exchange rates most had at the time. One after another, they were forced to abandon their fixed exchange rates
and turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for help.
Rather than promulgating policies that would allow developing countries to continue the textbook development path of growth driven
by importing capital and running trade deficits, the IMF made debt repayment a top priority. The bailout, under the direction of
the Clinton administration Treasury Department, required developing countries to switch to large trade surpluses (Radelet and Sachs
2000, O'Neil 1999).
The countries of East Asia would be far richer today had they been allowed to continue on the growth path of the early and mid-1990s,
when they had large trade deficits (Figure 1-2). Four of the five would be more than twice as rich, and the fifth, Vietnam, would
be almost 50 percent richer. South Korea and Malaysia would have higher per capita incomes today than the United States.
In the wake of the East Asia bailout, countries throughout the developing world decided they had to build up reserves of foreign
exchange, primarily dollars, in order to avoid ever facing the same harsh bailout terms as the countries of East Asia. Building up
reserves meant running large trade surpluses, and it is no coincidence that the U.S. trade deficit has exploded, rising from just
over 1 percent of GDP in 1996 to almost 6 percent in 2005. The rise has coincided with the loss of more than 3 million manufacturing
jobs, roughly 20 percent of employment in the sector.
There was no reason the textbook growth pattern of the 1990s could not have continued. It wasn't the laws of economics that forced
developing countries to take a different path, it was the failed bailout and the international financial system. It would seem that
the enemy of the world's poor is not Bernie Sanders but rather the engineers of our current globalization policies.
There is a further point in this story that is generally missed: it is not only the volume of trade flows that is determined by
policy, but also the content. A major push in recent trade deals has been to require stronger and longer patent and copyright protection.
Paying the fees imposed by these terms, especially for prescription drugs, is a huge burden on the developing world. Bill Clinton
would have much less need to fly around the world for the Clinton Foundation had he not inserted the TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects
of Intellectual Property Rights ) provisions in the World Trade Organization (WTO) that require developing countries to adopt U.S.-style
patent protections. Generic drugs are almost always cheap -patent protection makes drugs expensive. The cancer and hepatitis drugs
that sell for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year would sell for a few hundred dollars in a free market. Cheap drugs
would be more widely available had the developed world not forced TRIPS on the developing world.
Of course, we have to pay for the research to develop new drugs or any innovation. We also have to compensate creative workers
who produce music, movies, and books. But there are efficient alternatives to patents and copyrights, and the efforts by the elites
in the United States and other wealthy countries to impose these relics on the developing world is just a mechanism for redistributing
income from the world's poor to Pfizer, Microsoft, and Disney. Stronger and longer patent and copyright protection is not a necessary
feature of a 21 st century economy.
In textbook trade theory, if a country has a larger trade surplus on payments for royalties and patent licensing fees, it will
have a larger trade deficit in manufactured goods and other areas. The reason is that, in theory, the trade balance is fixed by national
savings and investment, not by the ability of a country to export in a particular area. If the trade deficit is effectively fixed
by these macroeconomic factors, then more exports in one area mean fewer exports in other areas. Put another way, income gains for
Pfizer and Disney translate into lost jobs for workers in the steel and auto industries.
The conventional story is that we lose manufacturing jobs to developing countries because they have hundreds of millions of people
willing to do factory work at a fraction of the pay of manufacturing workers in the United States. This is true, but developing countries
also have tens of millions of smart and ambitious people willing to work as doctors and lawyers in the United States at a fraction
of the pay of the ones we have now.
Gains from trade work the same with doctors and lawyers as they do with textiles and steel. Our consumers would save hundreds
of billions a year if we could hire professionals from developing countries and pay them salaries that are substantially less than
what we pay our professionals now. The reason we import manufactured goods and not doctors is that we have designed the rules of
trade that way. We deliberately write trade pacts to make it as easy as possible for U.S. companies to set up manufacturing operations
abroad and ship the products back to the United States, but we have done little or nothing to remove the obstacles that professionals
from other countries face in trying to work in the United States. The reason is simple: doctors and lawyers have more political power
than autoworkers.
[4]
In short, there is no truth to the story that the job loss and wage stagnation faced by manufacturing workers in the United States
and other wealthy countries was a necessary price for reducing poverty in the developing world.
[5] This is a fiction that is used to justify the upward redistribution of income in rich countries. After all, it is pretty
selfish for rich country autoworkers and textile workers to begrudge hungry people in Africa and Asia and the means to secure food,
clothing, and shelter.
The other aspect of this story that deserves mention is the nature of the jobs to which our supposedly selfish workers feel entitled.
The manufacturing jobs that are being lost to the developing world pay in the range of $15 to $30 an hour, with the vast majority
closer to the bottom figure than the top. The average hourly wage for production and nonsupervisory workers in manufacturing in 2015
was just under $20 an hour, or about $40,000 a year. While a person earning $40,000 is doing much better than a subsistence farmer
in Sub-Saharan Africa, it is difficult to see this worker as especially privileged.
By contrast, many of the people remarking on the narrow-mindedness and sense of entitlement of manufacturing workers earn comfortable
six-figure salaries. Senior writers and editors at network news shows or at the New York Times and Washington Post
feel entitled to their pay because they feel they have the education and skills to be successful in a rapidly changing global economy.
These are the sort of people who consider it a sacrifice to work at a high-level government job for $150,000 to $200,000 a year.
For example, Timothy Geithner, President Obama's first treasury secretary, often boasts about his choice to work for various government
agencies rather than earn big bucks in the private sector. His sacrifice included a stint as president of the Federal Reserve Bank
of New York that paid $415,000 a year.
[6] This level of pay put Geithner well into the top 1 percent of wage earners.
Geithner's comments about his sacrifices in public service did not elicit any outcry from the media at the time because his perspective
was widely shared. The implicit assumption is that the sort of person who is working at a high level government job could easily
be earning a paycheck that is many times higher if they were employed elsewhere. In fact, this is often true. When he left his job
as Treasury Secretary, Geithner took a position with a private equity company where his salary is likely several million dollars
a year.
Not everyone who was complaining about entitled manufacturing workers was earning as much as Timothy Geithner, but it is a safe
bet that the average critic was earning far more than the average manufacturing worker - and certainly far more than the average
displaced manufacturing worker.
Turning the Debate Right-Side Up: Markets Are Structured
The perverse nature of the debate over a trade policy that would have the audacity to benefit workers in rich countries is a great
example of how we accept as givens not just markets themselves but also the policies that structure markets. If we accept it as a
fact of nature that poor countries cannot borrow from rich countries to finance their development, and that they can only export
manufactured goods, then their growth will depend on displacing manufacturing workers in the United States and other rich countries.
It is absurd to narrow the policy choices in this way, yet the centrists and conservatives who support the upward redistribution
of the last four decades have been extremely successful in doing just that, and progressives have largely let them set the terms
of the debate.
Markets are never just given. Neither God nor nature hands us a worked-out set of rules determining the way property relations
are defined, contracts are enforced, or macroeconomic policy is implemented. These matters are determined by policy choices. The
elites have written these rules to redistribute income upward. Needless to say, they are not eager to have the rules rewritten which
means they have no interest in even having them discussed.
But for progressive change to succeed, these rules must be addressed. While modest tweaks to tax and transfer policies can ameliorate
the harm done by a regressive market structure, their effect will be limited. The complaint of conservatives - that tampering with
market outcomes leads to inefficiencies and unintended outcomes - is largely correct, even if they may exaggerate the size of the
distortions from policy interventions. Rather than tinker with badly designed rules, it is far more important to rewrite the rules
so that markets lead to progressive and productive outcomes in which the benefits of economic growth and improving technology are
broadly shared
This book examines five broad areas where the rules now in place tend to redistribute income upward and where alternative rules
can lead to more equitable outcomes and a more efficient market:
Macroeconomic policies determining levels of employment and output. Financial regulation and the structure of financial markets.
Patent and copyright monopolies and alternative mechanisms for financing innovation and creative work. Pay of chief executive
officers (CEOs) and corporate governance structures. Protections for highly paid professionals, such as doctors and lawyers.
In each of these areas, it is possible to identify policy choices that have engineered the upward redistribution of the last four
decades.
In the case of macroeconomic policy, the United States and other wealthy countries have explicitly adopted policies that focus
on maintaining low rates of inflation. Central banks are quick to raise interest rates at the first sign of rising inflation and
sometimes even before. Higher interest rates slow inflation by reducing demand, thereby reducing job growth, and reduced job growth
weakens workers' bargaining power and puts downward pressure on wages. In other words, the commitment to an anti-inflation policy
is a commitment by the government, acting through central banks, to keep wages down. It should not be surprising that this policy
has the effect of redistributing income upward.
The changing structure of financial regulation and financial markets has also been an important factor in redistributing income
upward. This is a case where an industry has undergone very rapid change as a result of technological innovation. Information technology
has hugely reduced the cost of financial transactions and allowed for the development of an array of derivative instruments that
would have been unimaginable four decades ago. Rather than modernizing regulation to ensure that these technologies allow the financial
sector to better serve the productive economy, the United States and other countries have largely structured regulations to allow
a tiny group of bankers and hedge fund and private equity fund managers to become incredibly rich.
This changed structure of regulation over the last four decades was not "deregulation," as is often claimed. Almost no proponent
of deregulation argued against the bailouts that saved Wall Street in the financial crisis or against the elimination of government
deposit insurance that is an essential part of a stable banking system. Rather, they advocated a system in which the rules restricting
their ability to profit were eliminated, while the insurance provided by the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation, and other arms of the government were left in place. The position of "deregulators" effectively amounted to arguing
that they should not have to pay for the insurance they were receiving.
The third area in which the rules have been written to ensure an upward redistribution is patent and copyright protection. Over
the last four decades these protections have been made stronger and longer. In the case of both patent and copyright, the duration
of the monopoly period has been extended. In addition, these monopolies have been applied to new areas. Patents can now be applied
to life forms, business methods, and software. Copyrights have been extended to cover digitally produced material as well as the
internet. Penalties for infringement have been increased and the United States has vigorously pursued their application in other
countries through trade agreements and diplomatic pressure.
Government-granted monopolies are not facts of nature, and there are alternative mechanisms for financing innovation and creative
work. Direct government funding, as opposed to government granted monopolies, is one obvious alternative. For example, the government
spends more than $30 billion a year on biomedical research through the National Institutes of Health - money that all parties agree
is very well spent. There are also other possible mechanisms. It is likely that these alternatives are more efficient than the current
patent and copyright system, in large part because they would be more market-oriented. And, they would likely lead to less upward
redistribution than the current system.
The CEOs who are paid tens of millions a year would like the public to think that the market is simply compensating them for their
extraordinary skills. A more realistic story is that a broken corporate governance process gives corporate boards of directors -
the people who largely determine CEO pay -little incentive to hold down pay. Directors are more closely tied to top management than
to the shareholders they are supposed to represent, and their positions are lucrative, usually paying six figures for very part-time
work. Directors are almost never voted out by shareholders for their lack of attention to the job or for incompetence.
The market discipline that holds down the pay of ordinary workers does not apply to CEOs, since their friends determine their
pay. And a director has little incentive to pick a fight with fellow directors or top management by asking a simple question like,
"Can we get a CEO just as good for half the pay?" This privilege matters not just for CEOs; it has the spillover effect of raising
the pay of other top managers in the corporate sector and putting upward pressure on the salaries of top management in universities,
hospitals, private charities, and other nonprofits.
Reformed corporate governance structures could empower shareholders to contain the pay of their top-level employees. Suppose directors
could count on boosts in their own pay if they cut the pay of top management without hurting profitability, With this sort of policy
change, CEOs and top management might start to experience some of the downward wage pressure that existing policies have made routine
for typical workers.
This is very much not a story of the natural workings of the market. Corporations are a legal entity created by the government,
which also sets the rules of corporate governance. Current law includes a lengthy set of restrictions on corporate governance practices.
It is easy to envision rules which would make it less likely that CEOs earn such outlandish paychecks by making it easier for shareholders
to curb excessive pay.
Finally, government policies strongly promote the upward redistribution of income for highly paid professionals by protecting
them from competition. To protect physicians and specialists, we restrict the ability of nurse practitioners or physician assistants
to perform tasks for which they are entirely competent. We require lawyers for work that paralegals are capable of completing. While
trade agreements go far to remove any obstacle that might protect an autoworker in the United States from competition with a low-paid
factory worker in Mexico or China, they do little or nothing to reduce the barriers that protect doctors, dentists, and lawyers from
the same sort of competition. To practice medicine in the United States, it is still necessary to complete a residency program here,
as though there were no other way for a person to become a competent doctor.
We also have done little to foster medical travel. This could lead to enormous benefits to patients and the economy, since many
high cost medical procedures can be performed at a fifth or even one-tenth the U.S. price in top quality medical facilities elsewhere
in the world. In this context, it is not surprising that the median pay of physicians is over $250,000 a year and some areas of specialization
earn close to twice this amount. In the case of physicians alone, if pay were reduced to West European-levels the savings would be
close to $100 billion a year (@ 0.6 percent of GDP).
Changing the rules in these five areas could reduce much and possibly all of the upward redistribution of the last four decades.
But changing the rules does not mean using government intervention to curb the market. It means restructuring the market to produce
different outcomes. The purpose of this book is to show how.
[1] See also Weissman (2016), Iacono (2016), Worstall (2016), Lane (2016), and Zakaria (2016).
[2] As explained in the next chapter, this view is not exactly correct, but it's what you're supposed to believe if you adhere
to the mainstream economic view.
[3] There can be modest changes in employment through a supply-side effect. If the trade deal increases the efficiency of the
economy, then the marginal product of labor should rise, leading to a higher real wage, which in turn should induce some people to
choose work over leisure. So the trade deal results in more people choosing to work, not an increased demand for labor.
[4] For those worried about brain drain from developing countries, there is an easy fix. Economists like to talk about taxing
the winners, in this case developing country professionals and rich country consumers, to compensate the losers, which would be the
home countries of the migrating professionals. We could tax a portion of the professionals' pay to allow their home countries to
train two or three professionals for every one that came to the United States. This is a classic win-win from trade.
[5] The loss of manufacturing jobs also reduced the wages of less-educated workers (those without college degrees) more generally.
The displaced manufacturing workers crowded into retail and other service sectors, putting downward pressure on wages there.
[6] As a technical matter, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is a private bank. It is owned by the banks that are members
of the Federal Reserve System in the New York District.
"Markets are never just given. Neither God nor nature hands us a worked-out set of rules determining the way property relations
are defined, contracts are enforced, or macroeconomic policy is implemented. These matters are determined by policy choices. The
elites have written these rules to redistribute income upward. Needless to say, they are not eager to have the rules rewritten
which means they have no interest in even having them discussed."
======================================================
It is one of those remarkable hypocrisies that free "unregulated" trade requires deals of thousands of pages .
but if these deals weren't so carefully structured to help the 1%, support would melt like snowmen in Fresno on a July day
Or check your local indy, or one of those that take orders (I refrain from naming my favorite co-op in Chicago, and anyway
I admit there are others). Nice to support those when you can.
Almost no proponent of deregulation argued against the bailouts that saved Wall Street in the financial crisis or against
the elimination of government deposit insurance that is an essential part of a stable banking system.
Actually I believe there were some Republicans who denounced the Wall Street bailout as a violation of capitalist principles.
My state's Mark Sanford comes to mind. It was the Dems at the urging of Pelosi who saved the bailout. On the other hand many of
my local politicians are big on "public/private" partnerships which would be a violation of laissez-faire that they approve. Perhaps
it was simply that there are no giant banks headquartered in SC.
The truth is there is no coherent intellectual basis to how the US economy is currently run. It's all about power and what
you can do with it. Which is to say it is our politics, above all, that is broken.
"That is how the economics is supposed to work. In the standard theory, general shortages of demand are not a problem.[2]
Economists have traditionally assumed that economies tended toward full employment. The basic economic constraint was a lack of
supply. The problem was that we couldn't produce enough goods and services, not that we were producing too much and couldn't find
anyone to buy them. In fact, this is why all the standard models used to analyze trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership
assume trade doesn't affect total employment.[3] Economies adjust so that shortages of demand are not a problem."
Unbelievable.
By the 1920s they realised the system produced so much stuff that extensive advertising was needed to shift it all.
One hundred year's later, we might take this on board.
What is the global advertising budget?
The amount necessary to shift all the crap the system produces today.
We need to move on from Milton Freidman's ideas and discover what trade in a globalized world is really about.
We are still under the influence of Milton Freidman's ideas of a globalised free trade world.
These ideas came from Milton Freidman's imagination where he saw the ideal as small state, raw capitalism and thought the public
sector should be sold off and entitlement programs whittled down until everything must be purchased through the private sector.
"You are free to spend your money as you choose"
Not mentioning its other meaning:
"No money, no freedom"
After Milton Freedman's "shock therapy" in Russia, people were left with so little money they couldn't afford to eat and starved
to death. In Greece people cannot afford even bread today.
But this is economic liberalism, the economy comes first.
Milton Freidman used his imagination to work out what small state, raw capitalism looked like whereas he could have looked
at it in reality through history books of the 18th and 19th centuries where it had already existed.
The Classical Economists studied it and were able to see its problems first hand and noted the detrimental effects of the rentier
class on the economy. They were constantly looking to get "unearned" income from doing nothing; sucking purchasing power out of
the economy and bleeding it dry.
Adam Smith observed:
"The Labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the maintaining of the rich in ease and luxury.
The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury by the labour of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions
from the industrious merchant and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the use of his money. But every
savage has the full fruits of his own labours; there are no landlords, no usurers and no tax gatherers."
Adam Smith saw landlords, usurers (bankers) and Government taxes as equally parasitic, all raising the cost of doing business.
He sees the lazy people at the top living off "unearned" income from their land and capital.
He sees the trickle up of Capitalism:
1) Those with excess capital collect rent and interest.
2) Those with insufficient capital pay rent and interest.
He differentiates between "earned" and "unearned" income.
Today we encourage a new rentier class of BTL landlords who look to extract the "earned" income of generation rent for "unearned"
income. If you have a large BTL portfolio you can become a true rentier, do nothing productive at all and live off "unearned"
income extracted from generation rent, the true capitalist parasite. (UK)
The Classical Economists realised capitalism has two sides, the productive side where "earned" income is generated and the
unproductive, parasitic, rentier side where "unearned" income is generated.
You should tax "unearned" income to discourage the parasitic side of capitalism.
You shouldn't tax "earned" income to encourage the productive side of capitalism.
You should provide low cost housing, education and services to create a low cost of living, giving a low minimum wage making
you globally competitive. This is to be funded by taxes on "unearned" income.
The US has probably been the most successful in making its labour force internationally uncompetitive with soaring costs of
housing, healthcare and student loan repayments.
These all have to be covered by wages and US businesses are now squealing about the high minimum wage.
That's Milton Freidman's imagined small state, raw capitalism.
What he imagined bears little resemblance to the reality the Classical Economists saw firsthand.
We need to move on from Milton Freidman fantasy land.
Small state, raw capitalism as observed by Adam Smith:
"But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity and fall with the declension of the society.
On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going
fastest to ruin."
When rates of profit are high, capitalism is cannibalising itself by:
1) Not engaging in long term investment for the future
2) Paying insufficient wages to maintain demand for its products and services
In the 18th Century they would have understood today's problems with growth and demand.
Luckily Jeff Bezos didn't inhabit Milton Freidman fantasy land.
He re-invested almost everything to turn Amazon onto the global behemoth it is today.
' The commitment to an anti-inflation policy is a commitment by the government, acting through central banks, to keep wages
down. '
This is strikingly silly. Insert the word 'nominal' before wages, and it's not a howler anymore.
Anti-inflation policy in fact has little influence on real wages (the variable of concern, not nominal wages). But it has a
lot to do with preventing the social chaos of constantly rising prices, strikes for higher wages, inability of first-time home
buyers to borrow at affordable rates, and so on.
Inflationism is greasy kid stuff not to mention a brazen fraud on the public.
As one who walked the corridors of power in a very modest capacity in my country in the early to mid 1990s, can I just say
that people with power or influence then were aware that globalisation would create winners and losers. I recall the consensus
of those I knew then was that steps would need to be taken to compensate the losers. The tragedy is that these steps were never
taken, or, if they were, only to a wholly inadequate degree.
The always elusive referents for cost, price and value the flip-side of social chaos would seem the entropic degradation of
wasted lives, excluded from participating {either-OR} abandoned as irredeemable
Higher interest rates slow inflation by reducing demand, thereby reducing job growth, and reduced job growth weakens workers'
bargaining power and puts downward pressure on wages.
Your assertion that anti-inflation policy has little influence on real wages does not address Baker's statement about the mechanism
by which he says it does. Given an argument between two people, one of whom cites a mechanism he is probably prepared to document
with numbers and one of whom merely declares his belief, which are people more likely to trust? Granted always, they should go
look for the numbers before they fully accept the statement, his credibility is currently higher than yours on this subject.
By contrast, since the 1970s real wages stalled, while interest rates round-tripped back to 2 percent.
Over nearly seven decades, the correlation is quite the opposite from that made up claimed by Dean Bonkers.
Namely, real wages soared under a regime of steadily rising nominal interest rates.
Since my original reply has disappeared in limbo, I will merely note that numbers are probably even crunchier when you don't
generalize across a span of decades: first there was A, then there was B, nothing else happened. It's a sure way to obscure patterns.
And Jim, please quit the ad hominem stuff! It's ugly and needless. If you really have an argument you don't need it, and if
you don't you don't gain by it. You know perfectly well he's not making things up and he's not bonkers. When you say stuff like
that, the obvious presumption is that you just don't want to consider his arguments because they lead somewhere you don't want
to go.
Perhaps I am missing the point being made, but if you are suggesting that increases in real wages in the 1945-1975 period caused
inflation, why not provide the data on inflation which would in fact show that inflation was essentially tame for 20 years in
this period (1952-1972, with a slight hiccup in 1969-1971), thereby contradicting your point? And if you are suggesting that Fed
increases in interest rate have not resulted in suppression of wages you will have to demonstrate that using analysis that takes
into account the lag in time between increase in rate and transmission to wages, and in that case would you not also use the Fed
Funds Rate itself as a variable?
Bulltwacky, they have been globalizing wages downwards while globalizing housing prices upwards!
Every time some stupid and moronic newsy floozy on one of the CorporateNonMedia outlets claims housing purchases may be going
down because consumer confidence is plummeting, they CHOOSE to ignore the foreign buyers of said houses!
Did I get this right? Full employment is an assumed boundary condition and so is fixed balance of trade? If the model is to
work as advertised then the boundary conditions must be hard wired to be true, right?
If the top 25 hedge fund managers saved around $5 billion per year in being taxed on their income at capital gains rate (carried
interest ruling in tax code - utterly corrupt), then think of the amount that is being robbed from the tax base when one considers
ALL the hedge fund people, and ALL the private equity types (who also do this), a conservative amount of tax revenues remitted
should be around $100 billion per year!
"... This outcome has an objective character. The two-party system is a political monopoly of the capitalist class. Both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are political instruments of big business. The claims of Bernie Sanders and his pseudo-left apologists that it is possible to reform or pressure the Democrats-and even carry out a "political revolution" through it-have proven to be lies ..."
"The 2016 election campaign was dominated for many months by explosive popular disaffection with
the whole political and corporate establishment. But it has concluded in a contest between two candidates
who personify that establishment-one a billionaire from the criminal world of real-estate swindling,
the other the consensus choice of the military-intelligence apparatus and Wall Street.
This outcome has an objective character. The two-party system is a political monopoly of the
capitalist class. Both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are political instruments of
big business. The claims of Bernie Sanders and his pseudo-left apologists that it is possible to
reform or pressure the Democrats-and even carry out a "political revolution" through it-have proven
to be lies."
"... Their grievances about a grift-maximized political economy were genuine, and Trump managed to make them look like a claque of sinister clowns. This cartoon of a rich kid with no internal boundaries was unable to articulate their legitimate complaints. His behavior during the so-called debates verged on psychotic. ..."
"... The "tell" in these late stages of the campaign has been the demonization of Russia - a way more idiotic exercise than the McCarthyite Cold War hysteria of the early 1950s, since there is no longer any ideological conflict between us and all the evidence indicates that the current state of bad relations is America's fault, in particular our sponsorship of the state failure in Ukraine and our avid deployment of NATO forces in war games on Russia's border. Hillary has had the full force of the foreign affairs establishment behind her in this war-drum-banging effort, yet they have not been able to produce any evidence, for instance, in their claim that Russia is behind the Wikileaks hack of Hillary's email. They apparently subscribe to the Joseph Goebbels theory of propaganda: if you're going to lie, make sure it's a whopper, and then repeat it incessantly. ..."
"... The media has been on-board with all this. The New York Times especially has acted as the hired amplifier for the establishment lies - such a difference from the same newspaper's role in the Vietnam War ruckus of yesteryear. Today (Monday) they ran an astounding editorial "explaining" the tactical necessity of Hillary's dishonesty: "In politics, hypocrisy and doublespeak are tools," The Times editorial board wrote. Oh, well, that's reassuring. Welcome to the George Orwell Theme Park of Democracy. ..."
"... Of course neither Trump nor Hillary show any signs of understanding the real problems afflicting the USA. They don't recognize the basic energy equation that has made it impossible for industrial economies to keep growing, or the deformities in banking and finance that result from official efforts to overcome these implacable conditions, namely, the piling up of ever-greater debt to "solve" the problem of over-indebtedness. ..."
"... Hillary would bring a more measured discredit to the system with the chance that our institutions might be rehabilitated - with the cherry-on-top being Hillary's eventual impeachment for lying, a fate that her husband and the late Richard Nixon both wiggled out of one way or another. ..."
It's getting hard to give a shit about this election, though you might still care about this country.
The damage has been done to the two long-reigning political parties and perhaps that's a good thing.
They deserved to be dragged into the gutter and now they can either go through a severe rehab or
be replaced by as-yet-unformed coalitions of reality-based interests.
Trump did a greater disservice all-in-all to the faction he supposedly represented. Their grievances
about a grift-maximized political economy were genuine, and Trump managed to make them look like
a claque of sinister clowns. This cartoon of a rich kid with no internal boundaries was unable to
articulate their legitimate complaints. His behavior during the so-called debates verged on
psychotic. If Trump loses, I will essay to guess that his followers' next step will be some
kind of violence. For the moment, pathetic as it is, Trump was their last best hope.
I'm more comfortable about Hillary - though I won't vote for her - because it will be salutary
for the ruling establishment to unravel with her in charge of it. That way, the right people will
be blamed for the mismanagement of our national affairs. This gang of elites needs to be circulated
out of power the hard way, under the burden of their own obvious perfidy, with no one else to point
their fingers at. Her election will sharpen awareness of the criminal conduct in our financial practices
and the neglect of regulation that marked the eight years of Obama's appointees at the Department
of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The "tell" in these late stages of the campaign has been the demonization of Russia - a way more
idiotic exercise than the McCarthyite Cold War hysteria of the early 1950s, since there is no longer
any ideological conflict between us and all the evidence indicates that the current state of bad
relations is America's fault, in particular our sponsorship of the state failure in Ukraine and our
avid deployment of NATO forces in war games on Russia's border. Hillary has had the full force of
the foreign affairs establishment behind her in this war-drum-banging effort, yet they have not been
able to produce any evidence, for instance, in their claim that Russia is behind the Wikileaks hack
of Hillary's email. They apparently subscribe to the Joseph Goebbels theory of propaganda: if you're
going to lie, make sure it's a whopper, and then repeat it incessantly.
The media has been on-board with all this. The New York Times especially has acted as the
hired amplifier for the establishment lies - such a difference from the same newspaper's role in
the Vietnam War ruckus of yesteryear. Today (Monday) they ran an
astounding editorial "explaining" the tactical necessity of Hillary's dishonesty: "In politics,
hypocrisy and doublespeak are tools," The Times editorial board wrote. Oh, well, that's reassuring.
Welcome to the George Orwell Theme Park of Democracy.
Of course neither Trump nor Hillary show any signs of understanding the real problems afflicting
the USA. They don't recognize the basic energy equation that has made it impossible for industrial
economies to keep growing, or the deformities in banking and finance that result from official efforts
to overcome these implacable conditions, namely, the piling up of ever-greater debt to "solve" the
problem of over-indebtedness.
The beginning of the way out of this quandary will be recognition that the federal government
is the greatest obstacle for America making the necessary adjustments to a world that has changed.
If Trump got elected, I'm convinced that he would be removed from office by a military coup inside
of a year, which would be an epic smash-up of our political machinery per se, comparable to the period
44 BCE in Rome, when the republic crashed. Hillary would bring a more measured discredit to the system
with the chance that our institutions might be rehabilitated - with the cherry-on-top being Hillary's
eventual impeachment for lying, a fate that her husband and the late Richard Nixon both wiggled out
of one way or another.
Hitler is accused of being the evil practitioner of the "Big Lie" technique, but as usual,
he was misquoted. Here's the entire idea in context:
"In this they [the Jews] proceeded on the sound principle that the magnitude of a lie always
contains a certain factor of credibility, since the great masses of the people in the very
bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously and purposely evil, and
that, therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds, they more easily fall
victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would
be ashamed of lies that were too big. Such a falsehood will never enter their heads, and they
will not be able to believe in the possibility of such monstrous effrontery and infamous misrepresentation
in others.…" (p. 231 of the Manheim translation)
Hitler is accusing the Jews of the Vienna press of this strategy. It is often taken as evidence
that Hitler advocated the "Big Lie." He is, in fact, accusing his enemies of lying.
One might say, rightly, that Trump and Hitler ARE on the same page here... both accusing the
jews of bearing grand false witness. (Trump implicitly)
You exist for my entertainment. Some of you are great eye candy. Some of you can deliver a
line with such conviction that you bring tears to my eyes. Some of you can scare the hell out
of me. Others make me laugh.
But you all have one thing in common, you only have a place in my world to entertain me. That's
it. You make your living pretending to be someone else . Playing dress up like a 6 year old. You
live in a make believe world in front of a camera.
And often when you are away from one too. Your entire existence depends on my patronage. I'll
crank the organ grinder; you dance. I don't really care where you stand on issues.
Honestly, your stance matters far less to me than that of my neighbor. You see, you aren't
real. I turn off my TV or shut down my computer and you cease to exist in my world . Once I am
done with you, I can put you back in your little box until I want you to entertain me again.
Get back into your bubble. I'll let you know when I'm in the mood for something blue and shiny.
And I'm also supposed to care that you will leave this great country if Trump becomes president?
Ha. Please don't forget to close the door behind you.
We'd like to reserve your seat for someone who loves this country and really wants to be here.
Make me laugh, or cry. Scare me. But realize that the only words of yours that matter are scripted.
I might agree with some of you from time to time, but it doesn't matter. In my world, you exist
solely as entertainment So, shut your pie hole and dance, monkey!
"In politics, hypocrisy and doublespeak are tools," but she has made it a way of life that nobody
knows if her campaign promises are essentially a "doublespeak". If only the criteria is being
the best liar, she would win the presidency hands down.
This gang of elites needs to be circulated out of power the hard way, under the burden of their
own obvious perfidy, with no one else to point their fingers at.
Ahh, but you think they'll be "circulated out of power" under Hillary?! No chance. The bitch
will have tanks in the street first. And after the financial collapse, the soldiers will cooperate,
because they won't want their families starving like everybody else's will be.
"I'm more comfortable about Hillary - though I won't vote for her - because it will be salutary
for the ruling establishment to unravel with her in charge of it."
Sorry, but that is a leap of faith I can't make. It's like being at the event horizon of a
black hole and deciding to jump into the hole because you look forward to seeing what is on the
other side. Chances are you will be spaghettified so that your atoms might arrive elsewhere, but
not in particular relation to the you that jumped into the hole, so you will not survive to see
any change of scenery.
There will be a USA after Hillary, but it will not be your father's USA, and getting to this
new promised land will be a very painful process. Rome lived on until 1453 in the form of the
Byzantine empire, but the Republic died well before the birth of Christ.
"... My impression is that Trump_vs_deep_state is more about dissatisfaction of the Republican base with the Republican brass (which fully endorsed neoliberal globalization), the phenomenon somewhat similar to Sanders. ..."
"... Working class and lower middle class essentially abandoned DemoRats (Clinton democrats) after so many years of betrayal and "they have nowhere to go" attitude. ..."
"... Now they try to forge the alliance of highly paid professionals who benefitted from globalization("creative class"), financial speculators and minorities. Which does not look like a stable coalition to me. ..."
"... In other words both Parties are now split and have two mini-parties inside. I am not sure that Sanders part of Democratic party would support Hillary. The wounds caused by DNC betrayal and double dealing are still too fresh. ..."
"... We have something like what Marxists call "revolutionary situation" when the elite loses control of "peons". And existence of Internet made MSM propaganda far less effective that it would be otherwise. That's why they resort to war propaganda tricks. ..."
"That's not untrue, but it seems to me to be getting worse."
Because of economic stagnation and anxiety among lower class Republicans. Trump blames immigration
and trade unlike traditional elite Republicans. These are economic issues.
Trump supporters no longer believe or trust the Republican elite who they see as corrupt
which is partly true. They've been backing Nixon, Reagan, Bush etc and things are just getting
worse. They've been played.
Granted it's complicated and partly they see their side as losing and so are doubling down
on the conservatism, racism, sexism etc. But Trump *brags* that he was against the Iraq war.
That's not an elite Republican opinion.
likbez -> DrDick... , -1
My impression is that Trump_vs_deep_state is more about dissatisfaction of the Republican base with the Republican
brass (which fully endorsed neoliberal globalization), the phenomenon somewhat similar to Sanders.
Working class and lower middle class essentially abandoned DemoRats (Clinton democrats) after
so many years of betrayal and "they have nowhere to go" attitude.
Looks like they have found were to go this election cycle and this loss of the base is probably
was the biggest surprise for neoliberal Democrats.
Now they try to forge the alliance of highly paid professionals who benefitted from globalization("creative
class"), financial speculators and minorities. Which does not look like a stable coalition to
me.
Some data suggest that among unions which endorsed Hillary 3 out of 4 members will vote against
her. And that are data from union brass. Lower middle class might also demonstrate the same pattern
this election cycle.
In other words both Parties are now split and have two mini-parties inside. I am not sure that
Sanders part of Democratic party would support Hillary. The wounds caused by DNC betrayal and
double dealing are still too fresh.
We have something like what Marxists call "revolutionary situation" when the elite loses control
of "peons". And existence of Internet made MSM propaganda far less effective that it would be
otherwise. That's why they resort to war propaganda tricks.
"... Obama said back in 2008: "I want to be honest, it's not as if it's just Republicans who have monkeyed around with elections in the past. Sometimes, Democrats have, too." ..."
"... hillary goes along with CIA and the neocon/zionist/MIC agenda but she's replaceable. ..."
"... An out of control, above the law, criminal mafia acting on behalf of the Saudis and Israelis (if you think Syria is about the petrodollar or a Qatari pipeline... Think again - it's about Iran and Russia and about Greater Israel and its Leviathan and Golan gas most of all - Zbig et al would prefer to be full battle rattle in Ukraine and Chechnya...) is stopped how? ..."
A U.K. based company that has provided voting machines for 16 states, including important battleground
states like Florida and Arizona, has direct ties with billionaire leftist and Clinton crusader George
Soros.
As Lifezette
reports , the fact that the man in control of voting machines in 16 states is tied directly to
the man who has given millions of dollars to the Clinton campaign and various progressive and globalist
causes will surely leave a bad taste in the mouth of many a voter.
The balloting equipment tied to Soros is coming from the U.K. based Smartmatic company, whose
chairman Mark Malloch-Brown is a former UN official and sits on the board of Soros' Open Society
Foundation.
According to Lifezette , Malloch-Brown was part of the Soros Advisory Committee on Bosnia and
also is a member of the executive committee of the International Crisis Group, an organization he
co-founded in the 1990s and built with funds from George Soros' personal fortune.
In 2007 Soros appointed Malloch-Brown vice-president of his Quantum Funds, vice-chairman of Soros
Fund Management, and vice-chairman of the Open Society Institute (former name of OSF).
Browns ties also intertwine with the Clintons as he was a partner with Sawyer-Miller, the consulting
firm where close Clinton associate Mandy Grunwald worked. Brown also was also a senior advisor to
FTI Consulting, a firm at which Jackson Dunn, who spent 15 years working as an aide to the Clintons,
is a senior managing director.
When taking that into account, along with the poor track record Smartmatic has of providing free
and fair elections, this all becomes quite terrifying.
An astonishing 2006 classified U.S. diplomatic cable obtained and released by WikiLeaks reveals
the extent to which Smartmatic may have played a hand in rigging the 2004 Venezuelan recall election
under a section titled "A Shadow of Fraud." The memo stated that "Smartmatic Corporation is a
riddle both in ownership and operation, complicated by the fact that its machines have overseen
several landslide (and contested) victories by President Hugo Chavez and his supporters."
"The Smartmatic machines used in Venezuela are widely suspected of, though never proven conclusively
to be, susceptible to fraud," the memo continued. "The Venezuelan opposition is convinced that
the Smartmatic machines robbed them of victory in the August 2004 referendum. Since then, there
have been at least eight statistical analyses performed on the referendum results."
"One study obtained the data log from the CANTV network and supposedly proved that the Smartmatic
machines were bi-directional and in fact showed irregularities in how they reported their results
to the CNE central server during the referendum," it read.
With such suspicion and a study which claims to prove that the U.K. firm's equipment tampered
with the 2004 Venezuelan recall election, should be enough for states to reject these machines if
they desire a fair election.
Smartmatic is providing machines to Arizona, California, Colorado, Washington DC, Florida, Illinois,
Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington and
Wisconsin, which means these Soros and Clinton linked machines are going to take the votes of thousands
of Americans.
While GOP nominee Donald Trump has been voicing his opinion that the elections are indeed rigged
due to media bias, and the proof that
mainstream polls are heavily weighted to favor Clinton , it is needless to say that if the results
show Hillary as a winner in November, there is going to a mess to shuffle through to find signs of
honesty.
MSNBC are reporting that Hillary is absolutely surging and now leading by double digits! America
is going absolutely wild for Hillary!! This is very exciting – I can sense victory, and I see
that bitter right-wingers can sense defeat as they pre-emptively blame their loss on vote rigging.
There is no such thing as election rigging, unless we're talking about Al Gore losing to Bush
– there was clear evidence of rigging during this election. But Republicans are known for rigging
elections. Democrats have never, and will never rig an election.
Two words: PAPER BALLOTS!!! How anyone with 3 brain cells or more can't see that paper ballots
are the way to go when voting is beyond me. There is a paper trail, and they cannot be hacked.
They can be recounted. Machines are easily manipulated and there is NO PAPER trail to recount.
Use paper ballots and tell Gerge Soros to go fuck himself.
The Soros voting machine issue is one of the largest problems with this election. Trump has mentioned
him by name twice during the debates and has also talked openly about a 'rigged' election. I hope
he will address this directly.
We're already seeing the polls skew in Clinton's direction in unusual states like Arizona so
even that is on the cards to be stolen.
LOL, not even your big hero Barry would claim that. To wit: Obama said back in 2008: "I want
to be honest, it's not as if it's just Republicans who have monkeyed around with elections in
the past. Sometimes, Democrats have, too."
And this time, it seems to be more than some monkeying on part of Hitlery and Barry. Rather
"we rigged some votes and screwed some folks." Go figure.
Speaking at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, Million Dollar Bonus said: "To say you won't
respect the results of the election, that is a direct threat to our democracy.
"The peaceful transfer of power is one of the things that makes America America.
And look, some people are sore losers, and we just got to keep going" It was actually Hillary
Clinton who said that, same difference lol,
You make a good point, and to distill the matter to its essence, apart from a controlled media
and well established and entrenched special, foreign and banking interests in DC... The CIA is
a CRIMINAL MAFIA acting under color of law, currently taking Saudi money to pay jihadi and 'blackwater'
type mercs in Syria, and by the way Yemen, and elsewhere, to include the slow ramp up in E Ukraine.
hillary goes along with CIA and the neocon/zionist/MIC agenda but she's replaceable.
No they can and will steal this election if, in fact, Trump were to get a majority of votes
(which by the way is unlikely - study the demographics... trump can not beat hillary when she
has 70/80% of women, the latinos, blacks, leftists, and so on) - but the underlying issue remains:
An out of control, above the law, criminal mafia acting on behalf of the Saudis and Israelis
(if you think Syria is about the petrodollar or a Qatari pipeline... Think again - it's about
Iran and Russia and about Greater Israel and its Leviathan and Golan gas most of all - Zbig et
al would prefer to be full battle rattle in Ukraine and Chechnya...) is stopped how?
Considering that US military personnel may quite literally be killed by CIA provided weapons,
one might posit that one scenario is CIA personnel being hunted down and arrested (or not) by
elements of the US special forces although this doesn't happen without either strong and secure
leadership or some paradigm-shifting revelation.
For example- if more knew how exceedingly likely it is that 9/11 was an inside/Israeli job...
Knew it... Things might change.
but I'm not optimistic.
hillary means ww3, and we are not the good guys. If we ever were..
Things were way different back when JFK was killed, I know I was around then.
For one thing there was no internet, and people trusted and respected the media (TV and Newspapers)
This trust made it very easy to coverup and / or bury details.
People overwhelmingly trusted government officials, Very few people questioned what government
and media told them, again this makes it super easy to lie and coverup
I repect your question, and I hope you consider what I said. I am trying to make the case that
assasination is no longer an option, not unless they want to truly start a real civil war. Which
I would not rule out. But if they wish to keep the status quo and the sheep silent, assasination
is way way to risky for the reasons I mentioned above
"... I wonder if the various powers that be assembled some kind of "Committee to Defend the Liberal Order" when Trump began to make noises about re-assessing Nato ..."
"... A very interesting and pretty plausible hypothesis... That actually is the most deep insight I got from this interesting discussion. In such case intelligence agencies are definitely a part of "Committee to Defend the Liberal Order" which is yet another explanation of their strange behavior. ..."
"... it's a bunch of scams, lies and public manipulation schemes. ..."
I wonder if the various powers that be assembled some kind of "Committee to Defend the Liberal
Order" when Trump began to make noises about re-assessing Nato.
Reply
Monday, October 24, 2016 at 02:11 PM
> ...some kind of "Committee to Defend the Liberal Order" when Trump began to make noises about
re-assessing Nato.
A very interesting and pretty plausible hypothesis... That actually is the most deep insight
I got from this interesting discussion. In such case intelligence agencies are definitely a part
of "Committee to Defend the Liberal Order" which is yet another explanation of their strange behavior.
I can't claim that a mere mortal like me actually has the slightest clue what is really going
on. All I will hazard is that, whatever it is, it's a bunch of scams, lies and public manipulation
schemes.
Where this kind of high level foreign policy is involved, the US government and intelligence
services blew their cred with me long ago. I disbelieve them now on as a strong and resilient
prior.
"... the discontent that motivates the Trump voters seems less likely to just vanish. We seem to be in the midst of a realignment of both UK and US politics, of which Trump and Farrage are just symptoms ..."
"... Trump should be defeated according to most here. Some may actually believe Trump really is the anti-Christ Hitler we've been constantly told he is, instead of a widely watched and often admired vulgarian capitalist welcomed into living rooms across America for more than a decade. Whatever Trump is, he's not Cruz. His supporters are not Cruz supporters. Yet. ..."
"... Which is why, in this instance, I think the polls are wrong. Who in their right mind is going to ever admit that Trump's language and behavior is not offensive? Nobody. Who in their right mind looks out at America and sees Donald Trump, not Bill Cosby etc, etc, etc as a threat to their own daughters, sisters, sons, etc? Which is why, in the end, enough voters are going to say no thanks to Hillary and roll the dice with Donald. ..."
"... The stink coming out of the Clinton campaign is so rank it's actually penetrating the media wall of silence. Given that social media provides numerous ways for candidates to bypass the gate-keepers, I suspect enough voters are learning what's in the emails whether CNN, or the Wapo, report the discoveries, or not. ..."
"... On most wedge issues, Trump is running as a bog-standard Republican conservative, and he's losing on those issues. ..."
"... Indeed I see the synthesis of neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism as the final consolidation of conservatism and the end of what we have understood as history – the final triumph of capitalism as it dies. ..."
"... The right has also succeeded in the same way to reduce consumer rights. Arbitration agreements are attached to almost everything you buy that needs an agreement (software, mobile phones, etc.) before use. The agreements not only mandate secret arbitration they also prevent consumers from banding together in order to form a class thus making each individual consumer litigate alone. Obviously this reduces the power of individual consumers and also decreases the incentive for any one consumer to do something about what, on the individual level, may be a small injury. Basically it allows business to steal a small amount from a lot of people. ..."
"... On the "economy", "taxes", and, "foreign affairs" the respondents "trust" the GOP more than the Dems. Though on one key measure "caring about people like you" the Dems are trusted over the GOP by a slight margin. ..."
"... The reduction of marginal income tax rates on the highest "wage" incomes combined with new doctrines of corporate business leadership that emphasized the maximization of shareholder value created a new class of C-suite business executives occupying positions of great political power as allies and servants of the rentier class of Capital owners. The elaborate structures of financial repression and mutual finance were systematically demolished, removing many of the protections from financial predation afforded the working and middle classes. ..."
"... she's the least popular Democratic candidate perhaps ever! That's the only reason it would be close. A party built around the principles of white male supremacy and dedicated to expanding the wealth and income gap is at a massive disadvantage in any non-gerrymandered election. ..."
"... It is striking to me how even on the left the discussion of U.S. militarism and imperialism has been marginalized and does not come up much in casual conversation. We had an active peace movement through the worst days of the Cold War, and then there was a bit of a resurgence of it in response to the Iraq War. But Obama's acceptance of the core assumptions of the 'War on Terror' (even as he waged it more responsibly) seems to have led to the war party co-opting the liberals as well until there is no longer an effective opposition. The rhetoric of 'humanitarian intervention' has been hugely successful in that effort. ..."
Trump himself will go away, I think. But the discontent that motivates the Trump voters
seems less likely to just vanish. We seem to be in the midst of a realignment of both UK and US
politics, of which Trump and Farrage are just symptoms. Farrage has already made an attempt
at retiring from politics, and I could easily see Trump going back to reality television after
the election. The real question is: what will their supporters do next?
I am also surprised that Corey thinks feminism and the civil rights movement has been defeated.
These seem to me to be areas in which some progress has been made (along with other forms of identity
politics, e.g. gay marriage). It's been the class-based labour/union movement that's been the
real loser.
Possibly it depends on which time scale you're talking about, and that some of us now count
as old people, in that our implicit timescale is over our lifetimes. Maybe young college students
think that all the progress made by feminism happened before they were even born, and things have
slowed down of late. (With a slight hat-tip to Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions
, I could easily see some further progress on feminist issues being made simply by the older
guys in management positions dying off, and being replaced by younger people who grew up in a
different culture),
I disagree with the basic premise of the post in that the right has been beaten because it
has won.
That's certainly not how the right sees the landscape. The tea party of 2010 was co-opted by
Richard Armey and the Kochs on the one hand and buried under a mountain of forms by Lois Lerner
on the other. The Armey group rallies to Ted Cruz, who is sure to have something to say about
America and the future of the Republican party should Trump be undone because of his lewd behavior
and actions.
The media is certain to be savaged no matter what the outcome. The number of artists and musicians
who both profit from and promote misogyny and violence invited to the WH over the last 8 years
to serve as role models for America's youth should raise nary an eyebrow. The prudery of the moment
is going to be the template for 'social reform' under the Republicans. If Hillary and her
media allies succeed in derailing the Trump insurgency via his mouth, his hands, and his zipper
they're going to face an extremely hostile electorate. Cruz is certain to try to step into Trump's
shoes as leader, preaching that Trump was a flawed messenger undone by an unforgiving god. This
will make sense for too many Americans to completely ignore. The unhappy white males who have
yet to self-identify as angry white males, rather than simply as Americans, may well decide to
do so.
Whatever few victories the Democrats enjoy lower down the ticket are unlikely to survive skyrocketing
Affordable Care Act premiums, some form of amnesty, and an extension of America's wars in the
ME. The Democrats are betting the farm that Republicans will never unlock the padlock Democrats
maintain over socially-conservative minorities. Cruz's ground game and networking with the evangelical
community didn't get the job done in 2016, but we can be sure that he and his team are already
mapping 2020.
Trump should be defeated according to most here. Some may actually believe Trump really
is the anti-Christ Hitler we've been constantly told he is, instead of a widely watched and often
admired vulgarian capitalist welcomed into living rooms across America for more than a decade.
Whatever Trump is, he's not Cruz. His supporters are not Cruz supporters. Yet.
I've no idea whether those supporting the Democratic candidate expect her to wake up on November
9, should she win, and suddenly decide to abandon the practices that got her this far. I certainly
don't. If you're nauseated at the prospect of 4-8 more years of secrecy, war, lies, and corruption
you're going to need to keep more than barf bags at hand, however. The polarization that has divided
America over the last 8 years is, imho, far more likely to become much more corrosive and
damaging with Democrats in charge.
Ted Cruz will literally be burning crosses and probably books, pornography, and anyone/thing
else that strikes his fancy. The donor class is praying that Hillary/Bush can stamp out the fires.
With rising unemployment, stagnating wages, and more and more Americans feeling that the system
isn't interested in them, or their children, there may very well be a little hell to pay, or a
lot.
kidneystones 10.24.16 at 12:37 pm @ 14
It won't surprise you to learn I think you're wrong about Trump. The battle against Trump is
for many a rejection of what they see in the mirror transposed onto Trump, as far as males go.
Many women, including some who support him, see in Trump a dangerous predator who offers the promise
of protection and wealth, but at a cost. Good thing no woman would ever sell herself, or her principles,
to such a man – and if Bill Clinton pops into your head, please don't blame me.
Which is why, in this instance, I think the polls are wrong. Who in their right mind is
going to ever admit that Trump's language and behavior is not offensive? Nobody. Who in their
right mind looks out at America and sees Donald Trump, not Bill Cosby etc, etc, etc as a threat
to their own daughters, sisters, sons, etc? Which is why, in the end, enough voters are going
to say no thanks to Hillary and roll the dice with Donald.
I like your question re: Cruz. I find him such a phenomenally transparent phony that I can't
quite believe anyone trusts him. With Trump, and Bill Clinton, what you see is what you get –
Slick Willie.
At the moment Americans are being told they don't like what they see in Trump, but if that
were the case, why was he so popular back when he was actually on the Howard Stern show and otherwise
acting out? I frankly don't think most Americans give a toss what Trump did or said this week,
much less ten years ago.
The stink coming out of the Clinton campaign is so rank it's actually penetrating the media
wall of silence. Given that social media provides numerous ways for candidates to bypass the gate-keepers,
I suspect enough voters are learning what's in the emails whether CNN, or the Wapo, report the
discoveries, or not.
Like I said. I think it will be close and right now I still say Trump edges it.
Layman 10.24.16 at 12:55 pm
"Clinton will win easily, but it could easily be argued that the victory will be over
Trump the man than over any ideology. If Clinton were running against Cruz – who on any reasonable
measure is well to the right of Trump – would she be 20 points ahead with women?"
Hard to find more recent polling than this; but based on this, women would solidly still prefer
Clinton over Cruz.
I also doubt that notion that it is Trump's vulgarity, on its own, rather than Republican conservative
ideology which is driving the likely result. Trump does himself no favors, but Clinton's negatives
hold her back, too. On most wedge issues, Trump is running as a bog-standard Republican conservative,
and he's losing on those issues.
Which is why, in the end, enough voters are going to say no thanks to Hillary and roll the
dice with Donald.
What odds would you accept on this outcome?
SusanC 10.24.16 at 2:26 pm @20.
Indeed. There's a difference between a biased sample and the oversampling technique. The difference
being that with oversampling you statistically correct for the fact that you've intentionally
sampled some subpopulation more frequently than you would have done if you just chose members
of the whole population uniformly at random (while a biased sample just ignores or is ignorant
of the problem…)
(I hope this isn't too much of a derail. There is a grand CT tradition of yawn-not-that-again
OPs with derails where you might learn something).
I am not sanguine about the apparent collapse of this version (Trump) of American fascism. If
conservatism can be said to be that which argues for the preservation of traditional social institutions
and traditional political values then conservatism is far from dying. Indeed I see the synthesis
of neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism as the final consolidation of conservatism and the end
of what we have understood as history – the final triumph of capitalism as it dies.
Bernard Yomtov 10.24.16 at 3:59 pm
the reason I think the right has not much of a future is that it has won. If you consider its
great animating energies since the New Deal-anti-labor, anti-civil rights, and anti-feminism-the
right has achieved a considerable amount of success.
I agree with dd that this is just wrong. Are labor, the civil rights movement, women's rights,
worse than they were at the end of the New Deal? I don't see how.
The right has won or is winning in an some ways on labor and civil rights issues by changing the
procedure by which one can assert the rights that may exist.
The number of strikes are down as someone else mentioned. But the Right has also largely succeeded
in reducing the ability of individual employees to engage in private actions to vindicate their
rights. E.g. the huge increase in enforceable arbitration agreements in what are essentially contracts
of adhesion. The Right has solidified the ability of business to prevent employees from using
the independent, publicly funded judiciary, and instead forces them to use private, secretive,
arbitrators who essentially work for the companies (because the business is a repeat player and
the arbitrators rely on being chosen to arbitrate in order to make their money).
The right has also succeeded in the same way to reduce consumer rights. Arbitration agreements
are attached to almost everything you buy that needs an agreement (software, mobile phones, etc.)
before use. The agreements not only mandate secret arbitration they also prevent consumers from
banding together in order to form a class thus making each individual consumer litigate alone.
Obviously this reduces the power of individual consumers and also decreases the incentive for
any one consumer to do something about what, on the individual level, may be a small injury. Basically
it allows business to steal a small amount from a lot of people.
In regards to Clinton and her chances against any other Republican, here is some polling which
suggests the country at least trust the GOP over the Dems on a number of important issues. It
is from April, 2016 so not the freshest data. But it might indicate Trump's bog standard GOP policies
are not what is driving votes to Clinton/away from Trump.
On the "economy", "taxes", and, "foreign affairs" the respondents "trust" the GOP more
than the Dems. Though on one key measure "caring about people like you" the Dems are trusted over
the GOP by a slight margin.
bruce wilder 10.24.16 at 5:04 pm
Among the most successful projects of the Right was financialization of the economy.
The reduction of marginal income tax rates on the highest "wage" incomes combined with
new doctrines of corporate business leadership that emphasized the maximization of shareholder
value created a new class of C-suite business executives occupying positions of great political
power as allies and servants of the rentier class of Capital owners. The elaborate structures
of financial repression and mutual finance were systematically demolished, removing many of the
protections from financial predation afforded the working and middle classes.
In the current election, the Democratic Party has split on financial reform issues, with the
dominant faction represented by the Party's candidate prioritizing issues of race and gender equality.
"In regards to Clinton and her chances against any other Republican, here is some polling
which suggests the country at least trust the GOP over the Dems on a number of important issues."
I imagine any poll pitting 'generic Republican' against Hillary Clinton in April of this year
would have shown 'generic Republican' winning. The problem is, you can't run 'generic Republican'.
I'm hard pressed to point at any prominent Republican who I think would be handily beating
Clinton now. Once you name them, they have to say what they're for and against, and she takes
her shot at them, and they're fighting an uphill battle. And she's the least popular Democratic
candidate perhaps ever! That's the only reason it would be close. A party built around the principles
of white male supremacy and dedicated to expanding the wealth and income gap is at a massive disadvantage
in any non-gerrymandered election.
PGD 10.24.16 at 6:28 pm
It is striking to me how even on the left the discussion of U.S. militarism and imperialism
has been marginalized and does not come up much in casual conversation. We had an active peace
movement through the worst days of the Cold War, and then there was a bit of a resurgence of it
in response to the Iraq War. But Obama's acceptance of the core assumptions of the 'War on Terror'
(even as he waged it more responsibly) seems to have led to the war party co-opting the liberals
as well until there is no longer an effective opposition. The rhetoric of 'humanitarian intervention'
has been hugely successful in that effort.
One of the most depressing things about this election campaign to me has been to see
the Democrats using their full spectrum media dominance not to fight for a mandate for left policies,
but to run a coordinated and effective propaganda campaign for greater U.S. military involvement
in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, focusing on demonizing Putin and on humanitarian intervention
rhetoric around Aleppo and the like.
Last week, Jame O'keefe and Project Veritas Action potentially
altered the course of the U.S. election, or at a minimum raised serious doubts about the practices of the Clinton campaign and
the DNC, after releasing two undercover videos that revealed efforts of democrat operatives to incite violence at republican rallies
and commit "mass voter fraud." While democrats have vehemently denied the authenticity of the videos, two democratic operatives,
Robert Creamer and Scott Foval, have both been forced to resign over the allegations.
Many democrats made the rounds on various mainstream media outlets over the weekend in an attempt to debunk the Project Veritas
videos. Unfortunately for them, O'Keefe fired back with warnings that part 3 of his multi-part series was forthcoming and would
implicate Hillary Clinton directly.
Anything happens to me, there's a deadman's switch on Part III, which will be released Monday.
@HillaryClinton and
@donnabrazile implicated.
Now, we have the 3rd installment of O'Keefe's videos which does seemingly reveal direct coordination between Hillary Clinton,
Donna Brazile, Robert Creamer and Scott Foval to organize a smear campaign over Trump's failure to release his tax returns. Per
Project Veritas :
Part III of the undercover Project Veritas Action investigation dives further into the back room dealings of Democratic
politics. It exposes prohibited communications between Hillary Clinton's campaign, the DNC and the non-profit organization
Americans United for Change. And, it's all disguised as a duck. In this video, several Project Veritas Action undercover journalists
catch Democracy Partners founder directly implicating Hillary Clinton in FEC violations. " In the end, it was the candidate,
Hillary Clinton, the future president of the United States, who wanted ducks on the ground," says Creamer in one of several
exchanges. "So, by God, we would get ducks on the ground." It is made clear that high-level DNC operative Creamer realized
that this direct coordination between Democracy Partners and the campaign would be damning when he said: "Don't repeat that
to anybody."
Within the video both Clinton and Brazile are directly implicated by Creamer during the following exchange:
"The duck has to be an Americans United for Change entity. This had to do only with some problem between Donna Brazile and
ABC, which is owned by Disney, because they were worried about a trademark issue. That's why. It's really silly.
We originally launched this duck because Hillary Clinton wants the duck .
In any case, so she really wanted this duck figure out there doing this stuff, so that was fine. So, we put all these ducks
out there and got a lot of coverage. And Trump taxes. And then ABC/Disney went crazy because they thought our original slogan
was 'Donald ducks his taxes, releasing his tax returns."
They said it was a trademark issue. It's not, but anyway, Donna Brazile had a connection with them and she didn't want to
get sued. So we switched the ownership of the duck to Americans United for Change and now our signs say 'Trump ducks releasing
his tax returns.' And we haven't had anymore trouble."
As Project Veritas points out, this direct coordination between Clinton, Brazile and Americans United For Change is a violation
of federal election laws:
"The ducks on the ground are likely 'public communications' for purposes of the law. It's political activity opposing Trump,
paid for by Americans United For Change funds but controlled by Clinton/her campaign."
"As Project Veritas points out, this direct coordination between Clinton, Brazile and Americans United For Change is a violation
of federal election laws "
Yeah, you pretty much got the head shot there. Unfortunately, no gun to shoot it from. The enforcement authorities all work
FOR the Democrat party.
Full spectrum dominance. It's a bitch. Even if you catch them red-haned there's no "authorities" to report it to that will
listen to you.
Remember what happened to Planned Parenthood when they were caught red-handed selling human tissue for profit (which is also
illegal)? That's right. Nothing. Same thing here.
The problem is that the MSM isn't reporting on any of this stuff about Hillary. And, the Republicans in office aren't on the news
at all to talk about any of this. So, the only place it is reported is on the Trump campaign trail where just a few thousand hear
about.
If the media won't report it and the Republicans won't talk about it, Hillary gets a pass. The audience for sites like ZH and
Drudge are just preaching to the chior and not reaching the people who could change their minds or haven't made up their minds.
froze25 -> ImGumbydmmt •Oct 24, 2016 3:40 PM
What this video is, is evidence of collusion between a campaign and a SuperPac. That is illegal in a criminal court. This is enough
to open an investigation, problem is nothing will be done by Nov 8th. All we can do is share it non-stop.
Bastiat d Haus-Targaryen •Oct 24, 2016 2:11 PM
Don't discount the Enquirer: remember who took down Gary Hart and John Edwards:
Hillary Clinton's shady Mr. Fix It will tell all on TV tonight, just days after his explosive confession in The National ENQUIRER
hit the stands.
The man who's rocked Washington, D.C., will join Sean Hannity on tonight's episode of "Hannity" - airing on the FOX News Channel
at 10 p.m. EST - to reveal his true identity at last.
"... US-Russia-China cooperation will eliminate for the US the threat of war with the only two powers whose nuclear capabilities could pose existential threats to the US. ..."
"... Simultaneously, Trump will put an end to "the prevailing view that the U.S. is, and always must be, the benign hegemon, altruistically policing the world, while allowing its allies, satellites-and even rivals-to manufacture everything and thereby generate the jobs, profits, and knowhow…a view that elevated the ambitions and pretensions of the American elite over the well-being of the larger U.S. population…Instead of sacrificing American economic interests on the altar of U.S. 'leadership,' [Trump] will view the strengthening of the American economy as central to American greatness." ..."
"... President Trump will rebuild the decimated US manufacturing sector and return to Americans those tens of millions of jobs that America's globalist elites were allowed to ship overseas. Rebuilding the US economy – and jobs! – will be the centerpiece of a Donald Trump presidency. ..."
"... The problem is that everyone wants to call themselves a Realist, even the Neocons. The Neocons proclaim that promoting Democracy, nation building, and being the world's policeman is 'realism' because if you withdraw from the world the problems follow you home. Tom Rogan bellowed that we needed to destroy Syria in the name of realism. They are totally wrong but the point is that everyone wants to claim this mantle which is why I tend to avoid this term. ..."
"... I think we should embrace the Putin Doctrine but that name is toxic. Basically, he eschews destroying standing govts because it is highly destabilizing. This is common sense. ..."
"... Oh, when I hear 'Bush kept us safe' it tears my heart out when I see guys in their 20/30's walking around with those titanium prosthetics. Do the 4,000+ men who died in Iraq and 10,000+ severely wounded count? And this does not even start to count the chaos and death in the M.E. ..."
"... Mainstream media are besides themselves at the prospect of their masters having to relinquish their special entitlements; namely, designer wars, selection of the few to govern the many (Supreme Court and the Fed), and putting foreign dictates over American interests at an incredible cost to the U.S. in human and non-human resources. ..."
Donald Trump played a wily capitalistic trick on his Republican opponents in the primary fights
this year-he served an underserved market.
By now it's a cliché that Trump, while on his way to the GOP nomination, tapped into an unnoticed
reservoir of right-of-center opinion on domestic and economic concerns-namely, the populist-nationalists
who felt left out of the reigning market-libertarianism of the last few decades.
Indeed, of the 17 Republicans who ran this year, Trump had mostly to himself the populist issues:
that is, opposition to open borders, to free trade, and to earned-entitlement cutting. When the other
candidates were zigging toward the familiar-and unpopular-Chamber of Commerce-approved orthodoxy,
Trump was zagging toward the voters.
Moreover, the same sort of populist-nationalist reservoir-tapping was evident in the realm of
foreign affairs. To put it in bluntly Trumpian terms, the New Yorker hit 'em where they weren't.
The fact that Trump was doing something dramatically different became clear in the make-or-break
Republican debate in Greenville, S.C., on February 13. Back in those early days of the campaign,
Trump had lost one contest (Iowa) and won one (New Hampshire), and it was still anybody's guess who
would emerge victorious.
During that debate, Trump took what seemed to be an extraordinary gamble: he ripped into George
W. Bush's national-security record-in a state where the 43rd president was still popular. Speaking
of the Iraq War, Trump said, "George Bush made a mistake. We can make mistakes. But that one was
a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East."
And then Trump went further, aiming indirectly at the former president, while slugging his brother
Jeb directly: "The World Trade Center came down during your brother's reign, remember that."
In response, Jeb intoned the usual Republican line, "He kept us safe." And others on the stage
in Greenville that night rushed to associate themselves with Bush 43.
In the aftermath of this verbal melee, many thought that Trump had doomed himself. As one unnamed
Republican "strategist" chortled to Politico , "Trump's attack on President George W. Bush
was galactic-level stupid in South Carolina."
Well, not quite: Trump triumphed in the Palmetto State primary a week later, winning by a 10-point
margin.
Thus, as we can see in retrospect, something had changed within the GOP. After 9/11, in the early
years of this century, South Carolinians had been eager to fight. Yet by the middle of the second
decade, they-or at least a plurality of them-had grown weary of endless foreign war.
Trump's victory in the Palmetto State was decisive, yet it was nevertheless only a plurality,
32.5 percent. Meanwhile, Sen. Marco Rubio, running as an unabashed neocon hawk, finished second.
So we can see that the Republican foreign-policy "market" is now segmented. And while Trump proved
effective at targeting crucial segments, they weren't the only segments-because, in actuality, there
are four easily identifiable blocs on the foreign-policy right. And as we delineate these four segments,
we can see that while some are highly organized and tightly articulate, others are loose and inchoate:
First, the libertarians. That is, the Cato Institute and other free-market think tanks, Reason
magazine, and so on. Libertarians are not so numerous around the country, but they are strong
among the intelligentsia.
Second, the old-right "isolationists." These folks, also known as "paleocons," often find common
ground with libertarians, yet their origins are different, and so is their outlook. Whereas the libertarians
typically have issued a blanket anathema to all foreign entanglements, the isolationists have been
more selective. During World War I, for example, their intellectual forbears were hostile to U.S.
involvement on the side of the Allies, but that was often because of specifically anti-English or
pro-German sentiments, not because they felt guided by an overall principle of non-intervention.
Indeed, the same isolationists were often eager to intervene in Latin America and in the Far East.
More recently, the temperamentally isolationist bloc has joined with the libertarians in opposition
to deeper U.S. involvement in the Middle East.
Third, the traditional hawks. On the proverbial Main Street, USA, plenty of people-not limited
to the active-duty military, veterans, and law-enforcers-believe that America's national honor is
worth fighting for.
Fourth, the neoconservatives. This group, which takes hawkishness to an avant-garde extreme, is
so praised, and so criticized, that there's little that needs be added here. Yet we can say this:
as with the libertarians, they are concentrated in Washington, DC; by contrast, out beyond the Beltway,
they are relatively scarce. Because of their connections to big donors to both parties, however,
they have been powerful, even preeminent, in foreign-policy circles over the last quarter-century.
Yet today, it's the neocons who feel most threatened by, and most hostile to, the Trump phenomenon.
We can pause to offer a contextual point: floating somewhere among the first three categories-libertarians,
isolationists, hawks-are the foreign-policy realists. These, of course, are the people, following
in the tradition of the great scholar Hans Morgenthau, who pride themselves on seeing the world as
it is, regarding foreign policy as just another application of Bismarckian wisdom-"the art of the
possible."
The realists, disproportionately academics and think-tankers, are a savvy and well-credentialed
group-or, according to critics, cynical and world-weary. Yet either way, they have made many alliances
with the aforementioned trio of groups, even as they have usually maintained their ideological flexibility.
To borrow the celebrated wisdom of the 19th-century realpolitiker Lord Palmerston, realists don't
have permanent attachments; they have permanent interests. And so it seems likely that if Trump wins-or
anyone like Trump in the future-many realists will be willing to emerge from their wood-paneled precincts
to engage in the hurly-burly of public service.
Returning to our basic quartet of blocs, we can quickly see that two of them, the libertarians
and the neocons, have been loudly successful in the "battle of ideas." That is, almost everyone knows
where the libertarians and the neocons stand on the controversies of the moment. Meanwhile, the other
two groups-the isolationists and the traditional hawks-have failed to make themselves heard. That
is, until Trump.
For the most part, the isolationists and hawks have not been organized; they've just been clusters
of veterans, cops, gun owners, and like-minded souls gathering here and there, feeling strongly about
the issues but never finding a national megaphone. Indeed, even organized groups, such as the American
Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, sizable as they might be, have had little impact, of late,
on foreign affairs.
This paradoxical reality-that even big groups can be voiceless, allowing smaller groups to carry
the day-is well understood. Back in 1839, the historian Thomas Carlyle observed of his Britain, "The
speaking classes speak and debate," while the "deep-buried [working] class lies like an Enceladus"-a
mythological giant imprisoned under a volcano. Yet, Carlyle continued, the giant under the volcano
will not stay silent forever; one day it will erupt, and the inevitable eruption "has to produce
earthquakes!"
In our time, Trump has provoked the Enceladus-like earthquake. Over the past year, while the mainstream
media has continued to lavish attention on the fine points of libertarianism and neoconservatism,
the Peoples of the Volcano have blown up American politics.
Trump has spoken loudly to both of his groups. To the isolationists, he has highlighted his past
opposition to the Iraq and Libya misadventures, as well as his suspicions about NATO and other alliances.
(Here the libertarians, too, are on board.) At the same time, he has also talked the language of
the hawks, as when he has said, "Take the oil" and "Bomb the [bleep] out of them." Trump has also
attacked the Iran nuclear agreement, deriding it as "one of the worst deals ever made."
Thus earlier this year Trump mobilized the isolationists and the hawks, leaving the libertarians
to Rand Paul and the neocons to Rubio.
Now as we move to the general election, it appears that Trump has kept the loyalty of his core
groups. Many libertarians, meanwhile, are voting for Gary Johnson-the former Republican governor
at the top of the Libertarian Party's ticket-and they are being joined, most likely as a one-off,
by disaffected Republicans and Democrats. Meanwhile, the neocons, most of them, have become the objective
allies, if not the overt supporters, of Hillary Clinton.
Even if Trump loses, his energized supporters, having found their voice, will be a new and important
force within the GOP-a force that could make it significantly harder for a future president to, say,
"liberate" and "democratize" Syria.
♦♦♦
Yet now we must skip past the unknown unknowns of the election and ask: what might we expect if
Trump becomes president?
One immediate point to be borne in mind is that it will be a challenge to fill the cabinet and
the sub-cabinet-to say nothing of the thousands of "Schedule C" positions across the administration-with
true Trump loyalists. Yes, of course, if Trump wins that means he will have garnered 50 million or
more votes, but still, the number of people who have the right credentials and can pass all the background
checks-including, for most of the top jobs, Senate confirmation-is minuscule.
So here we might single out the foreign-policy realists as likely having a bright future in a
Trump administration: after all, they are often well-credentialed and, by their nature, have prudently
tended to keep their anti-Trump commentary to a minimum. (There's a piece of inside-the-Beltway realist
wisdom that seems relevant here: "You're for what happens.")
Yet the path to realist dominion in a Trump administration is not smooth. As a group, they have
been in eclipse since the Bush 41 era, so an entire generation of their cadres is missing. The realists
do not have long lists of age-appropriate alumni ready for another spin through the revolving door.
By contrast, the libertarians have lots of young staffers on some think-tank payroll or another.
And of course, the neocons have lots of experience and contacts-yes, they screwed up the last time
they were in power, but at least they know the jargon.
Thus, unless president-elect Trump makes a genuinely heroic effort to infuse his administration
with new blood, he will end up hiring a lot of folks who might not really agree with him-and who
perhaps even have strongly, if quietly, opposed him. That means that the path of a Trump presidency
could be channeled in an unexpected direction, as the adherents of other foreign-policy schools-including,
conceivably, schools from the left-clamber aboard. As they say in DC, "personnel is policy."
Still, Trump has a strong personality, and it's entirely possible that, as president, he will
succeed in imprinting his unique will on his appointees. (On the other hand, the career government,
starting with the State Department's foreign service officers, might well prove to be a different
story.)
Looking further ahead, as a hypothetical President Trump surveys the situation from the Sit Room,
here are nine things that will be in view:
1.
Trump will recall, always, that the Bush 43 presidency drove itself into a ditch on Iraq. So he
will surely see the supreme value of not sending U.S. ground troops-beyond a few advisors-into Middle
Eastern war zones.
2.
Trump will also realize that Barack Obama, for all his talk about hope and change, ended up preserving
the bulk of Bush 43's policies. The only difference is that Obama did it on the cheap, reducing defense
spending as he went along.
Obama similar to Bush-really? Yes. To be sure, Obama dropped all of Bush's democratic messianism,
but even with his cool detachment he kept all of Bush's alliances and commitments, including those
in Afghanistan and Iraq. And then he added a new international commitment: "climate change."
In other words, America now has a policy of "quintuple containment": Russia, China, Iran, ISIS/al-Qaeda,
and, of course, the carbon-dioxide molecule. Many would argue that today we aren't managing any of
these containments well; others insist that the Obama administration, perversely, seems most dedicated
to the containment of climate change: everything else can fall apart, but if the Obamans can maintain
the illusion of their international CO2 deals, as far as they are concerned all will be well.
In addition, Uncle Sam has another hundred or so minor commitments-including bilateral defense
treaties with countries most Americans have never heard of, along with special commitments to champion
the rights of children, women, dissidents, endangered species, etc. On a one-by-one basis, it's possible
to admire many of these efforts; on a cumulative basis, it's impossible to imagine how we can sustain
all of them.
3. A populist president like Trump will further realize that if the U.S. has just 4 percent of the
world's population and barely more than a fifth of world GDP, it's not possible that we can continue
to police the planet. Yes, we have many allies-on paper. Yet Trump's critique of many of them as
feckless, even faithless, resonated for one big reason: it was true.
So Trump will likely begin the process of rethinking U.S. commitments around the world. Do we
really want to risk nuclear war over the Spratly Islands? Or the eastern marches of Ukraine? Here,
Trump might well default to the wisdom of the realists: big powers are just that-big powers-and so
one must deal with them in all their authoritarian essentiality. And as for all the other countries
of the world-some we like and some we don't-we're not going to change them, either. (Although in
some cases, notably Iraq and Syria, partition, supervised by the great powers, may be the only solution.)
4.
Trump will surely see world diplomacy as an extension of what he has done best all his life-making
deals. This instinct will serve him well in two ways: first, he will be sharply separating himself
from his predecessors, Bush the hot-blooded unilateralist war-of-choicer and Obama the cool and detached
multilateralist leader-from-behind. Second, his deal-making desire will inspire him do what needs
to be done: build rapport with world leaders as a prelude to making things happen.
To cite one immediate example: there's no way that we will ever achieve anything resembling "peace
with honor" in Afghanistan without the full cooperation of the Taliban's masters in Pakistan. Ergo,
the needed deal must be struck in Islamabad, not Kabul.
Almost certainly, a President Trump will treat China and Russia as legitimate powers, not as rogue
states that must be single-handedly tamed by America.
Moreover, Trump's deal-making trope also suggests that instead of sacrificing American economic
interests on the altar of U.S. "leadership," he will view the strengthening of the American economy
as central to American greatness.
5.
Trump will further realize that his friends the realists have had a blind spot of late when it
comes to eco nomic matters. Once upon a time-that is, in the 19th century-economic nationalism was
at the forefront of American foreign-policy making. In the old days, as America's Manifest Destiny
stretched beyond the continental U.S., expansionism and Hamiltonianism went together: as they used
to say, trade follows the flag. Theodore Roosevelt's digging of the Panama Canal surely ranks as
one of the most successful fusions of foreign and economic policy in American history.
Yet in the past few decades, the economic nationalists and the foreign-policy realists have drifted
apart. For example, a Reagan official, Clyde Prestowitz of the Economic Strategy Institute, has been
mostly ignored by the realists, who have instead embraced the conventional elite view of free trade
and globalization.
So a President Trump will have the opportunity to reunite realism and economic nationalism; he
can once again put manufacturing exports, for example, at the top of the U.S. agenda. Indeed, Trump
might consider other economic-nationalist gambits: for example, if we are currently defending such
wealthy countries as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Norway, why aren't they investing some of the trillions
of dollars in their sovereign-wealth funds into, say, American infrastructure?
6.
Trump will also come into power realizing that he has few friends in the foreign-policy establishment;
after all, most establishmentarians opposed him vehemently. Yet that could turn out to be a real
plus for the 45th president because it could enable him to discard the stodgy and outworn thinking
of the "experts." In particular, he could refute the prevailing view that the U.S. is, and always
must be, the benign hegemon, altruistically policing the world, while allowing its allies, satellites-and
even rivals-to manufacture everything and thereby generate the jobs, profits, and knowhow. That was
always, of course, a view that elevated the ambitions and pretensions of the American elite over
the well-being of the larger U.S. population-and maybe Trump can come up with a better and fairer
vision.
7.
As an instinctive deal-maker, Trump will have the capacity to clear away the underbrush of accumulated
obsolete doctrines and dogmas. To cite just one small but tragic example, there's the dopey chain
of thinking that has guided U.S. policy toward South Sudan. Today, we officially condemn both sides
in that country's ongoing civil war. Yet we might ask, how can that work out well for American interests?
After all, one side or the other is going to win, and we presumably want a friend in Juba, not a
Chinese-affiliated foe.
On the larger canvas, Trump will observe that if the U.S., China, and Russia are the three countries
capable of destroying the world, then it's smart to figure out a modus vivendi among this
threesome. Such practical deal-making, of course, would undermine the moralistic narrative that Xi
Jinping and Vladimir Putin are the potentates of new evil empires.
8.
Whether or not he's currently familiar with the terminology, Trump seems likely to recapitulate
the "multipolar" system envisioned by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in the 1970s. Back then,
the multipolar vision included the U.S., the USSR, Western Europe, China, and Japan.
Yet multipolarity was lost in the '80s, as the American economy was Reaganized, the Cold War grew
colder, and the Soviet Union staggered to its self-implosion. Then in the '90s we had the "unipolar
moment," when the U.S. enjoyed "hyper-power" primacy.
Yet as with all moments, unipolarity soon passed, undone by the Iraq quagmire, America's economic
stagnation, and the rise of other powers. So today, multipolarity seems destined to re-emerge with
a slightly upgraded cast of players: the U.S., China, Russia, the European Union, and perhaps India.
9.
And, of course, Trump will have to build that wall along the U.S.-Mexican border.
♦♦♦
Some might object that I am reading too much into Trump. Indeed, the conventional wisdom, even
today, maintains that Trump is visceral, not intellectual, that he is buffoonish, not Kissingerian.
To such critics, this Trump supporter feels compelled to respond: when has the conventional wisdom
about the New Yorker been proven correct?
It's not easy to become president. In all of U.S. history, just 42 individuals have been elected
to the presidency-or to the vice presidency and succeeded a fallen president. That is, indeed, an
exclusive club. Or as Trump himself might say, it's not a club for dummies.
If Trump does, in fact, become the 45th president, then by definition, he will have proven himself
to be pretty darn strategic. And that's a portent that bodes well for his foreign policy.
James P. Pinkerton is a contributor to the Fox News Channel.
Among James Pinkerton's most compelling reasons to hope for a Trump presidency are these two:
[1] "Almost certainly, a President Trump will treat China and Russia as legitimate powers, not
as rogue states that must be single-handedly tamed by America…Trump will observe that if the U.S.,
China, and Russia are the three countries capable of destroying the world, then it's smart to
figure out amodus vivendi among this threesome…"
US-Russia-China cooperation will eliminate for the US the threat of war with the only two
powers whose nuclear capabilities could pose existential threats to the US.
[2] Simultaneously, Trump will put an end to "the prevailing view that the U.S. is,
and always must be, the benign hegemon, altruistically policing the world, while allowing its
allies, satellites-and even rivals-to manufacture everything and thereby generate the jobs, profits,
and knowhow…a view that elevated the ambitions and pretensions of the American elite over the
well-being of the larger U.S. population…Instead of sacrificing American economic interests on
the altar of U.S. 'leadership,' [Trump] will view the strengthening of the American economy as
central to American greatness."
President Trump will rebuild the decimated US manufacturing sector and return to Americans
those tens of millions of jobs that America's globalist elites were allowed to ship overseas.
Rebuilding the US economy – and jobs! – will be the centerpiece of a Donald Trump presidency.<
The problem is that everyone wants to call themselves a Realist, even the Neocons. The Neocons
proclaim that promoting Democracy, nation building, and being the world's policeman is 'realism'
because if you withdraw from the world the problems follow you home. Tom Rogan bellowed that we
needed to destroy Syria in the name of realism. They are totally wrong but the point is that everyone
wants to claim this mantle which is why I tend to avoid this term.
I think we should
embrace the Putin Doctrine but that name is toxic. Basically, he eschews destroying standing govts
because it is highly destabilizing. This is common sense.
Oh, when I hear 'Bush kept us safe' it tears my heart out when I see guys in their 20/30's
walking around with those titanium prosthetics. Do the 4,000+ men who died in Iraq and 10,000+
severely wounded count? And this does not even start to count the chaos and death in the M.E.
Trump just came across as different while maintaining conservative, albeit middle-American values.
Mainstream media are besides themselves at the prospect of their masters having to relinquish
their special entitlements; namely, designer wars, selection of the few to govern the many (Supreme
Court and the Fed), and putting foreign dictates over American interests at an incredible cost
to the U.S. in human and non-human resources.
The song goes on. Trump hit a real nerve. Even if he loses, the American people have had a
small but important victory. We are frustrated with the ruling cabal. A sleeping giant has been
awoken. This election could be the political Perl Harbor….
Pinkerton has spent thousands of words writing about someone who is not the Donald Trump anyone
has ever seen.
In this, he joins every other member of the Right, who wait in hopeful anticipation
to see a Champion for their cause in Donald Trump, and are willing to turn a blind eye to his
ignorance, outright stupidity, lack of self-discipline, and lack of serious intent.
Pinkerton, he will only follow your lead here if he sees what's in it for HIM, not for the
Right and certainly not for the benefit of the American people.
Flawed premise. This opine works its way through the rabbit hole pretzel of current methodologies
in D.C. The ones that don't work. The city of NY had a similar outcome building a certain ice
skating facility within the confines of a system designed to fail.
What Trump does is implode those failed systems, implements a methodology that has proven to
succeed, and then does it. Under budget and before the deadline. Finding the *right* bodies to
make it all work isn't as difficult as is surmised. What that shows is how difficult that task
would be for the author. Whenever I hear some pundit claim that Trump can't possibly do all that
means is the pundit couldn't possibly do it.
The current system is full of youcan'tdoits, what have you got to lose, more of the same?
"... So… Russia is already isolated, its economy is in shreds… or not? Because you can't have isolation (as you, pressitudes, claimed since 2014) of Russia and demand it at the same time! At the same time, no – ignoring Russia completely and talking only about "plox, don't use nukes, m'cay?" is not a "diplomacy". ..."
"... Absolutely schizophrenic Clinton-McFoul (yes, I know that his surname is spelled differently), which is still dominants in the alls of power of the West boils down to the following: ..."
"... 1) Talk harsh (really harsh!) with Russia on things we don't like ..."
"... 2) Cooperate with Russia when it possible as if never happened. ..."
"... And when Russia says that there are direct links between 1) and 2), that you can't expect to get 2) after doing 1) – there is no use to fake a hurt innocence of Ukrainians from this old anecdote with the "А на за що?!" punchline, ..."
"... You want war? You will have one! Want peace? Then behave yourself accodringly. ..."
"... Eli Lake is a dork who used to be the 'National Security Correspondent' for the Daily Beast. You know what a rag that is. Also, he was educated at Trinity College, a private liberal-arts school. ..."
"... I know how we can reach a compromise – me and the Russian government. Every year on the day that article was published, they could have "Eli Lake Day". On that day, an American company could be chosen at random to be kicked out of the country and have all its assets confiscated. The documents could lead off with, "Congratulations! You have been selected to receive the Eli Lake Award for Bankruptcy. You can thank Eli Lake and his big fucking mouth". ..."
Unsurprisingly – this article is from the Blub-blub-bloomberg. What is surprising – it's not by
Lyonya Bershidski. It's by another titan of handshakability – Eli Lake.
Why, surely with the name like that the article must be honest, objective and answer to all
standards of the journalism (in the West)?
I was again surprised when the now standard litany of Kremlin sins suddenly became an accusation
of "Murder, Kidnapping and Jaywalking":
"Russia also poisons the international system in small ways… It continues to support Kirsan
Ilyumzhinov as head of the International Chess Federation, despite his chummy visits to rogue
states like North Korea and Iran. His recent plan to hold the international chess championship
in Iran has drawn protest from the U.S. women's chess champion, Nazi Paikidze-Barnes, because
Iran requires women to cover their heads with a hijab."
Wow. Yet another bottom is crushed successfully and the standards of journalism in the Free
West get new way to fall! Or was it a secret way to endorse a "legitimate" head of the Chess Federation
– fearless Gary Kimovich Kasparov?
With new way to fall achieved by crashing yet another bottom the article takes a plunge:
"Browder last month proposed a plan for Interpol to create a two-tiered system. Speaking
before a human-rights commission in Congress, he said that transparent countries like the U.S.
would have their red notice requests processed immediately, whereas countries like Russia,
known to abuse the system, would have their requests reviewed by a panel of objective and independent
experts before being sent out to member states."
How handshakable! Surely, such approach will demonstrate the equality of countries in the international
relations and the true value of the Rule of Law!
The article ends in – now traditional for all Westie journos – couple of self-contradicting
paragraphs:
"None of this should preclude diplomacy with Russia. The U.S. and Russia should still
have channels to discuss nuclear stockpiles and other matters. But as Secretary of State John
Kerry has learned in his fruitless engagements, Russian promises are worthless. Everyone in
U.S. politics, with the exception of Donald Trump and a few other extremists on the left and
right, understands this. Russia is a pariah.
Pariahs are not asked to cooperate on challenges to the global commons. They shouldn't
get to host events like the World Cup, as Russia is scheduled to do in 2018. They should not
be diplomatic partners in U.S. policy to disarm other pariahs like Iran. No, pariahs should
be quarantined. With Russia, it's the very least the U.S. and its allies can do to save the
international system from a country that seeks to destroy it."
So… Russia is already isolated, its economy is in shreds… or not? Because you can't have
isolation (as you, pressitudes, claimed since 2014) of Russia and demand it at the same time!
At the same time, no – ignoring Russia completely and talking only about "plox, don't use nukes,
m'cay?" is not a "diplomacy".
Absolutely schizophrenic Clinton-McFoul (yes, I know that his surname is spelled differently),
which is still dominants in the alls of power of the West boils down to the following:
1) Talk harsh (really harsh!) with Russia on things we don't like
2) Cooperate with Russia when it possible as if never happened.
Now imagine that your neighbour decided to harm you in some nasty, really mean way. Imagine
him throwing seeds on you car, parked outside, and then filming how birds land (and shit) o your
car on his phone – with lots, and lots of really "smart" comments. Then your neighbor uploads
this video on YouTube, his Facebook page, Twitter, Instagram etc, etc. Here he engages with other
commenters in the vein of "Yeah, I know – he's a total douche! He got what he deserved! But wait,
guys – I have more plans for my neighbour!!!:)".
Next week he asks you to borrow him a landmover – as if nothing has ever happened before.
And when Russia says that there are direct links between 1) and 2), that you can't expect
to get 2) after doing 1) – there is no use to fake a hurt innocence of Ukrainians from this old
anecdote with the "А на за що?!" punchline,
You want war? You will have one! Want peace? Then behave yourself accodringly.
Eli Lake is a dork who used to be the 'National Security Correspondent' for the Daily Beast.
You know what a rag that is. Also, he was educated at Trinity College, a private liberal-arts
school. But the day will come when it is Russia's choice to punish Americans for the ignorant
things people like Eli Lake said. I would do it in a heartbeat; I would chortle with glee as I
tore up American proposals for joint ventures, and send balaclava-sporting kids dressed like Voina
around to paint giant dicks on their office doors with the message, "This is for Eli", until they
fled for the airport gibbering with terror. But that's me. Russia probably won't do it, because
they are pragmatic and like business and profit.
I know how we can reach a compromise – me and the Russian government. Every year on the
day that article was published, they could have "Eli Lake Day". On that day, an American company
could be chosen at random to be kicked out of the country and have all its assets confiscated.
The documents could lead off with, "Congratulations! You have been selected to receive the Eli
Lake Award for Bankruptcy. You can thank Eli Lake and his big fucking mouth".
"... It is an obvious fact that the oligarchic One Percent have anointed Hillary, despite her myriad problems to be President of the US. There are reports that her staff are already moving into their White House offices. This much confidence before the vote does suggest that the skids have been greased. ..."
"... Stolen elections are the American tradition. Elections are stolen at every level-state, local, and federal. Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley's theft of the Chicago and, thereby, Illinois vote for John F. Kennedy is legendary. The Republican US Supreme Court's theft of the 2000 presidential election from Al Gore by preventing the Florida vote recount is another legendary example. The discrepancies between exit polls and the vote count of the secretly programmed electronic voting machines that have no paper trails are also legendary. ..."
"... The presstitutes have gone all out to demonize both Trump and any mention of election rigging, because they know for a fact that the election will be stolen and that they will have the job of covering up the theft. ..."
"... Don't believe the polls that say Hillary won the Q&A sessions or the polls that say Hillary is ahead in the election. Pollsters work for political organizations. If pollsters produce unwelcome results, they don't have any customers. The desired results are that Hillary wins. The purpose of the rigged polls showing her to be ahead is to discourage Trump supporters from voting. ..."
"... Don't vote early. The purpose of early voting is to show the One Percent how the vote is shaping up. From this information, the oligarchs learn how to program the electronic machines in order to elect the candidate that they want. ..."
It is an obvious fact that the oligarchic One Percent have anointed Hillary, despite her myriad
problems to be President of the US. There are reports that her staff are already moving into their
White House offices. This much confidence before the vote does suggest that the skids have been greased.
The current cause celebre against Trump is his conditional statement that he might not accept
the election results if they appear to have been rigged. The presstitutes immediately jumped on him
for "discrediting American democracy" and for "breaking American tradition of accepting the people's
will."
What nonsense! Stolen elections are the American tradition. Elections are stolen at every
level-state, local, and federal. Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley's theft of the Chicago and, thereby,
Illinois vote for John F. Kennedy is legendary. The Republican US Supreme Court's theft of the 2000
presidential election from Al Gore by preventing the Florida vote recount is another legendary example.
The discrepancies between exit polls and the vote count of the secretly programmed electronic voting
machines that have no paper trails are also legendary.
So what's the big deal about Trump's suspicion of election rigging?
The black civil rights movement has fought vote rigging for decades. The rigging takes place in
a number of ways. Blacks simply can't get registered to vote. If they do get registered, there are
few polling places in their districts. And so on. After decades of struggle it is impossible that
there are any blacks who are not aware of how hard it can be for them to vote. Yet, I heard on the
presstitute radio network, NPR, Hillary's Uncle Toms saying how awful it was that Trump had cast
aspersion on the credibility of American election results.
I also heard a NPR announcer suggest that Russia had not only hacked Hillary's emails, but also
had altered them in order to make incriminating documents out of harmless emails.
The presstitutes have gone all out to demonize both Trump and any mention of election rigging,
because they know for a fact that the election will be stolen and that they will have the job of
covering up the theft.
Don't believe the polls that say Hillary won the Q&A sessions or the polls that say Hillary
is ahead in the election. Pollsters work for political organizations. If pollsters produce unwelcome
results, they don't have any customers. The desired results are that Hillary wins. The purpose of
the rigged polls showing her to be ahead is to discourage Trump supporters from voting.
Don't vote early. The purpose of early voting is to show the One Percent how the vote is shaping
up. From this information, the oligarchs learn how to program the electronic machines in order to
elect the candidate that they want.
That's explains vicious campaign by neoliberal MSM against Trump and swiping under the carpet all
criminal deeds of Clinton family. They feel the threat...
Notable quotes:
"... It should be remembered that fascism does not succeed in the real world as a crusade by race-obsessed lumpen. It succeeds when fascists are co-opted by capitalists, as was unambiguously the case in Nazi Germany and Italy. And big business supported fascism because it feared the alternatives: socialism and communism. ..."
"... That's because there is no more effective counter to class consciousness than race consciousness. That's one reason why, in my opinion, socialism hasn't done a better job of catching on in the United States. The contradictions between black and white labor formed a ready-made wedge. ..."
It should be remembered that fascism does not succeed in the real world as a crusade by
race-obsessed lumpen. It succeeds when fascists are co-opted by capitalists, as was unambiguously
the case in Nazi Germany and Italy. And big business supported fascism because it feared the alternatives:
socialism and communism.
That's because there is no more effective counter to class consciousness than race consciousness.
That's one reason why, in my opinion, socialism hasn't done a better job of catching on in the
United States. The contradictions between black and white labor formed a ready-made wedge.
The North's abhorrence at the spread of slavery into the American West before the Civil War
had more to do a desire to preserve these new realms for "free" labor-"free" in one context, from
the competition of slave labor-than egalitarian principle.[…]
There is more to Clintonism, I think, than simply playing the "identity politics" card to
screw Bernie Sanders or discombobulate the Trump campaign. "Identity politics" is near the core
of the Clintonian agenda as a bulwark against any class/populist upheaval that might threaten
her brand of billionaire-friendly liberalism.
In other words it's all part of a grand plan when the Clintonoids aren't busy debating the finer
points of her marketing and "mark"–a term normally applied to the graphic logo on a commercial product.
"... I would agree that Trump is horrible candidate. The candidate who (like Hillary) suggests complete degeneration of the US neoliberal elite. ..."
"... But the problem is that Hillary is even worse. Much worse and more dangerous because in addition to being a closet Republican she is also a warmonger. In foreign policy area she is John McCain in pantsuit. And if you believe that after one hour in White House she does not abandon all her election promises and start behaving like a far-right republican in foreign policy and a moderate republican in domestic policy, it's you who drunk too much Cool Aid. ..."
"... In other words, the USA [workers and middle class] now is in the political position that in chess is called Zugzwang: we face a choice between the compulsive liar, unrepentant, extremely dangerous and unstable warmonger with failing health vs. a bombastic, completely unprepared to governance of such a huge country crook. ..."
The key problems with Democratic Party and Hillary is that they lost working class and middle
class voters, becoming another party of highly paid professionals and Wall Street speculators
(let's say top 10%, not just 1%), the party of neoliberal elite.
It will be interesting to see if yet another attempt to "bait and switch" working class and
lower middle class works this time. I think it will not. Even upper middle class is very resentful
of Democrats and Hillary. So many votes will be not "for" but "against". This is the scenario
Democratic strategists fear the most, but they can do nothing about it.
She overplayed "identity politics" card. Her "identity politics" and her fake feminism are
completely insincere. She is completely numb to human suffering and interests of females and minorities.
Looks like she has a total lack of empathy for other people.
"What scares me is my knowledge of her career-long investment in trying to convince the
generals and the admirals that she is a 'tough bitch', ala Margaret Thatcher, who will not
hesitate to pull the trigger. An illuminating article in the NY Times (
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/magazine/how-hillary-clinton-became-a-hawk.html ) revealed
that she always advocates the most muscular and reckless dispositions of U.S. military forces
whenever her opinion is solicited. "
Usually people are resentful about Party which betrayed them so many times. It would be interesting
to see how this will play this time.
Beverly Mann October 23, 2016 12:00 pm
It will be interesting to see if yet another attempt to "bait and switch" working class and
lower middle class works this time?
Yup. The Republicans definitely have the interests of the working class and lower middle class
at heart when they give, and propose, ever deeper tax cuts for the wealthy, the repeal of the
estate tax that by now applies only to estates of more than $5 million, complete deregulation
of the finance industry, industry capture of every federal regulatory agency and cabinet department
and commission or board, from the SEC, to the EPA, to the Interior Dept. (in order to hand over
to the oil, gas and timber industries vast parts of federal lands), the FDA, the FTC, the FCC,
the NLRB, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the Justice Dept. (including the Antitrust
Division)-to name only some.
And OF COURSE it's to serve the interests of the working class and lower middle class that
they concertedly appoint Supreme Court justices and lower federal court judges that are unabashed
proxies of big business.
And then there's the incessant push to privatize Social Security and Medicare. It ain't the
Dems that are pushing that.
You're drinking wayyy too much Kool Aid, likbez. Or maybe just reading too much Ayn Rand, at
Paul Ryan's recommendation.
beene October 23, 2016 10:31 am
I would suggest despite most of the elite in both parties supporting Hillary, and saying
she has the election in the bag is premature. In my opinion the fact that Trump rallies still
has large attendance; where Hillary's rallies would have trouble filling up a large room is a
better indication that Trump will win.
Even democrats are not voting democratic this time to be ignored till election again.
likbez October 23, 2016 12:56 pm
Beverly,
=== quote ===
Yup. The Republicans definitely have the interests of the working class and lower middle class
at heart when they give, and propose, ever deeper tax cuts for the wealthy, the repeal of the
estate tax that by now applies only to estates of more than $5 million, complete deregulation
of the finance industry, industry capture of every federal regulatory agency and cabinet department
and commission or board, from the SEC, to the EPA, to the Interior Dept. (in order to hand
over to the oil, gas and timber industries vast parts of federal lands), the FDA, the FTC,
the FCC, the NLRB, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the Justice Dept. (including
the Antitrust Division) -- to name only some.
And OF COURSE it's to serve the interests of the working class and lower middle class that
they concertedly appoint Supreme Court justices and lower federal court judges that are unabashed
proxies of big business.
=== end of quote ===
This is all true. But Trump essentially running not as a Republican but as an independent on
(mostly) populist platform (with elements of nativism). That's why a large part of Republican
brass explicitly abandoned him. That does not exclude that he easily will be co-opted after the
election, if he wins.
And I would not be surprised one bit if Dick Cheney, Victoria Nuland, Paul Wolfowitz and Perle
vote for Hillary. Robert Kagan and papa Bush already declared such an intention. She is a neocon.
A wolf in sheep clothing, if we are talking about real anti-war democrats, not the USA brand of
DemoRats. She is crazy warmonger, no question about it, trying to compensate a complete lack of
diplomatic skills with jingoism and saber rattling.
The problem here might be that you implicitly idealize Hillary and demonize Trump.
I would agree that Trump is horrible candidate. The candidate who (like Hillary) suggests
complete degeneration of the US neoliberal elite.
But the problem is that Hillary is even worse. Much worse and more dangerous because in
addition to being a closet Republican she is also a warmonger. In foreign policy area she is John
McCain in pantsuit. And if you believe that after one hour in White House she does not abandon
all her election promises and start behaving like a far-right republican in foreign policy and
a moderate republican in domestic policy, it's you who drunk too much Cool Aid.
That's what classic neoliberal DemoRats "bait and switch" maneuver (previously executed
by Obama two times) means. And that's why working class now abandoned Democratic Party. Even unions
members of unions which endorses Clinton are expected to vote 3:1 against her. Serial betrayal
of interests of working class (and lower middle class) after 25 years gets on nerve. Not that
their choice is wise, but they made a choice. This is "What's the matter with Kansas" all over
again.
It reminds me the situation when Stalin was asked whether right revisionism of Marxism (social
democrats) or left (Trotskyites with their dream of World revolution) is better. He answered "both
are worse" :-).
In other words, the USA [workers and middle class] now is in the political position that
in chess is called Zugzwang: we face a choice between the compulsive liar, unrepentant, extremely
dangerous and unstable warmonger with failing health vs. a bombastic, completely unprepared to
governance of such a huge country crook.
Of course, we need also remember about existence of "deep state" which make each of
them mostly a figurehead, but still the power of "deep state" is not absolute and this is a very
sad situation.
Beverly Mann, October 23, 2016 1:57 pm
Good grace.
Two points: First, you apparently are unaware of Trump's proposed tax plan, written by Heritage
Foundation economists and political-think-tank types. It's literally more regressively extreme
evn than Paul Ryan's. It gives tax cuts to the wealthy that are exponentially more generous percentage-wise
than G.W. Bush's two tax cuts together were, it eliminates the estate tax, and it gives massive
tax cuts to corporations, including yuge ones.
Two billionaire Hamptons-based hedge funders, Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, have
been funding a super PAC for Trump and since late spring have met with Trump and handed him policy
proposals and suggestions for administrative agency heads and judicial appointments. Other yuge
funders are members of the Ricketts family, including Thomas Ricketts, CEO of TD Ameritrade and
a son of its founder.
Two other billionaires funding Trump: Forrest Lucas, founder of Lucas Oil and reportedly Trump's
choice for Interior Secretary if you and the working class and lower middle class folks whose
interests Trump has at heart get their way.
And then there's Texas oil billionaire Harold Hamm, Trump's very first billionaire mega-donor.
One of my recurring pet peeves about Clinton and her campaign is her failure to tell the public
that these billionaires are contributing mega-bucks to help fund Trump's campaign, and to tell
the public who exactly they are. As well as her failure to make a concerted effort to educate
the public about the the specifics of Trump's fiscal and deregulatory agenda as he has published
it.
As for your belief that I idealize Clinton, you obviously are very new to Angry Bear. I was
a virulent Sanders supporter throughout the primaries, to the very end. In 2008 I originally supported
John Edwards during the primaries and then, when it became clear that it was a two-candidate race,
supported Obama. My reason? I really, really, REALLY did not want to see another triangulation
Democratic administration. That's largely what we got during Obama's first term, though, and I
was not happy about it.
Bottom line: I'm not the gullible one here. You are.
likbez, October 23, 2016 2:37 pm
You demonstrate complete inability to weight the gravity of two dismal, but unequal in their
gravity options.
All your arguments about Supreme Court justices, taxes, inheritance and other similar things
make sense if and only if the country continues to exist.
Which is not given due to the craziness and the level of degeneration of neoliberal elite and
specifically Hillary ("no fly zone in Syria" is one example of her craziness). Playing chickens
with a nuclear power for the sake of proving imperial dominance in Middle East is a crazy policy.
Neocons rule the roost in both parties, which essentially became a single War Party with two
wings. Trump looks like the only chance somewhat to limit their influence and reach some détente
with Russia.
Looks like you organically unable to understand that your choice in this particular case is
between the decimation of the last remnants of the New Deal and a real chance of WWIII.
This is not "pick your poison" situation. Those are two events of completely difference magnitude:
one is reversible (and please note that Trump is bound by very controversial obligations to his
electorate and faces hostile Congress), the other is not.
We all should do our best to prevent the unleashing WWIII even if that means temporary decimation
of the remnants of New Deal.
Neoliberalism after 2008 entered zombie state, so while it is still strong, aggressive and
bloodthirsty it might not last for long. And in such case the defeat of democratic forces on domestic
front is temporary.
"... And continued and constant propaganda-peddling that the race is over because Trump's sexual assault allegations are "sucking all the air out of the room" compared to Hillary's stream of WikiLeaks facts. ..."
"... CNN made the mistake of asking its focus group of real Americans who won the final debate... and instantly regretted it... ..."
"... The media is just going to claim a winner on election night no matter what happens. You can't know otherwise. ..."
"... I know that in my day to day dealings, as a businessman and as a private individual, I am taking every opportunity to fuck over the main stream media and anyone that works in it, hard and without mercy. ..."
"... As Trump said CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, Wash Post, NYT working hard to elect Hillary Rodent. ..."
"... Rep Sheila Jackson (D) continues to embarrass herself by denouncing Wikipedia for engaging in espionage. ..."
And continued and constant propaganda-peddling that the race is over because Trump's sexual
assault
allegations are "sucking all the air out of the room" compared to Hillary's stream of WikiLeaks facts.
CNN made the mistake of asking its focus group of real Americans who won the final debate...
and instantly regretted it...
I know that in my day to day dealings, as a businessman and as a private individual, I am taking
every opportunity to fuck over the main stream media and anyone that works in it, hard and without
mercy.
These opportunities are many and significant. I am enjoying it. Consequences, bitchezzz!!!
As Trump said CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, Wash Post, NYT working hard to elect Hillary Rodent.
Rep Sheila Jackson (D) continues to embarrass herself by denouncing Wikipedia for engaging
in espionage.
She is the congresswoman from Mars
Claimed we sent a man to Mars
We won the Vietnam war
Hurricanes need more diverse names
Wore a gold Hillary Clinton campaign pin Wednesday to a House Judiciary Committee hearing on
the FBI investigation into Clinton's private email server.
In a lengthy speech on Saturday night in Manheim, Pennsylvania, Republican nominee for president
Donald J. Trump lambasted his opponent Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton for a secret tape
recording of her bashing supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont-and even called for Clinton
to be placed in prison and questioned as to whether she has been loyal to her husband former President
Bill Clinton.
Trump said in the speech on Saturday night:
A new audio tape that has surfaced just yesterday from another one of Hillary's high roller
fundraisers shows her demeaning and mocking Bernie Sanders and all of his supporters. You know,
and I'll tell you something we have a much bigger movement that Bernie Sanders ever had. We have
much bigger crowds than Sanders ever had. And we have a more important movement than Bernie Sanders
ever had because we're going to save our country, okay? We're going to save our country. But I
can tell you Bernie Sanders would have left a great, great legacy had he not made the deal with
the devil. He would have really left a great legacy. Now he shows up and 120 people come in to
hear him talk. Bernie Sanders would have left a great legacy had he not made the deal, had he
held his head high and walked away. Now he's on the other side perhaps from us and we want to
get along with everybody and we will-we're going to unite the country-but what Bernie Sanders
did to his supporters was very, very unfair. And they're really not his supporters any longer
and they're not going to support Hillary Clinton. I really believe a lot of those people are coming
over and largely because of trade, college education, lots of other things-but largely because
of trade, they're coming over to our side-you watch, you watch. Especially after Hillary mocks
him and mocks all of those people by attacking him and his supporters as 'living in their parents'
basements,' and trapped in dead-end careers. That's not what they are.
Also in his speech on Saturday night, Trump summed up exactly what came out in the latest Hillary
Clinton tapes in which she mocks Sanders supporters:
She describes many of them as ignorant, and [that] they want the United States to be more like
Scandinavia but that 'half the people don't know what that means' in a really sarcastic tone because
she's a sarcastic woman. To sum up, and I'll tell you the other thing-she's an incompetent woman.
She's an incompetent woman. I've seen it. Just take a look at what she touches. It never works
out, and you watch: her run for the presidency will never ever work out because we can't let it
work out. To sum up, Hillary Clinton thinks Bernie supporters are hopeless and ignorant basement
dwellers. Then, of course, she thinks people who vote for and follow us are deplorable and irredeemable.
I don't think so. I don't think so. We have the smartest people, we have the sharpest people,
we have the most amazing people, and you know in all of the years of this country they say, even
the pundits-most of them aren't worth the ground they're standing on, some of that ground could
be fairly wealthy but ground, but most of these people say they have never seen a phenomenon like
is going on. We have crowds like this wherever we go.
WATCH THE FULL SPEECH:
Later in the speech, Trump came back to the tape again and hammered her once more for it.
"Hillary Clinton all but said that most of the country is racist, including the men and women
of law enforcement," Trump said. "She said that the other night. Did anybody like Lester Holt? Did
anybody question her when she said that? No, she said it the other night. [If] you're not a die hard
Clinton fan-you're not a supporter-from Day One, Hillary Clinton thinks you are a defective person.
That's what she's going around saying."
In the speech, Trump questioned whether Clinton has the moral authority to lead when she considers
the majority of Americans-Trump supporters and Sanders supporters-to be "defective" people. And he
went so far as saying that Clinton "should be in prison." He went on:
How on earth can Hillary Clinton try to lead this country when she has nothing but contempt
for the people who live in this country? She's got contempt. First of all, she's got so many scandals
and she's been caught cheating so much. One of the worst things I've ever witnessed as a citizen
of the United States was last week when the FBI director was trying so hard to explain how she
away with what she got away with, because she should be in prison. Let me tell you. She should
be in prison. She's being totally protected by the New York Times and the Washington Post and
all of the media and CNN-Clinton News Network-which nobody is watching anyway so what difference
does it make? Don't even watch it. But she's being protected by many of these groups. It's not
like do you think she's guilty? They've actually admitted she's guilty. And then she lies and
lies, 33,000 emails deleted, bleached, acid-washed! And then they take their phones and they hammer
the hell out of them. How many people have acid washed or bleached a Tweet? How many?
He returned to the secret Clinton tape a little while later:
Hillary Clinton slanders and attacks anyone who wants to put America First, whether they
are Trump Voters or Bernie Voters. What she said about Bernie voters amazing. Like the European
Union, she wants to erase our borders and she wants to do it for her donors and she wants people
to pour into country without knowing who they are.
Trump later bashed the media as "dishonest as hell" when calling on the reporters at his event
to "turn your cameras" to show the crowd that came to see him.
"If they showed the kind of crowds we have-which people can hear, you know it's interesting: you
can hear the crowd when you hear the television but if they showed the crowd it would be better television,
but they don't know much about that. But it would actually be better television," Trump said.
Trump also questioned whether Hillary Clinton has been loyal to her husband, former President
Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton has been known to cheat on Hillary Clinton with a variety of mistresses
and has been accused of rape and sexual assault by some women.
"Hillary Clinton's only loyalty is to her financial contributors and to herself," Trump
said. "I don't even think she's loyal to Bill, if you want to know the truth. And really, folks,
really: Why should she be, right? Why should she be?"
Throughout the speech, Trump weaved together references to his new campaign theme about Clinton-"Follow
The Money"-with details about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. He said:
We're going to take on the corrupt media, the powerful lobbyists and the special interests
that have stolen your jobs, your factories, and your future-that's exactly what's happened. We're
going to stop Hillary Clinton from continuing to raid the industry from your state for her profit.
Hillary Clinton has collected millions of dollars from the same global corporations shipping
your jobs and your dreams to other countries. You know it and everybody else knows it. That's
why Clinton, if she ever got the chance, would 100 percent approve Trans Pacific Partnership-a
total disastrous trade deal. She called the deal the 'gold standard.' The TPP will bring economic
devastation to Pennsylvania and our campaign is the only chance to stop that and other bad things
that are happening to our country. She lied about the Gold Standard the other night at the debate.
She said she didn't say it-she said it. We want to stop the Trans Pacific Partnership and if we
don't-remember this, if we don't stop it, billions and billions [of dollars] in jobs and wealth
will be vacuumed right out of Pennsylvania and sent to these other countries. Just like NAFTA
was a disaster, this will be a disaster. Frankly I don't think it'll be as bad as NAFTA. It can't
get any worse than that-signed by Bill Clinton. All of us here in this massive room here tonight
can prevent this from happening. Together we can stop TPP and we can end the theft of American
jobs and prosperity.
Trump praised Sanders for being strongly opposed to the TPP:
I knew one man-I'm not a big fan-but one man who knew the dangers of the TPP was Bernie
Sanders. Crazy Bernie. He was right about one thing, only one thing, and that was trade. He was
right about it because he knew we were getting ripped off, but he wouldn't be able to do anything
about it . We're going to do a lot about it. We're going to have those highways running the
opposite direction. We're going to have a lot of trade, but it's going to come into our country.
We are going to start benefitting our country because right now it's one way road to trouble.
Our jobs leave us, our money leaves us. With Mexico, we get the drugs-they get the cash-it's that
simple.
Hillary Clinton, Trump noted, is "controlled by global special interests."
"She's on the opposite side of Bernie on the trade issue," Trump said. "She's totally on the opposite
side of Bernie."
He circled back to trade a bit later in the more-than-hour-long speech, hammering TPP and Clinton
cash connections. Trump continued:
Three TPP member countries gave between $6 and $15 million to Clinton. At least four lobbyists
who are actively lobbying for TPP passage have raised more than $800,000 for her campaign. I'm
just telling you Pennsylvania, we're going to make it. We're going to make it. We're going to
make it if we have Pennsylvania for sure. It'll be easy. But you cannot let this pass. NAFTA passed.
It's been the worst trade deal probably ever passed, not in this country but anywhere in the world.
It cleaned out New England. It cleaned out big portions of Pennsylvania. It cleaned out big portions
of Ohio and North Carolina and South Carolina-you can't let it happen.
Trump even called the politicians like Clinton "bloodsuckers" who have let America be drained
out of millions upon millions of jobs.
"These bloodsuckers want it to happen," Trump said. "They're politicians that are getting taken
care of by people that want it to happen. Other countries want it to happen because it's good for
them, but it's not good for us. So hopefully you're not going to let it happen. Whatever Hillary's
donors want, they get. They own her. On Nov. 8, we're going to end Clinton corruption. Hillary Clinton,
dishonest person, is an insider fighting for herself and for her friends. I'm an outsider fighting
for you. And by the way, just in case you're not aware, I used to be an insider but I thought this
was the right thing to do. This is the right thing to do, believe me."
Their "Russian" they quote, works at, get this, the neocon *Cato Institute* in Wash DC (you would
be correct in assuming they don't mention that) try SourceWatch to get some info on them
The icing on the cake is they refer to the "Balkan Sea" throughout the article, and still haven't
corrected it, they just don't give a hoot anymore about the plebs they make up the dross for :D
Someone want to grab a copy of the page before they trash it?
"... I find the spectacle of liberals heroically mounting the barricades against Trump-fascism rather amusing. ..."
"... Second thing is, Trump isn't fascist. In my opinion, Trump's an old-fashioned white American nativist, ..."
"... Tagging him as "fascist" allows his critics to put an alien, non-American gloss on a set of attitudes and policies that have been mainstreamed in American politics for at least 150 years and predate the formulation of fascism by several decades if not a century. Those nasty vetting/exclusion things he's proposing are as American as apple pie. For those interested in boning up on the Know Nothings and the Chinese Exclusion Act, I have this piece for you . ..."
"... Real fascism, in theory, is a rather interesting and nasty beast. In my opinion, it turns bolshevism on its head by using race or ethnic identity instead of class identity as the supreme, mobilizing force in national life. ..."
"... In both fascism and bolshevism, democratic outcomes lack inherent legitimacy. National legitimacy resides in the party, which embodies the essence of a threatened race or class in a way that Hegel might appreciate but Marx probably wouldn't. Subversion of democracy and seizure of state power are not only permissible; they are imperatives. ..."
"... The purest fascism movement I know of exists in Ukraine. I wrote about it here , and it's a piece I think is well worth reading to understand what a political movement organized on fascist principles really looks like. And Trump ain't no fascist. He's a nativist running a rather incompetent campaign. ..."
"... The most interesting application of the "fascist" analysis, rather surprisingly, applies to the Clinton campaign, not the Trump campaign, when considering the cultivation of a nexus between big business and *ahem* racially inflected politics. ..."
"... White labor originally had legal recourse to beating back the challenge/threat of African-American labor instead of accommodating it as a "class" ally; it subsequently relied on institutional and customary advantages. ..."
"... The most reliable wedge against working class solidarity and a socialist narrative in American politics used to be white privilege which, when it was reliably backed by US business and political muscle, was a doctrine of de facto white supremacy. ..."
"... The perception of marginalized white clout is reinforced by the nomination of Hillary Clinton and her campaign emphasis on the empowerment of previously marginalized but now demographically more important groups. ..."
"... The Clinton campaign has been all about race and its doppelganger -actually, the overarching and more ear-friendly term that encompasses racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual loyalties-"identity politics." ..."
"... The most calculated and systematic employment of racial politics was employed by the Hillary Clinton campaign in the Democratic primary to undercut the socialist-lite populist appeal of Bernie Sanders. ..."
"... My personal disdain for the Clinton campaign was born on the day that John Lewis intoned "I never saw him" in order to dismiss the civil rights credentials of Bernie Sanders ..."
"... In the primary, this translated into an attack on Sanders and the apparently mythical "Bernie bro" as racist swine threatening the legacy of the first black president, venerated by the African American electorate, Barack Obama. In the general, well, Donald Trump and his supporters provided acres more genuine grist for the identity warrior mill. ..."
"... Trump's ambitions to gain traction for a favorable American/populist/outsider narrative for his campaign have been frustrated by determined efforts to frame him as anti-Semitic, racist against blacks and Hispanics, sexist, and bigoted against the disabled-and ready to hold the door while Pepe the Frog feeds his opponents, including a large contingent of conservative and liberal Jewish journalists subjected to unimaginable invective by the Alt-Right– into the ovens. ..."
"... That campaign pretty much went by the wayside (as did Black Lives Matter, a racial justice initiative partially funded by core Clinton backer George Soros; interesting, no?) as a) black nationalists started shooting policemen and b) Clinton kicked off a charm campaign to help wedge the black-wary GOP establishment away from Trump. ..."
"... "Identity politics" is near the core of the Clintonian agenda as a bulwark against any class/populist upheaval that might threaten her brand of billionaire-friendly liberalism. ..."
"... Clinton's enduring and grotesque loyalty to her family's charitable foundation, an operation that in my opinion has no place on the resume of a public servant, as a font of prestige, conduit for influence, and model for billionaire-backed global engagement. ..."
"... By placing the focus of the campaign on identity politics and Trump's actual and putative crimes against various identity groups, the Clinton campaign has successfully obscured what I consider to be its fundamental identity as a vehicle for neoliberal globalists keen to preserve and employ the United States as a welcoming environment and supreme vehicle for supra-sovereign business interests. ..."
"... Clintonism's core identity is not, in other words, as a crusade for groups suffering from the legacy and future threat of oppression by Trump's white male followers. It is a full-court press to keep the wheels on the neoliberal sh*twagon as it careens down the road of globalization, and it recognizes the importance in American democracy of slicing and dicing the electorate by identity politics and co-opting useful demographics as the key to maintaining power. ..."
"... Trump has cornered the somewhat less entitled and increasingly threatened white ethnic group, some of whom are poised to make the jump to white nationalism with or without him. ..."
"... Clinton has cornered the increasingly entitled and assertive global billionaire group, which adores the class-busting anti-socialist identity-based politics she practices. ..."
I find the spectacle of liberals heroically mounting the barricades against Trump-fascism
rather amusing.
For one thing, liberals don't crush fascism. Liberals appease fascism, then they exploit fascism.
In between there's a great big war, where communists crush fascism. That's pretty much the lesson
of WWII.
Second thing is, Trump isn't fascist. In my opinion, Trump's an old-fashioned white American
nativist, which is pretty much indistinguishable from old-fashioned racist when considering
the subjugation of native Americans and African-Americans and Asian immigrants, but requires that
touch of "nativist" nuance when considering indigenous bigotry against Irish, Italian, and Jewish
immigrants and citizens.
Tagging him as "fascist" allows his critics to put an alien, non-American gloss on a set of
attitudes and policies that have been mainstreamed in American politics for at least 150 years and
predate the formulation of fascism by several decades if not a century. Those nasty vetting/exclusion
things he's proposing are as American as apple pie. For those interested in boning up on the Know
Nothings and the Chinese Exclusion Act,
I have this piece for you .
And for anybody who doesn't believe the US government does not already engage in intensive "extreme"
vetting and targeting of all Muslims immigrants, especially those from targeted countries, not only
to identify potential security risks but to groom potential intelligence assets, I got the Brooklyn
Bridge to sell you right here:
Real fascism, in theory, is a rather interesting and nasty beast. In my opinion, it turns
bolshevism on its head by using race or ethnic identity instead of class identity as the supreme,
mobilizing force in national life.
In both fascism and bolshevism, democratic outcomes lack inherent legitimacy. National legitimacy
resides in the party, which embodies the essence of a threatened race or class in a way that Hegel
might appreciate but Marx probably wouldn't. Subversion of democracy and seizure of state power are
not only permissible; they are imperatives.
The need to seize state power and hold it while a fascist or Bolshevik agenda is implemented dictates
the need for a military force loyal to and subservient to the party and its leadership, not the state.
The purest fascism movement I know of exists in Ukraine.
I wrote about it here , and it's a piece I think is well worth reading to understand what a political
movement organized on fascist principles really looks like. And Trump ain't no fascist. He's a nativist
running a rather incompetent campaign.
It's a little premature to throw dirt on the grave of the Trump candidacy, perhaps (I'll check
back in on November 9), but it looks like he spent too much time glorying in the adulation of his
white male nativist base and too little time, effort, and money trying to deliver a plausible message
that would allow other demographics to shrug off the "deplorable" tag and vote for him. I don't blame/credit
the media too much for burying Trump, a prejudice of mine perhaps. I blame Trump's inability to construct
an effective phalanx of pro-Trump messengers, a failure that's probably rooted in the fact that Trump
spent the primary and general campaign at war with the GOP establishment.
The only capital crime in politics is disunity, and the GOP and Trump are guilty on multiple counts.
The most interesting application of the "fascist" analysis, rather surprisingly, applies to
the Clinton campaign, not the Trump campaign, when considering the cultivation of a nexus between
big business and *ahem* racially inflected politics.
It should be remembered that fascism does not succeed in the real world as a crusade by race-obsessed
lumpen . It succeeds when fascists are co-opted by capitalists, as was unambiguously the case
in Nazi Germany and Italy. And big business supported fascism because it feared the alternatives:
socialism and communism.
That's because there is no more effective counter to class consciousness than race consciousness.
That's one reason why, in my opinion, socialism hasn't done a better job of catching on in the
United States. The contradictions between black and white labor formed a ready-made wedge. The North's
abhorrence at the spread of slavery into the American West before the Civil War had more to do a
desire to preserve these new realms for "free" labor-"free" in one context, from the competition
of slave labor-than egalitarian principle.
White labor originally had legal recourse to beating back the challenge/threat of African-American
labor instead of accommodating it as a "class" ally; it subsequently relied on institutional and
customary advantages.
If anyone harbors illusions concerning the kumbaya solidarity between white and black labor
in the post-World War II era, I think the article The Problem of Race in American Labor History
by Herbert Hill ( a freebie on
JSTOR ) is a good place to start.
The most reliable wedge against working class solidarity and a socialist narrative in American
politics used to be white privilege which, when it was reliably backed by US business and political
muscle, was a doctrine of de facto white supremacy.
However, in this campaign, the race wedge has cut the other way in a most interesting fashion.
White conservatives are appalled, and minority liberals energized, by the fact that the white guy,
despite winning the majority white male vote, lost to a black guy not once but twice, giving a White
Twilight/Black Dawn (TM) vibe to the national debate.
The perception of marginalized white clout is reinforced by the nomination of Hillary Clinton
and her campaign emphasis on the empowerment of previously marginalized but now demographically more
important groups.
The Clinton campaign has been all about race and its doppelganger -actually, the overarching
and more ear-friendly term that encompasses racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual loyalties-"identity
politics."
The most calculated and systematic employment of racial politics was employed by the Hillary
Clinton campaign in the Democratic primary to undercut the socialist-lite populist appeal of Bernie
Sanders.
My personal disdain for the Clinton campaign was born on the day that John Lewis intoned "I
never saw him" in order to dismiss the civil rights credentials of Bernie Sanders while announcing
the Black Congressional Caucus endorsement of Hillary Clinton. Bear in mind that during the 1960s,
Sanders had
affiliated his student group at the University of Chicago with Lewis' SNCC, the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee; during the same era, Hillary Clinton was at Wellesley
condemning
"the snicks" for their excessively confrontational tactics.
Ah, politics.
To understand the significance of this event, one should read Fracture by the guru of woke
Clintonism, Joy Reid. Or read
my piece on the subject . Or simply understand that after Hillary Clinton lost Lewis's endorsement,
the black vote, and the southern Democratic primaries to Barack Obama in 2008, and she was determined
above all to secure and exploit monolithic black support in the primaries and, later on, the general
in 2016.
So, in order to prevent Sanders from splitting the black vote to her disadvantage on ideological/class
lines, Clinton played the race card. Or, as we put it today when discussing the championing of historically
disadvantaged a.k.a. non white male heterosexual groups, celebrated "identity politics".
In the primary, this translated into an attack on Sanders and the apparently mythical "Bernie
bro" as racist swine threatening the legacy of the first black president, venerated by the African
American electorate, Barack Obama. In the general, well, Donald Trump and his supporters provided
acres more genuine grist for the identity warrior mill.
Trump's populism draws its heat from American nativism, not "soak the rich" populism of the Sandernista
stripe, and it was easily submerged in the "identity politics" narrative.
Trump's ambitions to gain traction for a favorable American/populist/outsider narrative for
his campaign have been frustrated by determined efforts to frame him as anti-Semitic, racist against
blacks and Hispanics, sexist, and bigoted against the disabled-and ready to hold the door while Pepe
the Frog feeds his opponents, including a large contingent of conservative and liberal Jewish journalists
subjected to unimaginable invective by the Alt-Right– into the ovens.
As an indication of the fungible & opportunistic character of the "identity politics" approach,
as far as I can tell from a recent visit to a swing state, as the Clinton campaign pivoted to the
general, the theme of Trump's anti-black racism has been retired in favor of pushing his offenses
against women and the disabled. Perhaps this reflects the fact that Clinton has a well-advertised
lock on the African-American vote and doesn't need to cater to it; also, racism being what it is,
playing the black card is not the best way to lure Republicans and indies to the Clinton camp.
The high water mark of the Clinton African-American tilt was perhaps the abortive campaign to
turn gun control into a referendum on the domination of Congress by white male conservatives. It
happened a few months ago, so who remembers? But John Lewis led a sit-in occupation of the Senate
floor in the wake of the Orlando shootings to highlight how America's future was being held hostage
to the whims of Trump-inclined white pols.
That campaign pretty much went by the wayside (as did Black Lives Matter, a racial justice
initiative partially funded by core Clinton backer George Soros; interesting, no?) as a) black nationalists
started shooting policemen and b) Clinton kicked off a charm campaign to help wedge the black-wary
GOP establishment away from Trump.
There is more to Clintonism, I think, than simply playing the "identity politics" card to screw
Bernie Sanders or discombobulate the Trump campaign. "Identity politics" is near the core of
the Clintonian agenda as a bulwark against any class/populist upheaval that might threaten her brand
of billionaire-friendly liberalism.
In my view, a key tell is Clinton's enduring and grotesque loyalty to her family's charitable
foundation, an operation that in my opinion has no place on the resume of a public servant, as a
font of prestige, conduit for influence, and model for billionaire-backed global engagement.
By placing the focus of the campaign on identity politics and Trump's actual and putative
crimes against various identity groups, the Clinton campaign has successfully obscured what I consider
to be its fundamental identity as a vehicle for neoliberal globalists keen to preserve and employ
the United States as a welcoming environment and supreme vehicle for supra-sovereign business interests.
Clintonism's core identity is not, in other words, as a crusade for groups suffering from
the legacy and future threat of oppression by Trump's white male followers. It is a full-court press
to keep the wheels on the neoliberal sh*twagon as it careens down the road of globalization, and
it recognizes the importance in American democracy of slicing and dicing the electorate by identity
politics and co-opting useful demographics as the key to maintaining power.
In my view, the Trump and Clinton campaigns are both protofascist.
Trump has cornered the somewhat less entitled and increasingly threatened white ethnic group,
some of whom are poised to make the jump to white nationalism with or without him.
Clinton has cornered the increasingly entitled and assertive global billionaire group, which
adores the class-busting anti-socialist identity-based politics she practices.
But the bottom line is race. U.S. racism has stacked up 400 years of tinder that might take a
few hundred more years, if ever, to burn off. And until it does, every politician in the country
is going to see his or her political future in flicking matches at it. And that's what we're seeing
in the current campaign. A lot. Not fascism.
(Reprinted from
China Matters by permission of author or representative)
Kocherlakota:"Another possibility, highlighted in Yellen's
speech, is that the recovery engineered by the Fed was so
slow that it did (possibly reversible) damage to the
supply side -- for example, as long-term unemployment
eroded the skills and motivation of workers"
Unfortunately they won´t give up their favorite Phillips
Curve Model:
https://thefaintofheart.wordpress.com/2016/03/18/the-fomc-its-forecasts/
US Budgetary Costs of Wars through 2016: $4.79 Trillion
and Counting
Summary of Costs of the US Wars in Iraq, Syria,
Afghanistan and Pakistan and Homeland Security
By Neta C. Crawford
Anne, wars are certainly "destructive", but why should
this one damage the supply side so much more than all the
other wars?
[ I would argue that the unprecedented
amount of time taken by the wars, the important actual
spending and what was not spent as a result of the
constraint of spending on the wars. Also, while there was
spending on the wars which bolstered the economy, I would
argue this spending did relatively little to build a
productive base for the economy.
We could properly argue that digging ditches and
filling them in provides needed work and support for the
economy in a recession, but we were lots better off
productively because of New Deal ditch digging and filling
designed for the Tennessee Valley Authority. ]
But just think what all of our pre-emptive invasions did
to the global environment....
[ A refrain that I have
often read, but have no reference just now, is that
American militarism has been the price of economic advance
or well-being. Likely because I am bothered by militarism
and such a generality, I have never set down a reference.
But, I have not thought about the environmental effects of
war since 2001. ]
The other problem with foreign wars is that, to the extent
that money is spent abroad and stays there, they represent
leakage to the US economy...IOW they are a contractionary
force. Of course, there is no reporting on how much of the
DOD budget gets spent abroad and stays there. However,
leasing alone of 800 plus military bases can't be cheap...
OTOH digging ditches and filling them in keeps money in
the economy and probably even has a positive multiplier.
anne -> JohnH...
, -1
The money spent abroad argument is faulty as such, since
dollars spent in abroad on development programs will in
turn be spent in the United States. China has begun a "one
belt, one road" program in which large, large sums will be
spent on infrastructure from Russia and Mongolia to Laos
and Cambodia to Pakistan and Bangladesh... to build an
Asian trading network.
Money spent abroad on fighting
however is another matter.
The Most Technologically Progressive Decade of the
Century
By Alexander J. Field
Abstract
There is now an emerging consensus that over the course
of U.S. economic history, multifactor productivity grew
fastest over a broad plateau between 1905 and 1966, and
within that period, in the two decades following 1929.
This paper argues that the bulk of the achieved
productivity levels in 1948 had already been attained
before full scale war mobilization in 1942. It was not
principally the war that laid the foundation for postwar
prosperity. It was technological progress across a broad
frontier of the American economy during the 1930s.
Ghost of Christmas
Future :
, -1
$800 billion trade
deficit still not a
major topic in
economics. This is
incredible. The US
has only 5% of the
world's population
yet we are
absorbing more than
a third of the
global trade
surplus of surplus
economies.
Is it easier for
5% of the world to
absorb $800 billion
a year in annual
trade deficits or
would it be easier
for 95% of the
world able to do
that? A trade
surplus for the US
of $800 billion is
much more
reasonable. A swing
of $1.6 trillion in
aggregate demand
would have enormous
consequences for US
development,
stability and
unemployment
levels. A
commitment to
industry, combined
with low interest
loans, government
contracts and high
tariffs would lead
to a boom in
industrial
investment rather
than its virtual
absence. The
working class could
actually find jobs
working again
rather than being
forced into the
drug trade and
prison - even
people in the
destroyed cities of
Camden, Chicago and
Buffalo could find
hope again. We
could get 10-14%
annual GDP growth
as 25-50 factories
were built a day.
(We lost 15 a day
from 2000-2010 with
our economists not
noticing or caring)
Why does the US
settle for economic
destruction when
Vietnam, Singapore,
China, Israel etc.
etc. show that
growth and
development are
easy? Why must we
accept poverty and
deindustrialization?
Why do Americans
need to be forced
to return to stone
age subsistence
agriculture, street
commerce,
prostitution,
begging, the drug
trade?
The pointless
destruction of the
US as an economy,
center of wealth
and technology
continues apace
without attracting
any attention from
our serious
economists. Trump
should continue to
focus on his
message - Clinton
won't fix anything,
and things may very
well collapse
between now and
November 2020. At
which point Trump
will be ideally
positioned to
champion the 40-70%
of the population
that is "new poor".
Our last hope is
that Trump wins in
November 2016 or
Nov. 2020 and as
soon as he takes
office both
disbands all
economics
departments and
raises tariffs to
the necessary
300-400% range.
Anything else is
continued insane
economic suicide.
ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs...
, -1
Hegemon needs all the tools it can scrape up to perpetrate
its evil.
Obama was going to end Iraghistan, now US has
done Libya, is doing Syria and still losing lives and
wasting treasure in Iraghistan.
Obama advocated a nuclear free world until someone
offered a reason to add $30B a year to the pentagon
trough.
Safety and reliability is a sham in the pentagon
trough.
The only use of nuclear weapons is extending the terror
bpmbing which Le May and Bomber Harris perfected.
Smaller nuclear yields add the the useless but very
expensive read profitable strategy of bombing them "into
the stone age".
If the only strategy is count body bags then small
nukes fit.
Bottom line hegemon war is immoral.
Adding $30B a year is adding opportunity cost to the
immoral!
Love of "security" (cash for the trough) is the root of
all evil.
ilsm -> anne...
, -1
$30B a year for nuclear arms modifications on top of the
spending keeping the existing A-bombs ready to blow away
the world for the hege0mon!!!!!
Russia and China
spending less than half the pentagon core budgets which do
not include the munificent war supplements.
Between Russia's $78B a year and China's $140B per year
they have a long way to go with the US putting $500B a
year in the core pentagon trough and adding plus ups for
bombing Assad.
However, if China is as efficient in war as in
manufactures the $500B riddled with waste and welfare is
concerning.
As Europeans assess the fallout from the U.K.'s
Brexit referendum
, they face a series of elections that could equally shake the political establishment. In the
coming 12 months, four of Europe's five largest economies have votes that will almost certainly mean
serious gains for right-wing populists and nationalists. Once seen as fringe groups, France's National
Front, Italy's Five Star Movement, and the Freedom Party in the Netherlands have attracted legions
of followers by tapping discontent over immigration, terrorism, and feeble economic performance.
"The Netherlands should again become a country of and for the Dutch people," says Evert Davelaar,
a Freedom Party backer who says immigrants don't share "Western and Christian values."
... ... ....
The populists are deeply skeptical of European integration, and those in France and the Netherlands
want to follow Britain's lead and quit the European Union. "Political risk in Europe is now far more
significant than in the United States," says Ajay Rajadhyaksha, head of macro research at Barclays.
... ... ...
...the biggest risk of the nationalist groundswell: increasingly fragmented parliaments that will
be unable or unwilling to tackle the problems hobbling their economies. True, populist leaders might
not have enough clout to enact controversial measures such as the Dutch Freedom Party's call to close
mosques and deport Muslims. And while the Brexit vote in June helped energize Eurosceptics, it's
unlikely that any major European country will soon quit the EU, Morgan Stanley economists wrote in
a recent report. But they added that "the protest parties promise to turn back the clock" on free-market
reforms while leaving "sclerotic" labour and market regulations in place. France's National Front,
for example, wants to temporarily renationalise banks and increase tariffs while embracing cumbersome
labour rules widely blamed for chronic double-digit unemployment. Such policies could damp already
weak euro zone growth, forecast by the International Monetary Fund to drop from 2 percent in 2015
to 1.5 percent in 2017. "Politics introduces a downside skew to growth," the economists said.
Please note that Hillary's path to the top was marked by proved beyond reasonable doubt DNC fraud.
With information contained in recent email leaks some DNC honchos probably might go to jail for
violation of elections laws. So for them this is a death match and people usually fight well when
they are against the wall. The same in true about Obama and his entourage.
And while this Nobel Peace Price winner managed to bomb just eight countries, Hillary might
improve this peace effort, which was definitely insufficient from the point of view of many diplomats
in State Department. Also the number of humanitarian bombs could be much greater. Here Hillary
election can really help.
From the other point of view this might well be a sign of the crisis of legitimacy of the US
ruling neoliberal elite (aka financial oligarchy).
After approximately 50 years in power the level of degeneration of the US neoliberal elite
reached the level when the quality of candidates reminds me the quality of candidates from the
USSR Politburo after Brezhnev death. Health-wise Hillary really bear some resemblance to Andropov
and Chernenko. And inability of the elite to replace either of them with a more viable candidate
speaks volumes.
The other factor that will not go away is that Obama effectively pardoned Hillary for emailgate
(after gentle encouragement from Bill via Loretta Lynch). Otherwise instead of candidate to POTUS,
she would be a viable candidate for orange suit too. Sure, the rule of law is not applicable to
neoliberal elite, so why Hilary should be an exception? But some naive schmucks might think that
this is highly improper. And be way too much upset with the fruits of neoliberal globalization.
Not that Brexit is easily repeatable in the USA, but vote against neoliberal globalization (protest
vote) might play a role.
Another interesting thing to observe is when (and if) the impeachment process starts, if she
is elected. With some FBI materials in hands of the Congress Republicans she in on the hook. A
simple majority of those present and voting is required for each article of impeachment, or the
resolution as a whole, to pass.
All-in-all her win might well be a Pyrrhic victory. And the unknown neurological disease that
she has (Parkinson?) makes her even more vulnerable after the election, then before. The role
of POTUS involves a lot of stress and requires substantial physical stamina as POTUS is the center
of intersection of all important government conflicts, conversations and communications. That's
a killing environment for anyone with Parkinson. And remember she was not able to survive the
pressure of the role of the Secretary of State when she was in much better health and has an earlier
stage of the disease.
Another interesting question, if the leaks continue after the election. That also can contribute
to the level of stress. Just anticipation is highly stressful. I do not buy the theory about "evil
Russians." This hypothesis does not survive Occam razor test. I think that there some anti-Hillary
forces within the USA ruling elite, possibly within the NSA or some other three letter agency
that has access to email boxes of major Web mail providers via NSA.
If this is a plausible hypothesis, that makes it more probable that the leaks continue. To
say nothing about possible damaging revelations about Bill (especially related to Clinton Foundation),
who really enjoyed his retirement way too much.
Those who vote for Hillary for the sake of stability need to be reminded that according to
the Minsky Theory stability sometimes can be very destabilizing
When Krugman is appointed to a top government post by Hillary Clinton we will be able to FOIA
his pay and attach a value to all the columns "electioneering" Krugman has written.
likbez -> anne...
Anne,
"An intolerably destructive essay that should never have been posted, and I assume no
such essay will be posted again on this blog. Shameful, shameful essay."
You mean that voting for the female warmonger with some psychopathic tendencies ("We came,
we saw, he died") is not shameful ?
An interesting approach I would say.
I am not fun of Trump, but he, at least, does not have the blood of innocent women and children
on his hands. And less likely to start WWIII unlike this completely out of control warmonger.
With the number of victims of wars of neoliberal empire expansion in Iraq, Libya and Syria,
you should be ashamed of yourself as a women.
Please think about your current position Anne. You really should be ashamed.
Washington forgot his role in color revolutions in Ukraine, Russia, Serbia and other countries,
when Washington controlled neoliberal media served as air support for local fifth column. Now
boomerang returned...
On Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry of Ecuador confirmed WikiLeaks' charge that Ecuador itself
had ordered the severing of Assange's Internet connection under pressure from the US government.
In a statement, the ministry said that WikiLeaks had "published a wealth of documents impacting
on the US election campaign," adding that the government of Ecuador "respects the principle of
non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states" and "does not interfere in external
electoral processes." On that grounds, the statement claimed, the Ecuadorian government decided
to "restrict access" to the communications network at its London embassy.
Looks like Yahoo commentariat is definitely anti-Hillary and did not buy the Yahoo story.
the first pro-hillary comment was in the second dozen of comments by ratings from Yahoo readers.
Brad
11 hours ago
I watched the presidential
candidates at the Al Smith dinner
tonight and thought how wonderful
that they raised $6 million for
the nations children..The thing
that is sad is that Hillary spent
over $150 million on negative adds
against Donald Trump in one
month...Goes to show exactly how
much Hillary truly cares about the
children when they stand in her
way ...Win at all cost...no matter
how the money could be better
spent...THIS COUNTRY NEEDS DONALD
TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT 2016
LisaAllenC
11 hours ago
Trump was not booed by anyone
but the far left stunked up
media, everyone else that i
could see was raising their
fist and laughing as they were
nodding that they agreed with
TRUMP, you little people of the
left media have really lost
yourself s, lost your
professionalism in your field,
i mean you took an oath when
you started that career as a
journalist to report as fairly
and as honest as you could and
you took that platform as
something that you would treat
as a place the American people
and the rest of the world could
come to for an honest and
balanced look at issues, not a
place to be used to push your
own interests on people in such
ways that even small children
that listen well can tell is
words filled full of lies and
dishonesty, words that are
filled with hate and such
lopsided views that our kids
are saying, turn that trash
daddy, it makes me sick to my
stomach to watch such lies, my
kids and our neighbors kids
actually said that, they are
watching very closely and you
people of the far left trash
machine should be so ashamed of
what you have been force
feeding not only these kids but
some of the very easily
confused people, i mean thats
the only ones you are hurting
because we the American people
know better but still you
should have to stand up and
answer to what you have done to
the ones you have terribly hurt
during this mess. You want to
ever say that you are someone
this country could ever trust
and believe, you wonder why
Trump knows not to trust
anything you may have your
hands or words mixed in with,
you have dishonored yourself's
and no one will ever believe
you again, we have your names
etched in our brains as
dishonest nobody's and know to
stop reading or listening to
anything you say or do, what a
shame but your true colors came
out and the honest people of
this country see you as who you
are. We are so glad and HONORED
TO VOTE FOR TRUMP, we know
there is no one that is perfect
but Christ himself but we also
know the heart of a person as
well and TRUMPS HEART IS IN THE
RIGHT PLACE, he wants real
honest change for us Americans
and he wants real honest help
to be given to ALL THE AMERICAN
PEOPLE, and without you left
twisting word machine, TRUMP
WANTS REAL HELP FOR OUR AFRICAN
AMERICANS AND OUR MEXICAN
AMERICANS, he does want the law
to be honored but he doesn't
want to harm anybody, you
people have twisted his words
in such dramatic fashion that
we rarely get to hear his real
plan to bring safety and lawful
ways at our borders. I have
heard the plans and i am no
genius but the plans make very
good since and they will be
fair and help people that want
to be here legally, now if you
are trying to break our laws,
thats another story but at
least he does have a great plan
that will work so much better
and give our men and women
officers at the border the help
they so desperately have been
needing, TRUMP IS BY FAR THE
BEST CHOICE FOR AMERICA, the
twisted person that you people
have tried to make him out to
be, will of course that person
is not who we need but thats
not TRUMP, WE NEED TRUMP FOR
CHANGE WE NEED TRUMP FOR OUR
COUNTRY AND OUR FAMILY, VOTE
TRUMP FOR CHANGE.
Louis
10 hours ago
I watch the whole thing, the
article is wrong. Hillary was
booed just as much, and her
insulting joke about Guiliani was
followed by an awkward silence.
The author here is very biased,
Trump was right, the media is in
collusion with HRC.
Melissa
11 hours ago
When I was a little girl I felt
such pride in America. I recall
hearing how awful Russia was
because their poor citizens didn't
know the truth because they were
filled with propaganda. I am so
disgusted with our country on so
many levels. Freedom of the press
was not meant to mean what you
people are doing. Didn't you take
some sort of pledge to honestly
report unbiased news when you
graduated from journalism school?
As Donald said to Hillary, you
should be ashamed.
carle
11 hours ago
Every time Trump is booed by the
media that equals another vote
from an undecided.
LOYAL
11 hours ago
I am not going to lie to you,
Hillary is stupid, confused,
and has been exposed. Her guilt
of running a stupid campaign
and a stupid office called the
Secretary of State is no longer
in question. During the debate
Hillary got confused on
proposed gun laws. On abortion,
Hillary thinks it's ok to kill
babies ready to be delivered.
This is like saying I love
children that have been
delivered alive but not so much
those not yet delivered. Sound
like, I like a hero that does
not get captured? Hillary is
all talk and no action. Black
people should understand this
by now. So should everyone
else.
On September 28 the French mission to the UN claimed that two hospitals in east-Aleppo had been bombed.
It documented this in a tweet with
a picture of destroyed buildings in Gaza. The French later deleted that tweet.
It is not the first time such false claims and willful obfuscations were made by "western" officials.
But usually they shy away from outright lies.
Not so the US Secretary of State John Kerry. In a press event yesterday, before talks with the French
Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault about a new UN resolution,
he said (vid
@1:00) about Syria:
Last night, the regime attacked yet another hospital, and 20 people were killed and 100 people
were wounded. And Russia and the regime owe the world more than an explanation about why they
keep hitting hospitals and medical facilities and children and women.These are acts that beg for
an appropriate investigation of war crimes. And those who commit these would and should be held
accountable for these actions.
No opposition group has claimed that such an extremely grave event happened. None. No press agency
has a record of it. The MI-6 disinformation outlet SOHR in Britain, which quite reliably notes every
claimed casualty and is frequently cited in "western" media", has not said anything about such an
event anywhere in Syria.
The grave incident Kerry claimed did not happen. Kerry made it up. (Was it supposed to happen, got
canceled and Kerry missed the memo?) Kerry used the lie to call for war crime investigations and
punishment. This in front of cameras, at an official event with a foreign guest in the context of
a United Nations Security Council resolution.
This is grave. This is nearly as grave as Colin Powell's false claims of WMD in Iraq in front of
the UN Security Council.
Early reports, like
this one at CBSNEWS, repeat the Kerry claim:
Kerry said Syrian forces hit a hospital overnight, killing 20 people and wounding 100, describing
what would be the latest strike by Moscow or its ally in Damascus on a civilian target.
But the New York Times write up of the event, which includes Kerry's demand for war crime investigations,
does not mention the hospital bombing claim. Not at all. For the self-acclaimed "paper of record",
Kerry's lie did not happen. Likewise the Washington Post which in its own write up
makes no mention of the false Kerry claim.
The latest AP write up by Matthew Lee
also omits the lie. This is curious as Matt Lee is obviously aware of it. The State Departments
daily press briefing yesterday
had a whole section
on it. Video (@3:30)
shows that it is Matt who asks these questions:
QUESTION: Okay. On to Syria and the Secretary's comments earlier this morning, one is: Do you
know what strike he was talking about in his comments overnight on a hospital in Aleppo?
MR KIRBY: I think the Secretary's referring actually to a strike that we saw happen yesterday
on a field hospital in the Rif Dimashq Governorate. I'm not exactly positive that that's what
he was referring to, but I think he was referring to actually one that was --
QUESTION: Not one in Aleppo?
MR KIRBY: I believe it was – I think it was – I think he – my guess is – I'm guessing here that
he was a bit mistaken on location and referring to one --
...
QUESTION: But you don't have certainty, though?
MR KIRBY: I don't. Best I got, best information I got, is that he was most likely referring to
one yesterday in this governorate, but it could just be an honest mistake.
QUESTION: If we could – if we can nail that down with certainty what he was talking about --
MR KIRBY: I'll do the best I can, Matt.
...
This goes on for a while. But there was no hospital attack in Rif Dimashq nor in Aleppo. Later on
DoS spokesman Kirby basically admits that Kerry lied: "I can't corroborate that."
It also turns out that Kerry has no evidence for any war crimes and no plausible way to initiate
any official international procedure about such. And for what? To bully Russia? Fat chance, that
would be a hopeless endeavor and Kerry should know that.
Kerry is desperate. He completely lost the plot on Syria. Russia is in the lead and will do whatever
needs to be done. The Obama administration has, apart from starting a World War, no longer any way
to significantly influence that.
Kerry is only one tool of the Obama administration. Later that day the US Director of National Intelligence,
James Clapper, made other
accusations against Russia:
The US Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directedthe recent
compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.
The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by
the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed
efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process.
Such activity is not new to Moscow-the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across
Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope
and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized
these activities.
Translation: "WE DO NOT KNOW at all ("we are confident", "we believe", "directed") who did these
hacks and WE DO NOT HAVE the slightest evidence ("consistent with","based on the scope and sensitivity")
that Russia is involved, so let me throw some chaff and try to bamboozle you all."
The former British ambassador Craig Murray calls it
a
blatant neocon lie. It was obviously the DNC that manipulated the US election by, contrary to
its mandate, promoting Clinton over Sanders. The hackers only proved that. It is also easy to see
why these accusations are made now. Murray:
That the Obama administration has made a formal accusation of Russia based on no evidence is,
on one level, astonishing. But it is motivated by desperation. WikiLeaks have already announced
that they have a huge cache of other material relating to Hillary's shenanigans. The White House
is simply seeking to discredit it in advance by a completely false association with Russian intelligence.
The Obama administration is losing it. On Syria as well as on the election it can no longer assert
its will. Trump, despite all dirty boy's club talk he may do, has a significant chance to catch the
presidency. He (-44%) and Clinton (-41%) are
more disliked by the U.S electorate, than Putin (-38%). Any solution in Syria will be more in
Russia's than the Washington's favor.
Such desperation can be dangerous. Kerry is gasping at straws when he lies about Russia. The president
and his colleagues at the Pentagon and the CIA have more kinetic means to express themselves. Could
they order up something really stupid?
"... It is fortunate for Saudi Arabia and Qatar that the furor over the sexual antics of Donald Trump is preventing much attention being given to the latest batch of leaked emails to and from Hillary Clinton . Most fascinating of these is what reads like a US State Department memo , dated 17 August 2014, on the appropriate US response to the rapid advance of Isis forces, which were then sweeping through northern Iraq and eastern Syria. ..."
"... The memo says: "We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to Isis and other radical groups in the region." ..."
"... An earlier WikiLeaks release of a State Department cable sent under her name in December 2009 states that "Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT [Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan]." But Saudi complicity with these movements never became a central political issue in the US. Why not? ..."
"... The answer is that the US did not think it was in its interests to cut its traditional Sunni allies loose and put a great deal of resources into making sure that this did not happen. They brought on side compliant journalists, academics and politicians willing to give overt or covert support to Saudi positions. ..."
"... Iraqi and Kurdish leaders said that they did not believe a word of it, claiming privately that Isis was blackmailing the Gulf states by threatening violence on their territory unless they paid up. ..."
"... Going by the latest leaked email, the State Department and US intelligence clearly had no doubt that Saudi Arabia and Qatar were funding Isis. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton should be very vulnerable over the failings of US foreign policy during the years she was Secretary of State. But, such is the crudity of Trump's demagoguery, she has never had to answer for it. ..."
"... A Hillary Clinton presidency might mean closer amity with Saudi Arabia, but American attitudes towards the Saudi regime are becoming soured, as was shown recently when Congress overwhelmingly overturned a presidential veto of a bill allowing the relatives of 9/11 victims to sue the Saudi government. ..."
It is fortunate for
Saudi Arabia and Qatar
that the furor over the
sexual antics of Donald
Trump is preventing much attention being given to the latest batch of leaked emails to and from
Hillary Clinton.
Most fascinating of these is what reads like a
US State Department memo, dated 17 August 2014, on the appropriate US response to the rapid advance
of Isis forces, which were then sweeping through northern Iraq and eastern Syria.
At the time,
the US government was not admitting that Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies were supporting
Isis and
al-Qaeda-type movements.
But in
the leaked memo, which says that it draws on "western intelligence, US intelligence and sources
in the region" there is no ambivalence about who is backing Isis, which at the time of writing was
butchering and raping Yazidi villagers and slaughtering captured Iraqi and Syrian soldiers.
The memo says: "We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to
bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial
and logistic support to Isis and other radical groups in the region." This was evidently received
wisdom in the upper ranks of the US government, but never openly admitted because to it was held
that to antagonise Saudi Arabia, the Gulf monarchies, Turkey and Pakistan would fatally undermine
US power in the Middle East and South Asia.
For an extraordinarily long period after 9/11, the US refused to confront these traditional Sunni
allies and thereby ensured that the "War on Terror" would fail decisively; 15 years later, al-Qaeda
in its different guises is much stronger than it used to be because shadowy state sponsors, without
whom it could not have survived, were given a free pass.
It is not as if Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and the US foreign policy establishment
in general did not know what was happening. An earlier WikiLeaks release of a State Department
cable sent under her name in December 2009 states that "Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial
support base for al-Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT [Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan]." But Saudi complicity
with these movements never became a central political issue in the US. Why not?
The answer is that the US did not think it was in its interests to cut its traditional Sunni
allies loose and put a great deal of resources into making sure that this did not happen. They brought
on side compliant journalists, academics and politicians willing to give overt or covert support
to Saudi positions.
The real views of senior officials in the White House and the State Department were only periodically
visible and, even when their frankness made news, what they said was swiftly forgotten. Earlier this
year, for instance, Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic wrote a piece based on numerous interviews
with Barack Obama in which Obama "questioned, often harshly, the role that America's Sunni Arab allies
play in fomenting anti-American terrorism. He is clearly irritated that foreign policy orthodoxy
compels him to treat Saudi Arabia as an ally".
It is worth recalling White House cynicism about how that foreign policy orthodoxy in Washington
was produced and how easily its influence could be bought. Goldberg reported that "a widely held
sentiment inside the White House is that many of the most prominent foreign-policy think tanks in
Washington are doing the bidding of their Arab and pro-Israel funders. I've heard one administration
official refer to Massachusetts Avenue, the home of many of these think tanks, as 'Arab-occupied
territory'."
Despite this, television and newspaper interview self-declared academic experts from these same
think tanks on Isis, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf are wilfully ignoring or happily disregarding
their partisan sympathies.
The Hillary Clinton email of August 2014 takes for granted that Saudi Arabia and Qatar are funding
Isis – but this was not the journalistic or academic conventional wisdom of the day. Instead, there
was much assertion that the newly declared caliphate was self-supporting through the sale of oil,
taxes and antiquities; it therefore followed that Isis did not need money from Saudi Arabia and the
Gulf. The same argument could not be made to explain the funding of Jabhat al-Nusra, which controlled
no oilfields, but even in the case of Isis the belief in its self-sufficiency was always shaky.
Iraqi and Kurdish leaders said that they did not believe a word of it, claiming privately
that Isis was blackmailing the Gulf states by threatening violence on their territory unless they
paid up. The Iraqi and Kurdish officials never produced proof of this, but it seemed unlikely
that men as tough and ruthless as the Isis leaders would have satisfied themselves with taxing truck
traffic and shopkeepers in the extensive but poor lands they ruled and not extracted far larger sums
from fabulously wealthy private and state donors in the oil producers of the Gulf.
Going by the latest leaked email, the State Department and US intelligence clearly had no
doubt that Saudi Arabia and Qatar were funding Isis. But there has always been bizarre discontinuity
between what the Obama administration knew about Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states and what they would
say in public. Occasionally the truth would spill out, as when Vice-President Joe Biden told students
at Harvard in October 2014 that Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates "were so determined
to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war. What did they do? They poured hundreds
of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad.
Except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements
of jihadis coming from other parts of the world". Biden poured scorn on the idea that there were
Syrian "moderates" capable of fighting Isis and Assad at the same time.
Hillary Clinton should be very vulnerable over the failings of US foreign policy during the
years she was Secretary of State. But, such is the crudity of Trump's demagoguery, she has never
had to answer for it. Republican challenges have focussed on issues – the death of the US ambassador
in Benghazi in 2012 and the final US military withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 – for which she was not
responsible.
A Hillary Clinton presidency might mean closer amity with Saudi Arabia, but American attitudes
towards the Saudi regime are becoming soured, as was shown recently when Congress overwhelmingly
overturned a presidential veto of a bill allowing the relatives of 9/11 victims to sue the Saudi
government.
Another development is weakening Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies. The leaked memo speaks of
the rival ambitions of Saudi Arabia and Qatar "to dominate the Sunni world". But this has not turned
out well, with east Aleppo and Mosul, two great Sunni cities, coming under attack and likely to fall.
Whatever Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and the others thought they were doing it has not happened and
the Sunni of Syria and Iraq are paying a heavy price. It is this failure which will shape the future
relations of the Sunni states with the new US administration.
"... It is high time for the U.S. to return to paper-ballots and manual vote counting. The process is easier, comprehensible, less prone to manipulations and reproducible. Experience in other countries show that it is also nearly as fast, if not faster, than machine counting. There is simply no sensible reason why machines should be used at all. ..."
"... There is simply no sensible reason why machines should be used at all." Of course there is - to rig elections. What do you think they are used for. ..."
"... The price to pay is the ability to be alerted when vote rigging is going on. Bush won in 2000 because his people controlled the processes that mattered in Florida. ..."
"... There are the same allegations about 2004 in regards to Ohio. ..."
"... Here's the best statistical analysis of US vote count irregularities to date. Not a pretty picture. ..."
"... There is more needed than just paper ballots. A proportional system, a limit on donations and partisan/donor government posts, a stop to the corporate and lobbyist revolving doors. ..."
"... At present the US seem to be on their way to a one party system. Any democratic process will take place within this "private" club including a very small part of the population. ..."
"... for the 1 percent the system is not rigged, they have a preferred globalization candidate, and a police state fall back should the peasants rebell. ..."
"... US citizens are reduced to vote in a block to this power in the Senate and the House in continuous cycles. In the end that blocks any political progress there might be. ..."
"... There's lots of evidence that the 2004 election was stolen for Bush in Ohio. ..."
"... "smartmatic" is obviously the right choice. it's a name we know and trust. Like Deibold, Northrup, KBR, and Bellingcat. The integrity stands for itself. ..."
"... Just think of how many residents of graveyards will be voting their consciences (or lack thereof) this year. Remember Chicago advise - vote early, vote often. ..."
"... obomber has a friend in the vote rigging business. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-18/robert-creamer ..."
"... Concerted media campaign (scripted) against Trump portrays him as hysterical. Recall the trumped-up "(Howard) Dean Scream". ..."
"... Hillary is as nasty and hysterical as Trump or worse. She uses the F bomb regularly. Screams at her subordinates and she annihilated several countries worth of women and children. ..."
"... We should all be aware of what occurred in the two Baby Bush elections as far as voter machine tabulations and judicial fraud in his becoming president in both elections and the likely murder(s) to cover the fraud up. Small plane crashes being almost untraceable. ..."
"... paper vote or bust. Everything else hides an attempt at control and ultimately fraud. ..."
"... How does that help Trump? Most DNC *and* RNC Deep State insiders favor Hillary. ..."
"... Who is leaking all this stuff so well-timed together? Might just be the FBI, finding itself unable to prosecute officially, not only for fear of retribution, but also because the heap of shit that would get uncovered could be enough for the rest of the world to declare war on the US. ..."
"... In Vietnam, as in Iraq, the U.S. government pushed hard to get an election to sanctify its puppet regime. Ellsberg, who spent two years in Vietnam after his time in the Pentagon, aided some of the key U.S. officials in this effort who sought an honest vote. But when U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge heard their pitch, he replied, "You've got a gentleman in the White House right now [Johnson] who has spent most of his life rigging elections. I've spent most of my life rigging elections. I spent nine whole months rigging a Republican convention to choose Ike as a candidate rather than Bob Taft." Lodge later ordered, "Get it across to the press that they shouldn't apply higher standards here in Vietnam than they do in the U.S." ..."
"... Why is policy discussion absent from this election cycle? Its all Trump bashing,wo one iota of his policies being broadcast? ..."
"... Obomba, the most un-criticised POTUS in American history, is a laughable pos concerned about his terrible corrupt legacy of death war and division which Trump will reveal, once in. ..."
"... Election Fraud within the Outlaw US Empire has a long history. One very intrepid investigator and expert on this is Brad Friedman who runs the Brad Blog, whose current lead item is about this very topic. ..."
"... The Vote 'No Confidence' movement is growing. It's being actively discussed on FB and ZH now ..."
"... Trump say the election is rigged ? Obama's setting up a straw mam by changing the story to election fraud. There may well be fraud in the voting process but we are unlikely to ever know how much. But as to the election being rigged , that's so plainly obvious it's painful. ..."
"... And Germany doesn't allow electronic voting machines. Gotta be a clue there somewhere. ..."
"... There is ample evidence of election fraud, vote fraud, and various types of 'rigging' or 'organising' in the US it is just too long to go into in a short post. ..."
"... Poll Pro-HRC results are not trustworthy. They aren't necessarily outright fabricated (is easy to do and very hard to detect / prosecute), nor even fraudulently carried out, but 'arranged' to give the desired result, which might even, in some cases, be perfectly unconscious, just following SOP. (I could outline 10 major problems / procedures that twist the results.) ..."
"... Then, the media take it up, and cherry-pick the results, pro HRC. That includes internet sites like real clear politics, which I noticed recently is biased (paid?) in favor of HRC. ..."
"... It is amazing to me, yet very few ppl actually dig into the available info about the polls. (Maybe 300 ppl in the world?) HRC needs these fakelorum poll results because they will 'rig' the election as best as they can, they need to point back to them: "see we were winning all the time Trump deplorables yelling insults who cares" - Pathetic. Also, of course, controlling the polls while not the same as 'riggin' the election is part of the same MO. (See Podesta e-mails from Wikileaks.) ..."
"... I think things could get pretty ugly on Nov 9 if Trump wins because i don't see Hillary going quietly into the night and the dems have seeded "putin is rigging" the election idea to contest the results. Plus the establishment that wants Hillary controls the media and the executive office. ..."
"... Trump's delegitimizing the election before it takes place is definitely color revolution stuff - the carrot revolution? ..."
"... "Hillary Clinton now says her "number one priority" in Syria is the removal of Bashar al-Assad, putting us on the path of war with Syria and Russia next year. ..."
"... no-fly zone" over Syria will certainly be followed by the shooting down of both Russian and U.S. jets, in an unpredictable escalation that could easily spread ..."
"... Note the sums are shards of chewed peanuts and their shells. MSM are bought, controlled and are put in a lowly position, and pamper to power, any.… They will go where the money is but it takes them a long time to figure out who what where why etc. and what they are supposed to do. They cannot be outed as completely controlled, so have to do some 'moves' to retain credibility, and their clients/controllers understand that. Encouraging a corrupt 4th Estate has its major downsides. ..."
"... Rigged. Right. Let me tell you about rigged. The US system is rigged in a far larger sense than any Americans realize. It's rigged to blow off the Constitution. ..."
"... the idea of the Electoral College was that every four years communities vote for a local person who could be trusted to go to Washington and become part of the committee that chooses a president and vice-president. ..."
"... The process is "supposed" to be more akin to the Holy See choosing a pope. The electors were to meet in Washington, debate the possibilities, come up with short list, go to the top person on the list and ask if they would be willing to be president (or vice-president, as the case may be), and if they agreed, the deal was done. If not, go to the second person. ..."
"... And demand hand counted paper ballots that cannot be rigged by "Russian hackers". It's called simple score because it is almost the same as other well-known forms of score (and "range") voting, except it's optimized for hand counted paper ballots (i.e. no machines). ..."
"... Need to comb through the propositions carefully. Against big business and self serving liberals.. BTW, I'm a Californian from the Central Valley. Oh! How I wish there is a proposition. Should Hussein Obomo II charge for crimes against humanity? ..."
"... it is absolutely evident that Donald Trump is not only facing the mammoth Clinton political machine, but, also the combined forces of the viciously dishonest Mainstream Media." ..."
"... "When was the last time the media threw 100% of its support behind one party's presidential candidate? What does that say about the media?" ..."
"... Do you feel comfortable with the idea that a handful of TV and print-news executives are inserting themselves into the process and choosing our leaders for us?" ..."
"... It looks like ALL of the Neocon war criminals and architects of the mass slaughters in Iraq (Libya, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, etc) are standing with Hillary Clinton: ..."
"... Here's a partial list of neocon war criminals supporting Miss Neocon: Paul Wolfowitz (aka, the Prince of Darkness), Eliot Cohen, Richard Perle, David Wurmser, Robert Kagan, Max Boot, Bill Kristol, Dov Zakheim, Douglas Feith, Michael Ledeen, Marc Grossman, David Frum, Michael Chertoff, John Podhoretz, Elliot Abrams, Alan Dershowitz, etc ..."
"... All neocons stand with the CrookedC*nt because there hasn't been nearly enough pointless war, slaughter, dismemberment, death or trauma, it needs to go on FOREVER. ..."
"... To be blunt. It is not only MSM who are prostitutes of oligarchic ruling elite but all or most even so called left-leaning or independent media are all under guise of phony "opposition" or diversity of opinion where there is none. ..."
"... MSM even lacks this basic foundation of a rational thought and must be dismissed entirely. ..."
"... The freedom of speech and press, democracy and just simple decency are simply not allowed in these US under penalty of social marginalizing or even death as Assange and Manning are facing. The entire message of MSM propaganda false flag soldiers is fear. ..."
"... The US Elections themselves are regularity defrauded (read Greg Palast) for decades in thousands of well-documented different and additional ways to polls such as: ..."
"... No independent verification of the vote or serious reporting by international observers about violations, or independent exit polls, and many, many more ways every election is stolen as anybody who opens eyes can see. ..."
"... "The individual loses his substance by voluntarily bowing to an overpowering and distant oligarchy, while simultaneously "participating" in sham democracy." ..."
"... Remember this is a person that actually publicly admits he took 6 months off (from what?) to campaign for Mr Changey Hopey, The drone Bombing Nobel Peace Prize winner, so it's not like he could ever 5have any political insights worth listening to, now is it? ..."
"... Oddly, I looked to Russia for inspiration. RF believes in international law so greatly that she strives mightily at every turn to make it the way nations interact. And what we can see if we choose, is that this effort is paying off. The world is changing because of what Russia believes in. ..."
"... Although Clinton Won Massachusetts by 2%, Hand Counted Precincts in Massachusetts Favored Bernie Sanders by 17% ..."
"... Massachusetts, one of the participating states for the Super Tuesday election results, may need further scrutiny to allay concerns over election fraud using electronic voting machines. 68 out of the state's 351 jurisdictions used hand counted ballots and showed a much larger preference of 17% for Bernie Sanders than the rest of the jurisdictions tabulated by electronic voting machine vendors ES&S, Diebold and Dominion. Hillary Clinton was declared the winner of Massachusetts by 1.42 %. ..."
"... In the Dominican Republic's last elections (May 2016) voters forced the Electoral Office to get rid of the electronic count in favor of paper ballots, which were counted both, by scanner and by hand, one by one, in front of delegates from each party. This action avoided a credibility crisis and everything went smooth. ..."
Obama was asked about Trump's voter fraud assertions on Tuesday [..] He responded with a blistering
attack on the Republican candidate, noting that U.S. elections are run and monitored by local
officials, who may well be appointed by Republican governors of states, and saying that cases
of significant voter fraud were not to be found in American elections.
Obama said there was "no serious" person who would suggest it was possible to rig American
elections , adding, "I'd invite Mr. Trump to stop whining and go try to make his case to get votes."
That is curious. There are a lot of "non serious" persons in the Democratic Party who tell us
that Russia is trying to manipulate the U.S. elections. How is it going to that when it's not possible?
Is rigging the election only impossible when it is in favor of Hillary Clinton? This while rigging
the elections in favor of Donald Trump, by Russia or someone else, is entirely possible and even
"evident"?
Curious.
That said - I do believe that the U.S. election can be decided through manipulation. We have evidently
seen that in 2000 when Bush was "elected" by a fake "recount" and a Supreme Court decision.
The outcome of a U.S. presidential election can depend on very few votes in very few localities.
The various machines and processes used in U.S. elections can be influenced. It is no longer comprehensible
for the voters how the votes are counted and how the results created. *
The intense manipulation attempts by the Clinton camp, via the DNC against Sanders or by
creating a Russian boogeyman to propagandize against Trump, lets me believe that her side is well
capable of considering and implementing some vote count shenanigan. Neither are Trump or the Republicans
in general strangers to dirty methods and manipulations.
It is high time for the U.S. to return to paper-ballots and manual vote counting. The process
is easier, comprehensible, less prone to manipulations and reproducible. Experience in other countries
show that it is also nearly as fast, if not faster, than machine counting. There is simply no sensible
reason why machines should be used at all.
* (The German Constitutional Court prohibited the use of all voting machines in German
elections because for the general voters they institute irreproducible vote counting which leads
to a general loss of trust in the democratic process. The price to pay for using voting machines
is legitimacy.)
Posted by b on October 19, 2016 at 01:54 AM |
Permalink
I just found out that many states in the US use electronic voting systems made by Smartmatic which
is part of the SGO Group. Lord Mark Malloch-Brown is the chairman of SGO. This man is heavily
entangled with Soros. Hillary is Soros' candidate. You simply can't make this sh*t up
No. The price to pay is the ability to be alerted when vote rigging is going on. Bush won
in 2000 because his people controlled the processes that mattered in Florida.
There are the same allegations about 2004 in regards to Ohio.
There is more needed than just paper ballots. A proportional system, a limit on donations
and partisan/donor government posts, a stop to the corporate and lobbyist revolving doors.
And diverse political parties that present voters with a choice. At present the US seem
to be on their way to a one party system. Any democratic process will take place within this "private"
club including a very small part of the population.
But democracy never meant the power of the poor. So, no, for the 1 percent the system is
not rigged, they have a preferred globalization candidate, and a police state fall back should
the peasants rebell.
And in the end, this is the way things are run in Russia and China, with a lot less media circus.
Add - a limit to presidential power for one person. US citizens are reduced to vote in
a block to this power in the Senate and the House in continuous cycles. In the end that blocks
any political progress there might be. The US are the oldest modern democracy. It is like
being stuck in the age of steam engines.
Good one, wj2! Here's some more info on Lord Malloch-Brown and George Soros, courtesy of WikiPedia:
Malloch Brown has been closely associated with billionaire speculator George Soros. Working
for Refugees International, he was part of the Soros Advisory Committee on Bosnia in 1993–94,
formed by George Soros. He has since kept cordial relations with Soros, and rented an apartment
owned by Soros while working in New York on UN assignments. In May 2007, Soros' Quantum Fund
announced the appointment of Sir Mark as vice-president. In September 2007, The Observer reported
that he had resigned this position on becoming a government minister in the UK. Also in May
2007, Malloch Brown was named vice-chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute,
two other important Soros organisations.
DOOOOOOOOOM! "smartmatic" is obviously the right choice. it's a name we know and trust. Like
Deibold, Northrup, KBR, and Bellingcat. The integrity stands for itself. With a population
so gleefully ignorant and self centered as D'uhmerica, you should be lowering your expectations
significantly.
Are honest elections even legal in Texas and Louisiana? How about Massachusetts and New York?
They may be legal there but it would be dangerous to try to enforce that.
Just think of how many residents of graveyards will be voting their consciences (or lack thereof)
this year. Remember Chicago advise - vote early, vote often.
PB 13 "Concerning attacks from both sides, Trump is definitely more hysterical."
Concerted media campaign (scripted) against Trump portrays him as hysterical. Recall the
trumped-up "(Howard) Dean Scream".
Trump's hysterical rants (and the smear campaign) are played up in a organized attempt to knock
him out. People are getting kneecapped (Billy Bush) to demonstrate to others the wrath that may
be visited upon them for supporting the wrong candidate.
Take Bill O'Reilly for example, He told a subordinate female employee (documented court record)
that he wanted to "get a few wines in her and soap up her tits in the shower with a loofah and
falafel. There was a settlement and the story was under-reported. Forgotten and forgiven. In fact
Bill O stands as an arbiter of moral virtue.
Hillary is as nasty and hysterical as Trump or worse. She uses the F bomb regularly. Screams
at her subordinates and she annihilated several countries worth of women and children.
It is simply "not in the script" to malign Hillary with her own words and obnoxious behavior.
By the way, she is also a drunk.
We should all be aware of what occurred in the two Baby Bush elections as far as voter machine
tabulations and judicial fraud in his becoming president in both elections and the likely murder(s)
to cover the fraud up. Small plane crashes being almost untraceable.
https://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2008/12/26/bushs-it-guy-killed-in-plane-crash/
Who is leaking all this stuff so well-timed together? Might just be the FBI, finding itself
unable to prosecute officially, not only for fear of retribution, but also because the heap of
shit that would get uncovered could be enough for the rest of the world to declare war on the
US.
Daniel Ellsberg, in his book Secrets , recounts what he had learned during his government
service about the honesty of U.S. elections. As reported in
Counterpunch :
In Vietnam, as in Iraq, the U.S. government pushed hard to get an election to sanctify
its puppet regime. Ellsberg, who spent two years in Vietnam after his time in the Pentagon,
aided some of the key U.S. officials in this effort who sought an honest vote. But when U.S.
Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge heard their pitch, he replied, "You've got a gentleman in the
White House right now [Johnson] who has spent most of his life rigging elections. I've spent
most of my life rigging elections. I spent nine whole months rigging a Republican convention
to choose Ike as a candidate rather than Bob Taft." Lodge later ordered, "Get it across to
the press that they shouldn't apply higher standards here in Vietnam than they do in the U.S."
But Lodge's comments were downright uplifting compared with a meeting that Ellsberg attended
with former Vice President Richard Nixon, who was visiting Vietnam on a "fact-finding mission"
to help bolster his presidential aspirations. Former CIA operative Edward Lansdale told Nixon
that he and his colleagues wanted to help "make this the most honest election that's ever been
held in Vietnam." Nixon replied, "Oh, sure, honest, yes, honest, that's right … so long as
you win!" With the last words he did three things in quick succession: winked, drove his elbow
hard into Lansdale's arm, and slapped his own knee.
12,13,will you clowns keep your zippers closed? Your propaganda is unseemly, and we'll see just
whose victory will be huge Nov.8,won't we? Why does anyone put any credence in serial liar polls?
Why is policy discussion absent from this election cycle? Its all Trump bashing,wo one iota
of his policies being broadcast?
That is his vote rigging angle, that the MSM is corrupt and is politically assassinating him
daily,not the polls themselves being a major factor in the rigging accusations.
Obomba, the most un-criticised POTUS in American history, is a laughable pos concerned
about his terrible corrupt legacy of death war and division which Trump will reveal, once in.
And only commie morons would oppose that.
Election Fraud within the Outlaw US Empire has a long history. One very intrepid investigator
and expert on this is Brad Friedman who runs the Brad Blog, whose current lead item is about this
very topic. I suggest those interested in learning more take the time to investigate his
site and its many years of accumulated evidence proving Election Fraud a very big problem,
http://bradblog.com/
The Vote 'No Confidence' movement is growing. It's being actively discussed on FB and ZH now.
A bloviating bunko artist vers a grifting crypto neocon is not a 'choice', it's a suicide squad
lootfest it's taking America down.
In Humboldt County California we still use paper ballots. Our polling place also has one electronic
voting machine sitting in a corner for voters who can't use the paper ballots. I have never seen
it being used. There was a transparency program that I think they still do where all ballots were
scanned and the images made available online for the public to double check results. I'm no wiz
with machine vision but I think I could knock together enough code to do my own recount.
I'm not paying much attention but doesn't Trump say the election is rigged ? Obama's setting
up a straw mam by changing the story to election fraud. There may well be fraud in the voting
process but we are unlikely to ever know how much. But as to the election being rigged , that's
so plainly obvious it's painful.
And Germany doesn't allow electronic voting machines. Gotta be a clue there somewhere.
There is ample evidence of election fraud, vote fraud, and various types of 'rigging' or 'organising'
in the US it is just too long to go into in a short post. (See for ex. Adjuvant @ 6, john
@ 18)
Ideally, one would have to divide it into different types. It is also traditional, which some
forget, I only know about that from 'realistic' novels, I recently read Dos Passos' Manhattan
Transfer, and was amazed how little things change (despite horse-drawn carriages, rouge, spitoons,
cigars, sauerkraut, etc.) - see karlof1 @ 25.
Poll Pro-HRC results are not trustworthy. They aren't necessarily outright fabricated (is
easy to do and very hard to detect / prosecute), nor even fraudulently carried out, but 'arranged'
to give the desired result, which might even, in some cases, be perfectly unconscious, just following
SOP. (I could outline 10 major problems / procedures that twist the results.)
Then, the media take it up, and cherry-pick the results, pro HRC. That includes internet
sites like real clear politics, which I noticed recently is biased (paid?) in favor of
HRC.
It is amazing to me, yet very few ppl actually dig into the available info about the polls.
(Maybe 300 ppl in the world?) HRC needs these fakelorum poll results because they will 'rig' the
election as best as they can, they need to point back to them: "see we were winning all the time
Trump deplorables yelling insults who cares" - Pathetic. Also, of course, controlling the polls
while not the same as 'riggin' the election is part of the same MO. (See Podesta e-mails from
Wikileaks.)
This is also the reason for the mad accusations of Putin interference in US elections - if
somebody is doing illegit moves it is Trump's supporter Putin and so the 'bad stuff' is 'foreign
take-over' and not 'us', and btw NOT the Republicans, or Trump circle, which is very telling.
I didn't see the O Keefe, Project Veritas, vids mentioned. Here the first one. There is a second
one up and more coming.
I think things could get pretty ugly on Nov 9 if Trump wins because i don't see Hillary going
quietly into the night and the dems have seeded "putin is rigging" the election idea to contest
the results. Plus the establishment that wants Hillary controls the media and the executive office.
Trump's delegitimizing the election before it takes place is definitely color revolution
stuff - the carrot revolution?
It is an interesting experiment if you can make people vote for a candidate they don't like
by it being the only way to prevent a candidate they dislike even more. You just showed you aren't
able to.
"Hillary Clinton now says her "number one priority" in Syria is the removal of Bashar al-Assad,
putting us on the path of war with Syria and Russia next year.
Any "no-fly zone" over Syria will certainly be followed by the shooting down of both Russian
and U.S. jets, in an unpredictable escalation that could easily spread
Russia will not back down if we start shooting down its aircraft. Is Hillary willing to risk
nuclear war with Russia in order to protect al-Qaeda in Syria?
96% of disclosed campaign contributions from journalists went to the Clinton campaign.
From the MSM: TIME.
Note the sums are shards of chewed peanuts and their shells. MSM are bought, controlled
and are put in a lowly position, and pamper to power, any.… They will go where the money is but
it takes them a long time to figure out who what where why etc. and what they are supposed to
do. They cannot be outed as completely controlled, so have to do some 'moves' to retain credibility,
and their clients/controllers understand that. Encouraging a corrupt 4th Estate has its major
downsides.
Rigged. Right. Let me tell you about rigged. The US system is rigged in a far larger sense
than any Americans realize. It's rigged to blow off the Constitution.
If you want to know how badly rigged, ask any voter when they leave the voting venue: "What
is the name of the elector you just voted for?" You'll get either: 1) a dumb stare; 2) a laugh,
or 3) a "WTF is an elector?"
Under the Constitution, Americans vote for electors. They do not vote for presidents, and there's
a reason for that. It's called "mass stupidity."
The Fondling Fathers were smart enough to know that the people are too stupid to choose their
own leader. So the idea of the Electoral College was that every four years communities vote
for a local person who could be trusted to go to Washington and become part of the committee that
chooses a president and vice-president.
There is not "supposed" to be any campaign, candidates, or polls. The process is "supposed"
to be more akin to the Holy See choosing a pope. The electors were to meet in Washington, debate
the possibilities, come up with short list, go to the top person on the list and ask if they would
be willing to be president (or vice-president, as the case may be), and if they agreed, the deal
was done. If not, go to the second person. Pretty much how the CEO of a large corporation
is chosen.
Having the people of a community vote for the local person who would be the most trustworthy
to deliberate on who should be president is a reasonable objective. I mean, essentially the question
for the voter would be reduced to: "What person in our community would be least likely to be bought
off?" But having a gang-bang of 60 million voting Americans who don't really know shit about the
morons they are voting into office . . . that, on its face, is a sign of mass self-deception and
insanity. It is mass stupidity perpetuating itself.
The circus that the US presidential election has turned into – including the grotesque primaries
– just goes to show how fucking stupid Americans are. The system is an embarrassment to the entire
country. And it is an act of flipping-off the Fondling Fathers and their better judgment every
four years. But worst of all, the present system is virtually certain to eventually produce the
most powerful person in the world who is a complete moron, and who will precipitate a global catastrophe
– economic, or military, or both.
And demand hand counted paper ballots that cannot be rigged by "Russian hackers". It's
called simple score because it is almost the same as other well-known forms of score (and "range")
voting, except it's optimized for hand counted paper ballots (i.e. no machines).
Just got my mail-in ballots from the postman. Voting against all Democrats except, for POTUS.
Take a few days and vote either Jill Stein or Donald Trump.
Need to comb through the propositions carefully. Against big business and self serving
liberals.. BTW, I'm a Californian from the Central Valley. Oh! How I wish there is a proposition.
Should Hussein Obomo II charge for crimes against humanity?
"For any minimally conscious American citizen, it is absolutely evident that Donald Trump
is not only facing the mammoth Clinton political machine, but, also the combined forces of the
viciously dishonest Mainstream Media."
-Boyd D. Cathey, "The Tape, the Conspiracy, and the Death of the Old Politics", Unz Review
"When was the last time the media threw 100% of its support behind one party's presidential
candidate? What does that say about the media?"
Do you feel comfortable with the idea that a handful of TV and print-news executives are
inserting themselves into the process and choosing our leaders for us?"
If Jill Stein needs 5% of the vote in order to be considered a legitimate candidate (or to bring
the Green party up to legitimate third-party status for the 2020 election), then you can rest
assured that no matter how many votes she actually gets, her percentage will never be above 4.99%.
Just like when Obama swept into office in 2008, the powers-that-be made sure the Democrats never
had a filibuster-proof majority. Give 'em just enough to believe that the system works, but never
enough to create a situation where the lack of change can't be explained away by "gridlock". Brilliant
in its malevolence, really.
It looks like ALL of the Neocon war criminals and architects of the mass slaughters in Iraq
(Libya, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, etc) are standing with Hillary Clinton:
Here's a partial list of neocon war criminals supporting Miss Neocon: Paul Wolfowitz (aka,
the Prince of Darkness), Eliot Cohen, Richard Perle, David Wurmser, Robert Kagan, Max Boot, Bill
Kristol, Dov Zakheim, Douglas Feith, Michael Ledeen, Marc Grossman, David Frum, Michael Chertoff,
John Podhoretz, Elliot Abrams, Alan Dershowitz, etc
All neocons stand with the CrookedC*nt because there hasn't been nearly enough pointless
war, slaughter, dismemberment, death or trauma, it needs to go on FOREVER.
To be blunt. It is not only MSM who are prostitutes of oligarchic ruling elite but all or
most even so called left-leaning or independent media are all under guise of phony "opposition"
or diversity of opinion where there is none.
Actually MOA is one of few, more or less independent, aligning itself with any sane ideology,
a welcome island of order in the ocean of media cacophony and I often disagreed with MOA but I
appreciate its logical consistency and integrity, hard facts based journalism,no matter from what
moral stand MOA writings are coming from. MSM even lacks this basic foundation of a rational
thought and must be dismissed entirely.
But there is much, much more rigging going on, on massive, even global scale. The fraud is
so massive and so visible that blinds people from the truth about it. From the truth of how massively
they are being controlled in their opinions and thoughts.
The freedom of speech and press, democracy and just simple decency are simply not allowed
in these US under penalty of social marginalizing or even death as Assange and Manning are facing.
The entire message of MSM propaganda false flag soldiers is fear.
It may seem shocking for people under spell of overwhelming propaganda, but this government
run by Global oligarchs is dangerous to our physical and mental health and must be eradicated
as a matter of sanitary emergency.
Let's sweep all those political excretions into the sewage pipes where they belong. But first
we have to recognize the scale of their influence and their horrifying daily routine subversion
of social order, gross malfeasance or even horrendous crimes also war crimes covered up by MSM.
Only after we get rid of this abhorrent, brutal regime, cut the chains of enslavement we can
have decent democracy or voting, not before.
John Stuart Mill - "Government shapes our character, values, and intellect. It can affect
us positively or negatively. When political institutions are ill constructed, "the effect is
felt in a thousand ways in lowering the morality and deadening the intelligence and activity
of the people"
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "I had come to see that everything was radically connected
with politics, and that however one proceeded, no people would be other than the nature of
its government.
And here we are, believing the shit those mofos and feeding us about freedom and democracy
citing bought and sold lies as "scientific research" concocted for one reason alone, to fuck us
up , exploit and discard when not needed.
Here is, in a small part, about how they do it, starting from phony polls that suppose to sway
you one way or another into following supposed projected winner anointed by the establishment.
Polls are routinely skewed, even MSM pundits say use polls they can trust i.e. which give them
results their bosses seek.
Now over hundred top newspapers and media outlets endorsed Hillary so you can safely remove
them from your list of polls you can rely on.
Anyway most polls are rigged even more than elections themselves, mostly by skewing the content
of a poling sample like in the above example. If you poll Dems about Reps that exactly you get
what you seek. But they are more insidious like doubling or tripling polling sample and then pick
an choose what answers they like, or focus sample on the area you know there is overall support
for your thesis or assertion of candidate regardless of official affiliation, and many more down
to raw rigging by fixing numbers or adjustments.
The US Elections themselves are regularity defrauded (read Greg Palast) for decades in
thousands of well-documented different and additional ways to polls such as:
By limiting selection of possible candidates and their access to statewide or national ballot
box via rigged undemocratic caucuses and primaries and other unreasonable requirements, goal-seeking
ad-hoc rules. by eliminating and/or confusing voters about voting at proper physical location
often changed in last moments, forcing into never counted provisional vote by purposely hiding
registered lists, purging made up "felons" from voter lists, requiring expensive or unavailable
or costly to obtain due to extensive travel, identifying documents, threatening citizen (of color)
with deportation, accusing them of voter fraud [baseless challenging that automatically pushes
voter into provisional vote], or strait offering meaningless provisional ballots instead of proper
ballot for people who can't read (English) well, eliminating students and military vote when needed
on phony registration issues, signature, pictures, purposefully misspelled names, mostly non-British
names etc., reducing number of polling places where majority votes for "rouge" candidate, forcing
people to stand in line for hours or preventing people from voting al together.
Selecting remote polling locations with obstructed public access by car or transit, paid parking,
exposed to weather elements, cold, wind and rain in November.
Hacking databases before and after vote, switching votes, adding votes for absent voters, and
switching party affiliations and vote at polling places as well up in the data collating chain,
county, state, filing in court last minute frivolous law suits aimed to block unwanted candidates
or challenging readiness of the polling places in certain neighborhoods deemed politically uncertain,
outrageous voting ON a WORKING DAY (everywhere else voting is on Sunday or a day free of work)
skewing that way votes toward older retired people.
Massive lying propaganda of whom we vote for, a fraudulent ballot supposedly voting for "candidates"
but in fact voting on unnamed electors, party apparatchiks instead, violating basic democratic
principle of transparency of candidates on the ballot and secrecy of a voter, outrageous electorate
college rules design to directly suppress democracy. Requirement of approval of the electoral
vote by congress is an outrageous thing illegal in quasi-democratic western countries due to division
of powers.
Outrageous, voting day propaganda to discourage voting by phony polling and predictions while
everywhere else there is campaigning ban, silence for two to three days before Election Day.
No independent verification of the vote or serious reporting by international observers
about violations, or independent exit polls, and many, many more ways every election is stolen
as anybody who opens eyes can see.
All the above fraud prepared by close group of election criminals on political party payroll,
months/years before election date often without any contribution from ordinary polling workers
who believe that nothing is rigged.
If somebody thinks that they would restrain themselves this time, think again. The regime,
in a form of mostly unsuspecting county registrars are tools of the establishment and will do
everything, everything they can and they can a lot, to defraud those elections and push an establishment
candidate down to our throats, without a thought crossing their comatose minds. "Just doing their
jobs like little Eichmanns of NAZI regime".
One way or another your vote will be stolen or manipulated up and down the ticket at will
and your participation would mean one thing legitimizing this abhorrent regime.
We must reject those rigged elections and demand that establishment must go, all of them GOP,
DNC and that including Hillary before any truly democratic electoral process worth participating
may commence.
"The individual loses his substance by voluntarily bowing to an overpowering and distant
oligarchy, while simultaneously "participating" in sham democracy."
C. Wright Mills,"The Power Elite" (1956)
Any sane person must thus conclude that an act of voting in the current helplessly tainted
and rigged political system is nothing but morally corrupting tool that divides us, conflicts
us, extorts from us an approval for the meaningless political puppets of the calcified, repugnant
oligarchic US regime, in a surrealistic act of utter futility aimed just to break us down,
to break our sense of human dignity, our individual will and self-determination since no true
choice is ever being offered to us and never will.
Idea of political/electoral boycott, unplugging from the system that corrupts us and ALTERNATIVE
POLITICAL PROCESS designed, developed and implemented for benefit of 99% of population is the
only viable idea to express our political views that are absent from official regime candidates'
agendas and from the rigged ballots. Let's not be afraid, it was already successfully done
in the past. It works." Without courage there is only slavery.
Remember this is a person that actually publicly admits he took 6 months off (from what?)
to campaign for Mr Changey Hopey, The drone Bombing Nobel Peace Prize winner, so it's not like
he could ever 5have any political insights worth listening to, now is it?
Grow up.
I took the time off (I'm a software engineer) after the primaries (having supported neither
BO or HRC) because that's who get got. We were coming off 8 years of BushCo which was, in summary...
a horror. The republicans were 100% unrepentant, and McCain was a far louder and steadfast supporter
of Iraq then Hillary... wasn't even close. McCain burried his Abramhoff investigation, sealed
their findings for 50 years. And his running mate was not just bereft of any policy expertise,
she was a loudmouth loon... even FOX canceled her post election show.
I was well aware of BO's questions/limitations. He didn't put his time in as a Senator and
sponsored no meaningful legislation. He played it safe. He had no real policy track record. And
as a Senator he quietly slipped away and hob-nobbed with Bush several times (no other Dem Senator
at the time did this that I was aware). So yeah, Obama was on open question.
I was going to pass on this election, but I've read a lot here about it and started to consider
what as a US voter I might do.
Oddly, I looked to Russia for inspiration. RF believes in international law so greatly
that she strives mightily at every turn to make it the way nations interact. And what we can see
if we choose, is that this effort is paying off. The world is changing because of what Russia
believes in.
I believe in voting. I believe in multiple parties. I believe the game is totally rigged but
sometimes you can win, except that you have to play for this to happen. I believe that you have
to be the thing you want.
I believe in a Green Party and I admire the sanity that comes from Dr. Jill Stein every time
I encounter her position. This is the world I believe in. This is the world I'll vote for and
support, with all tools that comes to hand, forever.
~~
I don't believe in the view that aspiring for betterment is foolish or naive, or the view that
current status cannot change or be changed. Such views fail to acknowledge the physical reality
of a new universe manifesting in each moment, always different in some way from that of the previous
moment. Such views are lost, bewildered, behind the curve, forever.
Term limits are useless. There could never be a Cynthia McKinney or a Dennis Kucinich -- Ever!
Term limited representatives would by definition be track record-free representatives. If you
really would like positive change, you simply need to get strategic hedge simple score voting:
SHSV
Although Clinton Won Massachusetts by 2%, Hand Counted Precincts in Massachusetts Favored
Bernie Sanders by 17%
Mar 06 2016
J.T. Waldron
Massachusetts, one of the participating states for the Super Tuesday election results,
may need further scrutiny to allay concerns over election fraud using electronic voting machines.
68 out of the state's 351 jurisdictions used hand counted ballots and showed a much larger preference
of 17% for Bernie Sanders than the rest of the jurisdictions tabulated by electronic voting machine
vendors ES&S, Diebold and Dominion. Hillary Clinton was declared the winner of Massachusetts by
1.42 %.
In the Dominican Republic's last elections (May 2016) voters forced the Electoral Office to
get rid of the electronic count in favor of paper ballots, which were counted both, by scanner
and by hand, one by one, in front of delegates from each party. This action avoided a credibility
crisis and everything went smooth.
Yet another attempt to explain Trump success... and Democratic Party disintegration because Dems
lost working class voters and substantial part of middle class voters.
Notable quotes:
"... I have a great deal of empathy for the Donald Trump voters. ..."
"... The elites have failed the people so thoroughly that tens of millions of people, on any side of any issue, can legitimately say they don't think the system is working for them anymore, if it ever did. ..."
"... There are elements of racism, xenophobia and misogyny in the Trump movement, and there's also all kinds of legitimate of anxieties. ..."
"... The rise of Trump is a judgment on the progressive movement that has adopted a style that doesn't leave much room for a 55-year-old heterosexual white Republican living in a red state to feel that he has any place of honor or dignity in the world progressives are trying to create. We see the disrespect coming from them, but there's a subtle disrespect coming from us, the NPR crowd, that is intolerant of intolerance. Nobody wants to feel as though they don't count. ..."
I also believe that people are fundamentally good, but this election cycle has tried that
hypothesis for me.
I have a great deal of empathy for the Donald Trump voters. When you listen to them talk
about feeling hurt, scared and left behind, they sound like the Black Lives Matter activists.
How so? The elites have failed the people so thoroughly that tens
of millions of people, on any side of any issue, can legitimately say they don't think the system
is working for them anymore, if it ever did. ...
... ... ...
A lot of people are mocking the idea that you can explain the bigotry at a Trump rally
by writing it off as simply a response to economic anxiety.
There are elements of racism, xenophobia and misogyny in the Trump movement, and there's also
all kinds of legitimate of anxieties.
The rise of Trump is a judgment on the progressive movement that has adopted a style that
doesn't leave much room for a 55-year-old heterosexual white Republican living in a red state to
feel that he has any place of honor or dignity in the world progressives are trying to create. We
see the disrespect coming from them, but there's a subtle disrespect coming from us, the NPR crowd,
that is intolerant of intolerance. Nobody wants to feel as though they don't count.
This guy is die hard neoliberal. That's why he is fond of Washington consensus. He does not understand
that the time is over for Washington consensus in 2008. this is just a delayed reaction :-)
Notable quotes:
"... after years of unusually sluggish and strikingly non-inclusive growth, the consensus is breaking down. Advanced-country citizens are frustrated with an "establishment" – including economic "experts," mainstream political leaders, and dominant multinational companies – which they increasingly blame for their economic travails. ..."
"... Anti-establishment movements and figures have been quick to seize on this frustration, using inflammatory and even combative rhetoric to win support. They do not even have to win elections to disrupt the transmission mechanism between economics and politics. ..."
"... They also included attacks on "international elites" and criticism of Bank of England policies that were instrumental in stabilizing the British economy in the referendum's immediate aftermath – thus giving May's new government time to formulate a coherent Brexit strategy. ..."
"... The risk is that, as bad politics crowds out good economics, popular anger and frustration will rise, making politics even more toxic. ..."
"... At one time, the people's government served as a check on the excesses of economic interests -- now, it is simply owned by them. ..."
"... The defects of the maximalist-globalist view were known for years before the "consensus began to break down". ..."
"... In at least some of these cases, the "transmission" of the consensus involved more than a little coercion and undermining local interests, sovereignty, and democracy. This is an central feature of the "consensus", and it is hard to see how it can by anything but irredeemable. ..."
"... However it is not bad politics crowding out out good economics, for the simple reason that the economic "consensus" itself, in embracing destructive and destabilizing economic policy crowded out the ostensibly centrist politics... ..."
"... The Inclusive Growth has remained only a Slogan and Politicians never ventured into the theme. In the changed version of the World.] essential equal opportunity and World of Social media, perspective and social Political scene is changed. Its more like reverting to mean. ..."
In the 1990s and 2000s, for example, the so-called Washington Consensus dominated policymaking
in much of the world...
... ... ...
But after years of unusually sluggish and strikingly non-inclusive growth, the consensus is
breaking down. Advanced-country citizens are frustrated with an "establishment" – including economic
"experts," mainstream political leaders, and dominant multinational companies – which they increasingly
blame for their economic travails.
Anti-establishment movements and figures have been quick to seize on this frustration, using
inflammatory and even combative rhetoric to win support. They do not even have to win elections to
disrupt the transmission mechanism between economics and politics. The United Kingdom proved
that in June, with its Brexit vote – a decision that directly defied the broad economic consensus
that remaining within the European Union was in Britain's best interest.
... ... ...
... speeches by Prime Minister Theresa May and members of her cabinet revealed an intention to
pursue a "hard Brexit," thereby dismantling trading arrangements that have served the economy well.
They also included attacks on "international elites" and criticism of Bank of England policies
that were instrumental in stabilizing the British economy in the referendum's immediate aftermath
– thus giving May's new government time to formulate a coherent Brexit strategy.
Several other advanced economies are experiencing analogous political developments. In Germany,
a surprisingly strong showing by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland in recent state
elections already appears to be affecting the government's behavior.
In the US, even if Donald Trump's presidential campaign fails to put a Republican back in the
White House (as appears increasingly likely, given that, in the latest twist of this highly unusual
campaign, many Republican leaders have now renounced their party's nominee), his candidacy will likely
leave a lasting impact on American politics. If not managed well, Italy's constitutional referendum
in December – a risky bid by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to consolidate support – could backfire,
just like Cameron's referendum did, causing political disruption and undermining effective action
to address the country's economic challenges.
... ... ...
The risk is that, as bad politics crowds out good economics, popular anger and frustration
will rise, making politics even more toxic. ...
Mr El-Erian, I know you are a good man, but it seems as though everyone believes we can synthetically
engineer a way out of this never ending hole that financial engineering dug us into in the first
place.
Instead why don't we let this game collapse, you are a good man and you will play a role in
the rebuilding of better system, one that nurtures and guides instead of manipulate and lie.
The moral suasion you mention can only appear by allowing for the self annihilation of this
financial system. This way we can learn from the autopsies and leave speculative theories to third
rate economists
It is sadly true that "the relationship between politics and economics is changing," at least
in the U.S.. At one time, the people's government served as a check on the excesses of economic
interests -- now, it is simply owned by them.
It seems to me that the best we can hope for now is some sort of modest correction in the relationship
after 2020 -- and that the TBTF banks won't deliver another economic disaster in the meantime.
Petey Bee OCT 15, 2016
1. The defects of the maximalist-globalist view were known for years before the "consensus
began to break down".
2. In at least some of these cases, the "transmission" of the consensus involved more than
a little coercion and undermining local interests, sovereignty, and democracy. This is an central
feature of the "consensus", and it is hard to see how it can by anything but irredeemable.
In the concluding paragraph, the author states that the reaction is going to be slow. That's absolutely
correct, the evidence has been pushed higher and higher above the icy water line since 2008.
However it is not bad politics crowding out out good economics, for the simple reason that
the economic "consensus" itself, in embracing destructive and destabilizing economic policy crowded
out the ostensibly centrist politics...
Paul Daley OCT 15, 2016
The Washington consensus collapsed during the Great Recession but the latest "consensus" among
economists regarding "good economics" deserves respect.
atul baride OCT 15, 2016
The Inclusive Growth has remained only a Slogan and Politicians never ventured into the theme.
In the changed version of the World.] essential equal opportunity and World of Social media, perspective
and social Political scene is changed. Its more like reverting to mean.
"... If you insist on focusing on individuals, you may miss the connection, because the worst off
within communities - actual chronic discouraged workers, addicts - are likely to express no opinion
to the degree they can be polled at all. Trump primary voters are white Republicans who vote, automatically
a more affluent baseline* than the white voters generally. ..."
EMichael quotes Steve Randy Waldman and Dylan Matthews in today's links:
""Trump voters, FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver found, had a median household income of $72,000,
a fair bit higher than the $62,000 median household income for non-Hispanic whites in America."
...
""But it is also obvious that, within the Republican Party, Trump's support comes disproportionately
from troubled communities, from places that have been left behind economically, that struggle
with unusual rates of opiate addiction, low educational achievement, and other social vices."
I followed the link and failed to find any numbers on the "troubled communities" thing. It
seems strange to me that the two comments above are in conflict with each other."
It seems like you are missing the point of Waldman's blog post (and Stiglitz and Shiller)
You didn't quote this part:
"... If you insist on focusing on individuals, you may miss the connection, because the
worst off within communities - actual chronic discouraged workers, addicts - are likely to express
no opinion to the degree they can be polled at all. Trump primary voters are white Republicans
who vote, automatically a more affluent baseline* than the white voters generally.
"Among Republicans, Trump supporters have slightly lower incomes. But what really differentiates
them?"]
"At the community level**, patterns are clear. (See this*** too.) Of course, it could still
all be racism, because within white communities, measures of social and economic dysfunction are
likely correlated with measures you could associate with racism."
Of course, it could still all be racism, because within white communities, measures of social
and economic dysfunction are likely correlated with measures you could associate with racism.
Social affairs are complicated and the real world does not hand us unique well-identified models.
We always have to choose our explanations,**** and we should think carefully about how and why
we do so. Explanations have consequences, not just for the people we are imposing them upon, but
for our polity as a whole. I don't get involved in these arguments to express some high-minded
empathy for Trump voters, but because I think that monocausally attributing a broad political
movement to racism when it has other plausible antecedents does real harm....
"... Everything Wikileaks is putting out on this simply continues to CONFIRM the verifiable existence of this vast network of Clinton MSM Media Mafia that Hill-Billery have constructed over the years. The MSM is absolutely IN THE TANK for the war-whore. ..."
"... AMAZING how the "Objective", "Fact-Checking" MSM is shown to be totally tainted, but the very stranglehold that the MSM mafia have on the information flow prevents these clear facts form being widely disseminated to the (sometimes willfully) stupid masses. ..."
"... George H.W. Bush - Potus - CIA, Bill Clinton - Potus - CIA, George W. Bush - Potus - CIA, Barack Obama - Potus - CIA, Hillary Clinton - CIA Is Trump toast or what? ..."
"... As an aside, the sheeples are easily persuaded by simple catchy headlines and seldom read deeper into the articles to separate fact from fiction. Look at how many facts have been released proving the massive widespread fraud by Hillary and the Clinton Foundation, yet there is not one indictment...yet. ..."
"... As corporate control of media outlets has tightened, the Democrats have become the party of hot-money Corporate America. As our economy disintegrates, most corporate interests are moving to finance as their main activity. The Clinton Democrats realized this faster than the Republicans did, and pivoted to represent Finance above all other sectors of the economy. So the Clintons have safely positioned themselves in alignment with the interests that control the media, and any opponents have to take on the media to get to the Clintons. ..."
Everything Wikileaks is putting out on this simply continues to CONFIRM
the verifiable existence of this vast network of Clinton MSM Media Mafia that Hill-Billery have constructed
over the years. The MSM is absolutely IN THE TANK for the war-whore.
AMAZING how the "Objective", "Fact-Checking" MSM is shown to be totally tainted, but the very
stranglehold that the MSM mafia have on the information flow prevents these clear facts form being
widely disseminated to the (sometimes willfully) stupid masses.
George H.W. Bush - Potus - CIA,
Bill Clinton - Potus - CIA,
George W. Bush - Potus - CIA,
Barack Obama - Potus - CIA,
Hillary Clinton - CIA Is Trump toast or what?
As an aside, the sheeples are easily persuaded by simple catchy headlines
and seldom read deeper into the articles to separate fact from fiction. Look at how many facts have
been released proving the massive widespread fraud by Hillary and the Clinton Foundation, yet there
is not one indictment...yet. Add to that the corrupt FBI cheif 0Comey) and DOJ AG (Lowrenta) and
Americans are royally screwed unless they read deeper and thoughtfully AND vote!
I will admit I used to be that simply way (pretty stupid) and seldom read analytically ... when
I was 6 years old. But a person needs to educate themselves for their own survival and read and listen
critically.
Simple. Two reasons, actually. As corporate control of media outlets has tightened, the
Democrats have become the party of hot-money Corporate America. As our economy disintegrates,
most corporate interests are moving to finance as their main activity. The Clinton Democrats
realized this faster than the Republicans did, and pivoted to represent Finance above all
other sectors of the economy. So the Clintons have safely positioned themselves in alignment
with the interests that control the media, and any opponents have to take on the media to get
to the Clintons.
Also, the Clintons have had to face the weakest and least media-attractive opponents available.
Trump is a little different, as he's a complete media creation and probably the most media-savvy
public figure out there, but what the media create, they can tear down also. When the media have
to choose between their paymasters and their creations, their paymasters win every time.
Global Hunter
y3maxx
Oct 16, 2016 1:06 PM
"In layman's terms...how have the clintons been so successful controlling
MSM?"
Clinton's are the public and political front and in return they have been given license to loot
whatever they can. The people the Clinton's represent control the MSM and pretty much all the people
who work in the MSM will do or say anything for not only money but esteem of their peers (or to feel
superior or better than their peers).
There are six big corporations that own 90% of the MSM, including Time Warner,
Comcast and Disney. Thus, they tightly control the CONTENT asnd FLOW of the news. They work together
controlling the NARRATIVE for the candidate they wish to promote.
sushi y3maxx
Oct 16, 2016 2:53 PM
Look at her advertising budget. It is in the hundreds of millions. Look
at Trumps advertising budget. It is the cost of his Twitter account.
The corporate media are bleeding. Advertisers are leaving for new media. The Clinton ad money
is manna from heaven. Would you risk being cut off the gravy train by running a negative story? No
way. This is why NBC holds a negative tape on Clinton but happily releases a negative tape on Trump.
This campaign shows the 1% all talking to themselves and assuring each other they are victorius.
Outside the 1% who counts? Nobody. They are all deplorable. I think the results on November 8th could
be shocker.
The Fourth Amendment gives protection against unlawful searches and seizures, and, as shown in
the previous cases, its protection applies to governmental action. Its origin and history clearly
show that it was intended as a restraint upon the activities of sovereign authority, and was not
intended to be a limitation upon other than governmental agencies; as against such authority, it
was the purpose of the Fourth Amendment to secure the citizen in the right of unmolested occupation
of his dwelling and the possession of his property, subject to the right of seizure by process duly
issued.
In the present case, the record clearly shows that no official of the federal government had anything
to do with the wrongful seizure of the petitioner's property or any knowledge thereof until several
months after the property had been taken from him and was in the possession of the Cities Service
Company. It is manifest that there was no invasion of the security afforded by the Fourth Amendment
against unreasonable search and seizure, as whatever wrong was done was the act of individuals in
taking the property of another. A portion of the property so taken and held was turned over to the
prosecuting officers of the federal government. We assume that petitioner has an unquestionable right
of redress against those who illegally and wrongfully took his private property under the circumstances
herein disclosed, but with such remedies we are not now concerned.
The Fifth Amendment, as its terms import, is intended to secure the citizen from compulsory testimony
against himself. It protects from extorted confessions, or examinations in court proceedings by compulsory
methods.
government retain incriminating papers coming to it in the manner described with a view to their
use in a subsequent investigation by a grand jury where such papers will be part of the evidence
against the accused, and may be used against him upon trial should an indictment be returned?
We know of no constitutional principle which requires the government to surrender the papers under
such circumstances. Had it learned that such incriminatory papers, tending to show a violation of
federal law, were in the hands of a person other than the accused, it having had no part in wrongfully
obtaining them, we know of no reason why a subpoena might not issue for the production of the papers
as evidence. Such production would require no unreasonable search or seizure, nor would it amount
to compelling the accused to testify against himself.
The papers having come into the possession of the government without a violation of petitioner's
rights by governmental authority, we see no reason why the fact that individuals, unconnected with
the government, may have wrongfully taken them should prevent them from being held for use in prosecuting
an offense where the documents are of an incriminatory character.
It follows that the district court erred in making the order appealed from, and the same is
Reversed.
MR. JUSTICE BRANDEIS dissenting with whom MR. JUSTICE HOLMES concurs.
Plaintiff's private papers were stolen. The thief, to further his own ends, delivered them to
the law officer of the United States. He, knowing them to have been stolen, retains them for use
against the plaintiff. Should the court permit him to do so?
That the court would restore the papers to plaintiff if they were still in the thief's possession
is not questioned. That it has power to control the disposition of these stolen papers, although
they have passed into the possession of the law officer, is also not questioned. But it is said that
no provision of the Constitution requires their surrender, and that the papers could have been subpoenaed.
This may be true. Still I cannot believe that action of a public official is necessarily lawful because
it does not violate constitutional prohibitions and because the same result might have been attained
by other and proper means. At the foundation of our civil liberty lies the principle which denies
to government officials an exceptional position before the law and which subjects them to the same
rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. And, in the development of our liberty, insistence
upon procedural regularity has been large factor. Respect for law will not be advanced by resort,
in its enforcement, to means which shock the common man's sense of decency and fair play.
"... Most establishment news reporting has taken note that no evidence has been offered by the U.S. officials making the attribution. Clearly, someone thinks it matters, because the attribution is being made. I doubt that getting hold of Podesta's email password required the mysterious skillz of Russian super hackers, but sure ymmv. Why does the NSA spend billions and billions again? I mock because it is impossible to make sense of any of it. ..."
"... Yes, apparently, you think that the U.S. should be in there blowing up hospitals and civilians instead. The Russians just cannot handle the job, while the U.S. has its Afganistan and Iraq training and experience in bringing an end to those horrific civil wars in a few short Friedman units. Proven expertise! ..."
"... The history of humanitarian intervention is long and glorious. Only just last week, America's great and good ally, the Saudi monarchy, was blowing up a funeral in Yemen with American munitions, killing over 100. But, I indulge in irrelevancies, the better to mock you. ..."
LFC: We do have Bruce Wilder mocking the notion that the Russians hacked into the DNC email.
Cyber specialists think it was the Russians to a 90 percent certainty, but of course Wilder knows
better. Anyway, who cares whether the Russians hacked the ******* email?
Most establishment news reporting has taken note that no evidence has been offered by the
U.S. officials making the attribution. Clearly, someone thinks it matters, because the attribution
is being made. I doubt that getting hold of Podesta's email password required the mysterious skillz
of Russian super hackers, but sure ymmv. Why does the NSA spend billions and billions again? I
mock because it is impossible to make sense of any of it.
LFC: I'm more concerned w the fact that Russian planes are deliberately blowing up hospitals
and civilians.
Yes, apparently, you think that the U.S. should be in there blowing up hospitals and civilians
instead. The Russians just cannot handle the job, while the U.S. has its Afganistan and Iraq training
and experience in bringing an end to those horrific civil wars in a few short Friedman units.
Proven expertise!
Oh, I'm so sorry I mocked you again, didn't I?
The history of humanitarian intervention is long and glorious. Only just last week, America's
great and good ally, the Saudi monarchy, was blowing up a funeral in Yemen with American munitions,
killing over 100. But, I indulge in irrelevancies, the better to mock you.
Follow events in Syria day by day if you like, but don't pretend you are a humanitarian cheering
for the underdog rather than a voyeur entertained by mass tragedy.
likbez 10.16.16 at 2:43 pm
@305
bruce wilder 10.16.16 at 12:43 pm
LFC: We do have Bruce Wilder mocking the notion that the Russians hacked into the DNC email.
Cyber specialists think it was the Russians to a 90 percent certainty, but of course Wilder
knows better. Anyway, who cares whether the Russians hacked the ******* email?
Most establishment news reporting has taken note that no evidence has been offered by the
U.S. officials making the attribution.
It looks like LFC is completely clueless about such notion as Occam's razor.
Why we need all those insinuations about Russian hackers when we know that all email boxes in
major Web mail providers are just a click away from NSA analysts.
Why Russians and not something like "Snowden II".
And what exactly Russians will get politically by torpedoing Hillary candidacy. They probably
have tons of "compromat" on her, Bill and Clinton Foundation. Trump stance on Iran is no less
dangerous and jingoistic then Hillary stance on Syria. Aggressive protectionism might hurt Russian
exports. And as for Syria, Trump can turn on a dime and became a second John McCain anytime. Other
then his idea of avoiding foreign military presence (or more correctly that allies should pay
for it) and anti-globalization stance he does not have a fixed set of policies at all.
Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end
of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country
according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled
by, the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé
of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight,
and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately
termed an "establishment." All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed
to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer
global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself. That said,
it is neither omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister (although
it has highly sinister aspects) as it is relentlessly well entrenched. Far from being invincible,
its failures, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, are routine enough that it is only
the Deep State's protectiveness towards its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape
the consequences of their frequent ineptitude.
In view of all this, LFC anti-Russian stance looks extremely naďve and/or represents displaced
anti-Semitism.
In a way Hillary laments about Russia interference are what is typically called "The pot calling
the kettle black" as she is exactly the specialist in this area. BTW there is a documented history
of the US interference into Russian elections of 2011-2012.
In which Hillary (via ambassador McFaul and the net of NGOs) was trying to stage a "color revolution"
(nicknamed "white revolution") in Russia and prevent the re-election of Putin. The main instrument
was claiming the fraud in ballot counting.
Can you imagine the reaction if Russian ambassador invited Trump and Sanders to the embassy
and offered full and unconditional support for their noble cause of dislodging the corrupt neoliberal
regime that exists in Washington. With cash injections to breitbart.com, similar sites, and especially
organizations that conduct polls after that.
And RT covered staged revelations of "Hillary campaign corruption" 24 x 7. As was done by Western
MSM in regard to Alexei Navalny web site and him personally as the savior of Russia from entrenched
corruption ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Navalny
)
Actually the USA has several organizations explicitly oriented on interference in foreign elections
and promotion of "color revolutions", with functions that partially displaced old functions of
CIA (as in Italian elections of 1948). For example, NED.
Why Russia can't have something similar to help struggling American people to have more honest
elections despite all the blatantly undemocratic mechanisms of "first to the post", primaries,
state based counting of votes, and the United States Electoral College ?
It would be really funny if Russians really resorted to color revolution tricks in the current
presidential elections :-)
Here is a quote that can navigate them in right direction (note the irony of her words after
DNC throw Sanders under the bus ;-)
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sharply criticized what she called "troubling
practices" before and during the vote in Russia. "The Russian people, like people everywhere,
deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted," she said in Bonn, Germany.
With 99.9 percent of ballots processed, election officials said that United Russia had won
238 seats in Parliament, or about 53 percent, from 315 seats or 70 percent now. The Communist
Party won 92 seats; Just Russia, a social democratic party, won 64 seats and the national Liberal
Democratic Party won 56 seats.
RP: I mean, people pretty much have to take its effects seriously.
Do they? LFC can probably lecture us on our "complete lack of understanding that the world
contains moral ambiguities and that not everything is black-and-white and open-and-shut" while
hypernormalizing anything with imperative non sequiters.
@ 307, he apparently thinks my use of the Saudi attack in Yemen in my mockery of him is due
to a failure of reading comprehension on my part. He thinks he had criticized U.S. support for
the Saudi's war against Yemen, while arguing that American "standing to object . . . when blatant,
obvious war crimes are being committed" is unaffected when America itself or American allies commit
blatant obvious war crimes. He took the futility express, Rich, and arrived ahead of you, don't
you see? Things are complicated and we must not let our committing blatant obvious war crimes
prevent us from acting to intervene where we can stop blatant obvious war crimes with blatant
obvious war crimes of our own!
Hopefully, this little addendum to my previous mockery is not even worth a response. What are
the chances?
"... I don't buy the left neoliberal hysteria over Trump as the scariest reactionary dude evah. I think that's just to prevent the dissatisfaction that Trump has tapped into blending with the dissatisfaction Sanders tapped into. ..."
"... And, I tend to think that strategy has been successful in keeping the left v right neoliberal monopoly of power intact. The Republicans may take a hit, but it will only result in a slight shuffling among the seats of power. The left neoliberals will keep the right neoliberal seats warm for them. ymmv ..."
"... This really is another post 9/11 moment for the chattering classes. All their claims of expertise, clear eyed analysis, logic above emotion, has come crashing down around their hysterical, emotion driven response to the current political situation. There is, at this stage, basically zero willingness among these groups to do their Job of explaining the world, all they want to achieve is a combination of political signalling and intense personal satisfaction. ..."
"... The best analyses I've read were a couple of essays from 2015 comparing Trump to Berlusconi. Those interested will need to insert 2015 into the search string to skip past the more breathless 2016 versions. The 2015 essays are largely free of tbe breathless need to stop Trump cold that mar 2016 comparisons. ..."
"... middle-class unhappy with the rapine corruption and self-serving nature of the elites. ..."
"... The problem is that Trump is an entertainer/marketer and his product is him. Van Jones remains the single best pundit on Trump because Jones understands that the elections are about stagecraft, more than politics. ..."
"... the college-educated white new middle class (professionals and managers), is approximately 30 percent of the population, but are overrepresented, at 40 percent, among Trump supporters. Not surprisingly, the median household income of Trump voters is around $70,000 annually. ..."
"... More importantly, the category "non-college educated whites" includes both wage workers and the self-employed - the traditional middle class. The Economist found that "better-paid and better-educated voters have always formed as big a part of Mr. Trump's base as those at the lower end of the scale for income and education." ..."
"... 'I don't know, so I assume' is kind of the defining characteristic of reactions to the Trump Candidacy. Maybe he will, continue with neoliberalism. Or maybe he will go full communism now, or perhaps at least anti-imperialism, as one prolific poster here repeatedly claims. It all depends on which 10% of his statements you believe are not lies, and what you project into the gap left by the rest. ..."
"... But it could equally plausibly lead to a stable regime that would have European political scientists in lively debate as to whether or not it is most accurately called fascist. ..."
"... Clearly, Trump's right-wing opposition to neoliberal trade and tax policies resonates with a minority of older, white workers, including a minority of union members." ..."
"... these sectors have experiencing declining living standards and are fearful about their children's prospects of remaining in the middle class." ..."
"... The developments of late capitalism have to do with the transition of these decisions from the elite capitalist class as such to a group of managers. These managers can not and do not go against the traditional interests of capital as such. But their decisions characteristically favor their class in ways that a traditional class analysis can not fathom, and their ideology appeals to a group variously called "professionals", "technocrats", "the 10%" etc. who more broadly control the levers of power in society. ..."
"... The managerial class operates a world system - the system of trade agreements, monetary agreements, etc. This system keeps the world economy going as it is going through the cooperation of American economists, Eurocrat bureaucratic appointees, Chinese Communist Party higher-ups, important people in the financial industry (whether bankers or at central banks), CEOs of multinationals, and even the leaders of important NGOs. These interactions are observable and not a matter of conspiracy theory. ..."
soru: "Precisely because it is not left neoliberalism versus right neoliberalism, but left
neoliberalism versus something that is:
a: worse b: a predictable consequence of neoliberalism.
I think there is something to the thesis that Trump ripped the scab off the place where Luttwak's
"perfect non-sequitur" had rubbed the skin off the connection between the tax-cut loving Republican
establishment leadership and the Republican electoral base of male reactionary ignoramuses.
But, I don't know what actual policy follows from Trump_vs_deep_state, if not Mike Pence brand right neoliberalism.
A little light flavoring of theocracy on the tax cuts in other words.
I don't buy the left neoliberal hysteria over Trump as the scariest reactionary dude evah.
I think that's just to prevent the dissatisfaction that Trump has tapped into blending with the
dissatisfaction Sanders tapped into.
And, I tend to think that strategy has been successful in keeping the left v right neoliberal
monopoly of power intact. The Republicans may take a hit, but it will only result in a slight
shuffling among the seats of power. The left neoliberals will keep the right neoliberal seats
warm for them. ymmv
" The national polls (though not so much the state polls) were off in 2012. During the closing
month of the campaign, they showed, on average, a 0.3 point Romney lead. The RAND poll [LA Times],
by contrast, showed a 3.8 point Obama lead – which was almost exactly correct."
Sean Trende throws a big bucket of salt on the LA Times poll, before getting to the accuracy
of the poll in 2012.
This really is another post 9/11 moment for the chattering classes. All their claims of expertise,
clear eyed analysis, logic above emotion, has come crashing down around their hysterical, emotion
driven response to the current political situation. There is, at this stage, basically zero willingness
among these groups to do their Job of explaining the world, all they want to achieve is a combination
of political signalling and intense personal satisfaction.
@208 I generally agree. Thanks for the link to the Nation piece. I earlier skimmed this Guardian
piece by JJ which features an extended essay from the reviewed text. John has been beating this
drum for more than a year trying to wear his two hats: partisan Dem and serious social critic.
The first serious undermines the second.
The best analyses I've read were a couple of essays from 2015 comparing Trump to Berlusconi.
Those interested will need to insert 2015 into the search string to skip past the more breathless
2016 versions. The 2015 essays are largely free of tbe breathless need to stop Trump cold that
mar 2016 comparisons.
The Judis essay marries Trump too closely to George Wallace, another populist, but critically
also a professional politician, a Democrat, and a New Dealer.
Judis has a good quote, or two, from Wallace that definitely fit the Tea Party/Silent Majority
profile – rule followers, middle-class unhappy with the rapine corruption and self-serving
nature of the elites.
The problem is that Trump is an entertainer/marketer and his product is him. Van Jones
remains the single best pundit on Trump because Jones understands that the elections are about
stagecraft, more than politics. Both the Nation and the Guardian piece function as much as
thinly disguised GOTV arguments as academic assessments of the Trump phenomena.
What both get right, along with many others, is that removing Trump from the equation removes
nothing from the masses of ordinary folks who a/will not apologize for who they are and in fact
celebrate themselves and their values b/aren't interested in the approval, or the explications
of elites c/are completely determined to burn down this mess irrespective of whether Trump is
elected, or not.
Thanks for the link kidneystones, I'll check.it out. I'm working through Judis' book at the moment
and find larger parts, of it convincing.
Who. Is van Jones? Is it this lad?
…while approximately 55 percent of Trump supporters do not have a bachelor's degree, this
demographic makes up approximately 70 percent of the US population - they are underrepresented
among Trump voters. However, the college-educated white new middle class (professionals
and managers), is approximately 30 percent of the population, but are overrepresented, at 40
percent, among Trump supporters. Not surprisingly, the median household income of Trump voters
is around $70,000 annually.
More importantly, the category "non-college educated whites" includes both wage workers
and the self-employed - the traditional middle class. The Economist found that "better-paid
and better-educated voters have always formed as big a part of Mr. Trump's base as those at
the lower end of the scale for income and education."
A systematic review of Gallup polling data demonstrates, again, that most Trump supporters
are part of the traditional middle class (self-employed) and those sectors of the new middle
class (supervisors) who do not require college degrees. They tend to live in "white enclaves"…
Kidney stones I'll check out the link above when by a laptop.
Personally I don't know how j feel about the managerial class argument (I still have to read
both Hayes and Frank ) but it's becoming quite clear that large parts of the left and right "establishment"
(which is just a shorthand way of saying those with high profile journalistic, political and cultural
positions) are going out of their way to not acknowledge what is right in from of their eyes,
that there are political and economic (as well as racial and cultural) reasons behind the rise
of right wing populism.
> But, I don't know what actual policy follows from Trump_vs_deep_state, if not Mike Pence brand right neoliberalism.
'I don't know, so I assume' is kind of the defining characteristic of reactions to the
Trump Candidacy. Maybe he will, continue with neoliberalism. Or maybe he will go full communism
now, or perhaps at least anti-imperialism, as one prolific poster here repeatedly claims. It all
depends on which 10% of his statements you believe are not lies, and what you project into the
gap left by the rest.
If he was elected, things would be different from what they are, or at least are understood
to be. And things being different, they would continue to be so, taking a different path from
the continuation of a status quo. My personal evidence-free assumption is that this would likely
take the nature of a decade-long crisis that would end with a return to a weakened version of
the pre-Trump regime. A pale echo of the rosy days of Obama, Bush and Clinton.
But it could equally plausibly lead to a stable regime that would have European political
scientists in lively debate as to whether or not it is most accurately called fascist.
For those not wager to read the link, here are the bits engels cut. From the beginning.
"Who are Trump's voters? Despite claims that he has won the "white working class," the vast
majority of Trump's supporters, like those of the Tea Party, are drawn from the traditional
and new middle classes, especially the older, white male and less well-off strata of these
classes. Clearly, Trump's right-wing opposition to neoliberal trade and tax policies resonates
with a minority of older, white workers, including a minority of union members."
And after enclave
"isolated from immigrants and other people of color, have worse health than the average
US resident, and are experiencing low rates of intergenerational mobility. While not directly
affected either by the decline of industry in the Midwest or by immigration, these sectors
have experiencing declining living standards and are fearful about their children's prospects
of remaining in the middle class."
Roman, I already said I broadly agreed with you (is it the case you literally zzzzzzzzzzz)- I'm
delighted that via Luttwak you're groping towards a class analysis of fascism that has been standard
on the left since at least Trotsky…
Ronan(rf): "Personally I don't know how j feel about the managerial class argument"
There are certain decision makers who make all of the important decisions, or who at least
get a tremendously inordinate amount of power over those decisions. If they aren't making a decision
in a positive sense, their power often controls decisions in a negative sense by restricting the
available choices to those that are all acceptable to them.
The developments of late capitalism have to do with the transition of these decisions from
the elite capitalist class as such to a group of managers. These managers can not and do not go
against the traditional interests of capital as such. But their decisions characteristically favor
their class in ways that a traditional class analysis can not fathom, and their ideology appeals
to a group variously called "professionals", "technocrats", "the 10%" etc. who more broadly control
the levers of power in society.
The managerial class operates a world system - the system of trade agreements, monetary
agreements, etc. This system keeps the world economy going as it is going through the cooperation
of American economists, Eurocrat bureaucratic appointees, Chinese Communist Party higher-ups,
important people in the financial industry (whether bankers or at central banks), CEOs of multinationals,
and even the leaders of important NGOs. These interactions are observable and not a matter of
conspiracy theory.
this part seems to support those of us who have been saying that those adopting a blinkered
class/income based argument to 'disprove' the economic insecurity arguments are not even trying
to get at the truth(imo, theyre purposely working backwards from their conclusions towards a
conventional answer)
"Hayes argues that the angriest voters are not going to be the people at the bottom, but the
people in the middle, who used to expect that they and their kids could do well through
enterprise and don't believe that anymore. Experts have disagreed over whether Trump supporters
are richer or poorer than the average. Yet emerging evidence is beginning to portray a more
nuanced portrait of Trump's supporters than those earlier takes.
Jonathan Rothwell, a senior economist at Gallup, has used survey data on nearly 113,000
Americans to ask what really drives Trump support. He finds that support for the mogul turned
politician is concentrated in the middle-income categories; in contrast, those who are relatively
rich and those who are relatively poor are less likely to support him. Furthermore, economic
insecurity is a huge factor – those who worry about their economic future are much more likely to
vote for Trump. Rothwell builds on work by Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren at Harvard to find
that people in living in areas with weak mobility for kids from middle-class families are more
likely to vote for Trump.
These findings are only the start of what is likely to be a long debate. Nonetheless, they
support Hayes's argument. People seem to be more likely to support an anti-system candidate like
Donald Trump when they have a middling income, when they feel economically insecure, and when
they live in places where middle-class kids have worse prospects for getting ahead."
Ronan(rf)
10.14.16 at 4:04 pm
towards a *convenient* answer (ie an answer they want to be true, as it supports their worldview
).
"... the danger that he presents is shaking the rats from under the carpet. ..."
"... Yet the NYT keeps reporting that American intelligence asserts (without providing evidence) that Russian intelligence is behind the Clinton email hacks, and this is nothing less that attempts of American intelligence to manipulate the election. ..."
"... I'm afraid, when it comes to end-of-the-Republic stuff, it's worse when your own intelligence guys are trying to manipulate the election than when their intelligence guys are. ..."
I'll begin with the necessary avowal that I think Trump is a clown, and dangerous, and I hope
he goes down to a record defeat.
But still… the danger that he presents is shaking the rats from under the carpet.
How many times have I read that Russian intelligence is trying to manipulate the American election?
And that this is a Very Bad Thing?
Yet the NYT keeps reporting that American intelligence asserts (without providing evidence)
that Russian intelligence is behind the Clinton email hacks, and this is nothing less that attempts
of American intelligence to manipulate the election.
And I'm afraid, when it comes to end-of-the-Republic stuff, it's worse when your own intelligence
guys are trying to manipulate the election than when their intelligence guys are.
richsob
Oct 14, 2016 10:12 AM
Trump's biggest opponent is his own damn ego. He needs to simply say "I'm not
responding to these allegations and aspersions on my character any longer. I am
only going to make this important point one time. Whoever keeps making these
allegations and aspersions should stop immediately. If they don't, then they
better lawyer up". And then he should shut the hell up and only talk about jobs,
immigation and trade policy. Fuck his sensitive ego; it's going to cost him the
election and us the nation if he doesn't wise up. He can still win this thing.
And after the election he can either sue the living shit out of some people or
find another way to get even with those who he wants to go after.
Not My Real Name
richsob
Oct 14, 2016 11:38 AM
Yes, Trump has a very big ego. But saying that his ego is a bigger detriment to
his success than our corrupt media is ludicrous.
An unbiased media is
essential to maintaining a free republic and minimizing corruption at all
levels of government. The media is now just as corrupt as our government is.
In a way, the obvious
response to the media is 'if that's all they have on him, he's cleaner than every
other politician'.
The blanket coverage of her/she/it/that will also make many people become sick
of the sight of her/she/it/that, particularly as Trump has now let the cat out of
the bag regarding the rapes - all the undecided voters who watched that bit of the
debate will be thinking seriously about who is the greater evil here, even if they
remain ignorant of her/she/it/that's central role in smashing up Libya and Syria,
and trying to goad Russia into WWIII, her dream legacy to us peasants.
Dark
star
Oct 14, 2016 9:31 AM
America's media have betrayed the Nation.
The rest of the world in general, and
world leaders in particular know that Clinton is a crook and a liar; nothing she
says can be believed, her word is worthless, and she cannot be trusted in any
respect whatever.
A President Clinton would earn the same respect abroad as would Caligula's
horse had it been sent abroad to represent the Roman Empire. The crowds would
queue up to point their fingers, throw tomatoes and laugh at her.
0hedgehog
Oct 14, 2016 9:36 AM
I was in the business, (TV) and witnessed right around 20 years or so ago, the
entire concept of news was shifted over to entertainment, almost overnight.
Investigating and reportng solid news and information, which the electorate needs
in order to make sound decisions, went right out the window. I am not entertained.
moneybots
Oct 14, 2016 9:38 AM
"As Strassel points out, it's almost impossible to turn on the TV without hearing
about Trump's "lewd" comments while coverage of Hillary
"uniformly ignores
the flurry of bombshells"
inherent in the various WikiLeaks, FOIA
releases and FBI interviews.
It is impossible not to see media bias. The media is a traitor to the
American people.
Yes We Can. But...
rejected
Oct 14, 2016 12:33 PM
One could make a pretty solid case that the biggest problem - Problem #1 - this
country faces at this moment is the mountain of propaganda fed the masses. In
the darkness of the widespread shadow cast by Problem #1, other problems
difficult to discern and come to understand much less attempt to solve.
Barack Obama pushes Problem #1, and his notion of 'curating' the news
represents a furtherance of Problem #1. Getting the gubmint involved in 'curating'
the news would turn
unofficial
organs of the state - the MSNBCs of the
world - into
official
organs of the state.
Barack Obama's wet dream, and John Harwood's too.
We Are The Priests
Downtoolong
Oct 14, 2016 10:20 AM
It's the bedrock of their political strategy. They have no real policies to
tout, certainly none that any rational, independent thinking human being would
endorse, so they produce massive and relentless waves of derision aimed at
their opponents to keep the focus off themselves.
However, as we've seen this
election cycle, the Internet has changed everything and the tactics of the
Clinton political machine, wholly dependent on a subservient mockingbird print
and television media to shape and direct national narratives, just don't work
when you have a global, de-centralized iformation medium freely accessible to
all.
That said, say good-bye to the Internet as we now know it.
NobodyNowhere
Oct 14, 2016 10:00 AM
The media has betrayed America in the most blatant manner conceivable. This has
enormous implications for America, and millions of upright Americans have a task
cut out for themselves. America is the foremost yardstick of freedom, free
thought, progress and innovation that man has ever seen, a model of civilization
and advancement for centuries to come. The task is much bigger than just "take
our country back" - the task is to hunt and punish the entities that have struck
at the very foundation of the republic so that no one tries the same as long as
memory lasts.
gmak
Oct 14, 2016 10:02 AM
Who owns the WSJ? That billionaire has had enough, I guess. - or he didn't get
the entree he wanted at the $6million a plate pay-for-play. (hint: Rupert
Murdoch. Maybe Fox News will fall in line).
vegas
Oct 14, 2016 10:13 AM
Oh, this is rich; the WSJ pretending like they aren't part of the MSM, and have
"all of a sudden" discovered much to there shock ... SHOCK I TELL YOU ... that
news coverage is biased in favor of Cankles. Hmmm, this self reflection must have
been painfull.
Weren't these the same guys who teamed up with NBC to issue that absurd poll
right after the last debate, the one purporting to show Clinton up by 14 points?
The one that only used a two day average and about 300 RVs? The one that was
splashed all over the internet, at the top of every mainstream media webpage? The
one that has now disappeared nearly as fast as it was posted, after having
accomplished it's purpose ("Trump can't win, it's all over, stick a fork in it)?
The man didn't have the
qualifications to run your average convenience store.
Kina
Oct 14, 2016 10:19 AM
OH and Russia is now advising its people to prepare for nuclear war.
Well done Obama, neocons, Carlos Slim, NY Times, Washington Post, The Guardian
- maybe you just fried all your children, for what? A pat on the head from some
Oligarch.
847328_3527
Oct 14, 2016 10:19 AM
I copied this from a previous poster since it is truly shocking:
The media are
misleading the public on Syria
Coverage of the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful
episodes in the history of the American press. Reporting about carnage in the
ancient city of Aleppo is the latest reason why.
For three years, violent militants have run Aleppo. Their rule began with a
wave of repression. They posted notices warning residents: "Don't send your
children to school. If you do, we will get the backpack and you will get the
coffin." Then they destroyed factories, hoping that unemployed workers would have
no recourse other than to become fighters. They trucked looted machinery to Turkey
and sold it.
This month, people in Aleppo have finally seen glimmers of hope. The Syrian
army and its allies have been pushing militants out of the city. Last week they
reclaimed the main power plant. Regular electricity may soon be restored. The
militants' hold on the city could be ending.
This does not fit with Washington's narrative. As a result, much of the
American press is reporting the opposite of what is actually happening. Many news
reports suggest that Aleppo has been a "liberated zone" for three years but is now
being pulled back into misery.
Americans are being told that the virtuous course in Syria is to fight the
Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian partners. We are supposed to hope that a
righteous coalition of Americans, Turks, Saudis, Kurds, and the "moderate
opposition" will win.
This is convoluted nonsense, but Americans cannot be blamed for believing it.
We have almost no real information about the combatants, their goals, or their
tactics. Much blame for this lies with our media.
Inevitably, this kind of disinformation has bled into the American presidential
campaign. At the recent debate in Milwaukee, Hillary Clinton claimed that United
Nations peace efforts in Syria were based on "an agreement I negotiated in June of
2012 in Geneva." The precise opposite is true.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/02/18/the-media-are-misleading-p...
We Are The Priests
847328_3527
Oct 14, 2016 10:30 AM
The media has been misleading the public on everything for decades. This is
nothing new or shocking. What appears to be new is a sudden and dangerous
epidemic of healthy skepticism, critical independent thinking, a willingness to
question authority, and massive distrust of traditional power structures.
Not My Real Name
We Are The Priests
Oct 14, 2016 11:40 AM
Yes, but they were much more subtle about it. Now they no longer care about
appearances ... which tells me they are comfortable in knowing that the
overthrow of America from the inside is now all but complete.
replaceme
Oct 14, 2016 10:33 AM
I was listening to Breitbart this am, talked about a statute I had not heard of -
access fraud? Basically, it's illegal to sell government resources - the idea of
pay for play is patently illegal, something akin to bribery. I always knew it was
unethical, but the guy on had just done 4 years in a a federal pound you in the
ass prison for it. I'd say Hillary has something to fear if The Donald does win.
We Are The Priests
replaceme
Oct 14, 2016 10:39 AM
Pay to Play is not akin to bribery. It is bribery. It's just that Pay to Play
doesn't sound illegal and is much more innoquous--play doesn't sound like a bad
thing, right?
Son of Captain Nemo
Oct 14, 2016 11:23 AM
Question:
Why doesn't the Wall Street Journal "up the ante" by
drawing the line officially in the sand and putting across the front page of their
paper that
Any American voting for Hillary Clinton should be declared a
war criminal and guilty of treason
!....
Should have happened in the last two Administration(s) but didn't -but given
the
coronation
that is about to unfold no time like the present for the editors at
that "news organization" to attempt the retrieval of what is left of there
souls!!!
heretical
Oct 14, 2016 11:03 AM
THIS COULD BE THE SKINNY ON MDB -- HE'S A SINGULARLY INEPT EMPLOYEE OF THE CLINTON
CAMP!
From Stream.Org:
A significant portion of online support for Hillary Clinton is manufactured by
paid "astroturf" trolls: a large team of supporters who spend long hours
responding to negative news on the internet about her. The Clinton SuperPAC
Correct the Record, which is affiliated with her campaign, acknowledged in an
April press release that it was spending $1 million on project "Breaking Barriers"
to pay people to respond to negative information about Clinton on social media
sites like Facebook, Reddit, Instagram and Twitter. That amount has since
increased to over $6 million. The trolls create a false impression that Clinton
has more support than she really does, because one supporter will frequently
create multiple anonymous accounts.
Libby Watson of The Sunlight Foundation observed that the astroturf effort goes
far beyond merely defending Clinton, to targeting and intimidating those who
criticize her. She told The Daily Beast, "This seems to be going after essentially
random individuals online."
Brian Donahue, chief executive of the consulting firm Craft Media/Digital,
explained the troll operation to The Los Angeles Times, "It is meant 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." He went on,
"That is what the Clinton campaign has always been about. It runs the risk of
being exactly what their opponents accuse them of being: a campaign that appears
to be populist but is a smokescreen that is paid and brought to you by lifetime
political operatives and high-level consultants."
conraddobler
Oct 14, 2016 11:18 AM
Everyone should vote Trump because of the two he's obviously better for the
people.
However I have no doubt all of this is all part of a larger plan so
whatever happens, was suppossed to happen.
Ultimately mankind needs to wake up to the fact that the battle against evil is
never ending you only get brief periods of calm to enjoy life, the rest of it is a
ceaseless struggle against the forces of darkness.
However it's really not what you think it is.
It's your own choices that is all it ever is.
The most heroic act on earth is to take unkindness and let it end with you. To
not pass it on but to let it wash over you and send in kindness in return.
That is the most powerful act in the universe which nothing can defeat and unto
which evil has no possible hold on.
withglee
conraddobler
Oct 14, 2016 11:44 AM
Your average American glued to the TV and their smart phones will
NEVER have a clue about what's really going on using these sources of
information.
Is our battle against evil easier if we are
organized globally ... or if we are organized in small enclaves of like minded
people?
Ultimately mankind can NOT survive without adherence to a higher moral code,
it's simply impossible.
Modern secularists are missing the fundamental spirit of mankind and I'm
not talking about religion, the Native American's had it, far from perfect,
they did have it. That is what is lost and what is being made to come back
and that is the ultimate goal or point. There is no reason a majority of
mankind can't be taught that, should be taught that, because without it,
there is no hope for anyone.
Small enclaves are easily overrun by bigger enclaves. You run towards
gunfire because if you don't, it will come to you. You can't hide from this
even though that would be preferable. They'd love to divide us all up and
have us hide. Then we'd be easy to pick off.
With technology today you have to get on top of all that are you are
under it and under it, you have no hope.
MAD used to serve as a deterent but it's obsolete now, because the
unthinkable is now thinkable made possible by underground bunkers. The
folishness of this was pointed out in one of my other posts.
Elites are elite because of their position on earth, if they destroy
earth, they destroy the source of their own power.
It will go how it goes to teach what needs to be taught.
Wall Street Journal Finally Lashes Out "The Press Is Burying Hillary
Clinton's Sins"
by
Tyler Durden
Oct 14, 2016 9:06 AM
0
SHARES
Even the
Wall Street Journal
is now fed up with the biased media coverage of the 2016
Presidential election as revealed by a scathing article written by Kimberly Strassel, a
member of their editorial board. As Strassel points out, it's almost impossible to turn
on the TV without hearing about Trump's "lewd" comments while coverage of Hillary
"uniformly ignores the flurry of bombshells"
inherent in the various
WikiLeaks, FOIA releases and FBI interviews.
If average voters turned on the TV for five minutes this week, chances are they
know that Donald Trump made lewd remarks a decade ago and now stands accused of
groping women.
But even if average voters had the TV on 24/7,
they still probably haven't
heard the news about Hillary Clinton: That the nation now has proof of pretty much
everything she has been accused of.
It comes from hacked emails dumped by WikiLeaks, documents released under the
Freedom of Information Act, and accounts from FBI insiders.
The media has
almost uniformly ignored the flurry of bombshells, preferring to devote its front
pages to the Trump story.
So let's review what amounts to a devastating case
against a Clinton presidency.
Of course, the list of Hillary scandals is becoming way to long to remember though
one of the biggest has been her establishment of the now infamous private email server
and the subsequent intentional destruction of federal records despite the existence of a
Congressional subpoena.
Start with a June 2015 email to Clinton staffers from Erika Rottenberg, the former
general counsel of LinkedIn. Ms. Rottenberg wrote that none of the attorneys in her
circle of friends
"can understand how it was viewed as ok/secure/appropriate
to use a private server for secure documents AND why further Hillary took it upon
herself to review them and delete documents."
She added:
"It smacks
of acting above the law and it smacks of the type of thing I've either gotten
discovery sanctions for, fired people for, etc."
A few months later, in a September 2015 email, a Clinton confidante fretted that
Mrs. Clinton was too bullheaded to acknowledge she'd done wrong.
"Everyone
wants her to apologize,"
wrote Neera Tanden, president of the liberal Center
for American Progress.
"And she should. Apologies are like her Achilles'
heel."
Clinton staffers debated how to evade a congressional subpoena of Mrs. Clinton's
emails-three weeks before a technician deleted them. The campaign later employed a
focus group to see if it could fool Americans into thinking the email scandal was
part of the Benghazi investigation (they are separate) and lay it all off as a
Republican plot.
Meanwhile, as
Fox News
reported yesterday, according to an anonymous source within the FBI the
"vast majority" of the people that worked on Hillary's case thought she should be
prosecuted adding that
"it was unanimous that we all wanted her [Clinton's]
security clearance yanked."
The source, who spoke to FoxNews.com on the condition of anonymity, said FBI
Director James Comey's dramatic July 5 announcement that he would not recommend to
the Attorney General's office that the former secretary of state be charged left
members of the investigative team dismayed and disgusted. More than 100 FBI agents
and analysts worked around the clock with six attorneys from the DOJ's National
Security Division, Counter Espionage Section, to investigate the case.
"No trial level attorney agreed, no agent working the case agreed, with
the decision not to prosecute -- it was a top-down decision,"
said the
source, whose identity and role in the case has been verified by FoxNews.com.
A high-ranking FBI official told Fox News that while it might not have been a
unanimous decision,
"It was unanimous that we all wanted her [Clinton's]
security clearance yanked."
"It is safe to say the vast majority felt she should be prosecuted,"
the senior FBI official told Fox News. "We were floored while listening to the FBI
briefing because Comey laid it all out, and then said 'but we are doing nothing,'
which made no sense to us."
Moreover, the Wall Street Journal points out that the Obama administration was
seemingly
"working as an extension of the Clinton campaign"
with both
the State Department and DOJ providing frequent updates to Hillary staffers about a
confidential criminal investigation into her misconduct.
The Obama administration-the federal government, supported by tax dollars-
was
working as an extension of the Clinton campaign.
The
State
Department coordinated with her staff in responding to the email scandal, and the
Justice Department kept her team informed about developments in the court case.
Worse, Mrs. Clinton's State Department, as documents obtained under the Freedom of
Information Act show,
took special care of donors to the Clinton Foundation.
In a series of 2010 emails, a senior aide to Mrs. Clinton asked a foundation official
to let her know which groups offering assistance with the Haitian earthquake relief
were "FOB" (Friends of Bill) or "WJC VIPs" (William Jefferson Clinton VIPs)
.
Those who made the cut appear to have been teed up for contracts. Those who weren't?
Routed to a standard government website.
The leaks show that the foundation was indeed the nexus of influence and
money.
The head of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Ira Magaziner,
suggested in a 2011 email that Bill Clinton call Sheikh Mohammed of Saudi Arabia to
thank him for offering the use of a plane. In response, a top Clinton Foundation
official wrote:
"Unless Sheikh Mo has sent us a $6 million check, this sounds
crazy to do."
Strassel also takes direct aim at the press and admits that the "leaks also show that
the press is in Mrs. Clinton's pocket." While the WikiLeaks emails reveal substantial
coordination between Clinton and the press perhaps none are more disturbing than when
Donna Brazile, now DNC chair, sent the exact wording of a CNN town hall question
to Hillary ahead of a scheduled debate.
The leaks also show that the press is in Mrs. Clinton's pocket.
Donna Brazile, a former Clinton staffer and a TV pundit, sent the exact wording of a
coming CNN town hall question to the campaign in advance of the event.
Other
media allowed the Clinton camp to veto which quotes they used from interviews, worked
to maximize her press events and offered campaign advice.
Mrs. Clinton has been exposed to have no core,
to be someone who
constantly changes her position to maximize political gain. Leaked speeches prove
that she has two positions (public and private) on banks; two positions on the
wealthy; two positions on borders; two positions on energy. Her team had endless
discussions about what positions she should adopt to appease "the Red Army"-i.e. "the
base of the Democratic Party."
Finally, Strassle concludes by saying that "Voters might not know any of this,
because while both presidential candidates have plenty to answer for, the press
has focused solely on taking out Mr. Trump.
And the press is doing a diligent
job of it."
"Your word is your bond....and Barack Obama and I set out to
build lives guided by these values, and pass them on to the next
generations....Because we want our children, and all children in this
nation, to know that the only limit to the height of your"
FAILURES, is the level of your arrogance, evilness and
psychopathy.
HelluvaEngineer
TahoeBilly2012
Oct 14, 2016 9:30 AM
The WSJ can take the moral high ground, because all
they've done is slam Trump and fake their polls.
tmosley
HelluvaEngineer
Oct 14, 2016 9:34 AM
WSJ knows which way the wind is blowing. The rest of
the media save for those directly controlled will line
up soon after. The ones who are directly controlled
might stand with Hillary, until her other backers
abandon her.
It's over. Trump will take every state,
losing only DC. Book it.
NoDebt
tmosley
Oct 14, 2016 9:44
AM
I like your enthusiasm but it's not going to be that
easy. This is trench warfare and that never goes
quickly.
What Trump is fucking with is the entire
power structure of the Oligarchy. Hillary being
only one of it's manifestations. Quick and easy?
Unlikely. (Still worth doing? Absolutely!)
HopefulCynical
NoDebt
Oct 14, 2016
9:50 AM
It will take us decades to recover from the
Magical Marxist Mulatto.
Hanging him for
treason, after a proper trial, would be a start.
Shemp 4 Victory
HopefulCynical
Oct 14,
2016 10:13 AM
It will take us decades to recover from the US
policy of fucking the world since the end of
WW2. Obama is one of many parts in that
machine.
The machine is afraid of Trump.
This is why Western MSM tries to stretch an
owl on the globe over any minor incident in
the last 50 years which is even tangentially
related to Trump. In the meantime, Hillary has
a litany of crime and corruption which would
make Nixon blush, and it's treated like a
couple of unpaid parking tickets.
Occident Mortal
Shemp 4 Victory
Oct 14,
2016 10:53 AM
Don't you guys get it yet?
The Aramco IPO is going to be a $2 - 5
trillion transaction. If they pay 3% fees
that's could be $150 bn payday for the
banksters.
All of these pipeline wars, making
Russia a bogeyman to keep them out of EU,
making Elon Musk look credible, Saudi
2030...
It's all geared to the mother of all
IPO's.
tbone654
The Saint
Oct 14, 2016 12:17 PM
"The truth is that the newspaper is
not a place for information to be
given,
rather it is just hollow content, or
more than that, a provoker of
content.
If it prints lies about atrocities,
real atrocities are the result."
Karl Kraus, 1914
WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
1984
We are the world, we are
exceptional, we cannot fail. The
elite will lie, and the people will
pretend to believe them. Heck about
20 percent of the American public
will believe almost anything if it is
wrapped with the right prejudice and
appeal to passion. Have a pleasant
evening.
jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com,
Feb 04, 2015
Journalists manipulate us in the
interest of the Powerful
Bay of Pigs
SPONGE
Oct 14,
2016 11:21 AM
His speech yesterday was unbelieveable. I
never thought Id hear someone running for
POTUS saying these kinds of things to a
cheering American crowd.
I think the
extent of the MSM
revulsion effect is
starting to hit
them - in terms of
readership,
advertising
dollars,
circulation, or
something.
After all, when
you are continually
'scooped' by even
the smallest, most
podunk blogs on the
internet, b/c you
insisted on
ignoring the last,
oh, 500 biggest
stories of the year
so that you can
pretend they are
not happening...
well... people are
going to find their
news from
SOMEWHERE, and it
isn't gonna be you.
I was wondering
when the MSM would
begin to grok this.
When you choose to
be a PR mouthpiece,
you also choose to
give up journalism
(and relevance).
Can't really serve
both masters. Which
can become a bit of
a problem when your
job is technically
'journalism'.
Especially when the
subjects you're
avoiding are as
news-generating as
the Clintons and
their Foundation.
Wikileaks 'scoops'
have gone from
weekly to every
single day, lately!
You might figure
out - eventually -
that it's very
difficult to 'shape
the narrative' when
you're gagged from
even mentioning the
REAL NEWS.
Either that, or
they're trying to
get out in front of
some inevitable
Clinton-related
REAL investigation
that they got wind
was about to go
down. But I think
it's more likely
the former.
knukles
VinceFostersGhost
Oct 14, 2016 11:50 AM
Finally, a refugee attempting to hedge their position in the event of a Trump win OR a Hillbillary Disaster.
It was inevitable that Some MSM Outlet would Defend their franchise.
If Hillary is elected, at least half of Americans are going to believe that the Election is Rigged by the State electing the next Head of State.
Note the operative phrase "The State electing the next Head of State"
From this it seems that dictatorships are established
And for a Great PS, I'd suggest reading the first 164 or so pages of
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
. Only the names and dates have been changed to shield the guilty.
The financial enablers of Adolph thought that they too could control him.
Once in power with the tool of the spear at one's disposal in an environment of no laws (essentially) the New leader doesn't need the financial types. The New Leader just takes what they want from the bankers and if they bitch, they can go to a reeducation facility
Dig?
AlaricBalth
FireBrander
Oct 14, 2016 9:22 AM
The media is easier to control ever since consolidation and
cross-ownership was allowed. That translates to fewer companies owning
more media outlets, increasing the concentration of ownership. In
1983, 90% of US media was controlled by fifty companies; today, 90% is
controlled by just six companies. All one needs is a few friends in
high places and the narrative is massaged to influence the uninformed
masses.
Comcast
Holdings include: NBCUniversal, NBC
and Telemundo, Universal Pictures, Focus Features, DreamWorks
Animation, 26 television stations in the United States and cable
networks USA Network, Bravo, CNBC, The Weather Channel, MSNBC, Syfy,
NBCSN, Golf Channel, Esquire Network, E!, Cloo, Chiller, Universal HD
and the Comcast SportsNet regional system. Comcast also owns the
Philadelphia Flyers through a separate subsidiary.
The Walt Disney Company
Holdings include: ABC
Television Network, cable networks ESPN, the Disney Channel, A&E and
Lifetime, approximately 30 radio stations, music, video game, and book
publishing companies, production companies Touchstone, Marvel
Entertainment, Lucasfilm, Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation
Studios, the cellular service Disney Mobile, Disney Consumer Products
and Interactive Media, and theme parks in several countries. Also has
a longstanding partnership with Hearst Corporation, which owns
additional TV stations, newspapers, magazines, and stakes in several
Disney television ventures.
21st Century Fox
Holdings include: the Fox
Broadcasting Company; cable networks Fox News Channel, Fox Business
Network, Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports 2, National Geographic, Nat Geo
Wild, FX, FXX, FX Movie Channel, and the regional Fox Sports Networks
; film production companies 20th Century Fox, Fox Searchlight Pictures
and Blue Sky Studios.
Time Warner
Formerly the largest media
conglomerate in the world, with holdings including: CNN, the CW (a
joint venture with CBS), HBO, Cinemax, Cartoon Network/Adult Swim, HLN,
NBA TV, TBS, TNT, truTV, Turner Classic Movies, Warner Bros. Pictures,
Castle Rock, DC Comics, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, and
New Line Cinema.
CBS Corporation
Holdings include: CBS Television
Network and the CW (a joint venture with Time Warner), cable networks
CBS Sports Network, Showtime, Pop; 30 television stations; CBS Radio,
Inc., which has 130 stations; CBS Television Studios; book publisher
Simon & Schuster.
Viacom Holdings
include: MTV, Nickelodeon/Nick at
Nite, VH1, BET, Comedy Central, Paramount Pictures, and Paramount Home
Entertainment.
Yes, yes he is. That's why he's
pretty much single-handedly 1) multiplied his large inheritance into a much
larger fortune; 2) broken the Bush political machine (Jeb!); 3) repeatedly
humiliated the MSM news for its US election coverage; 4) broken the careers of
16 status-quo RNC pretenders and certain ex-pretenders such as Romney; 5) split
the establishment Repub party itself and driven out several of its worst
offenders (now voting Democrat!); 6) raised probably the biggest army of
citizen supporters since Reagan; 7) dominated news stories for free coverage
that tends to bring him more support; and 8) spent relatively little money
doing it.
All totally and completely by accident! Beginner's luck!
Thank God he's such a fucking moron, right? Just imagine the kind of damage
he could have done if he'd been wicked smart!
Renfield
WillyGroper
Oct 14, 2016 12:58 PM
<<
herd redirection. any press is good press. jerry springer reality
show politics. if this was the real deal he'd have been ron paul'd in the
press from the beginnning. ZERO time.
>>
Could well be. I have no
strong opinion on Trump since he has no record in office yet, so since
I'm not an American citizen & cannot vote in those elections anyway I
have to sit back and wait, see what the truth turns out to be. I
apologise for commenting on your elections, and normally I'd keep out of
it, but there's this:
The reason I have lately become a foreign 'Trump supporter' is that
the alternative is Hillary, a known war criminal. Living next door to you
guys I stand a much better chance of seeing old age if the Washington
string-puller for Canada's subsidiary of the Corporation isn't, you know,
already a known war criminal with a hard-on for Russia. Not that thrilled
with the prospect of an immediate & 'voter-supported' nuclear WW3. Hence,
I'm a Trump supporter now... as a foreign commenter the only current US
pollies I've a really strong opinion on are Jeb!, Barky, and Cankles.
That's b/c people (or in Jeb's case their immediate families) who've
already demonstrated their willingness to commit war crimes become very
relevant to those even outside American borders, especially when they
call the shots for my own, err, 'leaders'. (I know, that's our own damn
fault, too.)
I am very, very FOR your remaining non-war-criminal candidate since it
prevents Hillary as getting in as CEO of the US corporate office, with
"nuclear war" as her first order of business.
So here, just pointing out that DT, while he is and may be a lot of
things, is certainly not stupid! That particular MSM myth always makes me
giggle and reply flippantly (as above). Whether he's also evil, in my
foreigner's eyes, still remains to be seen from his record in office, if
he gets one. (Back to lurking, and let you better-informed Americans get
on with things!)
The Hillary Clinton campaign says the hackers behind the leaked
email evidence of their collusion with the major media are from
Russia and linked to the Russian regime. If so, I want to publicly
thank those Russian hackers and their leader, Russian President
Vladimir Putin, for opening a window into the modern workings of
the United States government-corporate-media establishment.
We always knew that the major media were extensions of the
Democratic Party. But the email evidence of how figures like
Maggie
Haberman
of The New York Times,
Juliet
Eilperin
of The Washington Post, and
John
Harwood
of CNBC worked hand-in-glove with the Democrats is
important. The Daily Caller and Breitbart have led the way in
digging through the emails and exposing the nature of this
evidence. It is shocking even to those of us at Accuracy in Media
who always knew about, and had documented, such collusion through
analysis and observation.
The Clinton campaign and various intelligence officials insist
that the purpose of the Russian hacking is to weaken the confidence
of the American people in their system of government, and to
suggest that the American system is just as corrupt as the Russian
system is alleged to be. Perhaps our confidence in our system
should be shaken. The American people can see that our media are
not independent of the government or the political system and, in
fact, function as an arm of the political party in control of the
White House that wants to maintain that control after November 8.
In conjunction with other evidence, including the ability to
conduct vote fraud that benefits the Democrats, the results on
Election Day will be in question and will form the basis for Donald
J. Trump to continue to claim that the system is "rigged" against
outsiders like him.
The idea of an American system of free and fair elections that
includes an honest press has been terribly undermined by the
evidence that has come to light. We are not yet to the point of the
Russian system, where opposition outlets are run out of business
and dissidents killed in the streets. That means that the Russians
have not completely succeeded in destroying confidence in our
system. But we do know that federal agencies like the Federal
Election Commission (FEC) and Federal Communications Commission
(FCC) are poised to strike blows against free and independent
media. Earlier this year the three Democrats on the FEC
voted
to punish
filmmaker Joel Gilbert for distributing a film
critical of President Barack Obama during the 2012 campaign.
The New York Times is
reporting
that
Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta has been contacted by the
FBI about the alleged Russian hackers behind the leaks of his
emails. This is what Podesta and many in the media want to talk
about.
But the Russians, if they are responsible, have performed a
public service. And until there is a thorough house-cleaning of
those in the major media who have made a mockery of professional
journalism, the American people will continue to lack confidence in
their system. The media have been caught in the act of sabotaging
the public's right to know by taking sides in the presidential
contest. They have become a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party,
coordinating with the Hillary Clinton for president campaign, which
apparently was being run out of Georgetown University, where John
Podesta was based. Many emails carry the web address of
[email protected], a reference to the Georgetown
University position held by the chairman of the 2016 Hillary
Clinton presidential campaign. Podesta is a Visiting Professor at
Georgetown University Law Center. His other affiliations include
the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress and the United
Nations High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda.
Podesta and the other members of this U.N. panel had proposed "
A
New Global Partnership for the World
," which advocated for a
"profound economic transformation" of the world's economic order
that would result in a new globalist system. Shouldn't the American
people be informed about what Podesta and his Democratic allies
have planned for the United States should they win on November 8?
That Podesta would serve the purposes of the U.N. is not a
surprise. But it is somewhat surprising that he would use his base
at Georgetown University to run the Hillary campaign. On the other
hand, Georgetown, the nation's oldest Catholic and Jesuit
university,
describes
itself
as preparing "the next generation of global citizens to lead and
make a difference in the world."
When a Catholic university serves as the base for the election
of a Democratic Party politician committed to taxpayer-funded
abortion on demand and transgender rights, you know America's
political system and academia are rotten to the core. The
disclosure from WikiLeaks that Podesta used his Georgetown email to
engage in party politics only confirms what we already knew.
If the Russians are ultimately responsible for the release of
these emails, some of which
show
an anti-Catholic animus
on the part of Clinton campaign
officials, we are grateful to them. The answer has to be to clean
out the American political system of those who corrupt it and
demonstrate to the world that we can achieve higher standards of
integrity and transparency.
For its part, Georgetown University should be stripped of its
Catholic affiliation and designated as an official arm of the
Democratic Party.
Paul Kersey
balolalo
Oct 14, 2016 12:02 PM
The well deserved hatred for Hillary and the globalists is so
great, that at least 40% of the males in this country would back
anyone who went up against the Clintons. That's just not the
same thing as "BUYING TRUMPS BULLSHIT HOOK, LINE, AND SINKER".
Trump is exposing the corruption and the hypocrisy of the
Clintons in a way that no one has ever had the guts to do in the
past. He's doing it on national TV with a large national
audience. With Trump we may get anarchy, but with the Clintons,
Deep State is guaranteed. It is Deep State that is working
overtime to finish building the expressway to neofeudalism.
We could always have a few murders and suspecious deaths looked
into again. .... A few to chose from:
-
Kevin Ives
and
Don Henry
, both 17, crushed by a train, August
23, 1987. Their deaths were ruled accidental, with the medical examiner saying
they had fallen asleep on a railroad line after smoking marijuana, but a grand
jury found they had been murdered before being placed on the tracks. They had
allegedly stumbled on a plot to smuggle drugs and guns from an airport in Mena,
Arkansas, that Bill Clinton was said to be involved in as state governor.
-
Victor Raiser
,
53, small plane crash, July 30, 1992. The second finance co-chair of Bill
Clinton's presidential campaign was killed along with his son during a fishing
vacation in Alaska. Campaign press secretary Dee Dee Myers called Raiser a major
player in the organization.
-
Paul Tully
,
48, heart attack, September 25, 1992. A chain-smoking, heavy drinking political
consultant who weighed more than 320lb. Tully died seven weeks before Clinton's
first presidential election win. He had been political director of the Democratic
National Committee (DNC) during Clinton's rise. Tully was on the left of the
Democratic Party and usually worked for those who shared his views, however he
agreed to work for Clinton because he thought he was the only Democrat who could
beat President George Bush.
-
Paula Gober
,
36, single car accident, December 7, 1992. She was Clinton's interpreter for the
deaf for several years and traveled with him while he was governor of Arkansas.
Her vehicle overturned on a bend, throwing her 30 feet. There were no witnesses.
-
Vince Foster
,
48, suicide, July 20, 1993. A long-time friend of the Clintons in Arkansas, new
president Bill Clinton appointed him Deputy White House Counsel. Foster soon
realized he hated the job and fell into a deep depression. He was found shot to
death in Fort Marcy Park in Washington.
-
Stanley Heard
,
47, small plane crash, September 3, 1993. An Arkansas chiropractor who, according
to the book, A Profession of One's Own, treated the Clinton family, Heard was
asked by Bill Clinton to represent the practice as plans for 'Hillarycare' were
being finalized. His attorney Steve Dickson, was flying him home from a healthcare
meeting in Washington, DC. On the way to the capital from his home in Kansas,
Dickson's small plane developed problems so he landed in St Louis and rented
another plane. That rented plane was the one that crashed in rural Virginia,
killing both men.
-
Jerry Parks
,
47, shot to death, September 23, 1993. The head of security for Bill Clinton's
headquarters in Arkansas was driving home in West Little Rock when two men pulled
alongside his car and sprayed it with semi-automatic gunfire. As Parks's car
stopped a man stepped out of the Chevy and shot him twice with a 9mm pistol and
sped off. Despite several witnesses, no-one was ever arrested. The killing came
two months after Parks had watched news of Foster's death and allegedly told his
son Gary 'I'm a dead man'. His wife Lois remarried, and her second husband, Dr
David Millstein was stabbed to death in 2006.
-
Ed Willey
, 60,
suicide, November 29, 1993. Husband of Bill Clinton accuser Kathleen Willey, he
was deeply in debt and shot himself to death on the day that his wife alleges she
was groped by Bill Clinton in the Oval Office.
-
Herschel Friday
,
70, small plane crash, March 1, 1994. Friday was an Arkansas lawyer who Richard
Nixon had once considered for the Supreme Court. Friday was known as a benefactor
of Bill Clinton, serving on his campaign finance committee.
-
Kathy Ferguson
,
37, gun suicide, May 11, 1994. She was the ex-wife of Arkansas State Trooper Danny
Ferguson, who was named in a sexual harassment suit brought by Paula Jones against
Bill Clinton. Ferguson left a note blaming problems with her fiancé, Bill Shelton.
A month later Shelton, upset about the suicide verdict, killed himself.
-
Ron Brown
, 54,
plane crash, April 3, 1996. Brown was chair of the Democratic National Committee
during Bill Clinton's rise to the presidential nomination and was rewarded with
the cabinet position. He was under a corruption investigation when his plane
slammed into a mountainside in Croatia. Doctors who examined his body found a
circular wound on the top of his head which led to suspicions that he had died
before the plane crashed, but that theory was later discounted. The crash was
attributed to pilot error.
-
Charles Meissner
,
56, same plane crash as Brown. Meissner was assistant secretary for international
trade and had been criticized for allegedly giving special security clearance to
John Huang, who later pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges for violating
campaign finance laws, in a case that enmeshed the Clinton administration.
-
Barbara Wise
,
48, natural causes, November 29, 1996. Wise, who worked alongside Brown, Meissner
and Huang in the Commerce Department was found dead at her desk on the day after
Thanksgiving 1996. Her death was originally classified as a homicide but police
later said Wise, 48, who had a history of severe ill health, had died from natural
causes. A local TV station initially quoted an unidentified police source as
saying her body was partially nude and her office was locked, but those reports
were later denied.
-
Mary Mahoney
,
25, armed robbery, July 7, 1997. Mahoney was a White House intern during the
Monica Lewinsky scandal. A lesbian gay rights activist, she never found herself
troubled by Clinton, but she did take to counseling those who did. She was shot
dead during a robbery at a Washington Starbucks where she worked.
-
Jim McDougal
,
57, heart attack, March 8, 1998. McDougal and his wife Susan were involved in the
Whitewater real estate scandal that rocked the Clinton administration. They and
the Clintons had invested $203,000 to buy land in the Ozarks but the venture
failed and McDougal was convicted of corruption for borrowing money from his
Savings and Loan to cover the cost. He died in federal prison in Fort Worth,
Texas.
-
John Ashe
, 61,
weightlifting accident, June 22, 2016. The Antiguan diplomat dropped a dumbbell on
his neck and asphyxiated himself at his home in Dobbs Ferry, New York. He was due
to stand trial for allegedly receiving $500,000 from billionaire real estate
developer Ng Lap Seng who was involved in a scandal involving illegally funneling
hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Democratic National Committee during Bill
Clinton's presidency.
-
Seth Rich
, 27,
armed robbery, July 26, 2016. A rising star in the DNC, Rich was robbed at
gunpoint after a night of drinking in Washington, DC. The robbers took nothing,
leaving his watch and wallet after shooting him several times in the back. Rich
had allegedly been involved in the leak of documents that brought down Hillary
Clinton ally Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.
-
Mark Weiner
,
62, leukemia, July 26, 2016. Despite his condition, Weiner, a prodigious Clinton
fundraiser, was due to attend the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia
and was dressing on the day he was due to travel from his home in Rhode Island.
But he suddenly felt ill and went to bed and never got up again.
-
Victor Thorn
,
54, suicide, August 1, 2016. Thorn shot himself in the head at the top of Nittany
Mountain, Pennsylvania, on his birthday. He had written four books highly critical
of the Clintons. He was also a Holocaust denier.
-
Shawn Lucas
,
38, unexplained, August 2, 2016. Just days before his death, Lucas, a process
server had delivered papers to the Democratic National Committee's headquarters in
Washington, DC, filming himself as he did so. He was found dead in his apartment
in the city.
There are more but these are a good start.
Live Hard, This Many Deaths Are Way More Than
Happenstance, Die Free
Killary only can beg that voters hold their noses and vote for her. Guardian neoliberal presstitutes
still don't want to understand that Hillary is more dangerous then trump, Sge with her attempt that
she is more militant then male neocons can really provoke a confrontation with Russia or China.
Notable quotes:
"... War at home versus another foreign war, nothing will get through Congress, and either will get impeached...so third party all the way for me. ..."
"... Keep in mind, the election is not over and that drip, drip, drip of Hillary emails may push more people towards Trump. ..."
"... Shameless. Absolutely shameless, Guardian. This is not-even-disguised Clinton sycophancy... ..."
"... Clinton has everything going for her. The media, the banks, big business, the UN, foreign leaders, special interest lobbyists, silicon valley, establishment Republicans. How can she not win in an landslide?! ..."
"... We came, we saw, and he grabbed some pussy. ..."
"... It seems nobody wants to talk about what is really going on here - instead we are fed this bilge from both sides about 'sexual misconduct' and other fluff ..."
"... The stagnation of middle-class incomes in the West may last another five decades or more. ..."
"... This calls into question either the sustainability of democracy under such conditions or the sustainability of globalization. ..."
"... These classes of "globalization losers," particularly in the United States, have had little political voice or influence, and perhaps this is why the backlash against globalization has been so muted. They have had little voice because the rich have come to control the political process. The rich, as can be seen by looking at the income gains of the global top 5 percent in Figure 1, have benefited immensely from globalization and they have keen interest in its continuation. ..."
"... But while their use of political power has enabled the continuation of globalization, it has also hollowed out national democracies and moved many countries closer to becoming plutocracies. Thus, the choice would seem either plutocracy and globalization – or populism and a halt to globalization. ..."
The vast majority of her support comes from people that will be holding their noses as they vote
for her. Seems to me that convincing those same people that you have it in the bag will just cause
them to think voting isn't worth their time since they don't want to anyway.
I know Trump's supporters, the real ones, and the anyone-but-Hillary club will show up as well.
Funny if this backfires and he wins.
I won't be voting for either one and couldn't care less which one wins. War at home versus
another foreign war, nothing will get through Congress, and either will get impeached...so third
party all the way for me.
"Trump has to be the limit, and there has to be a re-alignment"
Trump has shown one must fight fire with fire. The days of the meek and mild GOP are over. Twice
they tried with nice guys and failed. Trump has clearly shown come out with both fists swinging
and you attract needed media and you make the conversation about you. Trump's mistake was not
seeking that bit of polish that leaves your opponent on the floor.
Keep in mind, the election is not over and that drip, drip, drip of Hillary emails may
push more people towards Trump.
Shameless. Absolutely shameless, Guardian. This is not-even-disguised Clinton sycophancy...
tugend49
For every woman that's been sexually harassed, bullied, raped, assaulted, catcalled, groped,
objectified, and treated lesser than, a landslide victory for Clinton would be an especially sweet
"Fuck You" to the Trumps of this world.
Clinton has everything going for her. The media, the banks, big business, the UN, foreign
leaders, special interest lobbyists, silicon valley, establishment Republicans. How can she not
win in an landslide?!
It might be a reaction against Trump, but it's also a depressing example of the power of the
establishment, and their desire for control in democracy. Just look at how they squealed at Brexit.
It seems nobody wants to talk about what is really going on here - instead we are fed this
bilge from both sides about 'sexual misconduct' and other fluff
There is a report from two years ago, July 2014, before the candidates had even been selected,
by the economist Branko Milanovic for Yale 'Global' about the impact of Globalisation on the Lower
Middle Classes in the West and how this was basically going to turn into exactly the choice the
American electorate is facing now
Why won't the media discuss these issues instead of pushing this pointless circus?
These are the penultimate paragraphs of the article on the report (there is a similar one for
the Harvard Business Review
here ):
The populists warn disgruntled voters that economic trends observed during the past three
decades are just the first wave of cheap labor from Asia pitted in direct competition with
workers in the rich world, and more waves are on the way from poorer lands in Asia and Africa.
The stagnation of middle-class incomes in the West may last another five decades or more.
This calls into question either the sustainability of democracy under such conditions
or the sustainability of globalization.
If globalization is derailed, the middle classes of the West may be relieved from the immediate
pressure of cheaper Asian competition. But the longer-term costs to themselves and their countries,
let alone to the poor in Asia and Africa, will be high. Thus, the interests and the political
power of the middle classes in the rich world put them in a direct conflict with the interests
of the worldwide poor.
These classes of "globalization losers," particularly in the United States, have had
little political voice or influence, and perhaps this is why the backlash against globalization
has been so muted. They have had little voice because the rich have come to control the political
process. The rich, as can be seen by looking at the income gains of the global top 5 percent
in Figure 1, have benefited immensely from globalization and they have keen interest in its
continuation.
But while their use of political power has enabled the continuation of globalization, it
has also hollowed out national democracies and moved many countries closer to becoming plutocracies.
Thus, the choice would seem either plutocracy and globalization – or populism and a halt to
globalization.
Globalisation will continue to happen. It has pulled a large part of the world population out
of poverty and grown the global economy.
Sure on the downside it has also hugely benefitted the 1%, while the western middle classes
have done relatively less well and blue collar workers have suffered as they seek to turn to other
types (less well paid) of work.
The issue is the speed of change, how to manage globalisation and spread the wealth more equitably.
Maybe it will require slowing but it cannot and should not be stopped.
"... Meanwhile, between journalism's insiders and outsiders-between the ones who are rising and the ones who are sinking-there is no solidarity at all. Here in the capital city, every pundit and every would-be pundit identifies upward, always upward. ..."
"... We cling to our credentials and our professional-class fantasies, hobnobbing with senators and governors, trading witticisms with friendly Cabinet officials, helping ourselves to the champagne and lobster ..."
"... "The real "deplorables" generally aren't the people whom Hillary denounced as wholly "irredeemable," or at whom economically secure commentators fulminate on a regular basis. More obviously "deplorable" are Hillary's fellow financial, political, economic, and military elites who wrecked the economy, got us mired in endless unwinnable foreign wars, and erected a virtually impenetrable cultural barrier between everyday Americans trying to live fruitful lives and their pretentious, well-heeled superiors ensconced in select coastal enclaves. It is thanks to the actions of this "basket of deplorables" that we're in the situation we're in" ..."
I skimmed the Harpers article by Thomas Frank on the media's extermination of Bernie Sanders.
It's a good article about an unpleasant topic. One point that is not clear from the blurb is that
Frank isn't writing about the media's treatment of Sanders, but rather about the Washington Post's
treatment of Sanders. Occasionally other media outlets are mentioned (I saw a reference to the
Associated Press), but it's almost all about the Bezos Washington Post's unfairness
to Sanders. A lot of other newspapers mistreated him as well.
The article is excellent, but if anyone doesn't have the time to read it, I'd suggest going
straight to the last page, its a brilliant demolition of modern punditry journalism. The last
two paragraphs in particular:
Meanwhile, between journalism's insiders and outsiders-between the ones who are rising
and the ones who are sinking-there is no solidarity at all. Here in the capital city, every
pundit and every would-be pundit identifies upward, always upward.
We cling to our credentials and our professional-class fantasies, hobnobbing with senators
and governors, trading witticisms with friendly Cabinet officials, helping ourselves to the
champagne and lobster. Everyone wants to know our opinion, we like to believe, or to celebrate
our birthday, or to find out where we went for cocktails after work last night.
Until the day, that is, when you wake up and learn that the tycoon behind your media concern
has changed his mind and everyone is laid off and that it was never really about you in the
first place. Gone, the private office or award-winning column or cable-news show. The checks
start bouncing. The booker at MSNBC stops calling. And suddenly you find that you are a middle-aged
maker of paragraphs-of useless things-dumped out into a billionaire's world that has no need
for you, and doesn't really give a damn about your degree in comparative literature from Brown.
You start to think a little differently about universal health care and tuition-free college
and Wall Street bailouts. But of course it is too late now. Too late for all of us.
Yes, thanks for the link to Thomas Frank's essay in Harpers about the efforts of corporate
media, particularly the Washington Post and New York Times, to kill Senator Bernie Sanders' campaign
for the presidency.
Yesterday NC linked to an article from the American Conservative by Michael Tracey titled
"The Real Deplorables". In his article Tracey observed: …
"The real "deplorables" generally aren't the people whom Hillary denounced as wholly
"irredeemable," or at whom economically secure commentators fulminate on a regular basis. More
obviously "deplorable" are Hillary's fellow financial, political, economic, and military elites
who wrecked the economy, got us mired in endless unwinnable foreign wars, and erected a virtually
impenetrable cultural barrier between everyday Americans trying to live fruitful lives and
their pretentious, well-heeled superiors ensconced in select coastal enclaves. It is thanks
to the actions of this "basket of deplorables" that we're in the situation we're in"…
Clearly Michael Tracey overlooked a group. But what is particularly troubling me was Thomas
Frank's observation: …"for the sort of people who write and edit the opinion pages of the Post,
there was something deeply threatening about Sanders and his political views. He seems to have
represented something horrifying, something that could not be spoken of directly but that clearly
needed to be suppressed."
Statement of September 11th Advocates
Regarding
Saudia Arabia Support of ISIS
October 12, 2016
"Aren't the Saudis your friends?" Obama smiled. "It's complicated," he
said. "My view has never been that we should throw our traditional
allies"-the Saudis-"overboard in favor of Iran." President Barack Obama
"We have as solid a relationship, as clear an alliance and as strong a
friendship with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia as we have ever had." Secretary
of State John Kerry
"The strategic partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia is
based on mutual interests and a longstanding commitment to facing our common
threats together." Speaker of the House Paul Ryan
"I think Saudi Arabia is a valuable partner in the war on terror. If you
want to lose Saudi Arabia as an ally, be careful what you wish for." Senator
Lindsey Graham
"There is a public relations issue that exists. That doesn't mean that
it's in our national interest to not have an alliance with them - I mean
they're an important part of our efforts in the Middle East." said Senate
Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker
Citing Western Intelligence, U.S. Intelligence, and Intelligence from the
Region, that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia-not just its rich donors– was
providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other
radical Sunni groups, we would like to know why President Obama, Secretary
of State John Kerry, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Speaker of the
House Paul Ryan, Senator Bob Corker, Senator Lindsey Graham, and Senator
John McCain, would EVER consider the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia our ally.
Markedly, this is not complicated, nor is it a friendship, a special
relationship, a valuable partnership, a clear alliance, a
strategicpartnership, or a public relations issue.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a sponsor of terrorism.
According to Western Intelligence, U.S. Intelligence and Intelligence
from the region, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia clandestinely funds and
logistically supports ISIS.
How could a nation like Saudi Arabia (or Qatar) that funds or
logistically supports ISIS be considered an ally of the United States in the
fight against ISIS?
The Saudis (and the Qataris) are funding and logistically supporting our
enemy.
The United States Government should not condone, enable, or turn a blind
eye to that fact.
As 9/11 family members whose husbands were brutally murdered by 19
radical Sunni terrorists, we strongly request these appointed and elected
officials immediately explain their indefensible positions with regard to
the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its now clearly evident role in underwriting
and logistically supporting radical Sunni terror groups worldwide.
We also look forward to these appointed and elected officials immediately
explaining to the American public why they oppose JASTA or want to re-write
JASTA anti-terrorism legislation specifically designed to hold the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia accountable for its funding and logistical support of
radical Sunni terror groups that kill Americans.
Finally, we would like to, once again, wholeheartedly thank all those
members of Congress who saw the wisdom in making JASTA law. Clearly, this
new evidence further validates your vote and support for JASTA. Furthermore,
this evidence proves that JASTA was not a political vote, but rather a vote
to keep Americans safer from terrorism.
"... +A large part of the uproar over the Trump tapes is driven not by the fact that Trump's comments are shocking but because they are so familiar. We've heard similar, perhaps even more rancid, things from our fathers, uncles, brothers, coaches, teachers, pastors, teammates, and friends. Perhaps we've even made similar comments ourselves. Now the public wants to project its own shame onto Trump. His humiliation serves as a kind catharsis for the nation's own systemic sexism. Perhaps NOW will give him a medal one day for his "sacrifice"… ..."
Until a second Hunter Thompson comes along, the appropriately jaded Jeffrey St. Clair will have
to do [
Counterpunch ].
+A large part of the uproar over the Trump tapes is driven not by the fact that Trump's
comments are shocking but because they are so familiar. We've heard similar, perhaps even more
rancid, things from our fathers, uncles, brothers, coaches, teachers, pastors, teammates, and
friends. Perhaps we've even made similar comments ourselves. Now the public wants to project its
own shame onto Trump. His humiliation serves as a kind catharsis for the nation's own systemic
sexism. Perhaps NOW will give him a medal one day for his "sacrifice"…
I got news for you, Trump has enough enemies that if there was anything that could be pinned
on him he would have been in the slammer long ago; competitors , ex-wives, casino regulators,
you name it.
All they can come up with is Miss Universe, locker room banter and net operating loss carryforwards.
Absolutely spot on assessment. You can bet that from the intelligence community to querying
everyone he's ever been in contact with has been covered. The best they could come up with was
an 11 year old video of him preening his feathers.
+1000 Banzai! logged in just to upvote your coment.
Was thinking the same thing. is this the best dirt they got on him?
I see Trump's warts, I'm not blind.He's not Ron Paul, ok ok, we get it. and still I will
vote for Trump becasue i see how much opposition is being hurled at him everyday.
PLUS we see what a vile menace, murdering sack of fecal matter wrapped in corruption that "Die
Furher Hitlery" is.
And Because i've got two little kids that i dont want to die in Hitlery's nuclear war.
The Trump vs Clinton debacle seems to follow the UK's own pre-Brexit debate where the 'evil' (leavers)
were on the wrong end of a constant onslaught by the 'good' (remainers).
What was disregarded by the media and establishment alike was the undercurrent of disillusionment
of the PEOPLE with the system that was widely perceived to be betraying the public for the good
of a few - corporates, politicians, banksters et al - and they almost took it for granted that
remain would win the day.
Look how THAT turned out. The establishment line, backed by virtually all the media and the
apallingly corrupt BBC, were bitch-slapped the morning after the vote and it was a pleasure to
watch!
Parallels - right up to the 'bitch slapping' - this is what you may yet see.
Rape, pillage and plunder; it's as amerikan as apple pie. So whether you be a chump on da stump
for oligarch Trump or a psychopathic moron into the Clinton Crime Organization of sexual deviants
and murderers, in the end one of these bums is the real face of the USSAN thug state. Like NAZI
Germany before it (that other anglozionazi project) USSA will be "cured" from the outside and
that process is already well underway.
Good point. The Don has only "gamed the system," by using the rules and laws available to him.
He plays the press like a fiddle, therefore, generating free publicity, he would otherwise have
to pay for. The perpetual smirk, sneer, arrogance and disdain he has, is for many others, who
have done far worse, for far less, than he has.
kevin b
1
day ago
+Eric Shutter tell that to the
investigation committee..the FBI and the
congress investigation who all covered her
with "gross misconduct" instead of guilty
by hacked emails to known hacking and
homeland security of confidential
documents! another clinton victory by
paying off or threatening these guys if she
gets into office. what an ugly person she
is..she does think the law is beneath her
to follow...typical elitist narcissistic
profile!
Hank Chinaski
1
day ago
This psycho bitch will start WWIII... elect her at
your own risk.
Tam
1
day ago
0:17
Travelgate
1:03
Vince
Foster's
Death
1:29
Hillary
Care
2:56
Whitewater
Investigation
4:44
Cattlegate
5:48
Filegate
6:22
The
Clinton
Legal
defense
fund
6:33
Chinagate
7:18
IRS
Abuses
7:52
Pardongate
9:41
FALN
Terrorists
10:58
New
York
Senate
Campaign
Finance
12:15
New
York
Senate
performance
12:50
Senate
Rules
Violations
13:11
2008
Presidential
Canidate
13:45
Madam
Secretary
15:08
State
Department
Scandals
and
Cover-ups
15:59
Benghazi
Terrorist
Attack
Cover-up
17:12
Clinton
Secrets
(FoI)
17:37
Clinton
Foundation
Conflicts
of
Interest
20:37
Various
snippets
hellopuppy00
2
days ago
The fact that so many corrupts scandals of one
person can be listed for 25 minutes straight like
this is bad enough. The horrific part is that
American is about to make her President.
Eric Barth
1
day ago (edited)
we have no control over who we get to
choose and even then electoral votes
control th powers above popular votes.
Citizens do not matter in this regard
whatsoever. This game is controlled from
the top while feigning that it is
controlled by the people.
Raymond Cestaro
1
day ago
and this video is just scratching the
surface
Erkuht Ateue
5
months ago
HOLY SHIT, How can american people be so fucking
blind? This is outrageous!
View all 55 replies
Kevin S
3
days ago
Two ways. 1. Dumbing Down of the
population. 2. Entertainment. It is
sickening!
Tom F
48
minutes ago
Past Mobsters never come close to besting this bitch
and her Billy.
Took the Red Pill
1
day ago
Holy shit this is amazing. The work here is
fantastic. FBI really outdid themselves here. Still
gonna vote for Clinton, we cannot allow a man who
likes Pussy into office. I'm with HER :D
jefftc14
4
months ago
anyone else notice or remember how the Clinton's
were heavily involved in massive amounts of cocaine
smuggling into the U.S. and then hmm look at all
their friends they bail out.. all cocaine kingpins..
of course sexism and bigotry is probably ALL wrapped up in people's economic plights. Back
in the real world women put up with sexual harassment at work etc. because they need the income.
Yes it's illegal, but it's not always enforced especially in the blue collar workplace. And yes
Trumps comments were mostly about consensual stuff and if so arent' harassment. But sexism as
such isn't actually separable from economics.
I heard it as consensual, too. Women "let me" grab them. Maybe I am more forgiving than others
because I worked for a famous musician when I was younger and witnessed women throwing themselves
at him constantly. Are we taking away the agency of women by assuming this was unwanted attention?
Is it possible there are women who might have enjoyed the contact with him? Assuming he was even
telling the truth in his statements.
Do you want the willfully, aggressively ignorant on your side?
Would you choose purposely to select the most willfully wrong person to do any task for
you for pay?
1)Certainly: Will, Aggression and Plenty of Ignorance is *exactly* what it takes to put a good
scar on the face of the most organized, high-level, well-connected, mob-operation run by the US
government since the Shah of Iran.
Trump "going over the top", thus attracting all the "fire", has set in motion a flood of leaks.
Soon we will see defections when the rats see that the ship is indeed leaking and the water is
getting close to their nest. Then there will be congress hearings, the hyenas sizing up which
parts of the carcass they like to have when it dies, impeachment, several years of some progress
for the little folks while the new management rebuilds the enterprise and re-tune the neglected
Engine of Looting at the core.
2)The only people doing any task for *me* *for pay* are the carpenter and the guy cleaning
the drain. We have a deal: I don't care about their opinions and they don't complain over my coffee.
You are a bit naive if you think any kind of leadership works for you. In the best situation,
your interests are aligned with theirs, it looks like "working together". And since one does not
look in the mouth of a gift horse, everyone are happy. Right now, "our interests" and "theirs"
are blatantly opposed.
"... I've never heard anyone say "grab them by the pussy" but I have heard young college males talk about porn in a college library loud enough for me to hear them 2 tables over. I've heard detail accounts of what they want to do w/ girls they no. I just stared out them for a few minutes but it was clear that they did not care about my opinion or that they were in the library. ..."
"... St. Claire is right. Anyone that says that Trump can not be in the White House better vote for Stein or Johnson otherwise they are giant hypocrites. Bill Clinton is a rapist and Hillary Clinton aided and abetted his history of abuse. ..."
I've never heard anyone say "grab them by the pussy" but I have heard young college males
talk about porn in a college library loud enough for me to hear them 2 tables over. I've heard
detail accounts of what they want to do w/ girls they no. I just stared out them for a few minutes
but it was clear that they did not care about my opinion or that they were in the library.
I spent much of my childhood around athletes. The higher you go up the food chain the more
crass the comments. I was never in a football locker room but baseball and basketball were pretty
terrible. I played at the national level in AAU and spent a lot of time around traveling baseball
players. They were into drugs and girls. The comments were reprehensible and they have not changed
much behind closed doors. I'm 34 now.
My brother is older and his friends have all said horrible things when no women were around.
I was typically the voice of reason which made me a target for gay bashing. I'm straight but since
I did not see the need to devalue women I was asked if I was gay.
St. Claire is right. Anyone that says that Trump can not be in the White House better vote
for Stein or Johnson otherwise they are giant hypocrites. Bill Clinton is a rapist and Hillary
Clinton aided and abetted his history of abuse.
"... 2018 and 2020 will be interesting indeed, assuming HRC hasn't started WW3 by then. ..."
"... Speaking of which, Ray McGovern warns against the sabre-rattling over Syria and the calls for
"no fly zones" in CounterPunch today: ..."
"... For instance, Russian defense spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov warned on Oct. 6 that Russia
is prepared to shoot down unidentified aircraft – including any stealth aircraft – over Syria. It is
a warning that I believe should be taken seriously ..."
"... It's true that experts differ as to whether the advanced air defense systems already in Syria
can bring down stealth aircraft, but it would be a mistake to dismiss this warning out of hand. Besides,
Konashenkov added, in a telling ex-ante-extenuating-circumstance vein, that Russian air defense "will
not have time to identify the origin" of the aircraft. ..."
"... In other words, U.S. aircraft, which have been operating in Syrian skies without Syrian government
approval, could be vulnerable to attack with the Russian government preemptively warning that such an
incident won't be Moscow's fault. ..."
"... Bush & Cheney & Co were horrific enough with their neocon games in the Mideast, but their actions
seem mild compared with the latest anti-Russian lunatic talk by Clinton and her neocon pals. Really
scary. ..."
"... Yes the entire situation with out-of-touch imperialist aristocrats blindly blundering their
way to Sarajevo Aleppo has a very reminiscent feel to it…an easy chapter to write in the future history
books. ..."
"... This should terrify everyone. I wish we would elect someone who says we should sit down and
talk to our biggest rivals, not just provoke them to world war. But oh I forgot he said vulgar things
about women 15 years ago. ..."
"... sexual misconduct in the oval office-while president ..."
"... while being the leader of our country! ..."
"... I have a hierarchy of reactions to issues and I just can't seem to put vulgar language above
the ultimate vulgarity of world war for profit. ..."
"... I can't seem to care more about people with hurt feelings than people with their heads blown
off because a Saudi billionaire or arms manufacturer just had to have some more ka-ching. There is nothing
more vulgar than that. ..."
re WikiLeaks: adding to the endless hypocrisy and double standards over Trump's "grabbing pussy"
remarks and HRC & Co's behaviour:
* Hillary herself wondered about extrajudicially killing Assange by droning. In what world
is that considered permissible?
* It seems that the Clinton campaign's Catholic "outreach" person was involved in a prostitution
ring. So that's all good.
I'm starting to think Trump might yet pull this off. The Clinton camp must be terrified and
trying desperately to see what else might come out. If only Bernie had agreed to run with Jill
Stein… I honestly think they might have won. In any case the Republican party is going down in
flames, and after the Podesta leaks the Dems will have absolutely ZERO credibility and not much
of a mandate. 2018 and 2020 will be interesting indeed, assuming HRC hasn't started WW3 by
then.
Speaking of which, Ray McGovern warns against the sabre-rattling over Syria and the calls
for "no fly zones" in CounterPunch today:
We analysts were responsible for picking up warnings from Moscow and other key capitals
that the U.S. news media often missed or downplayed, much as the major news outlets today are
ignoring the escalation of warnings from Russia over Syria.
For instance, Russian defense spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov warned on Oct. 6
that Russia is prepared to shoot down unidentified aircraft – including any stealth aircraft
– over Syria. It is a warning that I believe should be taken seriously .
It's true that experts differ as to whether the advanced air defense systems already
in Syria can bring down stealth aircraft, but it would be a mistake to dismiss this warning
out of hand. Besides, Konashenkov added, in a telling ex-ante-extenuating-circumstance vein,
that Russian air defense "will not have time to identify the origin" of the aircraft.
In other words, U.S. aircraft, which have been operating in Syrian skies without Syrian
government approval, could be vulnerable to attack with the Russian government preemptively
warning that such an incident won't be Moscow's fault.
Bush & Cheney & Co were horrific enough with their neocon games in the Mideast, but their
actions seem mild compared with the latest anti-Russian lunatic talk by Clinton and her neocon
pals. Really scary.
Yes the entire situation with out-of-touch imperialist aristocrats blindly blundering their
way to Sarajevo Aleppo has a very reminiscent feel to it…an easy chapter to write
in the future history books.
This should terrify everyone. I wish we would elect someone who says we should sit down
and talk to our biggest rivals, not just provoke them to world war. But oh I forgot he said vulgar
things about women 15 years ago.
"Why do so many men claim that's what men do typically (not universally)?"
Because it's usually true of most men at one time or another in their lives. For all the talk
(and the reality) about women being treated as second rate, they do have enormous power; the power
to reject. And reject they do. You can be the nicest guy in the world, but if you're not her type,
if there's no chemistry or you're not her "caliber", down in flames you go. It's not necessarily
mean on her part, it's just reality. And it's not just looks or money that is a consideration.
You can be a nice, successful guy at a time in her life when she's attracted to the rebellious,
slightly "dangerous", exciting "bad boy".
This can be frustrating. And it's magnified when you grow up being taught that you can do anything
if you just try hard enough. But that's just it; you can't. Guys want to be rich and successful
(like Trump) or rich/successful/famous, because that's the inside track to the most elite women.
Except that even then, it's no guarantee. Look at all the women who wouldn't get involved with
Trump if they were marooned on an island and he was the only man. All his fame, all his money,
and They. Just. Aren't. Interested. And it's the same with virtually every guy whose name isn't
Tom Brady. So like I said, it breeds frustration - sometimes soul-crushing frustration - which
is displayed in crude anger.
Jess, and, thanks to political correctness, there are a dwindling number of venues where one
might seek to build lateral relationships, especially of the romantic or life partner sort, and
a dwindling amount of discretionary time to spend in those venues. Never mind the most elite women
- ten-year-olds with bottle-blonde updos and optional silicone-enhanced "chopped chicken parts"
are actually kinda gross - the less elite but still very aspirational Modern woman's
standards and policies are too high (unrealistic, as the less aspirational might put it) for the
life partner market to clear without externalizing something.
"Because it's usually true of most men at one time or another in their lives."
And therefore SIN, or whatever the symbol manipulators might prefer to call it, and therefore
PENANCE (payable in 3 easy installments), and THEN absolution. We do know how path dependence
cramps the American liberal's style and their group narcissism.
"When we're an empire, we create our own reality."
Jess–
It works both ways. Men also have the power to reject, & they do.
Your own wording of "that's the inside track to the most elite women" (my
emphasis) seems to say that a woman must be beautiful in figure and face to attract a man.
So what's different about a woman wanting a man who is nice looking with a nice body?
None.
It's just two different views, depending on gender.
Regarding what Trump supposedly said/did many years ago, even as a woman, I still find the
fact Hellary's husband was engaged in sexual misconduct in the oval office-while president
-even more disgusting.
I saw/see that as a huge slap in the face and a big FU to the entire nation that he would conduct
himself in such a way while being the leader of our country!
He couldn't even keep it zipped while sitting in the WH? How dare he!
At least Trump wasn't our freakin' PRESIDENT when he said/did those things.
Yet Bill's behavior is still a 'hush-hush' subject because he's a Clinton, it seems. (Or because
people don't want to be on that 'Clinton' list and disappear?)
No, I do not support Trump or his actions or manners or ego.
But since it's being made such a big deal, then I'd like to see all the facts about Bill brought
up again in the way he acted while leading this country.
THEN maybe all these 'distractions' would end and we could get down to policies!
Until then, which it appears will never happen, this 'election' is a sick joke, at best.
Yes, but at least Hillary has come out boldly against the Saudi persecution of women, gays,
and other races, has denounced the Saudi genocide in Yemen, and fought vigorously as Secretary
of State to ensure arms including cluster bombs and white phosphorus were not sold to a regime
with such a dreadful human rights record. And the Clinton Foundation displayed their "whiter than
white" sense of ethics by returning the millions of dollars of Saudi donations.
And Trump's words from 11 years ago were much worse than anything the Saudis did, in any case.
I have a hierarchy of reactions to issues and I just can't seem to put vulgar language
above the ultimate vulgarity of world war for profit.
Try as I might, I can't seem to care more about people with hurt feelings than people with
their heads blown off because a Saudi billionaire or arms manufacturer just had to have some more
ka-ching. There is nothing more vulgar than that.
"... If only Frank Sinatra had had the foresight to get a hidden tape spool running, we could now
enjoy the lasting record of Senator John F.Kennedy's attitudes toward "poontang". ..."
"... Anyway, if HRC actually broke the law… shouldn't she face prosecution? I know some people (at
amconmag, as it happens) have called for members of the Bush administration to be put on trial. Over
here, the demand for Blair to be tried at the Hague for war crimes is now a tired old Left cliche. Obviously,
it would be new to demand punishment for the loser just for losing, but that isn't the context here.
..."
"... Looking at the FB timelines of my 'professional class' milquetoast 'progressive' acquaintances
in the US (who all gravitas/te towards Vox), who have since this weekend become unglued, this is very
much a case of people deliberately goading themselves into frenzies, tumbling over one another in their
attempts to win an apparent virtue-signalling-contest. ..."
"For months, I've been beating the drum of the non-novelty of Donald Trump, but try as I might,
even I can't remember a presidential candidate caught on tape bragging about assaulting women
and grabbing pussy."
If only Frank Sinatra had had the foresight to get a hidden tape spool running, we could
now enjoy the lasting record of Senator John F.Kennedy's attitudes toward "poontang".
Anyway, if HRC actually broke the law… shouldn't she face prosecution? I know some people
(at amconmag, as it happens) have called for members of the Bush administration to be put on trial.
Over here, the demand for Blair to be tried at the Hague for war crimes is now a tired old Left
cliche. Obviously, it would be new to demand punishment for the loser just for losing, but that
isn't the context here.
Looking at the FB timelines of my 'professional class' milquetoast 'progressive' acquaintances
in the US (who all gravitas/te towards Vox), who have since this weekend become unglued, this
is very much a case of people deliberately goading themselves into frenzies, tumbling over one
another in their attempts to win an apparent virtue-signalling-contest.
Meanwhile, nary a word about "we came, we saw, he died", as it apparently is just peachy to
destroy a country if you want to tick 'killing an autocrat who is not in the US's pocket' off
your bucket-list.
To put it bluntly, looking away and excusing evils one "understands" and thinks one can "contain"
(except insofar as it affects non-nationals and
the bottom 30-40%
, anyway, but who cares about them) because the "other side" is perceived to be "more" evil/disruptive/threatening
to the status quo is a pattern of behavior that disturbs me far more than the behavior of the
other side, however nasty that may be.
Britain's Economy Was Resilient After 'Brexit.'
Its Leaders Learned the Wrong Lesson.
http://nyti.ms/2dOx0Is
via @UpshotNYT
NYT - Neil Irwin - OCT. 10, 2016
This article must begin with a mea culpa. When British
voters decided in June that they wanted to depart the
European Union, I agreed with the conventional wisdom that
the British economy would probably slow and that uncertainty
put it at risk of recession.
Advocates of "Brexit" argued that was hogwash, and the
early evidence suggests they were right. For example, surveys
of purchasing managers showed that both the British
manufacturing and service sectors plummeted after the vote in
July, yet were comfortably expanding in August and September.
But the events of the last couple of weeks suggest that
British leaders are drawing the wrong conclusions from the
fact that their predictions proved right. The British
currency is plummeting again, most immediately because of
comments from French and German leaders suggesting they will
take a tough line in negotiating Brexit. But the underlying
reason is that the British government is ignoring the lessons
from the relatively benign immediate aftermath of the vote.
The British pound fell to about $1.24 on Friday from $1.30
a week earlier and continued edging down Monday. Even if you
treat a "flash crash" in the pound on Asian markets Thursday
night as an aberration - it fell 6 percent, then recovered in
a short span - these types of aberrations seem to happen only
when a market is already under severe stress. (See, for
example, the May 2010 flash crash of American stocks, during
a flare-up of the eurozone crisis).
Sterling, as traders refer to the currency, is acting as
the global market's minute-to-minute referendum on how
significant the economic disruption from Brexit will end up
being. So what does the latest downswing represent? It's
worth understanding why British financial markets and the
country's economy stabilized quickly after the Brexit vote to
begin with.
The vote set off a chaotic time of political disruption,
especially the resignation of the prime minister, David
Cameron, who had advocated for the country's remaining part
of the E.U. Theresa May won the internal battle to become the
next prime minister, which was to markets and business
decision makers a relatively benign result.
Down, Down, Down for the Pound
The British currency plummeted after the country's vote to
leave the European Union, and again this week.
(graph at the link: Ł at ~$1.45 Jan-June 30,
then down to $1.30-1.35 thru Sep 30,
then plunging to $1.24.)
Ms. May, the former home secretary, is temperamentally
pragmatic. She reluctantly supported remaining in the union.
And while she pledged to follow through on leaving it
("Brexit means Brexit," she said), she seemed like the kind
of leader who would ensure that some of the worst-case
possibilities of how Brexit might go wouldn't materialize.
Exporters would retain access to European markets. London
could remain the de facto banking capital of Europe. All
would be well.
Meanwhile, the Bank of England sprang into action to
cushion the economic blow of Brexit-related uncertainty.
Despite the inflationary pressures created by a falling
pound, the bank, projecting loss of jobs and economic output,
cut interest rates and started a new program of quantitative
easing to try to soften the blow.
All of that - the prospect of "soft Brexit" and easier
monetary policy - helped financial markets stabilize and then
rally, and kept the economic damage mild, as the purchasing
managers' surveys show.
But in the last couple of weeks, the tenor has shifted.
The May government has sent a range of signals indicating
it will take a hard line in negotiations with European
governments over the terms of Brexit. At a conservative party
conference, she pledged to begin the "Article 50" process of
formally unwinding Britain's E.U. membership by the end of
March, declaring that the government's negotiators would
insist that Britain would assert control of immigration and
not be subject to decisions of the European Court of Justice.
That sets up confrontational negotiations between the
British government and its E.U. counterparts. European
leaders will be reluctant to allow Britain continued free
access to its markets, which the May government wants,
without similarly free movement of people across borders.
And beyond the substance of the negotiations, the British
government has signaled in recent days that it is looking
inward, and will be hostile to those who are not British
citizens. ...
The much-hyped severe Brexit
recession does not, so far, seem to be materializing – which
really shouldn't be that much of a surprise, because as I
warned, the actual economic case for such a recession was
surprisingly weak. (Ouch! I just pulled a muscle while
patting myself on the back!) But we are seeing a large drop
in the pound, which has steepened as it becomes likely that
this will indeed be a very hard Brexit. How should we think
about this?
Originally, stories about a pound plunge were tied to that
recession prediction: domestic investment demand would
collapse, leading to sustained very low interest rates, hence
capital flight. But the demand collapse doesn't seem to be
happening. So what is the story?
For now, at least, I'm coming at it from the trade side –
especially trade in financial services. It seems to me that
one way to think about this is in terms of the "home market
effect," an old story in trade but one that only got
formalized in 1980.
Here's an informal version: imagine a good or service
subject to large economies of scale in production, sufficient
that if it's consumed in two countries, you want to produce
it in only one, and export to the other, even if there are
costs of shipping it. Where will this production be located?
Other things equal, you would choose the larger market, so as
to minimize total shipping costs. Other things may not, of
course, be equal, but this market-size effect will always be
a factor, depending on how high those shipping costs are.
In one of the models I laid out in that old paper, the way
this worked out was not that all production left the smaller
economy, but rather that the smaller economy paid lower wages
and therefore made up in competitiveness what it lacked in
market access. In effect, it used a weaker currency to make
up for its smaller market.
In Britain's case, I'd suggest that we think of financial
services as the industry in question. Such services are
subject to both internal and external economies of scale,
which tends to concentrate them in a handful of huge
financial centers around the world, one of which is, of
course, the City of London. But now we face the prospect of
seriously increased transaction costs between Britain and the
rest of Europe, which creates an incentive to move those
services away from the smaller economy (Britain) and into the
larger (Europe). Britain therefore needs a weaker currency to
offset this adverse impact.
Does this make Britain poorer? Yes. It's not just the
efficiency effect of barriers to trade, there's also a
terms-of-trade effect as the real exchange rate depreciates.
But it's important to be aware that not everyone in
Britain is equally affected. Pre-Brexit, Britain was
obviously experiencing a version of the so-called Dutch
disease. In its traditional form, this referred to the way
natural resource exports crowd out manufacturing by keeping
the currency strong. In the UK case, the City's financial
exports play the same role. So their weakening helps British
manufacturing – and, maybe, the incomes of people who live
far from the City and still depend directly or indirectly on
manufacturing for their incomes. It's not completely
incidental that these were the parts of England (not
Scotland!) that voted for Brexit.
Is there a policy moral here? Basically it is that a
weaker pound shouldn't be viewed as an additional cost from
Brexit, it's just part of the adjustment. And it would be a
big mistake to prop up the pound: old notions of an
equilibrium exchange rate no longer apply.
Rod Dreher
hysterics became pretty annoying.
He dooes not want to understand that Hillary Clinton is a stuach neocon warmonger, has poor helath,
can be impeached even after winning due to emailgate and her platform is actually more of a moderate
republican, then a democrat. She is completly in the pcket of major Walll street bank and
enjoys this status.
Back in May, Michael Lind penned what I still think is
the most insightful essay
describing what's happening, and what is going to happen, in
US politics after this year. With the Left having won the culture war, the parties of the
future will be a nationalist GOP vs. a multiculturalist, globalist Democratic Party.
Excerpt:
The outlines of the two-party system of the 2020s and 2030s are dimly visible. The
Republicans will be a party of mostly working-class whites, based in the South and West
and suburbs and exurbs everywhere. They will favor universal, contributory social
insurance systems that benefit them and their families and reward work effort-programs
like Social Security and Medicare. But they will tend to oppose means-tested programs
for the poor whose benefits they and their families cannot enjoy.
They will oppose increases in both legal and illegal immigration, in some cases
because of ethnic prejudice; in other cases, for fear of economic competition. The
instinctive economic nationalism of tomorrow's Republicans could be invoked to justify
strategic trade as well as crude protectionism. They are likely to share
Trump's
view
of unproductive finance: "The hedge-fund guys didn't build this country. These
are guys that shift paper around and they get lucky."
The Democrats of the next generation will be even more of an alliance of upscale,
progressive whites with blacks and Latinos, based in large and diverse cities. They will
think of the U.S. as a version of their multicultural coalition of distinct racial and
ethnic identity groups writ large. Many younger progressives will take it for granted
that moral people are citizens of the world, equating nationalism and patriotism with
racism and fascism.
The withering-away of industrial unions, thanks to automation as well as offshoring,
will liberate the Democrats to embrace free trade along with mass immigration
wholeheartedly. The emerging progressive ideology of post-national cosmopolitanism will
fit nicely with urban economies which depend on finance, tech and other industries of
global scope, and which benefit from a constant stream of immigrants, both skilled and
unskilled.
"... I better like the reasoning in Basic Instinct when Sharon Stone just after passing a lie detector test said to Nick in reference to his killing civilians while on cocaine: "You see Nick … we're both innocent." ..."
"In an election in which one of the nominees is promising he'll make great deals-that he'll
deliver everything under the sun, without remotely explaining how any of it would be politically
possible-there's something bold, even radical, in espousing such a practical philosophy for political
deal-making.
Maybe it's not a popular message in this populist moment, but it would have the virtue of being
honest."
"The Case for a 'Two-Faced' Hillary Clinton" [The New Republic]. "In an election in which one
of the nominees is promising he'll make great deals-that he'll deliver everything under the sun,
without remotely explaining how any of it would be politically possible-there's something bold,
even radical, in espousing such a practical philosophy for political deal-making. Maybe it's not
a popular message in this populist moment, but it would have the virtue of being honest."
I better like the reasoning in Basic Instinct when Sharon Stone just after passing a lie
detector test said to Nick in reference to his killing civilians while on cocaine: "You see Nick
… we're both innocent."
Yikes:
"We therefore hold that the CFPB is unconstitutionally structured,' the court said" … PHH said
the law creating the CFPB gave an unaccountable director too much authority."
Can we get this same judge to rule on the constitutionality of the AUMF, Patriot Act, or any
case brought regarding NSA spyiny?
"Can we get this same judge to rule on the constitutionality of the AUMF, Patriot Act, or any
case brought regarding NSA spyiny?"
Unfortunately, this very same judge has a long history on those issues,
including time in the Bush Cheney White House before getting a lifetime appointment
on the bench,
and for the most part it's not pretty. Emptywheel has an
entire archive devoted
to him.
This segues into an argument in favor of voting for Hillary Clinton that I can't rebut: Republicans
appoint bad people to both the Executive branch and to the Judiciary, but Democrats only appoint
bad people to the Executive branch. Therefore, one should vote for Hillary Clinton, Democrat.
I've oversimplified the argument, but in general, that's what some people have told me, and I
don't have a good counter argument.
That doesn't mean I'm going to vote for Clinton. She's a crook. I'll either leave the Presidential
part of the ballot blank, or vote for Stein, despite my great annoyance over some of the things
that Ajamu Baraka has said.
Merrick Garland, Obama's latest nominee, is pro-Ciizen's United, so not sure how "good" he
is. Conventional wisdom about Democratic vs. Republican appointees to the bench would seem suspect
to me in a day when the Overton window has shifted so far to the right that the Democratic candidate
for President is more conservative, more pro-business, more hawkish, and less environmentally
responsible than Richard Nixon,
I challenge you to find any Democratic judicial appointments of the past 3 decades that are
as bad as Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, or Samuel Alito.
As for Garland, he's not good, but he's certainly not as bad as any Republican
nominee would be. And he hasn't even been confirmed.
Hillary is surrounding herself with exactly the same cast of characters as those who appointed
the judges you name. Why do you think her taste in justices will be any different than her taste
in policy advisors or potential cabinet members?
After Clinton signs the TPP, the Supreme Court will be moot anyway.
Obama's Executive branch appointments have been dismal, but his judicial appointments seem
to be better - Sotomayor and Kagan. Bill Clinton appointed Breyer and Ginsburg. None of these
4 judges is remotely like Scalia.
I strongly suspect that Hillary Clinton would nominate similar judges.
We definitely don't want the TPP to pass. We need to keep the pressure on Congress, so we don't
have to worry about what a President might do.
I reiterate: there are many things wrong with Clinton, and I will not vote for her.
Sotomayor has been great, but Kagan has been a mixed bag. She voted (in a losing dissent,
along with Scalia, Kennedy and Silent Clarence) , to allow Sarbanes-Oxley to be used against
a fisherman for throwing his catch overboard. She was to the right of Roberts on this one. Even the liberal Harvard Law School …
Clinton's first "appointment," first in the line of succession, Tim Kaine, is pro-TPP, pro-Hyde
Amendment, anti-labor (pro-right-to-work-for-nothing), and pro-intervention in Syria.
Know what you mean but try asking people who bring up judges as the reason to vote blue, why
should we believe that when Dems can't even deliver on judges when their nominee is a
REPUBLICAN for goodness sakes? Then take exaggerated offense at being expected to settle
for so LITTLE .
I appreciate the feedback. However, I don't think it's clear that Garland is a Republican.
Prior to nominating him, there were trial balloons from the White House suggesting that Republican
Brian Sandoval of Nevada would be chosen.
The New Republic piece is a festering pile of shit, and I intend that phrase as purely descriptive
account of the object.
This is a woman who with her husband earned over $139 MILLION DOLLARS in paid speeches to the
.1%–the OLIGARCHY–between 2007-2014 ALONE!
And yet the cretin of a human being calling himself the author of this "piece" [of shit] chooses
to insult my intelligence–yea, even perpetrate fraud upon the species!–by pretending as if this
UNQUESTIONABLE FACT is simply IRRELEVANT to Clinton's "nuanced"–[insert sounds of my heaving vomit]–distinction
between her public and private position. A DISTINCTION THAT WOULD ITSELF HAVE BEEN WITHHELD FROM
THE PUBLIC RECORD IF IT HAD NOT BEEN LEAKED BY WIKILEAKS, THE FOUNDER OF WHOM SHE HAS PROPOSED
BE MURDERED BY DRONE STRIKE!!
No, MY PROBLEM, YOUR PROBLEM, ANYBODY'S PROBLEM with this avaricious sociopathic warmongering
ulcerous wretch is–MUST BE–that she is a WOMAN?!
"As substantively defensible-even virtuous-as dealmaking can be, taking this tack runs the
risk of confirming the public's worst fears about Clinton: that she's dishonest and lacking in
core conviction. That notion, which has a gendered element to it…." [but might also perhaps not
be unrelated to her long history of manipulation, lying, stealing, backstabbing, fraud, embezzlement,
fraud, more lying, murder, more murder, more fraud]…
Fuck it. The oligarchy doesn't even have to be good at "public relations" anymore. Might as
well get ahead of the curve and move to Brazil.
PHH is horrible. They purchased my mortgage last year, and started forclosure proceedings within
the 60 day grace period while my autopayment was still going to the previous servicer (as allowed
by law). Their customer support in Asia lied repeatedly, and when I starting informing them that
I would record the calls, they would hang up or refuse to talk to me.
They finally acknowledged their error after 3-4 calls (particularly once I found out I had
to keep asking for a supervisor until I was connected to the US), but it was a huge waste of my
time.
Nor the 'Necrotelecomnicon.' The handy guide to contacting H Clinton's core advisor circle.
As for which precise 'circle' (of H-,) H Clintons advisors come from; opinions are divided.
Britain's Economy Was Resilient After 'Brexit.'
Its Leaders Learned the Wrong Lesson.
http://nyti.ms/2dOx0Is
via @UpshotNYT
NYT - Neil Irwin - OCT. 10, 2016
This article must begin with a mea culpa. When British
voters decided in June that they wanted to depart the
European Union, I agreed with the conventional wisdom that
the British economy would probably slow and that uncertainty
put it at risk of recession.
Advocates of "Brexit" argued that was hogwash, and the
early evidence suggests they were right. For example, surveys
of purchasing managers showed that both the British
manufacturing and service sectors plummeted after the vote in
July, yet were comfortably expanding in August and September.
But the events of the last couple of weeks suggest that
British leaders are drawing the wrong conclusions from the
fact that their predictions proved right. The British
currency is plummeting again, most immediately because of
comments from French and German leaders suggesting they will
take a tough line in negotiating Brexit. But the underlying
reason is that the British government is ignoring the lessons
from the relatively benign immediate aftermath of the vote.
The British pound fell to about $1.24 on Friday from $1.30
a week earlier and continued edging down Monday. Even if you
treat a "flash crash" in the pound on Asian markets Thursday
night as an aberration - it fell 6 percent, then recovered in
a short span - these types of aberrations seem to happen only
when a market is already under severe stress. (See, for
example, the May 2010 flash crash of American stocks, during
a flare-up of the eurozone crisis).
Sterling, as traders refer to the currency, is acting as
the global market's minute-to-minute referendum on how
significant the economic disruption from Brexit will end up
being. So what does the latest downswing represent? It's
worth understanding why British financial markets and the
country's economy stabilized quickly after the Brexit vote to
begin with.
The vote set off a chaotic time of political disruption,
especially the resignation of the prime minister, David
Cameron, who had advocated for the country's remaining part
of the E.U. Theresa May won the internal battle to become the
next prime minister, which was to markets and business
decision makers a relatively benign result.
Down, Down, Down for the Pound
The British currency plummeted after the country's vote to
leave the European Union, and again this week.
(graph at the link: Ł at ~$1.45 Jan-June 30,
then down to $1.30-1.35 thru Sep 30,
then plunging to $1.24.)
Ms. May, the former home secretary, is temperamentally
pragmatic. She reluctantly supported remaining in the union.
And while she pledged to follow through on leaving it
("Brexit means Brexit," she said), she seemed like the kind
of leader who would ensure that some of the worst-case
possibilities of how Brexit might go wouldn't materialize.
Exporters would retain access to European markets. London
could remain the de facto banking capital of Europe. All
would be well.
Meanwhile, the Bank of England sprang into action to
cushion the economic blow of Brexit-related uncertainty.
Despite the inflationary pressures created by a falling
pound, the bank, projecting loss of jobs and economic output,
cut interest rates and started a new program of quantitative
easing to try to soften the blow.
All of that - the prospect of "soft Brexit" and easier
monetary policy - helped financial markets stabilize and then
rally, and kept the economic damage mild, as the purchasing
managers' surveys show.
But in the last couple of weeks, the tenor has shifted.
The May government has sent a range of signals indicating
it will take a hard line in negotiations with European
governments over the terms of Brexit. At a conservative party
conference, she pledged to begin the "Article 50" process of
formally unwinding Britain's E.U. membership by the end of
March, declaring that the government's negotiators would
insist that Britain would assert control of immigration and
not be subject to decisions of the European Court of Justice.
That sets up confrontational negotiations between the
British government and its E.U. counterparts. European
leaders will be reluctant to allow Britain continued free
access to its markets, which the May government wants,
without similarly free movement of people across borders.
And beyond the substance of the negotiations, the British
government has signaled in recent days that it is looking
inward, and will be hostile to those who are not British
citizens. ...
Reply
Tuesday,
Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs...
,
Tuesday, October 11, 2016 at 07:17 AM
The much-hyped severe Brexit
recession does not, so far, seem to be materializing – which
really shouldn't be that much of a surprise, because as I
warned, the actual economic case for such a recession was
surprisingly weak. (Ouch! I just pulled a muscle while
patting myself on the back!) But we are seeing a large drop
in the pound, which has steepened as it becomes likely that
this will indeed be a very hard Brexit. How should we think
about this?
Originally, stories about a pound plunge were tied to that
recession prediction: domestic investment demand would
collapse, leading to sustained very low interest rates, hence
capital flight. But the demand collapse doesn't seem to be
happening. So what is the story?
For now, at least, I'm coming at it from the trade side –
especially trade in financial services. It seems to me that
one way to think about this is in terms of the "home market
effect," an old story in trade but one that only got
formalized in 1980.
Here's an informal version: imagine a good or service
subject to large economies of scale in production, sufficient
that if it's consumed in two countries, you want to produce
it in only one, and export to the other, even if there are
costs of shipping it. Where will this production be located?
Other things equal, you would choose the larger market, so as
to minimize total shipping costs. Other things may not, of
course, be equal, but this market-size effect will always be
a factor, depending on how high those shipping costs are.
In one of the models I laid out in that old paper, the way
this worked out was not that all production left the smaller
economy, but rather that the smaller economy paid lower wages
and therefore made up in competitiveness what it lacked in
market access. In effect, it used a weaker currency to make
up for its smaller market.
In Britain's case, I'd suggest that we think of financial
services as the industry in question. Such services are
subject to both internal and external economies of scale,
which tends to concentrate them in a handful of huge
financial centers around the world, one of which is, of
course, the City of London. But now we face the prospect of
seriously increased transaction costs between Britain and the
rest of Europe, which creates an incentive to move those
services away from the smaller economy (Britain) and into the
larger (Europe). Britain therefore needs a weaker currency to
offset this adverse impact.
Does this make Britain poorer? Yes. It's not just the
efficiency effect of barriers to trade, there's also a
terms-of-trade effect as the real exchange rate depreciates.
But it's important to be aware that not everyone in
Britain is equally affected. Pre-Brexit, Britain was
obviously experiencing a version of the so-called Dutch
disease. In its traditional form, this referred to the way
natural resource exports crowd out manufacturing by keeping
the currency strong. In the UK case, the City's financial
exports play the same role. So their weakening helps British
manufacturing – and, maybe, the incomes of people who live
far from the City and still depend directly or indirectly on
manufacturing for their incomes. It's not completely
incidental that these were the parts of England (not
Scotland!) that voted for Brexit.
Is there a policy moral here? Basically it is that a
weaker pound shouldn't be viewed as an additional cost from
Brexit, it's just part of the adjustment. And it would be a
big mistake to prop up the pound: old notions of an
equilibrium exchange rate no longer apply.
"... But if the third globalisation wave is mostly about taking advantage of cheap labour not commodities - whilst simultaneously reducing industrial capacity at home - today's global imbalances could result in a very different type of correction (something which may or may not be happening now). ..."
"... The immediate consequence may be the developed world's desire to engage in significant industrial on-shoring. ..."
"... I'm not convinced the end of globalization and the retrenchment of banking industry are the same thing. There are some things that can't be exp/imported. Maybe we just got to the point where it didn't make sense to order moules marinieres from Brussels!? ..."
"... You forget the third leg - reducing the price of labour for services via immigration of labour from poorer countries. On top of the supply-and-demand effects, it reduces social solidarity (see Robert Putnam) - of which trades union membership and activity is one indicator. It's a win-win for capital. ..."
According to strategists Bhanu Baweja, Manik Narain and Maximillian
Lin the elasticity of trade to GDP - a measure of wealth creating
globalisation - rose to as high as 2.2. in the so-called third wave
of globalisation which began in the 1980s. This compared to an
average of 1.5 since the 1950s. In the post-crisis era, however,
the elasticity of trade has fallen to 1.1, not far from the weak
average of the 1970s and early 1980s but well below the second and
third waves of globalisation.
... ... ...
The anti-globalist position has always been simple. Global trade isn't a net positive for anyone
if the terms of trade relationships aren't reciprocal or if the trade exists solely for the purpose
of taking advantage of undervalued local resources like labour or commodities whilst channeling
rents/profits to a single central beneficiary. That, they have always argued, makes it more akin to
an imperialistic relationship than a reciprocal one.
If the latest wave of "globalisation" is mostly an expression of
American imperialism, then it does seem logical it too will fade as
countries wake-up to the one-sided nature of the current global
value chains in place.
Back in the first wave of globalisation,
of course, much of the trade growth was driven by colonial empires
taking advantage of cheap commodity resources abroad in a bid to
add value to them domestically. When these supply chains unravelled,
that left Europe short of commodities but long industrial capacity
- a destabilising imbalance which coincided with two world wars.
Simplistically speaking, resource rich countries at this point
were faced with only two options: industrialising on their own
autonomous terms or be subjugated by even more oppressive
imperialist forces, which had even grander superiority agendas than
their old colonial foes. That left those empires boasting domestic
industrial capacity but lacking natural resources of their own,
with the option of fighting to defend the rights of their former
colonies in the hope that the promise of independence and friendly
future knowledge exchanges (alongside military protection) would be
enough to secure resource access from then on.
But if the third globalisation wave is mostly about taking
advantage of cheap labour not commodities - whilst simultaneously
reducing industrial capacity at home - today's global imbalances
could result in a very different type of correction (something
which may or may not be happening now).
The immediate consequence
may be the developed world's desire to engage in significant
industrial on-shoring.
But while reversing the off-shoring trend may boost productivity
in nations like the US or even in Europe, it's also likely to
reduce demand for mobile international capital as a whole. As UBS
notes, global cross border capital flows are already decelerating
significantly as a share of GDP post-crisis, and the peak-to-trough
swing in capital inflows to GDP over the past ten years has been
much more dramatic in developed markets than in emerging ones:
To note, in China trade as a % of GDP fell from
65% in 2006 to 42% in 2014. The relationship
between trade and GDP is in reality more variable
than is usually claimed.
I'm not convinced the end of globalization and
the retrenchment of banking industry are the same
thing. There are some things that can't be
exp/imported. Maybe we just got to the point
where it didn't make sense to order moules
marinieres from Brussels!?
"if the third globalisation wave is mostly about taking advantage of cheap labour not
commodities - whilst simultaneously reducing
industrial capacity at home"
You forget the third leg - reducing the
price of labour for services via immigration of
labour from poorer countries. On top of the
supply-and-demand effects, it reduces social
solidarity (see Robert Putnam) - of which trades
union membership and activity is one indicator.
It's a win-win for capital.
The simple problem with globalization is that it was based off economic views which looked
at things in aggregate - but people are
individuals, not aggregates. "On average, GDP
per person has gone up" doesn't do anything for
the person whose income has gone down. "Just
think about all the people in China who are so
much better off than they used to be" isn't going
to do much for an American or European whose
standard of living has slipped from middle class
to working class to government assistance.
"Redistribution" is routinely advertised as
the solution to all of this. I leave it as an
exercise to the reader to figure out how to
redistribute wealth from the areas that have
prospered the most (Asia, particularly China) to
the individuals (primarily in the West) who have
lost the most. In the absence of any viable
redistribution scheme, though, I suspect the most
likely outcome will be a pulling back on
globalization.
@
Terra_Desolata
The aggregates also do apply to countries -
i.e. the US on aggregate has benefited from
globalisation, but median wages have been
stagnant in real terms, meaning that the
benefits of globalisation have not been
well distributed across the country
(indeed, companies like Apple have
benefited hugely from reducing the costs of
production, while you could make the case
that much of the benefits of lower
production costs have been absorbed into
profit margins).
That suggests that redistribution can
occur at the country level, rather than
requiring a cross-border dimension.
@
Meh...
in the US, median male wages were
lower in 2014 than in 1973 - when a
far higher proportion of working-age
males were active in the labour
force.
Growing up in the 1970s, it would
have been unthinkable for wages to
have fallen since the 1930s.
Terra_Desolata
5pts
Featured
8 hours ago
@
Meh...
@
Terra_Desolata
Yes, there has been uneven
distribution of income within
countries as well as between them -
but as the Panama Papers revealed, in
a world of free movement of capital,
incomes can also move freely between
borders. (See: Apple.) While the
U.S. has lower tolerance than Europe
and Asia for such games, any attempts
at redistribution would necessarily
include an effort to keep incomes
from slipping across national
borders, which would have the same
effect: a net reduction in
globalization.
"... If nothing else, the I'm-with-her whole hog approach of the media to this election should put the lie to the notion that we have anything resembling a functioning press. ..."
"... Additionally, the blind adherence by the press to Hillary's spin that Trump would put her in jail amounts to a dictatorship ignores the fact that previous to that statement Trump had said he would push for a special prosecutor. IOW, a completely legalized, judicially approved criminal investigation. ..."
"... I agree about the press becoming so bought over by Hillary. Watched some speech Trump was giving a month or so ago and he talked about Iraq as I recall and the press totally spun it into some different meaning altogether. Funny thing was the next day Trump was giving another speech which I also happened to see and made mention of what he said the day before and what the press turned his comment into – from that point on I became very leery of believing anything they tell me. I too was amazed that almost immediately last night the press began reporting that Trump was talking to a dictatorship by saying he wanted her in jail when in fact that was completely taken out of context as well (as you mentioned above). ..."
"... I think the press has become very scary with all the power it has to twist the truth or what has been said as easily and quickly as they do. They must be very frightened by Trump. ..."
Why is the electorate seemingly more concerned with someone who is antagonistic towards certain
women than someone whose policies are antagonistic to whole nations and regions. Why aren't the
Wikileaks email revelations getting more traction or generating more outrage?
True. BigMedia is barely covering the Wikileaks story. My summary is that HClinton has a fake
"public position" & a genuine private position, that is pro-Grand Ripoff SS & MC cuts, & pro-TPP.
It should be a huge story, in that it calls as questionable any of HClinton's stated policies,
& given that Sanders repeatedly made the Wall $treet transcripts a major issue in the Primaries.
It takes a USian with intellectual curiosity, some free time, & enough critical thinking to
go to one of the few internet sources like nakedcapitalism or SecularTalk that actually will cover
the Wikileaks story honestly. IMHO sadly this is a small minority of the US eligible voter population.
BTW for Sanders to maintain my respect, he needs to "make news" in BigMedia by saying something
like "my support of HClinton is contingent on her 'public position' the approves the 2016 D party
platform, which is anti-TPP & anti-SS & MC cuts. If HClinton is elected & signs the TPP or SS/MC
cuts, she will be strongly primary challenged in 2020, & I will not support her if the Rs ever
impeach her"
If nothing else, the I'm-with-her whole hog approach of the media to this election should
put the lie to the notion that we have anything resembling a functioning press.
Just one example–I listened to some Clinton operative on msnbc radio today who was giving his
weaselly spin on Hillary's private position v. public position statement and who said that it
was only a few sentences out of an entire speech and needed to be viewed in context. Chuck Todd,
I think it was, never made note of the fact that there is no context to those statements since
the speeches have not and will not be released. There is no available context and Chuck just muttered
uh huh and let it pass.
Additionally, the blind adherence by the press to Hillary's spin that Trump would put her
in jail amounts to a dictatorship ignores the fact that previous to that statement Trump had said
he would push for a special prosecutor. IOW, a completely legalized, judicially approved criminal
investigation.
I agree about the press becoming so bought over by Hillary. Watched some speech Trump was
giving a month or so ago and he talked about Iraq as I recall and the press totally spun it into
some different meaning altogether. Funny thing was the next day Trump was giving another speech
which I also happened to see and made mention of what he said the day before and what the press
turned his comment into – from that point on I became very leery of believing anything they tell
me. I too was amazed that almost immediately last night the press began reporting that Trump was
talking to a dictatorship by saying he wanted her in jail when in fact that was completely taken
out of context as well (as you mentioned above).
I think the press has become very scary with all the power it has to twist the truth or
what has been said as easily and quickly as they do. They must be very frightened by Trump.
"... Chekov said something like: "If you show a gun in Act One, make sure it goes off in Act Three." So, Act One was bringing in Bill Clinton's accusers. But then nothing. Odd. ..."
"... * Interesting comment from the analyst after, something like: "I was talking to Trump voters in Ohio. They say they know exactly who he is" (and from the analyst's tone, that wasn't positive with respect to his character. I think a lot of voters, across the spectrum, are appalled by the choices, which is what the trust/likeability numbers are telling us) ..."
"... In retrospect, all the media questioning whether or not Trump would be effective in this kind of venue seems silly. Of course Trump can work a room. ..."
"... When Trump says he will put Hillary in jail, what do you think his kids and wife see regarding a Clinton presidency? Will she go after her enemies? ..."
"... Media going blatantly in the tank prob boosts turnout for trump. Cnn concedes trump did pretty well. Fox seems contented with him. Glad to see him break with pence on russia. Glad to see him say get isis, not assad. Aleo enjoyed him zinging clinton. ..."
"... With all the Russian efforts to undermine our democracy I can only hope we return to paper ballots hand counted in front of skeptical witnesses to the process. ..."
"... No mention of any laws broken by any previous presidents. No concerns about droning us citizens, no sweating any wars of opportunity. ..."
"... Trump absolutely dominated this debate. Hillary was on the ropes all night. The moderation was pretty good too. ..."
"... CNN directs us dweebs that this was a "contentious, nasty debate". It was contentious but aren't most debates like that? Nasty? Not that much. Sometimes but not as much as I thought it could be. ..."
"... HuffPo headline: "Don in Flames" I think, all things considered, he did fine. Neither one is offering any serious or meaningful solutions to anything we need. ..."
"... On the other had, HRC kept treating the debate like the white-shoe lawyer she is. "Refer to my website" = "I filed a brief on this." No one reads either. Too much relying on subtle distinctions. Worst of all, most of the time she speaks with no passion or genuineness. This is death to a lawyer speaking to a jury. ..."
"... She wants the debate to be like a federal class action case with multiple motions and lengthy affidavits and briefs that the Judge's top-of-their-law-school-class clerks will dissect and recommend a decision upon. ..."
"... The genius of this is that Trump is the device through which all of the real arguments against Clinton, the ones relating to criminal conduct and atrocious policy, are symbolically cleansed, ritually bled out. Trump as the public's cry for contrition and oh, how she has suffered for her vanity! Yet she is redeemed through him. She has crossed the pit of burning hard drives and she is sorry for her sins, but after all, America is nothing if not a forgiving nation. ..."
"... Once again we see America will get the president it deserves. The world? Not so much. ..."
Where were the questions about the 30 million illegals?
About the H-1B sand Greencard foreigners taking our jobs?
About health care we can't afford?
About corporations paying no taxes?
About people killing themselves with heroin because they have no hope,
no way out of poverty?
Trump did better than the first debate, where I thought he was destroyed. I'm not sure who
won, both were pretty repulsive. I really, really dislike the both of them, whether on policies
or on personality.
It doesn't matter who won. The pundits will spend several days telling you who won and that
your eyes and ears are lying again….
Frankly, from the comments above, it is pretty obvious America was embarrased again……glad I didn't
watch it……
No contrition from Trump, either, even though that's what the establishment wants (not that
any amount of contrition would work).
Which makes sense: 1) His base doesn't care 2) Backing down would be worse than gutting it
out, because backing down would make him look weak, destroying his brand.*
Chekov said something like: "If you show a gun in Act One, make sure it goes off in Act
Three." So, Act One was bringing in Bill Clinton's accusers. But then nothing. Odd.
* Interesting comment from the analyst after, something like: "I was talking to Trump voters
in Ohio. They say they know exactly who he is" (and from the analyst's tone, that wasn't positive
with respect to his character. I think a lot of voters, across the spectrum, are appalled by the
choices, which is what the trust/likeability numbers are telling us).
Once the crowd reacted positively to his "33K emails" attacks, he calmed down. I got the sense
he decided he didn't have to go low, since there were some in the room still on his side.
In retrospect, all the media questioning whether or not Trump would be effective in this
kind of venue seems silly. Of course Trump can work a room.
Media going blatantly in the tank prob boosts turnout for trump. Cnn concedes trump did
pretty well. Fox seems contented with him. Glad to see him break with pence on russia. Glad to
see him say get isis, not assad. Aleo enjoyed him zinging clinton.
He's still an idiot and has terrible policy ideas.
With all the Russian efforts to undermine our democracy I can only hope we return to paper
ballots hand counted in front of skeptical witnesses to the process.
With all the talk about 'the Russians did it", I'm tempted to write in Putin just to p*ss off
the Dems! (but I won't) Both candidates suck worse than a tornado.
Cnn people very much on edge. Dana bash breathless at trump saying he'd put her in jail. Said
that's what makes us different than African dictators, stalin and hitler. I'm not kidding.
No mention of any laws broken by any previous presidents. No concerns about droning us
citizens, no sweating any wars of opportunity.
CNN directs us dweebs that this was a "contentious, nasty debate". It was contentious but
aren't most debates like that? Nasty? Not that much. Sometimes but not as much as I thought it
could be.
HuffPo headline: "Don in Flames" I think, all things considered, he did fine. Neither one
is offering any serious or meaningful solutions to anything we need. It was, unfortunately,
just some lame entertainment and both remain equally unlikable and untrustworthy and unhelpful.
Watching this I kept thinking that Trump has been working with trial lawyers to prepare.
He used a lot of tricks trial lawyers use to influence juries. One, don't let the facts get
in the way of a good story (i.e. Why didn't you as one of 100 senators change the tax code? Answer:
"if she was an effective senator she could have"). Another is make the jury think the judge is
biased against you. The main one is put the black hat on your opponent and keep it there. Jury
trials are pretty simple affairs that way, the big thing is to make the other side the bad guy.
On the other had, HRC kept treating the debate like the white-shoe lawyer she is. "Refer
to my website" = "I filed a brief on this." No one reads either. Too much relying on subtle distinctions.
Worst of all, most of the time she speaks with no passion or genuineness. This is death to a lawyer
speaking to a jury.
She wants the debate to be like a federal class action case with multiple motions and lengthy
affidavits and briefs that the Judge's top-of-their-law-school-class clerks will dissect and recommend
a decision upon.
But it's not. It's an afternoon trial in front of a bunch of bored people sitting in a jury
box in a hot county courthouse. "Smart" lawyers get creamed by savvy ones in that situation all
the time. That's what I saw tonight.
Some low-watt bulb writing tomorrow is going to say 'This is how America does politics, does
democracy. We let it all hang out. A big old barn burner. A national catharsis, a venting of pent-up
emotion and frustration at some things in America and the world that just haven't worked out for
everybody, no matter how hard we try. This is good for America, even necessary, in fact it's what
makes us Americans. We deal with things and move on. Let all that poison out. And we move on.
I'm inclined to think the third debate will be a much more civil affair.'
The genius of this is that Trump is the device through which all of the real arguments
against Clinton, the ones relating to criminal conduct and atrocious policy, are symbolically
cleansed, ritually bled out. Trump as the public's cry for contrition and oh, how she has suffered
for her vanity! Yet she is redeemed through him. She has crossed the pit of burning hard drives
and she is sorry for her sins, but after all, America is nothing if not a forgiving nation.
Raise your right hand, Mrs. Clinton, and repeat after me….no, your right hand, please…
Possibly, it will be interesting to see if the Clinton camp is going to use
this, and if so how Bill will be protected. Could be a case of Mutually Assured
Destruction.
The Billionaire Pedophile Who Could Bring Down Donald Trump and
Hillary Clinton
"Trump's supporters have long wondered whether he'd use billionaire
sicko Jeffrey Epstein as ammo against the Clintons-until a lurid new
lawsuit accused The Donald of raping one of Epstein's girls himself."
There's plenty other stuff if you google "Jeff Epstein" and "Bill
Clinton"
It's all pretty vile but not at all surprising for what these overage,
entitled "stars" do behind the scenes.
I never got a chance to respond to
Yves' comment to my comment about Schwarzenegger a few days ago. Three
women came forward to accuse him of groping (or whatever – I, mercifully,
forget the details now). Arnold, with Maria standing dutifully by his
side, publicly apologized and it all went away.
My contention is that: 1)
there were many, many more women who didn't come forward (the threat of
never working again in Hollywood is very real – Arnold was represented by
one of the most powerful and nastiest law firms) and 2) it all
disappeared quickly from the media because Arnold was able to buy off and
intimidate the media.
But the stories I read in alternate media at the
time were pretty awful. I can only imagine the lewd bragging Arnold did
behind the scenes. Don't forget that Arnold was screwing the nanny and
sired a child with her while the nanny was living under the same roof as
him and Maria. "The rich are different than you and I."
While the Trump Tape scandal may end up far less damaging to the Trump campaign than
many pundits predicted, confirmed by several polls this morning which showed
rank-and-file Trump supporters barely changed their opinion of the candidate in the
aftermath of the hot mic recording leaked on Friday afternoon, he will have to pull off
a strong debate performance while ignoring loud calls from both the press and top
elected republicans to step aside, in order to offset a decline in polls has suffered
since the first debate.
That may be easier said than done, especially since over the past 24 hours Trump has
seen a barrage of attacks not only from the left but also from his own party, with
dozens of GOP lawmakers calling for him to stand down.
As Fox wrote earlier
, Trump was already struggling through a tough couple of weeks,
after the first debate with Clinton, in which she argued Trump was verbally abusive to a
1996 Miss Universe winner. Still, trying to appear unfazed, Trump struck a defiant tone
on Sunday in the face of calls for him to abandon the U.S. presidential race, attacking
prominent Republicans and saying he has "tremendous support."
As he so often has done in times of campaign stress, Trump took to social media to
try to squelch any speculation that he could leave the race. "Tremendous support (except
for some Republican leadership"). Thank you," Trump wrote on Twitter.
"So many self-righteous hypocrites. Watch their poll numbers - and elections - go
down!" Trump tweeted, apparently referring to Republican lawmakers seeking re-election
who have withdrawn their support for him over a 2005 video that emerged on Friday.
The negative speculation over the fate of Trump's campaign was the bulk of Saturday's
news cycle, and continued on Sunday.
As
Reuters
writes,
Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri told reporters on
Clinton's campaign plane: "We understand that this is uncharted territory ... to face an
opponent that is in the grips of a downward spiral in terms of his own party belatedly
walking away from him." A source close to the campaign of Trump's vice presidential
running mate, Mike Pence, dismissed talk among some political analysts the Indiana
governor might bolt the ticket in the uproar over Trump's comments. "Absolutely not,"
the source told Reuters.
Meanwhile, as noted above, with Republican Party leaders in crisis mode and doubts
emerging over Trump's ability to draw support from crucial undecided voters, it appeared
that many of Trump's core supporters would remain loyal despite the hot mic incident. A
public opinion poll by POLITICO/Morning Consult, taken just after news broke of the
video, found 39 percent of voters thought Trump should withdraw, and 45 percent said he
should stay. Of those who said Trump should leave, only 12 percent identified themselves
as Republicans.
Suggesting blowback may be in store for some Republicans who attacked Trump,
House
Speaker Paul Ryan was heckled by Trump supporters at a rally in his congressional
district in Wisconsin on Saturday, after having disinvited Trump following the release
of the recording of Trump making lewd remarks. "You better back Trump!" they yelled.
"You turned your back on him!" "Shame on you!"
But while there has been much verbal speculation about the future of the Trump
campaign, now one month ahead of the election, in practice it would be virtually
impossible to replace Trump. As we reported previously, in what have been largely
symbolic moves, at least two Republican governors, 10 senators and 11 House of
Representatives members withdrew their support of Trump, with some advising him to drop
out of the race, including John Thune of South Dakota, a member of the Senate Republican
leadership. But, as Reuters notes, any attempt to replace Trump on the ballot would face
huge legal and logistical hurdles.
The Trump campaign fought back, circulating "talking
points" to a core of high-profile Republicans who promote Trump in the news media. The
points sought to undermine establishment Republicans who have abandoned Trump.
"They are more concerned with their political future than they are about the future
of the country," said a copy of the talking points, described to Reuters by two sources
close to the campaign.
It might work: as we noted previously, Trump has made his battle against the
establishment a central campaign theme: what better way of underscoring that than by
showcasing that not only do Democrats hate his brand, as of this moment a vast majority
of Republicans do too.
"Phones have been blowing up for the past 24 hours," said a prominent Republican
political operative in Washington, referring to a heavy volume of calls among party
officials and Republican members of Congress.
There could be financial complications for Trump however. As we
reported last night
, Trump's troubles could steer campaign donations away from him
and to Republican candidates for Congress and other down-ballot offices.
But money may be the least of Trump's worries if he is unable to keep his head in
tonight's debate.
What should one expect?
According to one Reuters source, Trump could help himself if he himself quickly
addressed the video and the Oct. 1 New York Times report that he took so substantial a
tax deduction on a declared $916 million loss in 1995 that he could legally have avoided
paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years.
Altternatively, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Trump adviser, told Sunday
talk shows that at the debate Trump might choose to go on the offensive against Clinton
by bringing up past infidelities of her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
Interviewed on NBC's "Meet the Press," Giuliani said both presidential contenders were
flawed but that Trump feels he owes it to his supporters to stay in the race.
Republicans have attacked Clinton, 68, over what they say is her role in trying to
discredit women who accused her husband of sexual misconduct decades ago, and have
wondered why Trump ignored to approach the topic during the first debate.
According to the WSJ, which writes that "
Trump
Signals Attack on Bill Clinton in Coming Days
" a taste of what may be to
come was unveiled on Saturday when Bill Clinton was midway through a remark about
climate change Saturday when a heckler gave a taste of what he and his wife's
presidential campaign might get from Republican Donald Trump in coming days. "Nobody can
dispute the fact..." Mr. Clinton started to say at a rally in a union hall,
"...
that you're a rapist!"
the protester shouted, finishing the sentence for the
42nd president.
Previewing a hard-line attack on Clintons' sexual past, Trump on Sunday morning
tweeted an interview given by Juanita Broaddrick, who claimed Mr. Clinton sexually
assaulted her in the late 1970s.... Ms. Broaddrick tearfully recounts the episode in the
videotaped interview and said "I'm afraid of him."
As the WSJ adds, "Trump, facing fierce blowback for his lewd comments about women,
is signaling that he will target Mr. Clinton's behavior as he tries to stabilize
a campaign coping with its biggest crisis to date."
In weekend apologies for his remarks, the Republican nominee invoked Mr. Clinton
repeatedly, saying he had "abused women" and talked about them in ways that were more
offensive than his own in a 2005 video in which he boasted of sexual aggression.
He also claimed Mrs. Clinton attacked the women who accused her husband of sexual
misconduct.
"I've said some foolish things, but there's a big difference between the words
and actions of other people," Mr. Trump said in a Saturday morning video. "Bill
Clinton has actually abused women and Hillary has bullied, attacked, shamed and
intimidated his victims. We will discuss this more in the coming days."
That line of attack threatens to yank Mr. Clinton directly into the campaign
scrum, a space the former two-term president has largely avoided since his wife
launched her campaign a year and half ago.
The WSJ notes that according to strategists in both parties, a tactic where Trump
goes for Clinton's past infidelities may backfire.
Rudolph Giuliani, a Trump campaign surrogate, said Sunday on NBC that he didn't
expect his candidate to raise Mr. Clinton's past during an evening presidential town
hall meeting in St. Louis, Missouri.
Additionally, the WSJ notes that Bill Clinton remains a popular figure, outshining
his wife and her Republican opponent.
A recent Wall Street Journal/ NBC News poll found that 45% of voters said they
have very positive or somewhat positive feelings about the former president, compared
with 38% who have very negative or somewhat negative feelings.
The same survey found that 37% of voters have positive feelings about Mrs.
Clinton, while 52% have negative feelings. Meanwhile, just 28% of voters have very
positive or somewhat positive feelings about Mr. Trump; 61% have very negative or
somewhat negative feelings about him.
Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster, said Mr. Trump would be playing to his base of
hard-core supporters by attacking Mr. Clinton, but he isn't winning over any new voters.
"If he were running a Republican primary race, this could be an effective strategy," Mr.
Newhouse said. Now, "it's a failed strategy to try to bring Bill Clinton to this."
Lashing out at the former president and saying that he has done something worse is "like
an argument that a third-grader might make," Mr. Newhouse said. " When you use an
apology to turn around and attack your opponent, you lose ground," he said.
A democratic strategist, Joe Trippi, believes that "there's no way out for him other
than to be humble and apologize", which on the other hand some say would show weakness
and give Hillary the offensive. He also pointed out that Trump now needs to somehow win
over women and college-educated white voters and that "taking aim at Mr. Clinton is only
going to "repulse them further."
* * *
While nobody has any idea what Trump's best angle of attack may be, or what the
republican presidential contender will say in under three hours when the townhall-styled
debate begins, it is certain that following a brief courteous open, the mudslinging on
both sides will promptly escalate, resulting in one of the most memorable, "deplorable"
yet entertaining slow-motion trainwrecks observed in primetime history. The biggest
unknown, however, is how America will respond to it: and for Trump that particular
gamble could mean the difference between victory and defeat.
BREAKING: The Alabama Media Group, publisher of the Mobile Press-Register,
The Birmingham News, The Huntsville Times and other publications, as well as
one of the most right wing publishers in the South, has endorsed Hillary
Clinton for President.
For those who are familiar with Alabama politics (Yves?) this is
yuuge.
And tomorrow, their subscription office will be flooded with
cancellations. The GOP hive mind simply doesn't work this way.
When people buy newspapers for the op-eds, they want to read what they
already think. The newspapers themselves are largely purchased as local
papers of record or status symbols. The Union Leader endorsed Hillary, and
New Hampshire isn't breaking for Hillary. The Union Leader is a huge deal.
I know Team Blue is excited, but Palin, McCain (Team Blue seems to love
his deranged positions), Shrub, Jeb, Reagan, Nixon, Rick Scott, Graham,
Thurmond, Helms, Mittens…do you see where I am going?…haven't destroyed the
GOP. Partisan politics matters, believe it or not. By the end of the week,
every Republican outside of the ones close to retirement will have
apologized and declare war on "micro aggressions."
Once you get past the BRANDING (repub versus dem) isn't it just obvious
that Hillary would have been to the comfortable with most of the repub
candidates, on most issues, except for a very, very few social issues, and
even there not significantly outside repub suburban norms???
The parties in my view are the biggest impediment to critical thinking
there is – their downfall can't happen soon enough.
But I agree – this is YUUGE! Its kinda like the death of Sears.
Many men talk like Donald Trump in private. And only other men can stop
them.
WaPo. The difference between these many men (at least the elite
ones) and Trump is that Trump aspired to political power. The implicit
Democrat narrative that Trump is a uniquely pernicious outlier is ludicrous
on its face, as indeed this article urges.
Lewd Donald Trump Tape Is a Breaking Point for Many in the G.O.P.
NYT.
Except… This is the Republican establishment that (a) fielded 17 candidates
none of whom could be bothered to do oppo even to the extent of listening to
Trump's
public
tapes on Howard Stern, that (b) failed to fund or
unify behind a candidate to stop Trump when they had the chance, and that
(c) is hated by the most powerful factions in its own base. I think they're
going to have to carry Trump to term.
AP Exclusive: Job hunt substantial part of Bayh's last year
AP. "Evan
Bayh spent substantial time during his last year in the Senate searching for
a private sector job even as he voted on issues of interest to his future
corporate bosses, according to the former Indiana lawmaker's 2010 schedule."
So what? Both party establishments accept the central doctrine of
Citizens United
, that absent a showing of
quid pro quo
,
there's no corruption. Move along, people, move along. There's no story
here.
I'm shocked that Trump would say rude things in private. Men (and women,
don't fool yourself) being rude. Huh. Never would have seen that coming. An
entire entertainment industry called comedy, especially standup, based on
levels of rudeness. Can't be.
World leaders like LBJ watching movies of animals copulating in the White
House or bragging about having a Senator doing his bidding indicated by having
the man's p*cker in his pocket.
Yesterday John McCain again showed that he is a national treasure when he
assailed Donald Trump's "demeaning comments about women." This voice of
decency and reason in 1998 told a meeting of Republicans: "Do you know why
Chelsea Clinton is so ugly? Because Janet Reno is her father." [1]
McCain was joined in withdrawing support from Trump by his fellow neocon
Condoleezza Rice. Rice demonstrated her superior judgement during the summer
of 2001 when she systematically devalued intel that explicitly warned of an
impending major terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
The Republican hawks repudiating Trump are motivated not by his attitude
towards women but by his refusal to kowtow to a War Machine that has bought
and paid for Hillary Clinton.
And given that it was already universally known that Trump is a
despicable lout, these defections look a lot more like part of a larger
orchestrated outrage than a spontaneous reaction to the Trump tape.
Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also
let me in on another incident involving McCain's intemperateness. In
his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his
wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes
Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said,
"You're getting a little thin up there." McCain's face reddened, and
he responded, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop,
you cunt." McCain's excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected
president of the United States, McCain would have many long days.
Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair ran a great demolition
series on MCain during his presidential campaign, with a lot about his
disgusting behaviour towards his wife and general gilded misogyny. No
link here because the theme recurred through too many articles, a lot
of them the late Cockburn's wonderful Friday 'Diary' column (if you
missed those at the time, look them up and start reading anywhere;
also St Clair has lately revived the tradition, and his diary is
almost as good), but they should be easily searchable in the
Counterpunch archive. Or you could find them in AC's final book, 'A
Colossal Wreck'.
I could go all Plato and shadows on the cave walls, but everything we
see is filtered. Or emphasized.
Very, very rich people, with very, very specific agendas, do the
filtering and decide what you see, but more IMPORTANTLY, what you don't.
maybe they are just repudiating for a reason Trump if anyone on earth
would understand. They don't want to be seen with a loser (when Trump
loses the election).
Re: Badgers. From Hunter S. Thompson's Rolling Stone obituary for Richard
Nixon"
"It was Richard Nixon who got me into politics, and now that he's gone, I
feel lonely. He was a giant in his way. As long as Nixon was politically alive
- and he was, all the way to the end - we could always be sure of finding the
enemy on the Low Road. There was no need to look anywhere else for the evil
bastard. He had the fighting instincts of a badger trapped by hounds. The
badger will roll over on its back and emit a smell of death, which confuses the
dogs and lures them in for the traditional ripping and tearing action. But it
is usually the badger who does the ripping and tearing. It is a beast that
fights best on its back: rolling under the throat of the enemy and seizing it
by the head with all four claws.
"That was Nixon's style - and if you forgot, he would kill you as a lesson
to the others. Badgers don't fight fair, bubba. That's why God made dachshunds.
I haven't watched him in a while but I gotta feel concerned for CNN's Wolf
Blitzer. Having to acknowledge the Russian punk band Pussy Riot on the air a
couple of years ago. Now he has to acknowledge " grab them by the pussy" has to
be causing him some anguish. Because I'm sure he has never heard that before.
Then again a seven figure salary will undoubtedly sooth some of that faux
disgust.
You know, on PBS Gwen Ifil's Washington Week in Review, a woman
correspondent ACTUALLY quoted the audio tape that has Trump saying he grabs
a women's "P" – except she SAID, apparently to "clean it up" a woman's
"kitty cat."
I spit up my Cabernet!!!
Language – funny how the common name we use to name that small mammalian
predator, star of countless Youtube videos, that we keep as pets also refers
to womens's sexual organs – except apparently the other name we use for the
small mammalian predator can also be used (at least in hip hop videos), but
isn't as DIRTY…yet
(hmmm, I thought you could only say kitty cat if you were actually
referring to a…."cat" but you can't say "kitty cat" if your referring to a
"P" – odd…)
I imagine I could saaaaay any word in such a way to make it sound dirty…
a) Trump's comments are, of course, deplorable. But I do not see how they
are at all unexpected or out of character for Trump, especially given all the
preceding stories about how he behaved on the set of The Apprentice, etc. I
mean, what's next, Breaking News – Sun Rises in East as Previously Thought?
b) If you look at the electoral map (e.g. at RealClearPolitics) and make
some reasonable poll-based assumptions (e.g. Virginia and Indiana break for
Kaine and Pence, respectively), you end up with exactly three contested areas
of the country.
The Southwest – Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada. Let's say those
are split 50/50, although so long as Trump keeps flogging the "illegal brown
rapists" horse, who knows.
The Rust Belt-ish – the Pennsylvania-to-Wisconsin arc around the Great Lakes
(Penn, Ohio, Michigan, WI, MN, minus Indiana).
Florida.
So basically you're looking at something like six states that are likely
going to decide the whole contest, because everything else breaks 200-180 or
210-170 or some combination thereof.
Are Trump's comments going to have any influence whatsoever on his Rust Belt
vote? Or are those people voting for him because of anti-trade,
anti-establishment, anti-Clinton, whatever other factors? More bluntly, are the
pro-Trump women in those states going to shriek in horror at his latest
crudeness, or say something like "boys will be boys, but Clinton is still
worse"? I don't know. I doubt anyone in the media knows either. Maybe we'll
have an inkling in 1-2 weeks with fresh sets of polls.
Are Trump's comments going to really change the Florida-white-senior-citizen
vote, or whatever bloc over there is (reportedly, per Politico) breaking 2:1
for him? I don't know. I doubt anyone in the world knows. Maybe we'll have a
better view in 1-2 weeks (again).
c) Given (a) and (b), as well as the similarly-timed Wikileaks release, as
well as the similarly-timed "evil Russians are evil" release by the White
House, as well as the upcoming debate…nah, I'm just going to call the whole
thing a big set of coincidences and say the media is rightly focusing on the
most important story of the hour and not at all willfully ignoring anything
else of substance.
Lambert noted Trump is already an ugly billionaire who has made horrid
statements and noted it's likely this is priced in.
Three issues stand put:
-it's a claim from a very bizarre person with a history of ugly statements
not an accusation
-Bill is a serial predator. Lewinsky was an intern under his power. Hillary
has been part of smear campaigns and is a purveyor of violence to boot. I
recall Gaddafi was widely seen being raped before his death which produced
laughter. Also how many people laughed at Shrub's correspondents video where
he looks for WMDs. First hand accounts of the occupations and wars have been
spread for a long time now.
-the glee from the uni-party and msm can only backfire when they are widely
distrusted.
Virginia is breaking for military contracts. Northern Virginia is largely
"military Keynesianism" run amok. The vote there will break for whoever is
least likely to move federal spending to other locations. They have to lay
the mortgage on government salaries. Northern Virginia outside of a few
small enclaves is such a dump. Without the spending, no industry will
relocate there.
British blogger John Ward (self-exiled to France, I believe) made
similar and useful points today:
* The recording is eleven years old.
* It takes place in a locker room, where 97% of those mouthing off
this morning have never been in their lives. It was the sort of male
fantasy-boasting I listened to every Saturday before getting changed
into my footie kit.
* Nobody died. The US Ambassador wasn't anally raped and dragged
through the streets to a grisly demise. No whistleblower was taken out
with a drone.
* It didn't take place in the offices of Goldman Sachs, it didn't
take place in the Oval Office, and there were no cigars involved.
* If American men are shocked by this kind of talk, they're either
deaf or just never played sports.
* From the day he first opened his mouth in this campaign, anyone
with an iota of sensitivity could discern what kind of bloke he is:
crude, narcissistic and misogynist. This tape is, therefore, not news.
* The behaviour of his running mate evokes suspicion, I think. Mike
Pence voted for Cruz in his home State, and is renowned for his nose
being able to sniff a populist soundbite. Both he and Ryan (another
Trump-hater in private) were quick to condemn Trump's remarks
unequivocally. Senior GOP movers, however, are reputed to have told
the Vice-Presidential nominee that if he dumped Trump, they would make
him the Republican candidate "by acclamation".
* The source of the story – the Washington Post – is the biggest
non-surprise of all of all: the journalist involved there, David
Fahrenthold, has written several stories about Trump's charitable
foundation (but ignored the infinitely more septic Clinton Foundation)
while casting aspersions on his mental capacity to be President (while
ignoring Clinton's consistent inability to stand upright unaided.
* Fellow Washpost blogger Richard Cohen wrote two months ago (with
remarkable prescience) 'The way to hurt Trump is to ridicule him. He
is a man of immense pride, a pompous bloviator and a locker-room
towel-snapper. Either ignore him or ridicule him.'
* According to the Post, Farenthold knows the identity of the
person who leaked the video to him, but will not disclose it. It seems
the person works for NBC, who had a team working full-time to find
lewd tapes of Trump during production of their programming featuring
him. I understand, however, that NBC were going to leave airing the
featured extract until Monday – after the Second TV Debate – and so an
activist Democrat supporter downloaded the tape and gave it to
Farenthold.
I just cannot believe the level of outrage over this comments compared
to the real outrages and crimes going on in the world today. Ironically,
if Trump implodes, HRC will go on to win but more voters - assuming she
has it safely in the bag - may vote 3rd party. In any case the victory
will be a poisoned chalice. The most corrupt, dishonest, and disliked
candidate as POTUS?
Probably the best political analogy is "Bill's" Monica moment. The
institutional D party reaction was, "It's just about sex."
As for "Bill," so for Trump. If it's "just about sex," Trump's
supporters (including women) will rationalize it away, just as their
Democratic sisters did for "Bill."
Those for whom it's a deal killer were opponents anyway. So nothing
has really changed, except that the Clintons could end up getting
hoisted on their own petard if the counterattack includes some really
damning fresh dirt.
Incredible set of links, as always and nice work by our own Richard Smith.
SLPs being used to front illegal operations– who would've thought? Excellent
investigative work.
The revelations being sussed-out from the Goldman Sachs speeches could be
the last straw for Hillary's campaign, tipping undecideds and ex-Sanders
supporters further away from her. Public and private position, indeed. It's
also an apt term to describe people who answer polls and tell their friends and
colleagues they're voting for candidate A, while in fact voting for B,C, or D.
The Trump hot-take comes as another deflection, but it seems that his base
supporters could care less.
On a lighter note, the Onion hits the nail on the head once again:
The selective outrage regarding Trump's boorish behavior and Hillary
Clinton's bloodthirtsy and dangerous policy stances is profound.
In 2013, Clinton says,
"To have a no-fly zone you have to take out all of the air defenses, many
of which are located in populated areas. So our missiles, even if they are
standoff missiles so we're not putting our pilots at risk- you're going to
kill a lot of Syrians," Clinton admitted. She then expressed concern that
would make that "intervention that people talk about so glibly" a
full-fledged "American and NATO involvement where you take a lot of
civilians."
3 days ago, a Rueters report says:
"In a departure from the Obama administration, [Clinton] supports the
establishment of a no-fly zone over Syria and has called for an intensified
air campaign by the U.S.-led coalition."
See, it's okay when Clinton 'glibly' advocates for military escalation that
is guaranteed - by her own admission - to kill innocent civilians. Like a Hindu
goddess of death, she is in her rights to decide when it is acceptable to
"take" civilians.
But god forbid Trump mentions wanting to f*ck someone who he thinks is
attractive. There is no place for that kind of talk in Hillary's civilized
world!
Trump admitted to past sexual assualts, "hitting on married women by
kissing them & grabbing their p***y".
Far worse than expressing sexual desire towards another person. Agreed
that HClinton is worse. Trump sexually assaulting 10s of women, is lower on
the scale of moral atrocities than killing 1000s of innocent civilians.
Speaking of killing innocent civilians, your friendly reminder that the
entire Real Basket of Deplorables cohort of US politicians, including 0bama,
P Ryan, HClinton, Trump; kill 45K USians/yr per Harvard Public Health Profs,
by their continual blockage of Canada-style MedicareForAll, e.g. another
ANNUAL killing of 1000 of innocent (USian) civilians.
I believe part of the context is that Trump is boasting how his fame
gets him a lot of beautiful women and sex. This is undoubtedly true -
just look at Rupert Murdoch's recent marital history. The boasting (and
vulgarity) are such a part of his personality. It's odious and I wouldn't
want any of my female friends to associate with him, but compared to
killing 500,000 kids with Iraqi sanctions, I'd say it's relatively
unimportant in the scheme of things.
Henry Kissinger: "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac." He got to
screw Jill St. John, and a whole lot of Vietnamese, Cambodians,
Laotians, and me and my fellow troops, among others.
We're all screwed, us ordinary people. Don't even have the option
of "laying back and enjoying it." Too bad we don't have an organizing
principle we can coalesce around, to defeat the parasites and mass
murderers and enable a world of decency and comity and viable
stability…
So I just went to the
NY Times
"Politics" page at 9:30AM (Eastern
Time). Here is a list of the articles, in order. For your reading pleasure or
convenience, I have
bolded the articles not
about Donald
Trump. Note their position in the list.
Lewd Donald Trump Tape Is a Breaking Point for Many in the G.O.P.
By JONATHAN MARTIN, MAGGIE HABERMAN and ALEXANDER BURNS
Inside Trump Tower in Manhattan. Donald J. Trump is facing increasing
pressure in his own party to end his candidacy.
Pressure built on the candidate to withdraw from the presidential campaign
as party leaders urged the G.O.P. to shift its focus to down-ballot
contests.
Donald J. Trump waves to supporters outside Trump Tower in New York on
Saturday.
NEWS ANALYSIS
Donald Trump's Conduct Was Excused Again and Again. But Not This Time.
By MICHAEL BARBARO and PATRICK HEALY
It turns out that even the most self-interested members of the political
class, the true weather vanes swinging in the wind, have their limits.
Why Republicans Are Probably Stuck With Donald Trump
By ALAN RAPPEPORT
Unless he becomes incapacitated or quits, getting rid of him is, legally and
logistically, "the equivalent of a triple bank shot."
Donald Trump the Showman, Now Caught in the Klieg Lights
By JIM RUTENBERG 5:00 AM ET
Donald J. Trump deftly used the blending of news and entertainment to build
a brand, and then a campaign. But all that drama has turned into a big,
messy show.
Graphic: More Than 150 Republican Leaders Don't Support Donald Trump.
Here's When They Reached Their Breaking Point.
By KAREN YOURISH, LARRY BUCHANAN and ALICIA PARLAPIANO
Which statements caused Republicans to bail on Donald Trump.
Presidential Debate: What to Watch For
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE 5:00 AM ET
To achieve anything resembling a victory, Donald J. Trump needs to focus on
the most compelling parts of his message: trade, the threat of terrorism,
and the creation of jobs.
Women React With Fury to Donald Trump's Remarks, but Some Offer Support
By ABBY GOODNOUGH and WINNIE HU
What to tell a 10-year-old daughter? Why hasn't Mr. Trump outgrown the
locker-room talk? These are among the questions being asked across the
country.
Men Say Trump's Remarks on Sex and Women Are Beyond the Pale
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEŃA
Men of many backgrounds and parts of the country had varied opinions on how
men talk, but they agreed that Mr. Trump's version was unacceptable.
Donald Trump's Long Record of Degrading Women
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
The candidate has a history of insulting or unwelcome conduct that goes back
several decades, The New York Times has found.
John McCain Withdraws Support for Donald Trump After Disclosure of
Recording
By ALAN RAPPEPORT
Mr. McCain became the latest party leader to distance himself from the
nominee after a recording showed Mr. Trump speaking about women in lewd and
degrading terms.
Paul Ryan, Reluctant Supporter, Weighs Response to Donald Trump's Remarks
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Mr. Ryan uninvited Mr. Trump from a rally on Saturday, and said he was
"sickened" by Mr. Trump's remarks about women. But he did not withdraw his
support.
Graphic: Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell Reject Donald Trump's Words, Over
and Over, but Not His Candidacy
By LARRY BUCHANAN, ALICIA PARLAPIANO and KAREN YOURISH
How the two top Republicans in Congress have responded to Mr. Trump's
comments.
Donald Trump Apology Caps Day of Outrage Over Lewd Tape
By ALEXANDER BURNS, MAGGIE HABERMAN and JONATHAN MARTIN
A vulgar discussion recorded in 2005 on a soap opera set added to evidence
that Mr. Trump has a record of sexist behavior.
Donald Trump's Apology That Wasn't
By MAGGIE HABERMAN
In a video expressing regret over his lewd comments, Mr. Trump remained
defiant, calling the disclosure a "distraction" and used it to renew
political and personal attacks on Hillary Clinton.
Donald Trump: King of the Old Boys' Club, and Perhaps Its Destroyer
By SUSAN DOMINUS
A taped conversation involving the Republican nominee shows a world women
rarely see, and may not forget before Election Day.
Can't Find a Plan on HealthCare.gov? One May Be Picked for You.
By ROBERT PEAR
Under a new policy to make sure people maintain insurance coverage in 2017,
the government may automatically enroll them.
What Options Does the U.S. Have After Accusing Russia of Hacks?
By DAVID E. SANGER and NICOLE PERLROTH
Pentagon and intelligence officials have been debating how to deter future
attacks while controlling the potential escalation of a cyberconflict.
To Redefine Homestretch, Hillary Clinton Cues the Children
By NICK CORASANITI
"Measure," a new ad that begins with girls checking their heights against
wall rulers, aims to stand out near the end of a negative campaign season.
Leaked Speech Excerpts Show a Hillary Clinton at Ease With Wall
Street
By AMY CHOZICK, NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and MICHAEL BARBARO
According to documents posted online by WikiLeaks, Mrs. Clinton displayed an
easy comfort with business and embraced unfettered trade in paid speeches to
financial firms.
Newly Released Hillary Clinton Emails Offer Glimpse at Husband's
Advice
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and ERIC LICHTBLAU
The State Department began releasing emails the F.B.I. collected during its
investigation into her use of a private email server.
Billy Bush, a cousin of former President George W. Bush, in August.
Billy Bush Says He's Ashamed by Lewd Talk With Donald Trump
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM and JOHN KOBLIN
Mr. Bush, a cousin of President George W. Bush, said he was "less mature,
and acted foolishly" in a 2005 conversation with Mr. Trump about women.
Imagine if the sexual harassment and rape claims against Bill Clinton were
given the same amount of exposure? We know Trump is a lewd, sexist, buffoon,
but it was Bill who lied for six months about getting blowjobs from a 20 year
old intern in the Oval Office.
The Guardian this morning has a huge front page spread about Trump but not a
mention of the Wikileaks release of the Podesta emails.
The MSM just don't give a shit about their credibility.
I just have to note this. I remember how well argued and coordinated the
defense of Bill Clinton was. I believed it at first. Do you remember that he
couldn't have possibly had sex in the oval office because it is sooooo
busy??? (I still think the most outrageous lie is trying to convince people
that the president works hard). I could imagine the president having a
tryst…but in the Oval office!?!!?? don't be ridiculous.
That people come in and out (dirty side long glance) of the oval office
all day unexpectedly????
And of course, the despicable character assassination of Monica …by "pro
women" people.
I noticed that as well. Same at the Guardian - their main anti-Trump
pieces today have comments turned off. Mustn't have the "plebs" mention
Bill Clinton's past or bring up the Wikileaks Podesta emails!
I'm surprised not to see anything here about the "political bombshell" of Trump's latest sexist
remarks.
As I listen to the talking heads bloviate about what a "death blow" this is to the Trump campaign,
it occurs to me that if the Repubs could engineer Trump's withdrawal from the top of the ticket,
they could probably beat Hillary with Pence. They would have to arrange it so that Trump goes
agreeably - should not be too hard to do, since many doubt if he WANTS to be president - and Pence
could pledge that he would carry forward all of Trump's wonderful Screw the Establishment policies.
Trump without the messy Trump_vs_deep_states.
Disgusting as Trump is, I'm sure not looking forward to the howls of misogyny that will be
coming from the Clinton camp. And, just another distraction from talking about policy.
1. Clinton is corrupt (again), liar (still), dishonest (again), warmonger (still) etc. Trump
is racist(still), bigot (again), misogynist (still), Hitler (Putin, Ahmedinejad)…. gets tedious
after the 20th time.
2. I think Trump does it on purpose as a response to a Clinton dump. It looks like her GS speeches
are out today so the networks can cover Trump's latest bigoted statement and ignore Clinton insulting
the voters and sucking up to the oligarchs.
"... "In my lifetime I cannot remember anything like the scepticism about these values that we see today," said Suma Chakrabarti, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. ..."
"... There was much discussion this week about the underlying causes of that scepticism - low growth, stagnant wages and other scars of the 2008 global financial crisis - together with calls for governments to do more to ensure the benefits of globalisation are distributed more widely. ..."
"... Lou Jiwei, China's finance minister, told reporters on Friday, the current "political risks" would in the immediate future lead only to "superficial changes" for the global economy. But underlying them was a deeper trend of "deglobalisation". ..."
The world's economic elite spent this week invoking fears of protectionism and the
existential
crisis facing globalisation
.... ... ...
Mr Trump has raised the possibility of trying to renegotiate the terms of the US sovereign debt
much as he did repeatedly with his own business debts as a property developer. He also has proposed
imposing punitive tariffs on imports from China and Mexico and ripping up existing US trade pacts.
... ... ...
"Once a tariff has been imposed on a country's exports, it is in that country's best interest
to retaliate, and when it does, both countries end up worse off," IMF economists wrote.
It is not just angst over Mr Trump. There are similar concerns over Brexit and the rise of populist
parties elsewhere in Europe. All present their own threats to the advance of the US-led path of economic
liberalisation pursued since Keynes and his peers gathered at Bretton Woods in 1944.
"In my lifetime I cannot remember anything like the scepticism about these values that we
see today," said Suma Chakrabarti, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
There was much discussion this week about the underlying causes of that scepticism - low growth,
stagnant wages and other scars of the 2008 global financial crisis - together with calls for governments
to do more to ensure the benefits of globalisation are distributed more widely.
Lou Jiwei, China's finance minister, told reporters on Friday, the current "political risks" would
in the immediate future lead only to "superficial changes" for the global economy. But underlying
them was a deeper trend of "deglobalisation".
"... Weak global trade, fears that the U.K. is marching towards a hard Brexit , and polls indicating that the U.S. election remains a tighter call than markets are pricing in have led a bevy of analysts to redouble their warnings that a backlash over globalization is poised to roil global financial markets-with profound consequences for the real economy and investment strategies. ..."
"... From the economists and politicians at the annual IMF meeting in Washington to strategists on Wall Street trying to advise clients, everyone seems to be pondering a future in which cooperation and global trade may look much different than they do now. ..."
"... "The main risk with potentially tough negotiating tactics is that trade partners could panic, especially if global coordination evaporates." ..."
Weak global trade, fears that the U.K. is marching towards a
hard Brexit , and polls indicating that the U.S. election remains a
tighter call than markets are
pricing in have led a bevy of analysts to redouble their warnings that a backlash over globalization
is poised to roil global financial markets-with profound consequences for the real economy and investment
strategies.
From the economists and politicians at the annual
IMF meeting in Washington to strategists on Wall Street trying to advise clients, everyone seems
to be pondering a future in which cooperation and
global trade may look much different than they do now.
Brexit
Suggestions that the U.K. will prioritize control over its migration policy at the expense of
open access to Europe's single market in negotiations to leave the European Union-a strategy that's
being dubbed a "hard Brexit"-loomed large over global markets. The U.K. government is "strongly supportive
of open markets, free markets, open economies, free trade," said
Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond during a Bloomberg Television interview in New York
on Thursday. "But we have a problem-and it's not just a British problem, it's a developed-world problem-in
keeping our populations engaged and supportive of our market capitalism, our economic model."
Trade
Citing the rising anti-trade sentiment, analysts from Bank of America Merrill Lynch warned that
"events show nations are becoming less willing to cooperate, more willing to contest," and a
backlash against inequality is likely to trigger more activist fiscal policies. Looser government
spending in developed countries-combined with trade protectionism and wealth redistribution-could
reshape global investment strategies, unleashing a wave of inflation, the bank argued, amid a looming
war against inequality.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew did his part to push for more openness. During an interview in
Washington on Thursday, he said that efforts to boost trade, combined with a more equitable distribution
of the fruits of economic growth, are key to ensuring
U.S. prosperity. Rolling back on globalization would be counterproductive to any attempt to boost
median incomes, he added.
Trump
Without mentioning him by name, Lew's comments appeared to nod to Donald Trump, who some believe
could take the U.S. down a more isolationist trading path should he be elected president in November.
"The emergence of Donald Trump as a political force reflects a mood of growing discontent about immigration,
globalization and the distribution of wealth," write analysts at Fathom Consulting, a London-based
research firm. Their central scenario is that a Trump administration might be benign for the U.S.
economy. "However, in our downside scenario, Donald Dark, global trade falls sharply and a global
recession looms. In this world, isolationism wins, not just in the U.S., but globally," they caution.
Analysts at Standard Chartered Plc agree that the tail risks of a Trump presidency could be significant.
"The main risk with potentially tough negotiating tactics is that trade partners could panic, especially
if global coordination evaporates." They add that business confidence could take a big hit in this
context. "The global trade system could descend into a spiral of trade tariffs, reminiscent of what
happened after the
Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930 , and ultimately a trade war, possibly accompanied by foreign-exchange
devaluations; this would be a 'lose-lose' deal for all."
Market participants are also concerned that populism could take root under a Hillary Clinton administration.
"We believe the liberal base's demands on a Clinton Administration could lead to an overly expansive
federal government with aggressive regulators," write analysts at Barclays Plc. "If the GOP does
not unify, Clinton may expand President Obama's use of executive authority to accomplish her goals."
Thus my nightmares about the coming election. Consider:
Trump:
He promises to "make America great again."
("Deutschland uber alles," anyone?) He rants against immigrants and Muslims and
conniving foreign nations like Mexico and China. (Jews and gypsies get a pass this
time.) He is a bully. He promises hope to those who have been left behind economically
and socially. He attracts huge and very devoted crowds at his rallies. He has no
coherent program, at least yet-you have to believe in him as a great leader.
Whom does he remind you of, at least vaguely?
Clinton:
She is secretive to a fault, perhaps
paranoid in her pursuit of power. There are hints of hidden illnesses, so reminiscent of
Uncle Joe. An unhidden lust for money at any cost. Considering "two for the price of
one" (Bill and Hill), there are the key operatives who conveniently die when in
disfavor. They do not hesitate to use the Justice Department, and especially the IRS, to
persecute opponents. She runs a tight operation, as secretive as she is personally, and
has an ideological platform for totally transforming America.
Whom does she remind you of, at least vaguely?
Again, let me be clear. I do not think Trump has a
holocaust in mind; he is just an opportunist using "the other" both domestically and
abroad to gain power. And I do not think Clinton has the stamina for sustained great
purges and great gulags. Yes, she has a lust for power, but she has even more lust for
getting rich through politics. She can be bought, and has been, constantly.
It is these characteristics, however, that are so
disturbing. They build on what has come before, but suggest a revolutionary escalation.
Every president during my lifetime has added to the power of the American empire and the
deep state, but now we seem to be at an unprecedented and transformative junction.
This may actually help the Donald mobilize his base of pissed-off white
guys. I mean, how do you think
they
talk about women in their
locker rooms, truck stops, and on the unemployment line?
I don't recall those women actually being on the ballot for
president.
Good to know you wouldn't be offended to hear a bunch of women
treat you like a piece of meat and brag about how they attempted to
"nail you" even ignoring the fact that you were married? Nothing
offensive there right? You'd love it if women spent their time looking
at your pants straining to figure out the size of the bulge so they
can discuss it in detail instead of I don't know, actually listening
to you? It's classy and professional behavior(and yes Donald was there
for work).
Hey, I do have to respect that you've adopted his strategy also of
excusing his behavior by making this all about everyone else too-
incredibly adult. The "mommy they did it first" defense utilized by
Donald Trump, his defenders and 3 to 7 year olds throughout the US.
Right. Stop the presses. Trump is lascivious. That's news to who,
exactly?
And what's next? We learn that Trump sometimes farts in public? Or worse,
lets go the occasional SBD? "Revealed" to deflect the latest revelation of
Clinton greed and corruption, I'm sure.
Sheesh … what a low, debased and sad spectacle all around.
"But for all Trump's many faults and flaws, he saw things that were true
and important-and that few other leaders in his party have acknowledged in
the past two decades" [David Frum,
The Atlantic
].
Trump saw that Republican voters are much less religious in behavior
than they profess to pollsters. He saw that the social-insurance state
has arrived to stay. He saw that Americans regard healthcare as a right,
not a privilege. He saw that Republican voters had lost their optimism
about their personal futures-and the future of their country. He saw that
millions of ordinary people who do not deserve to be dismissed as bigots
were sick of the happy talk and reality-denial that goes by the too
generous label of "political correctness." He saw that the immigration
polices that might have worked for the mass-production economy of the
1910s don't make sense in the 2010s. He saw that rank-and-file
Republicans had become nearly as disgusted with the power of money in
politics as rank-and-file Democrats long have been. He saw that
Republican presidents are elected, when they are elected, by employees as
well as entrepreneurs. He saw these things, and he was right to see them.
Thanks for the link. Interesting and depressing. A snippet:
" Oligarchy is rule by the few. Plutocracy is rule by the wealthy.
Corporatocracy is a society governed or controlled by corporations. We have
all three."
"... It's because they couldn't get assurances from him that his anti-globalization talk was just talk, unlike Hillary whom they have gotten assurances that the outsourcing bloodbath will continue unabated. ..."
"... If Trump tears up NAFTA and the TPP then Americans will, at least, have gotten SOMETHING out of "their" government over the past 35 years. Some little morsel of democratic representation. Something that can be marked as a turning point from 35 years of escalating political and economic corruption that has put civilization on the verge of implosion into fascist revolutions and world war repeating, verbatim, the history of the 1920s and 30s. ..."
"... For a $10-million donation to the Clinton Foundation, Hillary gave the thumbs up for the use of child soldiers in South Sudan as SoS. A shady businessman had an eye on African mining rights and regime change. (Hillary data-shredded "business" related emails on an illegal private server; smashed her smartphones with a hammer; to destroy evidence.) ..."
"... Really? Stiffing his employees. Stiffing his creditors. Stiffing the tax man. All "perfectly legal". ..."
"... Is not this is what neoliberalism is about? Especially for the employees part ..."
If Trump is all talk, why are all the establishment neocons as hysterical over him as the PC pearl
clutchers?
It's because they couldn't get assurances from him that his anti-globalization talk was just
talk, unlike Hillary whom they have gotten assurances that the outsourcing bloodbath will continue
unabated.
If Trump tears up NAFTA and the TPP then Americans will, at least, have gotten SOMETHING out
of "their" government over the past 35 years. Some little morsel of democratic representation.
Something that can be marked as a turning point from 35 years of escalating political and economic
corruption that has put civilization on the verge of implosion into fascist revolutions and world
war repeating, verbatim, the history of the 1920s and 30s.
Trump is a weasel of a businessman and a weasel of a politician (par for the course on the latter.)
But he made all his money legally.
The concept of pure corruption, however, might suit the Clintons, given they have pocketed
over $100-million in bribe-related wealth.
They deregulated the banks for kickbacks from Wall Street. Set the stage for the 2000s Bust
Out - a complex web of fraud among all manner of banker including cheerleading central banker
- that culminated in global economic collapse.
For money from the burgeoning private prison industry, they labeled African American youth
"super predators" with "no conscience; no empathy" (a most vicious of racist dog whistle that
blows anything Trump has said out of the water.) Hillary called for a police crackdown ("we can
talk about how they ended up that way, but they first must be brought to heel") that kicked off
the era of mass incarceration; produced a militant police force filled with racist thugs and cowards;
and created the Black Lives Matter movement.
For a $10-million donation to the Clinton Foundation, Hillary gave the thumbs up for the use
of child soldiers in South Sudan as SoS. A shady businessman had an eye on African mining rights
and regime change. (Hillary data-shredded "business" related emails on an illegal private server;
smashed her smartphones with a hammer; to destroy evidence.)
All this (and MOAR) might not be pure corruption. But something around 99.99% pure. Like Ivory
soap, except evil.
Trump is small potatoes compared to what the real Wolves of Wall Street did to the global economy.
But if he did break the law he should be thrown in jail, right along with the Clintons and all
the other bribe-taking criminals.
nikbez -> pgl... , -1
Is not this is what neoliberalism is about?
Especially for the employees part
"... It's a pattern not just for the Clinton campaign, but liberals generally: the "irredeemable" "basket of deplorables"; the basement dwelling millenials. ..."
"... Worse, the Democrat approach is calculated: As Bernard Shaw says: "A blow in cold blood neither can nor should be forgiven." ..."
"... It's difficult to convince someone whose life is objectively worse that their life is better. And it's disengenuous to try. ..."
"... Neoliberal capitalism is not sustainable for these people. ..."
"... Neither party seems to be aligned with the interests of my union brothers and sisters. I'm sick and tired of hearing the kayfabe crap every election season about how I should vote dem to keep the evil GOPers from busting unions, when in reality both parties seem more or less committed to the corporate agenda of employment crapification. ..."
"... I believe in union's, but part of the decline can be directly laid at the feet of leadership that either knowingly or stupidly help elect people who aren't with their union members in any meaningful fashion. ..."
"... Some of the unions are straight out sell outs (I'm looking at you AFL/CIO – but the AFL kind of always has been, that's it's history, but now it's pretty appalling the positions being taken). Not sure about Teamsters and smaller unions are hit and miss I guess only a few are radical. The unions were defanged long ago in order to have un-threatening corporate unions and of course labor was the loser. But that still doesn't excuse their horrible political choices. ..."
"... Why in the hell are the Democrats parading around like they are the default? Oh my! The Republicans could get the White House snatched from the Dems! Why should an independent give a damn if the Democrats lose? If they are so freaking important, change your policies to win their votes legitimately you HACKs! ..."
"Fact-checking the vice-presidential debate between Kaine and Pence" [
WaPo ]. On the "insult-driven campaign" back-and-forth, where WaPo proffers a lovingly compiled
list of Trump's insults: If smearing an entire cohort of disfavored voters as racist and sexist
#BernieBros isn't an insult, I don't know what is. And that approach isn't isolated: It's
a pattern not just for the Clinton campaign, but liberals generally: the "irredeemable" "basket
of deplorables"; the basement dwelling millenials.
Worse, the Democrat approach is calculated: As Bernard Shaw says: "A blow in cold blood
neither can nor should be forgiven." So miss me with the insult discussion.
... ... ...
"I Listened to a Trump Supporter" [
Extra News Feed ]. The foreclosure crisis destroyed her landscraping business. Then she lost
her own house. "She told me that every week, it seemed there was another default letter, another
foreclosure, another bank demanding more blood from her dry veins. To her, that pile of default
notices and demands for payment looked suspiciously similar to Hillary Clinton's top donor list."
And she's not wrong.
"The Trump candidacy succeeded because of a massive revolt among rank-and-file Republicans
against their leaders. Should the Trump candidacy fail, as now seems likely, those leaders stand
ready to deny that the revolt ever happened. Instead, they'll have a story of a more or less normal
Republican undone only because (as Pence said last night) 'he's not a polished politician.' The
solution for 2020? Bring back the professionals-and return to business as usual" [David Frum,
The Atlantic ]. "It's unlikely to work. But you can understand why it's an attractive message
to a party elite that discovered to its horror that it had lost its base and lost its way."
"Trump faces new battleground threat from steelworkers: The United Steelworkers union is pledging
to make sure every one of its workers in make-or-break states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and
Ohio are well aware that the Republican presidential candidate may have circumvented U.S. laws
to import Chinese steel" [
Politico ].
"I Listened to a Trump Supporter" [Extra News Feed].
Thank the heavens the Banks made it out okay though. All those nice people might have had to
go through the same thing.
"It's difficult to convince someone whose life is objectively worse that their life is better.
And it's disengenuous to try. You can break down the specifics, sure.
What is the author talking about? Their lives ARE NOT better.
"Neoliberal capitalism is not sustainable for these people."
It is not sustainable period! What do you think will happen when all these people disappear?
My primary political concern is labor so why should I get behind a dem or a GOPer?
Neither party seems to be aligned with the interests of my union brothers and sisters. I'm
sick and tired of hearing the kayfabe crap every election season about how I should vote dem to
keep the evil GOPers from busting unions, when in reality both parties seem more or less committed
to the corporate agenda of employment crapification.
My union's bulletin arrived yesterday with a full color cover of Hillary touting how they are
with her.
I believe in union's, but part of the decline can be directly laid at the feet of leadership
that either knowingly or stupidly help elect people who aren't with their union members in any
meaningful fashion.
Some of the unions are straight out sell outs (I'm looking at you AFL/CIO – but the AFL kind
of always has been, that's it's history, but now it's pretty appalling the positions being taken).
Not sure about Teamsters and smaller unions are hit and miss I guess only a few are radical. The
unions were defanged long ago in order to have un-threatening corporate unions and of course labor
was the loser. But that still doesn't excuse their horrible political choices.
Al Gore: "The former vice president, a climate activist, will speak about not just Clinton's
plan to address global warming, but also the idea that voting for an independent presidential
candidate could deliver the White House to Republicans in the same way that Ralph Nader's candidacy
helped undermine his presidential bid in 2000."
Why in the hell are the Democrats parading around like they are the default? Oh my! The Republicans
could get the White House snatched from the Dems! Why should an independent give a damn if the
Democrats lose? If they are so freaking important, change your policies to win their votes legitimately
you HACKs!
Nah, just parade around an old loser… that will get those kids and independents invigorated
for sure! He made a movie! - ARGHH!!!! (this infuriates me).
"... The Military Industrial Complex with the Saudi/Qatari/Gulf Mafia in cahoots with The Religious Cult We're No Longer Allowed To Mention, have it in the bag. ..."
"... Expect another war in the Middle East shortly after she's crowned. ..."
"... Oh please. Yeah I'd sooner eat a cyanide sandwich than vote for that corrupt witch. ..."
"... It's amusing to see the Guardian claim that it has "no bias", like when Marxists argue that their doctrine is a 'science' instead of a set of political beliefs. ..."
"... Do the 1%ers and biased media believe that even if Clinton wins that the Trump supporters will just shrug their shoulders? Not a chance. ..."
"... 2020 is going to be the most epic fought POTUS election in the history of America, that's if CLinton can stay upright and read the teleprompter for 4 years. ..."
"... The only winner here will be globalist bankers and mega multinationals, the losers will, as usual, be all of the common people. ..."
"... The Guardian will be 3 times a loser, despite it's supersonic propaganda campaign. 1) Brexit vote 2) Corbyn re-elected 3) Trump will win ..."
"... In terms of comparing how much they are working Trump is simply working harder. He was campaigning yesterday and is today as well. It shows how dedicated he is for this whilst Hillary is in hiding and no doubt will be until Sunday !!! ..."
"... At a townhall two days ago in Pennsylvania the Hillary Clinton campaign used a child actor, a daughter of a democrat state senator from Pennsylvania, to further her narrative. ..."
"... The American people are like a sleeping elephant, sedated by a tame and corrupt media, yet when awoken with the truth they will trample everything in their path. Clinton is running out of tranquilisers. ..."
The Military Industrial Complex with the Saudi/Qatari/Gulf Mafia in cahoots with The Religious
Cult We're No Longer Allowed To Mention, have it in the bag.
The Guardian is an independent voice in this year's election. That means no bias
It's amusing to see the Guardian claim that it has "no bias", like when Marxists argue
that their doctrine is a 'science' instead of a set of political beliefs.
Do the 1%ers and biased media believe that even if Clinton wins that the Trump supporters
will just shrug their shoulders? Not a chance.
2020 is going to be the most epic fought
POTUS election in the history of America, that's if CLinton can stay upright and read the teleprompter
for 4 years.
Trump and Sanders supporters are just getting started.
In terms of comparing how much they are working Trump is simply working harder. He was campaigning
yesterday and is today as well. It shows how dedicated he is for this whilst Hillary is in hiding
and no doubt will be until Sunday !!!
At a townhall two days ago in Pennsylvania the Hillary Clinton campaign used a child actor,
a daughter of a democrat state senator from Pennsylvania, to further her narrative.
Unfortunately all about Hillary is fake and as the media don't even pretend to practice journalism
concerning Hillary Clinton, citizen researchers have to do the media's job. Here is a video explaining
what took place.
The American people are like a sleeping elephant, sedated by a tame and corrupt media, yet
when awoken with the truth they will trample everything in their path. Clinton is running out
of tranquilisers.
"... I usually remark that one must look at the 'second tier' of a political cabal to predict future actions by a 'candidate.' The people surrounding the 'candidate' and their track records on issues in their sphere of expertise tell the mind sets that 'drive' policy. Trump comes from the business world, where delegation of responsibility is standard for larger enterprises. His 'advisors' are key to future performance. Clinton seems to be encapsulated in a bubble of sycophants. So, the same rationale applies to her as applies to Trump. Who are her main 'advisors?' ..."
"... As anyone possessed of discernment would have noticed in the 2008 campaign, Obama surrounded himself with 'less than progressive' advisors. His subsequent governance followed suit so that we find the nation in the mess it is in today. ..."
"... Finally, all signs are that the Russians are not taking this slide towards bellicosity lightly. The Russians are demonstrating a clear sighted view of Americas dysfunctions. For the Russians to hold massive Civil Defense drills now is a clear message; "We are preparing for the worst. How about you?" ..."
"... The tone of this piece is remarkably similar to a long article Bacevich headed in a recent Harper's article on US foreign policy. Presented as a roundtable discussion, it centered on the dogged insistence of some State Department-tied clown that Russia is The Aggressor, while Bacevich and a two other participants nicked away at her position, largely, as I recall, by granting the Russians some right to a regional interest. While they slowed her down, the great missing element was a characterization of global aims of the US her position reflected. ..."
"... In short, Bacevich, a good liberal, will not name the beast of US imperialism. As a result he makes it seem as though any policy can be judged on a truncated logic of its own, and so policy debates fragment into a disconnected series of arguments that bid for "fresh thinking" without daring to consider the underlying drivers. It's one of the reasons Eisenhower, with his criticism of the military-industrial complex, still comes across as a guiding light. ..."
"... I'll put it out there: We have too many upper-middle-class white women who claim to understand foreign policy who should have been subject to a draft to concentrate their minds on what happens when a person is forced into the military and sent off to drive around with a rifle as people lob bombs at them. Madeleine Albright is the classic case: "What good is our exquisite military, if I, a compassion-challenged expert, can't waste a lot of lives on my follies?" Bacevich's personal history means that he knows what war is about (as did Gen. Sherman). ..."
"... Perry is forthright when he says: "Today, the danger of some sort of a nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War and most people are blissfully unaware of this danger." He also tells us that the nuclear danger is "growing greater every year" and that even a single nuclear detonation "could destroy our way of life." ..."
"... Perry does not use his memoir to score points or settle grudges. He does not sensationalize. But, as a defense insider and keeper of nuclear secrets, he is clearly calling American leaders to account for what he believes are very bad decisions, such as the precipitous expansion of NATO, right up to the Russian border,* and President George W. Bush's withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, originally signed by President Nixon. ..."
"... Interesting comments by Mr. Perry who had a starring role in 1979's "First Strike" propaganda film where he advocated for the MX ICBM system. ..."
"... So what's a voter to do? ..."
"... Well, I would hope that informed voters who have a healthy fear of the military-industrial-political complex will vote to keep the scariest of the two re: nuclear war out of office. This particular concern is the reason why I will in all likelihood be voting for the man I've been ridiculing for most of the past year, simply because I am terrified of the prospect of Hillary Clinton as Commander-in-Chief. ..."
"... Trump is a bad choice for a long list of reasons, but the most outrageous things he has proposed require legislation and I think it will be possible to defeat his essential sociopathy on that level, since he will face not only the opposition of the Dem Party, but also MSM and a significant number of people from his own party. ..."
"... But when it comes to the President's ability to put American 'boots on the ground' vs. some theoretical enemy, no such approval from Congress is necessary. Hillary Clinton will be in a position to get us into a costly war without having to overcome any domestic opposition to pull it off. ..."
"... What scares me is my knowledge of her career-long investment in trying to convince the generals and the admirals that she is a 'tough bitch', ala Margaret Thatcher, who will not hesitate to pull the trigger. An illuminating article in the NY Times revealed that she always ..."
"... All of her experience re: foreign policy that she's been touting is actually the scariest thing about her, when you look at what her historical dispositions have been. The "No Fly Zone" she's been pushing since last year is just the latest example of her instinct to act recklessly, as it directly invites a military confrontation with Russia. ..."
"... Her greatest political fear-that she might one day be accused by Republicans of being "weak on America's enemies"-is what we have to fear ..."
"... How reckless is Trump likely to be? Well, like Clinton-and all other civilian Commanders-in-Chief, Trump be utterly dependent upon the advice of military professionals in deciding what kind of responses to order. But in the position of The Decider, there is one significant difference between Trump and Clinton. Trump is at least willing and able to 1) view Putin as someone who is not a threat to the United States and 2) is able/willing to question the rationality of America's continued participation in NATO. ..."
"... Of Harding's speechifying, H.L. Mencken wrote at the time, "It reminds me of a string of wet sponges." Mencken characterized Harding's rhetoric as "so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash." So, too, with Hillary Clinton. She is our Warren G. Harding. In her oratory, flapdoodle and balderdash live on. ..."
"... At least Harding was aware of the damage his friends caused to him: "I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies in a fight. But my friends, my goddamned friends, they're the ones who keep me walking the floor at nights! " ..."
"... As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Harding had the political courage to pardon, and free from prison, Eugene V. Debs for his crime of giving an anti-war speech the Wilson administration did not like. ..."
"... Harding did not believe in foreign involvements and was never personally implicated in the financial corruption of his administration. ..."
"... If Clinton is to be compared to Harding, it would be to view Clinton as a "new" Harding who now believes she is well qualified to be President, wants to do much foreign military involvement, perhaps resulting in war, who is now trusting of her sycopathic friends to give her good advice, and who is personally involved in selling government favors (via the Clinton foundation) ..."
"... HRC is more dangerous because she is the 1st woman to become a serious contender for a position that has traditionally been considered a "man's job". Therefore she believes she must not, in any way, be perceived as "soft" or lacking "toughness" or aggressiveness. She feels compelled to "out-macho" the macho guys. ..."
"... The only bright spot in the prospect of a Hellary Klinton presidency is the probability that she may not survive long enough to start a war with Russia. I wonder how the training for the Mark I body double is coming? ..."
"... On the other hand, why should anyone think that a bubble-headed blowhard like Trumpet has the intelligence or gumption to have any effect upon the operations of the Warfare State? When the opinion makers of his own party and the neoliberal leaders of Klinton's party are all riding on the Military-Industrial gravy train looking for the next enemy to keep business booming? ..."
"... And how can anyone with a functioning brain cell think that anything a politician says or promises during an election has any connection to how they will act once elected? Remember Obama, Mr. "Audacity of Hope?" ..."
Prof. Bacevitch has bought up the one overriding problem with this election cycle: Lack of
substance.
I usually remark that one must look at the 'second tier' of a political cabal to predict
future actions by a 'candidate.' The people surrounding the 'candidate' and their track records
on issues in their sphere of expertise tell the mind sets that 'drive' policy. Trump comes from
the business world, where delegation of responsibility is standard for larger enterprises. His
'advisors' are key to future performance. Clinton seems to be encapsulated in a bubble of sycophants.
So, the same rationale applies to her as applies to Trump. Who are her main 'advisors?'
As anyone possessed of discernment would have noticed in the 2008 campaign, Obama surrounded
himself with 'less than progressive' advisors. His subsequent governance followed suit so that
we find the nation in the mess it is in today.
Finally, all signs are that the Russians are not taking this slide towards bellicosity
lightly. The Russians are demonstrating a clear sighted view of Americas dysfunctions. For the
Russians to hold massive Civil Defense drills now is a clear message; "We are preparing for the
worst. How about you?"
As always, Prof. Bacevitch is a joy to read. Live long, prosper, and hope those in positions
of power take his message to heart.
The tone of this piece is remarkably similar to a long article Bacevich headed in a recent
Harper's article on US foreign policy. Presented as a roundtable discussion, it centered on the
dogged insistence of some State Department-tied clown that Russia is The Aggressor, while Bacevich
and a two other participants nicked away at her position, largely, as I recall, by granting the
Russians some right to a regional interest. While they slowed her down, the great missing element
was a characterization of global aims of the US her position reflected.
That's pretty much what's going on here. "Do we really need a trillion dollar upgrade to US
nuclear capability?" Good question. But why, oh why, Andrew is it being proposed in the first
place? (Actually O has been pursuing the preliminaries for some time.) There's nothing about feeding
a military-industrial complex, nothing about trying to further distort the Russian economy to
promote instability, nothing about trying to capitalize on the US' military superiority as its
economic hegemony slips away.
In short, Bacevich, a good liberal, will not name the beast of US imperialism. As a result
he makes it seem as though any policy can be judged on a truncated logic of its own, and so policy
debates fragment into a disconnected series of arguments that bid for "fresh thinking" without
daring to consider the underlying drivers. It's one of the reasons Eisenhower, with his criticism
of the military-industrial complex, still comes across as a guiding light.
The round-table in Harper's, for background. One of the "takeaways" that I had is that both
of the women who participated are gratuitously hawkish. I am now tending to favor a universal
draft.
I'll put it out there: We have too many upper-middle-class white women who claim to understand
foreign policy who should have been subject to a draft to concentrate their minds on what happens
when a person is forced into the military and sent off to drive around with a rifle as people
lob bombs at them. Madeleine Albright is the classic case: "What good is our exquisite military,
if I, a compassion-challenged expert, can't waste a lot of lives on my follies?" Bacevich's personal
history means that he knows what war is about (as did Gen. Sherman).
Knowing what war's all about doesn't help much with knowing why wars come about, I'm afraid.
Bacevich is not helpful here. This reminds me of a great article by Graham Allison on bureaucratic
drivers in the Cuban Missile crisis, set out as three competing/complementary theories. Within
its mypoic scope, excellent, but as far as helping with the Cold War context, nada. He went on
to scotomize away in a chair at Harvard, gazing out his very fixed Overton window of permissible
strategic critique.
Wow. I just went to the TomDispatch site to look at Bacevich's work there. He does have a piece
criticizing Trump and HRC in light of Eisenhower, but slaps Eisenhower, appropriately, for various
crap, including the military-industrial complex takeoff. Why is it missing from this article?
At least Eisenhower criticized it.
Surprised that Bacevitch omits the thrust of Jerry Brown's important review:
My Journey at the Nuclear Brink
by William J. Perry, with a foreword by George P. Shultz
Stanford Security Studies, 234 pp., $85.00; $24.95 (paper)
I know of no person who understands the science and politics of modern weaponry better than
William J. Perry, the US Secretary of Defense from 1994 to 1997. When a man of such unquestioned
experience and intelligence issues the stark nuclear warning that is central to his recent
memoir, we should take heed. Perry is forthright when he says: "Today, the danger of some
sort of a nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War and
most people are blissfully unaware of this danger." He also tells us that the nuclear danger
is "growing greater every year" and that even a single nuclear detonation "could destroy our
way of life."
Perry does not use his memoir to score points or settle grudges. He does not sensationalize.
But, as a defense insider and keeper of nuclear secrets, he is clearly calling American leaders
to account for what he believes are very bad decisions, such as the precipitous expansion of
NATO, right up to the Russian border,* and President George W. Bush's withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty, originally signed by President Nixon.
*"The descent down the slippery slope began, I believe, with the premature NATO expansion,
and I soon came to believe that the downsides of early NATO membership for Eastern European
nations were even worse than I had feared" (p. 152).
Well, I would hope that informed voters who have a healthy fear of the military-industrial-political
complex will vote to keep the scariest of the two re: nuclear war out of office. This particular
concern is the reason why I will in all likelihood be voting for the man I've been ridiculing
for most of the past year, simply because I am terrified of the prospect of Hillary Clinton as
Commander-in-Chief.
Trump is a bad choice for a long list of reasons, but the most outrageous things he has
proposed require legislation and I think it will be possible to defeat his essential sociopathy
on that level, since he will face not only the opposition of the Dem Party, but also MSM and a
significant number of people from his own party.
But when it comes to the President's ability to put American 'boots on the ground' vs.
some theoretical enemy, no such approval from Congress is necessary. Hillary Clinton will be in
a position to get us into a costly war without having to overcome any domestic opposition to pull
it off.
What scares me is my knowledge of her career-long investment in trying to convince the
generals and the admirals that she is a 'tough bitch', ala Margaret Thatcher, who will not hesitate
to pull the trigger. An illuminating
article in the NY Times revealed that she always advocates the most muscular and
reckless dispositions of U.S. military forces whenever her opinion is solicited.
All of her experience re: foreign policy that she's been touting is actually the scariest
thing about her, when you look at what her historical dispositions have been. The "No Fly Zone"
she's been pushing since last year is just the latest example of her instinct to act recklessly,
as it directly invites a military confrontation with Russia.
Her willingness to roll the dice, to gamble with other people's lives, is ingrained within
her political personality, of which she is so proud.
Her greatest political fear-that she might one day be accused by Republicans of being "weak
on America's enemies"-is what we have to fear . That fear is what drives
her to the most extreme of war hawk positions, since her foundational strategy is to get out in
front of the criticism she anticipates.
It is what we can count on. She will most assuredly get America into a war within the first
6-9 months of her Presidency, since she will be looking forward to the muscular response she will
order when she is 'tested', as she expects.
How reckless is Trump likely to be? Well, like Clinton-and all other civilian Commanders-in-Chief,
Trump be utterly dependent upon the advice of military professionals in deciding what kind of
responses to order. But in the position of The Decider, there is one significant difference between
Trump and Clinton. Trump is at least willing and able to 1) view Putin as someone who is not a
threat to the United States and 2) is able/willing to question the rationality of America's continued
participation in NATO.
These differences alone are enough to move me to actually vote for someone I find politically
detestable, simply because I fear that the alternative is a high probability of war, and a greatly
enhanced risk of nuclear annihilation-through miscalculation-under a Hillary Clinton Presidency.
Yep. In the meantime, you have to wonder just how bad the false choice between the GOP / Dem
has to be before people vote in numbers for a better third-party candidate? Really, can it possible
get any worse than Trump v. Clinton?
Between this post and the VP debate I am growing comfortable with a decision to vote Green
and will probably continue voting Green in future elections.
Not that this isn't an important issue, but I disagree on the desirability of posing wonkish
questions in presidential debates, in the hopes of proving that someone didn't do enough homework.
Far too much policy is hidden by the constant recourse to bureaucratic language, which often rests
on other policy positions that remain undiscussed. One example: "chained CPI". Talking about it
/ taking it seriously presupposes that you subscribe to the notion that poor people may be told
to eat cardboard if some economist / committee member designated such an adequate replacement
for food. Yet most listeners will not catch on to that fact, were it ever to even come up in a
debate.
Words are just words, especially for politicians. If you want an idea of how they would govern,
go by what they did in the past. Right now we have the choice between a touchy blowhard with bad
hair and a mendacious conniver with bad judgement; you'd be foolish take anything either says
too seriously, even aside from the fact that they're wannabe politicians.
The response to why the nuclear arsenals need to be so large and constantly updated would have
been an interesting one if it had materialized. The fact is even a fairly limited exchange between
other nuclear powers with much smaller arsenals has the potential for rapid climate change that
renders Earth unlivable.
The Cold War notion that you just have to hole up a few days to avoid fallout doesn't really
make any more sense than using these weapons in the first place.
Just along these line, I did some order of magnitude calculations based on the US SLBM fleet.
Since the MIRV warheads are dial a yield, I calculated a range of 1210 – 1915 Megatons.
I know your point is more on the limited exchange scenario; just wanted to point out the destructive
potential of one country's submarine nuclear capability.
Of Harding's speechifying, H.L. Mencken wrote at the time, "It reminds me of a string of
wet sponges." Mencken characterized Harding's rhetoric as "so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps
into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle
of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash." So, too, with
Hillary Clinton. She is our Warren G. Harding. In her oratory, flapdoodle and balderdash live
on.
And when a person keeps pointing out the importance of keeping one's word, it almost always
means that he or she is lying.
At least Harding was aware of the damage his friends caused to him: "I have no trouble
with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies in a fight. But my friends, my goddamned friends,
they're the ones who keep me walking the floor at nights! "
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Harding had the political courage to pardon, and free from
prison, Eugene V. Debs for his crime of giving an anti-war speech the Wilson administration did
not like.
Harding did not believe in foreign involvements and was never personally implicated in
the financial corruption of his administration.
The Presidency was pushed on him, and he admitted felt he was not qualified.
I believe Harding gets a bad rap because he was not the leader of bold actions (wars) and the
corruption of people in his administration was well-documented.
His death was widely mourned in the USA.
As far as long term harm to the country, the do-nothing Harding was not bad for the country.
If Clinton is to be compared to Harding, it would be to view Clinton as a "new" Harding
who now believes she is well qualified to be President, wants to do much foreign military involvement,
perhaps resulting in war, who is now trusting of her sycopathic friends to give her good advice,
and who is personally involved in selling government favors (via the Clinton foundation)
Clinton is probably well coached by well paid advisors in her oratory.
Probably Harding wrote his own..
I would prefer Clinton to be like the old Harding, and the country would muddle through.
All it would take would be for a couple of strategically placed EMPs over the north american
continent ..
and poof . nothing functions anymore . while we get to stand and watch our 'supreme' military
launch their roman candles .
When it comes to war & nukes, I believe that HRC is the more dangerous of the two.
Before I explain, I would like to invite Yves or any female NC reader to consider & give their
POV on what I'm about say.
HRC is more dangerous because she is the 1st woman to become a serious contender for a
position that has traditionally been considered a "man's job". Therefore she believes she must
not, in any way, be perceived as "soft" or lacking "toughness" or aggressiveness. She feels compelled
to "out-macho" the macho guys.
Obviously this could have serious implications in any situation involving escalating tensions.
Negotiation or compromise would be off the table if she thought it could be perceived as soft
or weak (and she contemplates being a 2 term pres.)
What say you NC readers? Is this a justified concern or am I letting male bias color my view?
The only bright spot in the prospect of a Hellary Klinton presidency is the probability
that she may not survive long enough to start a war with Russia. I wonder how the training for
the Mark I body double is coming?
On the other hand, why should anyone think that a bubble-headed blowhard like Trumpet has
the intelligence or gumption to have any effect upon the operations of the Warfare State? When
the opinion makers of his own party and the neoliberal leaders of Klinton's party are all riding
on the Military-Industrial gravy train looking for the next enemy to keep business booming?
And how can anyone with a functioning brain cell think that anything a politician says
or promises during an election has any connection to how they will act once elected? Remember
Obama, Mr. "Audacity of Hope?"
"... Average US wages rose 350% in the 40 years between 1932 and 1972, but only 22% over the next 40 years. The pattern holds similar across the developed world. In other words, for all their hype, the computer and the internet have done less to lift economic growth than the flush toilet. ..."
"... ahem… the computer and the internet sped outsourcing to countries like China. Ask China or India how their economic growth has been since 1972. The author is mixing up several things at once. ..."
"... When so many of our jobs, technology and investment is offshored to China (and elsewhere), the future for innovation is certainly not bright, and this should be obvious to everyone, including the author. ..."
" Average US wages rose 350% in the 40 years between 1932 and 1972, but only 22% over the next
40 years. The pattern holds similar across the developed world. In other words, for all their hype,
the computer and the internet have done less to lift economic growth than the flush toilet."
ahem… the computer and the internet sped outsourcing to countries like China. Ask China or India
how their economic growth has been since 1972. The author is mixing up several things at once.
Great comments, and please allow me to piggyback off them:
When so many of our jobs, technology and investment is offshored to China (and elsewhere), the
future for innovation is certainly not bright, and this should be obvious to everyone, including
the author.
When so many have contributed so much, only to see their jobs and livelihoods offshored again
and again and again, that great jump the others have will then zero out OUR innovation!
I took a $915 million loss on my taxes in 1995, while you, Hillary CLinton, lost $6
billion in taxpayer's money during your tenure as Secretary of State. grunk
Oct 4, 2016 7:52 PM
Clinton Son-in-Law's Firm Is Said to Close Greece Hedge Fund
"two years later, the Greece-focused fund is shutting down, after losing nearly 90 percent
of its value..."
" The one silver lining for the fund's investors from all of this is that they will
have a somewhat larger tax loss on investments to claim next year. "
"During 2011, Secretary of State Clinton
lobbied the leaders of European governments to bail out the Greek financial system. She advocated
imposing austerity measures on Greece-raising taxes, cutting public employee salaries and eliminating
social welfare programs-to make the investors holding the debt happy." are we there yet
Oct 4, 2016 9:09 PM Interesting, google is highly opinionated in its search engine about Hillary
and trump. Google trump news and Hillary news. Its selection is heavily slanted to Hillary is
great, Trump is falling off a cliff. Alternate reality.
See also
Girl Talk at Trump Tower
MoDo, NYT. "After working with psychologists to figure out how to goad
Trump into an outburst in the first debate, the commanding Hillary saved the Machado provocation
until the end."
This was such garbage from the get go. Anyone with minor audio production
experience would have known that was a mic problem. It isn't the kind of thing
I would wonder if someone did intentionally. They certainly could have tried to
correct the problem at the soundboard as the debate went on.
"... The chaotic civil war in Syria and Iraq seems like another example where the U.S. is having a hard time "thinking" things thru realistically. ..."
"... One interpretation is she's stupid and vicious as a badge of class honor, blissfully consistent with the bloodthirsty record of Madeleine Albright and Henry Kissinger. Unfortunately, that might be true, though I think if it is true, it is more likely a product of being caught up in the amoral bubble of political and media process that has enveloped the whole foreign policy establishment than any personal psychopathy. ..."
Anarcissie @ 239: We basically have a whole class of people, at the top of the social order,
who seem devoid of a moral sense - a problem which the upcoming election isn't going to touch,
much less solve. I don't blame Clinton for this . . .
JimV @ 317: I am sorry if I mischaracterized BW as implying that HRC is evil, . . .
Peter T @ 320: Whatever the merits of their individual stances, there is no reason to suppose
that either Obama or Hillary can exert more than loose control over this mess [the multi-sided
regional civil war engulfing Syria and northern Iraq]
stevenjohnson @ 324: The recent leak that Clinton is against nuclear armed cruise missiles
and isn't committed to Obama's trillion dollar nuclear weapons upgrade appears to suggest she's
not quite on board with plans for general war.
LFC @ 330: I disagree w the notion that the pt of nuclear 'modernization' is to make plausible
the threat of "imminent general nuclear war." If U.S. military planners took hallucinogenic drugs
and went nuts, they could "plausibly" threaten "imminent general nuclear war" right now with the
US nuclear arsenal as currently configured. They don't need to upgrade the weapons to do that.
The program is prob more the result of rigid, unimaginative thinking at top levels of Pentagon
and influence of outside companies (e.g. Boeing etc) that work on the upgrades.
I don't know if that seems like a somewhat random collection of precursors to assemble as preface
to a comment. I was thinking of picking out a few upthread references to climate change and the
response to it (or inadequacy thereof) as well.
I am a little disturbed by the idea of leaving the impression that I think Hillary Clinton
is "evil". What I think is that American politics in general is not generating realistic, adaptive
governance.
I am using that bloodless phrase, "realistic, adaptive governance", deliberately, to emphasize
wanting to step outside the passions of the Presidential election. I think the Manichean narrative
where Trump is The Most Horrible Candidate Evah and Everyone Must Line Up Behind Clinton as an
Ethical Imperative of a High Order is part of the process of propaganda and manipulation that
distorts popular discussion and understanding and helps to create a politics that cannot govern
realistically and adaptively. This is not about me thinking Trump is anything but a horrible mess
of a candidate who ought to be kept far from power.
I see Clinton as someone who is trapped inside the dynamics of this seriously deranged politics
qua political process. I don't see her as entirely blameless. Politicians like Obama and either
Clinton, at the top of the political order, are masters (keeping in mind that there are many masters
working to some extent in opposition to one another as rivals, allies, enemies and so on) of the
process and create the process by the exercise of their mastery, as much as they are mastered
by it. I see them as trapped by the process they have helped (more than a little opportunistically)
to create, but trapped as Dr Frankenstein is by his Creature.
Clinton must struggle with the ethical contradictions of governance at the highest levels of
leadership: she must, in the exercise of power in office and out, practice the political art of
the possible in relation to crafting policy that will be "good" in the sense of passably effective
and efficient - this may involve a high degree of foresightful wonkery or a lethally ruthless
statesmanship, depending upon circumstances. Beside this business of making the great machinery
of the state lumber forward, she must strive to appear "good", like Machiavelli's Prince, even
while playing an amoral game of real politick, gathering and shepherding a complex coalition of
allies, supporters, donors and cooperative enemies.
Machiavelli, when he was considering the Princely business of appearing "good", was contending
with the hypocrisies and impossible idealism of authoritarian Catholic morality. He barely connected
with anything that we would recognize as democratic Public Opinion and could scarcely conceive
of what Ivy Lee or Edward Bernays, let alone Fox News, Vox and the world wide web might do to
politics.
We are trapped, just as Clinton is trapped, in the vast communication nightmare of surrealistic
news and opinion washing in upon us in a tide that never ebbs. We are trapped by the politics
of media "gotchas" and Kinsley Gaffes (A Kinsley gaffe occurs when a political gaffe reveals some
truth that a politician did not intend to admit.)
I don't think Clinton lacks a moral sense. What I think is that Clinton's moral sense is exhausted
calculating what to say or do within the parameters of media-synthesized conventional wisdom policed
by people who are themselves exhausted trying to manage it. Matt Lauer's interview with Clinton
was notorious for the relentless and clueless questioning about the email server, although I,
personally, was shocked when he asked her a question that seemed premised on the idea that veterans
should be offended by admitting the Iraq War was a mistake.
I would think it is easy to see that the media circus is out of control, especially when a
clown like Trump graduates from The Apprentice to the Republican nomination. YMMV, but
I think this is a serious problem that goes beyond vividly imagined sepia-toned parodies of Trump's
candidacy as the second coming of Mussolini.
While we're getting ourselves agitated over Trump's racism or threats to bar Muslims from entry,
apparently the Military-Industrial Complex, left on autopilot, is re-designing the nation's nuclear
arsenal to make the outbreak of nuclear war far more likely. And, the closest Clinton gets to
a comment, campaign commitment or public discussion, let alone an exercise of power, is a PR "leak"!!!
The chaotic civil war in Syria and Iraq seems like another example where the U.S. is having
a hard time "thinking" things thru realistically. Clinton offered up a sound-bite last year,
saying that she favored imposing a "no-fly" zone, which was exposed as kind of crazy idea, given
that the Russians as well as Assad's government are the ones flying, not to mention the recent
experience with a no-fly zone in Libya. One interpretation is she's stupid and vicious as
a badge of class honor, blissfully consistent with the bloodthirsty record of Madeleine Albright
and Henry Kissinger. Unfortunately, that might be true, though I think if it is true, it is more
likely a product of being caught up in the amoral bubble of political and media process that has
enveloped the whole foreign policy establishment than any personal psychopathy. What's most
alarming to me is that we cannot count on personal character to put the brakes on that process,
which is now the process of governance. I am writing now of the process of governance by public
relations that was has been exposed a bit in profiles of the Deputy National Security Advisor
for Strategic Communications, Ben Rhodes.
In Syria, it has become almost comical, if you can overlook the bodies piling up, as the U.S.
has sought a the mythical unicorn of Syrian Moderate Democrats whom the Pentagon or the CIA can
advise, train and arm. This is foreign policy by PR narrative and it is insanely unrealistic.
But, our politics is trapped in it, and, worse, policy is trapped in it. Layer after layer of
b.s. have piled up obscuring U.S. interests and practical options.
Recently, U.S. forces supporting
the Turks have come dangerously close to blowing up U.S. forces supporting the Kurds. When you
find yourself on opposing sides of a civil war like Charles I you may be in the process of losing
your head. Some of the worst elements opposing Assad have been engaged in a transparent re-branding
exercise aimed at garnering U.S. aid. And, U.S. diplomats and media face the high challenge of
explaining why the U.S. supports Saudi Arabia in Yemen.
But, hey, Clinton will get Robert Kagan's vote and a better tomorrow is only a Friedman unit
away, so it is all good.
Guardian is firmly in Hillary camp. Neoliberal media defends neoliberal candidate. What can
you expect?
Notable quotes:
"... "Some people insist on disguising this Great Satan as the savior angel." -- Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei, referring to the United States, 2015. ..."
"... The US has already been doing that for a long time. Your country is currently allied with al Qaeda in Syria and other so called moderates whose intention is to create a sharia law fundamentalist society as aopposed to Assad who is euro centric and secular. ..."
"... From the article: We know from Wikileaks that she believed privately in the past that Saudi Arabia was the largest source for terrorist funding worldwide, and that the Saudi government was not doing enough to stop that funding. ..."
"... and yet the Clinton Foundation benefits massively from KSA donations ..."
"... I heard that Donald Trump speaks out against the USA funding extremists to overthrow leaders like Assad, while they couldn't care about human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia. Tourists are being shot in Tunisia from extremists in Libya since we became involved in killing Gaddafi. ..."
"... The USA armed and trained extremists in Afghanistan to get one over on Russia, and despite more British troops and civilians being killed by USA friendly fire than the 'enemy' our media never make the same fuss about the USA. ..."
"... The USA didn't care for years when the government they helped implement in Afghanistan made women walk around in blue tents and banned them from education. ..."
"... Different political systems; two people who come from very different backgrounds with different views and experiences. Ahmadinejad was a social conservative with a populist economic agenda. Trump is all over the map, but in terms of his staff and advisers and his economic plans he's much more of a conventional Republican. David Duke's admiration is the main thing the two have in common. ..."
"... Clinton is tripe. She, and her kin, have a ponderous history of talk, and either inaction, or actions that generate disastrous results. Zero accomplishments across the board. Those who'd vote for Hillary must have a "horse" in this race. ..."
"... Yawn... The Guardian has Trump and Putin bashing on the brain. ..."
"... John Bolton as possible Secretary of State? http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/john-bolton-no-regrets-about-toppling-saddam/article/2564463 Unless you're not talking about the guy who looks like a dead ringer for Mr Pastry that is a really terrifying proposition. ..."
"... USA and Britain are very directly responsible for Iran being ruled by the Islamic mafia which has been in power in Iran since 1979. Iran had a democratic government which for the benefit of its people and against the stealing of its oil by Britain, nationalised the oil. Britain then, desperate to carry on stealing the Iranian oil persuaded USA to collaborate with it to covertly organise a coup by MI5 and CIA to topple the legitimate democratic government and install a puppet dictatorship. ..."
"... All that happened in 1953, and Britain and USA totally admitted to all that 30 years later when the official secrets were declassified. ..."
"... ..., forgot to mention, Jimmy C1arter recently admitted that while he was the president, they contributed to the funding of the Khomeini gang against their own installed ally, the Shah in 1979 to topple him ..."
"... Trump makes George W Bush seem like an intellectual heavyweight and Hillary Clinton makes Bush seem as honest and truthful as a Girl Scout! ..."
"... What a shitty choice Americans have to make this time round. A compulsive liar warmonger or an ignorant buffoonish bigot.... ..."
"... US hatred for Iran is hard to fathom. Other adversaries have been forgiven: Germany, Italy, Japan, Vietnam, China. Iran is an outlier. ..."
"... I think it's mainly to keep US allies happy. Both Saudi Arabia and Israel regard Iran as their greatest enemy and the Syrian Civil War is largely a proxy conflict between the Saudis and the Iranians over their respective oil supplies, regional clout and religious affinity. ..."
"... Vote Clinton and absolutely nothing changes or improves. Hillary might as well take golf lessons from Barack, and saxophone lessons from bonking Bill, every day of her presidency. ..."
"... I wouldn't be at all surprised if the CIA and/or the US Armed Forces do that sort of thing too actually! The CIA, after all, toppled the then democratically elected PM of Iran in 1953, forcibly installing the Shah in his place, the CIA helped bring the Taliban and Saddam to power in Afghanistan and Iraq respectively in the first place, unleashing decades of death and destruction on the peoples of those two countries ..."
"... When the Iraqi people rose up against Saddam's brutal dictatorship back in 1991, the US actually helped him crush the rebellion, thus ensuring he stayed in power. ..."
"... One of Trump's top advisors John Bolton wrote an article for the New York Times titled "To Stop Iran's Bomb, Bomb Iran" calling for a joint US-Israel strike on Iran, including regime change. He could well end up being Sec. Of State if Trump wins. ..."
"... Meanwhile Clinton is on record as saying that Iran are the world's main sponsor of terrorism and that if she became president she would obliterate Iran if they attacked Israel. Given that Hezbollah are always involved in tit for tat encounters with Israel, and Clinton feels Hezbollah is effectively the state of Iran, it wouldn't take much. ..."
"... Bolton is a vile neocon of the lowest order, what a charade if he gets a senior post and they call Hillary a warmonger? Just wait for Bolton, you mugs ..."
"... Let's hope the Saudis defeat the Houthi uprising and support the internationally recognised government of Yemen. Oh, sorry this is the Guardian: let's hope the Russians defeat the Sunni uprising and support the internationally recognised government of Syria... ..."
"... Yes. Trump is going to steal ISIS's oil. Only slight hole in that theory is that ISIS doesn't own any phucking oil. They aren't a nation state, just thieves. Stealing a thief's stolen goods is still stealing. ..."
"... I've never understood why we're allied to Saudi. They were complicit in 9/11, they hate the west and despise us. ..."
"... >I've never understood why we're allied to Saudi. Oil. Oil. And more Oil. ..."
"... There's nothing bizarre about working with Russia on Middle Eastern issues unless you're married to the idea of a new Cold War. Why Washington is so hell-bent on making Russians the enemies again is beyond me. ..."
"... Russia - does it really need all that land? Wouldn't it be better if Vladivostok was Obamagrad and Ekaterinburg was Katemiddletown? ..."
"... What exactly is the US now? a supplier of sophisticated weaponary to "rebels" or rather terrorists that the legitimate governnent ( with Russian help thankfully) is trying to defeat... ..."
"... There is no moral equivalence here. Once you look at what western intel has been upto all these decades, nowhere could Russia be close to the evil that the US and UK are. ..."
Donny is the best chance for the lasting world peace and stability because he is more likely
to work with Russians on key geopolitical issues.
Hillary is the best chance for ww3 and nuclear anihilation of the mainland American cities
because she is russophobic, demonizer of Russia, hell bent on messing with them and unexplicably
encouraged to do so by supposedly "normal" people in mainstream media.
The US has already been doing that for a long time. Your country is currently allied with
al Qaeda in Syria and other so called moderates whose intention is to create a sharia law fundamentalist
society as aopposed to Assad who is euro centric and secular.
From the article: We know from Wikileaks that she believed privately in the past that Saudi
Arabia was the largest source for terrorist funding worldwide, and that the Saudi government was
not doing enough to stop that funding.
You know who else believes that about the KSA? Joe Biden.
I heard that Donald Trump speaks out against the USA funding extremists to overthrow leaders
like Assad, while they couldn't care about human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia. Tourists are being
shot in Tunisia from extremists in Libya since we became involved in killing Gaddafi.
The USA armed and trained extremists in Afghanistan to get one over on Russia, and despite
more British troops and civilians being killed by USA friendly fire than the 'enemy' our media
never make the same fuss about the USA. It wasn't long ago that many doctors were killed
in a hospital by a USA bomb, but I only found out about it on the Doctors Without Borders facebook
page.
The USA didn't care for years when the government they helped implement in Afghanistan
made women walk around in blue tents and banned them from education.
The Ahmadinejad - Trump comparison is a weak comparison.
Different political systems; two people who come from very different backgrounds with different
views and experiences. Ahmadinejad was a social conservative with a populist economic agenda.
Trump is all over the map, but in terms of his staff and advisers and his economic plans he's
much more of a conventional Republican. David Duke's admiration is the main thing the two have
in common.
Clinton is tripe. She, and her kin, have a ponderous history of talk, and either inaction,
or actions that generate disastrous results. Zero accomplishments across the board. Those who'd
vote for Hillary must have a "horse" in this race.
I won't be specific, but that horse, or horses, are generally the disenfranchised ones. What
to say: I get their plight. But Hillary? Elected, she only make sure they stay that way so she'll
be elected again. Time to wake up. There ain't no "pie in the sky", but with perserverance, all's
possible, and likely. Trump's the guy.
USA and Britain are very directly responsible for Iran being ruled by the Islamic mafia which
has been in power in Iran since 1979. Iran had a democratic government which for the benefit of
its people and against the stealing of its oil by Britain, nationalised the oil. Britain then,
desperate to carry on stealing the Iranian oil persuaded USA to collaborate with it to covertly
organise a coup by MI5 and CIA to topple the legitimate democratic government and install a puppet
dictatorship.
All that happened in 1953, and Britain and USA totally admitted to all that 30 years later
when the official secrets were declassified. One of the consequences of that criminal act
was that it lead to the Islamic revolution which brought the Islam clergy to power which turned
this most strategically, economically, and culturally important country of the region into an
enemy of the west, supporter of terrorism, human rights abuser, arch enemy of Israel, total economic
ruin, and eternal nuclear threat to the region- not to mention the Shia-Sunni sectarian division
that it has perpetrated which to the large extent has contributed to the mighty mess that the
Middle East is in now and potentially spreading to the outside of the region.
..., forgot to mention, Jimmy C1arter recently admitted that while he was the president, they
contributed to the funding of the Khomeini gang against their own installed ally, the Shah in
1979 to topple him
I think it's mainly to keep US allies happy. Both Saudi Arabia and Israel regard Iran as their
greatest enemy and the Syrian Civil War is largely a proxy conflict between the Saudis and the
Iranians over their respective oil supplies, regional clout and religious affinity.
Though the continuance of PNAC's schema shouldn't be discounted either. US policy hawks close
to both Clinton and Trump still aim for dominance in Central Eurasia. I expect if they could press
a button and magically summon up a new Shah for Iran they'd jump at the chance.
Cuba spent over half a century living beneath the shadow of American wrath too for different
reasons. Though perhaps burning revenge at the loss of a compliant puppet also played a role.
Vote Clinton and absolutely nothing changes or improves. Hillary might as well take golf lessons
from Barack, and saxophone lessons from bonking Bill, every day of her presidency.
Vote Trump and things are going to change in America. No more pussyfooting around.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if the CIA and/or the US Armed Forces do that sort of thing
too actually! The CIA, after all, toppled the then democratically elected PM of Iran in 1953,
forcibly installing the Shah in his place, the CIA helped bring the Taliban and Saddam to power
in Afghanistan and Iraq respectively in the first place, unleashing decades of death and destruction
on the peoples of those two countries.
When the Iraqi people rose up against Saddam's brutal dictatorship back in 1991, the US
actually helped him crush the rebellion, thus ensuring he stayed in power. So the US is arguably
at least partly responsible for the crimes Saddam and the Taliban committed (in the case of Iraq,
as well as murdering at least hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, the US is probably also partly
responsible for Saddam's DRAINING OF THE MARSHLANDS OF SOUTHER IRAQ).
One of Trump's top advisors John Bolton wrote an article for the New York Times titled "To
Stop Iran's Bomb, Bomb Iran" calling for a joint US-Israel strike on Iran, including regime change.
He could well end up being Sec. Of State if Trump wins.
Meanwhile Clinton is on record as saying that Iran are the world's main sponsor of terrorism
and that if she became president she would obliterate Iran if they attacked Israel. Given that
Hezbollah are always involved in tit for tat encounters with Israel, and Clinton feels Hezbollah
is effectively the state of Iran, it wouldn't take much.
Let's hope the Saudis defeat the Houthi uprising and support the internationally recognised
government of Yemen. Oh, sorry this is the Guardian: let's hope the Russians defeat the Sunni
uprising and support the internationally recognised government of Syria...
Yes. Trump is going to steal ISIS's oil. Only slight hole in that theory is that ISIS doesn't
own any phucking oil. They aren't a nation state, just thieves. Stealing a thief's stolen goods
is still stealing.
There's nothing bizarre about working with Russia on Middle Eastern issues unless you're married
to the idea of a new Cold War. Why Washington is so hell-bent on making Russians the enemies again
is beyond me.
What exactly is the US now? a supplier of sophisticated weaponary to "rebels" or rather terrorists
that the legitimate governnent ( with Russian help thankfully) is trying to defeat...
Both America and Russia have been supplying arms to terrorists or to destabilise elected Govts.
Since the end of WW2. Neither country has a right to take the moral high ground especially not
Russia at this time with the revelations coming out about shooting down passenger aircraft. You're
both as bad as each other.
There is no moral equivalence here. Once you look at what western intel has been upto all
these decades, nowhere could Russia be close to the evil that the US and UK are.
"... I have noticed a pattern with you where you are misconstruing Trump's positions and framing his behaviour as the corrupt media wishes you to frame it. Trump is not great, but he's also not nearly as awful as you're thinking he is. Don't be so influenced by the propaganda coming from Hillary and her devoted lackeys in the MSM. ..."
"... As a female voter I don't give a crap how bad he is, I'd still rather watch Congress go nuts impeaching him than I would Hillary taking us to war with Russia. ..."
Uh that only happens if someone manages to duct tape Trump's mouth shut.
Trump's got his own brand of offensive and apparently his goal this week was to alienate female
voters even more with his antics.
I hear that at the next debate his big idea is to blame Hillary for Bill's wandering penis.
That should go over like a lead balloon (because believe it or not women don't like to be blamed
for the times men act like dogs.)
I have noticed a pattern with you where you are misconstruing Trump's positions and framing
his behaviour as the corrupt media wishes you to frame it. Trump is not great, but he's also not
nearly as awful as you're thinking he is. Don't be so influenced by the propaganda coming from
Hillary and her devoted lackeys in the MSM.
You want to run on the fact the guy has no public record per se (Look! He didn't bomb anybody!
Yeah, that's probably because he didn't have the means to do so either.). That's great.
However, he does have a very real past and I refuse to wallpaper over that past. It's completely
unacceptable and unprofessional to call your employees Miss Piggy. Acknowledge it. Move on.
Oh like anyone is left who wasn't already aware that Trump's a misogynist gasbag.
As a
female voter I don't give a crap how bad he is, I'd still rather watch Congress go nuts impeaching
him than I would Hillary taking us to war with Russia.
"... The race baiting has to stop. Krugman should travel to Camden, Rochester, East St. Louis or any of the thousands of towns and cities that were stripped of their wealth thanks to free trade policies he championed. ..."
"... It is close because Trump offers hope. People remember that times were much, much better when their cities had factories before the so-called globalization hurricane just "naturally" swept everything away. ..."
"... Twenty years of protectionism and an undervalued currency will turn the US into a star trek land like Singapore. 10 more years on our current free trade trajectory and we'll be Haiti, another free trade paradise. ..."
The race baiting has to stop. Krugman should travel to Camden, Rochester, East St. Louis
or any of the thousands of towns and cities that were stripped of their wealth thanks to free
trade policies he championed.
It is close because Trump offers hope. People remember that times were much, much better when
their cities had factories before the so-called globalization hurricane just "naturally" swept
everything away.
Twenty years of protectionism and an undervalued currency will turn the US into
a star trek land like Singapore. 10 more years on our current free trade trajectory and we'll
be Haiti, another free trade paradise.
Only to relatively prosperous, uneducated, old white men who are terrified by watching their
privilege slip away. Trump would actually make all those issues you mention far worse.
The way Lester Holt "corrected" Donald Trump at Monday's debate (as he was clearly instructed
to do) regarding the Iraq War, you'd think the answer to whether he supported it or not was clear-cut.
The truth is, it may not be that simple.
Joe Concha (who has been doing some great work by the way), just wrote an excellent
article at The Hill exploring the topic in detail. Here's what he found:
Question: Did Donald Trump oppose or support the Iraq War?
Before answering, a quick note on why providing clarity around a relatively simple question:
It's rare that cooler heads can prevail in this media world we live in. Lines in the sand have
never been drawn between blue and red media as vividly as they are now. And as a result, simple
logic and lucidity is supplied less and less to drawing a verdict on whether a story is true or
not.
Exhibit A today is the aforementioned question: Did Trump - as he insists - oppose the Iraq
War?
At first, given that Trump wasn't a politician in 2002 and therefore had no official vote on
the war authorization (as is the case with Hillary Clinton 's support of it), the press simply
took him at his word on the matter with no evidence readily available to provide otherwise.
Except there was evidence, albeit flimsy at best, thanks to the dogged work of Buzzfeed's Andrew
Kaczynski and Nathan McDermott in unearthing a 2002 interview Trump did with Howard Stern.
Here's what Trump said when asked by Stern during a typically long interview (Howard can go
more than an hour without taking a break) if he was for going into Iraq.
"Yeah, I guess so," Trump responded. "I wish the first time it was done correctly."
So to review, Trump, a businessman at that time, didn't broach the topic. There are no other
public statements by him on the matter in 2002.
"Yeah, I guess so" isn't what one would call someone absolutely advocating the invasion of
another country.
Instead, a reasonable person listening could only conclude that Trump probably hadn't given
the matter even a passing thought and answered matter-of-factly. Because if Trump was so pro-Iraq
War at the time, as he's being portrayed of being by the media in 2016, one would think he - who
seemingly shares every perspective that enters his head - would be mentioning it every chance
he got in other interviews, which never happens.
Trump's next interview occurred with Fox's Neil Cavuto in February 2003, just weeks before
the invasion occurred.
In the video, Cavuto asks Trump how much time President Bush should spend on the economy vs.
Iraq.
"Well, I'm starting to think that people are much more focused now on the economy," Trump said.
"They're getting a little bit tired of hearing 'We're going in, we're not going in.' Whatever
happened to the days of Douglas MacArthur? Either do it or don't do it."
Trump continued: "Perhaps he shouldn't be doing it yet. And perhaps we should be waiting for
the United Nations."
But during Monday night's debate, Lester Holt followed the lead of many in the media who had
come to a definitive conclusion on Trump's (at first) apathetic-turned-ambiguous stance.
"The record shows it," Lester Holt pushed back on Trump after the candidate challenged the
moderator's assertion that Trump absolutely was for the Iraq War. The record also shows Trump
cautioning that the United Nations needs to be on board.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations at the time, Kofi Annan, said this when speaking
on the invasion:
"I have indicated it was not in conformity with the U.N. Charter. From our point of view, from
the charter point of view, it was illegal."
So if following Trump logic in his interview with Cavuto, if the U.S. and its allies had waited
for U.N. approval, the war likely never happens.
But here's an important nugget few are speaking about: On March 26, 2003, just one week after
the invasion began, Trump says at an Academy Awards after-party, "The war's a mess," according
to The Washington Post. One day earlier, a Gallup poll showed public support for the war at 72
percent.
The "war's a mess" quote is even included in Politifact's verdict before coming to the conclusion
that Trump is absolutely false in stating he opposed the war.
In the end, the solution here is simple: Politifact needs to change its "False" rating on Trump's
claim. That isn't to say it should be not characterized as "True" or "Mostly True" either.
Instead, in a suggestion likely to send the usual suspects in our polarized media crazy, the
rating of "Half True" needs to be applied here.
The Hill reached out to Politifact for comment but did not get a response.
As for media organizations (and this applies to almost every one), who keep insisting that
Trump supported the Iraq War so definitively, not every situation lives in absolutes. Not every
question has an absolute "yes" or "no" as a final verdict.
In the case of businessman Donald Trump circa 2002 and 2003, chalk up his perspective on the
Iraq War before it started as the following:
- At first - months before it began to get any real traction in the American mindset - Trump's
thought process was one of ambivalence via having not given it almost any thought before being
asked about it by Stern, which was nothing more than a quick tangent in an interview focusing
on 20 other things.
- And then in January 2003, Trump's public "stance" was one of caution-before-proceeding by
stating a need to wait for the United Nations before rushing in. Note: There weren't declarations
around the threat of weapons of mass destruction, spreading democracy or the need to remove a
brutal dictator. Trump never cites any of those common arguments for war even once, as Republicans
and even some Democrats did.
In March of 2003, as the war just began, Trump declares "the war's a mess."
Bottom line: There's was nothing to indicate Trump supported the war, as the so-called record
showed.
He didn't seem 100 percent against it either.
"On the fence" would be another apt way to describe it.
Cooler heads need to prevail here.
But "sanity," "media," and "this year's election" are five words rarely seen in the same sentence
anymore.
Meanwhile, we know for sure which candidate absolutely loves war and leaves a trail of death and
destruction in her wake: Hillary Clinton.
Actually, a Malfunction Did
Affect Donald Trump's
Voice at the Debate
http://nyti.ms/2cGN1m8
NYT - NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and PATRICK HEALY - SEPT. 30
The Commission on Presidential Debates said Friday that the first debate on Monday was marred
by an unspecified technical malfunction that affected the volume of Mr. Trump's voice in the debate
hall.
Mr. Trump complained after the debate that the event's organizers had given him a "defective mike,"
contributing to his widely panned performance against Hillary Clinton. Mrs. Clinton lampooned Mr.
Trump's claim, telling reporters on her campaign plane, "Anybody who complains about the microphone
is not having a good night."
Mr. Trump was clearly audible to the television audience. And there is no evidence of sabotage.
But it turns out he was on to something.
"Regarding the first debate, there were issues regarding Donald Trump's audio that affected the
sound level in the debate hall," the commission said in its statement.
The commission, a nonprofit organization that sponsors the presidential debates, released no other
information about the malfunction, including how it was discovered, which equipment was to blame,
or why the problem was admitted to only on Friday, four days after the debate.
Reached by phone, a member of the commission's media staff said she was not authorized to speak
about the matter.
Some members of the audience, held at Hofstra University in New York, recalled in interviews that
the amplification of Mr. Trump's voice was at times significantly lower than that for Mrs. Clinton.
And at times Mr. Trump appeared to be hunching down to get his face closer to his microphone.
Zeke Miller, a reporter for Time Magazine who attended the debate, mentioned the difference on
Monday in a report to the traveling press pool for Mr. Trump. From his vantage point, Mr. Miller
wrote, Mr. Trump was sometimes "a little quieter" than Mrs. Clinton.
In an interview, Mr. Trump said he had tested out the audio system two hours before the event
and found it "flawless." Only during the debate did he notice the problem, Mr. Trump said, and he
tried to compensate by leaning down more closely to the microphone. He complained that the changing
volume had distracted him and alleged again that someone had created the problem deliberately.
"They had somebody modulating the microphone, so when I was speaking, the mike would go up and
down," Mr. Trump said. "I spent 50 percent of my thought process working the mike." ...
Doing what contemporary American economists
suggest: eliminate tariffs, don't worry about huge capital inflows or a ridiculously overvalued dollar,
has led the US from being the envy of the world to being a non-developed economy with worse roads
than Cuba or Ghana.
That US economists are still treated with any degree of credibility it totally
appalling. They are so obviously bought-and-paid for snake oil salesmen that people are finally tuning
them out.
TRUMP 2016: Return America to Protectionism - Screw globalism
[There is a pdf at the link. Olivier Blanchard has
surprised me again. As establishment economists go he is not
so bad. There is plenty that he still glosses over but
insofar as status quo establishment macroeconomics goes he is
thorough and coherent. One might hope that those that do not
understand either the debate for higher inflation targets or
the debate for fiscal policy to accomplish what monetary
policy cannot might learn from this article by Olivier
Blanchard, but I will not hold my breath waiting for that. In
any case the article is worth a read for anyone that can.]
RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
,
Friday, September 30, 2016 at 07:07 AM
Get real! No alumni of the Peterson Institute and IMF is
going to go all mushy on the down sides of globalization and
wealth distribution.
The State of Advanced Economies and Related Policy
Debates: A Fall 2016 Assessment
By Olivier Blanchard
Perhaps the most striking macroeconomic fact about
advanced economies today is how anemic demand remains in the
face of zero interest rates.
In the wake of the global financial crisis, we had a
plausible explanation why demand was persistently weak:
Legacies of the crisis, from deleveraging by banks, to fiscal
austerity by governments, to lasting anxiety by consumers and
firms, could all explain why, despite low rates, demand
remained depressed.
This explanation is steadily becoming less convincing.
Banks have largely deleveraged, credit supply has loosened,
fiscal consolidation has been largely put on hold, and the
financial crisis is farther in the rearview mirror. Demand
should have steadily strengthened. Yet, demand growth has
remained low.
Why? The likely answer is that, as the legacies of the
past have faded, the future has looked steadily bleaker.
Forecasts of potential growth have been repeatedly revised
down. And consumers and firms-anticipating a gloomier
future-are cutting back spending, leading to unusually low
demand growth today....
"... This means the "default position" of the Clinton campaign and her friendly media is, "if there's something wrong in the world, criticize George W. Bush." ..."
"... "Why not? It worked for Obama. Maybe it will work for her as well," Bolton said. "And I think the fact that the media are aiding and abetting this approach shouldn't surprise anybody. I think no matter who the Republican nominee was this year, the media were going to be – as the Wall Street Journal has so aptly called them – stenographers for the White House and the Clinton campaign. And that's exactly what they're doing." ..."
"... Most people watching 90 minutes of a debate like that don't score it on this debating point, or that debating point. They look at the entire thing. They want to know about the character of the people. And I think the fact that Trump was there for 90 minutes and held his own, or more than, in a format that Hillary Clinton has been familiar with since she was in law school, accomplished what he needed to accomplish. ..."
"I think it's entirely understandable that what Clinton will try to do is avoid criticizing Obama,
because she desperately needs to recreate the Obama coalition on November the 8th," said Bolton.
"She has gone out of her way, including in her 600-page-long tedious memoir about her days at the
State Department, failing to distance herself from Obama."
This means the "default position" of the Clinton campaign and her friendly media is, "if there's
something wrong in the world, criticize George W. Bush."
"Why not? It worked for Obama. Maybe it will work for her as well," Bolton said. "And I think
the fact that the media are aiding and abetting this approach shouldn't surprise anybody. I think
no matter who the Republican nominee was this year, the media were going to be – as the Wall Street
Journal has so aptly called them – stenographers for the White House and the Clinton campaign.
And that's exactly what they're doing."
Bolton thought Trump "did what he needed to do" at the first presidential debate:
Most people watching 90 minutes of a debate like that don't score it on this debating point,
or that debating point. They look at the entire thing. They want to know about the character of
the people. And I think the fact that Trump was there for 90 minutes and held his own, or more
than, in a format that Hillary Clinton has been familiar with since she was in law school, accomplished
what he needed to accomplish.
My critique of his performance would be that he missed opportunities. For example, you mentioned
the foreign policy section, when they were asked about cyber warfare, and the dangers to the United
States of hacking, and that gave Clinton a chance to give a little college-type lecture on Russia
– by the way, omitting China, Iran, North Korea, and others – I thought at that point Trump could
have talked about her email homebrew server for his entire time, and just drilled that point home.
But, you know, people at home aren't sitting there grading on that basis. I think the second
debate, and the third debate, will be very different, and those – particularly in the media –
who now confidently predict the outcome of the election, based on their take of this debate, are
smoking something.
"... This means the "default position" of the Clinton campaign and her friendly media is, "if there's something wrong in the world, criticize George W. Bush." ..."
"... "Why not? It worked for Obama. Maybe it will work for her as well," Bolton said. "And I think the fact that the media are aiding and abetting this approach shouldn't surprise anybody. I think no matter who the Republican nominee was this year, the media were going to be – as the Wall Street Journal has so aptly called them – stenographers for the White House and the Clinton campaign. And that's exactly what they're doing." ..."
"... Most people watching 90 minutes of a debate like that don't score it on this debating point, or that debating point. They look at the entire thing. They want to know about the character of the people. And I think the fact that Trump was there for 90 minutes and held his own, or more than, in a format that Hillary Clinton has been familiar with since she was in law school, accomplished what he needed to accomplish. ..."
"I think it's entirely understandable that what Clinton will try to do is avoid criticizing Obama,
because she desperately needs to recreate the Obama coalition on November the 8th," said Bolton.
"She has gone out of her way, including in her 600-page-long tedious memoir about her days at the
State Department, failing to distance herself from Obama."
This means the "default position" of the Clinton campaign and her friendly media is, "if there's
something wrong in the world, criticize George W. Bush."
"Why not? It worked for Obama. Maybe it will work for her as well," Bolton said. "And I think
the fact that the media are aiding and abetting this approach shouldn't surprise anybody. I think
no matter who the Republican nominee was this year, the media were going to be – as the Wall Street
Journal has so aptly called them – stenographers for the White House and the Clinton campaign.
And that's exactly what they're doing."
Bolton thought Trump "did what he needed to do" at the first presidential debate:
Most people watching 90 minutes of a debate like that don't score it on this debating point,
or that debating point. They look at the entire thing. They want to know about the character of
the people. And I think the fact that Trump was there for 90 minutes and held his own, or more
than, in a format that Hillary Clinton has been familiar with since she was in law school, accomplished
what he needed to accomplish.
My critique of his performance would be that he missed opportunities. For example, you mentioned
the foreign policy section, when they were asked about cyber warfare, and the dangers to the United
States of hacking, and that gave Clinton a chance to give a little college-type lecture on Russia
– by the way, omitting China, Iran, North Korea, and others – I thought at that point Trump could
have talked about her email homebrew server for his entire time, and just drilled that point home.
But, you know, people at home aren't sitting there grading on that basis. I think the second
debate, and the third debate, will be very different, and those – particularly in the media –
who now confidently predict the outcome of the election, based on their take of this debate, are
smoking something.
2) Trade. With only 4 percent of the world's population, we buy almost one-fourth of the world's
goods. Every country is champing at the bit to get into our markets. We have tremendous leverage
on trade that we have not used. We do not want or need trade wars. But we should, in a friendly way,
tell other countries-especially the Chinese-"We want to trade with you, but we can't sustain our
huge trade deficit. You are going to have to find some things to buy from us, too."
3) Immigration.
With 58 percent of the world's population-almost 4 billion people-having to get by on $4 or less
a day, hundreds of millions would come here over the next few years if we simply opened our borders.
Our entire infrastructure-our schools, jails, sewers, hospitals, roads-and our economy as a whole
could not handle such a massive, rapid influx of people. The American people are the kindest, most
generous people in the world, and we have already allowed many millions more than any other country
to immigrate here, legally and illegally. But we must do a much better job enforcing our immigration
laws.
4) Wars. I am now the only Republican left in Congress who voted against going to war in
Iraq. For the first three of four years, it was the most unpopular vote I ever cast. I even once
was disinvited to speak at a Baptist church. Now, it is probably the most popular vote I ever cast.
The American people are tired of permanent, forever wars. While everyone wants a friendly relationship
with Israel, I do not believe the American people will continue to support wars that primarily benefit
Israel but cause thousands of young Americans to be killed or horribly maimed for life.
5) Jobs. Almost any member of Congress, if asked what is the greatest need in their district,
would probably say more good jobs. Radical environmentalists have caused many thousands of U.S. businesses
to go to other countries or close for good. We have ended up with the best-educated waiters and waitresses
in the world. When I was in Vietnam a few years ago, I was told if you wanted to start a business
there, you just went out and did it. The place was booming. It is now apparently easier to start
a small business in some former communist countries than in the supposedly free-enterprise U.S.
... ... ...
Rep. John J. Duncan Jr. represents the 2nd district of Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives.represents
the 2nd district of Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives.
"... "Over the last 25 years, the number of people living in extreme poverty has been cut from nearly 40 percent of humanity to under 10 percent." This is roughly true, according to World Bank data, but the story of how it happened goes against his whole speech - which argues that this progress is a result of the "globalization" that Washington leads and supports wherever it has influence in the developing world. In fact, the majority of the reduction in extreme poverty during this period (more than 1.1 billion people worldwide) took place in China. But during this period China was really the counterexample to the "principles of open markets" with which Obama insists "we must go forward, not backward." ..."
"... If we go back a bit more and look at 1981–2012, China accounted for even more of the reduction of the world population in extreme poverty, about 70 percent. This would indicate that other parts of the developing world increased their economic and social progress during the 21st century, relative to China, and indeed many developing countries did (as compared to the last two decades of the 20th century). But China played an increasingly large role in reducing poverty in other countries during this period. ..."
"... It was so successful in its economic growth and development - by far the fastest in world history - that it became the largest economy in the world, and pulled up many developing countries through its imports. Chinese imports went from a negligible 0.1 percent of other developing countries' exports to 3 percent, from 1980–2010. China also provided hundreds of billions of dollars in investment, loans, and aid to low- and middle-income countries in the 21st century. (In the last few years, Chinese growth has slowed, along with that of most countries, and that has contributed - although perhaps not as much as Europe has - to the global slowdown since 2011.) ..."
"... the "principles of open markets" that Obama refers to is really code for "policies that Washington supports." ..."
"... In his defense of a world economic order ruled by Washington and its rich country allies, President Obama also asserted that "we have made international institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund more representative." But that is a gross exaggeration: the most recent reform of IMF voting shares left the US with an unchanged 16.7 percent share, enough to veto many important decisions (that require an 85 percent majority) by itself; and it left Washington and its traditional rich country allies with a solid majority of more than 60 percent of votes. Of course, it is the developing countries, especially poorer ones, that are most subject to IMF decisions. But the IMF is - by a gentleman's agreement among the rich country governments - headed by a European, and the World Bank by an American. It should not be surprising if these institutions do not look out for the interests of the developing world. ..."
President Obama Inadvertently Gives High Praise to China
in UN Speech
By Mark Weisbrot
President Obama's speech at the UN last week was mostly a
defense of the world's economic and political status quo,
especially that part of it that is led or held in place by
the US government and the global institutions that Washington
controls or dominates. In doing so, he said some things that
were exaggerated or wrong, or somewhat misleading. It is
worth looking at some of the things that media reports on
this speech missed.
"Over the last 25 years, the number of people living
in extreme poverty has been cut from nearly 40 percent of
humanity to under 10 percent." This is roughly true,
according to World Bank data, but the story of how it
happened goes against his whole speech - which argues that
this progress is a result of the "globalization" that
Washington leads and supports wherever it has influence in
the developing world. In fact, the majority of the reduction
in extreme poverty during this period (more than 1.1 billion
people worldwide) took place in China. But during this period
China was really the counterexample to the "principles of
open markets" with which Obama insists "we must go forward,
not backward."
China's historically unprecedented economic growth in the
past 25 years (or 35 years, or even more) was accomplished
with state-owned enterprises and banks dominating the
economy. State control over investment, technology transfer,
and foreign exchange was vastly greater than in other
developing countries. China rejected the neoliberal policies
of an "independent central bank," indiscriminate opening to
international trade and investment, and rapid privatization
of state companies. Instead, it chose a gradual transition,
over 35 years, from an overwhelmingly planned economy to a
mixed economy in which the state still plays a leading role.
Even today, China expanded the investment of state-owned
enterprises by 23.5 percent in the first six months of 2016
(as compared to the same period in 2015), to help boost the
economy.
If we go back a bit more and look at 1981–2012, China
accounted for even more of the reduction of the world
population in extreme poverty, about 70 percent. This would
indicate that other parts of the developing world increased
their economic and social progress during the 21st century,
relative to China, and indeed many developing countries did
(as compared to the last two decades of the 20th century).
But China played an increasingly large role in reducing
poverty in other countries during this period.
It was so
successful in its economic growth and development - by far
the fastest in world history - that it became the largest
economy in the world, and pulled up many developing countries
through its imports. Chinese imports went from a negligible
0.1 percent of other developing countries' exports to 3
percent, from 1980–2010. China also provided hundreds of
billions of dollars in investment, loans, and aid to low- and
middle-income countries in the 21st century. (In the last few
years, Chinese growth has slowed, along with that of most
countries, and that has contributed - although perhaps not as
much as Europe has - to the global slowdown since 2011.)
Of course, the "principles of open markets" that Obama
refers to is really code for "policies that Washington
supports." Some of them are the exact opposite of "open
markets," such as the lengthening and strengthening of patent
and copyright protection included in the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP) agreement. President Obama also made a plug
for the TPP in his speech, asserting that "we've worked to
reach trade agreements that raise labor standards and raise
environmental standards, as we've done with the Trans-Pacific
Partnership, so that the benefits [of globalization] are more
broadly shared." But the labor and environmental standards in
the TPP, as with those in previous US-led commercial
agreements, are not enforceable; whereas if a government
approves laws or regulations that infringe on the future
profit potential of a multinational corporation - even if
such laws or regulations are to protect public health or
safety - that government can be hit with billions of dollars
in fines. And they must pay these fines, or be subject to
trade sanctions.
In his defense of a world economic order ruled by
Washington and its rich country allies, President Obama also
asserted that "we have made international institutions like
the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund more
representative." But that is a gross exaggeration: the most
recent reform of IMF voting shares left the US with an
unchanged 16.7 percent share, enough to veto many important
decisions (that require an 85 percent majority) by itself;
and it left Washington and its traditional rich country
allies with a solid majority of more than 60 percent of
votes. Of course, it is the developing countries, especially
poorer ones, that are most subject to IMF decisions. But the
IMF is - by a gentleman's agreement among the rich country
governments - headed by a European, and the World Bank by an
American. It should not be surprising if these institutions
do not look out for the interests of the developing world.
"We can choose to press forward with a better model of
cooperation and integration," President Obama told the world
at the UN General Assembly. "Or we can retreat into a world
sharply divided, and ultimately in conflict, along age-old
lines of nation and tribe and race and religion."
But the rich country governments led by Washington are not
offering the rest of the world any better model of
cooperation and integration than the failed model they have
been offering for the past 35 years. And that is a big part
of the problem....
China's historically unprecedented economic growth in the
past 25 years (or 35 years, or even more) was accomplished
with state-owned enterprises and banks dominating the
economy. State control over investment, technology transfer,
and foreign exchange was vastly greater than in other
developing countries. China rejected the neoliberal policies
of an "independent central bank," indiscriminate opening to
international trade and investment, and rapid privatization
of state companies. Instead, it chose a gradual transition,
over 35 years, from an overwhelmingly planned economy to a
mixed economy in which the state still plays a leading role.
Even today, China expanded the investment of state-owned
enterprises by 23.5 percent in the first six months of 2016
(as compared to the same period in 2015), to help boost the
economy....
Even today, China expanded the investment of state-owned
enterprises by 23.5 percent in the first six months of 2016
(as compared to the same period in 2015), to help boost the
economy....
Yale Professors Offer Economic Prescriptions
By Brenda Cronin - Wall Street Journal
Richard C. Levin, president of Yale - and also a professor
of economics - moderated the conversation among Professors
Judith Chevalier, John Geanakoplos, William D. Nordhaus,
Robert J. Shiller and Aleh Tsyvinski....
An early mistake during the recession, Mr. Levin said, was
not targeting more stimulus funds to job creation. He
contrasted America's meager pace of growth in gross domestic
product in the past few years with China's often double-digit
pace, noting that after the crisis hit, Washington allocated
roughly 2% of GDP to job creation while Beijing directed 15%
of GDP to that goal....
Repeatedly there are warnings from Western economists that
the Chinese economy is near collapse, nonetheless economic
growth through the first 2 quarters this year is running at
6.7% and the third quarter looks about the same. The point is
to ask and describe how after these last 39 remarkable years:
Before the crash, complacent Democrats, ... tended to agree
with them that the economy was largely self-correcting.
Who is a complacent Democrat? Obama ran as a fiscal
conservative and appointed a GOP as his SecTreas. Geithner
was a "banks need to be bailed out" and the economy self
corrects. Geithner was not in favor of cram down or mortgage
programs that would have bailed out the injured little folks.
Democrats like Romer and Summers were in favor a fiscal
stimulus, but not enough of it. I expect to see the Clinton
economic team include a lot more women and especially focus
on economic policies that help working women and families.
I have always thought that a big reason for the Bush
jobless recovery was his lack of true fiscal stimulus. Bush
had tax cuts for the wealthy, but the latest from Summers
shows why trickle down does not work.
Full employment may have been missing from the 1992
platform, but full employment was pursued aggressively by
Bill Clinton. He got AG to agree to allow unemployment to
drop to 4% in exchange for raising taxes and dropping the
middle class tax cuts. Bill Clinton used fiscal policy to tax
the economy and as a break so monetary policy could be
accommodating.
He should include raising the MinWage. Maybe that has not
changed but it is a lynchpin for putting money in the pockets
of the working poor.
"... Will the media ever stop the ridiculous charade of pretending that the path of globalization that we are on is somehow and natural and that it is the outcome of a "free" market? Are longer and stronger patent and copyright monopolies the results of a free market? ..."
"... The NYT should up its game in this respect. It had a good piece on the devastation to millions of working class people and their communities from the flood of imports of manufactured goods in the last decade, but then it turns to hand-wringing nonsense about how it was all a necessary part of globalization. Actually, none of it was a necessary part of a free trade. ..."
"... First, the huge trade deficits were the direct result of the decision of China and other developing countries to buy massive amounts of U.S. dollars to hold as reserves in this period. This raised the value of the dollar and made our goods and services less competitive internationally. This problem of a seriously over-valued dollar stems from the bungling of the East Asian bailout by the Clinton Treasury Department and the I.M.F. ..."
"... The second point is political leaders are constantly working to make patents and copyrights stronger and longer. This raises the price that ordinary workers have to pay for everything from drugs to computer games. The result is lower real wages for ordinary workers and higher incomes for the beneficiaries of these rents. It also slows economic growth since markets are not smart enough to distinguish between a 10,000 percent price increase due to a tariff and a 10,000 percent price increase due to a patent monopoly. (In other words, all the bad things that "free trade" economists say about tariffs also apply to patents and copyrights, except the impact is far larger in the later case.) ..."
Why are none of the "free trade" members of
Congress pushing to change the regulations that require
doctors go through a U.S. residency program to be able to
practice medicine in the United States? Obviously they are
all protectionist Neanderthals.
Will the media ever stop the ridiculous charade of
pretending that the path of globalization that we are on is
somehow and natural and that it is the outcome of a "free"
market? Are longer and stronger patent and copyright
monopolies the results of a free market?
The NYT should up its game in this respect. It had a good
piece on the devastation to millions of working class people
and their communities from the flood of imports of
manufactured goods in the last decade, but then it turns to
hand-wringing nonsense about how it was all a necessary part
of globalization. Actually, none of it was a necessary part
of a free trade.
First, the huge trade deficits were the direct result of
the decision of China and other developing countries to buy
massive amounts of U.S. dollars to hold as reserves in this
period. This raised the value of the dollar and made our
goods and services less competitive internationally. This
problem of a seriously over-valued dollar stems from the
bungling of the East Asian bailout by the Clinton Treasury
Department and the I.M.F.
If we had a more competent team in place, that didn't
botch the workings of the international financial system,
then we would have expected the dollar to drop as more
imports entered the U.S. market. This would have moved the
U.S. trade deficit toward balance and prevented the massive
loss of manufacturing jobs we saw in the last decade.
The second point is political leaders are constantly
working to make patents and copyrights stronger and longer.
This raises the price that ordinary workers have to pay for
everything from drugs to computer games. The result is lower
real wages for ordinary workers and higher incomes for the
beneficiaries of these rents. It also slows economic growth
since markets are not smart enough to distinguish between a
10,000 percent price increase due to a tariff and a 10,000
percent price increase due to a patent monopoly. (In other
words, all the bad things that "free trade" economists say
about tariffs also apply to patents and copyrights, except
the impact is far larger in the later case.)
Finally, the fact that trade has exposed manufacturing
workers to international competition, but not doctors and
lawyers, was a policy choice, not a natural development.
There are enormous potential gains from allowing smart and
ambitious young people in the developing world to come to the
United States to work in the highly paid professions. We have
not opened these doors because doctors and lawyers are far
more powerful than autoworkers and textile workers. And, we
rarely even hear the idea mentioned because doctors and
lawyers have brothers and sisters who are reporters and
economists.
Addendum:
Since some folks asked about the botched bailout from the
East Asian financial crisis, the point is actually quite
simple. Prior to 1997 developing countries were largely
following the textbook model, borrowing capital from the West
to finance development. This meant running large trade
deficits. This reversed following the crisis as the
conventional view in the developing world was that you needed
massive amounts of reserves to avoid being in the situation
of the East Asian countries and being forced to beg for help
from the I.M.F. This led to the situation where developing
countries, especially those in the region, began running very
large trade surpluses, exporting capital to the United
States. (I am quite sure China noticed how its fellow East
Asian countries were being treated in 1997.)
Hillary supporters, or "the media," had reason to be happy: She looked healthy! She probably could
have kept reciting her snarky little talking points for another hour.
In fact, it was the best I've ever seen Hillary. She avoided that honking thing she does, smiled
a lot - a little too much, actually (maybe ease up on the pep pills next time) - and, as the entire
media has gleefully reported, she managed to "bait" Trump.
... ... ...
Hillary - with assists from the moderator - "baited" Trump on how rich he is, the loan from his
father, a lawsuit in 1972, the birther claims, who he said what to about the Iraq War from 2001 to
2003, and so on.
... ... ...
For the media, their gal was winning whenever precious minutes of a 90-minute debate were
spent rehashing allegations about Trump. Ha ha! We prevented Trump from talking about issues
that matter to the American people! That was scored as a "win."
... in foreign
policy, the modern American president has become a virtual
monarch. He or she can launch military actions without
congressional approval (just ask Presidents Clinton and
Obama), reach agreements with foreign nations, and establish
or rescind diplomatic relations. The Constitution is supposed
to check the power of the president to declare war or to
enter treaties, but presidents have been shedding those
restraints for generations. The president holds the power of
war and peace in his or her hands, and the entire world -
including our enemies - pays attention to the president's
every word and deed.
If you're a geopolitical rival of the United States, Trump
is a delight. He's America's leading Putin apologist, wasting
several agonizing turns in the debate defending Russia from
the charge of meddling in U.S. elections and bizarrely
wondering if a "400-pound" man "sitting on their bed" hacked
Democratic National Committee e-mails. He said he hasn't
"given lots of thought to NATO" and then went ahead and
proved the truth of that statement by fundamentally
misunderstanding the alliance. He treats it as a glorified
protection racket whereby NATO countries allegedly pay us to
defend Europe and they're not paying what they owe. He even
doubled down on his claim - an incredibly bizarre claim given
Russia's military resurgence - that NATO "could be obsolete."
...
Reply
Thursday, September 29, 2016 at 06:49 AM
pgl -> Fred C. Dobbs...
,
Thursday, September 29, 2016 at 07:05 AM
I agree Gary Johnson is not ready to be commander in chief
but he is far more ready than Trump. A low bar.
likbez -> Fred C. Dobbs...
, -1
Why you are reproducing neocon garbage in this blog ?
"He's America's leading Putin apologist"
That's pretty idiotic statement, even taking into account
the abhorrent level of Russophobia of the US elite for whom
Russophobia by-and-large replaced anti-Semitism. .
Anybody who blabber such things (and that includes Ms.
Goldman Sachs) should not be allowed to approach closer then
10 miles to Washington, DC, to say nothing about holding any
elected government position.
"... Reuters reports that an investigation conducted by it in 2013 found that around three-fourths of the 50 biggest U.S. technology companies use practices that are similar to Apple's to avoid paying tax. So Verstager has taken on not just one giant, but the worlds corporate elite. She should not lose. But even if she does this time, this is a battle well begun. ..."
"... Thus the power of the multinationals comes not just from their own size and reach, and from the support that their own governments afford them, but from their ability to divide desperate countries seeking the presence of global giants to make a small difference to their economic conditions ..."
"... Those who support globalisation support this power disparity. ..."
The case of Apple's Irish operations is an extreme example of such tax avoidance accounting. It relates
to two Apple subsidiaries Apple Sales International and Apple Operations Europe. Apple Inc US has
given the rights to Apple Sales International (ASI) to use its "intellectual property" to sell and
manufacture its products outside of North and South America, in return for which Apple Inc of the
US receives payments of more than $2 billion per year. The consequence of this arrangement is that
any Apple product sold outside the Americas is implicitly first bought by ASI, Ireland from different
manufacturers across the globe and sold along with the intellectual property to buyers everywhere
except the Americas. So all such sales are by ASI and all profits from those sales are recorded in
Ireland. Stage one is complete: incomes earned from sales in different jurisdictions outside the
Americas (including India) accrue in Ireland, where tax laws are investor-friendly. What is important
here that this was not a straight forward case of exercising the "transfer pricing" weapon. The profits
recorded in Ireland were large because the payment made to Apple Inc in the US for the right to use
intellectual property was a fraction of the net earnings of ASI.
Does this imply that Apple would
pay taxes on these profits in Ireland, however high or low the rate may be? The Commission found
it did not. In two rather curious rulings first made in 1991 and then reiterated in 2007 the Irish
tax authority allowed ASI to split it profits into two parts: one accruing to the Irish branch of
Apple and another to its "head office". That "head office" existed purely on paper, with no formal
location, actual offices, employees or activities. Interestingly, this made-of-nothing head office
got a lion's share of the profits that accrued to ASI, with only a small fraction going to the Irish
branch office. According to Verstager's Statement: "In 2011, Apple Sales International made profits
of 16 billion euros. Less than 50 million euros were allocated to the Irish branch. All the rest
was allocated to the 'head office', where they remained untaxed." As a result, across time, Apple
paid very little by way of taxes to the Irish government. The effective tax rate on its aggregate
profits was short of 1 per cent. The Commissioner saw this as illegal under the European Commission's
"state aid rules", and as amounting to aid that harms competition, since it diverts investment away
from other members who are unwilling to offer such special deals to companies.
In the books, however, taxes due on the "head office" profits of Apple are reportedly treated
as including a component of deferred taxes. The claim is that these profits will finally have to
be repatriated to the US parent, where they would be taxed as per US tax law. But it is well known
that US transnationals hold large volumes of surplus funds abroad to avoid US taxation and the evidence
is they take very little of it back to the home country. In fact, using the plea that it has "permanent
establishment" in Ireland and, therefore, is liable to be taxed there, and benefiting from the special
deal the Irish government has offered it, Apple has accumulated large surpluses. A study by two non-profit
groups published in 2015 has argued that Apple is holding as much as $181 billion of accumulated
profits outside the US, a record among US companies. Moreover, The Washington Post reports that Apple's
Chief Executive Tim Cook told its columnist Jena McGregor, "that the company won't bring its international
cash stockpile back to the United States to invest here until there's a 'fair rate' for corporate
taxation in America."
This has created a peculiar situation where the US is expressing concern about the EC decision
not because it disputes the conclusion about tax avoidance, but because it sees the tax revenues
as due to it rather than to Ireland or any other EU country. US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew criticised
the ruling saying, "I have been concerned that it reflected an attempt to reach into the U.S. tax
base to tax income that ought to be taxed in the United States." In Europe on the other hand, the
French Finance Minister and the German Economy Minister, among others, have come out in support of
Verstager, recognizing the implication this has for their own tax revenues. Governments other than
in Ireland are not with Apple, even if not always for reasons advanced by the EC.
... ... ...
Thus the power of the multinationals comes not just from their own size and reach, and from
the support that their own governments afford them, but from their ability to divide desperate
countries seeking the presence of global giants to make a small difference to their economic
conditions. The costs of garnering that difference are, therefore, often missed. Reuters
reports that an investigation conducted by it in 2013 found that around three-fourths of the 50
biggest U.S. technology companies use practices that are similar to Apple's to avoid paying tax.
So Verstager has taken on not just one giant, but the worlds corporate elite. She should not
lose. But even if she does this time, this is a battle well begun.
I think the common misconception that multinational corporations exist because "they are big
companies that happen to operate in more than one country" is one of the biggest lies ever told.
From the beginning (e.g. Standard Oil, United Fruit) it was clear that multinational status
was an exercise in political arbitrage.
" Thus the power of the multinationals comes not just from their own size and reach, and
from the support that their own governments afford them, but from their ability to divide desperate
countries seeking the presence of global giants to make a small difference to their economic conditions
"
Those who support globalisation support this power disparity.
"... To my untrained eyes and ears, Hillary Clinton doesn't look sufficiently healthy – mentally or otherwise – to be leading the country. If you disagree, take a look at the now-famous " Why aren't I 50 points ahead " video clip. Likewise, Bill Clinton seems to be in bad shape too, and Hillary wouldn't be much use to the country if she is taking care of a dying husband on the side. ..."
"... So when Clinton supporters ask me how I could support a "fascist," the answer is that he isn't one. Clinton's team, with the help of Godzilla, have effectively persuaded the public to see Trump as scary. The persuasion works because Trump's "pacing" system is not obvious to the public. They see his "first offers" as evidence of evil. They are not. They are technique. ..."
"... The battle with ISIS is also a persuasion problem. The entire purpose of military action against ISIS is to persuade them to stop, not to kill every single one of them. We need military-grade persuasion to get at the root of the problem. Trump understands persuasion, so he is likely to put more emphasis in that area. ..."
"... Most of the job of president is persuasion. Presidents don't need to understand policy minutia. They need to listen to experts and then help sell the best expert solutions to the public. Trump sells better than anyone you have ever seen, even if you haven't personally bought into him yet. You can't deny his persuasion talents that have gotten him this far. ..."
As most of you know, I had been endorsing Hillary Clinton for president, for my personal safety,
because I live in California. It isn't safe to be a Trump supporter where I live. And it's bad for
business too. But recently I switched my endorsement to Trump, and I owe you an explanation. So here
it goes.
1. Things I Don't Know: There are many things I don't know. For example, I don't know the
best way to defeat ISIS. Neither do you. I don't know the best way to negotiate trade policies. Neither
do you. I don't know the best tax policy to lift all boats. Neither do you. My opinion on abortion
is that men should follow the lead of women on that topic because doing so produces the most credible
laws. So on most political topics, I don't know enough to make a decision. Neither do you, but you
probably think you do.
Given the uncertainty about each candidate – at least in my own mind – I have been saying I am
not smart enough to know who would be the best president. That neutrality changed when Clinton proposed
raising estate taxes. I understand that issue and I view it as robbery by government.
I'll say more about that, plus some other issues I do understand, below.
... ... ...
4. Clinton's Health: To my untrained eyes and ears, Hillary Clinton doesn't look sufficiently
healthy – mentally or otherwise – to be leading the country. If you disagree, take a look at the
now-famous "
Why aren't I 50 points ahead " video clip. Likewise, Bill Clinton seems to be in bad shape too,
and Hillary wouldn't be much use to the country if she is taking care of a dying husband on the side.
5. Pacing and Leading: Trump always takes the extreme position on matters of safety and
security for the country, even if those positions are unconstitutional, impractical, evil, or something
that the military would refuse to do. Normal people see this as a dangerous situation. Trained persuaders
like me see this as something called pacing and leading . Trump "paces" the public – meaning
he matches them in their emotional state, and then some. He does that with his extreme responses
on immigration, fighting ISIS, stop-and-frisk, etc. Once Trump has established himself as the biggest
bad-ass on the topic, he is free to "lead," which we see him do by softening his deportation stand,
limiting his stop-and-frisk comment to Chicago, reversing his first answer on penalties for abortion,
and so on. If you are not trained in persuasion, Trump look scary. If you understand pacing and leading,
you might see him as the safest candidate who has ever gotten this close to the presidency. That's
how I see him.
So when Clinton supporters ask me how I could support a "fascist," the answer is that he isn't
one. Clinton's team, with the help of Godzilla, have effectively persuaded the public to see Trump
as scary. The persuasion works because Trump's "pacing" system is not obvious to the public. They
see his "first offers" as evidence of evil. They are not. They are technique.
And being chummy with Putin is more likely to keep us safe, whether you find that distasteful
or not. Clinton wants to insult Putin into doing what we want. That approach seems dangerous as hell
to me.
6. Persuasion: Economies are driven by psychology. If you expect things to go well tomorrow,
you invest today, which causes things to go well tomorrow, as long as others are doing
the same. The best kind of president for managing the psychology of citizens – and therefore the
economy – is a trained persuader. You can call that persuader a con man, a snake oil salesman, a
carnival barker, or full of shit. It's all persuasion. And Trump simply does it better than I have
ever seen anyone do it.
The battle with ISIS is also a persuasion problem. The entire purpose of military action against
ISIS is to persuade them to stop, not to kill every single one of them. We need military-grade persuasion
to get at the root of the problem. Trump understands persuasion, so he is likely to put more emphasis
in that area.
Most of the job of president is persuasion. Presidents don't need to understand policy minutia.
They need to listen to experts and then help sell the best expert solutions to the public. Trump
sells better than anyone you have ever seen, even if you haven't personally bought into him yet.
You can't deny his persuasion talents that have gotten him this far.
In summary, I don't understand the policy details and implications of most of either Trump's or
Clinton's proposed ideas. Neither do you. But I do understand persuasion. I also understand when
the government is planning to confiscate the majority of my assets. And I can also distinguish between
a deeply unhealthy person and a healthy person, even though I have no medical training. (So can you.)
I will be
live streaming my viewing of the debate Monday night, with my co-host and neighbor,
Kristina Basham . Tune your television to the debate and use your phone or iPad with the Periscope
app, and look for me at @ScottAdamsSays.
"... Flawed as he may be, Trump is telling more of the truth than politicians of our day. Most important, he offers a path away from constant war, a path of businesslike accommodation with all reasonable people and nations, concentrating our forces and efforts against the true enemies of civilization. Thus, to dwell on his faults and errors is to evade the great questions of war and peace, life and death for our people and our country. You and I will have to compensate for his deficits of civility, in return for peace, we may hope as Lincoln hoped, among ourselves and with all nations. ..."
"... No doubt, clinton supporters will snicker and deride efforts to treat Trump's positions seriously as this essay does. ..."
Flawed as he may be, Trump is telling more of the truth than politicians of our day. Most
important, he offers a path away from constant war, a path of businesslike accommodation with
all reasonable people and nations, concentrating our forces and efforts against the true enemies
of civilization. Thus, to dwell on his faults and errors is to evade the great questions of war
and peace, life and death for our people and our country. You and I will have to compensate for
his deficits of civility, in return for peace, we may hope as Lincoln hoped, among ourselves and
with all nations.
No doubt, clinton supporters will snicker and deride efforts to treat Trump's positions seriously
as this essay does.
But for anyone who is the slightest bit aware of how the maniac imperialists have hijacked
the public means of persuasion for a generation to the detriment of countless foreign countries
as well as our own, the obsession with turning Trump into a cartoon character with joke "policies"
should sound an alarm.
No "politician" was ever going to buck this system. Bernie Sanders, fiery and committed though
he was, proved that. It was always going to take an over-sized personality with an over-sized
ego to withstand the shit storm that a demand for profound change would create, and some "incivility"
seems a small price to pay to break the vice grip of the status quo.
I, for one, have no intention of squandering this opportunity to throw sand in the gears. There
has never been a third candidate allowed to plead their case in a presidential "debate" since
Ross Perot threw a scare into TPTB in 1992. Should clinton manage to pull this one out, the lesson
of Trump will be learned, and we may not be "given" the opportunity to choose an "outsider" again
for a very long time. It's worth taking a minute to separate the message from the messenger.
"... Global is gone as a main driving force, pan-European is gone, and whether the United States will stay united is far from a done deal. We are moving towards a mass movement of dozens of separate countries and states and societies looking inward. All of which are in some form of -impending- trouble or another. ..."
"... And of course it's confusing that the protests against the 'old regimes' and the growth and centralization -first- manifest in the rise of faces and voices who do not reject all of the above offhand. That is to say, the likes of Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump and Nigel Farage may be against more centralization, but none of them has a clue about growth being over. They don't get that part anymore than Hillary or Hollande or Merkel do. ..."
"... Dems in the US, Labour in the UK, and Hollande's 'Socialists' in France have all become part of the two-headed monster that is the political center, and that is (held) responsible for the deterioration in people's lives. ..."
But nobody seems to really know or understand. Which is odd, because it's not that hard. That
is, this all happens because growth is over. And if growth is over, so are expansion and centralization
in all the myriad of shapes and forms they come in.
Global is gone as a main driving force, pan-European is gone, and whether the United States
will stay united is far from a done deal. We are moving towards a mass movement of dozens of separate
countries and states and societies looking inward. All of which are in some form of -impending-
trouble or another.
What makes the entire situation so hard to grasp for everyone is that nobody wants to acknowledge
any of this. Even though tales of often bitter poverty emanate from all the exact same places
that Trump and Brexit and Le Pen come from too.
That the politico-econo-media machine churns out positive growth messages 24/7 goes some way
towards explaining the lack of acknowledgement and self-reflection, but only some way. The rest
is due to who we ourselves are. We think we deserve eternal growth.
And of course it's confusing that the protests against the 'old regimes' and the growth
and centralization -first- manifest in the rise of faces and voices who do not reject all of the
above offhand. That is to say, the likes of Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump and Nigel Farage may be
against more centralization, but none of them has a clue about growth being over. They don't get
that part anymore than Hillary or Hollande or Merkel do.
So why these people? Look closer and you see that in the US, UK and France, there is nobody
left who used to speak for the 'poor and poorer'. While at the same time, the numbers of poor
and poorer increase at a rapid clip. They just have nowhere left to turn to. There is literally
no left left.
Dems in the US, Labour in the UK, and Hollande's 'Socialists' in France have all become
part of the two-headed monster that is the political center, and that is (held) responsible for
the deterioration in people's lives. Moreover, at least for now, the actual left wing may
try to stand up in the form of Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders, but they are both being stangled
by the two-headed monster's fake left in their countries and their own parties.
================================================
This is from today's Links, but I didn't have a chance to post this snippet. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A191RL1A225NBEA
Long time since we had 5% – if the whole system is financial scheme is premised on growth,
and there is less and less of it ever year, it doesn't look sustainable. How bad http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/09/200pm-water-cooler-9272016.html#comment-2676054does
it have to get for how many before the model is chucked???
In the great depression, even the bankers were having a tough time. If the rich are exempt
from suffering, I think history has shown that a small elite can impose suffering on masses for
a long time…
'there is nobody left who used to speak for the 'poor and poorer'.
Actually, there are plenty who SPEAK for the poor, there just is NONE who ACT.
How would we measure this growth that is supposed to be over? Yes of course there are the conventional
measurements like GDP, but it's not zero. Yes of course if inflation is understated it would overstate
GDP, and yes GDP measurements may not measure much as many critics have said. But what about other
measures?
Is oil use down, are CO2 emissions down, is resource use in general down? If not it's growth
(or groath). This growth is at the cost of the planet but that's why GDP is flawed. And the benefit
of this groath goes entirely to the 1%ers, but that's distribution.
The left failed, I don't know all the reasons (and it's always hard to oppose the powers that
be, the field always tilts toward them, it's never a fair fight) but it failed. That's what we
see the results of.
Someone very smart said "the Fed makes the economy more stable".
He also quoted The Princess Bride: "You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you
think".
Definition of stable: firm; steady; not wavering or changeable.
As in: US GDP growth of a paltry 1.22% per year.
But hey it only took an additional trillion $ in debt per year to stay "stable".
there are plenty who SPEAK for the poor, there just is NONE who ACT.
========
That's why in 1992 Francis Futurama refirmed the end of history that was predicted by Hegel some
150 years earlier.
Springsteen, who has dramatised the plight of working-class Americans in his music, said he
understands how Trump could seem "compelling" to people who are economically insecure.
"The
absurdity is beyond cartoon-like. But he's gotten close enough [to the White House] so it can
make you nervous," he told the talk show Skavlan.
"I don't think he's going to win, but even him running is a great embarrassment if you're
an American," he said.
Trump knows how to tell voters "some of the things they want to hear," he added, including
to people "uncomfortable with the 'browning' of America."
"We have certain problems in the United States – tremendous inequality of wealth
distribution. That makes for ripe ground for demagoguery," Springsteen said.
"He has a very simple answer to all these very, very complex problems."
Springsteen recorded the interview with the talk show ahead of next week's release of his
memoir, Born to Run, which describes his childhood in New Jersey and rise to fame.
The singer, famous for his onstage stamina, has drawn a diverse field of devoted fans for
decades, including New Jersey governor Chris Christie, one of Trump's most public backers.
Springsteen insisted for years that he would let his music speak for him but has been more
openly political since the election in 2004, when he campaigned for John Kerry in his
unsuccessful bid to win the White House from George W Bush.
One hit wonder boy who climbed to fame on the back of his jingoistic melody 'Born in the
USA.' What he knows about politics could be written on a stamp!
I don't know too about Hilary being the ebb and flow of this countrys future. She outspent
Trump 3 to 1. She spent a wooping 360 million dollars on this campaign alone. The
Libertarian party also spent it up up to 7 million for their parties choice of President.
Some are saying that Hilary is not so popular with the vulture class. Those who feel
that her 300,000 a plate dinners to raise huge wads of cash could be spent on the poor.
1. Springsteen is eminently qualified to comment on being in a moronic state. (Huh?)
2. The issue doesn't revolve around the candidates' intelligence , but rather the ability
to make sound, timely and balanced judgments on many things with which you may or may not
have requisite familiarity. THOSE DECISIONS MUST BE MADE WITH COURAGE and sometimes almost
instantly.
3. Then, there is there are the issues of Trust, Honesty, Openness and the SECURITY OF THE
UNITED STATES.
But, then, I'm a Yank. (I hold 2 MBA's, I'm a Senior, a former executive with a major
international corporation, a father and grandfather, and a Veteran.), so what do I know?
against Sanders (who gave up far too soon) neither Hillary nor Trump would have a chance.
But the DNC, in its corrupt establishment wisdom, cf. Mme Wassermann-Schultz... undermined
his fair chances of raising real questions of why America is slipping economically,
socially, morally.
Who of the two is going to be less destructive for the US and the world ?
Well , I am not ready to say the lady is.
A professional politician and a non professional one. By the look of what the present has
to offer, I would be inclined to go for the non professional.
Goldman Sachs made Hillary's tie? Does she even wear a tie?
===============
$675,000.00 says Goldman Sachs has her tied around their chubby greedy finger.
Springsteen and Trump are alike in that they are both cowards when it came time for them to
do their duty in Vietnam. Springsteen told his draft board he was homosexual (funny he
hasn't been acting homosexual), whereas Trump got deferments for heel spurs. Dick Cheny is
like Springsteen and Trump as well in this regard.
I thought you Americans had finally decided that the Vietnam campaign was a bad error of
political judgement. Nothing cowardly about saying "no" to a draft that included, inter
alia, carpet bombing of innocents and applications of agent orange where the fall out is
still happening.
"In 2015, the work rate (or employment-to-population
ratio) for American males ages 25 to 54 was slightly lower
than it had been in 1940, at the tail end of the Great
Depression. If we were back at 1965 levels today, nearly 10
million additional men would have paying jobs. The collapse
of male work is due almost entirely to a flight out of the
labor force-and that flight has on the whole been voluntary.
The fact that only 1 in 7 prime-age men are not in the labor
force points to a lack of jobs as the reason they are not
working."
Uh Nick – thanks for telling us what we already knew –
labor force participation is down. But do you realize how you
just contradicted yourself. Keynesians like myself would
agree that is due to a lack of jobs (aka low aggregate
demand). So is this a voluntary thing?
Let's read on:
"these unworking men are floated by other household
members (wives, girlfriends, relatives) and by Uncle Sam.
Government disability programs figure prominently in the
calculus of support for unworking men-ever more prominently
over time."
Since government provided benefits have not been scaled up
by our policy makers – he must think the hard working ladies
are cuddling young men for their good lucks or something. Uh
Nick – come to NYC and you will see that the ladies here
think this is so stupid. His next excuse is all those dudes
in prison. Seriously? Does this AEI clown not realize crime
is much lower than it was a generation ago? This piece was
dumb even by AEI "standards". But at least he did not dwell
on the Tyler Cowen porn thing.And at the risk of repeating
myself (and Noah Smith) if their thesis that young men had
suddenly decided to loaf, then the inward shift of the labor
supply curve would mean higher real wages than we are seeing.
Reply
Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 09:37 AM
pgl said in reply to pgl...
I decided to put these thoughts in the following Econospeak
post which goes a little further debunking the
misrepresentations from the AEI hack:
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night
Alive as you or me
Says I, But Joe, you're ten years dead
I never died, says he
I never died, says he
In Salt Lake, Joe, says I to him
Him standing by my bed
They framed you on a murder charge
Says Joe, But I ain't dead
Says Joe, But I ain't dead
The copper bosses killed you, Joe
They shot you, Joe, says I
Takes more than guns to kill a man
Says Joe, I didn't die
Says Joe, I didn't die
And standing there as big as life
And smiling with his eyes
Joe says, What they forgot to kill
Went on to organize
Went on to organize
Joe Hill ain't dead, he says to me
Joe Hill ain't never died
Where working men are out on strike
Joe Hill is at their side
Joe Hill is at their side
From San Diego up to Maine
In every mine and mill
Where workers strike and organize
Says he, You'll find Joe Hill
Says he, You'll find Joe Hill
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night
Alive as you or me
Says I, But Joe, you're ten years dead
I never died, says he
I never died, says he
[More about Joe Hill and Alfred Hayes at the link.]
Reply
Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 10:10 AM
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
Fortunately I will have very little spare time for idle or
addle minded leisure now until well after the election and
even well after the subsequent coronation save those days so
rainy that outdoor activity is entirely impractical.
Reply
Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 10:14 AM
pgl said...
I never liked Ross Douhart. The political right thinks he has
written something very important:
"At the same time, outside the liberal tent, the feeling
of being suffocated by the left's cultural dominance is
turning voting Republican into an act of cultural rebellion -
which may be one reason the Obama years, so good for
liberalism in the culture, have seen sharp G.O.P. gains at
every level of the country's government. This spirit of
political-cultural rebellion is obviously crucial to Trump's
act."
Vote for a racist like Trump because liberals are
suffocating. Did I say I really do not like Ross Douhart?
Reply
Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 11:55 AM
Peter K. said in reply to pgl...
Again we agree. (Signs of the apocalypse? I guess Trump is
going to win.)
Douchehat is the worst hypocrite. He wants
readers to believe he's an expert in morality and morale
rectitude and that's what conservative should be known for
when in reality Republicans chose Trump as their candidate,
one grand example of immorality and dishonesty.
And still Douthat turns on the liberals as behaving badly.
Suffocating? Howabout the insanity of the Republican
convention? That was suffocating.
He even quotes Internet Troll Steve Sailor!!!
*rubs eyes*
"(The alt-right-ish columnist Steve Sailer made the punk
rock analogy as well.)"
It's like Douthat writing about JohnH or BINY. Every one
of Sailor's Internet comments would be racist ones about
immigration. He's mentally unhinged.
"But it remains an advantage for the G.O.P., and a
liability for the Democratic Party, that the new cultural
orthodoxy is sufficiently stifling to leave many Americans
looking to the voting booth as a way to register dissent."
Clueless Douthat. The culture is getting better in certain
ways because the TV executives just want to sell advertising
and these performers are popular. It's capitalism at work.
Kudos to John Oliver for winning an Emmy.
"Among millennials, especially, there's a growing
constituency for whom right-wing ideas are so alien or
triggering, left-wing orthodoxy so pervasive and
unquestioned, that supporting a candidate like Hillary
Clinton looks like a needless form of compromise."
Note the disdain for millennials. "Triggering."
Conservative like Douthat and Bobo Brooks "trigger" the
hate and anger centers of my brain.
The fact is that Samantha Bee is right and NBC facilitated
the rise of Trump with the Apprentice and treating him well
on other shows like Jimmy Fallon and SNL.
[ Do not use sickening
language on this blog. Never ever use such language here. ]
Reply
Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 02:44 PM
pgl said...
I have provided this link to some of the papers by Michael
Bruno – many co-authored by Jeffrey Sachs – for a couple of
reasons:
The minor reason is they have a nice paper on the Dutch
Disease – something JohnH thinks he understands but he needs
to read up on this topic. But the main reason has to do with
a stupid comment from Paine on my Econospeak post, which goes
to show how very little Paine actually learned in graduate
school.
I was try to paint a picture of some Real Business Cycle
claim that Bruno and Sachs emphasized when I was in graduate
school. I never truly bought their story as I was (and still
am) a die hard Keynesian. But here is how it went as applied
to the early 1980's (the period I was talking about). If a
nation enjoys a massive real appreciation and if aggregate
demand does not matter (the New Classical view which we
Keynesians do not buy) then the real wages of its domestic
workers rise. These workers supply more labor driving down
wages relative to domestic prices. So domestic firms hire
more workers.
That is their story. I do not buy it as I was clearly
mocking it. Alas Paine never learned this. And so he mocks
someone who did. Just another day at the EV comment section.
Aals.
Reply
Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 12:24 PM
anne said in reply to pgl...
Just another day at the -- ------- section.
"... telling pollsters that they now favor the Donald seems to be the only way many people have to tell Hillary and the people around her what they think of them. ..."
And Jill Stein is eager to do so now. She could do a far better job than Sanders too, because
her progressive vision, unlike his, doesn't end at the country's borders. She, unlike he, would
at least try to take American imperialism on.
But in the actual world, Jill Stein is still "Jill who?," and telling pollsters that they
now favor the Donald seems to be the only way many people have to tell Hillary and the people
around her what they think of them.
"... By Miguel Nińo-Zarazúa, Research Fellow, UNU-WIDE, Laurence Roope, Researcher, Health Economics Research Centre, University of Oxford, and Finn Tarp, Director, UNU-WIDER. Originally published at VoxEU ..."
"... See original post for references ..."
"... John Ross argues that the reduction in poverty has been pretty much all China. I'm also not convinced China is actually that much richer than before. A sweatshop worker has a higher income than a traditional farmer, but probably has a lower standard of living, and while the traditional farmer maintains the natural resource base, the industrial worker destroys it. ..."
"... Globalization is an economic and ecological disaster. We have outsourced wealth creation to China and they do it in the most polluting way possible, turning their country into a toxic waste dump in the process. ..."
"... The peasants slaving away in the cinder block hellholes of their factories churning out the crapola on Wal-Mart's shelves also get paid squat, while the leaders of the Chinese Criminal Party steal half of their effort for themselves and smuggle the loot out, to get away from the pollution. The other half gets stolen by the likes of Wal-Mart and Apple. ..."
"... The elites sold globalization as something that would generate such a munificent surplus that those in harms way would be helped. It ends up as a lie, where the elites the world over help themselves to the stolen sweat of the lowest people in society, with nothing left over, except for a polluted planet. ..."
"... Yes, those who "have seen their incomes stagnating in real terms for over 20 years" are indeed experiencing "considerable discontent." But this anodyne phrasing masks the reality of entire communities seeing their means of livelihood ripped out and shipped across the globe. This rhetoric makes it sound like, Oh those prosperous American workers can't buy as many luxuries now, boo hoo, when the standard practice from NAFTA on of globalization-as-corporate-welfare has meant real impoverishment for hundreds of thousands of individuals, entire cities and large chunks of whole states. As Lambert always says, Whose economy? ..."
...if you look at absolute inequality, as opposed to relative inequality, inequality has increased
around the world. This calls into question one of the big arguments made in favor of globalization:
that the cost to workers in advanced economies are offset by gains to workers in developing economies,
and is thus virtuous by lowering inequality more broadly measured.
By Miguel Nińo-Zarazúa, Research Fellow, UNU-WIDE, Laurence Roope, Researcher, Health
Economics Research Centre, University of Oxford, and Finn Tarp, Director, UNU-WIDER. Originally published
at VoxEU
Since the turn of the century, inequality in the distribution of income, together with concerns
over the pace and nature of globalisation, have risen to be among the most prominent policy issues
of our time. These concerns took centre stage at the recent annual G20 summit in China. From President
Obama to President Xi, there was broad agreement that the global economy needs more inclusive and
sustainable growth, where the economic pie increases in size and is at the same time divided more
fairly. As President Obama emphasised, "[t]he international order is under strain." The consensus
is well founded, following as it does the recent Brexit vote, and the rise of populism (especially
on the right) in the US and Europe, with its hard stance against free trade agreements, capital flows
and migration.
... ... ...
The inclusivity aspect of growth is now more imperative than ever. Globalisation has not been
a zero sum game. Overall perhaps more have benefitted, especially in fast-growing economies in the
developing world. However, many others, for example among the working middle class in industrialised
nations, have seen their incomes stagnating in real terms for over 20 years. It is unsurprising that
this has bred considerable discontent, and it is an urgent priority that concrete steps are taken
to reduce the underlying sources of this discontent. Those who feel they have not benefitted, and
those who have even lost from globalisation, have legitimate reasons for their discontent. Appropriate
action will require not only the provision of social protection to the poorest and most vulnerable.
It is essential that the very nature of the ongoing processes of globalisation, growth, and economic
transformation are scrutinised, and that broad based investments are made in education, skills, and
health, particularly among relatively disadvantaged groups. Only in this way will the world experience
sustained – and sustainable – economic growth and the convergence of nations in the years to come.
John Ross argues that the reduction in poverty has been pretty much all China. I'm also
not convinced China is actually that much richer than before. A sweatshop worker has a higher
income than a traditional farmer, but probably has a lower standard of living, and while the traditional
farmer maintains the natural resource base, the industrial worker destroys it.
Only in this way will the world experience sustained – and sustainable
– economic growth and the convergence of nations in the years to come.
Globalization is an economic and ecological disaster. We have outsourced wealth creation
to China and they do it in the most polluting way possible, turning their country into a toxic
waste dump in the process.
The peasants slaving away in the cinder block hellholes of their factories churning out
the crapola on Wal-Mart's shelves also get paid squat, while the leaders of the Chinese Criminal
Party steal half of their effort for themselves and smuggle the loot out, to get away from the
pollution. The other half gets stolen by the likes of Wal-Mart and Apple.
The elites sold globalization as something that would generate such a munificent surplus
that those in harms way would be helped. It ends up as a lie, where the elites the world over
help themselves to the stolen sweat of the lowest people in society, with nothing left over, except
for a polluted planet.
The notable presence of public policies that exacerbate racial and economic inequality and
the lack of will by Washington to change the system mean that the ethnic/racial wealth gap is
becoming more firmly entrenched in society.
"broad based investments are made in education, skills, and health, particularly among relatively
disadvantaged groups. Only in this way will the world experience sustained – and sustainable
– economic growth and the convergence of nations in the years to come."
…I guess if the skills were sustainable low chemical and diverse farming in 5 acre lots or
in co-ops then I might have less complaint, however the skills people apparently are going to
need are supervising robots and going to non jobs in autonomous vehicles and being fed on chemical
mush shaped like things we used to eat, a grim dystopia.
Yesterday I had the unpleasant experience of reading the hard copy nyt wherein kristof opined
that hey it's not so bad, extreme poverty has eased (the same as in this article, but without
this article's Vietnamese example where 1 v. 8 becomes 8 v. 80),ignoring the relative difference
while on another lackluster page there was an article saying immigrants don't take jobs from citizens
which had to be one of the most thinly veiled press releases of some study made by some important
sounding acronym and and, of course a supposed "balance" between pro and anti immigration academics.
because in this case, they claim we're relatively better off.
So there you have it, it's all relative. Bi color bird cage liner, dedicated to the ever shrinking
population of affluent/wealthy who are relatively better off as opposed to the ever increasing
population of people who are actually worse off…There was also an article on the desert dwelling
uighur and their system of canals bringing glacier water to farm their arid land which showed
some people who were fine for thousands of years, but now thanks to fracking, industrial pollution
and less community involvement (kids used to clean the karatz, keeping it healthy) now these people
can be uplifted into the modern world(…so great…) that was reminiscent of the nyt of olde which
presented the conundrum but left out the policy prescription which now always seems to be "the
richer I get the less extreme poverty there is in the world so stop your whining and borrow a
few hundred thousand to buy a PhD "
Yes, those who "have seen their incomes stagnating in real terms for over 20 years" are
indeed experiencing "considerable discontent." But this anodyne phrasing masks the reality of
entire communities seeing their means of livelihood ripped out and shipped across the globe. This
rhetoric makes it sound like, Oh those prosperous American workers can't buy as many luxuries
now, boo hoo, when the standard practice from NAFTA on of globalization-as-corporate-welfare has
meant real impoverishment for hundreds of thousands of individuals, entire cities and large chunks
of whole states. As Lambert always says, Whose economy?
Three reading recommendations for anyone who doesn't grasp your sentiment, shared by millions:
Sold Out , by Michelle Malkin Outsourcing America , by Ron Hira America: Who
Stole the Dream? , by Donald L. Barlett
Reply ↓
Hillary just can't help herself. Her political instincts (and those of her
campaign) are just plain stupid. Everything backfires on her, probably because
she is living in a fantasy bubble called the Political Industrial Complex (PIC).
The Political Industrial Complex encompasses all those elites whose livelihoods
are predicated on central-control of resources and who determine who is allowed
to succeed in society. It is a bipartisan exclusive club. It includes the Politicians
and their career staffers. It includes crony donors and lobbyists who reap government
windfalls and special treatment that average citizens cannot obtain. It includes
the PIC industrial base of pollsters, consultants, etc. And it includes the
pliant news media, whose success rest on access to those in power, and in return
for access making sure no bad news will disrupt said power.
This strange and bizarre parallel universe is where all the political elites
hang out – isolated from Main Street America (and the commoner world as well).
The denizens of the PIC are very wealthy, very cozy with each other and one
of they live in the most dense echo chamber on the planet.
Hillary is just the epitome of Political Correctness dripping from the center
of the PIC.
But now Hillary has created a massive movement in the country, outside the
PIC. She has created " The Deplorables! ".
It is becoming a badge of honor to be feared and attacked by the PIC. It
is becoming fun to watch members of the PIC just collapse into lick-spittle
rage, as the voters reject their self-anointed brilliance.
For example :
Hillary, you recently labeled me - and millions of Americans like me
- "deplorable."
I am not deplorable. What I am is your worst nightmare: a woman, a mother
and a voter who sees right through you.
In your remarks to an LGBT group, with liberal millionaire mouthpiece
Barbra Streisand hosting your appearance, you waved your invisible scepter
and banished millions of people from respectable society, just because you
felt like it.
"Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it,"
you said last Friday. "There are people like that, and [Trump] has lifted
them up."
Well, I'm concerned about national security, supportive of law enforcement,
and a believer in traditional marriage. How does that make me "deplorable?"
You may be a deplorable if you just got your car inspected.
If you're deployable, you're definitely deplorable.
If you wake before noon, if you call Islamic terrorists Islamic terrorists,
if you don't have an Obamaphone and you don't believe that global warming
is "settled science" - can you say deplorable?
…
Or if while watching the second Monday night NFL game you were less irritated
by the streaker than you were by all the fawning coverage of Colin Kaepernick
on the pre-game show.
You may be a deplorable if you resent training your H1-B replacement.
Or the fact that the Earned Income Tax Credit is NOT earned.
Nothing says deplorable like the National Rifle Association.
Hillary wanted to brand Trump Voters as subhuman (well, at least below the
standards of the PIC). But by giving them a name, she gave them a rallying point,
a joint cause.
Honestly, how could she have helped Trump even more? Given her political
skills I am sure we will find out soon enough.
The author fails to distinguish between two (intermixed) faction so of Repugs
-- neocons and neolib.
Neoconservatives and neoliberals are "enemy within" the Republican Party as
they have nothing to do with either republicanism or conservatism. They are Empire
builders. Neocons should be purged as they definitely do not belong. They already
started moving to Democratic party (Robert Kagan is a typical case) ...
Neoliberals are more complex and difficult case. They are the essence of the
current republican establishment, the face of the party. Here a Stalin-type purge
(Trotskyites were very influential before the purge) is necessary to get rid of
this faction, in order to return the Party to Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt
roots...
Notable quotes:
"... Only one outcome in November would forestall a complete, likely irreversible fracturing: the election of Hillary Clinton. Thus, many elite Republican operators-including lobbyists, elected officials, and pundits-are desperately hoping that Trump loses. Some are limited to expressing this desire privately, for fear of alienating the conservative voters on whom their continued electoral (or business) prospects depend. ..."
"... Republicans who were especially devoted to Marco Rubio during the primary-whose interests align with the perpetuation of the party's status quo-are perhaps the most strident in their wish for a Trump defeat. ..."
"... Under a President Trump, such establishmentarian actors would lose power. Maybe they'd retain some measure of influence within the administration, as Trump exerted his deal-making prowess to bring them into the fold, but their interests would no longer be paramount. Other forces would have propelled Trump to victory, and he would likely prioritize them in governance. ..."
"... "True conservatives" of the Cruz variety could feasibly come to include the free marketeers and conventional national-security hawks who cannot countenance Trump. ..."
"... It should also be noted that while this schism is especially pronounced among elites-such as those with sinecures at prestigious think tanks, or lobbyists with powerful clients to please-the divisions are far less evident at the voter level. Support for Trump among Republicans is around 90 percent , according to recent polling. ..."
"... those whose livelihood depends on conservative-movement institutions have added incentive to root for a Trump loss. ..."
"... In sum, Trump poses an existential threat to American movement [neo]conservatives. Hillary is their only hope. ..."
Obviously there is . It has been developing for years, and could be seen
to some extent in earlier presidential cycles, but was opened fully and dramatically
by the improbable candidacy of Donald Trump. Only one outcome in November
would forestall a complete, likely irreversible fracturing: the election of
Hillary Clinton. Thus, many elite Republican operators-including lobbyists,
elected officials, and pundits-are desperately hoping that Trump loses. Some
are limited to expressing this desire privately, for fear of alienating the
conservative voters on whom their continued electoral (or business) prospects
depend.
Republicans who were especially devoted to Marco Rubio during the primary-whose
interests align with the perpetuation of the party's status quo-are perhaps
the most strident in their wish for a Trump defeat. (Recall that the few
areas where Rubio prevailed earlier this year included
Washington, D.C., and its
Northern Virginia suburbs-locations that have profited immensely from the
post-9/11 military-industrial buildup.)
Under a President Trump, such establishmentarian actors would lose power.
Maybe they'd retain some measure of influence within the administration, as
Trump exerted his deal-making prowess to bring them into the fold, but their
interests would no longer be paramount. Other forces would have propelled Trump
to victory, and he would likely prioritize them in governance.
After Trump's election, many conservative organs and their congressional
allies would position themselves as Trump's enemies, coordinating with Democrats
on key initiatives to block his agenda. At the same time, other conservative
organs, in tandem with Trump-sympathetic factions of the Republican congressional
caucus, would coalesce around the sitting president and support his agenda.
Eventually, these factions' coexistence within the same movement would prove
untenable, practically and philosophically.
The result would be less overall leverage for traditional Republican institutions
in Washington, the kind whose existence is premised on the maintenance of the
decades-old "three-legged stool" formula-social conservatism, free markets,
and hawkish foreign policy-for entrenching conservative political power. Trump
would saw off one or two of the stool's legs, and there would be no replacing
them, at least not in the short term.
Though a Trump win would necessitate a realignment, it would not happen overnight.
Think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation
would not undergo a sudden ideological makeover; institutional inertia precludes
such rapid transformation. Change would happen slowly, but surely. A president
always influences the ideological composition of the body politic-within his
own party and the opposition. For instance, Obama's eight-year term has reshaped
the Democratic Party coalition, and also engendered commensurate shifts within
internal Republican dynamics.
Under a President Trump, the Republican congressional caucus and affiliated
movement-conservative entities would be constantly wracked by internecine warfare
of the type that was on vivid display during the GOP primaries. No doubt Ted
Cruz would be at the forefront of whatever organized conservative opposition
to Trump emerged as he positioned himself for a likely presidential primary
challenge in 2020. Cruz would be well situated to pick up the mantle of "true
conservatism"-however that ended up getting defined-and he would be able to
(convincingly) blame establishment-GOP squishes for fostering the conditions
that gave rise to Trump. "True conservatives" of the Cruz variety could
feasibly come to include the free marketeers and conventional national-security
hawks who cannot countenance Trump.
Conversely, under a President Hillary, movement conservatives could comfortably
unify the party in opposition to their longstanding enemy, papering over the
ideological divisions exposed by Trump. Such divisions would still exist, but
dealing with them would be subordinated to the overriding task of undermining
Hillary. Movement conservatives could easily discount Trump's nomination and
failed general-election run as an aberration, and revert more or less back to
form. They'd probably proffer some superficial initiatives to address "Trump_vs_deep_state"
at the urging of prominent columnists-the somber panel discussions would be
manifold-but "Trump_vs_deep_state" as a political program is so ill-defined and malleable
that, in practice, any remedial actions wouldn't amount to much.
It should also be noted that while this schism is especially pronounced
among elites-such as those with sinecures at prestigious think tanks, or lobbyists
with powerful clients to please-the divisions are far less evident at the voter
level. Support for Trump among Republicans is
around 90 percent , according to recent polling. In addition to keeping
the traditional movement-conservative coalition intact, a Trump loss would narrow
the gap between ordinary Republican voters and conservative elites, who could
unite in their disdain for Hillary. Thus, those whose livelihood depends on
conservative-movement institutions have added incentive to root for a Trump
loss.
In sum, Trump poses an existential threat to American movement [neo]conservatives.
Hillary is their only hope.
Michael Tracey is a journalist based in New York City.
"... traditional ways of life are dissolving as a new class of entrepreneur-warriors are wielding unprecedented power - and changing the global landscape. ..."
"... It's a huge psychological dent in people's faith in the system. I think what's going to happen in the next few years is huge unemployment in the middle class in America because a lot of their jobs will be outsourced or automated. ..."
Novelist Rana Dasgupta recently turned to nonfiction to explore the explosive
social and economic changes in Delhi starting in 1991, when India launched a
series of transformative economic reforms. In
Capital: The Eruption of Delhi, he describes a city where the epic hopes
of globalization have dimmed in the face of a sterner, more elitist world. In
Part 1 of an interview with the
Institute for New Economic
Thinking, Dasgupta traces a turbulent time in which traditional ways
of life are dissolving as a new class of entrepreneur-warriors are wielding
unprecedented power - and changing the global landscape.
Lynn Parramore: Why did you decide to move from New York to Delhi
in 2000, and then to write a book about the city?
Rana Dasgupta: I moved to be with my partner who lived in Delhi, and soon
realized it was a great place to have landed. I was trying write a novel and
there were a lot of people doing creative things. There was a fascinating intellectual
climate, all linked to changes in society and the economy. It was 10 years since
liberalization and a lot of the impact of that was just being felt and widely
sensed.
There was a sense of opportunity, not any more just on the part of business
people, but everyone. People felt that things were really going to change in
a deep way - in every part of the political spectrum and every class of society.
Products and technology spread, affecting even very poor people. Coke made ads
about the rickshaw drivers with their mobile phones -people who had never had
access to a landline. A lot of people sensed a new possibility for their own
lives.
Amongst the artists and intellectuals that I found myself with, there were
very big hopes for what kind of society Delhi could become and they were very
interested in being part of creating that. They were setting up institutions,
publications, publishing houses, and businesses. They were thinking new ideas.
When I arrived, I felt, this is where stuff is happening. The scale of conversations,
the philosophy of change was just amazing.
LP: You've interviewed many of the young tycoons who emerged during
Delhi's transformation. How would you describe this new figure? How do they
do business?
RD: Many of their fathers and grandfathers had run significant provincial
businesses. They were frugal in their habits and didn't like to advertise themselves,
and anyway their wealth remained local both in its magnitude and its reach.
They had business and political associates that they drank with and whose weddings
they went to, and so it was a tight-knit kind of wealth.
But the sons, who would probably be now between 35 and 45, had an entirely
different experience. Their adult life happened after globalization. Because
their fathers often didn't have the skills or qualifications to tap into the
forces of globalization, the sons were sent abroad, probably to do an MBA, so
they could walk into a meeting with a management consultancy firm or a bank
and give a presentation. When they came back they operated not from the local
hubs where their fathers ruled but from Delhi, where they could plug into federal
politics and global capital.
So you have these very powerful combinations of father/son businesses. The
sons revere the fathers, these muscular, huge masculine figures who have often
done much more risky and difficult work building their businesses and have cultivated
relationships across the political spectrum. They are very savvy, charismatic
people. They know who to give gifts to, how to do favors.
The sons often don't have that set of skills, but they have corporate skills.
They can talk finance in a kind of international language. Neither skill set
is enough on its own by early 2000's: they need each other. And what's interesting
about this package is that it's very powerful elsewhere, too. It's kind of a
world-beating combination. The son fits into an American style world of business
and finance, but the thing about American-style business is that there are lots
of things in the world that are closed to it. It's very difficult for an American
real estate company or food company to go to the president of an African country
and do a deal. They don't have the skills for it. But even if they did, they
are legally prevented from all the kinds of practices involved, the bribes and
everything.
This Indian business combination can go into places like Africa and Central
Asia and do all the things required. If they need to go to market and raise
money, they can do that. But if they need to sit around and drink with some
government guys and figure out who are the players that need to be kept happy,
they can do that, too. They see a lot of the world open to themselves.
LP: How do these figures compare to American tycoons during, say,
the Gilded Age?
RD: When American observers see these people they think, well, we had these
guys between 1890 and 1920, but then they all kind of went under because there
was a massive escalation of state power and state wealth and basically the state
declared a kind of protracted war on them.
Americans think this is a stage of development that will pass. But I think
it's not going to pass in our case. The Indian state is never going to have
the same power over private interests as the U.S. state because lots of things
have to happen. The Depression and the Second World War were very important
in creating a U.S. state that was that powerful and a rationale for defeating
these private interests. I think those private interests saw much more benefit
in consenting to, collaborating in, and producing a stronger U.S. state.
Over time, American business allied itself with the government, which did
a lot to open up other markets for it. In India, I think these private interests
will not for many years see a benefit in operating differently, precisely because
continents like Africa, with their particular set of attributes, have such a
bright future. It's not just about what India's like, but what other places
are like, and how there aren't that many people in the world that can do what
they can do.
LP: What has been lost and gained in a place like Delhi under global
capitalism?
RD: Undeniably there has been immense material gain in the city since 1991,
including the very poorest people, who are richer and have more access to information.
What my book tracks is a kind of spiritual and moral crisis that affects rich
and poor alike.
One kind of malaise is political and economic. Even though the poorest are
richer, they have less political influence. In a socialist system, everything
is done in the name of the poor, for good or for bad, and the poor occupy center
stage in political discourse. But since 1991 the poor have become much less
prominent in political and economic ideology. As the proportion of wealth held
by the richest few families of India has grown massively larger, the situation
is very much like the break-up of the Soviet Union, which leads to a much more
hierarchical economy where people closest to power have the best information,
contacts, and access to capital. They can just expand massively.
Suddenly there's a state infrastructure that's been built for 70 years or
60 years which is transferred to the private domain and that is hugely valuable.
People gain access to telecommunication systems, mines, land, and forests for
almost nothing. So ordinary people say, yes, we are richer, and we have all
these products and things, but those making the decisions about our society
are not elected and hugely wealthy.
Imagine the upper-middle-class guy who has been to Harvard, works for a management
consultancy firm or for an ad agency, and enjoys a kind of international-style
middle-class life. He thinks he deserves to make decisions about how the country
is run and how resources are used. He feels himself to be a significant figure
in his society. Then he realizes that he's not. There's another, infinitely
wealthier class of people who are involved in all kinds of backroom deals that
dramatically alter the landscape of his life. New private highways and new private
townships are being built all around him. They're sucking the water out of the
ground. There's a very rapid and seemingly reckless transformation of the landscape
that's being wrought and he has no part in it.
If he did have a say, he might ask, is this really the way that we want this
landscape to look? Isn't there enormous ecological damage? Have we not just
kicked 10,000 farmers off their land?
All these conversations that democracies have are not being had. People think,
this exactly what the socialists told us that capitalism was - it's pillage
and it creates a very wealthy elite exploiting the poor majority. To some extent,
I think that explains a lot of why capitalism is so turbulent in places like
India and China. No one ever expected capitalism to be tranquil. They had been
told for the better part of a century that capitalism was the imperialist curse.
So when it comes, and it's very violent, and everyone thinks, well that's what
we expected. One of the reasons that it still has a lot of ideological consensus
is that people are prepared for that. They go into it as an act of war, not
as an act of peace, and all they know is that the rewards for the people at
the top are very high, so you'd better be on the top.
The other kind of malaise is one of culture. Basically, America and Britain
invented capitalism and they also invented the philosophical and cultural furniture
to make it acceptable. Places where capitalism is going in anew do not have
200 years of cultural readiness. It's just a huge shock. Of course, Indians
are prepared for some aspects of it because many of them are trading communities
and they understand money and deals. But a lot of those trading communities
are actually incredibly conservative about culture - about what kind of lifestyle
their daughters will have, what kinds of careers their sons will have. They
don't think that their son goes to Brown to become a professor of literature,
but to come back and run the family business.
LP: What is changing between men and women?
RD: A lot of the fallout is about families. Will women work? If so, will
they still cook and be the kind of wife they're supposed to be? Will they be
out on the street with their boyfriends dressed in Western clothes and going
to movies and clearly advertising the fact that they are economically independent,
sexually independent, socially independent? How will we deal with the backlash
of violent crimes that have everything to do with all these changes?
This capitalist system has produced a new figure, which is the economically
successful and independent middle-class woman. She's extremely globalized in
the sense of what she should be able to do in her life. It's also created a
set of lower-middle-class men who had a much greater sense of stability both
in their gender and professional situation 30 years ago, when they could rely
on a family member or fellow caste member to keep them employed even if they
didn't have any marketable attributes. They had a wife who made sure that the
culture of the family was intact - religion, cuisine, that kind of stuff.
Thirty years later, those guys are not going to get jobs because that whole
caste value thing has no place in the very fast-moving market economy. Without
a high school diploma, they just have nothing to offer. Those guys in the streets
are thinking, I don't have a claim on the economy, or on women anymore because
I can't earn anything. Women across the middle classes - and it's not just across
India, it's across Asia -are trying to opt out of marriage for as long as they
can because they see only a downside. Remaining single allows all kinds of benefits
– social, romantic, professional. So those guys are pretty bitter and there's
a backlash that can become quite violent. We also have an upswing of Hindu fundamentalism
as a way of trying to preserve things. It's very appealing to people who think
society is falling apart.
LP: You've described India's experience of global capitalism as traumatic.
How is the trauma distinct in Delhi, and in what ways is it universal?
RD: Delhi suffers specifically from the trauma of Partition, which has created
a distinct society. When India became independent, it was divided into India
and Pakistan. Pakistan was essentially a Muslim state, and Hindis and Sikhs
left. The border was about 400 kilometers from Delhi, which was a tiny, empty
city, a British administrative town. Most of those Hindis and Sikhs settled
in Delhi where they were allocated housing as refugees. Muslims went in the
other direction to Pakistan, and as we know, something between 1 and 2 million
were killed in that event.
The people who arrived in Delhi arrived traumatized, having lost their businesses,
properties, friends, and communities, and having seen their family members murdered,
raped and abducted. Like the Jewish Holocaust, everyone can tell the stories
and everyone has experienced loss. When they all arrive in Delhi, they have
a fairly homogeneous reaction: they're never going to let this happen to them
again. They become fiercely concerned with security, physical and financial.
They're not interested in having nice neighbors and the lighter things of life.
They say, it was our neighbors that killed us, so we're going to trust only
our blood and run businesses with our brother and our sons. We're going to build
high walls around our houses.
When the grandchildren of these people grow up, it's a problem because none
of this has been exorcised. The families have not talked about it. The state
has not dealt with it and wants to remember only that India became independent
and that was a glorious moment. So the catastrophe actually becomes focused
within families rather than the reverse. A lot of grandchildren are more fearful
and hateful of Muslims than the grandparents, who remembered a time before when
they actually had very deep friendships with Muslims.
Parents of my generation grew up with immense silence in their households
and they knew that in that silence was Islam - a terrifying thing. When you're
one year old, you don't even know yet what Islam is, you just know that it's
something which is the greatest horror in the universe.
The Punjabi businessman is a very distinct species. They have treated business
as warfare, and they are still doing it like that 70 years later and they are
very good at it. They enter the global economy at a time when it's becoming
much less civilized as well. In many cases they succeed not because they have
a good idea, but because they know how to seize global assets and resources.
Punjabi businessmen are not inventing Facebook. They are about mines and oil
and water and food -things that everyone understands and needs.
In this moment of globalization, the world will have to realize that events
like the Partition of India are not local history anymore but global history.
Especially in this moment when the West no longer controls the whole system,
these traumas explode onto the world and affect all of us, like the Holocaust.
They introduce levels of turbulence into businesses and practices that we didn't
expect necessarily.
Then there's the trauma of capitalism itself, and here I think it's important
for us to re-remember the West's own history. Capitalism achieved a level of
consensus in the second half of the 20th century very accidentally, and by a
number of enormous forces, not all of which were intended. There's no guarantee
that such consensus will be achieved everywhere in the emerging world. India
and China don't have an empire to ship people off to as a safety valve when
suffering become immense. They just have to absorb all that stuff.
For a century or so, people in power in Paris and London and Washington felt
that they had to save the capitalist system from socialist revolution, so they
gave enormous concessions to their populations. Very quickly, people in the
West forgot that there was that level of dissent. They thought that everyone
loved capitalism. I think as we come into the next period where the kind of
consensus has already been dealt a huge blow in the West, we're going to have
to deal with some of those forces again.
LP: When you say that the consensus on capitalism has been dealt
a blow, are you talking about the financial crisis?
RD: Yes, the sense that the nation-state - I'm talking about the U.S. context
- can no longer control global capital, global processes, or, indeed, it's own
financial elite.
It's a huge psychological dent in people's faith in the system. I think
what's going to happen in the next few years is huge unemployment in the middle
class in America because a lot of their jobs will be outsourced or automated.
Then, if you have 30-40 percent unemployment in America, which has always
been the ideological leader in capitalism, America will start to re-theorize
capitalism very profoundly (and maybe the Institute of New Economic Thinking
is part of that). Meanwhile, I think the middle class in India would not have
these kinds of problems. It's precisely because American technology and finance
are so advanced that they're going to hit a lot of those problems. I think in
places like India there's so much work to be done that no one needs to leap
to the next stage of making the middle class obsolete. They're still useful.
Lynn Parramore is contributing editor at AlterNet. She is cofounder of Recessionwire,
founding editor of New Deal 2.0, and author of "Reading the Sphinx: Ancient
Egypt in Nineteenth-Century Literary Culture." She received her Ph.D. in English
and cultural theory from NYU. Follow her on Twitter @LynnParramore.
This set of principles in the core of "Trump_vs_deep_state" probably can be
improved, but still are interesting: "... If you listen closely to Trump, you'll hear a direct repudiation of the
system of globalization and identity politics that has defined the world order since
the Cold War. There are, in fact, six specific ideas that he has either blurted
out or thinly buried in his rhetoric: (1) borders matter; (2) immigration policy
matters; (3) national interests, not so-called universal interests, matter; (4)
entrepreneurship matters; (5) decentralization matters; (6) PC speech-without which
identity politics is inconceivable-must be repudiated. ..."
Notable quotes:
"... If you listen closely to Trump, you'll hear a direct repudiation of the system of globalization and identity politics that has defined the world order since the Cold War. There are, in fact, six specific ideas that he has either blurted out or thinly buried in his rhetoric: (1) borders matter; (2) immigration policy matters; (3) national interests, not so-called universal interests, matter; (4) entrepreneurship matters; (5) decentralization matters; (6) PC speech-without which identity politics is inconceivable-must be repudiated. ..."
"... These six ideas together point to an end to the unstable experiment with supra- and sub-national sovereignty that many of our elites have guided us toward, siren-like, since 1989. ..."
"... if anti-Trumpers convince themselves that that's all ..."
"... What is going on is that "globalization-and-identity-politics-speak" is being boldly challenged. Inside the Beltway, along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, there is scarcely any evidence of this challenge. There are people in those places who will vote for Trump, but they dare not say it, for fear of ostracism. ..."
"... Out beyond this hermetically sealed bicoastal consensus, there are Trump placards everywhere, not because citizens are racists or homophobes or some other vermin that needs to be eradicated, but because there is little evidence in their own lives that this vast post-1989 experiment with "globalization" and identity politics has done them much good. ..."
"... The most highly motivated voters in this election cycle seem to be insurgents pushing back against corrupt and incompetent elites and the Establishment. That does not bode well for Clinton. ..."
"... Another page in the annals of American elite incompetence, only five days after the ceasefire in Syria was negotiated, we broke it by bombing a well-known Syrian position. After Russia took us to the woodshed, Samantha Power responds by basically saying, "We messed up, but Russia is a moralistic hypocrite because they support Assad and he is, like, really bad and stuff." ..."
"... They seem to think that any attempt to stop mass 3rd world immigration, stop pc thought police, or up hold Christian-ish values are a direct threat to them. ..."
"... The enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders and Trump can only be understood as an overdue awakening of voters--finally recognizing that voting for more of the same tools of the plutocrats and oligarchs (which was represented by all candidates other than Trump and Sanders) will only serve the war profiteers, neocons, and other beltway bandits--at the expense of every other voter. ..."
"... Once the voters have awakened, they will not return to slumber or accept the establishment politics as usual. It is going to be a very interesting process to watch, and the political operatives who think we will return to the same old GOP and Democratic politics as usual should brace themselves for a rude awakening. ..."
"... Trump vs. Clinton = Nationalism vs. Globalism ..."
If you listen closely to Trump, you'll hear a direct repudiation
of the system of globalization and identity politics that has defined the
world order since the Cold War. There are, in fact, six specific ideas that
he has either blurted out or thinly buried in his rhetoric: (1) borders
matter; (2) immigration policy matters; (3) national interests, not so-called
universal interests, matter; (4) entrepreneurship matters; (5) decentralization
matters; (6) PC speech-without which identity politics is inconceivable-must
be repudiated.
These six ideas together point to an end to the unstable experiment
with supra- and sub-national sovereignty that many of our elites have guided
us toward, siren-like, since 1989.
That is what the Trump campaign, ghastly though it may at times be, leads
us toward: A future where states matter. A future where people are citizens,
working together toward (bourgeois) improvement of their lot. His ideas
do not yet fully cohere. They are a bit too much like mental dust that has
yet to come together. But they can come together. And Trump is the first
American candidate to bring some coherence to them, however raucous his
formulations have been.
Mitchell goes on to say that political elites call Trump "unprincipled,"
and perhaps they're right: that he only does what's good for Trump. On the other
hand, maybe Trump's principles are not ideological, but pragmatic. That is,
Trump might be a quintessential American political type: the leader who gets
into a situation and figures out how to muddle through. Or, as Mitchell puts
it:
This doesn't necessarily mean that he is unprincipled; it means rather
that he doesn't believe that yet another policy paper based on conservative
"principles" is going to save either America or the Republican Party.
Also, Mitchell says that there are no doubt voters in the Trump coalition
who are nothing but angry, provincial bigots. But if anti-Trumpers convince
themselves that that's all the Trump voters are, they will miss something
profoundly important about how Western politics are changing because of deep
instincts emerging from within the body politic:
What is going on is that "globalization-and-identity-politics-speak"
is being boldly challenged. Inside the Beltway, along the Atlantic
and Pacific coasts, there is scarcely any evidence of this challenge. There
are people in those places who will vote for Trump, but they dare not say
it, for fear of ostracism.
They think that identity politics has gone too
far, or that if it hasn't yet gone too far, there is no principled place
where it must stop. They believe that the state can't be our only large-scale
political unit, but they see that on the post-1989 model, there will, finally,
be no place for the state.
Out beyond this hermetically sealed bicoastal consensus, there are Trump
placards everywhere, not because citizens are racists or homophobes or some
other vermin that needs to be eradicated, but because there is little evidence
in their own lives that this vast post-1989 experiment with "globalization"
and identity politics has done them much good.
There's lots more here, including his prediction of what's going to happen
to the GOP.
Read the whole thing.
The most highly motivated voters in this election cycle seem to be
insurgents pushing back against corrupt and incompetent elites and the
Establishment. That does not bode well for Clinton.
Another page in the annals of American elite incompetence, only five
days after the ceasefire in Syria was negotiated, we broke it by
bombing a well-known Syrian position. After Russia took us to the woodshed,
Samantha Power responds by basically saying, "We messed up, but Russia is
a moralistic hypocrite because they support Assad and he is, like, really
bad and stuff."
Which not only makes it seem more likely that we were targeting
Assad's forces to anyone reasonably distrustful of American involvement
in the war, but also shows the moral reasoning ability of nothing greater
than a 6 year old.
Seriously, accusing Russia of moralism, and then moralistically trying
to hide responsibility by listing atrocities committed by Assad? It is self-parody.
Call it anti-Semitic if you want but all my Jewish cousins and the several
other Jewish business associates I know feel uncontrollable hate for Trump.
"thinly buried in his rhetoric:
borders matter;
immigration policy matters;
national interests, not so-called universal interests, matter;
entrepreneurship matters;
decentralization matters;
PC speech-without which identity politics is inconceivable-must
be repudiated."
They seem to think that any attempt to stop mass 3rd world immigration,
stop pc thought police, or up hold Christian-ish values are a direct threat
to them.
I cannot speak to what is best for conservative Christians, but change is
definitely in the air. Since the start of this election, I have had a clear
sense that we are seeing a beginning of a new political reality.
The enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders and Trump can only be understood
as an overdue awakening of voters--finally recognizing that voting for more
of the same tools of the plutocrats and oligarchs (which was represented
by all candidates other than Trump and Sanders) will only serve the war
profiteers, neocons, and other beltway bandits--at the expense of every
other voter.
Too many voters have finally come to recognize that neither party serves
them in any real way. This will forcibly result in a serious reform process
of one or both parties, a third party that actually represents working people,
or if neither reform or a new party is viable-–a new American revolution,
which I fear greatly.
Once the voters have awakened, they will not return to slumber or
accept the establishment politics as usual. It is going to be a very interesting
process to watch, and the political operatives who think we will return
to the same old GOP and Democratic politics as usual should brace themselves
for a rude awakening.
I'm certainly not
the first to say this, but perhaps the first to post it on this blog. RD,
perhaps rightfully, has steered this post toward the Benedict Option, but
what should be debated is the repudiation of globalization and identity
politics.
"Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will and
deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases
have to be changed."
Uh Oh -- We Christians are in Hillary Clinton's Basket of Deplorables.
"... Moscow did indeed support secessionist pro-Russia rebels in East Ukraine. But did not the U.S. launch a 78-day bombing campaign on tiny Serbia to effect a secession of its cradle province of Kosovo? ..."
"... Russia is reportedly hacking into our political institutions. If so, it ought to stop. But have not our own CIA, National Endowment for Democracy, and NGOs meddled in Russia's internal affairs for years? ..."
"... Scores of the world's 190-odd nations are today ruled by autocrats. How does it advance our interests or diplomacy to have congressional leaders yapping "thug" at the ruler of a nation with hundreds of nuclear warheads? ..."
"... Very good article indeed. Knee-jerk reaction of american politicians and journalists looks extremely strange. As a matter of fact they look like idiots or puppets. ..."
"... Rubio and Graham are reflexively ready to push US influence everywhere, all the time, with military force always on the agenda, and McCain seems to be in a state of constant agitation ..."
"... Very sensible article. And as the EU falls further into disarray and possible disintegration, due to migration and other catastrophically mishandled problems, a working partnership with Russia will become even more important. Right now, we treat Russia as an enemy and Saudi Arabia as a friend. That makes no sense at all. ..."
"... As I've stated many times, Obama the narcissist hates Putin because Putin doesn't play the sycophantic lapdog yapping about how good it is to interact with the "smartest person in the room". ..."
"... I'm serious. Obama craves sources of narcissistic supply and has visceral contempt for sources of narcissistic injury. I.e., people who may reveal the mediocrity that he actually is. Obama considers Putin a threat in that context. ..."
"... The downside for the U.S. is that Obama has extended hating Putin to hating Russia. And yes, Washington is flooded with sources of sycophantic narcissistic supply for Obama including the MSM. And they are happy to massage his twisted ego by enthusiastically playing along with the Putin/Russia fear-monger bashing. ..."
"... P.S. too bad Hillary is saturated with her own psychopathology that portends more Global Cop wreckage. ..."
"... Anyway, what Buchanan is saying is, "We have to deal with him," not "favor him." The two terms should not be confused. ..."
"... There are a lot of "allies" of questionable usefulness that the US should stop "favoring," and a lot of competitors (and potential allies in the true sense) out there the US should begin "dealing" with. ..."
"... Everything the Western elite does is about dollar hegemony and control of energy. ..."
"... As long as Russia is not a puppet of the globalist banking cartel they will be presented as an "enemy". Standing in the way of energy imperialism was the last straw for the all out hybrid war being launched on Russia now. ..."
"... If the Western public wasn't so lazy and stupid we would remove the globalists controlling us. Instead people, especially liberals, get in bed with the globalists plans against Russia bc they can't stand Russia is Christian and supports the family. ..."
"... Every word about Russia allowed in the Western establishment are lies funded and molded by people like Soros and warmongers. This is the reality. Nobody who will speak honestly or positively about Russia is allowed any voice. And scumbag neoliberal globalists like Kasperov are presented as "Russians" while real Russian people are given zero voice. ..."
"... What the Western elite is doing right now in Ukraine and Syria is reprehensible and its all our fault for letting these people control us. ..."
...Arriving on Capitol Hill to repair ties between Trump and party elites,
Gov. Mike Pence was taken straight to the woodshed.
John McCain told Pence that Putin was a "thug and a butcher," and Trump's
embrace of him intolerable.
Said Lindsey Graham: "Vladimir Putin is a thug, a dictator … who has
his opposition killed in the streets," and Trump's views bring to mind Munich.
Putin is an "authoritarian thug," added "Little Marco" Rubio.
What causes the Republican Party to lose it whenever the name of Vladimir
Putin is raised?
Putin is no Stalin, whom FDR and Harry Truman called "Good old Joe" and "Uncle
Joe." Unlike Nikita Khrushchev, he never drowned a Hungarian Revolution in blood.
He did crush the Chechen secession. But what did he do there that General Sherman
did not do to Atlanta when Georgia seceded from Mr. Lincoln's Union?
Putin supported the U.S. in Afghanistan, backed our nuclear deal with Iran,
and signed on to John Kerry's plan have us ensure a cease fire in Syria and
go hunting together for ISIS and al-Qaida terrorists.
Still, Putin committed "aggression" in Ukraine, we are told. But was that
really aggression, or reflexive strategic reaction? We helped dump over a pro-Putin
democratically elected regime in Kiev, and Putin acted to secure his Black Sea
naval base by re-annexing Crimea, a peninsula that has belonged to Russia from
Catherine the Great to Khrushchev. Great powers do such things.
When the Castros pulled Cuba out of America's orbit, we decided to keep Guantanamo,
and dismiss Havana's protests?
Moscow did indeed support secessionist pro-Russia rebels in East Ukraine.
But did not the U.S. launch a 78-day bombing campaign on tiny Serbia to effect
a secession of its cradle province of Kosovo?
... ... ...
Russia is reportedly hacking into our political institutions. If so,
it ought to stop. But have not our own CIA, National Endowment for Democracy,
and NGOs meddled in Russia's internal affairs for years?
... ... ...
Is Putin's Russia more repressive than Xi Jinping's China? Yet, Republicans
rarely use "thug" when speaking about Xi. During the Cold War, we partnered
with such autocrats as the Shah of Iran and General Pinochet of Chile, Ferdinand
Marcos in Manila, and Park Chung-Hee of South Korea. Cold War necessity required
it.
Scores of the world's 190-odd nations are today ruled by autocrats. How
does it advance our interests or diplomacy to have congressional leaders yapping
"thug" at the ruler of a nation with hundreds of nuclear warheads?
>>During the Cold War, we partnered with such autocrats as the Shah
of Iran and General Pinochet of Chile, Ferdinand Marcos in Manila, and Park
Chung-Hee of South Korea
buttressed could be even more pertinent)
Very good article indeed. Knee-jerk reaction of american politicians
and journalists looks extremely strange. As a matter of fact they look like
idiots or puppets.
Rubio
and Graham are reflexively ready to push US influence everywhere, all the
time, with military force always on the agenda, and McCain seems to be in
a state of constant agitation whenever US forces are not actively engaged
in combat somewhere. They are loud voices, yes, but irrational voices, too.
Very sensible article. And as the EU falls further into disarray
and possible disintegration, due to migration and other catastrophically
mishandled problems, a working partnership with Russia will become even
more important. Right now, we treat Russia as an enemy and Saudi Arabia
as a friend. That makes no sense at all.
"Just" states the starvation of the Ukraine is a western lie. The Harvest
of Sorrow by Robert Conquest refutes this dangerous falsehood. Perhaps "Just"
believes The Great Leap Forward did not lead to starvation of tens of millions
in China. After all, this could be another "western lie". So to could be
the Armenian genocide in Turkey or slaughter of Communists in Indonesia.
As I've stated many times, Obama the narcissist hates Putin because
Putin doesn't play the sycophantic lapdog yapping about how good it is to
interact with the "smartest person in the room".
I'm serious. Obama craves sources of narcissistic supply and has
visceral contempt for sources of narcissistic injury. I.e., people who may
reveal the mediocrity that he actually is. Obama considers Putin a threat
in that context.
The downside for the U.S. is that Obama has extended hating Putin
to hating Russia. And yes, Washington is flooded with sources of sycophantic
narcissistic supply for Obama including the MSM. And they are happy to massage
his twisted ego by enthusiastically playing along with the Putin/Russia
fear-monger bashing.
And so the U.S. – Russia relationship is wrecked by the "smartest person
in the room".
P.S. too bad Hillary is saturated with her own psychopathology that
portends more Global Cop wreckage.
John asks, "We also have to deal with our current allies. Whom would
Mr. Buchanan like to favor?"
Well, we could redouble our commitment to our democracy and peace loving
friends in Saudi Arabia, we could deepen our ties to those gentle folk in
Egypt, and maybe for a change give some meaningful support to Israel. Oh,
and our defensive alliances will be becoming so much stronger with Montenegro
as a member, we will need to pour more resources into that country.
Anyway, what Buchanan is saying is, "We have to deal with him," not
"favor him." The two terms should not be confused.
There are a lot of "allies" of questionable usefulness that the US
should stop "favoring," and a lot of competitors (and potential allies in
the true sense) out there the US should begin "dealing" with.
"During the Cold War, we partnered with such autocrats as the Shah of
Iran and General Pinochet of Chile, Ferdinand Marcos in Manila, and Park
Chung-Hee of South Korea. Cold War necessity required it (funny, you failed
to mention Laos, South Vietnam, Nicaragua, Noriega/Panama, and everyone's
favorite 9/11 co-conspirator and WMD developer, Saddam Hussein). either
way how did these "alliances" work out for the US? really doesn't matter,
does it? it is early 21st century, not mid 20th century. there is a school
of thought in the worlds of counter-terrorism/intelligence operations, which
suggests if you want to be successful, you have to partner with some pretty
nasty folks. Trump is being "handled" by an experienced, ruthless (that's
a compliment), and focused "operator". unless, of course, Trump is actually
the superior operator, in which case, this would be the greatest black op
of all time.
"From Russia With Money - Hillary Clinton, the Russian Reset and Cronyism,"
"Of the 28 US, European and Russian companies that participated in Skolkovo,
17 of them were Clinton Foundation donors" or sponsored speeches by former
President Bill Clinton, Schweizer told The Post.
Everything the Western elite does is about dollar hegemony and control
of energy. Once you understand that then the (evil)actions of the Western
elite make sense. Anyone who stands in the way of those things is an "enemy".
This is how they determine an "enemy".
As long as Russia is not a puppet of the globalist banking cartel
they will be presented as an "enemy". Standing in the way of energy imperialism
was the last straw for the all out hybrid war being launched on Russia now.
If the Western public wasn't so lazy and stupid we would remove the
globalists controlling us. Instead people, especially liberals, get in bed
with the globalists plans against Russia bc they can't stand Russia is Christian
and supports the family.
Every word about Russia allowed in the Western establishment are
lies funded and molded by people like Soros and warmongers. This is the
reality. Nobody who will speak honestly or positively about Russia is allowed
any voice. And scumbag neoliberal globalists like Kasperov are presented
as "Russians" while real Russian people are given zero voice.
What the Western elite is doing right now in Ukraine and Syria is
reprehensible and its all our fault for letting these people control us.
You need to substitute PIC (a.k.a., The Elites or Political Class)) for
neoliberal elite for the article to make more sense.
Notable quotes:
"... Our nation is in the grip of such poisonous thinking. The DNC with its "Super Delegates" already has a way to control who will be their candidate. In an irony to beat all ironies, the DNC's Super Delegates were able to stop Bernie Sanders... ..."
"... The reason Trump is still rising (and I believe will win handily) is he clearly represents the original image of America: a self made success story based on capitalism and the free market. ..."
This election cycle is so amazing one cannot help but think it has been scripted
by some invisible, all-powerful, hand. I mean, how could we have two completely
opposite candidates, perfectly reflecting the forces at play in this day and
age? It truly is a clash between The Elites and The Masses!
Main Street vs Wall & K Street.
The Political Industrial Complex (PIC – a.k.a., The Elites or Political Class)
is all up arms over the outsider barging in on their big con. The PIC is beside
itself trying to stop Donald Trump from gaining the Presidency, where he will
be able to clean out the People's House and the bureaucratic cesspool that has
shackled Main Street with political correctness, propaganda, impossibly expensive
health care, ridiculous taxes and a national debt that will take generations
to pay off.
The PIC has run amok long enough – illustrated perfectly by the defect ridden
democrat candidate: Hillary Clinton. I mean, how could you frame America's choices
this cycle
any better than this --
Back in July, Democratic presidential nominee and former Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton said, "there is
absolutely no connection between anything that I did as secretary of
state and the Clinton Foundation."
On Monday of this week,
ABC's Liz Kreutzer reminded people of that statement, as a new batch
of emails reveal that there was a connection, and
it was cash .
…
The Abedin emails reveal that the longtime Clinton aide apparently served
as a conduit between Clinton Foundation donors and Hillary Clinton while
Clinton served as secretary of state. In more than a dozen email exchanges,
Abedin provided expedited, direct access to Clinton for donors who had contributed
from $25,000 to $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. In many instances,
Clinton Foundation top executive Doug Band, who worked with the Foundation
throughout Hillary Clinton's tenure at State, coordinated closely with Abedin.
In Abedin's June deposition to Judicial Watch, she conceded that part of
her job at the State Department was taking care of "
Clinton family matters ."
This is what has Main Street so fed up with Wall & K street (big business,
big government). The Clinton foundation is a cash cow for Clinton, Inc. So while
our taxes go up, our debt sky rockets and our health care becomes too expensive
to afford, Clan Clinton has made 100's of millions of dollars selling access
(and obviously doing favors, because no one spends that kind of money without
results).
The PIC is circling the wagons with its news media arm shrilly screaming
anything and everything about Trump as if they could fool Main Street with their
worn out propaganda. I seriously doubt it will work. The Internet has broken
the information monopoly that allowed the PIC in the not too distant past to
control what people knew and thought.
Massachusetts has a long history of using the power of incumbency to
cripple political opponents. In fact, it's a leading state for such partisan
gamesmanship. Dating back to 1812, when Gov. Elbridge Gerry signed into
law a redistricting plan for state Senate districts that favored his Democratic-Republican
Party, the era of Massachusetts rule rigging began. It has continued, unabated,
ever since.
Given the insider dealing and venality that epitomized the 2016 presidential
primary process, I'd hoped that politicians would think twice before abusing
the power of the state for political purposes. Galvin quickly diminished
any such prospect of moderation in the sketchy behavior of elected officials.
He hid his actions behind the thin veil of fiscal responsibility. He claimed
to be troubled by the additional $56,000 he was going to have to spend printing
ballots to accommodate Independent voters. He conveniently ignored the fact
that thousands of these UIP members have been paying taxes for decades to
support a primary process that excludes them.
…
In my home state of Kansas, where my 2014 candidacy threatened to take
a U.S. Senate seat from the Republicans, they responded predictably. Instead
of becoming more responsive to voters, our state's highly partisan secretary
of state, Kris Kobach, introduced legislation that would bring back one
of the great excesses of machine politics: straight party-line voting –
which is designed to discourage voters from considering an Independent candidacy
altogether. Kobach's rationale, like Galvin's, was laughable. He described
it as a "convenience" for voters.
The article goes on to note these acts by the PIC are an affront to the large
swath of the electorate who really choose who will win elections:
In a recent Gallup poll, 60 percent of Americans said they do not feel
well-represented by the Democrats and Republicans and believe a third major
party is needed. Fully 42 percent of Americans now describe themselves
as politically independent .
That means the two main parties are each smaller in size than the independents
(68% divided by 2 equals 34%), which is why independents pick which side will
win. If the PIC attacks this group – guess what the response will look like?
I recently had a discussion with someone from Washington State who is pretty
much my opposite policy-wise. She is a deep blue democrat voter, whereas I am
a deep purple independent who is more small-government Tea Party than conservative-GOP.
She was lamenting the fact that her state has caucuses, which is one method
to blunt Main Street voters from having a say. It was interesting that we quickly
and strongly agreed on one thing above all else: open primaries. We both knew
that if the voters had the only say in who are leaders
would be, all sides could abide that decision easily. It is when PIC intervenes
that things get ugly.
Open primaries make the political parties accountable to the voters. Open
primaries make it harder for the PIC to control who gets into office, and reduces
the leverage of big donors. Open primaries reflect the will of the states and
the nation – not the vested interests (read bank accounts) of the PIC.
Without doubt, one of the most troublesome aspects of the current system
is its gross inefficiency. Whereas generations ago selecting a nominee
took relatively little time and money , today's process has resulted
in a near-permanent campaign. Because would-be nominees have to
win primaries and open caucuses in several states, they must put
together vast campaign apparatuses that spread across the nation, beginning
years in advance and raising tens of millions of dollars.
The length of the campaign alone keeps many potential candidates on the
sidelines. In particular, those in positions of leadership at various
levels of our government cannot easily put aside their duties and
shift into full-time campaign mode for such an extended period.
It is amazing how this kind of thinking can be considered legitimate. Note
how independent voters are evil in the mind of the PIC, and only government
leaders need apply. Not surprising, their answer is to control access to the
ballot:
During the week of Lincoln's birthday (February 12), the Republican Party
would hold a Republican Nomination Convention that would borrow from the
process by which the Constitution was ratified. Delegates to the
convention would be selected by rank-and-file Republicans in their local
communities , and those chosen delegates would meet, deliberate,
and ultimately nominate five people who, if willing, would each
be named as one of the party's officially sanctioned finalists for its presidential
nomination. Those five would subsequently debate one another a half-dozen
times.
Brexit became a political force because the European Union was not accountable
to the voters. The EU members are also selected by members of the European PIC
– not citizens of the EU. Without direct accountability to all citizens (a.k.a.
– voters) there is no democracy –
just a variant
of communism:
During the Russian Civil War (1918–1922), the Bolsheviks nationalized
all productive property and imposed a policy named war communism,
which put factories and railroads under strict government control,
collected and rationed food, and introduced some bourgeois management of
industry . After three years of war and the 1921 Kronstadt rebellion,
Lenin declared the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921, which was to give
a "limited place for a limited time to capitalism." The NEP lasted until
1928, when Joseph Stalin achieved party leadership, and the introduction
of the Five Year Plans spelled the end of it. Following the Russian Civil
War, the Bolsheviks, in 1922, formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR), or Soviet Union, from the former Russian Empire.
Following Lenin's democratic centralism, the Leninist parties
were organized on a hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as
the broad base; they were made up only of elite cadres approved by higher
members of the party as being reliable and completely subject to party discipline
.
Emphasis mine. Note how communism begins with government control of major
industries. The current con job about Global Warming is the cover-excuse for
a government grab of the energy sector. Obamacare is an attempt to grab the
healthcare sector. And Wall Street already controls the banking sector. See
a trend yet?
This is then followed by imposing a rigid hierarchy of "leaders" at all levels
of politics – so no opposing views can gain traction. Party discipline uber
alles!
Our nation is in the grip of such poisonous thinking. The DNC with its "Super
Delegates" already has a way to control who will be their candidate. In an irony
to beat all ironies, the DNC's Super Delegates were able to stop Bernie Sanders...
The reason Trump is still rising (and I believe will win handily) is he clearly
represents the original image of America: a self made success story based on
capitalism and the free market.
His opponent is the epitome of the Political Industrial Complex – a cancer
that has eaten away America's free market foundation and core strength. A person
who wants to impose government on the individual.
Coming on the heels of Brexit and in tandem with many other
anti-globalist-cronyism movements, it is a societal reaction
that has been building for years (since Bush 2, and definitely
since the Tea Party before it was co-opted by the Political
Elite). When the elite bend and break the rules to line their
pockets, and the masses end up being severely financially
impacted in return, then there is going to be a visceral
response to those hoarding the nation's riches and
opportunities.
What is amazing is the depth of ignorance (or compliance) in
the news media. Take Jonathan Chait at the New York Times, who
has been in near constant apocalyptic fit since the "debate" on
national security.
Hillary Clinton Is a Flawed But Normal
Politician. Why Can't America See That?
My only quibble with Chait is I would title it:
Hillary Clinton Is a Flawed But
Typical
Politician.
Why Can't America See That?
My only response is to inform Chait of the blatantly
obvious: Of course we see Clinton as a typical and flawed
politician!!
So were the establisment GOP contenders in the primary. So
are all the power brokers in the Political Industrial Complex (PIC).
So is the pliant, PIC-suckling news media.
Why do you think Clinton is sinking in the polls during an
election cycle where the vast majority of voters on Main Street
USA see the country heading in the wrong direction? Does this
translate to "more of the same please?"!!
Why would a swath of voters who sees their slice of the
American Dream being trampled want more of the same policies
from the "globalist" Political Elite sitting behind their gated
communities in their posh mansions?
Of course we see her that way. She is simply not what the
country wants – nor deserves.
The PIC should realize that when their best argument is "the
worst of us is better than anyone from outside the PIC" – they
have hit rock bottom. And it is sooooo obvious!
"... "You could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?" smirked Clinton to cheers and laughter. "The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it." They are "irredeemable," but they are "not America." ..."
"... "You can take Trump supporters and put them in two baskets." First there are "the deplorables, the racists, and the haters, and the people who … think somehow he's going to restore an America that no longer exists. So, just eliminate them from your thinking." And who might be in the other basket backing Donald Trump? They are people, said Clinton, "who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them. … These are people we have to understand and empathize with." ..."
"... Patrick J. Buchanan is a founding editor of ..."
Speaking to 1,000 of the overprivileged at an LGBT fundraiser,
where the chairs ponied up $250,000 each and Barbra Streisand sang,
Hillary Clinton gave New York's social liberals what they came to
hear.
"You could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call
the basket of deplorables. Right?" smirked Clinton to cheers and
laughter. "The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic,
you name it." They are "irredeemable," but they are "not America."
This was no verbal slip. Clinton had invited the press in to
cover the LGBT gala at Cipriani Wall Street where the cheap seats
went for $1,200. And she had tried out her new lines earlier on
Israeli TV:
"You can take Trump supporters and put them in two baskets."
First there are "the deplorables, the racists, and the haters, and
the people who … think somehow he's going to restore an America that
no longer exists. So, just eliminate them from your thinking." And
who might be in the other basket backing Donald Trump? They are
people, said Clinton, "who feel that the government has let them
down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them. …
These are people we have to understand and empathize with."
In short, Trump's support consists of one-half xenophobes,
bigots, and racists, and one-half losers we should pity.
And she is running on the slogan "Stronger Together."
Her remarks echo those of Barack Obama in 2008 to San Francisco
fat cats puzzled about those strange Pennsylvanians.
They are "bitter," said Obama, they "cling to guns or religion or
antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment
or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustration."
In short, Pennsylvania is a backwater of alienated Bible-banging
gun nuts and bigots suspicious of outsiders and foreigners.
But who really are these folks our new class detests, sneers at,
and pities? As African-Americans are 90 percent behind Clinton, it
is not black folks. Nor is it Hispanics, who are solidly in the
Clinton camp.
Nor would Clinton tolerate such slurs directed at Third World
immigrants who are making America better by making us more diverse
than that old "America that no longer exists."
No, the folks Obama and
Clinton detest, disparage, and pity are the white working- and
middle-class folks Richard Nixon celebrated as Middle Americans and
the Silent Majority.
They are the folks who brought America through the Depression,
won World War II, and carried us through the Cold War from Truman in
1945 to victory with Ronald Reagan in 1989.
These are the Trump supporters. They reside mostly in red states
like West Virginia, Kentucky, and Middle Pennsylvania, and southern,
plains, and mountain states that have provided a disproportionate
share of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who fought and
died to guarantee the freedom of plutocratic LGBT lovers to laugh at
and mock them at $2,400-a-plate dinners.
Yet, there is truth in what Clinton said about eliminating "from
your thinking" people who believe Trump can "restore an America that
no longer exists."
For the last chance to restore America, as Trump himself told
Christian Broadcasting's "Brody File" on Friday, September 9, is
slipping away:
"I think this will be the last election if I don't win … because
you're going to have people flowing across the border, you're going
to have illegal immigrants coming in and they're going to be
legalized and they're going to be able to vote, and once that all
happens, you can forget it."
Politically and demographically, America is at a tipping point.
Minorities are now 40 percent of the population and will be 30
percent of the electorate in November. If past trends hold, 4 of 5
will vote for Clinton.
Meanwhile, white folks, who normally vote 60 percent Republican,
will fall to 70 percent of the electorate, the lowest ever, and will
decline in every subsequent presidential year.
The passing of the greatest generation and silent generation,
and, soon, the baby-boom generation, is turning former red states
like Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, Arizona, and Nevada purple,
and putting crucial states like Florida and Ohio in peril.
What has happened to America is astonishing. A country 90 percent
Christian after World War II has been secularized by a dictatorial
Supreme Court with only feeble protest and resistance.
A nation, 90 percent of whose population traced their roots to
Europe, will have been changed by mass immigration and an invasion
across its Southern border into a predominantly Third World country
by 2042.
What will then be left of the old America to conserve?
No wonder Clinton was so giddy at the LGBT bash. They are taking
America away from the "haters," as they look down in moral supremacy
on the pitiable Middle Americans who are passing away.
But a question arises for 2017.
Why should Middle America, given what she thinks of us, render a
President Hillary Clinton and her regime any more allegiance or
loyalty than Colin Kaepernick renders to the America he so abhors?
"... cultural nationalism is the only ideology capable of being a legitimising ideology under the prevailing global and national political economy. ..."
"... Neoliberalism cannot perform this role since its simplicities make it harsh not just towards the lower orders, but give it the potential for damaging politically important interests amongst capitalist classes themselves. ..."
"... In this form, cultural nationalism provides national ruling classes a sense of their identity and purpose, as well as a form of legitimation among thelower orders. ..."
"... As Gramsci said, these are the main functions of every ruling ideology. Cultural nationalism masks, and to a degree resolves, the intense competition between capitals over access to the state for support domestically and in the international arena – in various bilateral and multilateral fora – where it bargainsfor the most favoured national capitalist interests within the global and imperial hierarchy. ..."
This is where cultural nationalism comes in. Only it can serve to mask, and
bridge, the divides within the 'cartel of anxiety' in a neoliberal context.
Cultural nationalism is a nationalism shorn of its civic-egalitarian and developmentalist
thrust, one reduced to its cultural core. It is structured around the culture
of thee conomically dominant classes in every country, with higher or lower
positions accorded to other groups within the nation relative to it. These positions
correspond, on the whole, to the groups' economic positions, and as such it
organises the dominant classes, and concentric circles of their allies, into
a collective national force. It also gives coherence to, and legitimises, the
activities of the nation-state on behalf of capital, or sections thereof, in
the international sphere.
Indeed, cultural nationalism is the only ideology capable of being a legitimising
ideology under the prevailing global and national political economy.
Neoliberalism
cannot perform this role since its simplicities make it harsh not just towards
the lower orders, but give it the potential for damaging politically important
interests amongst capitalist classes themselves. The activities of the state
on behalf of this or that capitalist interest necessarily exceed the Spartan
limits that neoliberalism sets. Such activities can only be legitimised as being
'in the national interest.'
Second, however, the nationalism that articulates
these interests is necessarily different from, but can easily (and given its
function as a legitimising ideology, it must be said, performatively) be mis-recognised
as, nationalism as widely understood: as being in some real sense in the interests
of all members of the nation. In this form, cultural nationalism provides national
ruling classes a sense of their identity and purpose, as well as a form of legitimation
among thelower orders.
As Gramsci said, these are the main functions of every
ruling ideology. Cultural nationalism masks, and to a degree resolves, the intense
competition between capitals over access to the state for support domestically
and in the international arena – in various bilateral and multilateral fora
– where it bargainsfor the most favoured national capitalist interests within
the global and imperial hierarchy.
Except for a commitment to neoliberal policies, the economic policy content
of this nationalism cannot be consistent: within the country, and inter-nationally,
the capitalist system is volatile and the positions of the various elements
of capital in the national and international hierarchies shift constantly as
does the economic policy of cultural nationalist governments. It is this volatility
that also increases the need for corruption – since that is how competitive
access of individual capitals to the state is today organised.
Whatever its utility to the capitalist classes, however, cultural nationalism
can never have a settled or secure hold on those who are marginalised or sub-ordinated
by it. In neoliberal regimes the scope for offering genuine economic gains to
the people at large, however measured they might be, is small.
This is a problem for right politics since even the broadest coalition of
the propertied can never be an electoral majority, even a viable plurality.
This is only in the nature of capitalist private property. While the left remains
in retreat or disarray, elec-toral apathy is a useful political resource but
even where, as in most countries, political choices are minimal, the electorate
as a whole is volatile. Despite, orperhaps because of, being reduced to a competition
between parties of capital, electoral politics in the age of the New Right entails
very large electoral costs, theextensive and often vain use of the media in
elections and in politics generally, and political compromises which may clash
with the high and shrilly ambitiou sdemands of the primary social base in the propertied
classes. Instability, uncertainty ...
"... What is "Globalization" and "Free Trade" really?… Does it encompass the slave trade, trading in narcotics, deforestation and export of a nation's tropical hardwood forests, environmentally damaging transnational oil pipelines or coal ports, fisheries depletion, laying off millions of workers and replacing them and the products they make with workers and products made in a foreign country, trading with an enemy, investing capital in a foreign country through a subsidiary or supplier that abuses its workers to the point that some commit suicide, no limits on or regulation of financial derivatives and transnational financial intermediaries?… the list is endless. ..."
"... As always, the questions are "Cui bono?"… "Who benefits"?… How and Why they benefit?… Who selects the short-term "Winners" and "Losers"? And WRT those questions, the final sentence of this post hints at its purpose. ..."
"... Yeah, how is European colonialism - starting in, what, like the 15th century, or something - not "globalisation"? What about the Roman and Persian and Selucid empires? Wasn't that globalisation? I think we've pretty much always lived in a globalised world, one way or another (if "globalised world" even makes sense). ..."
"... Bring back the broader, and more meaningful conception of Political Economy and some actual understanding can be gained. The study of economics cannot be separated from the political dimension of society. Politics being defined as who gets what in social interactions. ..."
"... The neoliberal experiment has run its course. Milton Friedman and his tribe had their alternative plan ready to go and implemented it when they could- to their great success. The best looting system developed-ever. This system only works with the availability of abundant resources and the mental justifications to support that gross exploitation. Both of which are reaching limits. ..."
"... If only the Milton Friedman tribe had interested itself in sports instead of economics. They could have argued that referees and umpires should be removed from the game for greater efficiency of play, and that sports teams would follow game rules by self-regulation. ..."
"... Wouldn't the whole thing just work out more efficiently if you leave traffic lights and rules out of it? Just let everyone figure it out at each light, survival of the fittest. ..."
"... With increasingly free movement of people as tourists whose spending impacts nations GDP, where does it fit in to discussions on globalization and trade? ..."
What is "Globalization" and "Free Trade" really?… Does it encompass
the slave trade, trading in narcotics, deforestation and export of a nation's
tropical hardwood forests, environmentally damaging transnational oil pipelines
or coal ports, fisheries depletion, laying off millions of workers and replacing
them and the products they make with workers and products made in a foreign
country, trading with an enemy, investing capital in a foreign country through
a subsidiary or supplier that abuses its workers to the point that some
commit suicide, no limits on or regulation of financial derivatives and
transnational financial intermediaries?… the list is endless.
As always, the questions are "Cui bono?"… "Who benefits"?… How and
Why they benefit?… Who selects the short-term "Winners" and "Losers"? And
WRT those questions, the final sentence of this post hints at its purpose.
diptherio
Yeah, how is European colonialism - starting in, what, like the 15th
century, or something - not "globalisation"? What about the Roman and Persian
and Selucid empires? Wasn't that globalisation? I think we've pretty much
always lived in a globalised world, one way or another (if "globalised world"
even makes sense).
Norb
Bring back the broader, and more meaningful conception of Political
Economy and some actual understanding can be gained. The study of economics
cannot be separated from the political dimension of society. Politics being
defined as who gets what in social interactions.
What folly. All this complexity and strident study of minutia to bring
about what end? Human history on this planet has been about how societies
form, develop, then recede form prominence. This flow being determined by
how well the society provided for its members or could support their worldview.
Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.
The neoliberal experiment has run its course. Milton Friedman and
his tribe had their alternative plan ready to go and implemented it when
they could- to their great success. The best looting system developed-ever.
This system only works with the availability of abundant resources and the
mental justifications to support that gross exploitation. Both of which
are reaching limits.
Only by thinking, and communicating in the broader terms of political
economy can we hope to understand our current conditions. Until then, change
will be difficult to enact. Hard landings for all indeed.
flora
If only the Milton Friedman tribe had interested itself in sports
instead of economics. They could have argued that referees and umpires should
be removed from the game for greater efficiency of play, and that sports
teams would follow game rules by self-regulation.
LA Mike September 17, 2016 at 8:15 pm
While in traffic, I was thinking about that today. For some time now,
I've viewed the traffic intersection as being a good example of the social
contract. We all agree on its benefits. But today, I thought about it in
terms of the Friedman Neoliberals.
Why should they have to stop at red lights. Wouldn't the whole thing
just work out more efficiently if you leave traffic lights and rules out
of it? Just let everyone figure it out at each light, survival of the fittest.
sd
Something I have wondered for some time, how does tourism fit into trade?
With increasingly free movement of people as tourists whose spending
impacts nations GDP, where does it fit in to discussions on globalization
and trade?
I Have Strange Dreams
Other things to consider:
– negative effects of immigration (skilled workers leave developing countries
where they are most needed)
– environmental pollution
– destruction of cultures/habitats
– importation of western diet leading to decreased health
– spread of disease (black death, hiv, ebola, bird flu)
– resource wars
– drugs
– happiness
How are these "externalities" calculated?
"... What about the large number of donors who, immediately after their hefty donations, received cushy ambassadorships? ..."
"... You gotta remember, [neo]liberals love to justify bad behavior, by pointing to (often unrelated) ... bad behavior. ..."
"... Remember, when someone like David Duke endorses Donald Trump and Trump says, "Who is David Duke, and why should I care?" this proves Trump is a racist. When Hillary Clinton talks about how Robert Byrd was her "friend and mentor" this also proves that Trump is a racist. See how easy that is? ..."
"... So it's okay to give money to a private political organization in order to get favors from the government? Why don't we just auction off ambassadorships then? ..."
"... The last set of documents showed that the DNC broke campaign finance laws and yet absolutely nothing was done about it. Since any damning evidence in documents from democrats will be ignored, why do they even try? It won't make any difference. ..."
"... Under Obama's administration political considerations trump the law every time. ..."
"... What are you talking about? Every media outlet except FOX is sucking at Hillary's big toes, and even at times FOX is sucking her toes and licking them. Whether it be in the US or Canada or the bloody UK. Hell NBC deleted a segment from a broadcast last night when Bill Clinton said Hillary "Frequently fainted" sorry I mean "occasionally fainted" that of course saved them all of 1.5 seconds from their 1hr broadcast time limit, which was their excuse. ..."
"... It is like when the talking heads on one news program (CNN I believe) described New York City on Sunday as "Sweltering", when it was 78 Degrees out, in an attempt to make Hillary's lie about dehydration seem more legitimate. Obviously they are "pro-Trump". ..."
"... Wouldn't surprise me. Here's the thing on CBC editing the news [thehill.com] earlier too. ..."
For the past several months, the hacker who calls himself "Guccifer 2.0"
has been releasing documents about the Democratic National Committee. Today,
he has released a new hoard of documents. Politico reports: The hacker persona
Guccifer 2.0 has released a new trove of documents that allegedly reveal more
information about the Democratic National Committee's finances and personal
information on Democratic donors, as well as details about the DNC's network
infrastructure. The cache also includes purported memos on tech initiatives
from Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine's time as governor of Virginia,
and some years-old missives on redistricting efforts and DNC donor outreach
strategy. Most notable among Tuesday's documents may be the detailed spreadsheets
allegedly about DNC fundraising efforts, including lists of DNC donors with
names, addresses, emails, phone numbers and other sensitive details. Tuesday's
documents regarding the DNC's information technology setup include several reports
from 2010 purporting to show that the committee's network passed multiple security
scans.
In total, the latest dump contains more than 600 megabytes of documents.
It is the first Guccifer 2.0 release to not come from the hacker's WordPress
account. Instead, it was given out via a link to the small group of security
experts attending [a London cybersecurity conference].
meta-monkey ( 321000 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2016 @09:09AM (#52885111)
Journal
Summary missing important piece... (Score:5, Informative)
What about the large number of donors who, immediately after their
hefty donations, received cushy ambassadorships?
Iconoc ( 2646179 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2016 @09:12AM (#52885127)
Archangel Michael ( 180766 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2016 @10:40AM
(#52885673) Journal
You gotta remember, [neo]liberals love to justify bad behavior, by
pointing to (often unrelated) ... bad behavior.
It is as if they are four year olds getting in trouble, and saying "but
Billy's Mom lets him drink beer/smoke dope". The problem is, nobody calls
it "childish" behavior (which it is), because that is insulting to children.
Zak3056 ( 69287 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2016 @04:28PM (#52888579)
Journal
Re:Summary missing important piece... (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember, when someone like David Duke endorses Donald Trump and
Trump says, "Who is David Duke, and why should I care?" this proves Trump
is a racist. When Hillary Clinton talks about how Robert Byrd was her "friend
and mentor" this also proves that Trump is a racist. See how easy that is?
Ambassadorships to friendly countries, the UK in particular, have always
been given as rewards to political friends. You could count the number of
people who became UK ambassador on merit on one hand which had been run
through a wood chipper.
The reason you didn't know about this before is because it never became
an issue. Tuttle made a bit of a kerfuffle a decade ago, but it takes a
lot to start a diplomatic incident with a close ally and being ambassador
to the UK or France or Australia really requires no great skill as a peacemaker.
If you were being particularly charitable, you could even say that fundraisers
and diplomats have a lot in common.
Everyone has plenty of dirty laundry, including you and me. 'Innocent
until proven guilty' is an excellent attitude in criminal court, but the
attitude 'innocent until doxxed' skews our perceptions and gives power to
doxxers. Honestly I'm a bit surprised these leaks haven't found more than
'omg, politics at political party!'
Remember, parties are not obligated to be democratic or unbiased. Legally
and constitutionally there's only one vote, the general election in November.
Anyone* can be nominated as a candidate for that election, and if both parties
decided to nominate whomever they pleased they might be breaking their own
rules but not the law. Everything up to and including the conventions is
just meant to give supporters a feel of involvement and to remove unpopular
candidates without invoking the wrath of their supporters. But the parties
want to win, and if one candidate seems more 'electable' you can bet the
party will give then a leg up on the rest.
meta-monkey ( 321000 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2016 @11:28AM (#52886055)
Journal
So it's okay to give money to a private political organization in
order to get favors from the government? Why don't we just auction off ambassadorships
then?
meta-monkey ( 321000 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2016 @02:02PM (#52887279)
Journal
There's been plenty of interesting stuff in previous releases of Hillary's
particular emails. I would say the most amazing was acknowledgment that
the reason we backed the moderate beheaders in Syria against Assad was so
the Israelis would feel better about a nuclear Iran without a stable Syria
as a base of operations for Hezbollah. The 400,000 war dead, the creation
of ISIS, the blowback attacks in Paris, San Bernardino, Brussels, Nice,
Orlando, and the refugee crisis that threatens to destabilize all of western
Europe...no problem for Hillary and her supporters. It's unreal. But here
we are.
Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14, 2016 @09:38AM (#52885273)
The last set showed laws broken by DNC (Score:5, Informative)
The last set of documents showed that the DNC broke campaign finance
laws and yet absolutely nothing was done about it. Since any damning evidence
in documents from democrats will be ignored, why do they even try? It won't
make any difference.
Now, if a similar trove of documents from the RNC was dumped, you can
bet the DOJ would be all over it. Under Obama's administration political
considerations trump the law every time.
DumbSwede ( 521261 ) <[email protected]> on Wednesday September
14, 2016 @10:31AM (#52885603) Homepage Journal
I'd say Glass Houses is the real reason (Score:2)
There is reluctance to take actions base on evidence uncovered by illegally
hacked emails. Doing so would invite more entities with political motivations
to just hack more...
Mashiki ( 184564 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `ikihsam'> on Wednesday September
14, 2016 @10:25AM (#52885549) Homepage
What are you talking about? Every media outlet except FOX is sucking
at Hillary's big toes, and even at times FOX is sucking her toes and licking
them. Whether it be in the US or Canada or the bloody UK. Hell NBC deleted
a segment from a broadcast last night when Bill Clinton said Hillary "Frequently
fainted" sorry I mean "occasionally fainted" that of course saved them all
of 1.5 seconds from their 1hr broadcast time limit, which was their excuse.
Nearly every site is sucking at her toes. Even on reddit from /r/politics
to /r/news to /r/worldnews is deleting anti-Hillary stories, even when they
use the exact title.
Archangel Michael ( 180766 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2016 @10:57AM
(#52885797) Journal
It is like when the talking heads on one news program (CNN I believe)
described New York City on Sunday as "Sweltering", when it was 78 Degrees
out, in an attempt to make Hillary's lie about dehydration seem more legitimate.
Obviously they are "pro-Trump".
Mashiki ( 184564 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `ikihsam'> on Wednesday September
14, 2016 @11:31AM (#52886073) Homepage
"...a full 95% of the cash that went to Greece ran a trip through Greece
and went straight back to creditors which in plain English is banks. So,
public taxpayers money was pushed through Greece to basically bail out banks...So
austerity becomes a side effect of a general policy of bank bailouts that
nobody wants to own. That's really what happened, ok?
Why are we peddling nonsense? Nobody wants to own up to a gigantic bailout
of the entire European banking system that took six years. Austerity was
a cover.
If the EU at the end of the day and the Euro is not actually improving
the lives of the majority of the people, what is it for? That's the question
that they've brought no answer to.
...the Hamptons is not a defensible position. The Hamptons is a very
rich area on Long Island that lies on low lying beaches. Very hard to defend
a low lying beach. Eventually people are going to come for you.
What's clear is that every social democratic party in Europe needs to
find a new reason to exist. Because as I said earlier over the past 20 years
they have sold their core constituency down the line for a bunch of floaters
in the middle who don't protect them or really don't particularly care for
them. Because the only offers on the agenda are basically austerity and
tax cuts for those who already have, versus austerity, apologies, and a
minimum wage."
Mark Blyth
Although I may not agree with every particular that Mark Blyth may say, directionally
he is exactly correct in diagnosing the problems in Europe.
And yes, I am aware that the subtitles are at times in error, and sometimes
outrageously so. Many of the errors were picked up and corrected in the comments.
No stimulus, no plans, no official actions, no monetary theories can be sustainably
effective in revitalizing an economy that is as bent as these have become without
serious reform at the first.
This was the lesson that was given by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. There
will be no lasting recovery without it; it is a sine qua non . One cannot
turn their economy around when the political and business structures are systemically
corrupt, and the elites are preoccupied with looting it, and hiding their spoils
offshore.
"But part of the answer lies in something Americans have a hard time
talking about: class. Trade is a class issue. The trade agreements we have
entered into over the past few decades have consistently harmed some
Americans (manufacturing workers) while just as consistently benefiting
others (owners and professionals). …
To understand "free trade" in such a way has made it difficult for people
in the bubble of the consensus to acknowledge the actual consequences of the
agreements we have negotiated over the years."
"... Despite the neoliberal obsession with wage suppression, history suggests that such a policy is self-destructive. Periods of high wages are associated with rapid technological change. ..."
"... On the ideological front, the South adopted a shallow, but rigid libertarian perspective which resembled modern neoliberalism. Samuel Johnson may have been the first person to see through the hypocrisy of the hollowness of southern libertarianism. ..."
"... the famous Powell Memo helped to spark a well-financed movement of well-finance right-wing political activism which morphed into right-wing political extremism both in economics and politics. ..."
"... In short, neoliberalism was surging ahead and the economy of high wages was now beyond the pale. These new conditions gave new force to the southern "yelps of liberty." The social safety net was taken down and reconstructed as the flag of neoliberalism. The one difference between the rhetoric of the slaveholders and that of the modern neoliberals was that entrepreneurial superiority replaced racial superiority as their battle cry. ..."
Despite the neoliberal obsession with wage suppression, history suggests
that such a policy is self-destructive. Periods of high wages are associated
with rapid technological change.
... ... ...
On the ideological front, the South adopted a shallow, but rigid libertarian
perspective which resembled modern neoliberalism. Samuel Johnson may have been
the first person to see through the hypocrisy of the hollowness of southern
libertarianism. Responding to the colonists' complaint that taxation by
the British was a form of tyranny, Samuel Johnson published his 1775 tract,
"Taxation No Tyranny: An answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American
Congress," asking the obvious question, "how is it that we hear the loudest
yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?" In The Works of Samuel Johnson,
LL. D.: Political Tracts. Political Essays. Miscellaneous Essays (London: J.
Buckland, 1787): pp. 60-146, p. 142.
... ... ...
By the late 19th century, David A Wells, an industrial technician who later
became the chief economic expert in the federal government, by virtue of his
position of overseeing federal taxes. After a trip to Europe, Wells reconsidered
his strong support for protectionism. Rather than comparing the dynamism of
the northern states with the technological backward of their southern counterparts,
he was responding to the fear that American industry could not compete with
the cheap "pauper" labor of Europe. Instead, he insisted that the United States
had little to fear from, the competition from cheap labor, because the relatively
high cost of American labor would ensure rapid technological change, which,
indeed, was more rapid in the United States than anywhere else in the world,
with the possible exception of Germany. Both countries were about to rapidly
surpass England's industrial prowess.
The now-forgotten Wells was so highly regarded that the prize for the best
economics dissertation at Harvard is still known as the David A Wells prize.
His efforts gave rise to a very powerful idea in economic theory at the time,
known as "the economy of high wages," which insisted that high wages drove economic
prosperity. With his emphasis on technical change, driven by the strong competitive
pressures from high wages, Wells anticipated Schumpeter's idea of creative destruction,
except that for him, high wages rather than entrepreneurial genius drove this
process.
Although the economy of high wages remained highly influential through the
1920s, the extensive growth of government powers during World War I reignited
the antipathy for big government. Laissez-faire economics began come back into
vogue with the election of Calvin Coolidge, while the once-powerful progressive
movement was becoming excluded from the ranks of reputable economics.
... ... ...
With Barry Goldwater's humiliating defeat in his presidential campaign,
the famous Powell Memo helped to spark a well-financed movement of well-finance
right-wing political activism which morphed into right-wing political extremism
both in economics and politics. Symbolic of the narrowness of this new
mindset among economists, Milton Friedman's close associate, George Stigler,
said in 1976 that "one evidence of professional integrity of the economist is
the fact that it is not possible to enlist good economists to defend minimum
wage laws." Stigler, G. J. 1982. The Economist as Preacher and Other Essays
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press): p. 60.
In short, neoliberalism was surging ahead and the economy of high wages
was now beyond the pale. These new conditions gave new force to the southern
"yelps of liberty." The social safety net was taken down and reconstructed as
the flag of neoliberalism. The one difference between the rhetoric of the slaveholders
and that of the modern neoliberals was that entrepreneurial superiority replaced
racial superiority as their battle cry.
One final irony: evangelical Christians were at the forefront of the abolitionist
movement. Today, some of them are providing the firepower for the epidemic of
neoliberalism.
"... the US has been successful in dictating neoliberal policies, acting partly through the IMF and World Bank and partly through direct pressure. ..."
"... From roughly the mid 1930s to the mid 1970s a new "interventionist" approach replaced classical liberalism, and it became the accepted belief that capitalism requires significant state regulation in order to be viable. In the 1970s the Old Religion of classical liberalism made a rapid comeback, first in academic economics and then in the realm of public policy. ..."
"... Neoliberal theory claims that a largely unregulated capitalist system (a "free market economy" not only embodies the ideal of free individual choice but also achieves optimum economic performance with respect to efficiency, economic growth, technical progress, and distributional justice. ..."
"... The policy recommendations of neoliberalism are concerned mainly with dismantling what remains of the regulationist welfare state. ..."
"... This paper argues that the resurgence and tenacity of neoliberalism during the past two decades cannot be explained, in an instrumental fashion, by any favorable effects of neoliberal policies on capitalist economic performance. On the contrary, we will present a case that neoliberalism has been harmful for long-run capitalist economic performance, even judging economic performance from the perspective of the interests of capital. It will be argued that the resurgence and continuing dominance of neoliberalism can be explained, at least in part, by changes in the competitive structure of world capitalism, which have resulted in turn from the particular form of global economic integration that has developed in recent decades. The changed competitive structure of capitalism has altered the political posture of big business with regard to economic policy and the role of the state, turning big business from a supporter of state-regulated capitalism into an opponent of it. ..."
"... Second, the neoliberal model creates instability on the macroeconomic level by renouncing state counter-cyclical spending and taxation policies, by reducing the effectiveness of "automatic stabilizers" through shrinking social welfare programs,3 and by loosening public regulation of the financial sector. This renders the system more vulnerable to major financial crises and depressions. Third, the neoliberal model tends to intensify class conflict, which can potentially discourage capitalist investment.4 ..."
"... The evidence from GDP and labor productivity growth rates supports the claim that the neoliberal model is inferior to the state regulationist model for key dimensions of capitalist economic performance. There is ample evidence that the neoliberal model has shifted income and wealth in the direction of the already wealthy. However, the ability to shift income upward has limits in an economy that is not growing rapidly. Neoliberalism does not appear to be delivering the goods in the ways that matter the most for capitalism's long-run stability and survival. ..."
"... Once capitalism had become well established in the US after the Civil War, it entered a period of cutthroat competition and wild accumulation known as the Robber Baron era. In this period a coherent anti-interventionist liberal position emerged and became politically dominant. Despite the enormous inequalities, the severe business cycle, and the outrageous and often unlawful behavior of the Goulds and Rockefellers, the idea that government should not intervene in the economy held sway through the end of the 19th century. ..."
"... Small business has remained adamantly opposed to the big, interventionist state, from the Progressive Era through the New Deal down to the present. This division between big and small business is chronicled for the Progressive Era in Weinstein (1968). In the decades immediately following World War II one can observe this division in the divergent views of the Business Roundtable, a big business organization which often supported interventionist programs, and the US Chambers of Commerce, the premier small business organization, which hewed to an antigovernment stance. ..."
"... By contrast, the typical small business faces a daily battle for survival, which prevents attention to long-run considerations and which places a premium on avoiding the short-run costs of taxation and state regulation. This explains the radically different positions that big business and small business held regarding the proper state role in the economy for the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. ..."
"... This long-standing division between big business and small business appeared to vanish in the US starting in the 1970s. Large corporations and banks which had formerly supported foundations that advocated an active government role in the economy, such as the Brookings Institution, became big donors to neoliberal foundations such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. As a result, such right-wing foundations, which previously had to rely mainly on contributions from small business, became very wealthy and influential.10 It was big business=s desertion of the political coalition supporting state intervention and its shift to neoliberalism that rebuilt support for neoliberal theories and policies in the US, starting in the 1970s. With business now unified on economic policy, the shift was dramatic. Big grants became available for economics research having a neoliberal slant. The major media shifted their spin on political developments, and the phrase "government programs" now could not be printed except with the word "bloated" before it. ..."
"... Globalization is usually defined as an increase in the volume of cross-border economic interactions and resource flows, producing a qualitative shift in the relations between national economies and between nation-states (Baker et. al., 1998, p. 5; Kozul-Wright and Rowthorn, 1998, p. 1). Three kinds of economic interactions have increased substantially in past decades: merchandise trade flows, foreign direct investment, and cross-border financial investments. We will briefly examine each, with an eye on their effects on the competitive structure of contemporary capitalism. ..."
"... By the close of the twentieth century, capitalism had become significantly more globalized than it had been fifty years ago, and by some measures it is much more globalized than it had been at the previous peak of this process in 1913. The most important features of globalization today are greatly increased international trade, increased flows of capital across national boundaries (particularly speculative short-term capital), and a major role for large TNCs in manufacturing, extractive activities, and finance, operating worldwide yet retaining in nearly all cases a clear base in a single nation-state. ..."
"... Some analysts argue that globalization has produced a world of such economic interdependence that individual nation-states no longer have the power to regulate capital. However, while global interdependence does create difficulties for state regulation, this effect has been greatly exaggerated. Nation-states still retain a good deal of potential power vis-a-vis capitalist firms, provided that the political will is present to exercise such power. For example, even such a small country as Malaysia proved able to successfully impose capital controls following the Asian financial crisis of 1997, despite the opposition of the IMF and the US government. ..."
"... Globalization appears to be one factor that has transformed big business from a supporter to an opponent of the interventionist state. It has done so partly by producing TNCs whose tie to the domestic markets for goods and labor is limited. ..."
"... Globalization has produced a world capitalism that bears some resemblance to the Robber Baron Era in the US. Giant corporations battle one another in a system lacking well defined rules. Mergers and acquisitions abound, including some that cross national boundaries, but so far few world industries have evolved the kind of tight oligopolistic structure that would lay the basis for a more controlled form of market relations. Like the late 19th century US Robber Barons, today's large corporations and banks above all want freedom from political burdens and restraints as they confront one another in world markets.18 ..."
"... The existence of a powerful bloc of Communist-run states with an alternative "state socialist" socioeconomic system tended to push capitalism toward a state regulationist form. It reinforced the fear among capitalists that their own working classes might turn against capitalism. It also had an impact on relations among the leading capitalist states, promoting inter-state unity behind US leadership, which facilitated the creation and operation of a world-system of state-regulated capitalism.19 The demise of state socialism during 1989-91 removed one more factor that had reinforced the regulationist state. ..."
"... If state socialism re-emerged in one or more major countries, perhaps this might push the capitalist world back toward the regulationist state. However, such a development does not seem likely. Even if Russia or Ukraine at some point does head in that direction, it would be unlikely to produce a serious rival socioeconomic system to that of world capitalism. ..."
Department of Economics and Political Economy Research Institute Thompson Hall
University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA 01003 U.S.A. Telephone 413-545-1248
Fax 413-545-2921 Email [email protected] August, 2000 This paper was published
in Rethinking Marxism, Volume 12, Number 2, Summer 2002, pp. 64-79.
Research assistance was provided by Elizabeth Ramey and Deger Eryar. Research
funding was provided by the Political Economy Research Institute of the University
of Massachusetts at Amherst. Globalization and Neoliberalism 1 For some
two decades neoliberalism has dominated economic policymaking in the US and
the UK. Neoliberalism has strong advocates in continental Western Europe and
Japan, but substantial popular resistance there has limited its influence so
far, despite continuing US efforts to impose neoliberal policies on them. In
much of the Third World, and in the transition countries (except for China),
the US has been successful in dictating neoliberal policies, acting partly through
the IMF and World Bank and partly through direct pressure.
Neoliberalism is an updated version of the classical liberal economic thought
that was dominant in the US and UK prior to the Great Depression of the 1930s.
From roughly the mid 1930s to the mid 1970s a new "interventionist" approach
replaced classical liberalism, and it became the accepted belief that capitalism
requires significant state regulation in order to be viable. In the 1970s the
Old Religion of classical liberalism made a rapid comeback, first in academic
economics and then in the realm of public policy.
Neoliberalism is both a body of economic theory and a policy stance.
Neoliberal theory claims that a largely unregulated capitalist system (a "free
market economy" not only embodies the ideal of free individual choice but also
achieves optimum economic performance with respect to efficiency, economic growth,
technical progress, and distributional justice. The state is assigned a
very limited economic role: defining property rights, enforcing contracts, and
regulating the money supply.1 State intervention to correct market failures
is viewed with suspicion, on the ground that such intervention is likely to
create more problems than it solves.
The policy recommendations of neoliberalism are concerned mainly with
dismantling what remains of the regulationist welfare state. These recommendations
include deregulation of business; privatization of public activities and assets;
elimination of, or cutbacks in, social welfare programs; and reduction of taxes
on businesses and the investing class. In the international sphere, neoliberalism
calls for free movement of goods, services, capital, and money (but not people)
across national boundaries. That is, corporations, banks, and individual investors
should be free to move their property across national boundaries, and free to
acquire property across national boundaries, although free cross-border movement
by individuals is not part of the neoliberal program. How can the re-emergence
of a seemingly outdated and outmoded economic theory be explained? At first
many progressive economists viewed the 1970s lurch toward liberalism as a temporary
response to the economic instability of that decade. As corporate interests
decided that the Keynesian regulationist approach no longer worked to their
advantage, they looked for an alternative and found only the old liberal ideas,
which could at least serve as an ideological basis for cutting those state programs
viewed as obstacles to profit-making. However, neoliberalism has proved to be
more than just a temporary response. It has outlasted the late 1970s/early 1980s
right-wing political victories in the UK (Thatcher) and US (Reagan). Under a
Democratic Party administration in the US and a Labor Party government in the
UK in the 1990s, neoliberalism solidified its position of dominance.
This paper argues that the resurgence and tenacity of neoliberalism during
the past two decades cannot be explained, in an instrumental fashion, by any
favorable effects of neoliberal policies on capitalist economic performance.
On the contrary, we will present a case that neoliberalism has been harmful
for long-run capitalist economic performance, even judging economic performance
from the perspective of the interests of capital. It will be argued that the
resurgence and continuing dominance of neoliberalism can be explained, at least
in part, by changes in the competitive structure of world capitalism, which
have resulted in turn from the particular form of global economic integration
that has developed in recent decades. The changed competitive structure of capitalism
has altered the political posture of big business with regard to economic policy
and the role of the state, turning big business from a supporter of state-regulated
capitalism into an opponent of it.
The Problematic Character of Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism appears to be problematic as a dominant theory for contemporary
capitalism. The stability and survival of the capitalist system depends on its
ability to bring vigorous capital accumulation, where the latter process is
understood to include not just economic expansion but also technological progress.
Vigorous capital accumulation permits rising profits to coexist with rising
living standards for a substantial part of the population over the long-run.2
However, it does not appear that neoliberalism promotes vigorous capital accumulation
in contemporary capitalism. There are a number of reasons why one would not
expect the neoliberal model to promote rapid accumulation. First, it gives rise
to a problem of insufficient aggregate demand over the long run, stemming from
the powerful tendency of the neoliberal regime to lower both real wages and
public spending. Second, the neoliberal model creates instability on the
macroeconomic level by renouncing state counter-cyclical spending and taxation
policies, by reducing the effectiveness of "automatic stabilizers" through shrinking
social welfare programs,3 and by loosening public regulation of the financial
sector. This renders the system more vulnerable to major financial crises and
depressions. Third, the neoliberal model tends to intensify class conflict,
which can potentially discourage capitalist investment.4
The historical evidence confirms doubts about the ability of the neoliberal
model to promote rapid capital accumulation. We will look at growth rates of
gross domestic product (GDP) and of labor productivity. The GDP growth rate
provides at least a rough approximation of the rate of capital accumulation,
while the labor productivity growth rate tells us something about the extent
to which capitalism is developing the forces of production via rising ratios
of means of production to direct labor, technological advance, and improved
labor skills.5 Table 1 shows average annual real GDP growth rates for six leading
developed capitalist countries over two periods, 1950-73 and 1973-99. The first
period was the heyday of state-regulated capitalism, both within those six countries
and in the capitalist world-system as a whole. The second period covers the
era of growing neoliberal dominance. All six countries had significantly faster
GDP growth in the earlier period than in the later one.
While Japan and the major Western European economies have been relatively
depressed in the 1990s, the US is often portrayed as rebounding to great prosperity
over the past decade. Neoliberals often claim that US adherence to neoliberal
policies finally paid off in the 1990s, while the more timid moves away from
state-interventionist policies in Europe and Japan kept them mired in stagnation.
Table 2 shows GDP and labor productivity growth rates for the US economy for
three subperiods during 1948-99.6 Column 1 of Table 2 shows that GDP growth
was significantly slower in 1973-90 B a period of transition from state-regulated
capitalism to the neoliberal model in the US B than in 1948-73. While GDP growth
improved slightly in 1990-99, it remained well below that of the era of state-regulated
capitalism. Some analysts cite the fact that GDP growth accelerated after 1995,
averaging 4.1% per year during 1995-99 (US Bureau of Economic Analysis, 2000).
However, it is not meaningful to compare a short fragment of the 1990s business
cycle expansion to the longrun performance of the economy during 1948-73.7
Column 2 of Table 1 shows that the high rate of labor productivity growth
recorded in 1948- 73 fell by more than half in 1973-90. While there was significant
improvement in productivity growth in the 1990s, it remained well below the
1948-73 rate, despite the rapid spread of what should be productivity-enhancing
communication and information-management technologies during the past decade.
The evidence from GDP and labor productivity growth rates supports the
claim that the neoliberal model is inferior to the state regulationist model
for key dimensions of capitalist economic performance. There is ample evidence
that the neoliberal model has shifted income and wealth in the direction of
the already wealthy. However, the ability to shift income upward has limits
in an economy that is not growing rapidly. Neoliberalism does not appear to
be delivering the goods in the ways that matter the most for capitalism's long-run
stability and survival.
The Structure of Competition and Economic Policy
The processes through which the dominant economic ideology and policies
are selected in a capitalist system are complex and many-sided. No general rule
operates to assure that those economic policies which would be most favorable
for capitalism are automatically adopted. History suggests that one important
determinant of the dominant economic ideology and policy stance is the competitive
structure of capitalism in a given era. Specifically, this paper argues that
periods of relatively unconstrained competition tend to produce the intellectual
and public policy dominance of liberalism, while periods of relatively constrained,
oligopolistic market relations tend to promote interventionist ideas and policies.
A relation in the opposite direction also exists, one which is often commented
upon. That is, one can argue that interventionist policies promote monopoly
power in markets, while liberal policies promote greater competition. This latter
relation is not being denied here. Rather, it will be argued that there is a
normally-overlooked direction of influence, having significant historical explanatory
power, which runs from competitive structure to public policy. In the period
when capitalism first became well established in the US, during 1800-1860, the
government played a relatively interventionist role. The federal government
placed high tariffs on competing manufactured goods from Europe, and federal,
state, and local levels of government all actively financed, and in some cases
built and operated, the new canal and rail system that created a large internal
market. There was no serious debate over the propriety of public financing of
transportation improvements in that era -- the only debate was over which regions
would get the key subsidized routes.
Once capitalism had become well established in the US after the Civil
War, it entered a period of cutthroat competition and wild accumulation known
as the Robber Baron era. In this period a coherent anti-interventionist liberal
position emerged and became politically dominant. Despite the enormous inequalities,
the severe business cycle, and the outrageous and often unlawful behavior of
the Goulds and Rockefellers, the idea that government should not intervene in
the economy held sway through the end of the 19th century.
From roughly 1890 to 1903 a huge merger wave transformed the competitive
structure of US capitalism. Out of that merger wave emerged giant corporations
possessing significant monopoly power in the manufacturing, mining, transportation,
and communication sectors. US industry settled down to a more restrained form
of oligopolistic rivalry. At the same time, many of the new monopoly capitalists
began to criticize the old Laissez Faire ideas and support a more interventionist
role for the state.8 The combination of big business support for state regulation
of business, together with similar demands arising from a popular anti-monopoly
movement based among small farmers and middle class professionals, ushered in
what is called the Progressive Era, from 1900-16. The building of a regulationist
state that was begun in the Progressive Era was completed during the New Deal
era a few decades later, when once again both big business leaders and a vigorous
popular movement (this time based among industrial workers) supported an interventionist
state. Both in the Progressive Era and the New Deal, big business and the popular
movement differed about what types of state intervention were needed. Big business
favored measures to increase the stability of the system and to improve conditions
for profit-making, while the popular movement sought to use the state to restrain
the power and privileges of big business and provide greater security for ordinary
people. The outcome in both cases was a political compromise, one weighted toward
the interests of big business, reflecting the relative power of the latter in
American capitalism.
Small business has remained adamantly opposed to the big, interventionist
state, from the Progressive Era through the New Deal down to the present. This
division between big and small business is chronicled for the Progressive Era
in Weinstein (1968). In the decades immediately following World War II one can
observe this division in the divergent views of the Business Roundtable, a big
business organization which often supported interventionist programs, and the
US Chambers of Commerce, the premier small business organization, which hewed
to an antigovernment stance.
What explains this political difference between large and small business?
When large corporations achieve significant market power and become freed from
fear concerning their immediate survival, they tend to develop a long time horizon
and pay attention to the requirements for assuring growing profits over time.9
They come to see the state as a potential ally. Having high and stable monopoly
profits, they tend to view the cost of government programs as something they
can afford, given their potential benefits. By contrast, the typical small
business faces a daily battle for survival, which prevents attention to long-run
considerations and which places a premium on avoiding the short-run costs of
taxation and state regulation. This explains the radically different positions
that big business and small business held regarding the proper state role in
the economy for the first two-thirds of the twentieth century.
This long-standing division between big business and small business appeared
to vanish in the US starting in the 1970s. Large corporations and banks which
had formerly supported foundations that advocated an active government role
in the economy, such as the Brookings Institution, became big donors to neoliberal
foundations such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation.
As a result, such right-wing foundations, which previously had to rely mainly
on contributions from small business, became very wealthy and influential.10
It was big business=s desertion of the political coalition supporting state
intervention and its shift to neoliberalism that rebuilt support for neoliberal
theories and policies in the US, starting in the 1970s. With business now unified
on economic policy, the shift was dramatic. Big grants became available for
economics research having a neoliberal slant. The major media shifted their
spin on political developments, and the phrase "government programs" now could
not be printed except with the word "bloated" before it.
This switch in the dominant economic model first showed up in the mid 1970s
in academic economics, as the previously marginalized Chicago School spread
its influence far beyond the University of Chicago. This was soon followed by
a radical shift in the public policy arena. In 1978- 79 the previously interventionist
Carter Administration began sounding the very neoliberal themes B deregulation
of business, cutbacks in social programs, and general fiscal and monetary austerity
B that were to become the centerpiece of Reagan Administration policies in 1981.
What caused the radical change in the political posture of big business regarding
state intervention in the economy? This paper argues that a major part of the
explanation lies in the effects of the globalization of the world capitalist
economy in the post-World War II period.
Globalization and Competition
Globalization is usually defined as an increase in the volume of cross-border
economic interactions and resource flows, producing a qualitative shift in the
relations between national economies and between nation-states (Baker et. al.,
1998, p. 5; Kozul-Wright and Rowthorn, 1998, p. 1). Three kinds of economic
interactions have increased substantially in past decades: merchandise trade
flows, foreign direct investment, and cross-border financial investments. We
will briefly examine each, with an eye on their effects on the competitive structure
of contemporary capitalism.
Table 3 shows the ratio of merchandise exports to gross domestic product
for selected years from 1820 to 1992, for the world and also for Western Europe,
the US, and Japan. Capitalism brought a five-fold rise in world exports relative
to output from 1820-70, followed by another increase of nearly three-fourths
by 1913. After declining in the interwar period, world exports reached a new
peak of 11.2% of world output in 1973, rising further to 13.5% in 1992. The
1992 figure was over fifty per cent higher than the pre-World War I peak.
Merchandise exports include physical goods only, while GDP includes services,
many of which are not tradable, as well as goods. In the twentieth century the
proportion of services in GDP has risen significantly. Table 4 shows an estimate
of the ratio of world merchandise exports to the good-only portion of world
GDP. This ratio nearly tripled during 1950-92, with merchandise exports rising
to nearly one-third of total goods output in the latter year. The 1992 figure
was 2.6 times as high as that of 1913.
Western Europe, the US, and Japan all experienced significant increases in
exports relative to GDP during 1950-92, as Table 3 shows. All of them achieved
ratios of exports to GDP far in excess of the 1913 level. While exports were
only 8.2% of the total GDP of the US in 1992, exports amounted to 22.0% of the
non-service portion of GDP that year (Economic Report of the President,
1999, pp. 338, 444).
Many analysts view foreign direct investment as the most important form of
cross-border economic interchange. It is associated with the movement of technology
and organizational methods, not just goods. Table 5 shows two measures of foreign
direct investment. Column 1 gives the outstanding stock of foreign direct investment
in the world as a percentage of world output. This measure has more than doubled
since 1975, although it is not much greater today than it was in 1913. Column
2 shows the annual inflow of direct foreign investment as a percentage of gross
fixed capital formation. This measure increased rapidly during 1975-95. However,
it is still relatively low in absolute terms, with foreign direct investment
accounting for only 5.2 per cent of gross fixed capital formation in 1995.
Not all, or even most, international capital flows take the form of direct
investment. Financial flows (such as cross-border purchases of securities and
deposits in foreign bank accounts) are normally larger. One measure that takes
account of financial as well as direct investment is the total net movement
of capital into or out of a country. That measure indicates the extent to which
capital from one country finances development in other countries. Table 6 shows
the absolute value of current account surpluses or deficits as a percentage
of GDP for 12 major capitalist countries. Since net capital inflow or outflow
is approximately equal to the current account deficit or surplus (differing
only due to errors and omissions), this indicates the size of net cross-border
capital flows. The ratio nearly doubled from 1970-74 to 1990-96, although it
remained well below the figure for 1910-14.
Cross-border gross capital movements have grown much more rapidly
than cross-border net capital movements.11 In recent times a very large
and rapidly growing volume of capital has moved back and forth across national
boundaries. Much of this capital flow is speculative in nature, reflecting growing
amounts of short-term capital that are moved around the world in search of the
best temporary return. No data on such flows are available for the early part
of this century, but the data for recent decades are impressive. During 1980-95
cross-border transactions in bonds and equities as a percentage of GDP rose
from 9% to 136% for the US, from 8% to 168% for Germany, and from 8% to 66%
for Japan (Baker et. al., 1998, p. 10). The total volume of foreign exchange
transactions in the world rose from about $15 billion per day in 1973 to $80
billion per day in 1980 and $1260 billion per day in 1995. Trade in goods and
services accounted for 15% of foreign exchange transactions in 1973 but for
less than 2% of foreign exchange transactions in 1995 (Bhaduri, 1998, p. 152).
While cross-border flows of goods and capital are usually considered to be
the best indicators of possible globalization of capitalism, changes that have
occurred over time within capitalist enterprises are also relevant. That is,
the much-discussed rise of the transnational corporation (TNC) is relevant here,
where a TNC is a corporation which has a substantial proportion of its sales,
assets, and employees outside its home country.12 TNCs existed in the pre-World
War I era, primarily in the extractive sector. In the post-World War II period
many large manufacturing corporations in the US, Western Europe, and Japan became
TNCs.
The largest TNCs are very international measured by the location of their
activities. One study found that the 100 largest TNCs in the world (ranked by
assets) had 40.4% of their assets abroad, 50.0% of output abroad, and 47.9%
of employment abroad in 1996 (Sutcliffe and Glyn, 1999, p. 125). While this
shows that the largest TNCs are significantly international in their activities,
all but a handful have retained a single national base for top officials and
major stockholders.13 The top 200 TNCs ranked by output were estimated to produce
only about 10 per cent of world GDP in 1995 (Sutcliffe and Glyn, 1999, p. 122).
By the close of the twentieth century, capitalism had become significantly
more globalized than it had been fifty years ago, and by some measures it is
much more globalized than it had been at the previous peak of this process in
1913. The most important features of globalization today are greatly increased
international trade, increased flows of capital across national boundaries (particularly
speculative short-term capital), and a major role for large TNCs in manufacturing,
extractive activities, and finance, operating worldwide yet retaining in nearly
all cases a clear base in a single nation-state.
While the earlier wave of globalization before World War I did produce a
capitalism that was significantly international, two features of that earlier
international system differed from the current global capitalism in ways that
are relevant here. First, the pre-world War I globalization took place within
a world carved up into a few great colonial empires, which meant that much of
the so-called "cross-border" trade and investment of that earlier era actually
occurred within a space controlled by a single state. Second, the high level
of world trade reached before World War I occurred within a system based much
more on specialization and division of labor. That is, manufactured goods were
exported by the advanced capitalist countries in exchange for primary products,
unlike today when most trade is in manufactured goods. In 1913 62.5% of world
trade was in primary products (Bairoch and Kozul-Wright, 1998, p. 45). By contrast,
in 1970 60.9% of world exports were manufactured goods, rising to 74.7% in 1994
(Baker et. al., 1998, p. 7).
Some analysts argue that globalization has produced a world of such economic
interdependence that individual nation-states no longer have the power to regulate
capital. However, while global interdependence does create difficulties for
state regulation, this effect has been greatly exaggerated. Nation-states still
retain a good deal of potential power vis-a-vis capitalist firms, provided that
the political will is present to exercise such power. For example, even such
a small country as Malaysia proved able to successfully impose capital controls
following the Asian financial crisis of 1997, despite the opposition of the
IMF and the US government. A state that has the political will to exercise
some control over movements of goods and capital across its borders still retains
significant power to regulate business. The more important effect of globalization
has been on the political will to undertake state regulation, rather than on
the technical feasibility of doing so. Globalization has had this effect by
changing the competitive structure of capitalism. It appears that globalization
in this period has made capitalism significantly more competitive, in several
ways. First, the rapid growth of trade has changed the situation faced by large
corporations. Large corporations that had previously operated in relatively
controlled oligopolistic domestic markets now face competition from other large
corporations based abroad, both in domestic and foreign markets. In the US the
rate of import penetration of domestic manufacturing markets was only 2 per
cent in 1950; it rose to 8% in 1971 and 16% by 1993, an 8-fold increase since
1950 (Sutcliffe and Glyn, 1999, p. 116).
Second, the rapid increase in foreign direct investment has in many cases
placed TNCs production facilities in the home markets of their foreign rivals.
General Motors not only faces import competition from Toyota and Honda but has
to compete with US-produced Toyota and Honda vehicles. Third, the increasingly
integrated and open world financial system has thrown the major banks and other
financial institutions of the leading capitalist nations increasingly into competition
with one another.
Globalization appears to be one factor that has transformed big business
from a supporter to an opponent of the interventionist state. It has done so
partly by producing TNCs whose tie to the domestic markets for goods and labor
is limited. More importantly, globalization tends to turn big business
into small business. The process of globalization has increased the competitive
pressure faced by large corporations and banks, as competition has become a
world-wide relationship.17 Even if those who run large corporations and financial
institutions recognize the need for a strong nationstate in their home base,
the new competitive pressure they face shortens their time horizon. It pushes
them toward support for any means to reduce their tax burden and lift their
regulatory constraints, to free them to compete more effectively with their
global rivals. While a regulationist state may seem to be in the interests of
big business, in that it can more effectively promote capital accumulation in
the long run, in a highly competitive environment big business is drawn away
from supporting a regulationist state.
Globalization has produced a world capitalism that bears some resemblance
to the Robber Baron Era in the US. Giant corporations battle one another in
a system lacking well defined rules. Mergers and acquisitions abound, including
some that cross national boundaries, but so far few world industries have evolved
the kind of tight oligopolistic structure that would lay the basis for a more
controlled form of market relations. Like the late 19th century US Robber Barons,
today's large corporations and banks above all want freedom from political burdens
and restraints as they confront one another in world markets.18
The above interpretation of the rise and persistence of neoliberalism attributes
it, at least in part, to the changed competitive structure of world capitalism
resulting from the process of globalization. As neoliberalism gained influence
starting in the 1970s, it became a force propelling the globalization process
further. One reason for stressing the line of causation running from globalization
to neoliberalism is the time sequence of the developments. The process of globalization,
which had been reversed to some extent by political and economic events in the
interwar period, resumed right after World War II, producing a significantly
more globalized world economy and eroding the monopoly power of large corporations
well before neoliberalism began its second coming in the mid 1970s. The rapid
rise in merchandise exports began during the Bretton Woods period, as Table
3 showed. So too did the growing role for TNC's. These two aspects of the current
globalization had their roots in the postwar era of state-regulated capitalism.
This suggests that, to some extent, globalization reflects a long-run tendency
in the capital accumulation process rather than just being a result of the rising
influence of neoliberal policies. On the other hand, once neoliberalism became
dominant, it accelerated the process of globalization. This can be seen most
clearly in the data on cross-border flows of both real and financial capital,
which began to grow rapidly only after the 1960s.
Other Factors Promoting Neoliberalism
The changed competitive structure of capitalism provides part of the explanation
for the rise from the ashes of classical liberalism and its persistence in the
face of widespread evidence of its failure to deliver the goods. However, three
additional factors have played a role in promoting neoliberal dominance. These
are the weakening of socialist movements in the industrialized capitalist countries,
the demise of state socialism, and the long period that has elapsed since the
last major capitalist economic crisis. There is space here for only some brief
comments about these additional factors.
The socialist movements in the industrialized capitalist countries have declined
in strength significantly over the past few decades. While Social Democratic
parties have come to office in several European countries recently, they no
longer represent a threat of even significant modification of capitalism, much
less the specter of replacing capitalism with an alternative socialist system.
The regulationist state was always partly a response to the fear of socialism,
a point illustrated by the emergence of the first major regulationist state
of the era of mature capitalism in Germany in the late 19th century, in response
to the world=s first major socialist movement. As the threat coming from socialist
movements in the industrialized capitalist countries has receded, so too has
to incentive to retain the regulationist state.
The existence of a powerful bloc of Communist-run states with an alternative
"state socialist" socioeconomic system tended to push capitalism toward a state
regulationist form. It reinforced the fear among capitalists that their own
working classes might turn against capitalism. It also had an impact on relations
among the leading capitalist states, promoting inter-state unity behind US leadership,
which facilitated the creation and operation of a world-system of state-regulated
capitalism.19 The demise of state socialism during 1989-91 removed one more
factor that had reinforced the regulationist state.
The occurrence of a major economic crisis tends to promote an interventionist
state, since active state intervention is required to overcome a major crisis.
The memory of a recent major crisis tends to keep up support for a regulationist
state, which is correctly seen as a stabilizing force tending to head off major
crises. As the Great Depression of the 1930s has receded into the distant past,
the belief has taken hold that major economic crises have been banished forever.
This reduces the perceived need to retain the regulationist state.
Concluding Comments
If neoliberalism continues to reign as the dominant ideology and policy stance,
it can be argued that world capitalism faces a future of stagnation, instability,
and even eventual social breakdown.20 However, from the factors that have promoted
neoliberalism one can see possible sources of a move back toward state-regulated
capitalism at some point. One possibility would be the development of tight
oligopoly and regulated competition on a world scale. Perhaps the current merger
wave might continue until, as happened at the beginning of the 20th century
within the US and in other industrialized capitalist economies, oligopoly replaced
cutthroat competition, but this time on a world scale. Such a development might
revive big business support for an interventionist state. However, this does
not seem to be likely in the foreseeable future. The world is a big place, with
differing cultures, laws, and business practices in different countries, which
serve as obstacles to overcoming the competitive tendency in market relations.
Transforming an industry=s structure so that two to four companies produce the
bulk of the output is not sufficient in itself to achieve stable monopoly power,
if the rivals are unable to communicate effectively with one another and find
common ground for cooperation. Also, it would be difficult for international
monopolies to exercise effective regulation via national governments, and a
genuine world capitalist state is not a possibility for the foreseeable future.
If state socialism re-emerged in one or more major countries, perhaps
this might push the capitalist world back toward the regulationist state. However,
such a development does not seem likely. Even if Russia or Ukraine at some point
does head in that direction, it would be unlikely to produce a serious rival
socioeconomic system to that of world capitalism.
A more likely source of a new era of state interventionism might come from
one of the remaining two factors considered above. The macro-instability of
neoliberal global capitalism might produce a major economic crisis at some point,
one which spins out of the control of the weakened regulatory authorities. This
would almost certainly revive the politics of the regulationist state. Finally,
the increasing exploitation and other social problems generated by neoliberal
global capitalism might prod the socialist movement back to life at some point.
Should socialist movements revive and begin to seriously challenge capitalism
in one or more major capitalist countries, state regulationism might return
in response to it. Such a development would also revive the possibility of finally
superceding capitalism and replacing it with a system based on human need rather
than private profit.
"... Elites can continue on the current path of pursuing integration projects and defending existing
integration, hoping to win enough popular support that their efforts are not thwarted. On the evidence
of the U.S. presidential campaign and the Brexit debate, this strategy may have run its course. ...
..."
"... I think some fellows already had this idea: "Much more promising is this idea: The promotion
of global integration can become a bottom-up rather than a top-down project" -- "Workers of the World,
Unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains!" ~Marx/Engels, 1848 ..."
"... Krugman sort of said this when he saw that apparel multinationals were shifting jobs out of
China to Bangladesh. Like $3 an hour is just way too high for workers. ..."
"... The "populists" are raging against global trade which benefits the world poor. The Very Serious
economists know what is really going on and have to interests of the poor at heart. Plus they are smarter
than the "populists" who are just dumb hippies. ..."
"... And what about neocolonialism and debt slavery ? http://historum.com/blogs/solidaire/245-debt-slavery-neo-colonialism-neoliberalism.html
..."
"... International debtors are the modern colonialists, sucking the marrow of countries; no armies
are needed anymore to keep those countries subjugated. Debt is the modern instrument of enslavement,
the international banks, corporations and hedge funds the modern colonial powers, and its enforcers
are instruments like the Global Bank, the IMF, and the corrupt, collaborationist governments (and totalitarian
regimes) of those countries, supported and propped up by these neo-colonials. ..."
"... Cover your a$$ much Larry? No mention of mass immigration? No mention of the elites' conscious,
planned attack on homogeneous societies in Western Europe, the US, and now Japan? ..."
"... The US was 88% European as of 1960. As of 1800 it was like 90% English. So yes, it was basically
a homogeneous society prior to the immigration act of 1965. Today it is extremely hard for Europeans
to get into the US -- but easier for non-Europeans. Now why would that be? Hmm .... ..."
"... The only trade that is actually free is trade not covered by laws and/or treaties. All other
trade is regulated trade. ..."
"... Here's a good rule to follow. When someone calls something the exact opposite of what it is,
in all probability they are trying to hustle your wallet. ..."
"... ISIS was invented by Wall Street who financed them. ISIS is a scam, just like Bin Laden's group,
just like "COMMUNISM!!!!" to control people. To manipulate them. ..."
"... Guys, the bourgeois state is a protection racket and always has been. It makes you feel safe,
secure and "feel like man". So we can enjoy every indulgent individual lust the world has to offer.
Then comes in dialectics of what that protection racket should do. ..."
"... To me, the bourgeois state is nothing more than a protection racket for the rich, something
you should not forget. ..."
"... I find it rather precious that Summers pretends not to understand why people hate TPP. I do
not think there is any real widespread antipathy toward global integration, though it does pose some
rather substantial systemic dangers, as we saw in the global financial collapse. What people, including
me, oppose is how that integration is structured. These agreements are about is not "free trade", but
removing all restrictions on global capital and that is a big problem. ..."
"... TPP is not free trade. It is protectionism for the rich. ..."
"... All or most modern "free trade" agreements are like that. What people oppose is agreements
which impoverish them and enrich capital. ..."
"... More free trade arrangement are not always better trade arrangements. People have seen the
results of the labor race to the bottom caused by earlier free trade agreements; and now they are guessing
we're going to get the same kind of race to the bottom with TPP when we have to put all of our environmental
laws and other domestic regulations into capitalist competition with backward countries. ..."
"... progressive states (WA, OR, CA, NV, IL, NY, MD) could simply treat union busting the same way
any OTHER major muscling or manipulation of the free market is treated: make it a felony. ..."
"... Summers: "Pie in the Sky" So trade negotiations would have to be lead by labor advocates and
environmental groups -- sounds great to me, but I can't for the life of me figure out why the goods
and service producers (i.e. capital owners) would have any incentive to promote trade under such a negotiated
trade agreement... or that trade would actually occur. You'd have to eliminate private enterprise incentives
to profit I think.. not something the U.S.'s "individualism" god can't tolerate. ..."
"... Alas, the Kaiser, the Tsar, and the Emperor did not act in accord with its tenets. Either increased
global trade is irrelevant to war and peace, or World War I didn't happen. Your pick which to believe.
..."
What's behind the revolt against global integration? : Since the end of World War II, a broad
consensus in support of global economic integration as a force for peace and prosperity has been
a pillar of the international order. ...
This broad program of global integration has been more successful than could reasonably have
been hoped. ... Yet a revolt against global integration is underway in the West. ...
One substantial part of what is behind the resistance is a lack of knowledge. ...The core of
the revolt against global integration, though, is not ignorance. It is a sense - unfortunately
not wholly unwarranted - that it is a project being carried out by elites for elites, with little
consideration for the interests of ordinary people. ...
Elites can continue on the current path of pursuing integration projects and defending
existing integration, hoping to win enough popular support that their efforts are not thwarted.
On the evidence of the U.S. presidential campaign and the Brexit debate, this strategy may have
run its course. ...
Much more promising is this idea: The promotion of global integration can become a bottom-up
rather than a top-down project. The emphasis can shift from promoting integration to managing
its consequences. This would mean a shift from international trade agreements to international
harmonization agreements, whereby issues such as labor rights and environmental protection would
be central, while issues related to empowering foreign producers would be secondary. It would
also mean devoting as much political capital to the trillions of dollars that escape taxation
or evade regulation through cross-border capital flows as we now devote to trade agreements. And
it would mean an emphasis on the challenges of middle-class parents everywhere who doubt, but
still hope desperately, that their kids can have better lives than they did.
I think some fellows already had this idea: "Much more promising is this idea: The promotion
of global integration can become a bottom-up rather than a top-down project" -- "Workers of the
World, Unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains!" ~Marx/Engels, 1848
Krugman sort of said this when he saw that apparel multinationals were shifting jobs out of
China to Bangladesh. Like $3 an hour is just way too high for workers.
A large part of the concern over free trade comes from the weak economic performances around the
globe. Summers could have addressed this. Jared Bernstein and Dean Baker - both sensible economists
- for example recently called on the US to do its own currency manipulation so as to reverse the
US$ appreciation which is lowering our net exports quite a bit.
What they left out is the fact that both China and Japan have seen currency appreciations as
well. If we raise our net exports at their expense, that lowers their economic activity. Better
would be global fiscal stimulus. I wish Larry had raised this issue here.
The "populists" are raging against global trade which benefits the world poor. The Very Serious
economists know what is really going on and have to interests of the poor at heart. Plus they
are smarter than the "populists" who are just dumb hippies.
One of the most fundamental reasons for the poverty and underdevelopment of Africa (and of
almost all "third world" countries) is neo-colonialism, which in modern history takes the shape
of external debt.
When countries are forced to pay 40,50,60% of their government budgets just to pay the interests
of their enormous debts, there is little room for actual prosperity left.
International debtors are the modern colonialists, sucking the marrow of countries; no
armies are needed anymore to keep those countries subjugated. Debt is the modern instrument of
enslavement, the international banks, corporations and hedge funds the modern colonial powers,
and its enforcers are instruments like the Global Bank, the IMF, and the corrupt, collaborationist
governments (and totalitarian regimes) of those countries, supported and propped up by these neo-colonials.
In reality, not much has changed since the fall of the great colonial empires. In paper, countries
have gained their sovereignty, but in reality they are enslaved to the international credit system.
The only thing that has changed, is that now the very colonial powers of the past, are threatened
to become debt colonies themselves. You see, global capitalism and credit system has no country,
nationality, colour; it only recognises the colour of money, earned at all cost by the very few,
on the expense of the vast, unsuspected and lulled masses.
Debt had always been a very efficient way of control, either on a personal, or state level.
And while most of us are aware of the implementations of personal debt and the risks involved,
the corridors of government debt are poorly lit, albeit this kind of debt is affecting all citizens
of a country and in ways more profound and far reaching into the future than those of private
debt.
Global capitalism was flourishing after WW2, and reached an apex somewhere in the 70's.
The lower classes in the mature capitalist countries had gained a respectable portion of the
distributed wealth, rights and privileges inconceivable several decades before. The purchasing
power of the average American for example, was very satisfactory, fully justifying the American
dream. Similar phenomena were taking place all over the "developed" world.
Cover your a$$ much Larry? No mention of mass immigration? No mention of the elites' conscious,
planned attack on homogeneous societies in Western Europe, the US, and now Japan?
There is of course no reasonable answering to prejudice, since prejudice is always unreasonable,
but should there be a question, when was the last time that, say, the United States or the territory
that the US now covers was a homogeneous society?
Before the US engulfed Spanish peoples? Before the US engulfed African peoples? Before the
US engulfed Indian peoples? When did the Irish, just to think of a random nationality, ruin "our"
homogeneity?
I could continue, but how much of a point is there in being reasonable?
The US was 88% European as of 1960. As of 1800 it was like 90% English. So yes, it was basically
a homogeneous society prior to the immigration act of 1965. Today it is extremely hard for Europeans
to get into the US -- but easier for non-Europeans. Now why would that be? Hmm ....
ISIS was invented by Wall Street who financed them. ISIS is a scam, just like Bin Laden's
group, just like "COMMUNISM!!!!" to control people. To manipulate them.
It is like using the internet to think you are "edgy". Some dudes like psuedo-science scam
artist Mike Adams are uncovering secrets to this witty viewer............then you wonder why society
is degenerating. What should happen with Mike Adams is, he should be beaten up and castrated.
My guess he would talk then. Boy would his idiot followers get a surprise and that surprise would
have results other than "poor mikey, he was robbed".
This explains why guys like Trump get delegates. Not because he uses illegal immigrants in
his old businesses, not because of some flat real wages going over 40 years, not because he is
a conman marketer.........he makes them feel safe. That is purely it. I think its pathetic, but
that is what happens in a emasculated world. Safety becomes absolute concern. "Trump makes me
feel safe".
Guys, the bourgeois state is a protection racket and always has been. It makes you feel
safe, secure and "feel like man". So we can enjoy every indulgent individual lust the world has
to offer. Then comes in dialectics of what that protection racket should do.
To me, the bourgeois state is nothing more than a protection racket for the rich, something
you should not forget.
I find it rather precious that Summers pretends not to understand why people hate TPP. I do
not think there is any real widespread antipathy toward global integration, though it does pose
some rather substantial systemic dangers, as we saw in the global financial collapse. What people,
including me, oppose is how that integration is structured. These agreements are about is not
"free trade", but removing all restrictions on global capital and that is a big problem.
Actually, this is my first actual response to the post itself, but you were too busy being and
a*****e to notice. All or most modern "free trade" agreements are like that. What people oppose
is agreements which impoverish them and enrich capital.
This has become a popular line, and it's not exactly false. But so what if it were a "free trade"
agreement? More free trade arrangement are not always better trade arrangements. People have
seen the results of the labor race to the bottom caused by earlier free trade agreements; and
now they are guessing we're going to get the same kind of race to the bottom with TPP when we
have to put all of our environmental laws and other domestic regulations into capitalist competition
with backward countries.
" The promotion of global integration can become a bottom-up rather than a top-down project. "
" ... whereby issues such as labor rights and environmental protection would be central ...
"
+1
Now if we could just adopt that policy internally in the United States first we could then
(and only then) support it externally across the world.
Easy approach: (FOR THE TEN MILLIONTH TIME!) progressive states (WA, OR, CA, NV, IL, NY,
MD) could simply treat union busting the same way any OTHER major muscling or manipulation of
the free market is treated: make it a felony. FYI (for those who are not aware) states can
add to federal labor protections, just not subtract.
A completely renewed, re-constituted democracy would be born.
Biggest obstacle to this being done in my (crackpot?) view: human males. Being instinctive
pack hunters, before they check out any idea they, first, check in with the pack (all those other
boys who are also checking in with the pack) -- almost automatically infer impossibility to overcome
what they see (correctly?) as wheels within wheels of inertia.
Self-fulfilling prophecy: nothing (not the most obvious, SHOULD BE easiest possible to get
support for actions) ever gets done.
I'm not the only one seeking a new path forward on trade.
by Jared Bernstein
April 11th, 2016 at 9:20 am
"...
Here's Larry's view of the way forward:
"The promotion of global integration can become a bottom-up rather than a top-down project.
The emphasis can shift from promoting integration to managing its consequences. This would
mean a shift from international trade agreements to international harmonization agreements,
whereby issues such as labor rights and environmental protection would be central, while issues
related to empowering foreign producers would be secondary. It would also mean devoting as
much political capital to the trillions of dollars that escape taxation or evade regulation
through cross-border capital flows as we now devote to trade agreements. And it would mean
an emphasis on the challenges of middle-class parents everywhere who doubt, but still hope
desperately, that their kids can have better lives than they did.
Good points, all. "Bottom-up" means what I've been calling a more representative, inclusive
process. But what's this about "international harmonization?""
It's a way of saying that we need to reduce the "frictions" and thus costs between trading
partners at the level of pragmatic infrastructure, not corporate power. One way to think of
this is TFAs, not FTAs. TFAs are trade facilitation agreements, which are more about integrating
ports, rail, and paperwork than patents that protect big Pharma.
It's refreshing to see mainstreamers thinking creatively about the anger that's surfaced
around globalization. Waiting for the anger to dissipate and then reverting back to the old
trade regimes may be the preferred path for elites, but that path may well be blocked. We'd
best clear a new, wider path, one that better accommodates folks from all walks of life, both
here and abroad."
Summers: "Pie in the Sky" So trade negotiations would have to be lead by labor advocates and
environmental groups -- sounds great to me, but I can't for the life of me figure out why the
goods and service producers (i.e. capital owners) would have any incentive to promote trade under
such a negotiated trade agreement... or that trade would actually occur. You'd have to eliminate
private enterprise incentives to profit I think.. not something the U.S.'s "individualism" god
can't tolerate.
Imagine a trade deal negotiated by the AFL-CIO. Labor wins a lot and capital owners lose a little.
We can all then smile and say to the latter - go get your buddies in Congress more serious about
the compensation principle. Turn the table!
"consensus in support of global economic integration as a force for peace and prosperity " --
"The Great Illusion" (
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion
)
That increased trade is a bulwark against war rears its ugly head again. The above book which
so ironically delivered the message was published in 1910.
Alas, the Kaiser, the Tsar, and the Emperor did not act in accord with its tenets. Either
increased global trade is irrelevant to war and peace, or World War I didn't happen. Your pick
which to believe.
Our problems began back in the 1970s when we abandoned the Bretton Woods international capital
controls and then broke the unions, cut taxes on corporations and upper income groups, and deregulated
the financial system. This eventually led a stagnation of wages in the US and an increase in the
concentration of income at the top of the income distribution throughout the world:
http://www.rwEconomics.com/Ch_1.htm
When combined with tax cuts and financial deregulation it led to increasing debt relative to
income in the importing countries that caused the financial catastrophe we went through in 2008,
the economic stagnation that followed, and the social unrest we see throughout the world today.
This, in turn, created a situation in which the full utilization of our economic resources can
only be maintained through an unsustainable increase in debt relative to income:
http://www.rwEconomics.com/htm/WDCh3e.htm
This is what has to be overcome if we are to get out of the mess the world is in today, and
it's not going to be overcome by pretending that it's just going to go away if people can just
become educated about the benefits of trade. At least that's not the way it worked out in the
1930s: http://www.rwEconomics.com/LTLGAD.htm
"... From Tunis to Tel Aviv, Madrid to Oakland, a new generation of youth activists is challenging the neoliberal state that has dominated the world ever since the Cold War ended. ..."
"... young rebels are reacting to a single stunning worldwide development: the extreme concentration of wealth in a few hands thanks to neoliberal policies of deregulation and union busting. They have taken to the streets, parks, plazas and squares to protest against the resulting corruption, the way politicians can be bought and sold, and the impunity ..."
"... In the "glorious thirty years" after World War II, North America and Western Europe achieved remarkable rates of economic growth and relatively low levels of inequality for capitalist societies, while instituting a broad range of benefits for workers, students and retirees. From roughly 1980 on, however, the neoliberal movement, rooted in the laissez-faire economic theories of Milton Friedman, launched what became a full-scale assault on workers' power and an attempt, often remarkably successful, to eviscerate the social welfare state. ..."
"... "Washington consensus" meant that the urge to impose privatisation on stagnating, nepotistic postcolonial states would become the order of the day. ..."
"... While neoliberalism has produced more unequal societies throughout the world, nowhere else has the income of the poor declined quite so strikingly. The concentration of wealth in a few hands profoundly contradicts the founding principles of Israel's Labour Zionism, and results from decades of right-wing Likud policies punishing the poor and middle classes and shifting wealth to the top of society. ..."
"... Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History and the director of the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of Michigan. His latest book, ..."
"... Engaging the Muslim World , is just out in a revised paperback edition from Palgrave Macmillan. He runs the Informed Comment website. ..."
"... A version of this article was first published on Tom Dispatch . ..."
"... The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy. ..."
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN - From Tunis to Tel Aviv, Madrid to Oakland, a new
generation of youth activists is challenging the neoliberal state that has dominated
the world ever since the Cold War ended. The massive popular protests that
shook the globe this year have much in common, though most of the reporting
on them in the mainstream media has obscured the similarities.
Whether in Egypt or the United States, young rebels are reacting to a
single stunning worldwide development: the extreme concentration of wealth in
a few hands thanks to neoliberal policies of deregulation and union busting.
They have taken to the streets, parks, plazas and squares to protest against
the resulting corruption, the way politicians can be bought and sold, and the
impunity
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN - From Tunis to Tel Aviv, Madrid to
Oakland, a new generation of youth activists is challenging the neoliberal state
that has dominated the world ever since the Cold War ended. The massive popular
protests that shook the globe this year have much in common, though most of
the reporting on them in the mainstream media has obscured the similarities.
Whether in Egypt or the United States, young rebels are reacting to a single
stunning worldwide development: the extreme concentration of wealth in a few
hands thanks to neoliberal policies of deregulation and union busting. They
have taken to the streets, parks, plazas and squares to protest against the
resulting corruption, the way politicians can be bought and sold, and the impunity
of the white-collar criminals who have run riot in societies everywhere. They
are objecting to high rates of unemployment, reduced social services, blighted
futures and above all the substitution of the market for all other values as
the matrix of human ethics and life.
Pasha the Tiger
In the "glorious thirty years" after World War II, North America and
Western Europe achieved remarkable rates of economic growth and relatively low
levels of inequality for capitalist societies, while instituting a broad range
of benefits for workers, students and retirees. From roughly 1980 on, however,
the neoliberal movement, rooted in the laissez-faire economic theories of Milton
Friedman, launched what became a full-scale assault on workers' power and an
attempt, often remarkably successful, to eviscerate the social welfare state.
Neoliberals chanted the mantra that everyone would benefit if the public
sector were privatised, businesses deregulated and market mechanisms allowed
to distribute wealth. But as economist David Harvey
argues, from the beginning it was a doctrine that primarily benefited the
wealthy, its adoption allowing the top one per cent in any neoliberal society
to capture a disproportionate share of whatever wealth was generated.
In the global South, countries that gained their independence from European
colonialism after World War II tended to create large public sectors as part
of the process of industrialization. Often, living standards improved as a result,
but by the 1970s, such developing economies were generally experiencing a levelling-off
of growth. This happened just as neoliberalism became ascendant in Washington,
Paris and London as well as in Bretton Woods institutions like the International
Monetary Fund. This "Washington consensus" meant that the urge to impose
privatisation on stagnating, nepotistic postcolonial states would become the
order of the day.
Egypt and Tunisia, to take two countries in the spotlight for sparking the
Arab Spring, were successfully pressured in the 1990s to privatise their relatively
large public sectors. Moving public resources into the private sector created
an almost endless range of opportunities for staggering levels of corruption
on the part of the ruling families of autocrats
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunis and
Hosni Mubarak in Cairo. International banks, central banks and emerging
local private banks aided and abetted their agenda.
It was not surprising then that one of the first targets of Tunisian crowds
in the course of the revolution they made last January was the
Zitouna bank, a branch of which they torched. Its owner? Sakher El Materi,
a son-in-law of President Ben Ali and the notorious owner of
Pasha, the well-fed pet tiger that prowled the grounds of one of his sumptuous
mansions. Not even the way his outfit sought legitimacy by practicing "Islamic
banking" could forestall popular rage. A 2006 State Department cable released
by WikiLeaks
observed, "One local financial expert blames the [Ben Ali] Family for chronic
banking sector woes due to the great percentage of non-performing loans issued
through crony connections, and has essentially paralysed banking authorities
from genuine recovery efforts." That is, the banks were used by the regime to
give away money to his cronies, with no expectation of repayment.
Tunisian activists similarly directed their ire at foreign banks and lenders
to which their country owes $14.4bn. Tunisians are still railing and rallying
against the repayment of all that money, some of which they believe was
borrowed profligately by the corrupt former regime and then squandered quite
privately.
Tunisians had their own one per cent, a thin commercial elite,
half of whom were related to or closely connected to President Ben Ali.
As a group, they were accused by young activists of mafia-like, predatory practices,
such as demanding pay-offs from legitimate businesses, and discouraging foreign
investment by tying it to a stupendous system of bribes. The closed, top-heavy
character of the Tunisian economic system was blamed for the bottom-heavy waves
of suffering that followed: cost of living increases that hit people on fixed
incomes or those like students and peddlers in the marginal economy especially
hard.
It was no happenstance that the young man who
immolated himself and so sparked the Tunisian rebellion was a hard-pressed
vegetable peddler. It's easy now to overlook what clearly ties the beginning
of the Arab Spring to the European Summer and the present American Fall: the
point of the Tunisian revolution was not just to gain political rights, but
to sweep away that one per cent, popularly imagined as a sort of dam against
economic opportunity.
Tahrir Square, Zuccotti Park, Rothschild Avenue
The success of the Tunisian revolution in removing the octopus-like Ben Ali
plutocracy inspired the dramatic events in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria and even
Israel that are redrawing the political map of the Middle East. But the 2011
youth protest movement was hardly contained in the Middle East. Estonian-Canadian
activist Kalle Lasn and his anti-consumerist colleagues at the Vancouver-based
Adbusters Media Foundation
were inspired by the success of the revolutionaries in Tahrir Square in
deposing dictator Hosni Mubarak.
Their organisation specialises in combatting advertising culture through
spoofs and pranks. It was Adbusters magazine that sent out the call
on Twitter in the summer of 2011 for a rally at Wall Street on September 17,
with the now-famous hash tag #OccupyWallStreet. A thousand protesters gathered
on the designated date, commemorating the 2008 economic meltdown that had thrown
millions of Americans out of their jobs and their homes. Some camped out in
nearby Zuccotti Park, another unexpected global spark for protest.
The Occupy Wall Street movement has now spread throughout the United States,
sometimes in the face of serious acts of repression, as in
Oakland, California. It has followed in the spirit of the Arab and European
movements in demanding an end to special privileges for the richest one per
cent, including their ability to more or less buy the US government for purposes
of their choosing. What is often forgotten is that the Ben Alis, Mubaraks and
Gaddafis were not simply authoritarian tyrants. They were the one per
cent and the guardians of the one per cent, in their own societies - and loathed
for exactly that.
Last April, around the time that Lasn began imagining Wall Street protests,
progressive activists in Israel started planning their own movement. In July,
sales clerk and aspiring filmmaker Daphne Leef found herself
unable
to cover a sudden rent increase on her Tel Aviv apartment. So she started
a protest Facebook page similar to the ones that fuelled the Arab Spring and
moved into a tent on the posh Rothschild Avenue where she was soon joined by
hundreds of other protesting Israelis. Week by week, the demonstrations grew,
spreading to cities throughout the country and
culminating on September 3 in a massive rally, the largest in Israel's history.
Some 300,000 protesters came out in Tel Aviv, 50,000 in Jerusalem and 40,000
in Haifa. Their demands
included not just lower housing costs, but a rollback of neoliberal policies,
less regressive taxes and more progressive, direct taxation, a halt to the privatisation
of the economy, and the funding of a system of inexpensive education and child
care.
Many on the left in Israel are also
deeply troubled by the political and economic power of right-wing settlers
on the West Bank, but most decline to bring the Palestinian issue into the movement's
demands for fear of losing support among the middle class. For the same reason,
the way the Israeli movement was inspired by Tahrir Square and the Egyptian
revolution has been downplayed, although
"Walk like an Egyptian" signs - a reference both to the Cairo demonstrations
and the 1986 Bangles hit song - have been spotted on Rothschild Avenue.
Most of the Israeli activists in the coastal cities know that they are victims
of the same neoliberal order that displaces the Palestinians, punishes them
and keeps them stateless. Indeed, the Palestinians, altogether lacking a state
but at the complete mercy of various forms of international capital controlled
by elites elsewhere, are the ultimate victims of the neoliberal order. But in
order to avoid a split in the Israeli protest movement, a quiet agreement was
reached to focus on economic discontents and so avoid the divisive issue of
the much-despised West Bank settlements.
There has been little reporting in the Western press about a key source of
Israeli unease, which was palpable to me when I visited the country in May.
Even then, before the local protests had fully hit their stride, Israelis I
met were complaining about the rise to power of an Israeli one per cent. There
are now
16 billionaires in the country, who control $45bn in assets, and the current
crop of 10,153 millionaires is 20 per cent larger than it was in the previous
fiscal year. In terms of its distribution of wealth, Israel is now among the
most unequal of the countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation
and Development. Since the late 1980s, the average household income of families
in the bottom fifth of the population has been declining at an annual rate of
1.1 per cent. Over the same period, the average household income of families
among the richest 20 per cent went up at an annual rate of 2.4 per cent.
While neoliberalism has produced more unequal societies throughout the
world, nowhere else has the income of the poor declined quite so strikingly.
The concentration of wealth in a few hands profoundly contradicts the founding
principles of Israel's Labour Zionism, and results from decades of right-wing
Likud policies punishing the poor and middle classes and shifting wealth to
the top of society.
The indignant ones
European youth were also inspired by the Tunisians and Egyptians - and by
a similar flight of wealth. I was in Barcelona on May 27, when the police attacked
demonstrators camped out at the Placa de Catalunya, provoking widespread consternation.
The government of the region is currently led by the centrist Convergence and
Union Party, a moderate proponent of Catalan nationalism. It is relatively popular
locally, and so Catalans had not expected such heavy-handed police action to
be ordered. The crackdown, however, underlined the very point of the protesters,
that the neoliberal state, whatever its political makeup, is protecting the
same set of wealthy miscreants.
Spain's "indignados" (indignant ones) got
their start in mid-May with huge protests at Madrid's Puerta del Sol Plaza
against the country's persistent 21 per cent unemployment rate (and double that
among the young). Egyptian activists in Tahrir Square
immediately sent a statement of warm support to those in the Spanish capital
(as they would months later to New York's demonstrators). Again following the
same pattern, the Spanish movement does not restrict its objections to unemployment
(and the lack of benefits attending the few new temporary or contract jobs that
do arise). Its targets are the banks, bank bailouts, financial corruption and
cuts in education and other services.
Youth activists I met in Toledo and Madrid this summer
denounced
both of the country's major parties and, indeed, the very consumer society that
emphasised wealth accumulation over community and material acquisition over
personal enrichment. In the past two months Spain's young protesters have concentrated
on demonstrating against cuts to education, with crowds of 70,000 to 90,000
coming out more than once in Madrid and tens of thousands in other cities. For
marches in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement,
hundreds of thousands reportedly took to the streets of Madrid and Barcelona,
among other cities.
The global reach and connectedness of these movements has yet to be fully
appreciated. The Madrid education protesters, for example, cited for inspiration
Chilean students who, through persistent, innovative, and large-scale demonstrations
this summer and fall, have forced that country's neoliberal government, headed
by the increasingly unpopular billionaire president Sebastian Pinera, to inject
$1.6bn in new money into education. Neither the crowds of youth in Madrid nor
those in Santiago are likely to be mollified, however, by new dorms and laboratories.
Chilean students have
already moved on from insisting on an end to an ever more expensive class-based
education system to demands that the country's lucrative copper mines be nationalised
so as to generate revenues for investment in education. In every instance, the
underlying goal of specific protests by the youthful reformists is the neoliberal
order itself.
The word "union" was little uttered in American television news coverage
of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, even though factory workers and sympathy
strikes of all sorts played a
key role in them. The right-wing press in the US actually went out of its
way to contrast Egyptian demonstrations against Mubarak with the Wisconsin rallies
of government workers against Governor Scott Walker's measure to cripple the
bargaining power of their unions.
The Egyptians, Commentary typically
wrote,
were risking their lives, while Wisconsin's union activists were taking the
day off from cushy jobs to parade around with placards, immune from being fired
for joining the rallies. The implication: the Egyptian revolution was against
tyranny, whereas already spoiled American workers were demanding further coddling.
The American right has never been interested in recognising this reality:
that forbidding unions and strikes is a form of tyranny. In fact, it wasn't
just progressive bloggers who saw a connection between Tahrir Square and Madison.
The head of the newly formed independent union federation in Egypt dispatched
an
explicit expression of solidarity to the Wisconsin workers, centering on
worker's rights.
At least,Commentary did us one favour: it clarified
why the story has been told as it has in most of the American media. If the
revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya were merely about individualistic political
rights - about the holding of elections and the guarantee of due process - then
they could be depicted as largely irrelevant to politics in the US and Europe,
where such norms already prevailed.
If, however, they centered on economic rights (as they certainly did), then
clearly the discontents of North African youth when it came to plutocracy, corruption,
the curbing of workers' rights, and persistent unemployment deeply resembled
those of their American counterparts.
The global protests of 2011 have been cast in the American media largely
as an "Arab Spring" challenging local dictatorships - as though Spain, Chile
and Israel do not exist. The constant speculation by pundits and television
news anchors in the US about whether "Islam" would benefit from the Arab Spring
functioned as an Orientalist way of marking events in North Africa as alien
and vaguely menacing, but also as not germane to the day to day concerns of
working Americans. The inhabitants of Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan clearly
feel differently.
Facebook flash mobs
If we focus on economic trends, then the neoliberal state looks eerily similar,
whether it is a democracy or a dictatorship, whether the government is nominally
right of centre or left of centre. As a package, deregulation, the privatisation
of public resources and firms, corruption and forms of insider trading and interference
in the ability of workers to organise or engage in collective bargaining have
allowed the top one per cent in Israel, just as in Tunisia or the US, to capture
the lion's share of profits from the growth of the last decades.
Observers were puzzled by the huge crowds that turned out in both Tunis and
Tel Aviv in 2011, especially given that economic growth in those countries had
been running at a seemingly healthy five per cent per annum. "Growth", defined
generally and without regard to its distribution, is the answer to a neoliberal
question. The question of the 99 per cent, however, is: Who is getting the increased
wealth? In both of those countries, as in the US and other neoliberal lands,
the answer is: disproportionately the one per cent.
If you were wondering why outraged young people around the globe are chanting
such similar slogans and using such similar tactics (including Facebook "flash
mobs"), it is because they have seen more clearly than their elders through
the neoliberal shell game.
Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History and
the director of the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of Michigan.
His latest book,
Engaging the Muslim World, is just out in a revised paperback edition from
Palgrave Macmillan. He runs the
Informed Comment website.
A version of this article was first published on
Tom Dispatch.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and
do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Yet another response [ to globalization] is that I term 21stcentury fascism.The ultra-right is an insurgent force in many countries. In broad strokes,
this project seeks to fuse reactionary political power with transnational capital
and to organise a mass base among historically privileged sectors of the global
working class – such as white workers in the North and middle layers in the
South – that are now experiencing heightened insecurity and the specter of downward
mobility. It involves militarism, extreme masculinisation, homophobia, racism
and racist mobilisations, including the search for scapegoats, such as immigrant
workers and, in the West, Muslims. Twenty-first century fascism evokes mystifying
ideologies, often involving race/culture supremacy and xenophobia, embracing an
idealised and mythical past. Neo-fascist culture normalises and glamorises warfare
and social violence, indeed, generates a fascination with domination that is portrayed
even as heroic.
Notable quotes:
"... over-accumulation ..."
"... Cyclical crises ..."
"... . Structural crises ..."
"... systemic crisis ..."
"... social reproduction. ..."
"... crisis of humanity ..."
"... 1984 has arrived; ..."
"... The crisis has resulted in a rapid political polarisation in global society. ..."
"... In broad strokes, this project seeks to fuse reactionary political power with transnational capital and to organise a mass base among historically privileged sectors of the global working class ..."
"... It involves militarism, extreme masculinisation, homophobia, racism and racist mobilisations, including the search for scapegoats, such as immigrant workers and, in the West, Muslims. ..."
"... Neo-fascist culture normalises and glamorises warfare and social violence, indeed, generates a fascination with domination that is portrayed even as heroic. ..."
World capitalism is experiencing the worst crisis in its 500 year history.
Global capitalism is a qualitatively new stage in the open ended evolution of
capitalism characterised by the rise of transnational capital, a transnational
capitalist class, and a transnational state. Below, William I. Robinson argues
that the global crisis is structural and threatens to become systemic, raising
the specter of collapse and a global police state in the face of ecological
holocaust, concentration of the means of violence, displacement of billions,
limits to extensive expansion and crises of state legitimacy, and suggests that
a massive redistribution of wealth and power downward to the poor majority of
humanity is the only viable solution.
The New Global Capitalism and the 21st Century Crisis
The world capitalist system is arguably experiencing the worst crisis in
its 500 year history. World capitalism has experienced a profound restructuring
through globalisation over the past few decades and has been transformed in
ways that make it fundamentally distinct from its earlier incarnations. Similarly,
the current crisis exhibits features that set it apart from earlier crises of
the system and raise the stakes for humanity. If we are to avert disastrous
outcomes we must understand both the nature of the new global capitalism and
the nature of its crisis. Analysis of capitalist globalisation provides a template
for probing a wide range of social, political, cultural and ideological processes
in this 21st century. Following Marx, we want to focus on the internal dynamics
of capitalism to understand crisis. And following the global capitalism perspective,
we want to see how capitalism has qualitatively evolved in recent decades.
The system-wide crisis we face is not a repeat of earlier such episodes such
as that of the the 1930s or the 1970s precisely because capitalism is fundamentally
different in the 21st century. Globalisation constitutes a qualitatively new
epoch in the ongoing and open-ended evolution of world capitalism, marked by
a number of qualitative shifts in the capitalist system and by novel articulations
of social power. I highlight four aspects unique to this epoch.1
First is the rise of truly transnational capital and a new global production
and financial system into which all nations and much of humanity has been integrated,
either directly or indirectly. We have gone from a world economy, in
which countries and regions were linked to each other via trade and financial
flows in an integrated international market, to a global economy, in
which nations are linked to each more organically through the transnationalisation
of the production process, of finance, and of the circuits of capital accumulation.
No single nation-state can remain insulated from the global economy or prevent
the penetration of the social, political, and cultural superstructure of global
capitalism. Second is the rise of a Transnational Capitalist Class (TCC), a
class group that has drawn in contingents from most countries around the world,
North and South, and has attempted to position itself as a global ruling class.
This TCC is the hegemonic fraction of capital on a world scale. Third
is the rise of Transnational State (TNS) apparatuses. The TNS is constituted
as a loose network made up of trans-, and supranational organisations together
with national states. It functions to organise the conditions for transnational
accumulation. The TCC attempts to organise and institutionally exercise its
class power through TNS apparatuses. Fourth are novel relations of inequality,
domination and exploitation in global society, including an increasing importance
of transnational social and class inequalities relative to North-South inequalities.
Cyclical, Structural, and Systemic Crises
Most commentators on the contemporary crisis refer to the "Great Recession"
of 2008 and its aftermath. Yet the causal origins of global crisis are to be
found in over-accumulation and also in contradictions of state
power, or in what Marxists call the internal contradictions of the capitalist
system. Moreover, because the system is now global, crisis in any one place
tends to represent crisis for the system as a whole. The system cannot expand
because the marginalisation of a significant portion of humanity from direct
productive participation, the downward pressure on wages and popular consumption
worldwide, and the polarisation of income, has reduced the ability of the world
market to absorb world output. At the same time, given the particular configuration
of social and class forces and the correlation of these forces worldwide, national
states are hard-pressed to regulate transnational circuits of accumulation and
offset the explosive contradictions built into the system.
Is this crisis cyclical, structural, or systemic? Cyclical crises
are recurrent to capitalism about once every 10 years and involve recessions
that act as self-correcting mechanisms without any major restructuring of the
system. The recessions of the early 1980s, the early 1990s, and of 2001 were
cyclical crises. In contrast, the 2008 crisis signaled the slide into astructural
crisis. Structural crises reflect deeper contradictions that can only
be resolved by a major restructuring of the system. The structural crisis of
the 1970s was resolved through capitalist globalisation. Prior to that, the
structural crisis of the 1930s was resolved through the creation of a new model
of redistributive capitalism, and prior to that the structural crisis of the
1870s resulted in the development of corporate capitalism. A systemic crisis
involves the replacement of a system by an entirely new system or
by an outright collapse. A structural crisis opens up the possibility
for a systemic crisis. But if it actually snowballs into a systemic crisis –
in this case, if it gives way either to capitalism being superseded or to a
breakdown of global civilisation – is not predetermined and depends entirely
on the response of social and political forces to the crisis and on historical
contingencies that are not easy to forecast. This is an historic moment of extreme
uncertainty, in which collective responses from distinct social and class forces
to the crisis are in great flux.
Hence my concept of global crisis is broader than financial. There are multiple
and mutually constitutive dimensions – economic, social, political, cultural,
ideological and ecological, not to mention the existential crisis of our consciousness,
values and very being. There is a crisis of social polarisation, that is, of
social reproduction. The system cannot meet the needs or assure the
survival of millions of people, perhaps a majority of humanity. There are crises
of state legitimacy and political authority, or of hegemony and
domination. National states face spiraling crises of legitimacy as they
fail to meet the social grievances of local working and popular classes experiencing
downward mobility, unemployment, heightened insecurity and greater hardships.
The legitimacy of the system has increasingly been called into question by millions,
perhaps even billions, of people around the world, and is facing expanded counter-hegemonic
challenges. Global elites have been unable counter this erosion of the system's
authority in the face of worldwide pressures for a global moral economy. And
a canopy that envelops all these dimensions is a crisis of sustainability rooted
in an ecological holocaust that has already begun, expressed in climate change
and the impending collapse of centralised agricultural systems in several regions
of the world, among other indicators.
By a crisis of humanity I mean a crisis that is approaching systemic
proportions, threatening the ability of billions of people to survive, and raising
the specter of a collapse of world civilisation and degeneration into a new
"Dark Ages."2
Global capitalism now couples human and natural history in such a way
as to threaten to bring about what would be the sixth mass extinction in the
known history of life on earth.
This crisis of humanity shares a
number of aspects with earlier structural crises but there are also several
features unique to the present:
The system is fast reaching the ecological limits of its reproduction.
Global capitalism now couples human and natural history in such a way as
to threaten to bring about what would be the sixth mass extinction in the
known history of life on earth.3 This mass extinction would
be caused not by a natural catastrophe such as a meteor impact or by evolutionary
changes such as the end of an ice age but by purposive human activity. According
to leading environmental scientists there are nine "planetary boundaries"
crucial to maintaining an earth system environment in which humans can exist,
four of which are experiencing at this time the onset of irreversible environmental
degradation and three of which (climate change, the nitrogen cycle, and
biodiversity loss) are at "tipping points," meaning that these processes
have already crossed their planetary boundaries.
The magnitude of the means of violence and social control is unprecedented,
as is the concentration of the means of global communication and symbolic
production and circulation in the hands of a very few powerful groups.
Computerised wars, drones, bunker-buster bombs, star wars, and so forth,
have changed the face of warfare. Warfare has become normalised and sanitised
for those not directly at the receiving end of armed aggression. At the
same time we have arrived at the panoptical surveillance society and the
age of thought control by those who control global flows of communication,
images and symbolic production. The world of Edward Snowden is the world
of George Orwell; 1984 has arrived;
Capitalism is reaching apparent limits to its extensive
expansion. There are no longer any new territories of significance that
can be integrated into world capitalism, de-ruralisation is now well advanced,
and the commodification of the countryside and of pre- and non-capitalist
spaces has intensified, that is, converted in hot-house fashion into spaces
of capital, so that intensive expansion is reaching depths never
before seen. Capitalism must continually expand or collapse. How or where
will it now expand?
There is the rise of a vast surplus population inhabiting a "planet
of slums,"4 alienated from the productive economy, thrown
into the margins, and subject to sophisticated systems of social control
and to destruction – to a mortal cycle of dispossession-exploitation-exclusion.
This includes prison-industrial and immigrant-detention complexes, omnipresent
policing, militarised gentrification, and so on;
There is a disjuncture between a globalising economy and a nation-state
based system of political authority. Transnational state apparatuses
are incipient and have not been able to play the role of what social scientists
refer to as a "hegemon," or a leading nation-state that has enough power
and authority to organise and stabilise the system. The spread of weapons
of mass destruction and the unprecedented militarisation of social life
and conflict across the globe makes it hard to imagine that the system can
come under any stable political authority that assures its reproduction.
Global Police State
How have social and political forces worldwide responded to crisis? The
crisis has resulted in a rapid political polarisation in global society.
Both right and left-wing forces are ascendant. Three responses seem to be in
dispute.
One is what we could call "reformism from above." This elite reformism is
aimed at stabilising the system, at saving the system from itself and from more
radical responses from below. Nonetheless, in the years following the 2008 collapse
of the global financial system it seems these reformers are unable (or unwilling)
to prevail over the power of transnational financial capital. A second response
is popular, grassroots and leftist resistance from below. As social and political
conflict escalates around the world there appears to be a mounting global revolt.
While such resistance appears insurgent in the wake of 2008 it is spread very
unevenly across countries and regions and facing many problems and challenges.
Yet another response is that I term 21stcentury fascism.5
The ultra-right is an insurgent force in many countries. In broad
strokes, this project seeks to fuse reactionary political power with transnational
capital and to organise a mass base among historically privileged sectors of
the global working class – such as white workers in the North and middle
layers in the South – that are now experiencing heightened insecurity and the
specter of downward mobility. It involves militarism, extreme masculinisation,
homophobia, racism and racist mobilisations, including the search for scapegoats,
such as immigrant workers and, in the West, Muslims. Twenty-first century
fascism evokes mystifying ideologies, often involving race/culture supremacy
and xenophobia, embracing an idealised and mythical past. Neo-fascist culture
normalises and glamorises warfare and social violence, indeed, generates a fascination
with domination that is portrayed even as heroic.
The need for dominant groups around the world to secure widespread, organised
mass social control of the world's surplus population and rebellious forces
from below gives a powerful impulse to projects of 21st century fascism. Simply
put, the immense structural inequalities of the global political economy cannot
easily be contained through consensual mechanisms of social control. We have
been witnessing transitions from social welfare to social control states around
the world. We have entered a period of great upheavals, momentous changes and
uncertainties. The only viable solution to the crisis of global capitalism is
a massive redistribution of wealth and power downward towards the poor majority
of humanity along the lines of a 21st century democratic socialism, in which
humanity is no longer at war with itself and with nature.
About the Author
William I. Robinson is professor of sociology, global and
international studies, and Latin American studies, at the University of California-Santa
Barbara. Among his many books are Promoting Polyarchy (1996),
Transnational Conflicts (2003), A Theory of Global Capitalism
(2004), Latin America and Global Capitalism (2008),
and
Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity (2014).
"What do these insurgents have in common? All have called into question
the interventionist consensus in foreign policy."
But today we have this:
Trump pledges big US military expansion . Trump doesn't appear to have
any coherent policy, he just says whatever seems to be useful at that particular
moment.
This
article outlines the main elements of
rupture and continuity in the global political economy since the global
economic crisis of
2008-2009. While the current calamity poses a more systemic challenge to
neoliberal
globalization than genetically similar turbulences in the
semi-periphery during the 1990s, we find that evidence for its
transformative significance remains mixed. Efforts to reform the distressed
capitalist models in the North encounter severe resistance, and the
broadened multilateralism of the G-20 is yet
to provide effective global economic governance. Overall,
neoliberal
globalization looks set to survive, but in more heterodox and
multipolar fashion. Without tighter coordination between old and emerging
powers, this new synthesis is unlikely to inspire lasting solutions to
pressing global problems such as an unsustainable international financial
architecture and the pending environmental catastrophe, and may even fail to
preserve some modest democratic and developmental gains
of the recent past.
"... True. I attribute it all to deep-seated self loathing. Somewhere deep down the vestigal organ known as the "conscience" is paying attention. ..."
"... was taken as evidence in his own mind ..."
"... Liberals believe in addressing every issue within a socio-economic context (Crime, Terrorism, …) Except racism. That issue is context free ..."
"... Kids just feel and act, unconditioned. ..."
"... They are pure and genuine. They are not cheaters. Kids are our masters, we must learn from them. We should be more like kids. ..."
"... Today we can learn from them, just watch these kids in action. ..."
"... I was a-falling 'till you put on the brakes ..."
"... "I am skeptical that a large-scale expansion of government spending by itself is the best way forward, since larger fiscal deficits will lead to higher expected future taxes, which could further undermine private sector confidence" Neel Kashkari ..."
"... "In the minds of many, soil is simply dirt, but without it we would all cease to exist. Unlike the water we drink and the air we breathe, soil is not protected in the EU and its quality is getting worse" ..."
"Basket of deplorables," how pithy a metaphor for placing your detractors
in a container from which their voices and needs can be discounted. Clinton
gives us a great turn of phrase with which we can contemplate her inclination
to strip the prerogatives of citizenship – such as the inclination not to select
her at the ballot – from her detractors.
Agamben's thesis is that western constitutional democracies inevitably turn
to the state of exception and strip citizenship from their peoples on the way.
We have been at it a long time in America. The delightful new twist is contemplating
the election of a candidate who tells us that not being a card carrying identity
politics connected elitist, or sycophant of, will get you relegated to the ranks
of homo sacer – the bare human. And oh yes, the Secretary is inclined to be
the decider. There is no functional distinction between the nightmares these
candidates represent.
Re: Charles Blow, "if the basket fits…"
_____________
Blow makes it official: this is the Best Election Ever for Team Blue.
First they get to bring their "kick-the-left" game up to the next level
with the mugging of the Sanders campaign. Then they (finally!) get to copulate
in public with their neo-con friends-with-benefits. And now, as Blow demonstrates,
they are at last free to spew their hate against the ignorant chumps in
flyover: all the bile they have piled up but just couldn't articulate because
you gotta be PC ("impolitic" dixit Blow).
Read the comments on the NYT articles or in other liberal goodthink rags:
HRC was just articulating what the entire Acela bubble wanted to say but
was too tactful. Listen to HRC making the actual comments: there were no
boos or gasps, just laughter (sadly showing how part of the LGBT movement
has become appallingly intolerant: a vast cry from the movement's origins).
Blow is just one voice in a blue chorus singing battlesongs against the
poor and the left. A very clarifying election indeed.
> "Wells Fargo Exec Who Headed Phony Accounts Unit Collected $125 Million"
[Fortune]. I think it's very important that a woman –Carrie Tolstedt - shattered
the glass ceiling for accounting control fraud.
When the story first broke a few days ago, I knew right away (as in,
before even finishing reading the headline) that this was another accounting
control fraud. It's really sad that NC is the only place where the term
"control fraud" is used in connection with this scandal.
I was entertaining a variation of that very idea. Some honest to God
disgruntled and disappointed Justice Fighter from the FBI goes rogue, righting
Comey's wrong, with the Russian Conspiracy twist(polonium) thrown in for
ironic flair.
The only positive thing to happen during this election season is
the death of mainstream media. With their insufferable propaganda fully
exposed, there is no coming back.
I have a bleaker view of human cognition, and so disagree. It must be
noted that in the past couple weeks, an NC commenter honestly felt he needed
to inform me of my own country of origin, because in his mind this was something
that I clearly needed to be schooled about. Yes, the fact that I disagreed
with his narrative was taken as evidence in his own mind that he
needed to school me - to teach me where I'm from, and teach me how my friends
and family died. A clearer example of basic cognitive failure would be hard
to come by.
Yet, as 20th century world history shows very clearly, when a culture
shifts in that direction, such self-certain lunacy just becomes the new
order of the day. It becomes the style.
It seems that many of my previous NC comments mention Robert Jay Lifton's
books, and, well, can't avoid doing it again. Critics of his analyses fault
them for being "unfalsifiable," etc, but I counter by saying that they were
offered in a totally different spirit as a summary of his painstaking observations
rather than a cognitive theory.
If there's any hope of digging out of the cultural hole in the near term,
I'd say that'd be the place to start.
""Wells Fargo Exec Who Headed Phony Accounts Unit Collected $125 Million"
[Fortune]. I think it's very important that a woman –Carrie Tolstedt - shattered
the glass ceiling for accounting control fraud."
See? We're living in a post racist, sexist world. Now it's not only white
men who can eff over everyone else, African-Americans and women can join
that elite club of amoral people. And get rich doing it!
Liberals believe in addressing every issue within a socio-economic
context (Crime, Terrorism, …)
Except racism. That issue is context free
Maybe it is just me but I disagree vehemently with this sentiment.
The reasoning is fairly simple: these issues that are used to divide
us (racism, sexism, religion, economics) are made much stronger when the
economy is the weakest.
If you need proof look to the great industrial states of the Midwest
with their racist (now, never before) governments: Michigan, Wisconsin,
Ohio, and even Rauner in Illinois. These political beliefs would never gain
traction when the economies were going great. Working people have taken
the brunt of the globalization bullshit and the endless contempt of "Clinton
Liberals" everywhere (apparently)
Economic hardship is an amplifier of racism. This is what the limousine
liberals never seem to understand. For them is it much more satisfying to
demonstrate their moral superiority through contempt for the deplorables.
2 days ago i went to a local park just to swing and to be honest, cry…
where no one would be put out. took about a minute for a toddler to bring
me a tiny flower…i didn't even know she was near. at first i was embarrassed
but then realized her heart will grow thru endearing gestures. i smiled
and asked her if she could show me how to swing as high as she does. hope
yall get a rise out of kids. they can be near at the strangest moment…when
we let them.
Given that we're all becoming resigned to having a horrible president
yet again I'm taking a surprising delight in the proliferating Clinton conspiracy
theories after her collapse Sunday (the body double, the catheter, etc.).
I hadn't seen this one before and thought I would share with the group –
that Chelsea's 10M condo (where Hillary was taken), at
The Whitman at 21 E. 26th St. in the NY – is supposedly (I have no idea)
the same building as has listed "
Metrocare Home Services "
The conspiracy theory is that Hillary has her own private hospital in
the same building, which going to "Chelsea's apartment" is cover for.
I'm sure it's not true but, like all the others, it'd be pretty funny
if it was and I'm sure the Clinton team would have zero compunction about
the deception involved.
It is amazing what one can come up with when one absolutely does not
trust another. Let me say, first of all, that Hillary allowing herself to
go out on a hot day in the middle of a large crowd after working like a
"demon" (!!!) is not the best political move. It is like sticking one's
head into the jaws of the conspiracy theorists and saying bite down hard.
But, if, perhaps Clinton is not soooo politically inept, which, Lord
knows, she gives every evidence of being, here is an alternative perspective
I cooked up with a little appetizer. . .
First item..The Clintons tell Loretta Lynch they want to keep her on
at DOJ. But that will be hard to do if she is the face of not filing charges
against Hillary. Let's do an impromptu meeting (Bill and Loretta Lynch)
on airplane, then put it out in marquis letters so the conspiracy theorists
run with it. Loretta Lynch honorably steps down, gets to keep her job if
Hillary is elected.
From this line of thinking, conspiratorial as it also well is, Hillary
is expected to clobber Donald Trump in the debates. Politically speaking,
she has set for herself a very high bar, being so qualified and all. Let's
use this illness thing, cook up a minor illness and Hillary faints at the
9/11 memorial. The conspiracy theorists run away with it, she is on death's
door, yadayada. Some upside is that she will engender some sympathy.
Two weeks later at Hofstra, bar much lower, she comes back as robust
as can be, bar set much , much lower. Headlines read "Clinton Comes Back
Swinging" and "Clinton Alive and Well at Hofstra".
In the movie "Being There", the super rich guy played by Melvyn Douglas
has a mini hospital in his home. Maybe that's standard operating procedure
for the oligarchs!
And one door away from the emergency chute that empties in the sub basement,
where a disused subway tunnel has been refurbished to whisk away any particularly
privacy-oriented presidential candidate, safe from prying eyes.
The whole building seems to have been the admin. headquarters for an
outfit called Metrocare Home Services before it was refitted as a swanky,
4-unit residential building. Amusing, but no "there" there.
Besides, she or anyone else with dough can have an ostentatiously well-appointed
sickroom within the apartment, regardless of previous or present tenants
of the building. And a home health care business wouldn't make a particularly
useful front to stockpile advanced treatments etc. for what ails her. They
tend not to keep much inventory, in my limited experience.
Had my catalytic converter stolen by thieves with battery operated sawsall's.
They are under the car
and out in two minutes. Locally they get $40.00-50.00 for them. Cost to
replace…Dealer $2,200.00,
local guy you know $1200.00 .
Police report in my area from two weeks ago said 12 were stolen in one
night's rampage.
Car broken into, rummaged thru, change stolen from center console.
Money stolen = About four bucks
Damage to car = Shattered window, prybar damage to "A" pillar and window
seals, when they tried to pry the window open = $1500.
Damage/theft ratio = 375 to 1
But according to this morning's post, they were probably tearing up my
s##t because they were hungry, so I guess I should blame myself for only
paying half my income in various taxes.
That statement is wrong on numerous levels, number one of which is that
while an employer may withhold earnings of a W-2 employee for the purpose
of paying income taxes, it is the employee that pays those taxes. Until
a return is filed and processed, the withheld amount is a deposit made on
the employee's behalf. The amount of the deposit is based on the gross wages
of the employee. If the tax rate drops, also would the deposit, and ultimately
the tax. But the amount of gross wages are unaffected.
Also, last I checked, employers generally don't pay sales or property
taxes for employees on non-employment related purchases.
Oh good God, over 40% of the population gets their payroll taxes back.
Yes, it sucks that they are taken out to begin with, particularly when
there are definitely pay periods when the 50 bucks could be utilized to
pay a co pay or buy things that one needs.
Additionally, if you are paying property taxes to begin with you're one
up on much of the population, it means you have a house or a car. You've
made a conscious choice to own things. The streets your car and house are
located on aren't free. The schools in your communities aren't no cost.
I'm so over people whining about paying taxes.
My comment strictly relates to the erroneous characterizations of the
responsibility for paying taxes and the effect of a tax reduction on gross
wages asserted by Robert Hahl.
I did not intend to address the amount thereof, justification for, nor
the proper amount of self-righteousness a taxpayer may exude for paying
said taxes.
I probably should have just called BS on his claim that he pays 50% in
taxes or called him on his lack of empathy for those that actually go hungry(many
of which are CHILDREN.)
My first instinct to tell those fortunate enough to have to pay is to
tell them to go ahead and "spite" the system by getting that job at BK so
they can live the "good life" on minimum wage and then they too can not
pay taxes….of course, they'll also forgo retirement accounts, vacation days,
owning a home, struggle with owning a car and the costs associated with
it, etc, etc but hey, they won't be paying 50% in taxes.
Personally, I am profoundly grateful that our family pays a percentage
in taxes(not 50% but above Mitt Romney.) It means we can afford a car, a
house and we have a decent income. It means I can afford that DVD that I
pay sales tax on. All in all it means our family is accumulating wealth.
Anyway, I should have directed this at the OP, not you.
Pretty sure my federal taxes go to defense contractors to make war. My
state and local taxes cover what doesn't come from the feds anymore cause
they're too busy spending on war. That's why I complain.
They go organizations that work on roads, they go to organizations that
make sure you have clean water, organizations that make sure your kids don't
eat lead, organizations that make sure you aren't eating food filled with
e coli- Don't go to the states to help pay for schools or other local programs
not covered by your local or state taxes.
Don't get me wrong, way too much money goes to war. On that we are in
absolute agreement however, be angry instead that our government has so
much potential to do so much more than destroy with that money. Our government
could be doing more for things like schooling or health care and it would
be a way better use of the monies we pay.
I think the right and left agree that the government is failing us. Where
we disagree is on what to do about it. The right thinks that things will
be better if the government gets smaller and gets out of the way. I tend
to disagree. It needs good leaders that believe in accountability and have
vision. It needs people to right size it, not downsize it and people that
negotiate in good faith with the private sector, not roll over for it.
A government is only as good as it's leadership and right now we've got
some pretty questionable leadership.
I would dearly love to know how to get it all back every year, having
spent my entire life under 30k and paying (aggregate) about 20% per anum.
What really gets me is listening to co-workers go on about how people go
on welfare because the gov't gives them so much money.
All my experiences with those on welfare is it's a pretty miserable experience.
After my stepfather died, my mom had to get help financially for her 3 minor
children. They means tested everything, she couldn't even own a car for
more than something ridiculous like $3000.
I also know someone who turned down work because actually working hours
she did not know would be guaranteed the next month would have cut her food
stamps the following month.
It seems positively contradictory to me to set up a system that encourages
reliance forever because you are continually threatening the safety net
of a person the minute they get a tiny bit ahead.
Personally, I'd love to see the government start doing what it does for
the very rich and allowing or helping people to put assets away in an "emergency
account(up to $5,000)." Instead it's only the really rich and middle class
who get to put money away tax free for retirement(401ks, hsas, IRAs) schools
for their kids, health care, etc, etc. All of this money is meant for long
term savings which for someone on the bottom of the income ladder is something
they can't do because they're too worried about having access to money when
that crappy $3000 car breaks down.
It's a stupid, crazy system and I know we could be doing better.
I am told that the tattoo approval test is a generational thing…if you're
old, you are not likely to have one or know a friend who has one (most of
time…many wonderful older people – in this country or many other countries
– have them).
Then you have theft of theft, that is, theft of property.
Property theft is under reported, it feels to me (based on my personal
experience and talking with neighbors around here…do i live in a bad neighborhood?).
Going from memory here, but I seem to recall reading in a car magazine
- late 60s, early 70s - that master thieves in NYC could drop a 4-speed
transmission from a curb-parked Corvette in 8 minutes flat.
Dropping a trans is not a trivial task.
Now butchers with sawzalls can swipe a cat converter in 2 minutes, with
two quick, crude cuts through a thinwall exhaust pipe.
Just goes to show how skills have declined. :-(
I was a butcher cutting up meat
My hands were bloody, I'm dying on my feet
I was a surgeon 'till I start to shake
I was a-falling 'till you put on the brakes
"I am skeptical that a large-scale expansion of government spending
by itself is the best way forward, since larger fiscal deficits will
lead to higher expected future taxes, which could further undermine
private sector confidence" Neel Kashkari
I am surprised you didn't comment on this, Lambert. The federal deficit
is just a number. Kashkari's argument that increasing the deficit implies
future higher taxes is bunk – displaying a lack in understanding monetary
theory. I admit to only a cursory understanding, but the real purpose of
income taxes is to slow the flow of money through the economy to reduce
inflationary pressures. Federal infrastructure spending would boost the
lagging economy, with virtually no downside. There is absolutely no need
to pay-down the debt. I would be more comfortable with Kashkari as the treasurer
of my local PTA than a regional Federal Reserve Bank president. Can't we
do better?
Kashkari's argument that increasing the deficit implies future higher
taxes is bunk – displaying a lack in understanding monetary theory.
Kashkari, as a big banker, would presumably be the recipient of those
higher taxes, since he would presumably be part of those financing said
deficit. He's talking business, not monetary theory. It's the flexian way
to presume that managers are there to be served.
Can either cut taxes, boost spending, or raise interest rates to suppress
inflation.
Taxing citizens give value to the currency and thereby makes them willing
to sell their goods and services to gov to obtain sufficient taxes to pay
tax.
So gov levies a tax to obtain goods and services, not dollars that have
no value to the entity that creates them.
She argued in part that, thanks to its new tools of forward guidance
and long-term asset purchases, the Fed would be able to offset the next
recession, even if interest rates eventually stabilized at historically
low levels.
…
Yet] two years into this hypothetical recession, the Fed would be refusing
to provide more accommodation, even though the unemployment rate would
be above 9 percent and it would be expecting the inflation rate to be
falling further below its target for another three years.
But I wonder why the good econo-doctor has only got religion now that
he is off the Fed.
Southern California Gas Co. agreed to a $4-million settlement Tuesday
to end a criminal case filed by Los Angeles County prosecutors over
the utility's handling of the massive gas leak near Porter Ranch last
year.
The gas company pleaded no contest to one misdemeanor count of failing
to immediately notify the California Office of Emergency Services and
Los Angeles County Fire Department of the leak that began on or around
Oct. 23, 2015, in the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage field. The utility
will pay the maximum fine of $75,000 for that three-day delay, according
to the L.A. County district attorney's office.
The gas company will pay $232,500 in state penalties on top of that
fine and $246,672 for the fire department's response to the leak.
Three other misdemeanor counts will be dismissed when the utility
is sentenced on Nov. 29.
End of story. Literally.
This is believed to be one of the largest releases in human history of
the most powerful green house gas.
another confusing plantidote. Is the plantidoe the yellow flower or is
it the green thingies by the rocks?
I suppose it's up to the viewer to decide. Which seems like a lot of
work. Some crackpot might choose the rocks themselves and then argue that
there's microscopic plants on the rocks and that's what they mean. if you
can't see them, that's your problem. The world is like that, crackpots pointing
at things only they can see and blaming you for not seeing them. Then kicking
your ass if they can.
Things should be obvous. And they are obvious, if you know what's what.
Then you don't need to kick people's ass unless they really deserve it.
mostly you just lay around waiting for people to see the things you see,
knowing that they would if they could. That's a lot different than blaming
them and kicking their ass. That's a lot of work - to kick someone's ass.
What a pain. Work is to be avoided if at all possible. That should be obvious
to everybody
Thank you for keeping the spotlight focused on efforts of the TBTF banks
and transnational corporations to gain passage of the TPP, TTIP and TiSA,
Lambert. Appears their lobbyists and the Obama administration have a full-court
press underway on members of Congress now. One can only guess at what is
being offered our congressional representatives for their vote during the
lame duck session after the November election in exchange for trading away
our national sovereignty.
"……..Doctors get continuing medical education (CME) through events like
lectures and conferences. CME is necessary because many physicians practise
for 30 or 40 years, and medicine is changing continuously, so they cannot
rely on their medical school training, which might have happened in the
1960s. Doctors are required to get a certain number of hours of CME every
year. You might imagine that doctors learn from unbiased experts dedicated
to learning. Actually, nothing is further from the truth. The dirty little
secret is that virtually all CME is sponsored heavily by Big Pharma giving
them huge influence over what information is presented to doctors.
Every single level of CME has been corrupted by $$$. Let's start at the
bottom.
In virtually every hospital in North America, there are lectures called
'rounds'. They happen in every specialty and almost every single day, mostly
at lunchtime. What a great idea. Doctors would spend lunchtime teaching
each other the intricacies of their specialty. Sorry, no. Most doctors don't
prepare a full hours worth of lecture topic. Most are too busy to spend
an hour listening a the lecture anyway. So, the friendly drug rep from Big
Pharma helpfully gets lunch for everybody. Free lunch! That helps bring
in the audience, but it doesn't help the fact that they still need a speaker………"
This probably explains, IMO, the pickle that HRC finds herself in
It isn't about her health, it's about her judgment. It's about the apparent
decision not to disclose the pneumonia diagnosis until they were forced
to – and even then, they tried three other "explanations" before – hours
later – they announced that fully 48 hours earlier, she had been diagnosed
with pneumonia. First, she wasn't feeling well. Then she became overheated.
Then she was dehydrated. It wasn't until some time after her reappearance
on the street looking fine and dandy that they disclosed the pneumonia.
Do you see the pattern? It's the same one we saw with the e-mails. We're
seeing it with the Clinton Foundation. This is a woman who doesn't seem
to feel any obligation or accept any responsibility for playing by the rules,
for following the protocols.
And she has the nerve to blame the right-wing conspiracy that's out to
get her when in reality she creates much of the controversy all by herself.
I don't frankly care if she has or had pneumonia or her toenail fungus
was acting up, but what she has once again managed to do is make it impossible
for people to believe whichever story qualifies as the latest, and if anything
she said before then has even a shred of truth in it.
What I fear, and what I do think would be a concern, is if the pneumonia
diagnosis is a giant head-fake designed to cover up that she may be experiencing
some neurological problems, perhaps related to the 2012 concussion (and
Lord only knows if that story was factual) that even her husband says took
her every bit of 6 months to recover from.
I get why she would want to hide anything even remotely like that, but
what she doesn't seem to understand is that she really has no right, as
a candidate for the highest office in the land, to hide it. Again, and again,
she allows her personal ambition to cloud her judgment; years and years
of important and wealthy people telling her she's one of the smartest people
in the room, paying to be in her presence, have convinced her she just knows
better than anyone. That she doesn't have to listen, that she has nothing
to learn.
And sometimes, she probably does, but she doesn't ever seem to be able
to know when she doesn't. That – the judgment problem – that's what she
has, and that's what matters here.
Oh, I absolutely agree with you she has a judgment problem, straight
down to ignoring good advice.
I just think it is interesting that the post I was commenting on seems
to be a jab at doctors and continuing education and
Pharma may be responsible for many things, Hillary Clinton's decision
not to follow her doctor's instructions on rest and fluid aren't one of
them though. They are in no way responsible for "the pickle that HRC finds
herself in." Hillary owns that.
The EU did have a Soil Framework Directive in the works for years but
it was eventually stymied by the UK, as
George Monbiot has pointed out . One of the good things about Brexit
is that it will undoubtedly improve the EU's capacity to bring forward more
environmental protect directives – the UK has always been one of the main
obstacles in this.
"I am skeptical that a large-scale expansion of government spending
by itself is the best way forward, since larger fiscal deficits will lead
to higher expected future taxes, which could further undermine private sector
confidence" Neel Kashkari
"In the minds of many, soil is simply dirt, but without it we would
all cease to exist. Unlike the water we drink and the air we breathe, soil
is not protected in the EU and its quality is getting worse"
Primary Day in NH. I went about 6:45p, 15 minutes before the polls closed.
On my way out, I asked the nice ladies staffing the place if turnout had
been light. They said "Very" and made disappointed faces.
"Why Are The Media Objectively Pro-Trump?"
[Paul Krugman,
The New York Times
]. He's got a point. After
all, the press systematically suppressed stories
about Sanders, who would have been a stronger
opponent for Trump than Clinton.
At the end of the day, I have concluded that my
focus on Hillary as of late (vs. Trump) has as much
to with my disgust for the mainstream media as
anything else.
To see these organs, which have destroyed this
country by keeping the people uninformed for
decades, now rally around a sickly, corrupt,
oligarch coddling politician as the empire enters
the collapse stage is simply too much to stomach.
Although I'm still voting 3rd party, it's now become
obvious that if my sentiments are widely reflected
across the country, Donald Trump will win the
election handily. As I tweeted earlier today:
The only positive thing to happen during this
election season is the death of mainstream media.
With their insufferable propaganda fully exposed,
there is no coming back.
Another positive thing is the demise of the
Bush dynasty. And if Donald Trump pulls it off,
the Clinton dynasty. I can't decide with is
worse though I tend to detest the Clinton
dynasty more especially now the its present star
is mucking the place up.
Another positive thing is the demise of the
Bush dynasty. And if Donald Trump pulls it off,
the Clinton dynasty. I can't decide with is
worse though I tend to detest the Clinton
dynasty more especially now the its present star
is mucking the place up.
Speaking of losing credibility… here is a
real shocker via The Hill:
CBS News edited a video clip and
transcript to remove former President Bill
Clinton's comment during an interview that
Hillary Clinton, now the Democratic
presidential nominee, "frequently" fainted
in the past.
Bill Clinton sat down with CBS's Charlie
Rose on Monday to try to clear the air
around questions regarding his wife's health
after she collapsed while getting into a van
at a 9/11 memorial ceremony on Sunday.
"Well, if it is, then it's a mystery to
me and all of her doctors," Bill Clinton
said when Rose asked him if Hillary Clinton
was simply dehydrated or if the situation
was more serious. "Frequently - well, not
frequently, rarely, on more than one
occasion, over the last many, many years,
the same sort of thing's happened to her
when she got severely dehydrated, and she's
worked like a demon, as you know, as
secretary of State, as a senator and in the
year since."
But the "CBS Evening News" version cut
Clinton's use of "frequently" out. And a
review by The Hill of the official
transcript released by the network shows
that Clinton saying "Frequently - well, not
frequently," is omitted as well.
Their credibility has eroded constantly with
the rise of alternative methods of
communication…it's just the election cycle that
lays it bare, like rain washing away a bunch of
soil where roots have already died.
"... If Donald Trump really is doing Presidential Campaign as performance art, it may turn out that his Doctor's letter about his awesome health is the most brilliant aspect of it. Call me wild and crazy but I'm beginning to think that item with its sheer obvious level of BS was a fairly brilliant parody of what we have seen and probably will see from Clinton. ..."
"... The Putin-did-it comments on that article are depressing and ..."
If Donald Trump really is doing Presidential
Campaign as performance art, it may turn out that his
Doctor's letter about his awesome health is the most
brilliant aspect of it. Call me wild and crazy but I'm
beginning to think that item with its sheer obvious
level of BS was a fairly brilliant parody of what we
have seen and probably will see from Clinton.
Of course, he isn't and that means it is just taking the BS to the nth degree
at least until we see the new Clinton release.
RE: poisoning - gee, who is next in line
behind Hillary? I mean, on the Dem side? This
whole "political season" is looking more like
something out of the Borgia era. And there is
no history of one part or another of the CIA
poisoning people like Fidel Castro or whatever,
and how many parts of the CIA and the other
bits of runaway Empire would like Clinton gone
so maybe they could slide a Biden into the slot…
"Questions for the presidential candidates on nuclear
terrorism, proliferation, weapons policy, and energy"
Can we first stop talking about nuclear terrorism like it's actually a thing?
If no terrorists managed to get the bomb during the deluge of corruption and
broken bureaucracy that was the collapse of the USSR (yes, NATO and Pentagon,
the Soviet Union also isn't a thing anymore), then none ever are.
No nuclear
country, be it Pakistan or anyone else, is dumb enough to hand over a nuke.
Can you imagine the witch hunt that would ensue if someone turned a city into
a mushroom cloud? Assuming WW3 didn't just start right then and there. No amount
of money would make the certain risk of getting caught worth it.
All that leaves is a dirty bomb, which is actually a whole lot of effort
for something that is no better than an infinitely easier fertilizer bomb.
"... It is not wise to demonize foreign leaders or worship them. Foreign policy needs sometimes to work with even some of the worst actors. ..."
"... We need to support institutions that work to guarantee and protect human rights for all. A personality cult that worships leaders promotes intolerance and the abuse of human rights. ..."
"... Krooogman is jus a useful moralistic idiot aiding and abetting [hillary compaigh] with humanist [neo]liberal anathemas. A policy of Russia constriction by uncle S and his posse ..."
"... [It would be better if] Current neocon democrats "display an ounce of statesmanship" and use any before they send out the aircraft carriers, bombers, drones and CIA arms for the next ISIL. ..."
"... Yes, Kerry talks while the DoD and CIA do the murdering. ..."
"... You are just a political writer, paid to reflect your bosses views. A proper journalist would at least provide a minimally balanced view. In your case we know your answer before we open the newspaper. ..."
"... No leftist calls krooogman a leftist. He is a a status quo elitist. An enlightenment humanist [interventionist neo]liberal. A convinced self-deluded neo-classical economist. A major political ignoramus... And a very decent little tabby cat. All rolled up into one pint sized ambitious. Self assured. Nassau county bright boy now aged but undaunted anne : , Monday, September 12, 2016 at 04:38 AM http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/opinion/david-brooks-snap-out-of-it.html September 22, 2014 Snap Out of It By David Brooks President Vladimir Putin of Russia, a lone thug sitting atop a failing regime.... http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/22/opinion/thomas-friedman-putin-and-the-pope.html October 21, 2014 Putin and the Pope By Thomas L. Friedman One keeps surprising us with his capacity for empathy, the other by how much he has become a first-class jerk and thug.... http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/opinion/sunday/thomas-l-friedman-whos-playing-marbles-now.html December 20, 2014 Who's Playing Marbles Now? By Thomas L. Friedman Let us not mince words: Vladimir Putin is a delusional thug.... http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/22/opinion/paul-krugman-putin-neocons-and-the-great-illusion.html December 21, 2014 Conquest Is for Losers: Putin, Neocons and the Great Illusion By Paul Krugman Remember, he's an ex-K.G.B. man - which is to say, he spent his formative years as a professional thug.... http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/opinion/thomas-friedman-czar-putins-next-moves.html January 27, 2015 Czar Putin's Next Moves By Thomas L. Friedman ZURICH - If Putin the Thug gets away with crushing Ukraine's new democratic experiment and unilaterally redrawing the borders of Europe, every pro-Western country around Russia will be in danger.... anne : , Monday, September 12, 2016 at 04:38 AM http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/16/world/middleeast/white-house-split-on-opening-talks-with-putin.html September 15, 2015 Obama Weighing Talks With Putin on Syrian Crisis By PETER BAKER and ANDREW E. KRAMER WASHINGTON - Mr. Obama views Mr. Putin as a thug, according to advisers and analysts.... http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/opinion/mr-putins-mixed-messages-on-syria.html September 20, 2015 Mr. Putin's Mixed Messages on Syria Mr. Obama considers Mr. Putin a thug, his advisers say.... ilsm -> anne... , Monday, September 12, 2016 at 03:18 PM Putin might ask why us army jihadis fought with cia jihadis in Assad's country? a subject one thug can raise with a bigger thug. ..."
"... Thug. I wonder if these bright liberals consider the word they like to use so much ? u can feel their thrill every time they hurl it at a target. Long live the self righteous [neo]Liberal goon squad ..."
"... thugs -- A target of colonial masters ..."
"... if your candidate cannot go to a hospital.... looks like a serious neurolgic issue to me. Let the spin begin is trump's Putin or Clinton neuopathy? ..."
"... I remember reading John Kenneth Galbraith describe how when he was being threatened by the original McCarthy, the strategy he chose was to name McCarthy using every name he could think of. The strategy worked, and Galbraith was forgotten by McCarthy. I suspect the strategy will work again. ..."
"... In the name of plain old fashion reasonable ness let's not turn krooogman the self righteous [neo] liberal " crusader" into a new kold war reactionary liberal just yet ..."
"... innuendo see as much deplorable assassination in moscow as folks dying at Clinton hands. And those 250k killed in 5 years of CIA blundering in Syria are Obama Clinton not Putin. ..."
"... Ok, so on your planet the civil war in Syria was caused entirely by CIA intervention? That's what you're going with? ..."
"... No of course not! The CIA is 'playing' 1300 year old schism in Islam. It is Sunni versus Shiite, the rest in funding, equipping, cheerleading by GCC royal, US and Israel. ..."
"... Official Washington's "group think" on the Ukraine crisis now has a totalitarian feel to it as "everyone who matters" joins in the ritualistic stoning of Russian President Putin and takes joy in Russia's economic pain, with liberal economist Paul Krugman the latest to hoist a rock. ..."
"... The anti-war left sees the demonization of foreign leaders as clearing the way for war and invasion. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton's National Security Advisers Are a "Who's Who" of the Warfare State ..."
"... The list of key advisers - which includes the general who executed the troop surge in Iraq and a former Bush homeland security chief turned terror profiteer - is a strong indicator that Clinton's national security policy will not threaten the post-9/11 national-security status quo that includes active use of military power abroad and heightened security measures at home. ..."
It is not wise to demonize foreign leaders or worship them.
Foreign policy needs sometimes to work with even some of the worst actors.
For example, Russia is in Syria and can either promote more violence or
work to end the civil war. Right now, they have agreed with the US to support
a cease fire.
Demonization of Russia led directly to the Vietnam War, the Cambodian horror,
the Taliban and a lot of bad outcomes.
We need to support institutions that work to guarantee and protect human
rights for all. A personality cult that worships leaders promotes intolerance
and the abuse of human rights. We need a strategy of building and strengthening
institutions that are committed to protecting ethnic minorities and offer
a change alternative to violent acting out.
Well said. One can debate the virtues and vices of Vladimir Putin indefinitely,
and historians will do so, but throwing the lives and security of young
Americans into the mill of short term political opportunism, at the service
of the campaign meme of the week, is not responsible.
Of course, Trump has
also behaved like a nincompoop in discussing Putin and Russia in ways that
do no display an ounce of statesmanship.
Who is "throwing the lives and security of young Americans into the mill
of short term political opportunism"?
I'm guessing you are saying Hillary is doing that by criticizing Putin
or something, but I can't fathom how you connect those dots.
Dan Kervick -> sanjait...
No, Krugman.
Krugman obediently parrots and amplifies whatever attack theme the campaign
decides to promote on any given week, and is clearly coordinating with a
number of other hyper-partisan "journalists" and apparatchiks, who sing
in harmony from the same hymn books. The man is a certifiable political
hack.
I'm surprised that Team D had not yet floated the charge that Putin gave
Clinton pneumonia with some infected umbrella pellet gun.
Paine -> sanjait...
No no
Krooogman is jus a useful moralistic idiot aiding and abetting [hillary
compaigh] with humanist [neo]liberal anathemas.
A policy of Russia constriction by uncle S and his posse
Paine -> Paine ...
Will Hillary take a forward policy stance on mother Russia.
Out do Barry- Kerry. I'm still hoping she's capable of evolution to good POTUS.
My best friends ardent fury at her bloody pals.
Has tempered me some. Nothing ever confirms convictions grounded in personal loathing
I've learned to love her since Bernie burned out over Pennsylvania or
was it Ohio ?
Paine -> Paine ...
However nothing about loving her requires me to support her legacy or her
entourage
Or like too many thin skinned compromises here. Attack those who can not find in their heart. Any love for such a compromised
saint
As dear Hill
ilsm -> Dan Kervick...
[It would be better if]
Current neocon democrats "display an ounce of statesmanship" and use any
before they send out the aircraft carriers, bombers, drones and CIA arms
for the next ISIL.
ilsm -> Dan Kervick...
Yes, Kerry talks while the DoD and CIA do the murdering.
gh : ,
Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner. How is it possible that you remain so
leftist, in spite of all the evidence ? You are just a political writer,
paid to reflect your bosses views. A proper journalist would at least provide
a minimally balanced view. In your case we know your answer before we open
the newspaper.
What a shame.
Paine -> djb...
Tempest in a tea pot. No leftist calls krooogman a leftist. He is a a status quo
elitist.
An enlightenment humanist [interventionist neo]liberal.
A convinced self-deluded neo-classical economist.
A major political ignoramus...
And a very decent little tabby cat.
All rolled up into one pint sized ambitious.
Self assured. Nassau county bright boy
now aged but undaunted
ZURICH - If Putin the Thug gets away with crushing Ukraine's new democratic
experiment and unilaterally redrawing the borders of Europe, every pro-Western
country around Russia will be in danger....
First of all, let's get this straight: The Russian Federation of 2016
is not the Soviet Union of 1986. True, it covers most of the same territory
and is run by some of the same thugs....
Thug. I wonder if these bright liberals consider the word they like to use
so much ? u can feel their thrill every time they hurl it at a target. Long live the self righteous
[neo]Liberal goon squad
" historical --
a member of a religious organization of robbers and assassins in India.
Devotees of the goddess Kali, the Thugs waylaid and strangled their victims,
usually travelers, in a ritually prescribed manner. They were suppressed
by the British in the 1830s."
Dat is about as much heavy liftin as the lettered folk can handle: hurling
insults. Take dat. "Geeves, send them a message!" Message: Thugs! Mission accomplished and now we must rest.
ilsm -> Paine ...
if your candidate cannot go to a hospital....
looks like a serious neurolgic issue to me. Let the spin begin is trump's
Putin or Clinton neuopathy?
anne :
Paul Krugman terrifies me, simply terrifies me. A pusher of a Cold War,
a pusher of McCarthyism, a person who is obviously collecting a list of
names and only waiting to name names. I however will be no Krugman martyr
and am also collecting names and will name names even before being ordered
to and I have already decided who I will be naming first.
[ I remember reading John Kenneth Galbraith describe how when he was
being threatened by the original McCarthy, the strategy he chose was to
name McCarthy using every name he could think of. The strategy worked, and
Galbraith was forgotten by McCarthy. I suspect the strategy will work again.
]
anne -> anne...
I need to find the Galbraith reference, and I also remember that Krugman
was attacking Galbraith before, well, "the line forms on the right."
Paine -> anne...
Anne,
In the name of plain old fashion reasonable ness let's not turn krooogman the self righteous
[neo] liberal " crusader" into a new kold war reactionary liberal just yet
The conversion of one section of new dealers into
that rumpus of uncle hegomony.'s Dupes
Was awful enough.
Not to contemplate yet another wholesale herd like.
Transduction of their "liberal values"
In the name of individual liberty and the rights of humanity
What Economists Can Learn From Evolutionary Theorists
By Paul Krugman - European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy
I guess it is no secret that even John Kenneth Galbraith, still the public's
idea of a great economist, looks to most serious economists like an intellectual
dilettante who lacks the patience for hard thinking....
ilsm -> Pinkybum...
innuendo see as much deplorable assassination in moscow as folks dying at
Clinton hands. And those 250k killed in 5 years of CIA blundering in Syria are Obama
Clinton not Putin.
Ok, so on your planet the civil war in Syria was caused entirely by CIA
intervention? That's what you're going with?
So, not the tyranny of the Assad regime, supported by Russia. And not
the emergence of ISIS. Those, by your accounting, are not primary causes
of the conflict, but instead it was the meager support the CIA offered the
FSA alliance, according to you. Pfft.
ilsm -> sanjait...
No of course not!
The CIA is 'playing' 1300 year old schism in Islam. It is Sunni versus
Shiite, the rest in funding, equipping, cheerleading by GCC royal, US and
Israel.
Official Washington's "group think" on the Ukraine crisis now has a totalitarian
feel to it as "everyone who matters" joins in the ritualistic stoning of
Russian President Putin and takes joy in Russia's economic pain, with liberal
economist Paul Krugman the latest to hoist a rock.
China's Market Crash Means Chinese Supergrowth Could Have Only 5 More
Years to Run
By Brad DeLong
Ever since I became an adult in 1980, I have been a stopped clock with
respect to the Chinese economy. I have said -- always -- that at most, Chinese
supergrowth likely has five more years to run.
Then there will come a crash -- in asset values and expectations, if
not in production and employment. After the crash, China will revert to
the standard pattern of an emerging market economy without successful institutions
that duplicate or somehow mimic those of the North Atlantic. Its productivity
rate will be little more than the 2 percent per year of emerging markets
as a whole; catch-up and convergence to the North Atlantic growth-path norm
will be slow if at all; and political risks that cause war, revolution or
merely economic stagnation rather than unexpected booms will become the
most likely surprises.
I was wrong for 25 years straight -- and the jury is still out on the
period since 2005. Thus, I'm very hesitant to count out China and its supergrowth
miracle. But now "a" crash -- even if, perhaps, not "the" crash I was predicting
-- is at hand....
[ Twenty-five years of wrongness, why not another 25? Never ever ask
why such wrongness, however. ]
Peter K. -> sanjait...
"The weird existence of people who somehow loved Bernie Sanders while also
being apologists for Putin continues to defy the notion of cognitive dissonance."
The anti-war left sees the demonization of foreign leaders as clearing
the way for war and invasion.
The center-left Demcocrats' anti-democratic practices during the primary
were hypocritical. At leas Debbie Wasserman-Shultz was ousted as chair of
the DNC.
Dan Kervick -> sanjait...
The context is that a murderers row of 2002/3 vintage neocons has now adopted
the Clinton campaign as its preferred vehicle for its further murderous
adventures and interventionist follies. Apparently only the (very) elder
neocon leader Norman Podhoretz is not in yet.
ilsm -> sanjait...
Somehow Putin is weak on plundering his country.
Bush and Obama are $4,000B in WAR waste on Iraghistan and Yemen.
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason
without proper regard for evidence. It also means "the practice of making
unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially
in order to restrict dissent or political criticism." The term has its origins
in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting
roughly from 1950 to 1956 and characterized by heightened political repression
against supposed communists, as well as a campaign spreading fear of their
influence on American institutions and of espionage by Soviet agents. Originally
coined to criticize the anti-communist pursuits of Republican U.S. Senator
Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, "McCarthyism" soon took on a broader meaning,
describing the excesses of similar efforts. The term is also now used more
generally to describe reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as
demagogic attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries.
Hillary Clinton's National Security Advisers Are a "Who's Who" of the
Warfare State
By Zaid Jilani, Alex Emmons, and Naomi LaChance
HILLARY CLINTON IS meeting with a new national security "working group"
that is filled with an elite "who's who" of the military-industrial complex
and the security deep state.
The list of key advisers - which includes the general who executed the
troop surge in Iraq and a former Bush homeland security chief turned terror
profiteer - is a strong indicator that Clinton's national security policy
will not threaten the post-9/11 national-security status quo that includes
active use of military power abroad and heightened security measures at
home.
It's a story we've seen before in President Obama's early appointments.
In retrospect, analysts have pointed to the continuity in national security
and intelligence advisers as an early sign that despite his campaign rhetoric
Obama would end up building on - rather than tearing down - the often-extralegal,
Bush-Cheney counterterror regime. For instance, while Obama promised in
2008 to reform the NSA, its director was kept on and its reach continued
to grow.
Obama's most fateful decision may have been choosing former National
Counterterrorism Center Director John Brennan to be national security adviser,
despite Brennan's support of Bush's torture program. Brennan would go on
to run the president's drone program, lead the CIA, fight the Senate's torture
investigation, and then lie about searching Senate computers.
That backdrop is what makes Clinton's new list of advisers so significant.
It includes Gen. David Petraeus, the major architect of the 2007 Iraq
War troop surge, which brought 30,000 more troops to Iraq. Picking him indicates
at partiality to combative ideology. It also represents a return to good
standing for the general after he pled guilty to leaking notebooks full
of classified information to his lover, Paula Broadwell, and got off with
two years of probation and a fine. Petraeus currently works at the investment
firm KKR & Co.
Another notable member of Clinton's group is Michael Chertoff, a hardliner
who served as President George W. Bush's last secretary of the Department
of Homeland Security, and who since leaving government in 2009 has helmed
a corporate consulting firm called the Chertoff Group that promotes security-industry
priorities. For example, in 2010, he gave dozens of media interviews touting
full-body scanners at airports while his firm was employed by a company
that produced body scanning machines. His firmalso employs a number of other
ex-security state officials, such as former CIA and NSA Director Michael
Hayden. It does not disclose a complete list of its clients - all of whom
now have a line of access to Clinton.
Many others on the list are open advocates of military escalation overseas.
Mike Morell, the former acting director of the CIA, endorsed Clinton last
month in a New York Times opinion piece that accused Trump of being an "unwitting
agent of the Russian Federation." The Times was criticized for not disclosing
his current employment by Beacon Global Strategies, a politically powerful
national-security consulting firm with strong links to Clinton. Three days
later, Morell told Charlie Rose in a PBS interview that the CIA should actively
assassinate Russians and Iranians in Syria.
During his time at the CIA, Morell was connected to some of the worst
scandals and intelligence failures of the Bush administration. In his book,
he apologizes for giving flawed intelligence to Colin Powell about Iraq's
supposed weapons of mass destruction, but defends the CIA torture program
as legal and ethical.
Jim Stavridis, a former NATO supreme allied commander Europe on Clinton's
advisory group, told Fox News Radio in July, when he was being vetted by
Clinton as a possible vice presidential nominee, that "we have got to get
more aggressive going into Syria and Iraq and go after [ISIS] because if
we don't they're going to come to us. It's a pretty simple equation." He
said he would "encourage the president to take a more aggressive stance
against Iran, to increase our military forces in Iraq and Syria, and to
confront Vladmir Putin" over his moves in Crimea.
The New York Times reported in 2011 that Michael Vickers, a former Pentagon
official on Clinton's new list, led the use of drone strikes. He would grin
and tell his colleagues at meetings, "I just want to kill those guys."
Others on the list played a role in the targeted killing policies of
the Obama administration, including Chris Fussell, a top aide to Gen. Stanley
McChrystal, and now a partner with him at his lucrative consulting firm,
the McChrystal Group....
"... I want to throw a chair at the elitist propaganda coming from the radio. ..."
"... Their political coverage is truly awful - horse race analysis cheerleading for HRC, no substantive talk about issues just a constant human interest sideshow anecdotal. ..."
"... They also seem to have exactly the same stories as same day's NYT - makes one wonder who's actually disseminating all the talking points. ..."
"... Yah I know but I also learned from NPR Trump is bad because he likes Putin who keeps invading nations and killing a bunch of folks and gives govt contracts to his friends – unlike good USA. All stated matter of factly by NPR analysts. ..."
"... It's amazing how everything has to get sloppy around Clinton. People, news papers, news shows, whatever. As soon as they decide to sign on with Camp Clinton, they all have to start making excuses for her. Sloppy excuses. Excuses with a smell of skunk to them. ..."
"... They should loose those donors, it would be a cleansing act that might result in more creative and honest programming. ..."
Used to have NPR going from wakey until bedtime. Now, I read about roses
and meditate. Much more serenity. Now, my agitation comes from NC. And it's
because world affairs are agitating, not because I want to throw a chair
at the elitist propaganda coming from the radio.
Their political coverage is truly awful - horse race analysis cheerleading
for HRC, no substantive talk about issues just a constant human interest
sideshow anecdotal. The Bernie coverage was a disgrace. I was raised
on a steady diet of NPR, and realized the headlines are all the same as
when I was a kid: Middle East "violence," Israeli politics, poor person
suffering anecdote, refugee porn.
I tune in from time to time just to make sure it hasn't changed. What
change there has been seems to be ever more shrill neoliberal pablum spoon-fed
with small words as though to eight-graders. They also seem to have
exactly the same stories as same day's NYT - makes one wonder who's actually
disseminating all the talking points.
I stopped listening to them after they did a long, sympathetic piece
on how Israeli soldiers were traumatized by the injuries they inflicted
on Palestinian kids during the first Intifada. The idea that they should
suffer from implacable guilt was not not discussed.
Yah I know but I also learned from NPR Trump is bad because he likes
Putin who keeps invading nations and killing a bunch of folks and gives
govt contracts to his friends – unlike good USA. All stated matter of factly
by NPR analysts.
Yes, "hold on for the ride." Now even the MSM is split on whether to
all of a sudden be skeptical of the stuff Camp Clinton puts out re Hill's
health. If she quits due to ill health, can she keep her campaign contributions?
She's got Parkinson's disease, or at least severe aftershocks from her earlier
brain trouble. She's not gonna get better.
It's amazing how everything has to get sloppy around Clinton. People,
news papers, news shows, whatever. As soon as they decide to sign on with
Camp Clinton, they all have to start making excuses for her. Sloppy excuses.
Excuses with a smell of skunk to them.
And once they give in, it sticks to them. They can no longer be trusted.
Whatever you thought of them before is now forever clouded. They are ruined.
I don't know about Democracy Now - haven't listened lately. But Krugman
went from a columnist I respected to idiotic Clinton shill starting this
year. His attacks on Sanders and his supporters and his excuse making for
Clinton's Iraq vote totally destroyed his credibility for me. Maybe he is
worth reading if he stays far away from the subject of Clinton, but I no
longer care enough to find out.
And, all this on top of the constant, daily, weekly, and monthly, never
ending, stream of rancid revelations being unearthed regarding her shady
public/private financial juggling act. Like, simply running for President
isn't stressful enough.
I stopped listening after Bush, Jr. was elected and immediately cut-off
aid to foreign family planning orgs that mentioned mentioned abortion as
an option to their patients. Ol' Cokie assured NPR listeners it was no big
thing, nothing to see here, move along people. I tore the radio out of the
dash and threw it out the window…
I gave up on NPR when I got sick and tired of Cokie Roberts condescending
republican talking points. It is very much a megaphone for center right
elites.
I've read that people who work there say that if they did not do the
center right slant, they would lose a vast majority of their big donor funding.
They should loose those donors, it would be a cleansing act that might
result in more creative and honest programming.
I only listen to local public radio and tune away if there is NPR news
content.
Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ) is an exception on local public radio. It
is awful and I will not listen to it, their programming has devolved to
whining elitist **** talk radio. It is insufferable.
This is Christopher Hitchens biting analysis from previous Presidential elections,
but still relevant
Notable quotes:
"... The last time that Clinton foreign-policy associations came up for congressional review, the investigations ended in a cloud of murk that still has not been dispelled. ..."
"... the real problem is otherwise. Both President and Sen. Clinton, while in office, made it obvious to foreign powers that they and their relatives were wide open to suggestions from lobbyists and middlemen. ..."
"... If you recall the names John Huang, James Riady, Johnny Chung, Charlie Trie, and others, you will remember the pattern of acquired amnesia syndrome and stubborn reluctance to testify, followed by sudden willingness on the part of the Democratic National Committee to return quite large sums of money from foreign sources. Much of this cash had been raised at political events held in the public rooms of the White House, the sort of events that featured the adorable Roger Tamraz , for another example. ..."
"... It found that the Clinton administration's attitude toward Chinese penetration had been abysmally lax (as lax, I would say, as its attitude toward easy money from businessmen with Chinese military-industrial associations). ..."
"... Many quids and many quos were mooted by these investigations (still incomplete at the time of writing) though perhaps not enough un-ambivalent pros . You can't say that about the Marc Rich and other pardons-the vulgar bonanza with which the last Clinton era came to an end. Rich's ex-wife, Denise Rich, gave large sums to Hillary Clinton's re-election campaign and to Bill Clinton's library, and Marc Rich got a pardon. ..."
"... Edgar and Vonna Jo Gregory, convicted of bank fraud, hired Hillary Clinton's brother Tony and paid him $250,000, and they got a pardon. Carlos Vignali Jr. and Almon Glenn Braswell paid $400,000 to Hillary Clinton's other brother, Hugh , and, hey, they , respectively, got a presidential commutation and a presidential pardon, too. ..."
"... Does this sibling and fraternal squalor have foreign-policy implications, too? Yes. Until late 1999, the fabulous Rodham boys were toiling on another scheme to get the hazelnut concession from the newly independent republic of Georgia. There was something quixotically awful about this scheme-something simultaneously too small-time and too big-time-but it also involved a partnership with the main political foe of the then-Georgian president (who may conceivably have had political aspirations), so once again the United States was made to look as if its extended first family were operating like a banana republic. ..."
"... In matters of foreign policy, it has been proved time and again, the Clintons are devoted to no interest other than their own. ..."
"... Who can say with a straight face that this is true of a woman whose personal ambition is without limit; whose second loyalty is to an impeached and disbarred and discredited former president; and who is ready at any moment, and on government time, to take a wheedling call from either of her bulbous brothers? This is also the unscrupulous female who until recently was willing to play the race card on President-elect Obama and (in spite of her own complete want of any foreign-policy qualifications) to ridicule him for lacking what she only knew about by way of sordid backstairs dealing. What may look like wound-healing and magnanimity to some looks like foolhardiness and masochism to me. ..."
It was apt in a small way that the first
endorser of Hillary Rodham Clinton for secretary of state should have been
Henry Kissinger. The last time he was nominated for any position of responsibility-the
chairmanship of the 9/11 commission-he accepted with many florid words about
the great honor and responsibility, and then he withdrew when it became clear
that he would have to disclose the client list of Kissinger Associates. (See,
for the article that began this embarrassing process for him, my Slate
column "The
Latest Kissinger Outrage.")
It is possible that the Senate will be as much of a club as the undistinguished
fraternity/sorority of our ex-secretaries of state, but even so, it's difficult
to see Sen. Clinton achieving confirmation unless our elected representatives
are ready to ask a few questions about conflict of interest along similar lines.
And how can they not? The last time that Clinton foreign-policy associations
came up for congressional review, the investigations ended in a cloud of murk
that still has not been dispelled. Former President Bill Clinton has recently
and rather disingenuously offered to submit his own foundation to scrutiny (see
the
work of my Vanity Fair colleague Todd Purdum on the delightful friends
and associates that Clinton has acquired since he left office), but
the real problem is otherwise. Both President and Sen. Clinton, while in
office, made it obvious to foreign powers that they and their relatives were
wide open to suggestions from lobbyists and middlemen.
Just to give the most salient examples from the Clinton fundraising scandals
of the late 1990s: The House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight published
a list of witnesses called before it who had either "fled
or pled"-in other words, who had left the country to avoid testifying or
invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination. Some Democratic members
of the committee said that this was unfair to, say, the Buddhist nuns who raised
the unlawful California temple dough for then-Vice President
Al Gore, but however fair you want to be, the number of those who found
it highly inconvenient to testify fluctuates between 94 and 120. If you
recall the names John Huang, James Riady, Johnny Chung, Charlie Trie, and others,
you will remember the pattern of acquired amnesia syndrome and stubborn reluctance
to testify, followed by sudden willingness on the part of the Democratic National
Committee to return quite large sums of money from foreign sources. Much of
this cash had been raised at political events held in the public rooms of the
White House, the sort of events that featured the adorable
Roger Tamraz, for another example.
Related was the result of a House select
committee
on Chinese espionage in the United States and the illegal transfer to China
of advanced military technology. Chaired by Christopher Cox, R-Calif., the committee
issued a
report
in 1999 with no dissenting or "minority" signature. It found that the Clinton
administration's attitude toward Chinese penetration had been abysmally lax
(as lax, I would say, as its attitude toward easy money from businessmen with
Chinese military-industrial associations).
Many quids and many quos were mooted by these investigations
(still incomplete at the time of writing) though perhaps not enough un-ambivalent
pros. You can't say that about the Marc Rich and other pardons-the vulgar
bonanza with which the last Clinton era came to an end. Rich's ex-wife, Denise
Rich, gave large sums to Hillary Clinton's re-election campaign and to Bill
Clinton's library, and Marc Rich got a pardon.
Edgar and Vonna Jo Gregory, convicted of bank fraud,
hired Hillary Clinton's brother Tony and paid him $250,000, and they
got a pardon. Carlos Vignali Jr. and Almon Glenn Braswell paid $400,000 to Hillary
Clinton's other brother,
Hugh, and, hey, they, respectively, got a presidential commutation
and a presidential pardon, too. In the Hugh case, the money was returned
as being too embarrassing for words (and as though following the hallowed custom,
when busted or flustered, of the Clinton-era DNC). But I would say that it was
more embarrassing to realize that a former first lady, and a candidate for secretary
of state, was a full partner in years of seedy overseas money-grubbing and has
two greedy brothers to whom she cannot say no.
Does this sibling and fraternal squalor have foreign-policy implications,
too? Yes. Until late 1999, the fabulous Rodham boys were toiling on another
scheme to get the hazelnut concession from the newly independent republic of
Georgia. There was something quixotically awful about this scheme-something
simultaneously too small-time and too big-time-but it also involved a partnership
with the main political foe of the then-Georgian president (who may conceivably
have had political aspirations), so once again the United States was made to
look as if its extended first family were operating like a banana republic.
China, Indonesia, Georgia-these are not exactly negligible countries on our
defense and financial and ideological peripheries. In each country, there are
important special interests that equate the name Clinton with the word pushover.
And did I forget to add what President Clinton pleaded when the revulsion at
the Rich pardons became too acute? He claimed that he had concerted the deal
with the government of Israel in the intervals of the Camp David "agreement"!
So anyone who criticized the pardons had better have been careful if they didn't
want to hear from the Anti-Defamation League. Another splendid way of showing
that all is aboveboard and of convincing the Muslim world of our evenhandedness.
In matters of foreign policy, it has been proved time and again, the
Clintons are devoted to no interest other than their own. A president absolutely
has to know of his chief foreign-policy executive that he or she has no other
agenda than the one he has set. Who can say with a straight face that this
is true of a woman whose personal ambition is without limit; whose second loyalty
is to an impeached and disbarred and discredited former president; and who is
ready at any moment, and on government time, to take a wheedling call from either
of her bulbous brothers? This is also the unscrupulous female who until recently
was willing to play the race card on President-elect Obama and (in spite of
her own complete want of any foreign-policy qualifications) to ridicule him
for lacking what she only knew about by way of sordid backstairs dealing. What
may look like wound-healing and magnanimity to some looks like foolhardiness
and masochism to me.
Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) was a columnist for Vanity Fair and
the author, most recently, of
Arguably, a collection of essays.
"... I think Trump is afraid the imperial global order presided by the US is about to crash and thinks he will be able to steer the country into a soft landing by accepting that other world powers have interests, by disengaging from costly and humiliating military interventions, by re-negotiating trade deals, and by stopping the mass immigration of poor people. Plus a few well-placed bombs ..."
"... Much has been written about the internet revolution, about the impact of people having access to much more information than before. The elite does not recognize this and is still organizing political and media campaigns as if it were 1990, relying on elder statesmen like Blair, Bush, Mitterrand, Clinton, and Obama to influence public opinion. They are failing miserably, to the point of being counterproductive. ..."
"... I don't think something as parochial as racism is sustaining Trump, but rather the fear of the loss of empire by a population with several orders of magnitude more information and communication than in 2008, even 2012. ..."
"... No one has literally argued that people should be glad to lose employment: that part was hyperbole. But the basic argument is often made quite seriously. See e.g. outsource Brad DeLong . ..."
"... The same thing has happened in Mexico with neoliberal government after neoliberal government being elected. There are many democratically elected neoliberal governments around the world. ..."
"... In the case of Mexico, because Peńa Nieto's wife is a telenovela star. How cool is that? It places Mexico in the same league as 1st world countries, such as France, with Carla Bruni. ..."
"... To the guy who asked- poor white people keep voting Republican even though it screws them because they genuinely believe that the country is best off when it encourages a culture of "by the bootstraps" self improvement, hard work, and personal responsibility. They view taxing people in order to give the money to the supposedly less fortunate as the anti thesis of this, because it gives people an easy out that let's them avoid having to engage in the hard work needed to live independently. ..."
"... The extent to which "poor white people" vote against their alleged economic interests is overblown. To a large extent, they do not vote at all nor is anyone or anything on the ballot to represent their interests. And, yes, they are misinformed systematically by elites out to screw them and they know this, but cannot do much to either clear up their own confusion or fight back. ..."
"... The mirror image problem - of elites manipulating the system to screw the poor and merely middle-class - is daily in the news. Both Presidential candidates have been implicated. So, who do you recommend they vote for? ..."
"... I think you're missing Patrick's point. These voters are switching from one Republican to another. They've jettisoned Bush et. al. for Trump. These guys despise Bush. ..."
"... They've figured out that the mainstream party is basically 30 years of affinity fraud. ..."
"... My understanding is trumps support disproportionately comes from the small business owning classes, Ie a demographic similar to the petite bourgeoisie who have often been heavily involved in reactionary movements. This gets oversold as "working class" when class is defined by education level rather than income. ..."
"... Layman - Why are these voters switching from Bush et al to Trump? Once again, Corey's whole point is that there is very little difference between the racism of Trump and the mainstream party since Nixon. Is Trump just more racist? Or are the policies of Trump resonating differently than Bush for reasons other than race? ..."
"... Eric Berne, in The Structures and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups, proposed that among the defining characteristics of a coherent group is an explicit boundary which determines whether an individual is a member of the group or not. (If there is no boundary, nothing binds the assemblage together; it is a crowd.) The boundary helps provide social cohesion and is so important that groups will create one if necessary. Clearly, boundaries exclude as well as include, and someone must play the role of outsider. ..."
"... For a time, the balkanization of American political communities by race, religion and ethnicity was an effective means to the dominance of an tiny elite with ties to an hegemonic community, but it backfired. Dismantling that balkanization has left the country with a very low level of social affiliation and thus a low capacity to organize resistance to elite depredations. ..."
I think Trump is afraid the imperial global order presided by the US is about to crash
and thinks he will be able to steer the country into a soft landing by accepting that other world
powers have interests, by disengaging from costly and humiliating military interventions, by re-negotiating
trade deals, and by stopping the mass immigration of poor people. Plus a few well-placed bombs
.
Much has been written about the internet revolution, about the impact of people having
access to much more information than before. The elite does not recognize this and is still organizing
political and media campaigns as if it were 1990, relying on elder statesmen like Blair, Bush,
Mitterrand, Clinton, and Obama to influence public opinion. They are failing miserably, to the
point of being counterproductive.
I don't think something as parochial as racism is sustaining Trump, but rather the fear
of the loss of empire by a population with several orders of magnitude more information and communication
than in 2008, even 2012.
Layman 08.04.16 at 11:59 am
Rich P: "Neoliberals often argue that people should be glad to lose employment at 50 so
that people from other countries can have higher incomes "
I doubt this most sincerely. While this may be the effect of some neoliberal policies, I can't
recall any particular instance where someone made this argument.
Rich Puchalsky 08.04.16 at 12:03 pm
"I can't recall any particular instance where someone made this argument."
No one has literally argued that people should be glad to lose employment: that part was
hyperbole. But the basic argument is often made quite seriously. See e.g.
outsource
Brad DeLong .
engels 08.04.16 at 12:25 pm
While this may be the effect of some neoliberal policies, I can't recall any particular instance
where someone made this argument
Maybe this kind of thing rom Henry Farrell? (There may well be better examples.)
Is some dilution of the traditional European welfare state acceptable, if it substantially
increases the wellbeing of current outsiders (i.e. for example, by bringing Turkey into the club).
My answer is yes, if European leftwingers are to stick to their core principles on justice, fairness,
egalitarianism etc
Large numbers of low-income white southern Americans consistently vote against their
own economic interests. They vote to award tax breaks to wealthy people and corporations, to
cut unemployment benefits, to bust unions, to reward companies for outsourcing jobs, to resist
wage increases, to cut funding for health care for the poor, to cut Social Security and Medicare,
etc.
The same thing has happened in Mexico with neoliberal government after neoliberal government
being elected. There are many democratically elected neoliberal governments around the world.
Why might this be?
In the case of Mexico, because Peńa Nieto's wife is a telenovela star. How cool is that?
It places Mexico in the same league as 1st world countries, such as France, with Carla Bruni.
Patrick 08.04.16 at 4:32 pm
To the guy who asked- poor white people keep voting Republican even though it screws them
because they genuinely believe that the country is best off when it encourages a culture of "by
the bootstraps" self improvement, hard work, and personal responsibility. They view taxing people
in order to give the money to the supposedly less fortunate as the anti thesis of this, because
it gives people an easy out that let's them avoid having to engage in the hard work needed to
live independently.
They see it as little different from letting your kid move back on after college and smoke
weed in your basement. They don't generally mind people being on unemployment transitionally,
but they're supposed to be a little embarrassed about it and get it over with as soon as possible.
They not only worry that increased government social spending will incentivize bad behavior, they
worry it will destroy the cultural values they see as vital to Americas past prosperity. They
tend to view claims about historic or systemic injustice necessitating collective remedy because
they view the world as one in which the vagaries of fate decree that some are born rich or poor,
and that success is in improving ones station relative to where one starts. Attempts at repairing
historical racial inequity read as cheating in that paradigm, and even as hostile since they can
easily observe white people who are just as poor or poorer than those who racial politics focuses
upon. Left wing insistence on borrowing the nastiest rhetoric of libertarians ("this guy is poor
because his ancestors couldn't get ahead because of historical racial injustice so we must help
him; your family couldn't get ahead either but that must have been your fault so you deserve it")
comes across as both antithetical to their values and as downright hostile within the values they
see around them.
All of this can be easily learned by just talking to them.
It's not a great world view. It fails to explain quite a lot. For example, they have literally
no way of explaining increased unemployment without positing either that everyone is getting too
lazy to work, or that the government screwed up the system somehow, possibly by making it too
expensive to do business in the US relative to other countries. and given their faith in the power
of hard work, they don't even blame sweatshops- they blame taxes and foreign subsidies.
I don't know exactly how to reach out to them, except that I can point to some things people
do that repulse them and say "stop doing that."
bruce wilder 08.04.16 at 5:50 pm
The extent to which "poor white people" vote against their alleged economic interests is
overblown. To a large extent, they do not vote at all nor is anyone or anything on the ballot
to represent their interests. And, yes, they are misinformed systematically by elites out to screw
them and they know this, but cannot do much to either clear up their own confusion or fight back.
The mirror image problem - of elites manipulating the system to screw the poor and merely
middle-class - is daily in the news. Both Presidential candidates have been implicated. So, who
do you recommend they vote for?
There is serious deficit of both trust and information among the poor. Poor whites hardly have
a monopoly; black misleadership is epidemic in our era of Cory Booker socialism.
bruce wilder 08.04.16 at 7:05 pm
Politics is founded on the complex social psychology of humans as social animals. We elevate
it from its irrational base in emotion to rationalized calculation or philosophy at our peril.
T 08.04.16 at 9:17 pm
@Layman
I think you're missing Patrick's point. These voters are switching from one Republican
to another. They've jettisoned Bush et. al. for Trump. These guys despise Bush.
They've figured out that the mainstream party is basically 30 years of affinity fraud.
So, is your argument is that Trump even more racist? That kind of goes against the whole point
of the OP. Not saying that race doesn't matter. Of course it does. But Trump has a 34% advantage
in non-college educated white men. It just isn't the South. Why does it have to be just race or
just class?
Ronan(rf) 08.04.16 at 10:35 pm
"I generally don't give a shit about polls so I have no "data" to evidence this claim, but
my guess is the majority of Trump's support comes from this broad middle"
My understanding is trumps support disproportionately comes from the small business owning
classes, Ie a demographic similar to the petite bourgeoisie who have often been heavily involved
in reactionary movements. This gets oversold as "working class" when class is defined by education
level rather than income.
This would make some sense as they are generally in economically unstable jobs, they tend to
be hostile to both big govt (regulations, freeloaders) and big business (unfair competition),
and while they (rhetorically at least) tend to value personal autonomy and self sufficiency ,
they generally sell into smaller, local markets, and so are particularly affected by local demographic
and cultural change , and decline. That's my speculation anyway.
T 08.05.16 at 3:12 pm
@patrick @layman
Patrick, you're right about the Trump demographic. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support/
Layman - Why are these voters switching from Bush et al to Trump? Once again, Corey's whole
point is that there is very little difference between the racism of Trump and the mainstream party
since Nixon. Is Trump just more racist? Or are the policies of Trump resonating differently than
Bush for reasons other than race?
Are the folks that voted for the other candidates in the primary less racist so Trump supporters
are just the most racist among Republicans? Cruz less racist? You have to explain the shift within
the Republican party because that's what happened.
Anarcissie 08.06.16 at 3:00 pm
Faustusnotes 08.06.16 at 1:50 pm @ 270 -
Eric Berne, in The Structures and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups, proposed that among
the defining characteristics of a coherent group is an explicit boundary which determines whether
an individual is a member of the group or not. (If there is no boundary, nothing binds the assemblage
together; it is a crowd.) The boundary helps provide social cohesion and is so important that
groups will create one if necessary. Clearly, boundaries exclude as well as include, and someone
must play the role of outsider. While Berne's theories are a bit too nifty for me to love
them, I have observed a lot of the behaviors he predicts. If one wanted to be sociobiological,
it is not hard to hypothesize evolutionary pressures which could lead to this sort of behavior
being genetically programmed. If a group of humans, a notably combative primate, does not have
strong social cohesion, the war of all against all ensues and everybody dies. Common affections
alone do not seem to provide enough cohesion.
In an earlier but related theory, in the United States, immigrants from diverse European communities
which fought each other for centuries in Europe arrived and managed to now get along because they
had a major Other, the Negro, against whom to define themselves (as the White Race) and thus to
cohere sufficiently to get on with business. The Negro had the additional advantage of being at
first a powerless slave and later, although theoretically freed, was legally, politically, and
economically disabled - an outsider who could not fight back very effectively, nor run away. Even
so, the US almost split apart and there continue to be important class, ethnic, religious, and
regional conflicts. You can see how these two theories resonate.
It may be that we can't have communities without this dark side, although we might be able
to mitigate some of its destructive effects.
bruce wilde r 08.06.16 at 4:28 pm
I am somewhat suspicious of leaving dominating elites out of these stories of racism as an
organizing principle for political economy or (cultural) community.
Racism served the purposes of a slaveholding elite that organized political communities to
serve their own interests. (Or, vis a vis the Indians a land-grab or genocide.)
Racism serves as an organizing principle. Politically, in an oppressive and stultifying hierarchy
like the plantation South, racism not incidentally buys the loyalty of subalterns with ersatz
status. The ugly prejudices and resentful arrogance of working class whites is thus a component
of how racism works to organize a political community to serve a hegemonic master class. The business
end of racism, though, is the autarkic poverty imposed on the working communities: slaves, sharecroppers,
poor blacks, poor whites - bad schools, bad roads, politically disabled communities, predatory
institutions and authoritarian governments.
For a time, the balkanization of American political communities by race, religion and ethnicity
was an effective means to the dominance of an tiny elite with ties to an hegemonic community,
but it backfired. Dismantling that balkanization has left the country with a very low level of
social affiliation and thus a low capacity to organize resistance to elite depredations.
engels 08.07.16 at 1:02 am
But how did that slavery happen
Possible short answer: the level of technological development made slavery an efficient way
of exploiting labour. At a certain point those conditions changed and slavery became a drag on
further development and it was abolished, along with much of the racist ideology that legitimated
it.
Lupita 08.07.16 at 3:40 am
But how did that slavery happen
In Mesoamerica, all the natives were enslaved because they were conquered by the Spaniards.
Then, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas successfully argued before the Crown that the natives had souls
and, therefore, should be Christianized rather than enslaved. As Bruce Wilder states, this did
not serve the interests of the slaveholding elite, so the African slave trade began and there
was no Fray Bartolomé to argue their case.
It is interesting that while natives were enslaved, the Aztec aristocracy was shipped to Spain
to be presented in court and study Latin. This would not have happened if the Mesoamericans were
considered inferior (soulless) as a race. Furthermore, the Spaniards needed the local elite to
help them out with their empire and the Aztecs were used to slavery and worse. This whole story
can be understood without recurring to racism. The logic of empire suffices.
Buying iPhone is mistake in itself. but as for neocon propaganda machine do
you thing that Google or Yahoo are better? they are not.
Notable quotes:
"... Anyone else notice that their apple iphone has turned into a raging anti-trump propaganda machine? I'm talking about the news headlines apple pushes to you when you slide your home screen all the way to the right. ..."
"... I didn't pay $700 for my iphone 6 to get a neocon propaganda machine. ..."
"... I have never actually read the anti trump stories that apple feeds my iphone because i didn't want to set up a preference for such things. I just see the headlines and they are quite negative. This is not the phone responding to my preference. It is content that is being deliberately pushed by Apple to my phone sans any info suggesting that i want it. ..."
"... Paying $700 for a $200 phone says unflattering things about i-Phone owners. ..."
Anyone else notice that their apple iphone has turned into a raging anti-trump propaganda machine?
I'm talking about the news headlines apple pushes to you when you slide your home screen all the
way to the right.
I didn't pay $700 for my iphone 6 to get a neocon propaganda machine.
Piotr Berman | Aug 6, 2016 4:22:11 PM | 6
Sometimes you get something extra with no additional cost. For 700 bucks you should get hourly
updates from the Lord of the Universe, so neocon urgent news are perhaps a step in this direction
:-)
More seriously, this is the fault of the browser and evil business model. Some click is cheerfully
interpreted as your request to get bombarded from some source, and sometimes it is clear how to
undo it, sometimes not.
Browsers should not have such features, but this is what makes them profitable.
Coming in near future: discount versions of cars that are steered by a computer. Every
few minutes the car stops and restarts only after you confirmed with clicks that you have seen
another ad.
alaric | Aug 6, 2016 5:13:45 PM | 14
"More seriously, this is the fault of the browser and evil business model. Some click is cheerfully
interpreted as your request to get bombarded from some source"
I have never actually read the anti trump stories that apple feeds my iphone because i didn't
want to set up a preference for such things. I just see the headlines and they are quite negative.
This is not the phone responding to my preference. It is content that is being deliberately pushed
by Apple to my phone sans any info suggesting that i want it.
Hoarsewhisperer | Aug 6, 2016 11:26:13 PM | 30
I didn't pay $700 for my iphone 6 to get a neocon propaganda machine.
alaric | Aug 6, 2016 2:41:59 PM | 3
Paying $700 for a $200 phone says unflattering things about i-Phone owners.
"... That means backing Wall Street, the neocons and the TPP. Shame on him! He told his followers to think of pie in the sky in the decades it will take to take over the Democratic Party from below, from school boards, etc. ..."
"... What on earth is revolution if it doesn't include either remove the rot in the Democratic Party, the Wall Street control, or start another party? It had to be one or the other. Here was his chance. I think he missed it. ..."
"... He did miss his chance. Some people were suggesting that he should walk and form his own party. Particularly how the party treated him. ..."
"... The Democrats and the Republicans together have made it almost impossible for a third party to get registered in every state. To run in every state. To get just all of the mechanics you need because of all the lawsuits against them. The Green Party is the only party that had already solved that. Apart from the Libertarian Party. ..."
"... The oligarchs have joined the Republicans and the Democrats are now seen to be the same party, called the Democratic Party. Here was his chance to make an alternative. ..."
"... I believe Hillary's the greater evil, not Trump, because Trump is incompetent and doesn't have the staff around him, or the political support that Hilary has. ..."
"... I have known Hillary Clinton for 25 years. I remember her, as you do, as a great first lady who broke precedent in terms of the role that a first lady was supposed to play as she helped lead the fight for universal health care. ..."
"... I served with her in the United States Senate and know her as a fierce advocate for the rights of children, for women and for the disabled. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president and I am proud to stand with her tonight! ..."
"... Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life. ..."
"... I agree with Hudson that HRC is the greater threat. I also agree with him that Bernie makes no sense. What the hell did Bernie have to lose? He could have accepted the prez nomination with the Greens. In fact, he should have run third party from the git-go. By sucking up to the dems that politically raped him, Bernie is exhibiting a variation of Stockholm syndrome. ..."
"... Bernie's problem in the end is that he couldn't see that in order to gain power in the Democratic Party (i.e., in order to dislodge the Clintons), the Left might (probably would) have to lose an election. ..."
"... The Democratic PoC (Party of Clinton) had to be shown as a party that could not win an election without its left half. He wrongly saw the powerless Trump as the greater threat, something that could only be done if he still at least marginally trusted Hillary to ever keep her word on anything. He will come to see that as his greatest mistake of all. ..."
"... Bernie reminds me of Gorbachev. Both clearly saw what the problem was with their respective societies, but still thought that things could be fixed by changing their respective parties. Bernie it seems, like Gorbachev before him, can not intellectually accept that effective reforms require radical action on the existing power structures. Gorbachev could not break with the Communist system and Bernie can not break with the Democratic party. ..."
"... I have known Hillary Clinton for 25 years. I remember her, as you do, as a great first lady who broke precedent in terms of the role that a first lady was supposed to play as she helped lead the fight for universal health care. ..."
"... I served with her in the United States Senate and know her as a fierce advocate for the rights of children, for women and for the disabled. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president and I am proud to stand with her tonight! ..."
"... Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life. ..."
PERIES: Let's turn to Sanders's strategy here. Now, Sanders is, of course,
asking people to support Hillary. And if you buy into the idea that she is the
lesser of two evils candidate, then we also have to look at Bernie's other strategy
– which is to vote as many people as we possibly can at various other levels
of the elections that are going on at congressional levels, Senate level, at
municipal levels. Is that the way to go, so that we can avoid some of these
choices we are offered?
HUDSON: Well, this is what I don't understand about Sanders's strategy. He
says we need a revolution. He's absolutely right. But then, everything he said
in terms of the election is about Trump. I can guarantee you that the revolution
isn't really about Trump. The way Sanders has described things, you have to
take over the Democratic Party and pry away the leadership, away from Wall Street,
away from the corporations.
Democrats pretend to be a party of the working class, a party of the people.
But it's teetering with Hillary as it's candidate. If ever there was a time
to split it, this was the year. But Bernie missed his chance. He knuckled under
and said okay, the election's going to be about Trump. Forget the revolution
that I've talked about. Forget reforming the Democratic Party, I'm sorry. Forget
that I said Hillary is not fit to be President. I'm sorry, she is fit to be
President. We've got to back her.
That means backing Wall Street, the neocons and the TPP. Shame on him!
He told his followers to think of pie in the sky in the decades it will take
to take over the Democratic Party from below, from school boards, etc.
Labor unions said this half a century ago. It didn't work. Bernie gave up
on everything to back the TPP candidate, the neocon candidate.
What on earth is revolution if it doesn't include either remove the rot
in the Democratic Party, the Wall Street control, or start another party? It
had to be one or the other. Here was his chance. I think he missed it.
PERIES: I think there's a lot of people out there that agree with
that analysis, Michael. He did miss his chance. Some people were suggesting
that he should walk and form his own party. Particularly how the party treated
him. But there is another choice out there. In fact, we at the Real News
is out there covering the Green Party election as we are speaking here, Michael.
Is that an option?
HUDSON: It would have been the only option for him. He had decided
that you can't really mount a third party, because it's so hard. The Democrats
and the Republicans together have made it almost impossible for a third party
to get registered in every state. To run in every state. To get just all of
the mechanics you need because of all the lawsuits against them. The Green Party
is the only party that had already solved that. Apart from the Libertarian Party.
So here you have the only possible third party he could have run on this
time, and he avoided it. I'm sure he must of thought about it. He was offered
the presidency on it. He could of used that and brought his revolution into
that party and then expanded it as a real alternative to both the Democrats
and the Republicans. Because the Republican Party is already split, by the fact
that the Tea Party's pretty much destroyed it. The oligarchs have joined
the Republicans and the Democrats are now seen to be the same party, called
the Democratic Party. Here was his chance to make an alternative.
I don't think there will be a chance like this again soon. I believe
Hillary's the greater evil, not Trump, because Trump is incompetent and doesn't
have the staff around him, or the political support that Hilary has. I
think Bernie missed his chance to take this party and develop it very quickly,
just like George Wallace could have done back in the 1960s when he had a chance.
I think Chris Hedges and other people have made this point with you. I have
no idea what Bernie's idea of a revolution is, if he's going to try to do it
within the Democratic Party that's just stamped on him again and again, you're
simply not going to have a revolution within the Democratic party.
I have known Hillary Clinton for 25 years. I remember her, as
you do, as a great first lady who broke precedent in terms of the role
that a first lady was supposed to play as she helped lead the fight
for universal health care.
I served with her in the United States Senate and know her as a fierce
advocate for the rights of children, for women and for the disabled.
Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president and I am proud
to stand with her tonight!
Sanders' campaign was premised on exactly the opposite. How can anyone
now take Bernie seriously?
Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful
human being I've ever known in my life.
Okay. I know this comment will bring forth much backlash, but I'm gonna
put it out there anyway since my 'give-a-shitter' was severely cracked over
4 yrs ago (when 2 sheriff's deputies evicted me from my home while I had
been current on my pymts when the bank foreclosed and the response from
EVERY govt agency I contacted told me to "hire a lawyer", which I couldn't
afford, with one costing much more than I owed on my home of 20 yrs). I
had bought my first house by the time I graduated h.s. and had owned one
ever since until now.
My 'give-a-shitter' completely shattered this year with the election,
so here goes:
So it seems we are offered 3 choices when we vote. Trump, Hillary or
Green.
To someone who is among the 8-10 MILLION (depending on whose figures
you believe) whose home was illegally taken from them by the banksters,
I would welcome a 4th choice since none of the 3 offered will improve my
life before I die.
The consensus seems to be that it'll take decades to create change through
voting.
I'm a divorced woman turning 65. I don't feel I have decades to wait,
while I am forced to live in a place that doesn't even have a flush toilet
because it's all I can afford. To someone my age with no degrees or special
skills, the job market is nonexistent, even if I lived in a big city (where
I couldn't afford the rent).
When I see reports of an increase in new homes being built, I'd love
to see a breakdown showing exactly how many of those homes will be primary
residences and how many are second (or third, or fourth) homes.
There are 4 new custom homes being built within a half mile of me.
None will be primary residences. All will be 'vacation' homes.
Yet if we're to believe the latest figures, "the housing market is improving!"
For whom?
Yes, I'm extremely disappointed that Bernie bailed on us. I doubt either
of us will live long enough to see the change required to change this govt
and save the planet with our current choices this election.
I fear the only thing that this election has given me was initially great
hope for my future, before being plunged into the darkness of the same ol',
same ol' as my only choices.
I was never radical or oppositional in my life but I would now welcome
a revolution. I don't see me living long enough to welcome that change by
voting. Especially with the blatant voter suppression and all else that
transpired this election.
While the govt and political oligarchs may fear Russia & ISIS, if they
met 8-10 million of us victims of the banksters, they would come to realize
real fear, from those within their homeland.
Most are horrified when I offer this view, saying I'd be thrown in prison.
Hmmm…considering that…I'd be fed, clothed, housed-and I'd have a flush toilet!
Gads, I'd love to see millions of us march on Washington & literally
throw those in power out of their seats onto the lawn, saying "enough is
enough"!
So I guess my question is, does anyone else feel as 'at the end of their
rope' as I do?
Can you even truly imagine being in my position and what you would do or
how you would feel?
Yes. I screamed, cried, and wrote Bernie's campaign before his endorsement
speech was even completed, expressing my disappointment, after foregoing
meals to send him my meager contributions.
My hopes were shattered and I'm growing impatient for change.
crittermom/Bullwinkle – here's one of the articles by Chris Hedges on
Bernie Sanders:
"Because the party is completely captive to corporate power," Hedges
said. "And Bernie has cut a Faustian deal with the Democrats. And that's
not even speculation. I did an event with him and Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein
and Kshama Sawant in New York the day before the Climate March. And Kshama
Sawant ,the Socialist City Councilwoman from Seattle and I asked Sanders
why he wanted to run as a Democrat. And he said - because I don't want to
end up like Nader."
"He didn't want to end up pushed out of the establishment," Hedges said.
"He wanted to keep his committee chairmanships, he wanted to keep his Senate
seat. And he knew the forms of retribution, punishment that would be visited
upon him if he applied his critique to the Democratic establishment. So
he won't."
Fair enough. I don't know enough about Nader to care. To me, it was just
the about-face that Bernie did, going from denouncing Hillary (albeit not
very strongly) to embracing her. I think if I had been one of his supporters
who cheered him on, sent him money, got my hopes raised that he would go
all the way, I would have been very disappointed. Almost like a tease.
I'd wanted Bernie to run as an Independent more than anything, but I
can understand him wanting to keep his Senate seat and chairs. Without them,
he has no power to bring change.
I had believed he had a good chance to win, whipping a big Bernie Bird to
both parties and changing things in my lifetime, running Independent.
I now realize just how completely corrupt our political system is. Far
worse than I ever could have imagined. Wow, have my eyes been opened!
I'm beginning to think this election may just come down to who has the
bigger thugs, Trump or HRC.
I agree with Hudson that HRC is the greater threat. I also agree
with him that Bernie makes no sense. What the hell did Bernie have to lose?
He could have accepted the prez nomination with the Greens. In fact, he
should have run third party from the git-go. By sucking up to the dems that
politically raped him, Bernie is exhibiting a variation of Stockholm syndrome.
Bernie's problem in the end is that he couldn't see that in order
to gain power in the Democratic Party (i.e., in order to dislodge the Clintons),
the Left might (probably would) have to lose an election.
The Democratic PoC (Party of Clinton) had to be shown as a party
that could not win an election without its left half. He wrongly saw the
powerless Trump as the greater threat, something that could only be done
if he still at least marginally trusted Hillary to ever keep her word on
anything. He will come to see that as his greatest mistake of all.
Bernie reminds me of Gorbachev. Both clearly saw what the problem
was with their respective societies, but still thought that things could
be fixed by changing their respective parties. Bernie it seems, like Gorbachev
before him, can not intellectually accept that effective reforms require
radical action on the existing power structures. Gorbachev could not break
with the Communist system and Bernie can not break with the Democratic party.
Bernie is too nice for his own good. He should have used the DNC machinations
as an excuse to go back on his promise to endorse. "I made that promise
on the assumption that we would all be acting in good faith. Sadly, that
has proved not to be the case."
But no, he's too much of a politician, or too nice, or has too much sense
of personal pride…or had his life and his family threatened if he didn't
toe the line (not that I'm foily). Whatever his motivations, we don't get
a "Get out of Responsibility Free" card just because one dude
made some mis-steps. If that's all it takes to derail us, we're
so, so screwed.
I also agree with Hudson and EndOfTheWorld that HRC is the greater threat
and that Sanders makes no sense.
Sure, the Dems probably threatened to kick him off of Congressional Committees
and to back a rival in Vermont.
So what! With his tenure and at his age, what's really to lose? If he
couldn't face off someone in his home state, it's probably time to retire
anyway. And it's not like he was ever in it for the money.
The best he gets now is mild tolerance from his masters. "Give me your
followers and lick my boots." What a coward, could have made history, now
he's a goat.
It's actually not so surprising given his long history of working within
the mainstream system, simply along its fringes. I think many may have been
falling into the '08 Obama trap of seeing what they wanted to see in him.
As a senator he's had plenty of opportunities to grandstand, gum up the
works, etc, and he really never does. Even his "filibuster" a few years
back wasn't all that disruptive.
EndOfTheWorld- totally agree with you. I just shake my head at Bernie.
Diametrically opposed to Clinton, he suddenly turns around and embraces
her! What? I will never understand that.
"America needs an ineffective president. That's much better than an effective
president that's going to go to war with Russia, that's going to push for
the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that's going to protect Wall Street, and
that's going to oppose neoliberal austerity."
He's right too. I am absolutely terrified of Hillary Clinton becoming
President. She strikes me as having psychopathic tendencies. I mean, just
look at the scandals she and Bill have been involved in, and then when she
gets caught, she lies, feigns ignorance, deflects, blames others, lies some
more. Power and money are her goals.
She has called Putin "Hitler", said she wants to expand NATO, and again
said she wants to take out Assad. Well, how is she going to do that when
Russia is in there? God, she is scary. I just hope that there's a big Clinton
Foundation email leak to finish her off.
Trump is out there, but at least he wants to try to negotiate peace (of
course, if war wasn't making so many people rich, it would be stopped tomorrow).
He's questioning why NATO is necessary, never mind its continual expansion,
and he wants to stop the TPP.
God, I'd be happy with even one of the above. Hillary will give us TPP,
more NATO, more war, and a cackle. Please, if anyone has some loose emails
hanging around, now is the time!
I have known Hillary Clinton for 25 years. I remember her, as
you do, as a great first lady who broke precedent in terms of the role
that a first lady was supposed to play as she helped lead the fight
for universal health care.
I served with her in the United States Senate and know her as a fierce
advocate for the rights of children, for women and for the disabled.
Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president and I am proud
to stand with her tonight!
Sanders' campaign was premised on exactly the opposite. How can anyone
now take Bernie seriously?
Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful
human being I've ever known in my life.
Butch – "…she helped lead the fight for universal health care." Did she
now? Here's a good quote on how she felt about universal health care:
"Hillary took the lead role in the White House's efforts to pass a corporate-friendly
version of "health reform." Along with the big insurance companies the Clintons
deceptively railed against, the "co-presidents" decided from the start to
exclude the popular health care alternative – single payer – from the national
health care "discussion." (Obama would do the same thing in 2009.)
"David, tell me something interesting." That was then First Lady Hillary
Clinton's weary and exasperated response – as head of the White House's
health reform initiative – to Harvard medical professor David Himmelstein
in 1993. Himmelstein was head of Physicians for a National Health Program.
He had just told her about the remarkable possibilities of a comprehensive,
single-payer "Canadian style" health plan, supported by more than two-thirds
of the U.S. public. Beyond backing by a citizen super-majority, Himmelstein
noted, single-payer would provide comprehensive coverage to the nation's
40 million uninsured while retaining free choice in doctor selection and
being certified by the Congressional Budget Office as "the most cost-effective
plan on offer."
"... Kessler points out that Clinton's protestations that the material under investigation was not marked classified is immaterial, writing, "The pertinent laws make no distinction between classified material that is marked as such or not. If material is classified and is handled improperly, that is a violation of criminal laws." ..."
"... The FBI investigation has been galvanized further by recent revelations involving emails sent by Abedin and Clinton aide Cheryl Mills, as well as the fact that State Department BlackBerry devices belonging to Abedin and Mills have likely been liquidated or sold. ..."
"... There's not an agent in the service who wants to be in Hillary's detail. If agents get the nod to go to her detail, that's considered a form of punishment among the agents. ..."
"... The most egregious example of Clinton's arrogance was evidenced in one particularly nasty incident when she was First Lady. One former agent related, "The first lady steps out of the limo, and another uniformed officer says to her, 'Good morning, ma'am.' Her response to him was 'F-- off.' I couldn't believe I heard it." ..."
Ronald Kessler, writing for The Daily Mail, testifies that Hillary Clinton and her
long-time aide Huma Abedin were detested by members of the Secret Service because
the two women arrogantly treated the Secret Service agents like dirt.
Kessler, the author of
The Secrets of the FBI and The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal
the Hidden Lives of the Presidents, dismisses claims by members
of the media that the current FBI investigation of Clinton is restricted to
a "security investigation." He attests that the investigation of Clinton means
that she violated criminal laws, as the FBI will not launch an investigation
unless laws have been violated. Kessler points out that Clinton's protestations
that the material under investigation was not marked classified is immaterial,
writing, "The pertinent laws make no distinction between classified material
that is marked as such or not. If material is classified and is handled improperly,
that is a violation of criminal laws."
The FBI investigation has been galvanized further by recent revelations
involving emails sent by
Abedin and Clinton aide
Cheryl Mills, as well as the fact that State Department BlackBerry devices
belonging to Abedin and Mills have likely been
liquidated or sold.
Some of the anecdotes involving the imperiousness and haughtiness of Clinton
and Abedin include:
In 2008, Abedin lost her way driving Chelsea Clinton to the February 2008
Democrat presidential debate in Los Angeles. One agent who tried to help Abedin
recalled, "She was belligerent and angry about being late for the event, no
appreciation for any of it, not a thank-you or anything. That was common for
her people to be rude."
Another Los Angeles imbroglio occurred when Abedin, who was not wearing a
pin certifying her identity, tried to bluster past a female Secret Service agent.
The agent, unaware of Abedin's identity, said, "You don't have the proper identification
to go beyond this point." Another agent told Kessler, "Huma basically tried
to throw her weight around. She tried to just force her way through and said
belligerently, 'Do you know who I am?''"
Kessler noted that Secret Service Agents are not required to carry luggage
for their protectees, but they will if they like them. One agent recollected
that, in Abedin's case, "The agents were just like, 'Hey, you're going to be
like that? Well, you get your own luggage to the car. Oh, and by the way, you
can carry the first lady's luggage to the car, too. She'd have four bags, and
we'd stand there and watch her and say, 'Oh, can we hold the door open for you?'"
The agent added, "When it's convenient for them, they'll utilize the service
for whatever favor they need, but otherwise, they look down upon the agents,
kind of like servants."
An agent who still works for the Secret Service asserted:
There's not an agent in the service who wants to be in Hillary's
detail. If agents get the nod to go to her detail, that's considered a form
of punishment among the agents. She's hard to work around, she's known
to snap at agents and yell at agents and dress them down to their faces,
and they just have to be humble and say, "Yes ma'am," and walk away. Agents
don't deserve that. They're there to do a job, they're there to protect
her, they'll lay their life down for hers, and there's absolutely no respect
for that. And that's why agents do not want to go to her detail.
The most egregious example of Clinton's arrogance was evidenced in one
particularly nasty incident when she was First Lady. One former agent related,
"The first lady steps out of the limo, and another uniformed officer says to
her, 'Good morning, ma'am.' Her response to him was 'F-- off.' I couldn't believe
I heard it."
Hillary was famous for wanting the Secret Service to be invisible; one former
agent said, "We were basically told, the Clintons don't want to see you, they
don't want to hear you, get out of the way. Hillary was walking down a hall,
you were supposed to hide behind drapes used as partitions. Supervisors would
tell us, 'Listen, stand behind this curtain. They're coming,' or 'Just stand
out of the way, don't be seen.'"
Hillary berated a White House electrician changing a light bulb, screaming
that he should have waited until the First Family was gone. Franette McCulloch,
the assistant White House pastry chief at the time, remembered, "He was a basket
case."
FBI agent Coy Copeland told Kessler that Hillary had a "standing rule that
no one spoke to her when she was going from one location to another."
One agent was abused by Hillary during the Kenneth Starr investigation of
the Whitewater scandal; he said, "Good morning, Mrs. Clinton," and she ranted,
"How dare you? You people are just destroying my husband… And where do you buy
your suits? Penney's?"
Weeks later, the agent confessed to Copeland, "I was wearing the best suit
I owned."
"You're living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58% of your youth is unemployed.
What the hell do you have to lose" by voting for Trump? the candidate asked. "At the end of four
years, I guarantee I will get over 95% of the African American vote."
The statement – highly unlikely given how poorly Republicans fare among black voters – continues
a theme the GOP presidential nominee has pounded this week as he courted African American voters.
He said Democrats take black voters for granted and have ignored their needs while governing cities
with large African American populations.
"America must reject the bigotry of Hillary Clinton, who sees communities of color only as votes,
not as human beings worthy of a better future," he said of his Democratic opponent.
... ... ...
Trump argued that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's policies on issues such as
immigration and refugee resettlement harm African Americans.
=== quote ===
It has recently become commonplace to argue that globalization can leave people behind, and that
this can have severe political consequences. Since 23 June, this has even become conventional
wisdom. While I welcome this belated acceptance of the blindingly obvious, I can't but help feeling
a little frustrated, since this has been self-evident for many years now. What we are seeing,
in part, is what happens to conventional wisdom when, all of a sudden, it finds that it can no
longer dismiss as irrelevant something that had been staring it in the face for a long time.
=== end of quote ==
This is not about "conventional wisdom". This is about the power of neoliberal propaganda,
the power of brainwashing and indoctrination of population via MSM, schools and universities.
And "all of a sudden, it finds that it can no longer dismiss as irrelevant something that had
been staring it in the face for a long time." also has nothing to do with conventional wisdom.
This is about the crisis of neoliberal ideology and especially Trotskyism part of it (neoliberalism
can be viewed as Trotskyism for the rich). The following integral elements of this ideology no
longer work well and are starting to cause the backlash:
1. High level of inequality as the explicit, desirable goal (which raises the productivity).
"Greed is good" or "Trickle down economics" -- redistribution of wealth up will create (via higher
productivity) enough scrapes for the lower classes, lifting all boats.
2. "Neoliberal rationality" when everything is a commodity that should be traded at specific
market. Human beings also are viewed as market actors with every field of activity seen as a specialized
market. Every entity (public or private, person, business, state) should be governed as a firm.
"Neoliberalism construes even non-wealth generating spheres-such as learning, dating, or exercising-in
market terms, submits them to market metrics, and governs them with market techniques and practices."
People are just " human capital" who must constantly tend to their own present and future market
value.
3. Extreme financialization or converting the economy into "casino capitalism" (under neoliberalism
everything is a marketable good, that is traded on explicit or implicit exchanges.
4. The idea of the global, USA dominated neoliberal empire and related "Permanent war for permanent
peace" -- wars for enlarging global neoliberal empire via crushing non-compliant regimes either
via color revolutions or via open military intervention.
5. Downgrading ordinary people to the role of commodity and creating three classes of citizens
(moochers, or Untermensch, "creative class" and top 0.1%), with the upper class (0.1% or "Masters
of the Universe") being above the law like the top level of "nomenklatura" was in the USSR.
6. "Downsizing" sovereignty of nations via international treaties like TPP, and making transnational
corporations the key political players, "the deciders" as W aptly said. Who decide about level
of immigration flows, minimal wages, tariffs, and other matters that previously were prerogative
of the state.
So after 36 (or more) years of dominance (which started with triumphal march of neoliberalism
in early 90th) the ideology entered "zombie state". That does not make it less dangerous but its
power over minds of the population started to evaporate. Far right ideologies now are filling
the vacuum, as with the discreditation of socialist ideology and decimation of "enlightened corporatism"
of the New Deal in the USA there is no other viable alternatives.
The same happened in late 1960th with the Communist ideology. It took 20 years for the USSR
to crash after that with the resulting splash of nationalism (which was the force that blow up
the USSR) and far right ideologies.
It remains to be seen whether the neoliberal US elite will fare better then Soviet nomenklatura
as challenges facing the USA are now far greater then challenges which the USSR faced at the time.
Among them is oil depletion which might be the final nail into the coffin of neoliberalism and,
specifically, the neoliberal globalization.
"... As the de facto test subjects for the inexorable media-fueled march of this ubiquitous global model, disparate groups worldwide have become the unwitting faces of revolt against inevitability. Anonymized behind the august facades of global financial institutions, neoliberal capitalism under TINA has produced political rage, confusion, panic and a worldwide search for scapegoats and alternatives across the political spectrum. ..."
"... McWorld cuts its destructive path under a self-promoting presumption of historic inevitability, because after more than four decades of the TINA narrative, the underlying rationale of market predestination is no longer economic. It is theological. ..."
"... Descriptions such as "free-market fundamentalism" and "market orthodoxy" are not mere figures of speech. They point to a deeper, technologically powered religious metamorphosis of capitalism that needs to be understood before a meaningful political response can be mounted. One does not have to be Christian, nor Catholic, to appreciate Pope Francis' warnings against the danger to Christian values from "a deified market" with its "globalization of indifference." The pope is explicitly acknowledging a new theology of capital whose core ethos runs counter to the values of both classical and religious humanism. ..."
"... Under the radically altered metaphysics of theologized capitalism, market outcomes are sacred and inevitable. Conversely, humanity and the natural world have been desacralized and defined as malleable forms of expendable and theoretically inexhaustible capital. Even life-sustaining ecosystems and individual human subjectivity are subsumed under a market rubric touted as historically preordained. ..."
"... Economic historian Karl Polanyi warned in 1944 that a false utopian belief in the ability of unfettered markets to produce naturally balanced outcomes would produce instead a dystopian "stark utopia." Today's political chaos represents a spontaneous and uncoordinated eruption of resistance against this encroaching sense of inevitable dystopianism. As Barber noted, what he refers to as "Jihad" is not a strictly Islamic phenomenon. It is localism, tribalism, particularism or sometimes classical republicanism taking a stand, often violently, acting as de facto social and political antibodies against the viral contagions of McWorld. ..."
"... The historically ordained march of theologized neoliberal capitalism depends for its continuation on a belief by individuals that they are powerless against putatively inevitable forces of market-driven globalization. ..."
"... One lesson nonetheless seems clear. The "power of the powerless" has been awakened globally. Whether this awakening will spark a movement towards equitable, ecologically sustainable democratic self-governance is an open question. ..."
In the wake of the June 23 Brexit vote, global media have bristled with headlines
declaring the Leave victory to be the latest sign of a historic
rejection of "globalization" by working-class voters on both sides of the
Atlantic. While there is an element of truth in this analysis, it misses the
deeper historical currents coursing beneath the dramatic headlines. If our politics
seem disordered at the moment, the blame lies not with globalization alone but
with the "There Is No Alternative" (TINA) philosophy of neoliberal market inevitability
that has driven it for nearly four decades.
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher introduced the TINA acronym to the
world in a 1980 policy speech that proclaimed
"There Is No Alternative" to a global neoliberal capitalist order. Thatcher's
vision for this new order was predicated on the market-as-god economic philosophy
she had distilled from the work of
Austrian School economists such as Friedrich Hayek and her own fundamentalist
Christian worldview. Western political life today has devolved into a series
of increasingly desperate and inchoate reactions against a sense of fatal historical
entrapment originally encoded in Thatcher's TINA credo of capitalist inevitability.
If this historical undercurrent is ignored, populist revolt will not produce
much-needed democratic reform. It will instead be exploited by fascistic nationalist
demagogues and turned into a dangerous search for political scapegoats.
The Rebellion Against Inevitability
Thatcher's formulation of neoliberal inevitability manifested itself in a
de facto policy cocktail of public sector budget cuts, privatization, financial
deregulation, tax cuts for the rich, globalization of capital flows and militarization
that were the hallmarks of her administration and a
template for the future of the world's developed economies. After the 1991
collapse of the Soviet Union, whose coercive state socialism represented capitalism's
last great power alternative, the underlying philosophy of economic inevitability
that informed TINA seemed like a prescient divination of cosmic design, with
giddy neoconservatives declaring the "end of history" and the triumph of
putatively democratic capitalism over all other historical alternatives.
Nearly four decades later, with neoliberalism having swept the globe in triumph
through a mix of technological innovation, exploitative financial engineering
and brute force, eclipsing its tenuous democratic underpinnings in the process,
disgraced British Prime Minister David Cameron maintained his devotion to TINA
right up to the moment of Brexit. In a 2013 speech delivered as his government
was preparing a
budget that proposed 40 percent cuts in social welfare spending , sweeping
privatization, wider war in Central Asia and continued austerity, he lamented
that "If there was another way, I would take it.
But there
is no alternative." Although they may want a change of makeup or clothes,
every G7 head of state heeds TINA's siren song of market inevitability.
As the de facto test subjects for the inexorable media-fueled march of
this ubiquitous global model, disparate groups worldwide have become the unwitting
faces of revolt against inevitability. Anonymized behind the august facades
of global financial institutions, neoliberal capitalism under TINA has produced
political rage, confusion, panic and a worldwide search for scapegoats and alternatives
across the political spectrum.
The members of ISIS have rejected the highest ideals of Islam in their search
for an alternative. Environmental activists attempt to counter the end-of-history
narrative at the heart of TINA with the scientific inevitability of global climate-induced
ecological catastrophe. Donald Trump offers a racial or foreign scapegoat for
every social and economic malady created by TINA, much like the far-right nationalist
parties emerging across Europe, while Bernie Sanders focuses on billionaires
and Wall Street. Leftist movements such as Podemos in Spain or Syriza in Greece
also embody attempted declarations of revolt against the narrative of inevitability,
as do the angry votes for Brexit in England and Wales.
Without judging or implying equality in the value of these varied expressions
of resistance, except to denounce the murderous ethos of ISIS and any other
call to violence or racism, it is clear that each offers seeming alternatives
to TINA's suffocating inevitability, and each attracts its own angry audience.
"Jihad" vs. "McWorld" and the New Theology of Capital
Benjamin Barber's 1992 essay and subsequent book, Jihad vs. McWorld
, is a better guide to the current politics of rage than the daily news
media. Barber describes a historic post-Soviet clash between the identity politics
of tribalism ("Jihad") and the forced financial and cultural integration of
corporate globalism ("McWorld").
McWorld is the financially integrated and omnipresent transnational order
of wired capitalism that has anointed itself the historic guardian of Western
civilization. It is viciously undemocratic in its pursuit of unrestricted profits
and violently punitive in response to any hint of economic apostasy. (See
Greece .) This new economic order offers the illusion of modernity with
its globally wired infrastructure and endless stream of consumerist spectacles,
but beneath the high-tech sheen, it is
spiritually empty , predicated on
permanent war ,
global poverty and is
destroying the biosphere .
McWorld cuts its destructive path under a self-promoting presumption
of historic inevitability, because after more than four decades of the TINA
narrative, the underlying rationale of market predestination is no longer economic.
It is theological. A historic transformation of market-based economic ideology
into theology underpins modern capitalism's instrumentalized view of human nature
and nature itself.
Descriptions such as
"free-market fundamentalism" and "market orthodoxy" are not mere figures
of speech. They point to a deeper, technologically powered religious metamorphosis
of capitalism that needs to be understood before a meaningful political response
can be mounted. One does not have to be Christian, nor Catholic, to appreciate
Pope Francis' warnings against the danger to Christian values from "a deified
market" with its "globalization of indifference." The pope is explicitly acknowledging
a new theology of capital whose core ethos runs counter to the values of both
classical and religious humanism.
Under the radically altered metaphysics of theologized capitalism, market
outcomes are sacred and inevitable. Conversely, humanity and the natural world
have been desacralized and defined as malleable forms of expendable and theoretically
inexhaustible capital. Even life-sustaining ecosystems and individual human
subjectivity are subsumed under a market rubric touted as historically preordained.
This is a crucial difference between capitalism today and capitalism even
50 years ago that is not only theological but apocalyptic in its refusal to
acknowledge limits. It has produced a global, social and economic order that
is increasingly feudal, while also connected via digital technologies.
Economic historian
Karl Polanyi warned in 1944 that a false utopian belief in the ability of
unfettered markets to produce naturally balanced outcomes would produce instead
a dystopian "stark utopia." Today's political chaos represents a spontaneous
and uncoordinated eruption of resistance against this encroaching sense of inevitable
dystopianism. As Barber noted, what he refers to as "Jihad" is not a strictly
Islamic phenomenon. It is localism, tribalism, particularism or sometimes classical
republicanism taking a stand, often violently, acting as de facto social and
political antibodies against the viral contagions of McWorld.
Pessimistic Optimism
The historically ordained march of theologized neoliberal capitalism
depends for its continuation on a belief by individuals that they are powerless
against putatively inevitable forces of market-driven globalization. It
is too early to know where the widely divergent outbreaks of resistance on display
in 2016 will lead, not least because they are uncoordinated, often self-contradictory
or profoundly undemocratic, and are arising in a maelstrom of confusion about
core causation.
One lesson nonetheless seems clear. The
"power of the powerless" has been awakened globally. Whether this awakening
will spark a movement towards equitable, ecologically sustainable democratic
self-governance is an open question. Many of today's leading political
theorists caution against an
outdated Enlightenment belief in progress and extol the
virtues of philosophic pessimism as a hedge against historically groundless
optimism. Amid today's fevered populist excitements triggered by a failure of
utopian faith in market inevitability, such cautionary thinking seems like sound
political advice. Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without
permission .
Michael Meurer is the founder of Meurer Education, a project offering classes
on the US political system in Latin American universities while partnering with
local education micro-projects to assist them with publicity and funding. Michael
is also president of Meurer Group & Associates, a strategic consultancy with
offices in Los Angeles and Denver.
"... As part of the murder process of Muammar Gaddafi, he was sodomized with a bayonet. Out of respect for any children reading this blog, I'm not going to spell that out any further. What was Hillary's RECORDED reaction? ..."
"... "We came, we saw, he died," followed by a laugh and gleeful hand clap. ..."
"... Finally, using Richard Cohen as an source for anything is beyond the pale. This shill for Israel was all-in for the destruction of Iraq. He was a big fan of the destruction of Libya. He's a huge booster for the destruction of Syria. And he most definitely wants somebody in the White House who will finish off Iran. That person is Hillary Clinton. ..."
As part of the murder process of Muammar Gaddafi, he was sodomized with a
bayonet. Out of respect for any children reading this blog, I'm not going to
spell that out any further. What was Hillary's RECORDED reaction?
"We came, we saw, he died," followed by a laugh and gleeful hand clap.
Under my definiton of "sociopath", Hillary Clinton qualifies on that one
alone. Of course there are others….
*** My father, too, turned bribes into gifts. ***
I know some saintly people myself, and have no difficulty accepting this
claim at face value. Stretching the analogy to the Clinton Foundation is, in
my opinion, a stretch too far. If Hillary was as pure as the driven snow, why
did she work so hard to ensure her communications were beyond the reach of the
Freedom Of Information Act? Why has the State department refused to release
her meeting schedules until after the election?
Finally, using Richard Cohen as an source for anything is beyond the pale.
This shill for Israel was all-in for the destruction of Iraq. He was a big fan
of the destruction of Libya. He's a huge booster for the destruction of Syria.
And he most definitely wants somebody in the White House who will finish off
Iran. That person is Hillary Clinton.
"... This who Hillary Clinton is. It's all about money and access. You know I'm not a Trump supporter, but I absolutely can see why people would vote for him to throw a rock through these people's collective window. ..."
What do Cher, Leonardo DiCaprio, Magic Johnson and Jimmy Buffett all
have in common? They're with her.
Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine, buoyed by rising poll numbers and a sputtering
Donald Trump campaign, are using August to raise tens of millions of dollars
in cash before the fall sprint.
Clinton will embark on a three-day, eight-fundraiser trip to California
next week, headlining a mix of star studded events with tech icons, athletes
and movie stars.
On Monday, August 22, Clinton will headline a top dollar fundraiser at
the Beverly Hills home of Cheryl and Haim Saban, the billionaire owner of
Univision and one of Clinton's wealthiest backers.
Clinton and her aides will then head down the street to another fundraiser
at the Beverly Hills home of Hall of Fame basketball player and businessman
Magic Johnson. That event, which according to Clinton donors in California
is expected to raise millions of dollars, will also be hosted by Willow
Bay and Bob Iger, the CEO of The Walt Disney Company, and Marilyn and Jeffrey
Katzenberg, the CEO of DreamWorks Animation.
The next day, Clinton will headline two events in Laguna Beach, including
a $33,400-per-person event hosted by Stephen Cloobeck, the CEO of Diamond
Resorts.
Later in the day, according to invites obtained by CNN, Clinton will
headline a fundraiser at the home of Leonardo DiCaprio, the Oscar-winning
actor known for his roles in Titanic, The Revenant and The Wolf of Wall
Street.
Scooter Braun, the agent that discovered Justin Beiber, and Tobey Maguire,
the actor known for his roles in the Spider-Man series, will also host the
star-studded event.
Sounds like fun for those celebrities and rich people, flooding the Democratic
Party nominee's coffers with campaign cash. Meanwhile, here in flood-ravaged
Louisiana, preliminary estimates claim that as many as 110,000 people lost their
homes (or at least suffered enormous damage to them),
suffering nearly $21 billion in losses.
Obama golfs with celebrities, Hillary parties with them and takes their cash.
This should not be forgotten. These are the oligarchs who rule us. It's despicable.
Do not believe for one second that there's any reason why Hillary Clinton cannot
get here. Donald Trump got here, spent a few hours, then left. So could she,
if she wanted to. But she would di$appoint her donor$.
This who Hillary Clinton is. It's all about money and access. You know
I'm not a Trump supporter, but I absolutely can see why people would vote for
him to throw a rock through these people's collective window.
You might want to study up. (Actually, that could be said to you on many,
many issues.) Perjury is lying on a point that is "material" to the case.
The judge in the Paula Jones lawsuit ruled that Bill's relationship with
Monica was not material to it, hence, no perjury.
But yeah, if it had been perjury, of course it's every bit as
bad as a president ordering federal agencies to break the law and obstruct
a criminal investigation in order to cover up his subordinates' illegal
eavesdropping on political opponents. Yep. Sure is.
Re: Bill Clinton was clearly guilty of both. That, not 'sex with an intern'
is why he was impeached.
In what way was Bill Clinton guilty of "Obstruction of justice"? I am
unaware of any criminal investigation he interfered in.
Also, Clinton was not even guilty of perjury in a the purely legal sense
of the term, since the lies he told (yes, they were lies) were not germane
to the matter on which he was testifying. A perjury charge requires that
to be true.
Sorry, should have acknowledged @Chris 1 on this as well:
And the denial continues in denying that there's anything anyone
can do, so let's do nothing. If you lived your moral life this way you'd
be a wreck.
It's a classic example of the "Futility" argument. Seriously, Albert
O. Hirschman's book explains a vast amount of conservative rhetoric. Here's
the Amazon link:
Another of his books, Exit, Voice and Loyalty (see further link
on that Amazon page), is also important and could helpfully explain, for
instance, different responses to the Catholic abuse scandals.
I agree that "political pundits, talk radio hosts, blog writers and blog
commenters who are complaining about a lack of tweets and visits" are "pathetic,
whiny, insecure, self-absorbed and a host of other bad things." I also agree
that nobody should be questioning the motives of people who are in the midst
of mucking out their homes, no matter what they are saying.
If President Obama is smart, he will give very little in the way of speeches,
or impromptu talks. He will simply ask as many people as possible, what
do you need, what is still lacking, what can we do to help you? If he talks
to the press, he will begin by saying "There are times when a visit from
the President of the United States is not going to make things better, and
might even distract from essential work. I came as soon as people on the
ground told me it would be acceptable, and would do more good than harm."
The perjury for which Clinton was had nothing to do with the Paula Jones
suit (a civil case in a state court, presided over by a former Clinton student).
He was impeached for lying to a federal grand jury. Same goes for the obstruction
of justice charge, nothing to do with Paula Jones or civil cases, everything
to do with the Federal investigation of Clinton's doings.
I was out of the country, in Bosnia in fact, at the time, so my ignorance
is excusable. My failing to check up the 'facts' presented by a Lefty isn't.
"... It is fascinating that younger US neoliberals (e.g. Matthew Yglesias) are totally sold on the the positives of 'metrics', statistics, testing, etc, to the point where they ignore all the negatives of those approaches, but absolutely and utterly loathe being tracked, having the performance of their preferred policies and predictions analyzed, and called out on the failures thereof. Is sure seems to me that the campaign to quash the use of the US, Charles Peters version of neoliberal is part of the effort to avoid accountability for their actions. ..."
"... If "conservative" is to be a third way to the opposition of "reactionary" and "revolutionary", the "liberals" are a species of conservative - like all conservatives, seeking to preserve the existing order as far as this is possible, but appealing to reason, reason's high principles, and a practical politics of incremental reform and "inevitable" progress. The liberals disguise their affection for social and political hierarchy as a preference for "meritocracy" and place their faith in the powers of Reason and Science to discover Truth. ..."
"... Liberalism adopts nationalism as a vehicle for popular mobilization which conservatives can share and as an ideal of governance, the self-governing democratic nation-state with a liberal constitution. ..."
"... It wasn't Liberalism Triumphant that faced a challenge from fascism; it was the abject failures of Liberalism that created fascism. ..."
"... he Liberal projects to create liberal democratic nation-states ran aground in Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia between 1870 and 1910 and instead of gradual reform of the old order, Europe experienced catastrophic collapse, and Liberalism was ill-prepared to devise working governments and politics in the crisis that followed. ..."
"... What is called neoliberalism in American politics has a lot to do with New Deal liberalism running out of steam and simply not having a program after 1970. Some of that is circumstantial in a way - the first Oil Crisis, the breakup of Bretton Woods - but even those circumstances were arguably results of the earlier program's success. ..."
= = = I am actually honestly suggesting an intellectual exercise which, I think, might
be worth your (extremely valuable) time. I propose you rewrite this post without using the
word "neoliberalism" (or a synonym). = = =
It is fascinating that younger US neoliberals (e.g. Matthew Yglesias) are totally sold
on the the positives of 'metrics', statistics, testing, etc, to the point where they ignore all
the negatives of those approaches, but absolutely and utterly loathe being tracked, having the
performance of their preferred policies and predictions analyzed, and called out on the failures
thereof. Is sure seems to me that the campaign to quash the use of the US, Charles Peters version
of neoliberal is part of the effort to avoid accountability for their actions.
bruce wilder 09.03.16 at 7:47 pm
In the politics of antonyms, I suppose we are always going get ourselves confused.
Perhaps because of American usage of the root, liberal, to mean the mildly social democratic
New Deal liberal Democrat, with its traces of American Populism and American Progressivism, we
seem to want "liberal" to designate an ideology of the left, or at least, the centre-left. Maybe,
it is the tendency of historical liberals to embrace idealistic high principles in their contest
with reactionary claims for hereditary aristocracy and arbitrary authority.
If "conservative" is to be a third way to the opposition of "reactionary" and "revolutionary",
the "liberals" are a species of conservative - like all conservatives, seeking to preserve the
existing order as far as this is possible, but appealing to reason, reason's high principles,
and a practical politics of incremental reform and "inevitable" progress. The liberals disguise
their affection for social and political hierarchy as a preference for "meritocracy" and place
their faith in the powers of Reason and Science to discover Truth.
All of that is by way of preface to a thumbnail history of modern political ideology different
from the one presented by Will G-R.
Modern political ideology is a by-product of the Enlightenment and the resulting imperative
to find a basis and purpose for political Authority in Reason, and apply Reason to the design
of political and social institutions.
Liberalism doesn't so much defeat conservatism as invent conservatism as an alternative to
purely reactionary politics. The notion of an "inevitable progress" allows liberals to reconcile
both themselves and their reactionary opponents to practical reality with incremental reform.
Political paranoia and rhetoric are turned toward thinking about constitutional design.
Mobilizing mass support and channeling popular discontents is a source of deep ambivalence
and risk for liberals and liberalism. Popular democracy can quickly become noisy and vulgar, the
proliferation of ideas and conflicting interests paralyzing. Inventing a conservatism that competes
with the liberals, but also mobilizes mass support and channels popular discontent, puts bounds
on "normal" politics.
Liberalism adopts nationalism as a vehicle for popular mobilization which conservatives
can share and as an ideal of governance, the self-governing democratic nation-state with a liberal
constitution.
I would put the challenges to liberalism from the left and right well behind in precedence
the critical failures and near-failures of liberalism in actual governance.
Liberalism failed abjectly to bring about a constitutional monarchy in France during the first
decade of the French Revolution, or a functioning deliberative assembly or religious toleration
or even to resolve the problems of state finance and legal administration that destroyed the ancient
regime. In the end, the solution was found in Napoleon Bonaparte, a precedent that would arguably
inspire the fascism of dictators and vulgar nationalism, beginning with Napoleon's nephew fifty
years later.
It wasn't Liberalism Triumphant that faced a challenge from fascism; it was the abject
failures of Liberalism that created fascism. And, this was especially true in the wake of
World War I, which many have argued persuasively was Liberalism's greatest and most catastrophic
failure. T he Liberal projects to create liberal democratic nation-states ran aground in Germany,
Austria-Hungary and Russia between 1870 and 1910 and instead of gradual reform of the old order,
Europe experienced catastrophic collapse, and Liberalism was ill-prepared to devise working governments
and politics in the crisis that followed.
If liberals invented conservatism, it seems to me that would-be socialists were at pains to
re-invent liberalism, and they did it several times going in radically different directions, but
always from a base in the basic liberal idea of rationalizing authority. A significant thread
in socialism adopted incremental progress and socialist ideas became liberal and conservative
means for taming popular discontent in an increasingly urban society.
Where and when liberalism actually was triumphant, both the range of liberal views and the
range of interests presenting a liberal front became too broad for a stable politics. Think about
the Liberal Party landslide of 1906, which eventually gave rise to the Labour Party in its role
of Left Party in the British two-party system. Or FDR's landslide in 1936, which played a pivotal
role in the march of the Southern Democrats to the Right. Or the emergence of the Liberal Consensus
in American politics in the late 1950s.
What is called neoliberalism in American politics has a lot to do with New Deal liberalism
running out of steam and simply not having a program after 1970. Some of that is circumstantial
in a way - the first Oil Crisis, the breakup of Bretton Woods - but even those circumstances were
arguably results of the earlier program's success.
It is almost a rote reaction to talk about the Republican's Southern Strategy, but they didn't
invent the crime wave that enveloped the country in the late 1960s or the riots that followed
the enactment of Civil Rights legislation.
Will G-R's "As soon [as] liberalism feels it can plausibly claim to have . . .overcome the
socialist and fascist challenges [liberals] are empowered to act as if liberalism's adaptive response
to the socialist and fascist challenges was never necessary in the first place - bye bye welfare
state, hello neoliberalism" doesn't seem to me to concede enough to Clinton and Blair entrepreneurially
inventing a popular politics in response to Reagan and Thatcher, after the actual failures
of an older model of social democratic programs and populist politics on its behalf.
I write more about this
over at
my blog (in a somewhat different context).
John Quiggin 09.04.16 at 6:57 am
RW @113 I wrote a whole book using "market liberalism" instead of "neoliberalism", since I wanted
a term more neutral and less pejorative. So, going back to "neoliberalism" was something I did
advisedly. You say
The word is abstract and has completely different meanings west and east of the Atlantic. In
the USA it refers to weak tea center leftisms. In Europe to hard core liberalism.
Well, yes. That's precisely why I've used the term, introduced the hard/soft distinction and explained
the history. The core point is that, despite their differences soft (US meaning) and hard (European
meaning) neoliberalism share crucial aspects of their history, theoretical foundations and policy
implications.
=== quote ===
Neoliberalism is an ideology of market fundamentalism based on deception that promotes "markets"
as a universal solution for all human problems in order to hide establishment of neo-fascist regime
(pioneered by Pinochet in Chile), where militarized government functions are limited to external
aggression and suppression of population within the country (often via establishing National Security
State using "terrorists" threat) and corporations are the only "first class" political players.
Like in classic corporatism, corporations are above the law and can rule the country as they see
fit, using political parties for the legitimatization of the regime.
The key difference with classic fascism is that instead of political dominance of the corporations
of particular nation, those corporations are now transnational and states, including the USA are
just enforcers of the will of transnational corporations on the population. Economic or "soft"
methods of enforcement such as debt slavery and control of employment are preferred to brute force
enforcement. At the same time police is militarized and due to technological achievements the
level of surveillance surpasses the level achieved in Eastern Germany.
Like with bolshevism in the USSR before, high, almost always hysterical, level of neoliberal
propaganda and scapegoating of "enemies" as well as the concept of "permanent war for permanent
peace" are used to suppress the protest against the wealth redistribution up (which is the key
principle of neoliberalism) and to decimate organized labor.
Multiple definitions of neoliberalism were proposed. Three major attempts to define this social
system were made:
Definitions stemming from the concept of "casino capitalism"
Definitions stemming from the concept of Washington consensus
Definitions stemming from the idea that Neoliberalism is Trotskyism for the rich. This
idea has two major variations:
Definitions stemming from Professor Wendy Brown's concept of Neoliberal rationality
which developed the concept of Inverted Totalitarism of Sheldon Wolin
Definitions stemming Professor Sheldon Wolin's older concept of Inverted Totalitarism
- "the heavy statism forging the novel fusions of economic with political power that he
took to be poisoning democracy at its root." (Sheldon Wolin and Inverted Totalitarianism
Common Dreams )
The first two are the most popular.
likbez 09.04.16 at 5:03 pm
bruce,
@117
Thanks for your post. It contains several important ideas:
"It wasn't Liberalism Triumphant that faced a challenge from fascism; it was the abject failures
of Liberalism that created fascism."
"What is called neoliberalism in American politics has a lot to do with New Deal liberalism
running out of steam and simply not having a program after 1970. Some of that is circumstantial
in a way - the first Oil Crisis, the breakup of Bretton Woods - but even those circumstances were
arguably results of the earlier program's success."
Moreover as Will G-R noted:
"neoliberalism will be every bit the wellspring of fascism that old-school liberalism was."
Failure of neoliberalism revives neofascist, far right movements. That's what the rise of far
right movements in Europe now demonstrates pretty vividly.
If you are still on the fence in the Democratic primary, or still
persuadable, you should know that Vox interviewed a number of political
scientists about the electability of Bernie Sanders, and got responses
ranging from warnings about a steep uphill climb to predictions of a
McGovern-Nixon style blowout defeat. …
On electability, by all means consider the evidence and reach your
own conclusions. But do consider the evidence - don't decide what you
want to believe and then make up justifications. The stakes are too
high for that, and history will not forgive you.
Well ok then obviously Putin is now hacking the Reuters polls now, too.
From the always apocalyptic ZeroHedge:
Trump's rise in popularity began when he started reaching out
to the black and hispanic communities and Hillary's slide began as more
and more disturbing facts were exposed of Hillary's time as Secretary of
State.
– "Murdoch told Ailes he wanted Fox's debate moderators - Kelly, Bret
Baier, and Chris Wallace - to hammer Trump on a variety of issues. Ailes,
understanding the GOP electorate better than most at that point, likely
thought it was a bad idea. "Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee,"
Ailes told a colleague around this time. But he didn't fight Murdoch on
the debate directive.
On the night of August 6, in front of 24 million people, the Fox moderators
peppered Trump with harder-hitting questions." [Roger's Angels]
Fascinating article, including tactics on taking down the powerful. "It
took 15 days to end the mighty 20-year reign of Roger Ailes at Fox News,
one of the most storied runs in media and political history."
"Making things look worse for Ailes, three days after Carlson's suit
was filed, New York published the accounts of six other women who claimed
to have been harassed by Ailes over the course of three decades. "
6 More Women Allege That Roger Ailes Sexually Harassed Them
So, who had that story cooking and ready to serve? Call me a conspiracy
nut, but one of Hillary's big problems is (or was) her husband's womanizing.
Now right wingers are worse!
My comment is in moderation limbo – how similar to Catholic limbo, I
have no idea…
Anyway, the point I always make is that Murdoch is not ideologically and/or
repub conservative – other than he believes he should be able to make as
much money as possible. His interest in Ailes was always primarily the ability
of Ailes to bring in great profits for Fox.
"... The prospect of Trump TV is a source of real anxiety for some inside Fox.
The candidate took the wedge issues that Ailes used to build a loyal audience at
Fox News - especially race and class - and used them to stoke barely containable
outrage among a downtrodden faction of conservatives. ..."
Also, Ailes has made the Murdochs a lot of money - Fox News generates
more than $1 billion annually, which accounts for 20 percent of 21st Century
Fox's profits - and Rupert worried that perhaps only Ailes could run the
network so successfully. "Rupert is in the clouds; he didn't appreciate
how toxic an environment it was that Ailes created," a person close to the
Murdochs said. "If the money hadn't been so good, then maybe they would
have asked questions."
…
What NBC considered fireable offenses, Murdoch saw as competitive advantages.
He hired Ailes to help achieve a goal that had eluded Murdoch for a decade:
busting CNN's cable news monopoly. Back in the mid-'90s, no one thought
it could be done. "I'm looking forward to squishing Rupert like a bug,"
CNN founder Ted Turner boasted at an industry conference. But Ailes recognized
how key wedge issues - race, religion, class - could turn conservative voters
into loyal viewers.
…. The prospect of Trump TV is a source of real anxiety for some inside
Fox. The candidate took the wedge issues that Ailes used to build a loyal
audience at Fox News - especially race and class - and used them to stoke
barely containable outrage among a downtrodden faction of conservatives.
Where that outrage is channeled after the election - assuming, as polls
now suggest, Trump doesn't make it to the White House - is a big question
for the Republican Party and for Fox News. Trump had a complicated relationship
with Fox even when his good friend Ailes was in charge; without Ailes, it's
plausible that he will try to monetize the movement he has galvanized in
competition with the network rather than in concert with it. Trump's appointment
of Steve Bannon, chairman of Breitbart, the digital-media upstart that has
by some measures already surpassed Fox News as the locus of conservative
energy, to run his campaign suggests a new right-wing news network of some
kind is a real possibility. One prominent media executive told me that if
Trump loses, Fox will need to try to damage him in the eyes of its viewers
by blaming him for the defeat.
=======================================
Just to reiterate a point I have made time and again, with Murdoch it is
all about the money.
It will indeed be ironic if Fox news collapses because the ultimate outcome
of their brand of "conservatism" failed to become president.
I can see the new "network" questioning whether that Australian, an internationalist,
really wants whats best for America…
Years ago, Seinfeld royalties freed Steve Bannon, the new CEO of Trump's
presidential campaign, from needing to work for a living, allowing him to throw
himself into extremist and racist alt-right politics.
Working in the film business, I briefly met the Donald Trump Republican presidential
campaign's new CEO, Steve Bannon, during the 1990s when he was a Hollywood investment
banker. As one producer whom Bannon helped raise capital for told me, even back
then he was an angry, racist, egregiously aggressive, and inappropriately temperamental
character.
Bannon was also whip smart with a sophisticated understanding of how the
media works.
Inside the liberal bubble, Democrats may be taking Bannon's appointment to
help run Trump's campaign as a something of a joke. But, at their peril, they
underestimate Bannon's ability to harm Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential
nominee.
Bannon was one of the early Harvard MBA-type financial pirates who realized
that Wall Street money could be tapped to finance film and television, often
with disastrous results for the investors but with great results for the Hollywood
studios and the financial engineers like Bannon who brokered the deals.
In the late '80s-early '90s, Wall Street discovered that intellectual property
like movies and television and the companies that owned them could be bought,
sold and traded just like hard assets such as real estate and commodities. Bannon
engineered some of those transactions, first as a specialist at Goldman Sachs,
then at his own boutique investment bank Bannon & Co., and briefly in partnership
with a volatile manager Jeff Kwatinetz (whose first claim to fame was discovering
the heavy metal band Korn and managing The Backstreet Boys).
Bannon was tough and merciless. It was Bannon who personally stuck the shiv
in the heart of former superagent and Disney President Michael Ovitz, effectively
ending the career of the man who had been known as the most powerful person
in Hollywood.
After being fired by Disney, Ovitz set out to create a powerful new entertainment
company called the American Management Group, with clients like Leonardo DiCaprio
and Cameron Diaz, in which Ovitz invested over $100 million of his own money.
(I remember visiting AMG's new offices, the most expensive and lavish in Beverly
Hills, with millions of dollars in art by the likes of Mark Rothko and Jasper
Johns adorning the walls.) But AMG was an abject failure, bleeding millions
of dollars a month, while Ovitz desperately sought a buyer. Finally, the only
available buyer was Kwatinetz and Bannon.
According to
Vanity Fair , Bannon went alone to see Ovitz and offered him $5 million,
none in cash. After a moment of silence, Ovitz told Bannon, "If I didn't know
you personally, I'd throw you out of the room." But out of options, Ovitz ended
up selling to Kwatinetz and Bannon's company, effectively ending Ovitz's legendary
Hollywood career. (Remember that, Hillary.)
Bannon's smartest (or luckiest) deal was brokering the sale of Rob Reiner's
company, Castle Rock Entertainment, to Ted Turner. In lieu of part of its brokerage
fee, Bannon & Co. agreed to take a piece of the future syndication revenues
from five TV shows, one of which turned out to be "Seinfeld." The rest is history.
The Seinfeld royalties freed Bannon (with a
reported
net worth of $41 million) from needing to work for a living, allowing him
to try his hand at producing (including the Sean Penn-directed "Indian Runner"
and a number of right-wing documentaries) and then to throw himself into extremist
and racist alt-right politics.
He invested $1 million in a laudatory film about Sarah Palin and became a
close confidante. He then attached himself to Andrew Breitbart and took over
Breitbart News after Andrew Breitbart's sudden death at 43, moving the already
far-right website closer to the openly white nationalist alt-right. There he
became a major advocate for Trump before being tapped to help run his campaign.
But Bannon's real danger doesn't come so much from his work with Breitbart
News, which plays mostly to the angry, racist white base. It comes more from
the Bannon-funded Government Accountability Institute, a research institute
staffed with some very smart and talented investigative journalists, data scientists
and lawyers.
GAI's staff does intensive and deep investigative research digging up hard-to-find,
but well-documented dirt on major politicians and then feeding it to the mainstream
media to disseminate to the general public.
Among other things, its staff has developed protocols to access the so-called
"deep web," which consists of a lot of old or useless information and information
in foreign languages which don't show up in traditional web searches, but often
contains otherwise undiscoverable and sometimes scandalous information which
Bannon then feeds to the mainstream media.
For example, Bannon is responsible for uncovering former liberal New York
congressman Anthony Weiner (husband of Hillary Clinton's personal aide Huma
Abedin) tweeting photos of his crotch to various women. Bannon hired trackers
to follow Weiner's Twitter account 24 hours a day until they eventually uncovered
the infamous crotch shots. They released them to the mass media, effectively
ending Weiner's political career. (Remember that, Hillary.)
Bannon's mantra for GAI is "Facts get shares, opinions get shrugs." GAI's
strategy is to feed damaging, fact-based stories that will get headlines in
the mainstream media and change mass perceptions. According to
Bloomberg , "GAI has collaborated with such mainstream media outlets as
Newsweek, ABC News, and CBS's "60 Minutes" on stories ranging from insider trading
in Congress to credit card fraud among presidential campaigns. It's essentially
a mining operation for political scoops."
One of Bannon's key insights is that economic imperatives have caused mainstream
media outlets to drastically cut back budgets for investigative reporting. "The
modern economics of the newsroom don't support big investigative reporting staffs,"
says Bannon. "You wouldn't get a Watergate, a Pentagon Papers today, because
nobody can afford to let a reporter spend seven months on a story. We can. We're
working as a support function."
So GAI's strategy is to spend weeks and months doing the fact-based research
that investigative reporters in the mainstream media no longer have the resources
to do, creating a compelling story line, and then feeding the story to investigative
reporters who, whatever their personal political views, are anxious in their
professional capacity to jump on. As a key GAI staffer says, "We're not going
public until we have something so tantalizing that any editor at a serious publication
would be an idiot to pass it up and give a competitor a scoop."
It's likely no accident that in the week since Bannon officially joined the
Trump campaign, media attention has shifted from focusing primarily on Trump's
gaffes to potential corrupting contributions to the Clinton Foundation in exchange
for access to Secretary of State Clinton.
GAI's biggest, and most effective project has been to uncover the nexus between
Bill and Hillary's paid speeches, contributions to the Clinton Foundation by
corrupt oligarchs and billionaires, and access to the State Department by donors.
The research culminated in the book "Clinton Cash" by Peter Schweitzer, president
of GAI, and published by mainstream publisher Harpers.
The back cover of "Clinton Cash" summarizes its premise:
"The Clintons typically blur the lines between politics, philanthropy,
and business. Consider the following: Bill flies into a Third World country
where he spends time in the company of a businessman. A deal is struck.
Soon after, enormous contributions are made to the Clinton Foundation, while
Bill is commissioned to deliver a series of highly paid speeches. Some of
these deals require approval or review by the US government and fall within
the purview of a powerful senator and secretary of state. Often the people
involved are characters of the kind that an American ex-president (or the
spouse of a sitting senator, secretary of state, or presidential candidate)
should have nothing to do with."
Bannon and Schweitzer have so far failed to prove any explicit quid pro quo.
But they're highly successful at making the nexus between the Clinton Foundation,
Bill and Hillary Clinton's paid speeches, and special access for donors feel
dirty and unseemly.
Before and after its publication, "Clinton Cash" got considerable play in
the mainstream media.
The New York Times ran a front-page story with the headline, "Cash Flowed
to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal," drawing on research from "Clinton
Cash."
In an
op-ed piece in The Washington Post, Larry Lessig, Harvard Law professor
and progressive crusader against money in politics concluded, "On any fair reading,
the pattern that Schweitzer has charged is corruption." And it seems that Bannon
and Schweitzer have more damaging research on the Clintons that they will drip
out through the campaign. Schweitzer has
warned that more emails are coming showing Clinton's State Department doing
favors for foreign oligarchs.
Bannon's strategy may not be enough to win the White House for Trump. But
it will almost certainly do further damage to Clinton. Voters already think
Clinton is less trustworthy than Trump. According to a recent
Quinnipiac poll, 53 percent of likely voters say Trump is not honest (with
42 percent saying he is honest). But a huge 66 percent of voters say Clinton
is not honest, compared to 29 percent who say she is.
Bannon's work for Trump could drive Clinton's honesty score even lower. Clinton's
core strategy has been to disqualify Trump as a potential president and commander-in-chief
among a majority of voters. Bannon's strategy is to do the same for Clinton.
Faced with a choice between two presidential candidates whom a large swath
of voters find untrustworthy and distasteful, Trump's outrageousness may still
enable Clinton to grind out a victory from a sullen electorate. But it's going
to get even uglier. And even if Clinton wins, popular distrust could harm her
ability to govern.
In that context, it would be a huge mistake for Democrats and the Clinton
campaign to underestimate Steve Bannon. This piece was reprinted by Truthout
with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission
or license from the source.
Miles Mogulescu Miles Mogulescu is an entertainment attorney/business affairs
executive, producer, political activist and writer. Professionally, he is a
former senior vice president at MGM. He has been a lifelong progressive since
the age of 12 when his father helped raise money for Dr. Martin Luther King,
who was a guest in his home several times. More recently, he organized a program
on single-payer health care at the Take Back America Conference, a two-day conference
on Money in Politics at UCLA Law School, and "Made in Cuba," the largest exhibition
of contemporary Cuban art ever held in Southern California. He co-produced and
co-directed Union Maids , a film about three women union organizers in Chicago
in the 1930s and '40s, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Feature
Documentary.
"... Is Donald Trump really as stupid as the press seems to think? And if not, how do we explain the press's version of countless Trumpian controversies lately? ..."
"... What is not in doubt is that if the election were to revolve around fundamental policy proposals (what an innovation!), it would be Trump's to lose. As Patrick Buchanan has observed, "on the mega-issue, America's desire for change, and on specific issues, Trump holds something close to a full house." ..."
"... On out-of-control immigration and gratuitously counterproductive foreign military adventures, he has seriously wrong-footed Hillary Clinton. He has moreover made remarkable progress in focusing attention on America's trade disaster. Thanks in large measure to his plain talk, the Clintons have finally been forced into ignominious retreat on their previous commitment to blue-sky globalism. For more on Hillary Clinton's trade woes, click here . ..."
"... Trump's hawkish stance not only packs wide popular appeal but, as I know from more than two decades covering the global economy from a vantage point in Tokyo, it addresses disastrous American policy-making misconceptions going back generations. ..."
"... Smith based his intellectual edifice on the rather pedestrian observation that rainy England was good at raising sheep, while sunny Portugal excelled in growing grapes. What could be more reasonable than for England to trade its wool for Portugal's wine? But, while Smith's case is a charming insight into eighteenth century simplicities, the fact is that climate-based agricultural endowments have long since ceased to play a decisive role in First World trade. Today the key factor is advanced manufacturing. By comparison, not only is agriculture a negligible force but, as I documented in a book some years ago, even such advanced service industries as computer software are disappointing exporters. ..."
"... In theory China should be a great market for, for instance, the U.S. auto industry – and it is, sort of. The Detroit companies have been told that while their American-made products are not welcome, they can still make money in China provided only they manufacture there AND bring their most advanced production know-how. ..."
"... Corporate America's Chinese subsidiaries moreover are expected almost from the get-go to export. In the early days they sell mainly to Africa and Southern Asia but then, as they approach state-of-the-art quality control, they come under increasing pressure to export even to the United States – with all that that implies for the job security of the very American workers and engineers who developed the advanced production know-how in the first place. ..."
"... Naturally all this has gone unnoticed in such reflexively anti-Trump media as the Washington Post . (A good account , however, is available at the pro-Trump website, Breitbart.com.) ..."
Is Donald Trump really as stupid as the press seems to think? And if not, how do we explain
the press's version of countless Trumpian controversies lately?
Take, for instance, the Kovaleski affair. According to a recent Bloomberg survey, no controversy
has proven more costly to Trump.
The episode began when, in substantiating his erstwhile widely ridiculed allegation that Arabs
in New Jersey had publicly celebrated the Twin Towers attacks, Trump unearthed a 2001 newspaper account
in which law enforcement authorities were stated to have detained "a number of people who were allegedly
seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the
devastation on the other side of the river." This seemed to settle the matter. But the report's author,
Serge Kovaleski, demurred. Trump's talk of "thousands" of Arabs, he alleged, was an exaggeration.
Trump fired back. Flailing his arms wildly in an impersonation of an embarrassed, backtracking
reporter, he implied that Kovaleski had bowed to political correctness.
So far, so normal for this election cycle. But it turned out that Kovaleski is no ordinary Trump-dissing
media liberal. He suffers from arthrogryposis, a malady in which the joints are malformed.
For Trump's critics, this was manna from heaven. Instead of merely accusing the New York real
estate magnate of exaggerating a minor, if disturbing, sideshow in U.S.-Arab relations, they could
now arraign him on the vastly more damaging charge of mocking a disabled person.
Trump pleaded that he hadn't known Kovaleski was handicapped. This was undermined, however, when
it emerged that in the 1980s the two had not only met but Kovaleski had even interviewed Trump in
Trump Tower. Trump was reduced to pleading a fading memory, something that those of us of a certain
age can sympathize with, but, of course, it didn't wash with Trump's accusers.
In responding directly to the charge of mocking a disabled person, Trump commented: "I would never
do that. Number one, I have a good heart; number two, I'm a smart person." Setting aside point one
(although to the press's chagrin, many of Trump's acquaintances have testified that a streak of considerable
private generosity underlies his tough-guy public image), it is hard to see how anyone can question
point two. Even if he really is the sort of unspeakable buffoon who might mock someone's disability,
he surely has enough political smarts to know that there is no profit in doing so in a public forum.
There has to be something else here, and, as we will see, there is. Key details have been swept
under the rug. We will get to them in a moment but first let's review the wider context. Candidate
Trump's weaknesses are well-known. He is unusually thin-skinned and can readily be lured into tilting
at windmills. His reality-television persona is sometimes remarkably abrasive. His penchant for speaking
off-the-cuff has resulted in a series of exaggerations and outright gaffes.
All that said, if he ends up losing in November, it will probably be less because of his own shortcomings
than the amazing lengths to which the press has gone in misrepresenting him – painting him by turns
weird, erratic, and downright sinister.
What is not in doubt is that if the election were to revolve around fundamental policy proposals
(what an innovation!), it would be Trump's to lose. As Patrick Buchanan has observed, "on the mega-issue,
America's desire for change, and on specific issues, Trump holds something close to a full house."
On out-of-control immigration and gratuitously counterproductive foreign military adventures,
he has seriously wrong-footed Hillary Clinton. He has moreover made remarkable progress in focusing
attention on America's trade disaster. Thanks in large measure to his plain talk, the Clintons have
finally been forced into ignominious retreat on their previous commitment to blue-sky globalism.
For more on Hillary Clinton's trade woes, click
here
.
Trump's hawkish stance not only packs wide popular appeal but, as I know from more than two
decades covering the global economy from a vantage point in Tokyo, it addresses disastrous American
policy-making misconceptions going back generations.
The standard Adam Smith/David Ricardo case for free trade, long considered holy writ in Washington,
has in the last half century become ludicrously anachronistic.
Smith based his intellectual edifice on the rather pedestrian observation that rainy England
was good at raising sheep, while sunny Portugal excelled in growing grapes. What could be more reasonable
than for England to trade its wool for Portugal's wine? But, while Smith's case is a charming insight
into eighteenth century simplicities, the fact is that climate-based agricultural endowments have
long since ceased to play a decisive role in First World trade. Today the key factor is advanced
manufacturing. By comparison, not only is agriculture a negligible force but, as I documented in
a book some years ago, even such advanced service industries as computer software are disappointing
exporters.
For nations intent on improving their manufacturing prowess (and, by extension, their standing
in the world incomes league table), a key gambit is to manipulate the global trading system. Japan
and Germany were the early leaders in intelligent mercantilism but in recent years the most consequential
exemplar has been China.
In theory China should be a great market for, for instance, the U.S. auto industry – and it
is, sort of. The Detroit companies have been told that while their American-made products are not
welcome, they can still make money in China provided only they manufacture there AND bring their
most advanced production know-how.
While such an arrangement may promise good short-term profits (nicely fattening up those notorious
executive stock options), the trade-deficit-plagued American economy is immediately deprived of badly
needed exports. Meanwhile the long-term implications are devastating. In industry after industry,
leading American corporations have been induced not only to move jobs to China but to transfer their
most advanced production technology. In many cases moreover, almost as soon as a U.S. company has
transferred its production secrets to a Chinese subsidiary, these "migrate" to rising Chinese competitors.
Precisely the sort of competitively crucial technology that in an earlier era ensured that American
workers were not only by far the world's most productive but the world's best paid have been served
up on a silver salver to America's most formidable power rival.
Corporate America's Chinese subsidiaries moreover are expected almost from the get-go to export.
In the early days they sell mainly to Africa and Southern Asia but then, as they approach state-of-the-art
quality control, they come under increasing pressure to export even to the United States – with all
that that implies for the job security of the very American workers and engineers who developed the
advanced production know-how in the first place.
Almost alone in corporate America, the Detroit companies have hitherto baulked at shipping their
Chinese-made products back to the United States but their resolve is weakening. Already General Motors
has announced that later this year it will begin selling Chinese-made Buicks in the American, European,
and Canadian markets. It is the thin end of what may prove to be a very large wedge.
Naturally all this has gone unnoticed in such reflexively anti-Trump media as the Washington
Post . (A good
account , however, is available at the pro-Trump website, Breitbart.com.)
For the mainstream press, the big nation-defining issues count as nothing compared to Trump's
personal peccadillos, real or, far too often, imagined.
This brings us back to Kovaleski. Did Trump really mean to mock a handicapped person's disability?
On any fair assessment, the answer is clearly No. As the Catholics 4 Trump website has documented,
the media have suppressed vital exonerating evidence.
The truth is that Trump's frenetic performance bore no resemblance to the rigid look of arthrogryposis
victims. Pointing out that Kovaleski conducted no on-camera interviews in the immediate wake of the
Trump performance, Catholics 4 Trump has commented:
Shouldn't the media have been chomping at the bit to get Kovaleski in front of their cameras
to embarrass Trump and prove to the world Trump was clearly mocking his disability? If the media
had a legitimate story, that is exactly what they would have done and we all know it. But the
media couldn't put Kovaleski in front of a camera or they'd have no story…..But, if they showed
video of Trump labeled "Trump Mocks Disabled Reporter," then put up a still shot of Kovaleski,
they knew you, the viewer, would assume Kovaleski's disability must make his arms move without
control.
According to Catholics 4 Trump, in the same speech in which he presented his Kovaleski cameo,
Trump acted out similar histrionics to portray a flustered U.S. general. Meanwhile, on another occasion,
he used the same wildly flapping hand motions to lampoon Ted Cruz's rationalizations on waterboarding.
Thus as neither the flustered general nor Ted Cruz are known to be physically handicapped, we have
little reason to assume that Trump's Kovaleski routine represented anything other than an admittedly
eccentric portrayal of someone prevaricating under political pressure.
Perhaps the ultimate smoking gun in all this is the behavior of the Washington Post .
On August 10, it published a particularly one-sided account by Callum Borchers. When someone used
the reader comments section to reference the alternative Catholics 4 Trump explanation, the links
were deleted almost immediately. As Catholics 4 Trump pointed out, the Post 's hidden agenda
suddenly stood revealed for all to see:
This demonstrates that the Washington Post is aware of evidence existing that contradicts
their conclusions, and that they are willfully attempting to conceal it from their readers. If
Borchers and WaPo were honest and truly wanted to report ALL of the evidence for and against and
let the readers decide, they would have to include the video of Kovaleski and the video of Trump
impersonating a flustered General and a flustered Cruz. Any objective report would include both
evidence for and against a certain interpretation of the Trump video.
What are we to make of the various other press controversies that have increasingly dogged the
Trumpmobile? For the most part, not much.
One recurring controversy concerns how rich Trump really is. The suggestion is that his net worth
is way short of the $10 billion he claims.
He has come in for particular flak from the author Timothy O'Brien, who a decade ago pronounced
him worth "$250 million tops." Although O'Brien continues to pop up regularly in places like the
Washington Post and Bloomberg, his methodology has been faulted by Forbes magazine,
which, of course, has long been the ultimate authority in such matters.
What can be said for sure is that even the best informed and most impartial calculation can only
be tentative. The fact is that the Trump business is private and thus not subject to daily stock
market assessment.
There is moreover a special complication almost unique to the Trump business - the value of his
brand. In Trump's own mind, he seems to think of himself as a latter-day Cesar Ritz – albeit he projects
less an image of five-star discretion as high-rolling hedonism. That the brand is a considerable
asset, however, is obvious from the fact that he franchises it to, among others, independent real-estate
developers. That said, it is an intangible whose value moves up and down in the same elevator as
The Donald's personal standing in global esteem.
All that said, in a major assessment last year, Forbes editor Randall Lane put Trump's
net worth at $4.5 billion. Although that is way short of Trump's own estimate, it still bespeaks
world class business acumen.
Another controversy concerns the country of origin of Trump campaign paraphernalia. After he disclosed
that his ties were made in China, his criticism of America's huge bilateral trade deficit with China
was denounced as hypocrisy.
Again there is less here than meets the eye. It is surely not unprincipled for someone to argue
for laws to be changed even while in the meantime he or she continues to benefit from the status
quo.
Warren Buffett, for instance, has often suggested that tax rates should be raised for plutocrats
like himself. In the meantime, however, he continues to pay lower rates than many of his junior staff
and nobody calls him a hypocrite. By the same token, many Ivy League-educated journalists privately
criticize the legacy system under which their children and the children of other graduates of top
universities enjoy preferential treatment in admissions. Few if any such parents, however, would
stand in the way of their own children cashing in on the system. Should they?
Perhaps Trump's most egregious experience of press misrepresentation was sparked when he archly
urged Russia to hack into Clinton's personal server to discover her missing emails. "Russia, if you're
listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," he said. "I think you
will probably be rewarded mightily by our press!"
This was sarcasm laid on with a trowel but the press, of course, wasn't buying it. Yet it is not
as if sarcasm is new to American politics. No less a figure than Abraham Lincoln had a famously sarcastic
tongue and the press laughed along with him. When someone complained of Ulysses Grant's drinking,
for instance, Lincoln rushed to the defense of the Union's most successful general. "Can you tell
me where he gets his whiskey," Lincoln asked. "Because, if I can only find out, I will send a barrel
of this wonderful whiskey to every general in the army."
Then there was Harry Truman, the man who declared himself in search of a one-handed economist.
When he was not making fun of dismal scientists, he found plenty of other opportunities for caustic
wit. After he was presented with the Chicago Tribune 's front page saying "Dewey Defeats
Truman," for instance, he commented: "I knew I should have campaigned harder!"
As for Trump, his wit is clearly a major draw with the ordinary voters who flock to his meetings.
Yet little of it is ever recycled in the press. In the case of the Russia hacking joke indeed, many
commentators were so humorless as to mutter darkly about a threat to national security. At Slate,
Osita Nwanevu interviewed a lawyer to see what could be done to arraign Trump on treason charges.
(The answer was nothing.) Meanwhile at Politico, Nahal Toosi and Seung Min Kim reported that Trump's
crack had "shocked, flabbergasted, and appalled lawmakers and national security experts across the
political spectrum." They quoted Philip Reiner, a former national security official in the Obama
administration, describing Trump as a "scumbag animal." Reiner went on to comment: "Hacking email
is a criminal activity. And he's asked a foreign government – a murderous, repressive regime – to
attack not just one of our citizens but the Democratic presidential candidate? Of course it's a national
security threat."
Countless other examples could be cited of how the press has piled on in ways that clearly make
a mockery of claims to fairness. All this is not to suggest that Trump hasn't made many unforced
errors. His handling of the Khizr Khan affair in particular played right into the press's agenda.
As Khan had lost a son in Iraq, his taunts should have been ignored. By challenging Khan, Trump was
charging the cape, not the matador. The matador, of course, was Hillary, and she was actually highly
exposed. Trump, after all, could have simply confined his riposte to the fact that but for her vote,
and the votes of other Senators, the United States would never have entered Iraq, and Khan's unfortunate
son would still be alive.
Where does Trump go from here? Although it is probably too late to get the press to fall into
line in observing traditional standards of fairness, Trump can make it harder for the press to deliver
cheap shots.
He needs to stake out the high ground and get a serious policy discussion going. The debates should
help but the first one is still more than a month away. In the meantime one strategy would be to
compile detailed, authoritative reports on trade, immigration, and other key issues. While such reports
would not reach everyone, in these days of the internet they would find a useful readership among
an influential, if no doubt relatively small, cadre of thoughtful constituents. They could thus work
indirectly but powerfully to change the tone of the campaign. Certainly such an initiative would
be hard for the mainstream press simply to ignore – and even harder completely to misrepresent.
Eamonn Fingleton is the author of In the Jaws of the Dragon: America's Fate in the Coming
Era of Chinese Hegemony . He interviewed Trump for Forbes magazine in 1982.
There is a simpler explanation: Trump is hated and constantly vilified by neoliberal
MSM because he threatens neoliberal establishment and imperial bureaucracy. Especially
neocons. That's why they changed party affiliation and will vote for Hillary. They
have found a new friend.
Notable quotes:
"... he is often mocked for having small hands and goofy orange hair; he eats
profane food like McDonald's; ..."
"... But Trump is a monster! Yes, but given the right circumstance, so are you.
His ugliness is simply more apparent than that of other managers of the state's
sacred violence. ..."
"... Think his call to deport illegally undocumented workers is fascist? The
Obama administration, garbed as it is with the shimmering rhetoric of victimhood,
has already deported over 2,500,000 human beings-23 percent more than Bush. ..."
"... How about his pledge to torture suspected terrorists? Clinton-Bush-Obama
beat him to it. They just don't talk about it like he does. And let's not limit
it to foreigners; Obama didn't bat an eye as elderly tax protester Irwin Schiff
died of cancer chained to a prison bed far away from his family for breaking the
sacred taboo against being too stingy in sharing his resources with the collective.
..."
"... How about the time Trump promised to target terrorists' families? Obama,
the great defender of Islam, already trumped that when he murdered people like U.S.
citizen Anwar al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son Abdulrahman, who hadn't seen his father
for two years. This teen and his friends were blown apart by the Nobel prize winner
while having a campfire dinner, apparently for the sinful dreams of his father.
..."
"... From Buzzfeed to Vanity Fair , CNN, the New York Times , broadcast networks,
Wall Street, Fortune 500 companies, academia, Hollywood, music stars, Silicon valley,
and NPR, to both party establishments, everyone's united in this orgy of outrage.
It's almost like the scapegoat purgings of yesteryear, but again, because of the
cross of Christ scrambling people's tribal unity, there is always a counter-factional
push-back. ..."
"... Still, scapegoating partially unifies. Just why is it that old enemies
like Romney, the DNC, and the media unite to expose Trump's shady timeshare-like
university gimmick but offer deafening crickets for Hillary's use of the Haiti earthquake
to secure an exclusive gold-mining contract for her brother? Trump's shamelessness
reveals the banality of the establishment's passe violence. ..."
"... The thing that drives this outrage mob mad is the mirror Trump's vulgar
speech holds up to the state's violence-based unity. ..."
"... In the popular imagination inspired by the mainstream media, Trump is a
wolf whose fangs will bring violent chaos from which the lamb herd must unite to
protect us. ..."
"... But peel off the wool skins and you'll see the [neoliberal] herd is itself
a wolf pack that wants to eat you too. Just in a way that gets them crooned about
on late-night comedy and earns them Nobel prizes while they quietly blow up kids.
..."
"... When Trump says the U.S. should have taken the oil in Iraq, he gets universal
sneers from the established imperial class the way a drunken wingman is eliminated
from the bar for loudly telling his friend to close the deal and "nail" the girl
he's chatting up. ..."
Reading René Girard helped me understand why so many hate the Donald.
•
Donald Trump is the scapegoat supreme of our time.
Don't kill the messenger. See, to have a scapegoat is to not know you have
one. It is to unite in common cause with other actors in your community to purge
a common monster to preserve peace and order. Trump, more than any other figure
in our present culture, fits that bill. (Yes, Trump and his supporters scapegoat
other groups as well.)
Having dedicated his life to the study of scapegoating as the origin of culture,
the late anthropologist René Girard is someone who should join every conservative's
pantheon. He argues that human beings unconsciously stumbled upon a circuit
breaker that kept violence from virally overwhelming our ancient communities:
the common identification and expulsion of a common enemy. The catharsis and
solidarity scapegoating provides led early people to mythologize their victims
into gods.
.... ... ...
Trump even viscerally looks the part of the old scapegoat kings who would
be ceremonially paraded before being sacrificed: he is often mocked for
having small hands and goofy orange hair; he eats profane food like McDonald's;
he loves gaudy decoration in an age of "shabby chic"; he calls himself a winner
in a culture where people must offer faux humility to gain status. Trump, who
has repeatedly said that were he not her father he would be dating his daughter,
is even accused of breaking the age-old taboo against incestual lust.
... ... ...
But Trump is a monster! Yes, but given the right circumstance, so are
you. His ugliness is simply more apparent than that of other managers of the
state's sacred violence. Let's be frank here: though his speech is scarily
vulgar, the violence he promises is already occurring.
Think his call to deport illegally undocumented workers is fascist? The
Obama administration, garbed as it is with the shimmering rhetoric of victimhood,
has already deported over 2,500,000 human beings-23 percent more than Bush.
How about his pledge to torture suspected terrorists? Clinton-Bush-Obama
beat him to it. They just don't talk about it like he does. And let's not limit
it to foreigners; Obama didn't bat an eye as elderly tax protester Irwin Schiff
died of cancer chained to a prison bed far away from his family for breaking
the sacred taboo against being too stingy in sharing his resources with the
collective.
How about the time Trump promised to target terrorists' families? Obama,
the great defender of Islam, already trumped that when he murdered people like
U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son Abdulrahman, who hadn't seen
his father for two years. This teen and his friends were blown apart by the
Nobel prize winner while having a campfire dinner, apparently for the sinful
dreams of his father.
Let's not pretend it is avant-garde to vilify Trump. Everyone's doing it,
especially the cool people, the ones, like us, preoccupied with social status
but hiding it in speech always patronizingly preening about victims. From
Buzzfeed to Vanity Fair, CNN, the New York Times, broadcast
networks, Wall Street, Fortune 500 companies, academia, Hollywood, music stars,
Silicon valley, and NPR, to both party establishments, everyone's united in
this orgy of outrage. It's almost like the scapegoat purgings of yesteryear,
but again, because of the cross of Christ scrambling people's tribal unity,
there is always a counter-factional push-back.
Still, scapegoating partially unifies. Just why is it that old enemies
like Romney, the DNC, and the media unite to expose Trump's shady timeshare-like
university gimmick but offer deafening crickets for Hillary's use of the Haiti
earthquake to secure an exclusive gold-mining contract for her brother? Trump's
shamelessness reveals the banality of the establishment's passe violence.
The thing that drives this outrage mob mad is the mirror Trump's vulgar
speech holds up to the state's violence-based unity. The one thing the
crowd can't stand is a scapegoat's refusal to apologize for its sins. Look at
how the old victors of history wrote of their witch hunts, with the victims
admitting guilt.
In the popular imagination inspired by the mainstream media, Trump is
a wolf whose fangs will bring violent chaos from which the lamb herd must unite
to protect us. He just needs to flinch and admit he's a wolf! But peel
off the wool skins and you'll see the [neoliberal] herd is itself a wolf pack
that wants to eat you too. Just in a way that gets them
crooned
about on late-night comedy and earns them Nobel prizes while they quietly
blow up kids. Trump refuses to apologize for his rhetoric, and so there
is no blood for the wolves to complete their feast.
I'm not saying he hasn't promised to make grave violence. But look who writes
history: the winning crowd. In the pagan world, Oedipus was cast as the scapegoat
who accepts all guilt for his community's woes. Yet behind the mythic veil,
it takes two to tango in the deadly dance of violent rivalry. Today's myth is
being written by people who use victimism to hide the continuance of sacred
violence. Watch out for the false catharsis they're trying to create in purging
Trump. It will not satisfy.
When Trump says the U.S. should have taken the oil in Iraq, he gets universal
sneers from the established imperial class the way a drunken wingman is eliminated
from the bar for loudly telling his friend to close the deal and "nail" the
girl he's chatting up.
... ... ...
David Gornoski is your
neighbor-as
well as an entrepreneur, speaker and writer. He recently launched a project
called A Neighbor's Choice, which seeks to introduce Jesus' culture of nonviolence
to both Christians and the broader public. A Florida promoter of local agriculture,
he also writes for WND.com, FEE.org, AffluentInvestor.com, and AltarandThrone.com.
TPP: "'It's very challenging to get people
to commit the political capital to move forward when the doubts are so
significant about what the United States will do," [Eric Altbach, a senior
vice president at the Albright Stonebridge Group] said" [
Politico
].
"Organizations including the Communications Workers of America, CREDO
Action, Democracy for America and several others sent a letter to Clinton on
Thursday asking her to make a 'clear, public and unequivocal statement'
opposing any vote on TPP" [
Politico
].
It will be interesting to parse Clinton's next statement, if any. (Remember
that Clinton's 10% base is cosmopolitan, and supports trade. She won't be
punished for remaining "equivocal.")
James Carville: "Whatever weaknesses Clinton has, Trump constantly covers
them up" [
Vanity
Fair
]. Hmm. I'd love to see a timeline that combines Clinton corruption
eruptions and Trump gaffes, if anybody knows of one. Although creating a
timeline like that would be an awful lot of work.
Ready4Hillary
: Think of it this way. If you asked someone,
"Would you like to climb into an old scow full of garbage?" most people
would say "No." But if you say, "Would you like to be saved at any cost
from the apocalyptic flood that is rising to destroy your city?" most
people would say "Yes." The trick is to focus on the second thing and not
be too specific about the first thing. OK?
Hillary
: am I the garbage scow in that analogy?
Ready4Hillary
: the point is, less is more. OK?
"Clinton's advisers tell her to prep for a landslide" [
Politico
].
"Revealing a level of confidence Clinton's inner circle has been eager to
squash for weeks, outside advisers have now identified victories in
Pennsylvania and New Hampshire as the path of least resistance, delivering
for the Democratic nominee more than the 270 electoral votes needed to take
the White House. And they are projecting increased confidence about her
chances in Republican-leaning North Carolina, a state that could prove as
critical as Ohio or Pennsylvania." I'd add a few grains of salt to this:
First, Clinton is notoriously surrounded by sycophants. Second, I think this
is messaging, and not reporting: The Clinton campaign wants early voters to
go with a winner. Third, a massive electoral win doesn't necessarily
translate to a popular vote landslide. Hence, an electoral landslide
combined with a much closer popular vote will do nothing to help Clinton in
a coming legitimacy crisis (and could even exacerbate it).
"There's almost no chance our elections can get hacked by the Russians.
Here's why" [
WaPo
].
War Drums
Putin on 2016: "All this should be more dignified" [
Bloomberg
].
Gotchyer
casus belli
right here…
Realignment
"So you think you can take over the Democrat Party?" [
South
Lawn
]. Cogent points. On the other hand, what's sauce for the sheepdog
is sauce for a century-long record of third-party #FAIL. Past results are no
guarantee of future performance.
"Downballot Republicans and top GOP leaders are dumping Trump" [
NBC
].
"[Y]esterday came this campaign video from John McCain, who's engaged in a
tough re-election fight: "If Hillary Clinton is elected, Arizona will need a
senator who will act as a check," he said, all but admitting that Trump is
unlikely to win in November. And McCain won't be the last GOPer making this
'check on Hillary' argument.
"Kissinger, George Schultz mull Clinton endorsement" [
The
Hill
]. Can't we just be open about this and set up a war criminals PAC?
. Rivals and challengers of
the past whether it be the British Empire, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan or the Soviet Union have
all fall by the way side in the titanic struggle of nation states and Great Powers.
So I asked Ms Rivlin, hypothetically, how she thought Americans would react if in a couple of
decades to come a significant and visible economic gap opened up between the USA and China.\
... She
failed to see, whether intentionally or not, that whatever one thinks about the merits of
seriousness or silliness of such talk and concerns, a lot of people in America believe it is
happening as encapsulated in Mr Trump's campaign slogan: "Make America Great Again". Clearly, a
great deal of people in America think the country is in terminal decline and want something
radical to reverse such decline. Hence their messenger Donald Trump and his rhetoric of America
First.
...Part of what Trump
represents is not only a deep seated anxiety that America is on a downward trajectory this
century, hence his China
bashing and protectionist rhetoric, his candidacy also represents a white backlash against
the increasing and rapid demographic changes in America society. America is on course by the
2050s to no longer be a white majority country. The population growth of non-white ethnic
minorities is over taking that of white Americans. Thus Trump's dog whistle racism with lines
such as: "We speak English in this country, not Spanish!"
At the rally in Everett, Guiliani asked rally-goers to get out their phone & text $$ to a certain
address.
I was shocked, what about "I'm funding my own campaign, I don't want your money." Guiliani
said something about how it is about gaining a big number of people who are donating. Donate $1,
if you want to, but just do it.
I was trying to think of the reasoning behind this. It was certainly counter-messaging. I would
suppose it is data-mining. Many people have multiple email addresses … it is easy to create an
anonymous email address just to get a Trump rally ticket. I thought of it myself, to avoid spam.
But most people only have one cell-phone number. Trump thanked Susan Hutchinson, head of the the
state Republican Party. I would imagine she was asking the Trump campaign to get as much info
about attendees as possible. That would explain why Guiliani and not Trump said this.
There may be another explanation. Clinton and the DNC have been running pretty insistent fund
raising campaign over the last couple of weeks as focused on number of donors as on money. Clearly
this was another version of Clinton's popularity over Trump.
As they are asking for $1 on the last day of this reporting period there could be a desire to
head that one off at the pass.
Or they could want your info, and to head that off at the pass.
If defeating Clinton is becoming more important, then voting for Trump
becomes more necessary.
I am getting more inclined all the time to vote for Trump. A vote FOR
Trump counts twice as hard aGAINST Clinton as a vote for some beautiful
Third Party.
Every ballot is a bullet on the field of political combat.
2020? To pick over the dry bones left by Bush Term 5?
Some people say a Trump presidency would be a disaster. No. We
already have a disaster.
Trump is a ridiculous blowhard buffoon. He's also against more
nation-building, questions NATO/Putin war mongering, thinks the
mainstream media is completely corrupt, wants to put the ACA out of
its misery, and actually opposes globalist trade deals. I couldn't
care less if he said mean things about Rosie O'Donnell.
You know the Republicans could have picked a better
candidate.
Oh wait they didn't do that because their intent was to hand
this to Hillary.
I'm so tired of hearing how "I have to" do things after a
small band of oligarchs chose the candidates I have to choose
from.
I don't have to vote for Trump the buffoon and I don't have
to vote for Clinton the corrupt and I can continue to not vote
for either of the duopoly. As long as you continue to play the
lesser evil game you can be assured the oligarchy is going to
continue to pick bad and worse for you.
I'm opting out of the sick and twisted game the GOP and
Democratic Party have going on and those of you who continually
vote for the bad choices you are given can blame yourselves for
the outcome(instead of projecting the outcome onto everyone who
refuses to eat the oligarchy's dog food.)
The 8-year partisan alternation pattern structurally
imposed by Amendment XXII indicates that it was the R party's
"turn."
Their intent was to hand this to Jeb! or Ted! or some
other vetted insider to claim the R party's 8 years of
spoils.
As the howls of protest and invective from Ted! made
clear, Trump's nomination was totally unplanned. Trump punked
the R party. And they still haven't gotten over their
butthurt.
Oh they left him in place because he is the perfect
buffoon to run against Queen Hillary(after all they sat
and debated whether or not to make him the nominee ad
nauseaum) and he gives the double bonus of once he loses
being able to allow them to wail, gnash their teeth and
fundraise against the Democrats and Hillary Clinton. Don't
kid yourself Clinton is interposable and will serve her
purpose just as well as Ted! or Jeb! for the oligarchy.
It's Her turn.
This is a game and the electorate are chumps that just
keep playing it.
No matter who you vote for, or don't, the US will end up with
either Clinton or Trump as prez, barring a catastrophic event, eg,
death of one or t'other.
So, you not only have to decide how you can live with who you
vote for, but you have to think about how you will live with who
you get. Maybe it won't be good enough to say, "Not the president
of me."
They're both horrible choices and I intend to prepare myself
to have to live with either of them.
I also intend to remind people that vote for team bad or team
worse that THEY are the ones who force this game to continue by
insisting that only a Democrat or Republican can win.
It won't matter if we don't live that long due to World War
Clinton with Russia. If you think Clinton poses no more danger of
nuclear annihilation than Trump would, then your logic is
impeccable.
But if you think a President Clinton poses a real and
non-trivial risk of global nuclear extermination in a way that a
President Trump just simply would not, then you might decide to
defer "vote your dreams" for now, and "vote your survival" for
Trump so you can live long enough to collect the Big Jackpot in
2024.
Both Trump and Hillary are frightening alternatives for President -
though Trump seems "the lesser of two evils". Hillary is starting to
appear like a female anti-Christ - Damiena Thorn or Nicole Carpathia -
the more I learn about her. Regardless which one wins I tend to agree
with the commenter here who suggested one of the two VP candidates
would be the acting executive.
I am tempted to vote Green just on the possibility the Green Party
might become a viable second party - especially if matching funds
become available. But I can't get past viewing the Green Party as a
clueless amalgam of underemployed ex-philosophy students.
Writing-in Sanders is tempting - but I don't trust write-ins will
be counted or reported in any meaningful way. As a last resort I can
leave President an undercount and register a "No!" vote in what seems
the best possible way to do that.
I will vote. None of the relatively good choices choices offer much
to realistically hope for and the bad choices are scary bad and
horrifyingly bad.
"But I can't get past viewing the Green Party as a clueless
amalgam of underemployed ex-philosophy students."
This made me chuckle, since many of my very best friends are
actually underemployed Phil majors, along with a healthy cohort of
underemployed art historians, medievalists etc.
"... compulsive lying can be associated with dementia or brain injury ..."
"... compulsive lying can be associated with a range of diagnoses, such as antisocial, borderline and narcissistic personality disorders. ..."
"... "This might explain Hillary's consistent unlikability factor, along with her consistent denial of lies, even in her lying about FBI Director Comey pointing out that she lied multiple times. Most of America believes her to be a liar, and yet she seems to have zero remorse, even and up to the point of costing American lives." ..."
"... In addition to pathological lying, Clinton's temper has reportedly been a problem in the past. A former military K9 handler described how then-Secretary of State Clinton once flew into a blind rage, yelling "get that f**king dog away from me." She then berated her security detail for the next 20 minutes about why the dog was in her quarters. After Clinton left after slamming the door in their faces, the leader of the detail explained to the K9 handler, "Happens every day, brother." ..."
"... "Hillary's been having screaming, child-like tantrums that have left staff members in tears and unable to work. She thought the nomination was hers for the asking, but her mounting problems have been getting to her and she's become shrill and, at times, even violent." ..."
Hillary Clinton has indeed become well known as a serial liar, as fully two-thirds
of Americans,
68 percent in a recent poll, said she was neither honest nor trustworthy.
Not only does Clinton lie to protect herself, as she has regarding Benghazi
and her private email server, but she lies when there appears to be no benefit
to doing so.
For example, she famously claimed she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary
for his conquering of Mt. Everest, even though that didn't happen until six
years after Clinton was born. She also notoriously claim she landed under sniper
fire in Bosnia in 1996, when newspaper and video accounts revealed exactly the
opposite.
"Robert Reich, M.D., a New York City psychiatrist and expert in psychopathology,
says compulsive lying can be associated with dementia or brain injury,"
Dr. Gina Loudon, a political psychology and behavior expert, told WND. "Otherwise,
compulsive lying can be associated with a range of diagnoses, such as antisocial,
borderline and narcissistic personality disorders.
"This might explain Hillary's consistent unlikability factor, along with
her consistent denial of lies, even in her lying about FBI Director Comey pointing
out that she lied multiple times. Most of America believes her to be a liar,
and yet she seems to have zero remorse, even and up to the point of costing
American lives."
In addition to pathological lying, Clinton's temper has reportedly been
a problem in the past. A former military K9 handler described how then-Secretary
of State Clinton once flew into a blind rage, yelling
"get that f**king dog away from me." She then berated her security detail
for the next 20 minutes about why the dog was in her quarters. After Clinton
left after slamming the door in their faces, the leader of the detail explained
to the K9 handler, "Happens every day, brother."
These types of outbursts continued after Hillary left her office as secretary
of state. An aide on her presidential campaign
told the New York Post last October: "Hillary's been having screaming, child-like
tantrums that have left staff members in tears and unable to work. She thought
the nomination was hers for the asking, but her mounting problems have been
getting to her and she's become shrill and, at times, even violent."
How Hillary can defend herself from two major and intermixed scandals: emailgate and Clinton cash
is unclear to me. Also her strong reputation of a neocon warmonger represents serious weakness
on any foreign policy discussion. Essentially she can be buried just with the list of her ;achievements".
So Trump is deeply right when he said "It can be dangerous. You can sound scripted or phony - like you're
trying to be someone you're not." Cards are on the table. They just need to be played.
"I believe you can prep too much for those things," Mr. Trump said in an interview last week.
"It can be dangerous. You can sound scripted or phony - like you're trying to be someone you're not."
she is searching for ways to bait him into making blunders. Mr. Trump, a supremely confident communicator,
wants viewers to see him as a truth-telling political outsider and trusts that he can box in Mrs.
Clinton on her ethics and honesty.
He has been especially resistant to his advisers' suggestions that he take part in mock debates with
a Clinton stand-in. At their first session devoted to the debate, on Aug. 21 at Mr. Trump's club
in Bedminster, N.J., the conservative radio host Laura Ingraham was on hand to offer counsel and,
if Mr. Trump was game, to play Mrs. Clinton, said Trump advisers who spoke on the condition of anonymity
because the debate preparations were supposed to be kept private. He declined.
Instead, Mr. Trump asked a battery of questions about debate topics, Mrs. Clinton's skills and possible
moderators, but people close to him said relatively little had been accomplished.
...
"I know who I am, and it got me here," Mr. Trump said, boasting of success in his 11 primary debate
appearances and in capturing the Republican nomination over veteran politicians and polished debaters.
"I don't want to present a false front. I mean, it's possible we'll do a mock debate, but I don't
see a real need."
Mr. Trump is certain that he holds advantages here, saying Mrs. Clinton is likely to come across
as a typical politician spouting rehearsed lines.
"... If we believe the mainstream media and the Establishment it protects and promotes, Trump has no chance of winning the presidential election. For starters, Trump supporters are all Confederate-flag waving hillbillies, bigots, fascists and misogynists. In other words. "good people" can't possibly vote for Trump. Even cartoon character Mike Doonesbury is fleeing to Vancouver to escape Trump_vs_deep_state. (Memo to the Doonesbury family: selling your Seattle home will barely net the down payment on a decent crib in Vancouver.). For another, Trump alienates the entire planet every time he speaks. The list goes on, of course, continuing with his lack of qualifications. ..."
"... But suppose this election isn't about Trump or Hillary at all. Suppose, as political scientists Allan J. Lichtman and Ken DeCell claimed in their 1988 book, Thirteen Keys to the Presidency , that all presidential elections from 1860 to the present are referendums on the sitting president and his party. ..."
"... Author/historian Robert W. Merry sorts through the 13 analytic keys in the current issue of The American Conservative magazine and concludes they "could pose bad news for Clinton." ..."
Based on this analytic structure, Trump may not just win the election in November--he might
win by a landslide.
If we believe the mainstream media and the Establishment it protects and promotes, Trump has
no chance of winning the presidential election. For starters, Trump supporters are all Confederate-flag
waving hillbillies, bigots, fascists and misogynists. In other words. "good people" can't possibly
vote for Trump. Even cartoon character Mike Doonesbury is fleeing to Vancouver to escape Trump_vs_deep_state. (Memo to the
Doonesbury family: selling your Seattle home will barely net the down payment on a decent crib in
Vancouver.). For another, Trump alienates the entire planet every time he speaks. The list goes on, of course, continuing with his lack of qualifications.
But suppose this election isn't about Trump or Hillary at all. Suppose, as political scientists
Allan J. Lichtman and Ken DeCell claimed in their 1988 book,
Thirteen Keys to the Presidency , that all presidential elections from 1860 to the present are
referendums on the sitting president and his party.
If the public views the sitting president's second term favorably, the candidate from his party
will win the election. If the public views the sitting president's second term unfavorably, the candidate
from the other party will win the election.
Author/historian Robert W. Merry sorts through the 13 analytic keys in the current issue of
The American
Conservative magazine and concludes they "could pose bad news for Clinton."
If five or fewer are negative for the incumbent, the incumbent party will win the election. If
six or more are negative, the incumbent party loses the election. Merry counts eight negatives for
President Obama's second term, which if true spells defeat for the Clinton ticket.
"... The Clinton campaign has deliberately positioned its response as an offensive boomerang rather than a rebuttal: Don't defend against the attacks, just redirect fire at the messenger ..."
"... But the politics are made harder amid the drip-drip revelations from the newly released emails demonstrating the messy overlap between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department, which leave even many Clinton-inclined voters wondering what she was really up to and why it's so hard for her to explain it. ..."
The Clinton campaign has deliberately positioned its response as an offensive boomerang rather
than a rebuttal: Don't defend against the attacks, just redirect fire at the messenger. "It holds
up a mirror to Donald Trump and what his campaign is about, and says everything you need to know
about Donald Trump and where these kinds of crazy conspiracy theories are coming from," as one
campaign aide put it.
... ... ...
But the politics are made harder amid the drip-drip revelations from the newly released emails
demonstrating the messy overlap between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department, which
leave even many Clinton-inclined voters wondering what she was really up to and why it's so hard
for her to explain it.
"... The media's obsession with reporting every drop of saliva to emerge from Donald Trump's mouth for the last year and a half, accompanied by requisite pearl clutching and gasps of offense, wasn't done by accident. Instead, it was a carefully planned campaign to set the bulk of the American populace up to automatically discard any criticism of the Clinton Cult without question ..."
"... What all that does accomplish, however, is generate the mindset that is now terrifying in its willingness to completely ignore any and all facts that the Clinton Foundation is a huge money-laundering organization. ..."
The media's obsession with reporting every drop of saliva to emerge from
Donald Trump's mouth for the last year and a half, accompanied by requisite
pearl clutching and gasps of offense, wasn't done by accident. Instead, it was
a carefully planned campaign to set the bulk of the American populace up to
automatically discard any criticism of the Clinton Cult without question
,
because the Cultists use the language and connections that have been inserted
into the national psyche as being Trump-related.
So, having made a great fuss over how Trump admires Putin, and spreading the
theme that Putin would love to have Trump in the Oval Office, they then embrace
with enthusiasm the contention of the DNC that their databases were "hacked by
Russians, probably at the behest of government agencies," even though there was
no possible way that could have been determined if, as they contend, they
weren't aware of the hack until just a few months ago. Oh, and it helps if you
believe Russian intelligence agencies are going to hire hackers stupid enough
to all but leave their names and addresses around to be "discovered."
What all that does accomplish, however, is generate the mindset that is
now terrifying in its willingness to completely ignore any and all facts that
the Clinton Foundation is a huge money-laundering organization.
I have
seen people who take great pride in their skepticism dismiss the multiple
articles exposing the corruption as "unfounded rubbish." I've been told the AP
article is "a farce." Point them to articles by qualified professionals showing
the utter absence of any proof the Clinton Foundation is a philanthropic
organization for anyone but the people it's named for, and the dismissal is
abrupt and total.
I don't know if it's cultism or just that people know she's going to be
elected and don't want to think about the consequences, but the vast number of
those who won't even consider shenanigans is appalling. It's all part of that
Republican conspiracy, and that's all they care to know.
"... people need to realize what they read is not the truth.. words can and are used to deceive... propaganda seems to be one of the central roles of all media at this point in time... folks need to beware of this.. ..."
"... Mark Twain said that if you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're misinformed. ..."
"... Do not pay attention to the fact the emperor has no clothes. Just look at this other guy!" ..."
"... Will we USAians ever wake up to 9/11 => Afghanistan => Iraq => Libya => Syria => Ukraine => Yemen ... ..."
"... How many innocents have 'our' emperors - Bush XLI, Clinton XLII, Bush XLIII, Obama XLIV, coming soon? Clinton XLV - killed in the runup to and execution of series of criminal aggressions post-9/11? Two million? If Clinton sets the world on fire the numbers will rise by two orders of magnitude. ..."
"... There have been rumours that the US government was helping to bankroll certain social media companies in return for access. I would say that the US government will step in and potentially rescue NYT and the like from being closed down. They serve an intrinsic and important service to the elite. They will not abandon it. ..."
"... The CIA has bankrolled many startups ... maybe they could take out ads for Raytheon and General Atomic products, run US military/CIA recruitment ads? Pay for placement of articles like Mark Sleboda 's, 'The Turkish Invasion Of Syria As Path To "Regime Change"'? ..."
"... The NYTimes going bellyup ... happened to the Washington Post and the WSJ. Maybe Eric Schmidt will buy it? Or Rupert Murdoch. ..."
"... I wonder if the CIA bankrolled Rupert Murdoch? The CIA took out a $500 million data storage contract with Amazon just before Bezos bought the WaPo. Come to think of it, having control of the WaPo, WSJ, and NYTimes archives would be just what Dr. Orwell ordered. Mark Sleboda could then work for the MiniTrue, revising the past as required. ..."
"... Like all psychopaths, they have a one-track mind that doesn't allow an effective strategy when it comes to bipedal meat units. Their answer to convincing you of their lies is to proffer more outrageous lies. It's kind of like the newspapers fighting declining advertising revenue by making the print smaller, stuffing the paper with more ads at higher rates and raising the price for a printed newspaper. Damn it, why won't you monkeys OBEY! ..."
"... That's an excellent point, b. I don't even remember the last time I've read anything truthful in any western MSM outlet. Almost everything is a spin of various degree. NYT is one of worst offenders, so another lying piece is not at all surprising. ..."
"... From the Wikipedia article Factoid : The term was coined in 1973 by American writer Norman Mailer to mean a "piece of information that becomes accepted as a fact even though it's not actually true, or an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print." ..."
"... This is a basic tool of Western mainstream propaganda. Sprinkle every article full of "factoids" or small lies. These lies are not about the core topic of article, so they are unlikely to be challenged. Their only purpose is to enforce the narrative and demonize the enemy. When small lies or "lielets" are repeated often enough, they become factoids, meaning that they are no longer recognized as lies. ..."
The New York Times is desperate for new readers and therefore tries to branch into the
realm of The Onion and other satirical sites. It attempts to show that allegedly Russia
controlled media spread false stories for political purpose - by providing a false media story. The
purpose of the NYT doing such is yours to guess.
The sourcing of
that Page 1 story is as weak as its content. It starts with claiming that opponents of Sweden
joining NATO must be somehow Russia related and are spreading false stories:
As often happens in such cases, Swedish officials were never able to pin down the source of the
false reports.
Duh! But it must have been Russia. Because Swedish internal opposition to joining NATO would be
incapable of opining against it. Right? Likewise anti-EU reports and opposition to the EU within
the Czech Republic MUST be caused by Russian disinformation and can in now way be related to mismanagement
of the EU project itself.
The sourcing for the whole long pamphlet is extremely weak:
But they, numerous analysts and experts in American and European intelligence
point to Russia as the prime suspect, noting that preventing NATO expansion is a centerpiece of
the foreign policy of President Vladimir V. Putin, who invaded Georgia in 2008
largely to forestall that possibility.
Whoa! "Experts in American and European intelligence" can of course be trusted not to ever spread
false stories or rumors about Russia influencing "news". Such truth tellers they are and have always
been.
Then follows, in a claim about false stories(!) spread by Russia, that factually false claim that
Russia "invaded Georgia in 2008". It was obvious in the very first hours of the Georgia war,
as we then noted
, that Georgia started it. A European Union commission later
confirmed that it was
Georgia, incited by the Bush government, that started the war. The NYT itself
found
the same . All Russia did was to protect the areas of South Ossetia and Abchazia that it was
officially designated to protect by the United Nations! No invasion of Georgia took place.
And what was the alleged reason that Russia "invaded" Georgia for? "Largely to forestall".."NATO
expansion"? But it was NATO that
rejected Georgia's membership
in April 2008. Why then would Russia "invade" Georgia in August 2008 to prevent a membership
that was surely not gonna happen?
Utter a-historic nonsense.
The who tale, written by Neil MacFarquhar
, is a long list of hearsay where Russia is claimed to have influenced news but without
ever showing any evidence.
the extensive cooperation between the New York Times and the CIA with spying as well as with
manipulating foreign news
the acknowledged spreading of false stories about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq an behalf
of the Bush administration by the NY Times itself.
As Carl Bernstein
described in his
book about the CIA and the media:
Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the [Central Intelligence] Agency were
Williarn Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Tirne Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times
, Barry Bingham Sr. of the LouisviIle Courier‑Journal,
and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA
include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press,
United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps‑Howard, Newsweek magazine, the
Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald‑Tribune.
By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been
with the New York Times , CBS and Time Inc.
Bernstein shows that the NYT cooperation with the U.S. government and its intelligence agencies
was very extensive and continues uninterrupted up to today.
To lament about alleged Russian influence on some news outlets while writing a disinformation
filled piece, based on "experts in American and European intelligence", for an outlet with proven
CIA cooperation in faking news, is way beyond hypocrisy.
Through this piece the NYT becomes its own parody. Did the author and editors recognize that?
Or are they too self-unconscious for even such simple insight?
Posted by b on August 29, 2016 at 11:04 AM |
Permalink
thanks b... people need to realize what they read is not the truth.. words can and are used
to deceive... propaganda seems to be one of the central roles of all media at this point in time...
folks need to beware of this..
Although, NYT, is bleeding and is losing audience, I am amazed that it is still in print. The
Guardian is posting loss in millions of pounds, and that is what I expect NYT to be doing.
"Do not pay attention to the fact the emperor has no clothes. Just look at this other guy!" That
seems to be the official US opinion on Russia as expressed by the Clinton campaign, the NYT, and
the other usual suspects purveying official US propaganda.
An amusing thing about the NYT's is the most-emailed/read lists, which are almost always well
represented by articles such as "what to cook this weekend" and "48hrs in Tulsa." This is often
despite the steady stream of heady world events. My take is that most readers of the Times want
to be seen/known as Times readers, but would really prefer to be reading tabloids. The difference
is becoming less obvious by the day.
One small quibble with this: But it was NATO that rejected Georgia's membership in April 2008.
. That April meeting did not really reject Georgia's membership. The discussion was just postponed
to a later meeting. It wasn't until after Russia thrashed Georgia in August that the US took the
membership issue off the table.
@3 wbl, "Do not pay attention to the fact the emperor has no clothes. Just look at this other
guy!"
That's the answer isn't it?
Will we USAians ever wake up to 9/11 => Afghanistan => Iraq => Libya => Syria => Ukraine
=> Yemen ...
How many innocents have 'our' emperors - Bush XLI, Clinton XLII, Bush XLIII, Obama XLIV,
coming soon? Clinton XLV - killed in the runup to and execution of series of criminal aggressions
post-9/11? Two million? If Clinton sets the world on fire the numbers will rise by two orders
of magnitude.
Don't look at Trump! Don't look at Me! Look at Vladimir, behind the tree!
Ya gotta wanna believe. How many USAians still wanna believe?
There have been rumours that the US government was helping to bankroll certain social media
companies in return for access. I would say that the US government will step in and potentially
rescue NYT and the like from being closed down. They serve an intrinsic and important service
to the elite. They will not abandon it.
It's been amusing to watch this electoral season as the Times has dropped all pretense of objectivity.
While actual news accounts continue to lightly pepper the broadsheet, the headlines, article placement
and, most importantly, what falls before and after the fold is so transparently partisan one is
increasingly startled to find well reported and honest journalism.
I remember back in the first Intifada when Abe Rosenthal had Palestinian youth throwing soviet
made rocks while he glossed Sabra and Shatila massacres. The Times was pretty "Onion"y then, but
the political coverage this year makes me weep for my country as what little good left in it chokes
on growing torrents of BS, obfuscation, prevarication and bombast.
The CIA has bankrolled many startups ... maybe they could take out ads for Raytheon and
General Atomic products, run US military/CIA recruitment ads? Pay for placement of articles like
Mark Sleboda 's, 'The Turkish Invasion Of Syria As Path To "Regime Change"'?
The NYTimes going bellyup ... happened to the Washington Post and the WSJ. Maybe Eric Schmidt
will buy it? Or Rupert Murdoch.
I wonder if the CIA bankrolled Rupert Murdoch? The CIA took out a $500 million data storage
contract with Amazon just before Bezos bought the WaPo. Come to think of it, having control of
the WaPo, WSJ, and NYTimes archives would be just what Dr. Orwell ordered. Mark Sleboda could
then work for the MiniTrue, revising the past as required.
jsn@12: do you really think that objectivity of NYT exhibits seasonal variation? Like neutral
to positive stories about Russia between Easter and Passover, and a more usual dreck for the rest
of the year?
There is still difference between NYT and tabloids. This is the most recent article in NY Post
about Russia in NY Post:
Putin is gobbling up whatever he can – while Obama does nothing
By Benny Avni August 17, 2016 | 8:22pm.
As Americans focus on who'll replace President Obama, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin marches
around the globe unabated, rushing to gobble up anything and everything he can before the new
president...
Are we already in the second of the four stages to victory?
I don't know much about the MSM, and even less about H. Clinton, but what was that all about
with the speech she made concerning the "alt-right"? Who in their right mind would bring to the
mainstream attention the existence of a body of contradictory writing?
Is it the same thing here with NYT? Is the sheer prevalence of opposing opinion from its readers
forcing the MSM - led by flagship NYT - to turn and address the phenomenon?
I could not have dared to hope we could already be at stage 2:
First they ignore you.
Then they ridicule you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.
--Gandhi
Grieved@17 - I'm going to argue we're at stage 2.5, Grieved. DDOS attacks on RT and Sputnik, 'managed'
Google search rankings, censored tweets, NSA on your desktop/cellphone. The powers that be and
western MSM are having a conniption fit and they are very angry.
Like all psychopaths, they have a one-track mind that doesn't allow an effective strategy
when it comes to bipedal meat units. Their answer to convincing you of their lies is to proffer
more outrageous lies. It's kind of like the newspapers fighting declining advertising revenue
by making the print smaller, stuffing the paper with more ads at higher rates and raising the
price for a printed newspaper. Damn it, why won't you monkeys OBEY!
Piotr@14,
The season to which I refer is, as I said, the electoral one!
The Times blows (or is it sucks?) very much with the political weather, though regretfully
our elections now blow for long enough to constitute multiple seasons proper.
I've long suspected that light seasoning of truth they sprinkle beneath the fold or deep inside
is there so that when the bogosity of one of their major narratives periodically explodes they
can scrape thin truths from the back pages and later paragraphs to claim the've been reporting
the truth all along!
That's an excellent point, b. I don't even remember the last time I've read anything truthful
in any western MSM outlet. Almost everything is a spin of various degree. NYT is one of worst
offenders, so another lying piece is not at all surprising.
Russia invading Georgia in 2008 fits the definition of factoid , as defined by Norman Mailer
in 1973:
From the Wikipedia article
Factoid : The term was coined in 1973 by American writer Norman Mailer to mean a "piece
of information that becomes accepted as a fact even though it's not actually true, or an invented
fact believed to be true because it appears in print."
This is a basic tool of Western mainstream propaganda. Sprinkle every article full of "factoids"
or small lies. These lies are not about the core topic of article, so they are unlikely to be
challenged. Their only purpose is to enforce the narrative and demonize the enemy. When small
lies or "lielets" are repeated often enough, they become factoids, meaning that they are no longer
recognized as lies.
"... We, as black people, have to reexamine the relationship. We're being pimped like prostitutes
and they're the big pimps pimping us politically… promising us everything and we get nothing in return.
We gotta step back now as black people and we gotta look at all the parties and vote our best interests.
..."
"... Barack Obama, our president, served two terms… the first black president ever… but did our
condition get better? Did financially, politically, academically with education in our community… did
things get better? Are our young people working more? ..."
"... If having the Black working community start totally hammering the Dems becomes "cool" the Dem's
are screwed for a long time. ..."
"... Obama trashed all of America, blacks and whites, while transferring millions of jobs overseas
to Bangladesh, China, Mexico, etc. ..."
... following interview with New Black Panther Quanell X requires no further commentary – he breaks
it down quite succinctly:
Let me say this to the brothers and sisters who listened and watched that speech… We may not
like the vessel [Donald Trump] that said what he said, but I ask us to truly examine what he said.
Because it is a fact that for 54 years we have been voting for the Democratic Party like no
other race in America. And they have not given us the same loyalty and love that we have given
them. We, as black people, have to reexamine the relationship. We're being pimped like prostitutes
and they're the big pimps pimping us politically… promising us everything and we get nothing in
return. We gotta step back now as black people and we gotta look at all the parties and vote our
best interests.
...
I want to say and encourage the brothers and sisters… Barack Obama, our president, served
two terms… the first black president ever… but did our condition get better? Did financially,
politically, academically with education in our community… did things get better? Are our young
people working more?
I've said that repeatedly. The question for hillary isn't what does the survey show, but how many
will actually be motivated enough to go vote. They may not show up and pull the lever for trump
this go round, but they may be curious enough to see what happens to just stay home and let things
work themselves out to see what the result will be
"... Mo Elleithee, who did tours separately as a top aide to Clinton and Tim Kaine and is now executive director of the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service, is nervous that the impact will be much deeper and long lasting. ..."
"... In addition to the health questions and rigged election talk, Elleithee cited Trump's encouragement of Second Amendment voters to do something about a Clinton presidency's court appointments ..."
"... Huma Abedin should be arrested, charged with espionage, and mis-handling of classified material, and imprisoned for a long long time, according to recent email releases. ..."
"... It's deflection because she doesn't want to explain why her family foundation takes money from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. ..."
"... The Saudis are buying access--not funding Clinton Foundation initiatives to help women and children. ..."
"... Horatio N. Fisk Are you saying she didn't delete e-mails and use bleaching software to try to hide her tracks? ..."
"... Classic Clinton propaganda. Are you HONESTLY trying to say she did NOTHING wrong? Then WHY is she stopping doing what she is doing IF she steals the presidency. All along Clinton has denied everything and EVERY SINGLE TIME she has been PROVEN to be a liar! She claimed she NEVER sent a classified email - you called those that said she did lunatic conspiracy theorists - turns out YOU WERE LYING! ..."
"... If ever a person was so obviously unfit to hold the office of POTUS - it's Clinton. Indeed James Comey said anyone else who did what she did would NEVER be able to hols ANY government office, and would either be in jail or minimum sacked. ..."
"... SHAME ON YOU for doing your Josepg Goebbels act. The innocent blood she is GUARANTEED to spill will be on the hands of every single person who votes for that war criminal ..."
"... Hillary is fit to be president? Based on what? Her accomplishments? Her ability to properly handle classified data? Her ability to lie? Being beholden to her big donors from Wall Street, Foreign Countries, shady sources, who made her a 1%er? ..."
"... No one has to de-legitimize Clinton. She's done a fine job all by herself! She lied to the faces of geiving parents, infront of the coffins containing the remains of their loved ones. She lied to the American people, over and over, about her server and the emails she "turned over". She lied to Congress about those same subjects ..."
"... She refuses to give a press conference where the questions are not scripted for her. She used her "Charitable Foundation" to sell access to the State Dep, let people like Bloomenthal decide what decisions she made as Sec State. She panders to blacks, treating them like children. You Go Hillary! Keep making the case for how unfit for office you are! ..."
"... Sure, Mr Trump is not a polished highly trained politician, and ends up very often with foot in mouth disease. But Donald J Trump single-handedly defeated the totally corrupt Republican establishment, and ripped the nomination out of their hands. ..."
"... Those treasonous RINO (especially the warmonger NeoCons) political hacks are still screaming, and the GOP is self-destructing before our eyes. They are fleeing in panic to the sinking, burning SS Clinton, as the establishment newsmedia desperately tries to hide the self-destructing, dying Hillary from the public. Good riddance; ..."
"... Too funny...Hillary hides from the press and the only thing she has got is to make Trump look like a deranged psychopath. That's all she has. She has already waffled on TPP because of Trump. She has not been forced to reckon with her own immigration policies or how she will deal with the refugee crisis. ..."
"... I'm an Independent, I march to my own beat. That said, as a US militay veteran and having served honorably in the United States Marine Corps, in a term I'm sure fellow veterans can understand... "Hillary Rodham Clinton is a scumbag." I'm voting for Dr. Jill Stein on November 8, 2016. ..."
"... Donald Trump really doesn't have to do very much at this point to impune Hillary Clinton 's reputation. She has already done that to herself. Her actions are indefensible and all he has to do is remind people of it and convince the idiots who keep defending her and can't see her crimes that are right in front of their faces. She has lied to us and Congress, concealed her crimes and sold us out time and time again for her own personal gain. ..."
The Clinton delegitimization project is now central to Donald Trump's campaign and such a prime
component of right-wing media that it's already seeped beyond extremist chat rooms into "lock her
up" chants on the convention floor, national news stories debating whether polls actually can be
rigged, and voters puzzling over that photo they think they saw of her needing to be carried up the
stairs.
The Clinton campaign has deliberately positioned its response as an offensive boomerang rather
than a rebuttal: Don't defend against the attacks, just redirect fire at the messenger. "It holds
up a mirror to Donald Trump and what his campaign is about, and says everything you need to know
about Donald Trump and where these kinds of crazy conspiracy theories are coming from," as one campaign
aide put it.
But the Democrat's team is aware of how this might factor in beyond November.
"Some of the campaign and allies' conspiracies are designed to delegitimize her personally. Most
are simply designed to spread fear and mistrust. And I am sure if she wins, the right wing will continue
to spread these theories," said Clinton senior adviser Jennifer Palmieri. Palmieri is in favor of
ignoring most of the wackiness but warned: "Just because they may have zero basis in truth doesn't
mean they can't be corrosive. So in this cycle I believe you have to call out the truly destructive
theories calmly, but aggressively, and in real time."
... ... ...
For days, Clinton campaign officials purposefully ignored questions coming at them from the Trump-intertwined
Breitbart News about her health, according to an aide. But after Fox News host Sean Hannity devoted
an episode of his show to a Clinton rumor medical panel, complete with an eager-to-please urologist
in a white coat, they shifted gears: a long release emailed to reporters two weeks ago with sourced
debunkings of all the rumors and a statement from her doctor attesting that supposedly leaked medical
records were forged.
... ... ...
Mo Elleithee, who did tours separately as a top aide to Clinton and Tim Kaine and is now executive
director of the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service, is nervous that the impact will
be much deeper and long lasting.
... ... ...
In addition to the health questions and rigged election talk, Elleithee cited Trump's encouragement
of Second Amendment voters to do something about a Clinton presidency's court appointments and
Trump adviser Roger Stone's suggestion of bloodshed if Trump loses.
Original unedited comments. Red bold/italic emphasis is mine
Mike
Davis
How does one poison a black widow spider? Hillary Clinton is already poison.
She and Slick have been poison for four decades.
It is Obama and Clinton wanting to bring radical Islam jihadists here to America. There is no
possible way to screen them at present. Even HS has no clue how to screen terrorists out and admit
so. Huma Abedin should be arrested, charged with espionage, and mis-handling of classified material,
and imprisoned for a long long time, according to recent email releases. Of course, losing her
radical Islam lover, might be too much for the sickened Hillary to withstand.
Donald J Trump wants to keep radical Islam sharia law jihadists out, along with other criminals,
drug dealers, who would endanger the innocent Americans. You liberals support the criminal dying
Clinton; therefore you support her policies, including the middle-class wrecking ball TPP and
NAFTA.
It's deflection because she doesn't want to explain why her family foundation
takes money from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Doing so would weaken her credibility as a human
rights champion. The Saudis are buying access--not funding Clinton Foundation initiatives
to help women and children. We should be scrutinizing our arms sales to oppressive regimes
like Saudi Arabia and standing up for human rights. Not taking money when it is convenient, selling
our best weapons to dictatorships, and then pretending the rest of the world believes we are some
City on a Hill human rights champions.
Thus the dilemma for the gutless Dems, attack the character of Trump while
defending the 100% lack of character of the email deleting, ambassador murdering money laundering
lying under oath criminal piece of shit..
Good luck with that..
Horatio N. Fisk · Works at Writer, Gadfly
Good luck with proving any of what you said;. You can't
David J. Lekse · Indianapolis, Indiana
Horatio N. Fisk Are you saying she didn't delete e-mails and use bleaching software to
try to hide her tracks?
Paul Marston · Works at Self-Employed
Classic Clinton propaganda. Are you HONESTLY trying to say she did NOTHING wrong? Then
WHY is she stopping doing what she is doing IF she steals the presidency. All along Clinton has
denied everything and EVERY SINGLE TIME she has been PROVEN to be a liar! She claimed she NEVER
sent a classified email - you called those that said she did lunatic conspiracy theorists - turns
out YOU WERE LYING!
The sheer contempt you and all the other Clinton drones have for the American public is genuinely
sickening. It has been PROVEN she rigged the primaries - and had to sack 5 staff for it, yet Clinton
claims she did nothing wrong.
If ever a person was so obviously unfit to hold the office of POTUS - it's Clinton. Indeed
James Comey said anyone else who did what she did would NEVER be able to hols ANY government office,
and would either be in jail or minimum sacked.
SHAME ON YOU for doing your Josepg Goebbels act. The innocent blood she is GUARANTEED to spill
will be on the hands of every single person who votes for that war criminal
Bob Rousseau
Pretty pathetic when the do nothing, low IQ Republicans have to resort to conspiracy theories
and lies to win elected office. If their voters werent so stupid and toxic, conspiracy theories
would be immediately identified for what they are; right wing garbage.
Marlin Johnson
Hillary is fit to be president? Based on what? Her accomplishments? Her ability to properly
handle classified data? Her ability to lie? Being beholden to her big donors from Wall Street,
Foreign Countries, shady sources, who made her a 1%er?
Not securing the Mexican border so illegal aliens can continue to flood in to be exploited
with low paying jobs, burdening social service budgets and taking American jobs? By allowing 550,000
unvetted Syrian refugees enter our country risking that some may be ISIS? Or having Bill back
in the White House seeking sexual favors from young interns? Of course you would mind if it were
your daughter working as an intern. And Hillary can launch vicious personal character attacks
against the victims of Bill's sexual assaults.
Wayne Barron
No one has to de-legitimize Clinton. She's done a fine job all by herself! She lied to
the faces of geiving parents, infront of the coffins containing the remains of their loved ones.
She lied to the American people, over and over, about her server and the emails she "turned over".
She lied to Congress about those same subjects.
She refuses to give a press conference where the questions are not scripted for her. She
used her "Charitable Foundation" to sell access to the State Dep, let people like Bloomenthal
decide what decisions she made as Sec State. She panders to blacks, treating them like children.
You Go Hillary! Keep making the case for how unfit for office you are!
Mike Davis
Sure, Mr Trump is not a polished highly trained politician, and ends up very often with
foot in mouth disease. But Donald J Trump single-handedly defeated the totally corrupt Republican
establishment, and ripped the nomination out of their hands.
Those treasonous RINO (especially the warmonger NeoCons) political hacks are still screaming,
and the GOP is self-destructing before our eyes. They are fleeing in panic to the sinking, burning
SS Clinton, as the establishment newsmedia desperately tries to hide the self-destructing, dying
Hillary from the public. Good riddance; thank you Mr Trump.
Tammy McKinnon · Florida State University
Too funny...Hillary hides from the press and the only thing she has got is to make Trump
look like a deranged psychopath. That's all she has. She has already waffled on TPP because of
Trump. She has not been forced to reckon with her own immigration policies or how she will deal
with the refugee crisis.
Not much about terror either. She released a tax plan but that is meaningless piece of paper
that all candidates put out there..you must get Congress on your side and Republicans will not
go for increases.
Then there is her free public college plan. Obamacare is collapsing and voters are going to
see it firsthand Nov 1st (if Obama doesn't delay it until after the election)
Yeah, the wind is behind her(and the MSM)....it wasn't rosy for her at the end of July. We
were told that didn't matter ...but now it does?
Tammy McKinnon · Florida State University
Bethsabe David,
Dems have perfected unsubstantiated attacks in elections. Remember Reid saying that Romney's
tax returns showed he had paid no taxes? Remember the commercial accusing Romney of murder and
the crying husband? (big lie) Oh and the Hillary camp started the birther movement. All 'lies'
are not created equal. Hillary is dangerous.
Trump is not "loosing" (spell check is your friend Bethsabe) He was doing very well the end
on July and we still have a ways to go.
Benjamin Andrew Marine · American University
Doug Perry,
I'm an Independent, I march to my own beat. That said, as a US militay veteran and
having served honorably in the United States Marine Corps, in a term I'm sure fellow veterans
can understand... "Hillary Rodham Clinton is a scumbag." I'm voting for Dr. Jill Stein on November
8, 2016.
Michael Iger
Republicans demonize opponents its in their nature and the Clinton's have been on that long
list of enemies now for decades. We see it too with Obama and Trump's birther charges and McConnell
talking about not cooperating with the President at a price of hurting the country. Hilary, both
as a Clinton and a Democrat, is going to get a double dose in her term of office. The real loser
is the country that becomes stalemated and dysfunctional at the top which then permeates the society.
We have a dysfunction group in this country with some power and until it changes must deal with
it. With Trump's campaign of bigotry and racism that may change sooner than later as the country
wakes up to reality of the mess and its done. With stalemate very little gets done and problems
don't get solved.
Michael Welby · Owner at Self-Employed
Yeah, it is Republicans that demonize. That is why, in Reno, Hillary draped the KKK all over
trump. YOu do it too: bigot, racist.
With such warm greetings and suggesting of cooperation, what the hell do you expect. She may win
the office. She will accomplish nothing. Nothing.
Donald Trump really doesn't have to do very much at this point to impune Hillary Clinton 's reputation.
She has already done that to herself. Her actions are indefensible and all he has to do is remind
people of it and convince the idiots who keep defending her and can't see her crimes that are
right in front of their faces. She has lied to us and Congress, concealed her crimes and sold
us out time and time again for her own personal gain.
"... there's an opportunity for Trump to draw a sharp contrast with Clinton, who also has issues engaging with the press as a whole. ..."
"... "If Trump were to more broadly engage the broader media landscape, he can provide a clear contrast to Hillary Clinton, who is clearly playing a 'run out the clock' strategy with regard to the press," McCall said. ..."
Jeff McCall, a professor of media studies at Depauw University, agrees there's an opportunity
for Trump to draw a sharp contrast with Clinton, who also has issues engaging with the press as a
whole.
"If Trump were to more broadly engage the broader media landscape, he can provide a clear
contrast to Hillary Clinton, who is clearly playing a 'run out the clock' strategy with regard to
the press," McCall said.
"Trump should speak to any and all news outlets and mention during each of those interviews that
he is there to speak to the electorate while Hillary ducks the tough questioning and won't even hold
a press conference."
But a more exposed Trump, McCall said, only works if he stays on the narrative the campaign wishes
to articulate.
"If he expands his media range, but has flimsy or off-target messages, he will just contribute to
the perception that his messaging and campaign are rather untethered," he said.
Problems are undeniable, but severity of the condition can be assessed only by qualified doctors
after studying all medical record. Which should be a requred stp for all US presidential candidates.
CNN presstitutes do disservice to the nation downplaying the concerns.
Notable quotes:
"... So, will Hillary accept Trump's challenge to release her medical records? I think we all know the answer to that... ..."
... reminds Americans about Trump's self-professed medical disability, which allowed him to avoid
serving in the Vietnam War Second, this baseless attack on Clinton's health reeks of the same conspiracy
theory junk we have heard before from him
...Even the way Trump's cheerleader-in-chief Rudy Giuliani
recently tried to support his claim that Clinton was very ill smacked of typical conspiracy fare:
...
CNN User
So, will Hillary accept Trump's challenge to release her medical records? I think we all
know the answer to that...
Just like showing up for a press conference, she just has too much to lose by being open with
voters.;
What is amazing is that such column was published is such a sycophantic for Hillary and openly anti-Trump
rag as NYT. In foreign policy Hillary is the second incarnation of Cheney... Neocons rules NYT coverage
of Presidential race and, of course, they all favor Hillary. Of course chances that some on neocons
who so enthusiastically support her, crossing Party lines are drafted, get M16 and send to kill brown
people for Wall Street interests now is close to zero. Everything is outsourced now. But still, it is
simply amazing that even a lonely voice against neocon campaign of demonization of Trump got published
in NYT ...
MSM shilling for Hillary is simply overwhelming, so why this was in NYT is a mystery to me. But
this article of Maureen Dowd in on spot. Simply amazing how she manage to publish it !!!
Notable quotes:
"... Hillary will keep the establishment safe. Who is more of an establishment figure, after all? Her husband was president, and he repealed Glass-Steagall, signed the Defense of Marriage Act and got rid of those pesky welfare queens. ..."
"... Hillary often seems more Republican than the Gotham bling king, who used to be a Democrat and donor to Democratic candidates before he jumped the turnstile. ..."
"... Hillary is a reliable creature of Wall Street. Her tax return showed the Clintons made $10.6 million last year, and like other superrich families, they incorporated with the Clinton Executive Services Corporation (which was billed for the infamous server). Trump has started holding up goofy charts at rallies showing Hillary has gotten $48,500,000 in contributions from hedge funders, compared to his $19,000. ..."
"... Unlike Trump, she hasn't been trashing leading Republicans. You know that her pals John McCain and Lindsey Graham are secretly rooting for her. There is a cascade of prominent Republicans endorsing Hillary, donating to Hillary, appearing in Hillary ads, talking up Hillary's charms. ..."
"... Robert Kagan, a former Reagan State Department aide, adviser to the McCain and Mitt Romney campaigns and Iraq war booster, headlined a Hillary fund-raiser this summer. Another neocon, James Kirchick, keened in The Daily Beast , "Hillary Clinton is the one person standing between America and the abyss." ..."
"... The Democratic nominee put out an ad featuring Trump-bashing Michael Hayden, an N.S.A. and CIA chief under W. who was deemed "incongruent" by the Senate when he testified about torture methods. And she earned an endorsement from John Negroponte, a Reagan hand linked to American-trained death squads in Latin America. ..."
"... Politico reports that the Clinton team sent out feelers to see if Kissinger, the Voldemort of Vietnam, and Condi Rice, the conjurer of Saddam's apocalyptic mushroom cloud, would back Hillary. ..."
"... The Hillary team seems giddy over its windfall of Republicans and neocons running from the Trump sharknado. But as David Weigel wrote in The Washington Post, the specter of Kissinger, the man who advised Nixon to prolong the Vietnam War to help with his re-election, fed a perception that "the Democratic nominee has returned to her old, hawkish ways and is again taking progressives for granted." ..."
"... Hillary is a safer bet in many ways for conservatives. Trump likes to say he is flexible. What if he returns to his liberal New York positions on gun control and abortion rights? ..."
"... Trump is far too incendiary in his manner of speaking, throwing around dangerous and self-destructive taunts about "Second Amendment people" taking out Hillary, or President Obama and Hillary being the founders of ISIS ..."
"... Hillary, on the other hand, understands her way around political language and Washington rituals. Of course you do favors for wealthy donors. And if you want to do something incredibly damaging to the country, like enabling George W. Bush to make the worst foreign policy blunder in U.S. history, don't shout inflammatory and fabricated taunts from a microphone. ..."
"... You must walk up to the microphone calmly, as Hillary did on the Senate floor the day of the Iraq war vote, and accuse Saddam of giving "aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda," repeating the Bush administration's phony case for war. If you want to carry the GOP banner, your fabrications have to be more sneaky. ..."
"... "You must walk up to the microphone calmly, as Hillary did on the Senate floor the day of the Iraq war vote, and accuse Saddam of giving "aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda," repeating the Bush administration's phony case for war." ..."
"... Anyone who believes Bill Clinton didn't know exactly what was going on is just kidding themselves. One clue, for example. They moved the WMD 'intelligence" investigation to the DOD under Paul Wolfowitz. LOL! ..."
"... Thomas Frank, the author of "What's the Matter with Kansas?" and "Listen Liberal: Or What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?" echoes Ms. Dowd's sentiments. In a recent column Frank says that with Trump certain to lose, you can forget about a progressive Clinton. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/13/trump-clinton-elec... ..."
"... "America's two-party system itself has temporarily become a one-party system. And within that one party, the political process bears a striking resemblance to dynastic succession. Come November, Clinton will have won her great victory – not as a champion of working people's concerns, but as the greatest moderate of them all." ..."
"... We've also managed to select one of biggest dissemblers, enablers, war hawks, fungible flip-floppers, pay for play con artists, scandal mongerers candidates since Tricky Dicky. Congratulations America! We did it. As Alexis de Tocqueville said, "Wet get the government we deserve." ..."
"... The reaction by many to Ms Dowd's column clearly shows that the "save the world" "lesser evil" argument only works is one is willing to suspend belief on the demonstrated evil of Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... Clinton could well take us to war against Russia. In Syria, Clinton is spoiling to give Russia a punch in the nose, on the theory that Russia will back down and the US will have a free hand there. She advocates a a no-fly zone for Russian jets in Syria. The idea there is to create a confrontation, shoot down a couple of Russian jets and teach them a lesson. There is also the CIA and Pentagon "Plan B" for the Syrian negotiations. ..."
"... It's always wonderful to see when the truth comes out in the end: Hillary is the perfect Repulican candidate and this is also prove of the fact that on finance and economic issues Democrats and old mainstream Republicans have been in in the same pocket...even under Obama. ..."
"... One night after the election on the Carson show Goldwater quipped that he didn't know how unpopular a president he would have been until Johnson adopted his policies... ..."
"... All the things you say about Hillary are true. She is an establishment favorite. She did indeed vote to support Bush and his insane desire to invade Iraq. ..."
"... Did we all forget the millions who went for Bernie and his direct and aggressive confrontation of Hillary's Wall Street/corporate ties? That was a contest between what used to be the Dem party of the people and the corporate friendly Dem party of today. We understood then that Hillary represented the Right; why the surprise now? (The right pointing arrow on the "H" logo is so appropriate.) ..."
"... There are reasons Hillary is disliked and distrusted by nearly a majority of us. My reasons are she is of and for the oligarchs and deceitful enough to run as a populist. ..."
"... America tried to liberalize in the 1960's and the response was swift and violent as three of the greatest liberal lions and voices the country has ever known - JFK, MLK and RFK - were gunned down. ..."
"... While one can endlessly argue the specific details of those ghastly assassinations of America's liberal superstars, in my view, all three of those murders rest on the violent, nefarious right-wing shoulders and fumes of moneyed American 'conservatism' that couldn't stand to share the profits of their economic parasitism with society. ..."
"... I truly believe that Congressional Republicans in the House are already drafting articles of impeachment should Hillary become President. Dowd may claim that Republicans are in lock step with her, but don't be surprised when the talk of impeachment starts soon after Jan 20, 2017. ..."
"... We need a multi party system. With 2 parties dominating the politics, its like having a monopoly of liberalism or conservatism which just does not represent the width and depth of views our citizens resonate with. Having voted democrat all my life, to me Hillary does not represent my choice (Bernie does). ..."
"... This annoys me..."like enabling George W. Bush to make the worst foreign policy blunder in U.S. history" Maureen is talking about Hillary, but she might as well be talking about her own newspaper. Hillary got it wrong, but so did the New York Times editorial board. ..."
"... The Bush Administration hinted that the anti-war people were traitors and terrorist sympathizers and everybody got steamrolled. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/22/opinion/culture-war-with-b-2-s.html ..."
"... HRC couldn't have asked for a better opponent if she'd constructed him out of a six-foot pile of mildewed straw. By running against Trump, the whole Trump and nothing but the Trump, and openly courting neocon war criminals and "establishment" Republicans, she's outrageously giving CPR to what should have been a rotting corpse of a political party by now. ..."
"... By giving new life to the pathocrats who made Trump possible, Clinton is only making her own party weaker and more right-wing, only making it easier for down-ticket Republicans to slither their way back into power.... the better to triangulate with during the Clinton restoration. Grand Bargain, here we come. TPP, (just waiting for that fig leaf of meager aid for displaced American workers) here we come. Bombs away. ..."
"... She'll have to stop hoarding her campaign cash and share it with the down-ticket Democrats running against the same well-heeled GOPers she is now courting with such naked abandon. ..."
"... The Empress needs some new clothes to hide that inner Goldwater Girl. ..."
All these woebegone Republicans whining that they can't rally behind their flawed candidate is
crazy. The G.O.P. angst, the gnashing and wailing and searching for last-minute substitutes and exit
strategies, is getting old. They already have a 1-percenter who will be totally fine in the Oval
Office, someone they can trust to help Wall Street, boost the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, cuddle with
hedge funds, secure the trade deals beloved by corporate America, seek guidance from Henry Kissinger
and hawk it up - unleashing hell on Syria and heaven knows where else.
The Republicans have their candidate: It's Hillary. They can't go with Donald Trump. He's too
volatile and unhinged. The erstwhile Goldwater Girl and Goldman Sachs busker can be counted on to
do the normal political things, not the abnormal haywire things. Trump's propounding could drag us
into war, plunge us into a recession and shatter Washington into a thousand tiny bits.
Hillary will keep the establishment safe. Who is more of an establishment figure, after all?
Her husband was president, and he repealed Glass-Steagall, signed the Defense of Marriage Act and
got rid of those pesky welfare queens.
Pushing her Midwestern Methodist roots, taking advantage of primogeniture, Hillary often seems
more Republican than the Gotham bling king, who used to be a Democrat and donor to Democratic candidates
before he jumped the turnstile.
Hillary is a reliable creature of Wall Street. Her tax return showed the Clintons made $10.6
million last year, and like other superrich families, they incorporated with the Clinton Executive
Services Corporation (which was billed for the infamous server). Trump has started holding up goofy
charts at rallies showing Hillary has gotten $48,500,000 in contributions from hedge funders, compared
to his $19,000.
Unlike Trump, she hasn't been trashing leading Republicans. You know that her pals John McCain
and Lindsey Graham are secretly rooting for her. There is a cascade of prominent Republicans endorsing
Hillary, donating to Hillary, appearing in Hillary ads, talking up Hillary's charms.
Robert Kagan, a former Reagan State Department aide, adviser to the McCain and Mitt Romney
campaigns and Iraq war booster, headlined a Hillary fund-raiser this summer. Another neocon, James
Kirchick,
keened in The Daily Beast , "Hillary Clinton is the one person standing between America and the
abyss."
She has finally stirred up some emotion in women, even if it is just moderate suburban Republican
women palpitating to leave their own nominee, who has the retro air of a guy who just left the dim
recesses of a Playboy bunny club.
The Democratic nominee put out an ad featuring Trump-bashing Michael Hayden, an N.S.A. and
CIA chief under W. who was deemed "incongruent" by the Senate when he testified about torture
methods. And she earned an endorsement from John Negroponte, a Reagan hand linked to American-trained
death squads in Latin America.
Politico reports that the Clinton team sent out feelers to see if Kissinger, the Voldemort
of Vietnam, and Condi Rice, the conjurer of Saddam's apocalyptic mushroom cloud, would back Hillary.
Hillary has written that Kissinger is an "idealistic" friend whose counsel she valued as secretary
of state, drawing a rebuke from Bernie Sanders during the primaries: "I'm proud to say Henry Kissinger
is not my friend."
The Hillary team seems giddy over its windfall of Republicans and neocons running from the
Trump sharknado. But as
David Weigel wrote in The Washington Post, the specter of Kissinger, the man who advised Nixon
to prolong the Vietnam War to help with his re-election, fed a perception that "the Democratic nominee
has returned to her old, hawkish ways and is again taking progressives for granted."
And
Isaac Chotiner wrote in Slate, "The prospect of Kissinger having influence in a Clinton White
House is downright scary."
Hillary is a safer bet in many ways for conservatives. Trump likes to say he is flexible.
What if he returns to his liberal New York positions on gun control and abortion rights?
Trump is far too incendiary in his manner of speaking, throwing around dangerous and self-destructive
taunts about "Second Amendment people" taking out Hillary, or President Obama and Hillary being the
founders of ISIS. And he still blindly follows his ego, failing to understand the fundamentals
of a campaign. "I don't know that we need to get out the vote," he told Fox News Thursday. "I think
people that really wanna vote are gonna get out and they're gonna vote for Trump."
Hillary, on the other hand, understands her way around political language and Washington rituals.
Of course you do favors for wealthy donors. And if you want to do something incredibly damaging to
the country, like enabling George W. Bush to make the worst foreign policy blunder in U.S. history,
don't shout inflammatory and fabricated taunts from a microphone.
You must walk up to the microphone calmly, as Hillary did on the Senate floor the day of the
Iraq war vote, and accuse Saddam of giving "aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al
Qaeda," repeating the Bush administration's phony case for war. If you want to carry the GOP banner,
your fabrications have to be more sneaky.
As
Republican strategist Steve Schmidt noted on MSNBC, "the candidate in the race most like George
W. Bush and Dick Cheney from a foreign policy perspective is in fact Hillary Clinton, not the Republican
nominee."
And that's how Republicans prefer their crazy - not like Trump, but like Cheney.
JohnNJ, New jersey August 14, 2016
For me, this is her strongest point:
"You must walk up to the microphone calmly, as Hillary did on the Senate floor the day
of the Iraq war vote, and accuse Saddam of giving "aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including
Al Qaeda," repeating the Bush administration's phony case for war."
There are still people who believe her excuse that she only voted for authorization, blah,
blah, blah.
Anyone who believes Bill Clinton didn't know exactly what was going on is just kidding
themselves. One clue, for example. They moved the WMD 'intelligence" investigation to the DOD
under Paul Wolfowitz. LOL!
Red_Dog , Denver CO August 14, 2016
Thomas Frank, the author of "What's the Matter with Kansas?" and "Listen Liberal: Or What
Ever Happened to the Party of the People?" echoes Ms. Dowd's sentiments. In a recent column Frank
says that with Trump certain to lose, you can forget about a progressive Clinton.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/13/trump-clinton-elec...
"America's two-party system itself has temporarily become a one-party system. And within
that one party, the political process bears a striking resemblance to dynastic succession. Come
November, Clinton will have won her great victory – not as a champion of working people's concerns,
but as the greatest moderate of them all."
And great populist uprising of our times will be gone --- probably for many years.
FDR Liberal , Sparks, NV August 14, 2016
Spot on column Ms. Dowd.
As Americans we are to blame that these two major party candidates are the only viable ones
seeking the presidency. Yes, fellow citizens we are to blame because in the end we are the ones
that voted for them in various primaries and caucuses. And if you didn't attend a caucus or vote
in a primary, you are also part of problem.
In short, it is not the media's fault, nor is it the top .1%, 1% or 10% fault, nor your kids'
fault, nor your parents' fault, nor your neighbors' fault, etc.
It is our fault because we did this together. Yes, we managed y to select a narcissist, xenophobe,
anti-Muslim, racist, misogynist, and dare I say buffoon to the GOP ticket.
We've also managed to select one of biggest dissemblers, enablers, war hawks, fungible
flip-floppers, pay for play con artists, scandal mongerers candidates since Tricky Dicky. Congratulations
America! We did it. As Alexis de Tocqueville said, "Wet get the government we deserve."
Martin Brod, NYC August 14, 2016
The reaction by many to Ms Dowd's column clearly shows that the "save the world" "lesser
evil" argument only works is one is willing to suspend belief on the demonstrated evil of Hillary
Clinton.
The Green Party and Libertarian parties provide sane alternatives to the two most distrusted
candidates of the major parties. As debate participants they
would offer an alternative to evil at a time when the planets count-down clock is racing to mid-night.
pathenry, berkeley August 14, 2016
Clinton could well take us to war against Russia. In Syria, Clinton is spoiling to give
Russia a punch in the nose, on the theory that Russia will back down and the US will have a free
hand there. She advocates a a no-fly zone for Russian jets in Syria. The idea there is to create
a confrontation, shoot down a couple of Russian jets and teach them a lesson. There is also the
CIA and Pentagon "Plan B" for the Syrian negotiations.
If the negotiations fail, give stingers to our "vetted allies". Who will those stingers be
used against? Russia. At least the ones not smuggled to Brussels. And then there is the plan being
bandied about by our best and brightest to organize, arm and lead our "vetted allies" in attacks
on Russian bases in Syria. A Bay of Pigs in the desert. A dime to a dollar, Clinton is supportive
of these plans.
All of this is dangerous brinksmanship which is how you go to war.
Mike A. , East Providence, RI August 14, 2016
The second Pulitzer quality piece from the NYT op-ed columnists in less than a month (see Charles
Blow's "Incandescent With Rage" for the first).
heinrich zwahlen , brooklyn August 14, 2016
It's always wonderful to see when the truth comes out in the end: Hillary is the perfect
Repulican candidate and this is also prove of the fact that on finance and economic issues Democrats
and old mainstream Republicans have been in in the same pocket...even under Obama.
For real progressives it's useless to vote for her and high time to start a new party. Cultural
issues are not the main issues that pain America, it's all about the money stupid.
JohnD, New York August 14, 2016
... One night after the election on the Carson show Goldwater quipped that he didn't know
how unpopular a president he would have been until Johnson adopted his policies...
Lee Elliott , Rochester August 14, 2016
You've written the most depressing column I've read lately. All the things you say about
Hillary are true. She is an establishment favorite. She did indeed vote to support Bush and his
insane desire to invade Iraq. But it was that vote kept her from being president in 2008.
Perhaps that will convince her to keep the establishment a little more at arm's length. When there
is no other behind for them to kiss, then you can afford to be a little hard to get.
As for Trump, he is proving to be too much like Ross Perot. He looks great at first but begins
to fade when his underlying lunacy begins to bubble to the surface.
Speaking of Perot, I find it an interesting coincidence that Bill Clinton and now Hillary Clinton
will depend on the ravings of an apparent lunatic in order to get elected.
citizen vox, San Francisco August 14, 2016
Why the vitriol against Dowd? Did we all forget the millions who went for Bernie and his
direct and aggressive confrontation of Hillary's Wall Street/corporate ties? That was a contest
between what used to be the Dem party of the people and the corporate friendly Dem party of today.
We understood then that Hillary represented the Right; why the surprise now? (The right pointing
arrow on the "H" logo is so appropriate.)
Last week's article on how Hillary came to love money was horrifying; because Bill lost a Governor's
race, Hillary felt so insecure she called all her wealthy friends for donations. Huh?! Two Harvard
trained lawyers asking for financial help?! And never getting enough money to feel secure?! GIVE
ME A BREAK (to coin a phrase).
There are reasons Hillary is disliked and distrusted by nearly a majority of us. My reasons
are she is of and for the oligarchs and deceitful enough to run as a populist.
If readers bemoan anything, let it be that the populist movement of the Dem party was put down
by the Dem establishment. We have a choice between a crazy candidate of no particular persuasion
and a cold, calculating Republican. How discouraging.
Thanks, Maureen Dowd.
Chris, Louisville August 14, 2016
Maureen please don't ever give up on Hillary bashing. It needs to be done before someone accidentally
elects her as President. She is most like Angela Merkel of Germany. Take a look what's happening
there. That is enough never to vote for Hillary.
Susan e, AZ August 14, 2016
I recall the outrage I, a peace loving liberal who despised W and Cheney, felt while watching
the made for TV "shock and awe" invasion of Iraq. I recall how the"liberal Democrats" who supported
that disaster with a vote for the IRW could never quite bring themselves to admit their mistake
- and I realized that many, like Hillary, didn't feel it was a mistake. Not really. It was necessary
for their political careers.
For me, its not a vote for Hillary, its a vote for a candidate that sees killing innocent people
in Syria (or Libya, or Gaza, etc.) as the only way to be viewed as a serious candidate for CIC.
I'm old enough to remember another endless war, as the old Vietnam anti-war ballad went: "I ain't
gonna vote for war no more."
John, Switzerland August 14, 2016
Maureen Dowd is not being nasty, but rather accurate. It is nasty to support and start wars
throughout the ME. It is nasty to say (on mic) "We came, we saw, he died" referring to the gruesome
torture-murder of Qaddafi.
Will Hillary start a war against Syria? Yes or no? That is the the "six trillion dollar" question.
Socrates , is a trusted commenter Downtown Verona, NJ August 13, 2016
It's hard to a find a good liberal in these United States, not because there's anything wrong
with liberalism or progressivism, but because Americans have been taught, hypnotized and beaten
by a powerfully insidious and filthy rich right-wing to think that liberalism, progressivism and
socialism is a form of fatal cancer.
America tried to liberalize in the 1960's and the response was swift and violent as three
of the greatest liberal lions and voices the country has ever known - JFK, MLK and RFK - were
gunned down.
While one can endlessly argue the specific details of those ghastly assassinations of America's
liberal superstars, in my view, all three of those murders rest on the violent, nefarious right-wing
shoulders and fumes of moneyed American 'conservatism' that couldn't stand to share the profits
of their economic parasitism with society.
The end result is that political liberals are forced to triangulate for their survival in right-wing
America, and you wind up with Presidents like Bill Clinton and (soon) Hillary Clinton who know
how to survive in a pool of right-wing knives, assassins and psychopaths lurking everywhere representing
Grand Old Profit.
... ... ...
Dotconnector, New York August 14, 2016
The trickery deep within the dark art of Clintonism is triangulation. By breeding a nominal
Democratic donkey with a de facto Republican elephant, what you get is a corporatist chameleon.
There's precious little solace in knowing that this cynical political hybrid is only slightly
less risky than Trumpenstein.
And the fact that Henry Kissinger still has a seat at the table ought to chill the spine of
anyone who considers human lives -- those of U.S. service members and foreign noncombatants alike
-- to have greater value than pawns in a global chess game.
Bj, is a trusted commenter Washington,dc August 13, 2016
I truly believe that Congressional Republicans in the House are already drafting articles
of impeachment should Hillary become President. Dowd may claim that Republicans are in lock step
with her, but don't be surprised when the talk of impeachment starts soon after Jan 20, 2017.
They didn't succeed with Bill. And they were chomping at the bit to try to impeach Obama
over his use of executive orders and his decision not to defend an early same sex marriage case.
They are just waiting for inauguration to start this process all over again - another circus and
waste of taxpayer money.
petey tonei, Massachusetts August 14, 2016
Two party system is not enough for a country this big, with such a wide spectrum of political
beliefs. We need a multi party system. With 2 parties dominating the politics, its like having
a monopoly of liberalism or conservatism which just does not represent the width and depth of
views our citizens resonate with. Having voted democrat all my life, to me Hillary does not represent
my choice (Bernie does). Heard on NPR just today from on the ground reporters in Terre Haute,
Indiana, the bellwether of presidential elections, the 2 names that were most heard were Trump
and Bernie Sanders, not Hillary. Sadly, Bernie is not even the nominee but he truly represents
the guts, soul of mid America
Schrodinger, is a trusted commenter Northern California August 14, 2016
This annoys me..."like enabling George W. Bush to make the worst foreign policy blunder
in U.S. history" Maureen is talking about Hillary, but she might as well be talking about her
own newspaper. Hillary got it wrong, but so did the New York Times editorial board.
What about Ms Dowd herself? Of the four columns she wrote before the vote on October 11th,
2002, only two mentioned the war vote, and one of those was mostly about Hillary. Dowd said of
Hillary that, "Whatever doubts she may have privately about the war, she is not articulating her
angst as loudly as some of her Democratic colleagues. She knows that any woman who hopes to be
elected president cannot have love beads in her jewelry case."
In her column 'Culture war with B-2's', Dowd comes out as mildly anti-war. "Don't feel bad
if you have the uneasy feeling that you're being steamrolled", Dowd writes, "You are not alone."
Fourteen years later that column still looks good, and I link to it at the bottom. However, Dowd
could and should have done a lot more. I don't think that anybody who draws a paycheck from the
New York Times has a right to get on their high horse and lecture Hillary about her vote. They
ignored the antiwar protests just like they ignored Bernie Sanders' large crowds.
Karen Garcia , is a trusted commenter New Paltz, NY August 13, 2016
HRC couldn't have asked for a better opponent if she'd constructed him out of a six-foot
pile of mildewed straw. By running against Trump, the whole Trump and nothing but the Trump, and
openly courting neocon war criminals and "establishment" Republicans, she's outrageously giving
CPR to what should have been a rotting corpse of a political party by now.
By giving new life to the pathocrats who made Trump possible, Clinton is only making her
own party weaker and more right-wing, only making it easier for down-ticket Republicans to slither
their way back into power.... the better to triangulate with during the Clinton restoration. Grand
Bargain, here we come. TPP, (just waiting for that fig leaf of meager aid for displaced American
workers) here we come. Bombs away.
With three months to go before this grotesque circus ends, Trump is giving every indication
that he wants out, getting more reckless by the day. And that's a good thing, because with her
rise in the polls, Hillary will now have to do more on the stump than inform us she is not Trump.
She'll have to ditch the fear factor. She'll have to start sending emails and Tweets with something
other than "OMG! Did you hear what Trump just said?!?" on them to convince voters.
She'll have to stop hoarding her campaign cash and share it with the down-ticket Democrats
running against the same well-heeled GOPers she is now courting with such naked abandon.
The Empress needs some new clothes to hide that inner Goldwater Girl.
"... Clinton bigotry against working with inconvenient facts. Read applicable US code one for security, one for federal records, Clinton gets away with calling law that protect security as 'spin'. ..."
The burgeoning neolib dog whistle "alt-right" is short for "a$$hole who thinks Clinton should
go to jail for 1000 times the misconduct that would get that a$$hole 10 years hard time".
Neoliberals use the term "alt-right" as shorthand for those who don't drink the Clinton neocon
Kool-Aid.
The bigotry of warmongering neoliberals against anyone who disagrees. There isn't enough fascism
going around?
Clinton bigotry against working with inconvenient facts. Read applicable US code one for security,
one for federal records, Clinton gets away with calling law that protect security as 'spin'.
ilsm -> Paine... , -1
The 'soft bigotry of GLBT and war for fascist allies' types criticizing racists' morals.
ilsm -> anne... , -1
In the same category as Brooks and Friedman. I regard Dowd better!
"... "Of course Julian Assange is right. Hillary Clinton's harangue depicting Donald Trump as the enabler of some insidious 'Alt Right' movement whose Grand Dragon is Vladimir Putin is too absurd for words," Jatras said on Friday. "It would be just silly if it weren't so dangerous." ..."
"... She and her surrogates have been banging the 'Kremlin agent' drum for some time. But when Trump asks rock-ribbed GOP [Republican] crowds if it wouldn't be a great thing to get along with Russia and team up with Moscow to fight ISIS [Islamic State], he gets thunderous approval, ..."
"... Jatras suggested that Clinton's latest attacks on Trump as an alleged racist were meant to distract attention from the latest WikiLeaks documents exposing the leaked information related to "pay to play" between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department. ..."
"... He also argued that Clinton's attacks were meant to distract pubic attention from her own record of controversy and alleged corruption. "Any American worthy of the name hates her and the whole rotten Deep State she fronts for: the profiteers on endless wars, the globalist corporations that dump their American workers to import their foreign-made goods duty free and the driving down of wages due to a glut of imported foreign labor," he said. ..."
"... Jatras suggested that these policies that Clinton as secretary of state and her husband, President Bill Clinton had implemented and supported were far more worthy of hate than the false accusations she was throwing against Trump. "Those are things all Americans, whether white, black, brown, red, or yellow should hate, and Hillary right along with them," he concluded. Jatras also formerly served as adviser to the Senate Republican leadership. ..."
US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's attempt to falsely portray her Republican
opponent Donald Trump as a racist extremist is absurd, silly and dangerous, former US Department
of State diplomat Jim Jatras told Sputnik.
On Thursday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
told Fox News in an interview that Clinton's campaign was full of anti-Russia hysteria as the Democrats
were trying to undermine the campaign of their opponent, Republican nominee Donald Trump.
"Of course Julian Assange is right. Hillary Clinton's harangue depicting Donald Trump as
the enabler of some insidious 'Alt Right' movement whose Grand Dragon is Vladimir Putin is too
absurd for words," Jatras said on Friday. "It would be just silly if it weren't so dangerous."
Jatras said he agreed with Assange's assessment that Clinton's increasingly wild charges against
Trump were not based on any reality. "She should get some kind of tinfoil hat award for the finest
piece of political paranoia totally divorced from facts in all of American history," Jatras said.
Hillary Clinton's Anti-Russian Campaign May BackfireJatras also pointed out the falsity of Clinton's
related claim that former UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, who endorsed Trump this week
was a racist. "Take her attack on Nigel Farage. Evidently now it is now 'racist' to believe citizens
are shareholders of their own country and have a right to decide who gets in and who doesn't, and
that dangerous people should be excluded," Jatras argued.
However, Jatras expressed skepticism as to how effective Clinton's racist and Russophobic attacks
would prove to be.
"She and her surrogates have been banging the 'Kremlin agent' drum for some time. But when
Trump asks rock-ribbed GOP [Republican] crowds if it wouldn't be a great thing to get along with
Russia and team up with Moscow to fight ISIS [Islamic State], he gets thunderous approval,"
Jatras observed.
Jatras suggested that Clinton's latest attacks on Trump as an alleged racist were meant to
distract attention from the latest WikiLeaks documents exposing the leaked information related to
"pay to play" between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department.
He also argued that Clinton's attacks were meant to distract pubic attention from her own
record of controversy and alleged corruption. "Any American worthy of the name hates her and the
whole rotten Deep State she fronts for: the profiteers on endless wars, the globalist corporations
that dump their American workers to import their foreign-made goods duty free and the driving down
of wages due to a glut of imported foreign labor," he said.
Jatras suggested that these policies that Clinton as secretary of state and her husband, President
Bill Clinton had implemented and supported were far more worthy of hate than the false accusations
she was throwing against Trump. "Those are things all Americans, whether white, black, brown, red,
or yellow should hate, and Hillary right along with them," he concluded. Jatras also formerly served
as adviser to the Senate Republican leadership.
Fox News' Shepard Smith appeared intent on having a guest on his program Thursday say that Republican
presidential nominee Donald Trump is a racist.
Wall Street Journal investigative reporter James Grimaldi joined Smith on Fox Reports immediately
after Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's speech in Reno, Nev., during which she charged that Trump
will "make America hate again."
"He is taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over the Republican Party,"
she said.
Smith said that "the problem with any attempt to rebut her" was that "she used Donald Trump's own
words, what's historically accurate on his policies on all reviewed points."
He turned to Grimaldi and said, "Where do you begin with this?"
"I don't know. It was pretty extraordinary and pretty hard-hitting," the reporter replied.
Grimaldi went on to explain that Trump "trades in hyperbole," giving Clinton more fodder to
work with.
Smith interjected: "He trades in racism, doesn't he?"
The Wall Street Journal reporter was not willing to go that far. "Well, I'll leave that up
to the commentators. … I'm not one to generally label people like that, so I would pass on that
question."
"... Here is the 'furthest back' shot. TV coverage did not show these. ..."
"... Bizzaro event. Minuscule, there is almost nobody there. It was deliberatly set up in 'small space' for the cams. The only other important ppl present are one man (Head of the college or? idk) and the Mayor of Reno. The only signs shown say *USA* are not appropriate and are whipped out only when Killary comes onstage. Doesn't even look like a Democrat event! Never mind an important campaign rally for *drum rolls* the person anointed to become Prez. of the most powerful country on Earth, the World Queen or Hegemon. ..."
"... The US is fracturing...Moreover the speech was perhaps the weakest from any pol I have ever heard. ..."
Part 1. ;) Got dragged into Killary's alt-right speech at Truckee Meadows Community College, Reno,
Nevada, Aug 2016. Only content: 100% against Trump , as sidebars, Alex Jones, Nigel Farage,
Putin, David Duke.
The official MSM version is 31 mins - the frame is just her with a fixed cam centered nothing
around. Sparse occasional clapping (real, one can see the clappers in other vids).. She speaks
as one would to a parterre of 30-50 ppl, not as in a campaign rally. A longer version (MSM) is
45 mins and shows some of the preliminaries, some guy, then the Mayor of Reno, youngish blondine,
introducing her. Killary was apparently hours late. (> youtube.) Killary is dressed in green.
To the interesting part. She spoke at the same College in Feb. 2015. Note: red dress, the brick
pillars typical of the college, and the big windows behind. A big hall…
link This shot shows the other direction, see the small windows at the side and back
link The event has all the hallmarks of a 'proper' pol show, no need to list. Note the Hall, quite
large, is not full. The signs are blue and are for Hillary, for Women, for Nevada and so on.
Part 2. The Aug. 2016 event took place at the College but either in a small part of the back of
the big hall or another locale (similar in architecture obviously)
link The widest shot Aug. 2016. AFGE (men with black Ts) = American Federation of Gvmt. Employees.
link Here is the 'furthest back' shot. TV coverage did not show these.
link The only shot I could find showing the audience facing her. Note the ppl behind her facing
out, i.e. the cams (shown on TV etc.) are not identifiable.
link Bizzaro event. Minuscule, there is almost nobody there. It was deliberatly set up in 'small
space' for the cams. The only other important ppl present are one man (Head of the college or?
idk) and the Mayor of Reno. The only signs shown say *USA* are not appropriate and are whipped
out only when Killary comes onstage. Doesn't even look like a Democrat event! Never mind an important
campaign rally for *drum rolls* the person anointed to become Prez. of the most powerful country
on Earth, the World Queen or Hegemon.
After the speech, vids show H.C. talking to a very few ppl, 25 at most, not answering "reporters"
questions, two tiny trays of confections were offered. Bwwahhh. She ate one choc. There was also
a stop at a Reno Coffee shop (10 ppl?) which made no sense. On these occasions she is accompanied
by the Mayor in a cosy girly coffee thingie. (> youtube.)
The US is fracturing...Moreover the speech was perhaps the weakest from any pol I have
ever heard.
okie farmer@80 Lavrov is on a loser if he accepts this "moderate terrorist" BS from Kerry. Those
"moderates" have replaced Islamic state in Jerablus, soon to be expanded to cover that huge area
between Jerablus, Azaz and Al-bab,all without a fight and apparent agreement with IS. Next could
be the area is controlled by Turkish and US "moderate" head choppers, which of course nobody will
be allowed to attack. They should only be called moderate if they oppose Assad and do not carry
arms, otherwise its just a case of changing labels, in which case the terrorists could never lose.
I find it hard to believe that so soon after the so called normalization of ties and trade deals
between Russia and Turkey, Turkey could do what they have threatened to do for years, invade Syria
and set up prospective no fly zones. I suppose we must wait and see, but in my opinion, it does
not look good.
I agree. Russia has been stabbed in the back by Turkey, and the US is backing Turkey ... of
course they were backing the Kurds, too, until they weren't.
Erdogan is utterly unreliable ... or he is utterly reliable if you're relying on duplicity
and betrayal.
vote for Clinton is vote for globalization, while vote for Trump is vote for anti-globalization
Notable quotes:
"... "As for the petty little world of journalism, the media demonstrates how it, more than anyone, is careful to traffic only in authorized ideas and waves; while at the same time it fosters, through its antics, the illusion of a free circulation of ideas and opinions – not unlike jesters in a tyrant's court " - ..."
"... In the 18th century, Edmund Burke described the role of the press as a Fourth Estate checking the powerful. Was that ever true? It certainly doesn't wash any more. What we need is a Fifth Estate: a journalism that monitors, deconstructs and counters propaganda and teaches the young to be agents of people, not power. We need what the Russians called perestroika – an insurrection of subjugated knowledge. I would call it real journalism. ..."
"... Add the pollsters in this deception. If polling samples are heavily weighted with yellow-dog Democrats the result is a Clinton lead. One only has to look at crowd draw: Trump = 7,000-10,000; Hiltery can't fill a kindergarten play-pen. ..."
"... Suggest the Trump campaign deploy IT personnel to inspect all Diebold software seconds before voting commences. ..."
"... In 8 years $Hillary was a US Senator (D-NY) she accomplished nothing of note. I actually went to one of her public appearances thinking I would hear something positive. She appeared to be an idiot when speaking extemporaneously. Clueless and incapable of expressing empathy with mere mortals. If there are debates with 'The Donald' I would expect that Her Highness will be reading a teleprompter. Her handlers do not allow her to speak off the cuff lest she reveal her total lack of human empathy and a state of perpetual clueless detachment from reality. $hill and 'The Donald.' Sad days for the Republic. ..."
"... US has to move away from its current hyper-financialized FIRE-based economy toward one based more on making things. There's only a chance to do that under Trump, since HRC is totally owned by Wall Street and the Perpetual War lobby. ..."
"... The US presidential election this November will tell whether a majority of the US population is irredeemably stupid. If voters elect Hillary, we will know that Americans are stupid beyond redemption. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/08/25/trump-vs-hillary-a-summation-paul-craig-roberts/ ..."
"... Paul Joseph Watson responds to Hillary's racism speech - The Truth About Hillary's 'Alt-Right' Speech - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufkHt8dgG8I ..."
"... But I started to doubt once I understood the gist of the song of Escamillo. After some generalities, he tells the events at the bull fight. Among the shouts of the spectators, a big bull is released from the corral. A picador woulds his back, then he is further wounded with banderillas. Bleeding, the bull retreats, only to wheel back and charge once more. Then the torero, with cape and sword, waits for him, fully alert (toreador, en guard!) to misdirect the bull a few times and deliver the final stab. Is Trump the torero or the bull? ..."
"... All the Trump bashing just reinforces the Propaganda System's utter lack of credibility and imagination. The underlying nature of numerous political websites is also exposed thanks to their shilling for HRC--particularly those calling themselves Progressive: No Genuine Progressive would support HRC ..."
"... ...Hillary is a one woman criminal enterprise and she's the monster's mother. [a comment from the intercept] ..."
"... It is called 'Psychological Projection' and seems to be successful for the good reason of being widespread inherent in the population itself. To project one's own shortcomings, flaws and crimes onto somebody else is as common, as it is based on the lack of real intelligence ..."
"... Even if Hillary is elected, her mandate will be haunted by her email stupidity and the Clinton foundation cupidity. She will be paralyzed and may not even finish her mandate. To avoid the looming shame, I think she should work NOT to be elected, so she can leave the political scene with till some dignity. ..."
"... Regarding voting against one's own interests, the Republican majority leader of the senate just said no to TPP for the time being... Draw your own conclusions; I'm more bemused by the parallels to eastern Europe under Soviet vs NATO occupation. ..."
"... "MoA-readers, who are left/progressive/intellectual/democratic/anti-Trump, are warmongering idiots." No, the true idiocy is with those who still buy into this concocted left/right, liberal/conservative, D/R scheme to oppress the masses. Divide and conquer at its very best. The Romans would cry tears of joy how their principle is so successfully implemented - since over 200 years. ..."
"... [Full Text Of Hillary Clinton's Speech On The Alt-Right ...] ..."
"... Outside the two traditional parties, there is no effective national political party. ..."
"... It is actually not stupid. First, raising his support among the Blacks from 1% to 2% may help. More importantly, he has to work on the vote of educated whites, especially suburban female Republicans where he lags. ..."
"... it makes the msm look like what it actually is - propaganda tool for the 1% with jackass journalists in tow.. ..."
"... As a long time observer of elections and history, it seems that this time both parties have figured out the value of identity politics and are using that instead of any intelligent discussion of issues to sway voters. ..."
"... It's probably the total ownership of the media by the oligarchs that allows them to do this, as it appears that no issues such as TPP or the wasteful MIC are ever discussed. Identity politics allows everything to be emotional and not rational, and it appears to be working for anyone who does not have the time or volition to read with care. ..."
"... Make no mistake: Hillary Clinton is on record as calling for funding of Islamist groups in Syria and overthrowing Assad. If she is elected, we're very likely to see a full-scale US intervention, with US forces openly and aggressively confronting not only Syrian government forces but also facing off with the Russians. ..."
"... Anyone calling for people to support Hilary Clinton, irrespective of whatever dishonest reasoning they use to try and con people into thinking it is a good idea, is calling for more war, more murder of brown-skinned middle eastern muslims and christians etc., and most importantly: more profits for the US/Zionist Death Machine. ..."
"... It may be that, despite his rethoric, and like Oboma before him, Trump will bring all those things too, should he win, but we DO know for sure what Killary intends, because we have already seen her handywork, and she has promised more of the same ..."
"... The proper question is : after Obama, why do people like you still think that voting is of any use? ..."
"... "What Hillary ought to do is very simple: Resign" I don't think she can, she's just a puppet, and her handlers would never let that happen. Her only chance is with her body finally giving in overwhelmed with guilt, stress, medication, her only way out... ..."
"... Shillary! Such refined thinking. Face it, the US has always been corrupt. ..."
"... If the US is to cease being an empire, the average American is going to go through hard times for a bit. If the US continues as a declining empire, the average American citizen will go through hard times plus another lot of harder times when the declining empire crashes and burns. ..."
"... The foreign policy of the American ruling class, in addition to the impoverishment of American society to fund the vast military apparatus, has had the most horrifying consequences for the peoples of the countries targeted. The war fomented by the United States in Syria has reduced the population of that country from 23 million to about 17 million, killed up to half a million people, and displaced over 13 million. ..."
"... Returning to protectionism and fair trade will lift all American boats, not just the Wall Street Zionists ..."
"... America, despite glowing MSM BS, is on the ropes of neoliberalism. As an older American,I remember a land of plenty, with good jobs for all, instead of fast food retail hell. ..."
"... What is unbelievable is the fact that she corruptly stole the primary with the help of the DNC and the ziomedia, but no one cares. ..."
"... For clear light on the positive relationship between a Trump presidency and the US economy, David Stockman offers wisdom. Take a look from time to time at his website to educate yourself: http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/ ..."
"... Now it is time for people to start saying Roberts is a shill for Trump. If you've read what he has written about Trump, he's highly critical. His point is simple: Do you support those who are so blatantly against Trump? Or, put the other way around, are you in favor of continued oligarchic rule. ..."
This pic comparing a young Donald Trump with a child figure in some old
Nazi propaganda was
posted by Doug
Saunders , supposedly a serious international-affairs columnist
at the Canadian Globe
and Mail.
It is illogical, childish nonsense. But Saunders is by far the only one disqualifying himself
as serious commentator by posting such bullshit. Indeed, the villain-ification of Donald Trump is
a regular feature which runs through U.S. and international media from the left to the right.
Is there any villain in U.S. (political) culture Donald Trump has not been compare to? Let me
know what to search for.
I doubt that this assault on Trump's character is effective. (Hillary Clinton is a
more fitting
object .) Potential Trump voters will at best ignore it. More likely they will feel confirmed
in their belief that all media and media people are anti-Trump and pro-Clinton.
The onslaught only validates what himself Trump claims: that all media are again him, independent
of whatever policies he may promote or commit to.
The jokes on them. Older voters, smarter voters are voting for Trump. If he remains on message
and points out those things that do matter then he can win. He has to stop the joking around and
being nasty. Be serious and get to the point.
Trump can joke and talk all the nonsense he want, still it won't change my mind. I know Hillary
including Bernie Sanders - they're from the same pot of shit.
The only question remain, should I vote for Jill Stein to bring her Green Party percentage
up? Jill Stein spoke repeatedly she will stop all aids to any country and NOT only Israel if
human right are abuse - not exact words.
Further she is a strong support of BDS even as Canada Green Party leader not in favor "Canadian
MP Elizabeth May told reporters on Monday that she will stay on as leader of Canada's Green Party
after saying she was considering stepping down because of her opposition to the party's recently-adopted
policy of endorsing the strategy of Boycott Divest and Sanction against Israel. "
For decades, at least 40 years, it was a whisper that the international medias have been sitting
in the lap of a certain 3 letter agency. The mission: Manufacturing Consent by Deception.
Globalism, War & Chaos
brought by The Establishment owners of Deep Shadow Government. This quote from Robert Faurisson who is tagged a Halocaust denier may offend those who cannot
be criticized:
"As for the petty little world of journalism, the media demonstrates how it, more than anyone,
is careful to traffic only in authorized ideas and waves; while at the same time it fosters, through
its antics, the illusion of a free circulation of ideas and opinions – not unlike jesters in a
tyrant's court " -
In the 18th century, Edmund Burke described the role of the press as a Fourth Estate checking
the powerful. Was that ever true? It certainly doesn't wash any more. What we need is a Fifth
Estate: a journalism that monitors, deconstructs and counters propaganda and teaches the young
to be agents of people, not power. We need what the Russians called perestroika – an insurrection
of subjugated knowledge. I would call it real journalism.
~ ~ ~
Add the pollsters in this deception. If polling samples are heavily weighted with yellow-dog
Democrats the result is a Clinton lead. One only has to look at crowd draw: Trump = 7,000-10,000;
Hiltery can't fill a kindergarten play-pen.
Suggest the Trump campaign deploy IT personnel to inspect all Diebold software seconds before
voting commences.
In 8 years $Hillary was a US Senator (D-NY) she accomplished nothing of note. I actually went
to one of her public appearances thinking I would hear something positive. She appeared to be
an idiot when speaking extemporaneously. Clueless and incapable of expressing empathy with mere
mortals. If there are debates with 'The Donald' I would expect that Her Highness will be reading
a teleprompter. Her handlers do not allow her to speak off the cuff lest she reveal her total
lack of human empathy and a state of perpetual clueless detachment from reality. $hill and 'The
Donald.' Sad days for the Republic.
People vote against their own self interests only because bought-and-paid-for MSM and political
pundits SAY that a third-party can't win.
If everyone would simply turn off toxic media and simply vote for their best interest the establishment
would stop taking us all for granted.
What is better: Trump is elected but Obama-Hillary Democratic "Third-Way" back-stabbing sell-outs are replaced
by a real left opposition led by Greens? - OR -
Obama-Hillary fake left squashes real opposition for another 8 years while extending and deepening
the soul-crushing neolib/neocon disaster?
"Trump's economic policies as U.S. president would be catastrophic for those most likely to vote
for him."
US has to move away from its current hyper-financialized FIRE-based economy toward one based
more on making things. There's only a chance to do that under Trump, since HRC is totally owned
by Wall Street and the Perpetual War lobby.
Carter (D) = 39%
Reagan (R) = 32%
Anderson (I) = 21%
Who took it? Polls are still unreliable. The poll sampling is key.
I don't have a vote. On November 08, the real problem is one of the two will be (s)elected.
Your decision does weigh heavily and guarantees the selection. Can you support another 4-8 years
of the certified corrupt Clinton couple?
There is a third way to effectively cast a ballot outside the two main party's candidates and
that is not to vote at all. This is effective as a historical fact that some fraction of eligible
voters did not participate (whatever the cause) and the winning candidate was enabled by some
plurality rather than a majority of the eligible electorate. Throwing away one's vote in a fit
of moral superiority is an effective way to throw away one's voting rights, but then the 'moral
majority' that wrecked the Republic never realised their culpability and still haven't. Not one
of the minority candidates became anything more than a sad footnote to history - not one.
I guess instead of violating Goodwin law, or complain one-sidedly, we should eschew "Hitlery"
and "fascist Trump", and find some high-brow metaphors. My proposals:
Hillary and Trump
But I started to doubt once I understood the gist of the song of Escamillo. After some generalities,
he tells the events at the bull fight. Among the shouts of the spectators, a big bull is released
from the corral. A picador woulds his back, then he is further wounded with banderillas. Bleeding,
the bull retreats, only to wheel back and charge once more. Then the torero, with cape and sword,
waits for him, fully alert (toreador, en guard!) to misdirect the bull a few times and deliver
the final stab. Is Trump the torero or the bull?
All the Trump bashing just reinforces the Propaganda System's utter lack of credibility and imagination.
The underlying nature of numerous political websites is also exposed thanks to their shilling
for HRC--particularly those calling themselves Progressive: No Genuine Progressive would support
HRC, or Sanders now that he's exposed himself for what he is, a Chevrolet Liberal. The launching
of the self-proclaimed "Our Revolution" website/organization is yet another DNC-based sham that
studiously avoids any mention of the military or foreign policy on its "Issues" page, which again
belies its nature since the #1 issue for all Genuine Progressives is War and being against it.
Still have 10 weeks to go. Stein has earned all the votes within my household.
I'm not a big fan of Trump's but I find that people don't argue about his politics, but insult
him and his wife on a personal basis.
This makes me think that it's the turn of the 'Left' in the USA to become immature and resort
to name calling. Remember when it was the 'Right' that made fun of Kerry's Purple Heart?
Which also exposes the problem with politics worldwide - the Left and the Right have met at
the extremes and we now see progressives arguing for burkinis and the right arguing for workers'
rights by trying to prevent the TPP, etc.
It is called 'Psychological Projection' and seems to be successful for the good reason of being
widespread inherent in the population itself. To project one's own shortcomings, flaws and crimes
onto somebody else is as common, as it is based on the lack of real intelligence - no, not the
one that is derived from fancy questionnaires, or adding numbers.
Real intelligence includes the understanding that sitting in a glasshouse throwing rocks does
not qualify to be such. It also includes the understanding to be inseparable part of one's environment
- a shared environment indicating that there is only interdependence, not separation.
Furthermore, real intelligence includes compassion, kindness and the will to walk in somebody
else's shoes.
This intelligence is sorely missing in the majority of people that are entrusted with 'journalistic'
work, or working in public offices. The stench of being "holier that thou" is covering the U.S.A.
and wafts to Europe were it is now also modus operandi.
The best course of action would be to punish those who engage in this kind of demagoguery with
nonobservance.
It won't be Trump who brings us fascism as the images implies, but more likely Clinton if she
wins and if the Democrats can win over one of the Houses of Congress. As the campaign goes on,
these comparisons add up and create in the minds of anybody anti-Trump an actual equivalency to
in particular Hitler. This is one half of the combustion needed to go down the road to fascism.
There is something else that Trump given the Russian hysteria is being called--a traitor. The
thing is, Hillary supports believe this to be true in a criminal sense. It is not just some throw
away smear normal for any election. I have seen way too way postings in major democratic party
sites calls for basically the resurrection of the House Un-American Activities Committee. These
supporters are historically clueless on what they are asking for, and I would imagine the same
with much of the democratic party lawmakers in Congress.
I can see if Hillary wins, witch hunts against anti-war protesters, or people who believe we
should have rapprochement with Russia and China. The goal will be to criminalize and punish dissenting
views on foreign and war policies because the constant Putin/Trump/Hitler/Stalin/etc comparisons
created the foundation for actual criminal accusations.
And the witch hunts will spread beyond war and foreign policy. Look at what is going on in
Europe. Literally, and I do mean literally, every problem is being attributed to Putin "weaponizing"
some issue. Serious politicians accused Putin of using drunken Russian fans during the Euro futbol
championships of starting fights to support Brexit. The Polish minister for internal security
accused Putin of master minding the Paris terrorist attacks. And these guys get away with the
most outlandish accusations. As the real Nazis understood, repetition of lies is the foundation
of propaganda to move people into action.
The underlying nature of numerous political websites is also exposed thanks to their shilling
for HRC--particularly those calling themselves Progressive: No Genuine Progressive would support
HRC, or Sanders now that he's exposed himself for what he is, a Chevrolet Liberal.
Well the resident Zio-Racist Hill-shill (rufus magister | Aug 26, 2016 11:47:38 AM | 5) likes
to pretend he is some sort of progressive, but still can't keep from outing himself by banging
on non-stop about the Zio-Racists favourite talking points (Heil hillary and "holocaustholocaustholocaut!!")
She appeared to be an idiot when speaking extemporaneously. Clueless and incapable of expressing
empathy with mere mortals. If there are debates with 'The Donald' I would expect that Her Highness
will be reading a teleprompter. Her handlers do not allow her to speak off the cuff [.]
Very interesting because I have been discussing with colleagues here the Don should be honing
his debating skill sets as Hillary is a trained lawyer/politician.
Even if Hillary is elected, her mandate will be haunted by her email stupidity and the Clinton
foundation cupidity. She will be paralyzed and may not even finish her mandate. To avoid the looming
shame, I think she should work NOT to be elected, so she can leave the political scene with till
some dignity.
Regarding voting against one's own interests, the Republican majority leader of the senate
just said no
to TPP for the time being... Draw your own conclusions; I'm more bemused by the parallels
to eastern Europe under Soviet vs NATO occupation.
. . .Clinton's use of BleachBit undermines her claims that she only deleted innocuous "personal"
emails from her private server
"If she considered them to be personal, then she and her lawyers had those emails deleted.
They didn't just push the delete button, they had them deleted where even God can't read
them.
"They were using something called BleachBit You don't use BleachBit for yoga emails."
"When you're using BleachBit, it is something you really do not want the world to see."
Vitriol galore! If the arguments made above ... either way ... are the best we can do then
maybe electing Hillary and hoping for WW3 is the lessor of evils. As I've said before, not a bad
idea.
Posted by: From The Hague | Aug 26, 2016 2:22:04 PM | 34
"MoA-readers, who are left/progressive/intellectual/democratic/anti-Trump, are warmongering
idiots." No, the true idiocy is with those who still buy into this concocted left/right, liberal/conservative,
D/R scheme to oppress the masses. Divide and conquer at its very best. The Romans would cry tears
of joy how their principle is so successfully implemented - since over 200 years.
To be bold here: a 'left' mother loves her child as much as a 'right' mother and even more
so the grandparents. Any grandparent here that denies their grandchildren their love based on
the fact that their children cling on to a different belief? And that it is in its entirety -
made believe by the Plutocrats and the sheople throw shit at each other instead of UPWARDS
.
[Full Text Of Hillary Clinton's Speech On The Alt-Right ...]
Just yesterday, one of Britain's most prominent right-wing leaders, Nigel Farage, who stoked
anti-immigrant sentiments to win the referendum on leaving the European Union, campaigned with
Donald Trump in Mississippi. Farage has called for a ban on the children of legal immigrants from public schools and
health services, has said women are quote "worth less" than men, and supports scrapping laws
that prevent employers from discriminating based on race ― that's who Trump wants by his side.
The godfather of this global brand of extreme nationalism is Russian President Vladimir
Putin.
In fact, Farage has appeared regularly on Russian propaganda programs. Now he's standing
on the same stage as the Republican nominee.
Hatred of Trump is nothing more than cloaked Jewish hatred of white Christians. Go ahead and take
my comment down, but you are too smart to not know the truth deep down in your heart. This above
all else, lie to yourself to protect the Jewish lies.
About the most successful 'breakaway political movement' ever was probably the Dixiecrats in the
1948 election which actually garnered a small fraction of the electoral college, but that was
using the apparatus of an organised national political party existent regionally. Outside the
two traditional parties, there is no effective national political party. ...Next time keep your idiot elections to yourselves - Please.
On August 5th, Michael Morell, a former acting Director of the CIA, pilloried GOP presidential
candidate Donald Trump, concluding that he was an "unwitting agent of Russia." Morell, who entitled
his New York Times op-ed "I Ran the CIA and now I'm endorsing Hillary Clinton," described the
process whereby Trump had been so corrupted. According to Morell, Putin, it seems, as a wily ex-career
intelligence officer, is "trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit
them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump's vulnerabilities…
In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting
agent of the Russian Federation."
So who is guilty of putting the interests of a foreign government ahead of those of the United
States? I know there are advocates for any number of foreign states running around loose in Washington
but the friends of Israel in government and the media come immediately to mind largely because
there are so many of them, they are very much in-your-face and they are both extremely well-funded
and very successful. Now deceased former Congressman Tom Lantos and Senator Frank Lautenberg were,
respectively, often referred to as the congressman and senator from Israel. And there are many
more: Chuck Schumer, Chuck Grassley, Ben Cardin, Bob Menendez, Tom Cotton, Mark Kirk, Nita Lowey,
Ted Deutch, Brad Sherman, Ileana-Ros Lehtinen and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to name only a few
in the Congress. All are
major recipients of Israel related PAC money and all are reliable defenders of Israel no matter
what Benjamin Netanyahu does and no matter how it effects the United States.
And then there are the Clintons. One only has to go back to Bill's
one-sided pro-Israeli
diplomacy at Camp David in 2000 to discern how the game was played. And then there was the
widely condemned January 2001
last minute pardon of
Mossad agent Marc Rich, whose wife Denise was a major contributor to the Clintons, to realize
that there was always a deference to Israeli interests particularly when money was involved. The
only problem is that the Clintons, relying on Morell's formulation, might more reasonably be described
as witting agents of Israel rather than unwitting as they have certainly known what they have
been doing and have been actively supporting Israeli policies even when damaging to U.S. interests
since they first emerged from the primordial political swamps in Arkansas. If one were completely
cynical it might be possible to suggest that they understood from the beginning that pandering
to Israel and gaining access to Jewish power and money would be a major component in their rise
to political prominence. It certainly has worked out that way.
=====
So who is guilty of putting the interests of a foreign government ahead of those of the United
States? I know there are advocates for any number of foreign states running around loose in Washington
but the friends of Israel in government and the media come immediately to mind largely because
there are so many of them, they are very much in-your-face and they are both extremely well-funded
and very successful. Now deceased former Congressman Tom Lantos and Senator Frank Lautenberg were,
respectively, often referred to as the congressman and senator from Israel. And there are many
more: Chuck Schumer, Chuck Grassley, Ben Cardin, Bob Menendez, Tom Cotton, Mark Kirk, Nita Lowey,
Ted Deutch, Brad Sherman, Ileana-Ros Lehtinen and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to name only a few
in the Congress. All are
major recipients of Israel related PAC money and all are reliable defenders of Israel no matter
what Benjamin Netanyahu does and no matter how it effects the United States.
And then there are the Clintons. One only has to go back to Bill's
one-sided pro-Israeli
diplomacy at Camp David in 2000 to discern how the game was played. And then there was the
widely condemned January 2001
last minute pardon of
Mossad agent Marc Rich, whose wife Denise was a major contributor to the Clintons, to realize
that there was always a deference to Israeli interests particularly when money was involved. The
only problem is that the Clintons, relying on Morell's formulation, might more reasonably be described
as witting agents of Israel rather than unwitting as they have certainly known what they have
been doing and have been actively supporting Israeli policies even when damaging to U.S. interests
since they first emerged from the primordial political swamps in Arkansas. If one were completely
cynical it might be possible to suggest that they understood from the beginning that pandering
to Israel and gaining access to Jewish power and money would be a major component in their rise
to political prominence. It certainly has worked out that way.
Tom @38: "Trump the racist Appealing to African-Americans was just a demented and sick desperate
joke. "
It is actually not stupid. First, raising his support among the Blacks from 1% to 2% may help.
More importantly, he has to work on the vote of educated whites, especially suburban female Republicans
where he lags.
As a long time observer of elections and history, it seems that this time both parties have figured
out the value of identity politics and are using that instead of any intelligent discussion of
issues to sway voters.
It's probably the total ownership of the media by the oligarchs that allows them to do this,
as it appears that no issues such as TPP or the wasteful MIC are ever discussed. Identity politics allows everything to be emotional and not rational, and it appears to be
working for anyone who does not have the time or volition to read with care.
Make no mistake: Hillary Clinton is on record as calling for funding of Islamist groups in Syria
and overthrowing Assad. If she is elected, we're very likely to see a full-scale US intervention,
with US forces openly and aggressively confronting not only Syrian government forces but also
facing off with the Russians.
Anyone calling for people to support Hilary Clinton, irrespective of whatever dishonest reasoning
they use to try and con people into thinking it is a good idea, is calling for more war, more
murder of brown-skinned middle eastern muslims and christians etc., and most importantly: more
profits for the US/Zionist Death Machine.
Make no mistake about that, these shitty Hillary-supporting people cannot claim that they do
not know what that that is what they are doing, because she has been quite vocal in her support
for more war and more murder (on behalf of Isreal naturally)
It may be that, despite his rethoric, and like Oboma before him, Trump will bring all those
things too, should he win, but we DO know for sure what Killary intends, because we have already
seen her handywork, and she has promised more of the same
The proper question is : after Obama, why do people like you still think that voting is of any
use?
When did it ever change anything? You going to have to come up with something a tad more effective than mere voting if you want
it to change. Personally I think the US deserves a Trump presidency.
"What Hillary ought to do is very simple: Resign" I don't think she can, she's just a puppet, and her handlers would never let that happen. Her
only chance is with her body finally giving in overwhelmed with guilt, stress, medication, her
only way out...
Look what they did to Reagan and the pope JP2 - GHWB failed with his assassins, but after the
attempts, both these puppets were basically doing what told, with only little freedom left to
do some good things (served well for maintaining appearances).
Which brings again that question to my mind - why did they let Hinckley the patsy out recently,
what's he's being set up for..?
Oooo! Shillary! Such refined thinking. Face it, the US has always been corrupt. "The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding
Industry" reviewed here:
http://www.chicagoreviewpress.com/american-slave-coast--the-products-9781613748206.php says it all. Thomas Jefferson, a hero? What about George Washington, the land owner? Trump and Clinton are only unusual in that most Duhmericans have finally no choice but to admit
they are venal. Stein, who could NEVER win, seems honorable. Johnson may be a wacked out libertarian, but he
is a well meaning wacko.
Great choices for the great democracy, light of the world, exceptional nation! I agree, Duhmerican politics are stupid ... the dumbest people in the world make it so. Then
again, is any place humans habitate NOT idiotically insane stupid?
"Trump's economic policies as U.S. president would be catastrophic for those most likely to vote
for him."
If the US is to cease being an empire, the average American is going to go through hard times
for a bit. If the US continues as a declining empire, the average American citizen will go through
hard times plus another lot of harder times when the declining empire crashes and burns.
The Godfather image is a popular one these days. The Godmother use it to deflect attention
from her own role as cackling harridan, wailing banshee of DDD&D ... others note that
"Godfather"
Biden visits Turkey
The foreign policy of the American ruling class, in addition to the impoverishment of American
society to fund the vast military apparatus, has had the most horrifying consequences for the
peoples of the countries targeted. The war fomented by the United States in Syria has reduced
the population of that country from 23 million to about 17 million, killed up to half a million
people, and displaced over 13 million.
Thirteen years after the invasion of Iraq, which resulted in the deaths of at least a million
people, some 4.4 million Iraqis are internally displaced, with over a quarter million forced
to flee the country.
Questions of foreign policy are not decided, much less deliberated, within the framework
of elections. Nowhere in the 2016 presidential race is there a serious debate, for instance,
on the character of the US alliance with Turkey or the consequences of launching a de facto
NATO invasion of Syria. Congress holds no hearings or votes. It neither seeks nor desires to
play a serious role.
As for the people, they simply have no say.
The press plays a key role in the deception and disenfranchisement of the population. One
tactic employed by the corporate-controlled media is simply to exclude "minor" developments
such as a US-backed invasion of Syria from the so-called "news." The most remarkable feature
of the media coverage to date of the Turkish incursion is its virtual non-existence. It is
a good bet, due to the media's corrupt silence, that the percentage of the US population that
is even aware of the invasion is in the single digits.
Returning to protectionism and fair trade will lift all American boats, not just the Wall Street
Zionists, so I am perplexed at b's comment.
America, despite glowing MSM BS, is on the ropes of neoliberalism. As an older American,I remember
a land of plenty, with good jobs for all, instead of fast food retail hell.
I don't think b has any
idea of the realities being endured by US, as the media refuses to give US reality ,instead rosy
economic garbage where not once in Obombas terrible reign have they created enough jobs to keep
up with the expanding population, and as DT says ,the inner cities are hellholes, witness the NBA
star Dwayne Wades cousin shot in Chicago pushing a baby stroller.
I had a nurse from Hempstead NY, when i had the big C, who said an old man in a wheelchair had a
pit bull tied to it to ward off potential crooks. WTF?
And now the antisemitism card is played by the serial liars, Bannon is accused of calling Jews
whiny. Well ,as a longtime observer, he is spot on there.
And the lying times says 90% chance for Hell bitch victory.
What is unbelievable is the fact that she corruptly stole the primary with the help of the DNC
and the ziomedia, but no one cares.(her supporters) If not emblematic of the depravity of liberals, those
who wish the death of others so they live in safety (which of course is poppycock) what is?
And when Trump gets her in the debates, he'll destroy the MSM narrative of BS.
There is one villain Trump has not been compared to: Hillary Clinton.
And don't be the kettle calling the pot black, whoever the author of this ill-researched piece
is. Your own journalism strikes me as irresponsible when you claim, "Trump's economic policies
as U.S. president would be catastrophic for those most likely to vote for him." Catastrophic?
Really? Who exactly is "most likely to vote for him" that would not benefit from better trade
deals and more corporate incentives for domestic business? The global elite? They're the ones
who definitely won't benefit, but they also definitely won't vote for him. Get your thinking straight.
For clear light on the positive relationship between a Trump presidency and the US economy,
David Stockman offers wisdom. Take a look from time to time at his website to educate yourself:
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/
Now it is time for people to start saying Roberts is a shill for Trump. If you've read what
he has written about Trump, he's highly critical. His point is simple: Do you support those who
are so blatantly against Trump? Or, put the other way around, are you in favor of continued oligarchic
rule.
Like Roberts, I am so opposed to Clinton that Trump seems (even ever so slightly) the lessor
of evils.
"... "As for the petty little world of journalism, the media demonstrates how it, more than anyone, is careful to traffic only in authorized ideas and waves; while at the same time it fosters, through its antics, the illusion of a free circulation of ideas and opinions – not unlike jesters in a tyrant's court " - ..."
"... In the 18th century, Edmund Burke described the role of the press as a Fourth Estate checking the powerful. Was that ever true? It certainly doesn't wash any more. What we need is a Fifth Estate: a journalism that monitors, deconstructs and counters propaganda and teaches the young to be agents of people, not power. We need what the Russians called perestroika – an insurrection of subjugated knowledge. I would call it real journalism. ..."
"... Add the pollsters in this deception. If polling samples are heavily weighted with yellow-dog Democrats the result is a Clinton lead. One only has to look at crowd draw: Trump = 7,000-10,000; Hiltery can't fill a kindergarten play-pen. ..."
"... Suggest the Trump campaign deploy IT personnel to inspect all Diebold software seconds before voting commences. ..."
"... In 8 years $Hillary was a US Senator (D-NY) she accomplished nothing of note. I actually went to one of her public appearances thinking I would hear something positive. She appeared to be an idiot when speaking extemporaneously. Clueless and incapable of expressing empathy with mere mortals. If there are debates with 'The Donald' I would expect that Her Highness will be reading a teleprompter. Her handlers do not allow her to speak off the cuff lest she reveal her total lack of human empathy and a state of perpetual clueless detachment from reality. $hill and 'The Donald.' Sad days for the Republic. ..."
"... US has to move away from its current hyper-financialized FIRE-based economy toward one based more on making things. There's only a chance to do that under Trump, since HRC is totally owned by Wall Street and the Perpetual War lobby. ..."
"... The US presidential election this November will tell whether a majority of the US population is irredeemably stupid. If voters elect Hillary, we will know that Americans are stupid beyond redemption. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/08/25/trump-vs-hillary-a-summation-paul-craig-roberts/ ..."
"... Paul Joseph Watson responds to Hillary's racism speech - The Truth About Hillary's 'Alt-Right' Speech - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufkHt8dgG8I ..."
"... But I started to doubt once I understood the gist of the song of Escamillo. After some generalities, he tells the events at the bull fight. Among the shouts of the spectators, a big bull is released from the corral. A picador woulds his back, then he is further wounded with banderillas. Bleeding, the bull retreats, only to wheel back and charge once more. Then the torero, with cape and sword, waits for him, fully alert (toreador, en guard!) to misdirect the bull a few times and deliver the final stab. Is Trump the torero or the bull? ..."
"... All the Trump bashing just reinforces the Propaganda System's utter lack of credibility and imagination. The underlying nature of numerous political websites is also exposed thanks to their shilling for HRC--particularly those calling themselves Progressive: No Genuine Progressive would support HRC ..."
"... ...Hillary is a one woman criminal enterprise and she's the monster's mother. [a comment from the intercept] ..."
"... It is called 'Psychological Projection' and seems to be successful for the good reason of being widespread inherent in the population itself. To project one's own shortcomings, flaws and crimes onto somebody else is as common, as it is based on the lack of real intelligence ..."
"... Even if Hillary is elected, her mandate will be haunted by her email stupidity and the Clinton foundation cupidity. She will be paralyzed and may not even finish her mandate. To avoid the looming shame, I think she should work NOT to be elected, so she can leave the political scene with till some dignity. ..."
"... Regarding voting against one's own interests, the Republican majority leader of the senate just said no to TPP for the time being... Draw your own conclusions; I'm more bemused by the parallels to eastern Europe under Soviet vs NATO occupation. ..."
"... "MoA-readers, who are left/progressive/intellectual/democratic/anti-Trump, are warmongering idiots." No, the true idiocy is with those who still buy into this concocted left/right, liberal/conservative, D/R scheme to oppress the masses. Divide and conquer at its very best. The Romans would cry tears of joy how their principle is so successfully implemented - since over 200 years. ..."
"... [Full Text Of Hillary Clinton's Speech On The Alt-Right ...] ..."
"... Outside the two traditional parties, there is no effective national political party. ..."
"... It is actually not stupid. First, raising his support among the Blacks from 1% to 2% may help. More importantly, he has to work on the vote of educated whites, especially suburban female Republicans where he lags. ..."
"... it makes the msm look like what it actually is - propaganda tool for the 1% with jackass journalists in tow.. ..."
"... As a long time observer of elections and history, it seems that this time both parties have figured out the value of identity politics and are using that instead of any intelligent discussion of issues to sway voters. ..."
"... It's probably the total ownership of the media by the oligarchs that allows them to do this, as it appears that no issues such as TPP or the wasteful MIC are ever discussed. Identity politics allows everything to be emotional and not rational, and it appears to be working for anyone who does not have the time or volition to read with care. ..."
"... Make no mistake: Hillary Clinton is on record as calling for funding of Islamist groups in Syria and overthrowing Assad. If she is elected, we're very likely to see a full-scale US intervention, with US forces openly and aggressively confronting not only Syrian government forces but also facing off with the Russians. ..."
"... Anyone calling for people to support Hilary Clinton, irrespective of whatever dishonest reasoning they use to try and con people into thinking it is a good idea, is calling for more war, more murder of brown-skinned middle eastern muslims and christians etc., and most importantly: more profits for the US/Zionist Death Machine. ..."
"... The proper question is : after Obama, why do people like you still think that voting is of any use? ..."
"... "What Hillary ought to do is very simple: Resign" I don't think she can, she's just a puppet, and her handlers would never let that happen. Her only chance is with her body finally giving in overwhelmed with guilt, stress, medication, her only way out... ..."
"... If the US is to cease being an empire, the average American is going to go through hard times for a bit. If the US continues as a declining empire, the average American citizen will go through hard times plus another lot of harder times when the declining empire crashes and burns. ..."
This pic comparing a young Donald Trump with a child figure in some old
Nazi propaganda was
posted by Doug
Saunders , supposedly a serious international-affairs columnist
at the Canadian Globe
and Mail.
It is illogical, childish nonsense. But Saunders is by far the only one disqualifying himself
as serious commentator by posting such bullshit. Indeed, the villain-ification of Donald Trump is
a regular feature which runs through U.S. and international media from the left to the right.
Is there any villain in U.S. (political) culture Donald Trump has not been compare to? Let me
know what to search for.
I doubt that this assault on Trump's character is effective. (Hillary Clinton is a
more fitting
object .) Potential Trump voters will at best ignore it. More likely they will feel confirmed
in their belief that all media and media people are anti-Trump and pro-Clinton.
The onslaught only validates what himself Trump claims: that all media are again him, independent
of whatever policies he may promote or commit to.
The jokes on them. Older voters, smarter voters are voting for Trump. If he remains on message
and points out those things that do matter then he can win. He has to stop the joking around and
being nasty. Be serious and get to the point.
Trump can joke and talk all the nonsense he want, still it won't change my mind. I know Hillary
including Bernie Sanders - they're from the same pot of shit.
The only question remain, should I vote for Jill Stein to bring her Green Party percentage
up? Jill Stein spoke repeatedly she will stop all aids to any country and NOT only Israel if
human right are abuse - not exact words.
Further she is a strong support of BDS even as Canada Green Party leader not in favor "Canadian
MP Elizabeth May told reporters on Monday that she will stay on as leader of Canada's Green Party
after saying she was considering stepping down because of her opposition to the party's recently-adopted
policy of endorsing the strategy of Boycott Divest and Sanction against Israel. "
For decades, at least 40 years, it was a whisper that the international medias have been sitting
in the lap of a certain 3 letter agency. The mission: Manufacturing Consent by Deception.
Globalism, War & Chaos
brought by The Establishment owners of Deep Shadow Government. This quote from Robert Faurisson who is tagged a Halocaust denier may offend those who cannot
be criticized:
"As for the petty little world of journalism, the media demonstrates how it, more than anyone,
is careful to traffic only in authorized ideas and waves; while at the same time it fosters, through
its antics, the illusion of a free circulation of ideas and opinions – not unlike jesters in a
tyrant's court " -
In the 18th century, Edmund Burke described the role of the press as a Fourth Estate checking
the powerful. Was that ever true? It certainly doesn't wash any more. What we need is a Fifth
Estate: a journalism that monitors, deconstructs and counters propaganda and teaches the young
to be agents of people, not power. We need what the Russians called perestroika – an insurrection
of subjugated knowledge. I would call it real journalism.
~ ~ ~
Add the pollsters in this deception. If polling samples are heavily weighted with yellow-dog
Democrats the result is a Clinton lead. One only has to look at crowd draw: Trump = 7,000-10,000;
Hiltery can't fill a kindergarten play-pen.
Suggest the Trump campaign deploy IT personnel to inspect all Diebold software seconds before
voting commences.
In 8 years $Hillary was a US Senator (D-NY) she accomplished nothing of note. I actually went
to one of her public appearances thinking I would hear something positive. She appeared to be
an idiot when speaking extemporaneously. Clueless and incapable of expressing empathy with mere
mortals. If there are debates with 'The Donald' I would expect that Her Highness will be reading
a teleprompter. Her handlers do not allow her to speak off the cuff lest she reveal her total
lack of human empathy and a state of perpetual clueless detachment from reality. $hill and 'The
Donald.' Sad days for the Republic.
People vote against their own self interests only because bought-and-paid-for MSM and political
pundits SAY that a third-party can't win.
If everyone would simply turn off toxic media and simply vote for their best interest the establishment
would stop taking us all for granted.
What is better: Trump is elected but Obama-Hillary Democratic "Third-Way" back-stabbing sell-outs are replaced
by a real left opposition led by Greens? - OR -
Obama-Hillary fake left squashes real opposition for another 8 years while extending and deepening
the soul-crushing neolib/neocon disaster?
"Trump's economic policies as U.S. president would be catastrophic for those most likely to vote
for him."
US has to move away from its current hyper-financialized FIRE-based economy toward one based
more on making things. There's only a chance to do that under Trump, since HRC is totally owned
by Wall Street and the Perpetual War lobby.
Carter (D) = 39%
Reagan (R) = 32%
Anderson (I) = 21%
Who took it? Polls are still unreliable. The poll sampling is key.
I don't have a vote. On November 08, the real problem is one of the two will be (s)elected.
Your decision does weigh heavily and guarantees the selection. Can you support another 4-8 years
of the certified corrupt Clinton couple?
There is a third way to effectively cast a ballot outside the two main party's candidates and
that is not to vote at all. This is effective as a historical fact that some fraction of eligible
voters did not participate (whatever the cause) and the winning candidate was enabled by some
plurality rather than a majority of the eligible electorate. Throwing away one's vote in a fit
of moral superiority is an effective way to throw away one's voting rights, but then the 'moral
majority' that wrecked the Republic never realised their culpability and still haven't. Not one
of the minority candidates became anything more than a sad footnote to history - not one.
I guess instead of violating Goodwin law, or complain one-sidedly, we should eschew "Hitlery"
and "fascist Trump", and find some high-brow metaphors. My proposals:
Hillary and Trump
But I started to doubt once I understood the gist of the song of Escamillo. After some generalities,
he tells the events at the bull fight. Among the shouts of the spectators, a big bull is released
from the corral. A picador woulds his back, then he is further wounded with banderillas. Bleeding,
the bull retreats, only to wheel back and charge once more. Then the torero, with cape and sword,
waits for him, fully alert (toreador, en guard!) to misdirect the bull a few times and deliver
the final stab. Is Trump the torero or the bull?
All the Trump bashing just reinforces the Propaganda System's utter lack of credibility and imagination.
The underlying nature of numerous political websites is also exposed thanks to their shilling
for HRC--particularly those calling themselves Progressive: No Genuine Progressive would support
HRC, or Sanders now that he's exposed himself for what he is, a Chevrolet Liberal. The launching
of the self-proclaimed "Our Revolution" website/organization is yet another DNC-based sham that
studiously avoids any mention of the military or foreign policy on its "Issues" page, which again
belies its nature since the #1 issue for all Genuine Progressives is War and being against it.
Still have 10 weeks to go. Stein has earned all the votes within my household.
I'm not a big fan of Trump's but I find that people don't argue about his politics, but insult
him and his wife on a personal basis.
This makes me think that it's the turn of the 'Left' in the USA to become immature and resort
to name calling. Remember when it was the 'Right' that made fun of Kerry's Purple Heart?
Which also exposes the problem with politics worldwide - the Left and the Right have met at
the extremes and we now see progressives arguing for burkinis and the right arguing for workers'
rights by trying to prevent the TPP, etc.
It is called 'Psychological Projection' and seems to be successful for the good reason of being
widespread inherent in the population itself. To project one's own shortcomings, flaws and crimes
onto somebody else is as common, as it is based on the lack of real intelligence - no, not the
one that is derived from fancy questionnaires, or adding numbers.
Real intelligence includes the understanding that sitting in a glasshouse throwing rocks does
not qualify to be such. It also includes the understanding to be inseparable part of one's environment
- a shared environment indicating that there is only interdependence, not separation.
Furthermore, real intelligence includes compassion, kindness and the will to walk in somebody
else's shoes.
This intelligence is sorely missing in the majority of people that are entrusted with 'journalistic'
work, or working in public offices. The stench of being "holier that thou" is covering the U.S.A.
and wafts to Europe were it is now also modus operandi.
The best course of action would be to punish those who engage in this kind of demagoguery with
nonobservance.
It won't be Trump who brings us fascism as the images implies, but more likely Clinton if she
wins and if the Democrats can win over one of the Houses of Congress. As the campaign goes on,
these comparisons add up and create in the minds of anybody anti-Trump an actual equivalency to
in particular Hitler. This is one half of the combustion needed to go down the road to fascism.
There is something else that Trump given the Russian hysteria is being called--a traitor. The
thing is, Hillary supports believe this to be true in a criminal sense. It is not just some throw
away smear normal for any election. I have seen way too way postings in major democratic party
sites calls for basically the resurrection of the House Un-American Activities Committee. These
supporters are historically clueless on what they are asking for, and I would imagine the same
with much of the democratic party lawmakers in Congress.
I can see if Hillary wins, witch hunts against anti-war protesters, or people who believe we
should have rapprochement with Russia and China. The goal will be to criminalize and punish dissenting
views on foreign and war policies because the constant Putin/Trump/Hitler/Stalin/etc comparisons
created the foundation for actual criminal accusations.
And the witch hunts will spread beyond war and foreign policy. Look at what is going on in
Europe. Literally, and I do mean literally, every problem is being attributed to Putin "weaponizing"
some issue. Serious politicians accused Putin of using drunken Russian fans during the Euro futbol
championships of starting fights to support Brexit. The Polish minister for internal security
accused Putin of master minding the Paris terrorist attacks. And these guys get away with the
most outlandish accusations. As the real Nazis understood, repetition of lies is the foundation
of propaganda to move people into action.
The underlying nature of numerous political websites is also exposed thanks to their shilling
for HRC--particularly those calling themselves Progressive: No Genuine Progressive would support
HRC, or Sanders now that he's exposed himself for what he is, a Chevrolet Liberal.
Well the resident Zio-Racist Hill-shill (rufus magister | Aug 26, 2016 11:47:38 AM | 5) likes
to pretend he is some sort of progressive, but still can't keep from outing himself by banging
on non-stop about the Zio-Racists favourite talking points (Heil hillary and "holocaustholocaustholocaut!!")
She appeared to be an idiot when speaking extemporaneously. Clueless and incapable of expressing
empathy with mere mortals. If there are debates with 'The Donald' I would expect that Her Highness
will be reading a teleprompter. Her handlers do not allow her to speak off the cuff [.]
Very interesting because I have been discussing with colleagues here the Don should be honing
his debating skill sets as Hillary is a trained lawyer/politician.
Even if Hillary is elected, her mandate will be haunted by her email stupidity and the Clinton
foundation cupidity. She will be paralyzed and may not even finish her mandate. To avoid the looming
shame, I think she should work NOT to be elected, so she can leave the political scene with till
some dignity.
Regarding voting against one's own interests, the Republican majority leader of the senate
just said no
to TPP for the time being... Draw your own conclusions; I'm more bemused by the parallels
to eastern Europe under Soviet vs NATO occupation.
. . .Clinton's use of BleachBit undermines her claims that she only deleted innocuous "personal"
emails from her private server
"If she considered them to be personal, then she and her lawyers had those emails deleted.
They didn't just push the delete button, they had them deleted where even God can't read
them.
"They were using something called BleachBit You don't use BleachBit for yoga emails."
"When you're using BleachBit, it is something you really do not want the world to see."
Vitriol galore! If the arguments made above ... either way ... are the best we can do then
maybe electing Hillary and hoping for WW3 is the lessor of evils. As I've said before, not a bad
idea.
Posted by: From The Hague | Aug 26, 2016 2:22:04 PM | 34
"MoA-readers, who are left/progressive/intellectual/democratic/anti-Trump, are warmongering
idiots." No, the true idiocy is with those who still buy into this concocted left/right, liberal/conservative,
D/R scheme to oppress the masses. Divide and conquer at its very best. The Romans would cry tears
of joy how their principle is so successfully implemented - since over 200 years.
To be bold here: a 'left' mother loves her child as much as a 'right' mother and even more
so the grandparents. Any grandparent here that denies their grandchildren their love based on
the fact that their children cling on to a different belief? And that it is in its entirety -
made believe by the Plutocrats and the sheople throw shit at each other instead of UPWARDS
.
[Full Text Of Hillary Clinton's Speech On The Alt-Right ...]
Just yesterday, one of Britain's most prominent right-wing leaders, Nigel Farage, who stoked
anti-immigrant sentiments to win the referendum on leaving the European Union, campaigned with
Donald Trump in Mississippi. Farage has called for a ban on the children of legal immigrants from public schools and
health services, has said women are quote "worth less" than men, and supports scrapping laws
that prevent employers from discriminating based on race ― that's who Trump wants by his side.
The godfather of this global brand of extreme nationalism is Russian President Vladimir
Putin.
In fact, Farage has appeared regularly on Russian propaganda programs. Now he's standing
on the same stage as the Republican nominee.
During a campaign rally in Nevada, US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spoke about the
dangers of right-wing forces in power, as well as about problems of racism. "Clinton noted that her rival Donald Trump supported the policies of Russian President Vladimir
Putin. As for relations with Russia, the views of Donald Trump come contrary to the views of all
American presidents, from "Truman to Reagan."
"He talks casually of abandoning our NATO allies, recognizing Russia's annexation of Crimea,
giving the Kremlin a free hand in eastern Europe. American presidents from Truman, to Reagan,
to Bush, to Clinton, to Obama have rejected the kind of approach Trump is taking on Russia. And
we should, too," Clinton said.
Hatred of Trump is nothing more than cloaked Jewish hatred of white Christians. Go ahead and take
my comment down, but you are too smart to not know the truth deep down in your heart. This above
all else, lie to yourself to protect the Jewish lies.
About the most successful 'breakaway political movement' ever was probably the Dixiecrats in the
1948 election which actually garnered a small fraction of the electoral college, but that was
using the apparatus of an organised national political party existent regionally. Outside the
two traditional parties, there is no effective national political party. ...Next time keep your idiot elections to yourselves - Please.
On August 5th, Michael Morell, a former acting Director of the CIA, pilloried GOP presidential
candidate Donald Trump, concluding that he was an "unwitting agent of Russia." Morell, who entitled
his New York Times op-ed "I Ran the CIA and now I'm endorsing Hillary Clinton," described the
process whereby Trump had been so corrupted. According to Morell, Putin, it seems, as a wily ex-career
intelligence officer, is "trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit
them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump's vulnerabilities…
In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting
agent of the Russian Federation."
So who is guilty of putting the interests of a foreign government ahead of those of the United
States? I know there are advocates for any number of foreign states running around loose in Washington
but the friends of Israel in government and the media come immediately to mind largely because
there are so many of them, they are very much in-your-face and they are both extremely well-funded
and very successful. Now deceased former Congressman Tom Lantos and Senator Frank Lautenberg were,
respectively, often referred to as the congressman and senator from Israel. And there are many
more: Chuck Schumer, Chuck Grassley, Ben Cardin, Bob Menendez, Tom Cotton, Mark Kirk, Nita Lowey,
Ted Deutch, Brad Sherman, Ileana-Ros Lehtinen and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to name only a few
in the Congress. All are
major recipients of Israel related PAC money and all are reliable defenders of Israel no matter
what Benjamin Netanyahu does and no matter how it effects the United States.
And then there are the Clintons. One only has to go back to Bill's
one-sided pro-Israeli
diplomacy at Camp David in 2000 to discern how the game was played. And then there was the
widely condemned January 2001
last minute pardon of
Mossad agent Marc Rich, whose wife Denise was a major contributor to the Clintons, to realize
that there was always a deference to Israeli interests particularly when money was involved. The
only problem is that the Clintons, relying on Morell's formulation, might more reasonably be described
as witting agents of Israel rather than unwitting as they have certainly known what they have
been doing and have been actively supporting Israeli policies even when damaging to U.S. interests
since they first emerged from the primordial political swamps in Arkansas. If one were completely
cynical it might be possible to suggest that they understood from the beginning that pandering
to Israel and gaining access to Jewish power and money would be a major component in their rise
to political prominence. It certainly has worked out that way.
=====
So who is guilty of putting the interests of a foreign government ahead of those of the United
States? I know there are advocates for any number of foreign states running around loose in Washington
but the friends of Israel in government and the media come immediately to mind largely because
there are so many of them, they are very much in-your-face and they are both extremely well-funded
and very successful. Now deceased former Congressman Tom Lantos and Senator Frank Lautenberg were,
respectively, often referred to as the congressman and senator from Israel. And there are many
more: Chuck Schumer, Chuck Grassley, Ben Cardin, Bob Menendez, Tom Cotton, Mark Kirk, Nita Lowey,
Ted Deutch, Brad Sherman, Ileana-Ros Lehtinen and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to name only a few
in the Congress. All are
major recipients of Israel related PAC money and all are reliable defenders of Israel no matter
what Benjamin Netanyahu does and no matter how it effects the United States.
And then there are the Clintons. One only has to go back to Bill's
one-sided pro-Israeli
diplomacy at Camp David in 2000 to discern how the game was played. And then there was the
widely condemned January 2001
last minute pardon of
Mossad agent Marc Rich, whose wife Denise was a major contributor to the Clintons, to realize
that there was always a deference to Israeli interests particularly when money was involved. The
only problem is that the Clintons, relying on Morell's formulation, might more reasonably be described
as witting agents of Israel rather than unwitting as they have certainly known what they have
been doing and have been actively supporting Israeli policies even when damaging to U.S. interests
since they first emerged from the primordial political swamps in Arkansas. If one were completely
cynical it might be possible to suggest that they understood from the beginning that pandering
to Israel and gaining access to Jewish power and money would be a major component in their rise
to political prominence. It certainly has worked out that way.
Tom @38: "Trump the racist Appealing to African-Americans was just a demented and sick desperate
joke. "
It is actually not stupid. First, raising his support among the Blacks from 1% to 2% may help.
More importantly, he has to work on the vote of educated whites, especially suburban female Republicans
where he lags.
However, a position that he is not racist is ... misguided, say. Through most of his life,
Trump simply donated to all elected politicians in areas where he was doing business, as it is
apparently necessary for every serious developer. But in recent years he became sort of Republican
activists, and his premiere issue was "birthism". A conspiracy theory alleging that Obama was
born abroad. Incidentally, Ted Cruz was born abroad, in Canada, of non-citizen father and American
citizen mother, and, surprise, surprise, he is perfectly eligible to run for President, but simple
legal arguments like that, not to mention actual documents from a hospital in Hawaii did not satisfy
the insane crowd. The only motivation that is non-insane is ugly: harping on "otherness" of mix-race
President with Muslim first name and African last name.
Or Trump harping that he would be more successful in foreign policy because he would be "more
respected" than a women or a Black boy.
Trump supports police brutality, down to gunning down unarmed poor folks (to err on the side
of caution) and death penalty, for innocently accused as it turned later. Somehow a white person
killing poor women and refrigerating the corpses does not lead to conniptions and full page newspaper
ads, unlike black youth accused of rape. This is really harking to good old time of lynch mobs.
LITERALLY.
And this: "Trump blamed financial difficulties partly on African American accountants.
"I've got black accountants at Trump Castle and at Trump Plaza - black guys counting my money!"
O'Donnell's book quoted Trump as saying. "I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my
money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. Those are the kind of people I want counting
my money. Nobody else. . . . Besides that, I've got to tell you something else. I think that the
guy is lazy. And it's probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really
is; I believe that. It's not anything they can control."
As a long time observer of elections and history, it seems that this time both parties have figured
out the value of identity politics and are using that instead of any intelligent discussion of
issues to sway voters.
It's probably the total ownership of the media by the oligarchs that allows them to do this,
as it appears that no issues such as TPP or the wasteful MIC are ever discussed. Identity politics allows everything to be emotional and not rational, and it appears to be
working for anyone who does not have the time or volition to read with care.
Make no mistake: Hillary Clinton is on record as calling for funding of Islamist groups in Syria
and overthrowing Assad. If she is elected, we're very likely to see a full-scale US intervention,
with US forces openly and aggressively confronting not only Syrian government forces but also
facing off with the Russians.
Anyone calling for people to support Hilary Clinton, irrespective of whatever dishonest reasoning
they use to try and con people into thinking it is a good idea, is calling for more war, more
murder of brown-skinned middle eastern muslims and christians etc., and most importantly: more
profits for the US/Zionist Death Machine.
Make no mistake about that, these shitty Hillary-supporting people cannot claim that they do
not know what that that is what they are doing, because she has been quite vocal in her support
for more war and more murder (on behalf of Isreal naturally)
It may be that, despite his rethoric, and like Oboma before him, Trump will bring all those
things too, should he win, but we DO know for sure what Killary intends, because we have already
seen her handywork, and she has promised more of the same
There's Hillary, whose delusion is that she has any political game. Certainly not enough to
get elected President, even against a reality TV host. Then there's Donald, whose delusion is
that he actually _is_ the person he plays on TV.
In the midst of the insanity is Jill. JIILLLLLLL people!
OT, but did Bill marry Hill as a firewall against any possibility he might act on his more
than occasional human/humane instincts? She certainly would have none of that, he must've known.
NOTHING must stand in the way of ambition.
What Hillary ought to do is very simple: Resign (or whatever verb works for this
presidential nominee situation), Apologize to all the voters who chose her. Explain that she would
probably be impeached and would be essentially neutered. She should then tell the public that Bernie Sanders would do the best for all the people of
this nation.
"What Hillary ought to do is very simple: Resign" I don't think she can, she's just a puppet, and her handlers would never let that happen. Her
only chance is with her body finally giving in overwhelmed with guilt, stress, medication, her
only way out...
Look what they did to Reagan and the pope JP2 - GHWB failed with his assassins, but after the
attempts, both these puppets were basically doing what told, with only little freedom left to
do some good things (served well for maintaining appearances).
Which brings again that question to my mind - why did they let Hinckley the patsy out recently,
what's he's being set up for..?
Oooo! Shillary! Such refined thinking. Face it, the US has always been corrupt. "The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding
Industry" reviewed here:
http://www.chicagoreviewpress.com/american-slave-coast--the-products-9781613748206.php says it all. Thomas Jefferson, a hero? What about George Washington, the land owner? Trump and Clinton are only unusual in that most Duhmericans have finally no choice but to admit
they are venal. Stein, who could NEVER win, seems honorable. Johnson may be a wacked out libertarian, but he
is a well meaning wacko.
Great choices for the great democracy, light of the world, exceptional nation!
I agree, Duhmerican politics are stupid ... the dumbest people in the world make it so. Then
again, is any place humans habitate NOT idiotically insane stupid?
"Trump's economic policies as U.S. president would be catastrophic for those most likely to vote
for him."
If the US is to cease being an empire, the average American is going to go through hard times
for a bit. If the US continues as a declining empire, the average American citizen will go through
hard times plus another lot of harder times when the declining empire crashes and burns.
Peter at 68: No, that's conventional economic thinking. Americans or any people will have good
economic times if the government stimulates the economy in ways that grow high-paying jobs, restructures
economic power toward workers, and massively redistributes income to the middle and working classes.
Empire or no Empire.
...
"Vladimir Putin is the grand-godfather of this global brand of extreme nationalism.", Hillary
Clinton said, (while standing in front of a gigantic American Flag, without a trace of Irony detectable
in her voice).
Posted by: Shillary | Aug 26, 2016 5:22:34 PM | 50
Yep. Dangerously stupid.
Superficial and self-absorbed Hollywoodishness; the polar opposite of self-aware.
The Godfather image is a popular one these days. The Godmother use it to deflect attention
from her own role as cackling harridan, wailing banshee of DDD&D ... others note that
"Godfather"
Biden visits Turkey
The foreign policy of the American ruling class, in addition to the impoverishment of American
society to fund the vast military apparatus, has had the most horrifying consequences for the
peoples of the countries targeted. The war fomented by the United States in Syria has reduced
the population of that country from 23 million to about 17 million, killed up to half a million
people, and displaced over 13 million.
Thirteen years after the invasion of Iraq, which resulted in the deaths of at least a million
people, some 4.4 million Iraqis are internally displaced, with over a quarter million forced
to flee the country.
Questions of foreign policy are not decided, much less deliberated, within the framework
of elections. Nowhere in the 2016 presidential race is there a serious debate, for instance,
on the character of the US alliance with Turkey or the consequences of launching a de facto
NATO invasion of Syria. Congress holds no hearings or votes. It neither seeks nor desires to
play a serious role.
As for the people, they simply have no say.
The press plays a key role in the deception and disenfranchisement of the population. One
tactic employed by the corporate-controlled media is simply to exclude "minor" developments
such as a US-backed invasion of Syria from the so-called "news." The most remarkable feature
of the media coverage to date of the Turkish incursion is its virtual non-existence. It is
a good bet, due to the media's corrupt silence, that the percentage of the US population that
is even aware of the invasion is in the single digits.
You forgot to add: "anyone who willfully votes for either Red Donald or Blue Hillary is a moral
leper, ...one who will still have to cough up a $4.5 TRILLION King's Ransom on April 15th for
Mil.Gov.Fed metastasizing Technocracy, regardless, and still have to pay $650 BILLION a year of
that YUUGE ransom in interest-only debt (sic) tithes to The Chosen."
Shillary @50 -- Hillary Clinton is completely devoid of any sense of irony or humour. She's a complete
emotional and, I would add, intellectual dud. She seems to be a good lawyer, though --- in the US
lawyers as far as the eye can see.
Shillary @50 -- Hillary Clinton is completely devoid of any sense of irony or humour. She's a
complete emotional and, I would add, intellectual dud. She seems to be a good lawyer, though ---
in the US lawyers as far as the eye can see.
OT
GENEVA - The United States and Russia say they have resolved a number of issues standing in the
way of restoring a nationwide truce to Syria and opening up aid deliveries, but were unable once
again to forge a comprehensive agreement on stepping up cooperation to end the brutal war that
has killed hundreds of thousands.
After meeting off-and-on for nearly 10 hours in Geneva on Friday, U.S. Secretary of State John
Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov could point to only incremental progress in filling
in details of a broad understanding to boost joint efforts that was reached last month in Moscow.
Their failure to reach an overall deal highlighted the increasingly complex situation on the
ground in Syria - including new Russian-backed Syrian government attacks on opposition forces,
the intermingling of some of those opposition forces with an al-Qaida affiliate not covered by
the truce and the surrender of a rebel-held suburb of Damascus - as well as deep divisions and
mistrust dividing Washington and Moscow.
The complexities have also grown with the increasing internationalization of what has largely
become a proxy war between regional and world powers, highlighted by a move by Turkish troops
across the Syrian border against Islamic State fighters this week.
Kerry said he and Lavrov had agreed on the "vast majority" of technical discussions on steps
to reinstate a cease-fire and improve humanitarian access. But critical sticking points remain
unresolved and experts will remain in Geneva with an eye toward finalizing those in the coming
days, he said.
```
Lavrov echoed that, saying "we still need to finalize a few issues" and pointed to the need to
separate fighters from the al-Nusra Front, which has ties to al-Qaida, from U.S.-backed fighters
who hold parts of northwest Syria.
"We have continued our efforts to reduce the areas where we lack understanding and trust, which
is an achievement," Lavrov said. "The mutual trust is growing with every meeting."
Yet, it was clear that neither side believes an overall agreement is imminent or even achievable
after numerous previous disappointments shattered a brief period of relative calm earlier this
year.
The inability to wrest an agreement between Russia and the U.S. - as the major sponsors of
the opposing sides in the stalled Syria peace talks - all but spells another missed deadline for
the U.N. Syria envoy to get the Syrian government and "moderate" opposition back to the table.
```
In a nod to previous failed attempts to resurrect the cessation of hostilities, Kerry stressed
the importance of keeping the details secret.
```
And, underscoring deep differences over developments on the ground, Kerry noted that Russia disputes
the U.S. "narrative" of recent attacks on heavily populated areas being conducted by Syrian forces,
Russia itself and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia. Russia maintains the attacks it has been
involved in have targeted legitimate terrorist targets, while the U.S. says they have hit moderate
opposition forces.
~~~
At the same time, the Obama administration is not of one mind regarding the Russians. The Pentagon
has publicly complained about getting drawn into greater cooperation with Russia even though it
has been forced recently to expand communication with Moscow. Last week, the U.S. had to call
for Russian help when Syrian warplanes struck an area not far from where U.S. troops were operating.
U.S. officials say it is imperative that Russia use its influence with Syrian President Bashar
Assad to halt all attacks on moderate opposition forces, open humanitarian aid corridors, and
concentrate any offensive action on the Islamic State group and other extremists not covered by
what has become a largely ignored truce.
For their part, U.S. officials say they are willing to press rebels groups they support harder
on separating themselves from the Islamic State and al-Nusra, which despite a recent name change
is still viewed as al-Qaida's affiliate in Syria.
Those goals are not new, but recent developments have made achieving them even more urgent
and important, according to U.S. officials. Recent developments include military operations around
the city of Aleppo, the entry of Turkey into the ground war, Turkish hostility toward U.S.-backed
Kurdish rebel groups and the presence of American military advisers in widening conflict zones.
Meanwhile, in a blow to the opposition, rebel forces and civilians in the besieged Damascus
suburb of Daraya were to be evacuated on Friday after agreeing to surrender the town late Thursday
after four years of grueling bombardment and a crippling siege that left the sprawling area in
ruins.
The surrender of Daraya, which became an early symbol of the nascent uprising against Assad,
marks a success for his government, removing a persistent threat only a few miles from his seat
of power.
Returning to protectionism and fair trade will lift all American boats,not just the Wall Street
Zionists,so I am perplexed at b's comment.
America,despite glowing MSM BS,is on the ropes of neoliberalism.As an older American,I remember
a land of plenty,with good jobs for all,instead of fast food retail hell.I don't think b has any
idea of the realities being endured by US,as the media refuses to give US reality,instead rosy
economic garbage where not once in Obombas terrible reign have they created enough jobs to keep
up with the expanding population,and as DT says,the inner cities are hellholes,witness the NBA
star Dwayne Wades cousin shot in Chicago pushing a baby stroller.
I had a nurse from Hempstead NY,when i had the big C,who said an old man in a wheelchair had a
pit bull tied to it to ward off potential crooks.WTF?
And now the antisemitism card is played by the serial liars,Bannon is accused of calling Jews
whiny.Well,as a longtime observer,he is spot on there.
And the lying times says 90% chance for Hell bitch victory.
Will saying it so often make it so?Nah.
What is unbelievable is the fact that she corruptly stole the primary with the help of the DNC
and the ziomedia,but no one cares.(her supporters)If not emblematic of the depravity of liberals,those
who wish the death of others so they live in safety(which of course is poppycock)what is?
And when Trump gets her in the debates,he'll destroy the MSM narrative of BS.
Part 1. ;) Got dragged into Killary's alt-right speech at Truckee Meadows Community College, Reno,
Nevada, Aug 2016. Only content: 100% against Trump , as sidebars, Alex Jones, Nigel Farage,
Putin, David Duke.
The official MSM version is 31 mins - the frame is just her with a fixed cam centered nothing
around. Sparse occasional clapping (real, one can see the clappers in other vids).. She speaks
as one would to a parterre of 30-50 ppl, not as in a campaign rally. A longer version (MSM) is
45 mins and shows some of the preliminaries, some guy, then the Mayor of Reno, youngish blondine,
introducing her. Killary was apparently hours late. (> youtube.) Killary is dressed in green.
To the interesting part. She spoke at the same College in Feb. 2015. Note: red dress, the brick
pillars typical of the college, and the big windows behind. A big hall…
The event has all the hallmarks of a 'proper' pol show, no need to list. Note the Hall, quite
large, is not full. The signs are blue and are for Hillary, for Women, for Nevada and so on.
Posted by: okie farmer | Aug 27, 2016 8:23:27 AM | 80
Re: Geneva negotiations...
Love the goto clause:
"In a nod to previous failed attempts to resurrect the cessation of hostilities, Kerry stressed
the importance of keeping the details secret."
Yeah, keeping the details secret so that next time the Yankees backstab Russia, observers won't
immediately realise that they were, in fact, just shooting themselves in the foot. Again.
Part 2. The Aug. 2016 event took place at the College but either in a small part of the back of
the big hall or another locale (similar in architecture obviously)
Bizzaro event. Minuscule, there is almost nobody there. It was deliberatly set up in 'small
space' for the cams. The only other important ppl present are one man (Head of the college or?
idk) and the Mayor of Reno. The only signs shown say *USA* are not appropriate and are whipped
out only when Killary comes onstage. Doesn't even look like a Democrat event! Never mind an important
campaign rally for *drum rolls* the person anointed to become Prez. of the most powerful country
on Earth, the World Queen or Hegemon.
After the speech, vids show H.C. talking to a very few ppl, 25 at most, not answering "reporters"
questions, two tiny trays of confections were offered. Bwwahhh. She ate one choc. There was also
a stop at a Reno Coffee shop (10 ppl?) which made no sense. On these occasions she is accompanied
by the Mayor in a cosy girly coffee thingie. (> youtube.)
The US is fracturing...Moreover the speech was perhaps the weakest from any pol I have ever
heard.
Wait a minute! They ID'd the hacker and it's a business in Israel? And it forced Apple to an
emergency software upgrade. But I thought all the evil hackers were Russians working for the government.
There is one villain Trump has not been compared to: Hillary Clinton.
And don't be the kettle calling the pot black, whoever the author of this ill-researched piece
is. Your own journalism strikes me as irresponsible when you claim, "Trump's economic policies
as U.S. president would be catastrophic for those most likely to vote for him." Catastrophic?
Really? Who exactly is "most likely to vote for him" that would not benefit from better trade
deals and more corporate incentives for domestic business? The global elite? They're the ones
who definitely won't benefit, but they also definitely won't vote for him. Get your thinking straight.
For clear light on the positive relationship between a Trump presidency and the US economy,
David Stockman offers wisdom. Take a look from time to time at his website to educate yourself:
okie farmer@80 Lavrov is on a loser if he accepts this "moderate terrorist" BS from Kerry. Those
"moderates" have replaced Islamic state in Jerablus, soon to be expanded to cover that huge area
between Jerablus, Azaz and Al-bab,all without a fight and apparent agreement with IS. Next could
be the area is controlled by Turkish and US "moderate" head choppers, which of course nobody will
be allowed to attack. They should only be called moderate if they oppose Assad and do not carry
arms, otherwise its just a case of changing labels, in which case the terrorists could never lose.
I find it hard to believe that so soon after the so called normalization of ties and trade deals
between Russia and Turkey, Turkey could do what they have threatened to do for years, invade Syria
and set up prospective no fly zones. I suppose we must wait and see, but in my opinion, it does
not look good.
@88, curtis, 'But I thought all the evil hackers were Russians working for the government'
Maybe they are ... Russian emigre hackers working for the Israeli government?
@92 hl,
I agree. Russia has been stabbed in the back by Turkey, and the US is backing Turkey ... of
course they were backing the Kurds, too, until they weren't.
Erdogan is utterly unreliable ... or he is utterly reliable if you're relying on duplicity
and betrayal.
Now it is time for people to start saying Roberts is a shill for Trump. If you've read what
he has written about Trump, he's highly critical. His point is simple: Do you support those who
are so blatantly against Trump? Or, put the other way around, are you in favor of continued oligarchic
rule.
Like Roberts, I am so opposed to Clinton that Trump seems (even ever so slightly) the lessor
of evils.
1 "Donald Trump is worse than Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad"
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/donald-trump/12182955/Donald-Trump-is-worse-than-Irans-Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad.html
2 "Donald Trump Is America's Gift To Bin Laden"
www.huffpost.com/us/entry/10445156
Gesine Hammerling@89 - "...What would happen if Trump won the majority of the members of the
Electoral College but they voted for Clinton?..."
The Electoral College vote is absolute - the candidate that gets 270 of the 538 votes wins,
so Clinton would be elected. If neither candidate gets that many, then an immediate vote by the
House of Representatives decides. The popular vote that takes place at the same time is utterly
meaningless other than to chose one of two bribe-funneling political parties who, in turn, chose
their typically party-loyal electors. There's a bit more to it than that, but that sums it up.
And, yes, the state political parties could chose electors who would jump ship and vote for the
other party. That will be the way they will ensure Clinton is elected in November regardless of
who the little people think they're voting for. Anyone who is familiar with the process knows
this will happen, including the Republican Party. Trump obviously knows the fix is in.
The paradox comes about because the political parties at the state level have slowly taken
over the process of choosing who goes to the electoral college. The founders' original intent
was to have (presumably) the best and the brightest citizens representing each state, making an
informed decision that would produce the 'best' choice. There were no political parties to speak
of when the Constitution was penned. In fact, the founders were rather suspicious of them in general
but did not go so far as to prohibit them (to our eventual ruin). They never intended the rigged,
two-party freak show popularity contest masquerading as an election that we have today.
For a bit more nuance in the choice of state electors, their vote pledge and 'jumping ship' (if
it's allowed by law in that state, see
faithless electors
.
I check the CPI every now and then looking for the US to drop. The Corruption Perception Index
depends on the perception which can be molded by the media. But as more people wake up, I expect
the US ranking to drop. Our 2015 ranking is 16 (behind countries in north-east Europe and Canada
and New Zealand). http://www.transparency.org/cpi2015
russia sees this bs crap about 'moderate' for what it is... just another shell game to play
hide and seek, switch flags, etc, etc... until the 'moderate' opposition drop their military arms,
it ain't 'moderate'... would 'moderate' opposition to the usa leadership be allowed to use weapons?
that's the answer to that bs...
as for turkey, clearly the apk has a 'get rid of the kurds' agenda.. works well in their alliance
with isis up to a point.. as for turkish/usa alliance and a no fly zone - if russia goes along
with this, they better get a hell of a trade off out of it.. i can't see it, although i see the
usa continuing on in their support of saudi arabia etc, using their mercenary isis army and saudi
arabia to continue to funnel arms sales and weaponry... it is what they do best, bullshite artists
that they are...
Clinton has a reasonably competitive opponent who has challenged her on her
record of Wall Street support, her dismissal
of the Glass-Steagall Act and her
vote for war in Iraq. She should also be challenged vigorously on her role
with the DLC.
Circumstances have created a unique moment where Clinton has to answer these
tough questions.
POLITICO) Donald Trump dug deeper into the archives Friday to point out Hillary Clinton's
complicated history of racially divisive politics, including her infamous "super-predators"
comment from the 1990s.
"The Clinton's are the real predators…" Trump wrote in a tweet
linking to an Instagram video.
The video begins with Hillary Clinton in 1996, defending her husband's controversial crime
bill, which has long been criticized for its impact on minority communities with respect to
mass incarceration.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2016/08/trump-clintons-are-the-real-predators/#hCaMDGFQDlFMqhZS.99
Re: Clintons campaign possible strategy of making a vote for Clinton 'a vote
for a winner'.
I know its conventional opinion that when in doubt, people prefer to vote
for who they perceive to be a 'winner', but I wonder if this really applies
with two such disliked candidates. I've a theory that one reason Brexit won is
that the polls beforehand saying it would be a narrow 'no', gave 'permission'
for people to vote with their conscience rather than their pragmatism. In other
words, presented with a 'pragmatic, but dirty' vote for X, but a 'fun, but
risky' vote for Y', people will vote X if its very close or it looks like Y
will win, but may be tempted to vote Y if they are pretty sure X will win.
Part of me thinks the Clinton campaign would have tested the theory to the
limit before going for a strategy like this, but the evidence from the
nomination campaign is that they are all tactics, no strategy. It seems to me
to be a very risky game to play, not least because promoting Clinton as a sure
winner may make wavering progressives simply opt to stay at home.
I don't even think you have to be a progressive for that to be a concern
if you are the Clinton campaign.
They know the public is not enthusiastic about voting for her for the most
part, and yet they are setting up a meme where she is unbeatable. It isn't
necessarily going to just keep Trump voters home. But how many people who
don't want Clinton but really don't want Trump will be able to convince
themselves that there is no need to go hold their nose and vote for her.
Republicans who think she is too far left, but he is crazy for instance will
be just as likely to stay home as the lefties who know she is lying
Neoliberal War Criminal, but not fascist like Trump. (And I know the real
fascism signs are all with Clinton, but some may have missed it).
On fascism I had the exact same thought after reading Adolph Reeds
"Vote For the Lying, NeoLiberal War-Monger, It's Important" link last
week.
Reed's critique was that communist leader Thallman failed to
anticipate Hitler's liquidation of all opposition, but frankly with
Hillary's and Donald's respective histories its hard for me to see how
Trump is more dangerous on this: Hillary has a deep and proven lethal
track record and wherever she could justify violent action in the past
she has, she keeps an enemies list, holds grudges and acts on them, all
thoroughly documented.
I certainly won't speculate that Trump couldn't do the same or worse,
given the state of our propaganda and lawlessness amongst the elite, but
like all the other negatives in this campaign its hard to ascertain who
really will be worse. Lambert's bet on gridlock in a Trump administration
has the further advantage of re-activating the simulation of "anti-war,
anti-violence" amongst Dem nomenklatura.
We have collectively known Donald Trump and much of his family
for the last 30 or 40 years. Over the years, he has evoked
different emotions in me. (Usually being appalled by his big-city,
realestate tycoon posturing etc). However, I have
never
been frightened by him. To me, he is more like a bombastic, well
loved, show-off uncle.
Today I see Trump as a modern day prophet (spiritual teacher). A
bringer of light (clarity) to the masses. We live in a rigged
system that gives Nobel Peace Prizes to mass murderers; that
charges a poor child $600 for a $1 lifesaving Epipen. Trump is
waking up The People. Finalllyyyyyy!!
In my experience, people usually do not change for the better
as they age. However, it does happen!; peasant girl (Joan of
Arc), patent inspector (Einstein)
It's not about what Trump will or won't do. It's about not handing
all three branches of government over to the GOP, which has the
Libertarian agenda of eliminating said government altogether. I find
it interesting that so many people scornful of identity politics
nevertheless seem to be as addicted as anyone to making this a horse
race between two candidates that has no real far-reaching consequences
beyond with each will or won't do in the Oval Office.
The Republican elite is clearly and strongly aligned with
Clinton, which reflects the status quo consensus.
It is certainly possible that the elected Republicans in the
House and the Senate will follow Trump or Trump will follow them.
But right now, that seems no more possible than that elected
Republican leadership (the ones most indebted to and aligned with
the donors/rest of the elite) will rebel at Trump and his takeover
of the party. Moreover, IF Trump's in, the Democrats will be forced
to enact the roll of "Democrat," thus guaranteeing some obstacle
somewhere.
Clinton is a Republican. Claiming she won't govern like a
Republican basically means relying on the Freedom Caucus to stop
her. I would just as soon not have to count on those guys to keep
throwing poop at the neoliberal walls - especially since they're
all being directly targeted in this election.
So true: "My view is that triumphalism from the Clinton campaign - which
now includes most of the political class, including the press and both party
establishments, and ignores event risk - is engineered to get early voters
to "go with the winner."–Lambert
I have noticed on Google News several "Clinton weighing cabinet choices"
articles, to me there is whistling past the graveyard quality to all this.
They want the election over now-the votes are just a formality.
They really really do not have any short term memory do they? I mean
it took sticking both thumbs on the scale and some handy dandy
shenanigans with voters to get her past the Primary finish line. And her
opponent there was much nicer about pointing out her flaws than her
current opponent. It is true they won't have any obvious elections that
disprove their position out there, but when you are spending millions and
your opponent nothing and he is still within the margin of error with you
in the states that people are watching the closest…
Although that isn't considering the fears of what other shoes have to
drop both in the world and in the news that could derail her victory
parade, they may have more to fear from that.
One of the problems Democrats have and the 50 state strategy
addressed is voting in very Democratic precincts. Without constant
pressure, many proud Democrats won't vote because they don't know any
Republicans. It's in the bag. College kids are the worst voters alive.
They will forget come election day or not be registered because they
moved. Dean squeezed these districts. These districts are where
Democrats , out in 2010 and 2014 and even a little in 2012. Mittens is
a robber baron.
If Democratic turnout is low and Hillary wins with crossover votes,
what happens? It's very likely those Republicans vote for down ticket
Republicans. Even for the people who have to vote against Trump, if
they believe he is a special kind of super fascist will they bother to
vote for the allies of a crook such as Hillary? It's possible Hillary
wins and drops a seat in the Senate depending on turnout.
I think it's clear Hillary isn't going to bring out any kind of
voter activism. Judging from photos in Virginia where one would hope a
commanding Hillary victory could jump start the Democrats for next
year's governors and legislative races, the Democratic Party is dead
or very close to it.
What if Hillary wins but does the unthinkable and delivers a
Republican pickup in the Senate? She needs to keep Republicans from
coming out because she isn't going to drive Democratic turnout to a
spot where that can win on its own.
Hillary needs to win to keep the never Trump crowd in the GOP from
voting because she knows the Democratic side which relies on very
Democratic districts and transient voters will not impress. An
emboldened GOP congress will be a tough environment for Hillary, and
GOP voters won't tolerate bipartisanship especially for anyone
suspected of not helping the party 100%. Those House Republicans have
to face 2018 and the smaller but arguably more motivated electorate.
They will come down hard on Hillary if she can't win the Senate which
a literal donkey could do.
Hell I don't want Clinton to win by any margin. But if anyone
thinks that the bipartisan nature of her possible victory will mean
anything but Republicans hunting her scalp, and dare I say getting
it, they are not paying attention. As much as both the Benghazi and
the email thing has them all flummoxed because the real crimes
involved with both are crimes they either agree with or want to
use. The Foundation on the other hand, not so much, they will make
the case that this is a global slush fund because it is. And the
McDonnell decision is not going to save her Presidency, much as it
would if she were indicted in a Court.
I should add, that is with or without winning the Senate. Much
of the loyalty any Dems there have towards her will disappear when
it is obvious that she keeps most of the money AND has no
coattails. Oh, they might not vote to impeach her, but that is
about it.
Hillary's only defense is to win the Senate and to be able to
stifle investigations through the appearance of a mandate. 2018
is the 2012 cycle, and that is 2006 which should be a good year
for the Republicans (a credit to Howard Dean). It's a tough map
for Team Blue. If they don't win the Senate in November, they
won't win it in 2018.
With 2018 on its way, a weak Democratic situation will make
the Democrats very jumpy as Hillary is clearly not delivering
the coattails they imagined.
She isn't going to have a mandate. Oh, the electoral
college count might look good. But regardless of who wins
this sucker, I'm betting this is going to be one of the
lowest, if not the lowest, voter turnout for any Presidential
election in the last century. I would not be surpised if more
people stay home than vote. And that is not a mandate.
The Senate isn't going to stifle investigations. She
doesn't even have to help the Dems get a majority for that
problem of conviction if impeached to rear its ugly head. No
way is there going to be 2/3 of the Senate in one party or
the other. That still won't stop the House. Just as it didn't
for her husband.
"... Trump's presidential campaign had seized on the news of Clinton's briefing to label her an "insider threat." The Trump campaign emailed reporters to point out the news that an Army training presentation previously identified Clinton as a threat ..."
Trump's presidential campaign had seized on the news of Clinton's
briefing to label her an "insider threat." The Trump campaign emailed reporters to
point out the news that an Army training presentation previously identified
Clinton as a threat, as the Washington Examiner previously
reported.
Clinton was investigated by the FBI for mishandling
classified information that appeared on a private email server she had set up, but
agency chief James Comey decided not to recommend charges.
Trump is attractive precisely because the Establishment fears and loathes him because 1) they
didn't pick him and 2) he might upset the neoconservative Empire that the Establishment elites view
as their global entitlement.
The Establishment is freaking out about Donald Trump for one reason: they didn't pick him.
The Establishment is freaking out because the natural order of things is that we pick the presidential
candidates and we run the country to serve ourselves, i.e. the financial-political elites.
Donald Trump's candidacy upsets this neofeudal natural order, and thus he (and everyone
who supports him) is anathema to the Establishment, heretics who must be silenced, cowed, marginalized,
mocked and ultimately put back in their place as subservient debt-serfs.
... ... ...
The utter cluelessness of the professional apologists and punditry would be laughable if it
wasn't so pathetic: the more you fume and rage that Trump is unqualified, narcissistic, singularly
inappropriate, etc. etc. etc., the more appealing he becomes to everyone who isn't inside the protective
walls of your neofeudal castle.
The people outside the cozy walls of the protected elites don't care if he is unqualified (by
the standards of those who get to pick our presidents for us) narcissistic, singularly inappropriate,
and so on--they are cheering him on because you, the multitudes of water-carriers for the Imperial
elites, the teeming hordes of well-paid, I-got-mine-so-shut-the-heck-up pundits, flacks, hacks, sycophants,
apparatchiks, toadies, lackeys, functionaries, leeches and apologists, are so visibly afraid that
your perks, wealth, influence and power might drain away if the 80% actually get a say.
Dear pundits, flacks, hacks, sycophants, apparatchiks, toadies, lackeys, functionaries, leeches
and apologists: we're sick of you, every one of you, and the neofeudal Empire you support. We
want you cashiered, pushed outside the walls with the rest of us, scraping by on well-earned and
richly deserved unemployment.
"... from my perspective the history of the last forty five years of senior economic advisors to U.S. Presidents seems mostly a competition to see who could piss on Great Society and New Deal remedies in favor of "market-based incentives" fast enough. ..."
"... This bunch has taken our economy and so our country from its position in 1976 to its position in 2016. If you have been among the educated 20% you have benefited from their policy prescriptions over the past 40 years. The rest not so much. This kind of WSJ establishment worship does not travel well outside of NYC, DC, SF, LA, and Boston. ..."
"Economists Who've Advised Presidents Are No Fans of Donald
Trump"
Okay I am a guy that wouldn't piss on Trump if he
was on fire but this lead gets a little too close to "Praising
with Faint Damns" for my taste. I mean who on this list is
supposed to impress?
Okay Stiglitz. And I think Christine Romer had a medium
level role as did maybe her husband. But
from my perspective
the history of the last forty five years of senior economic
advisors to U.S. Presidents seems mostly a competition to
see who could piss on Great Society and New Deal remedies
in favor of "market-based incentives" fast enough.
I am not saying that this unanimity doesn't mean something
important. Just that as phrased we are talking kind of a low
bar.
mrrunangun :
, -1
This bunch has taken our economy and so our country from
its position in 1976 to its position in 2016. If you have
been among the educated 20% you have benefited from their
policy prescriptions over the past 40 years. The rest not
so much. This kind of WSJ establishment worship does not travel
well outside of NYC, DC, SF, LA, and Boston.
"Donald Trump now needs a swing of only 3 to 4 percentage points in key battleground states
to win this election" [
MarketWatch ]. "according to a new poll in Michigan, one of the key states in play, as well
as the latest polls in other key states… Meanwhile, Trump faces even smaller deficits in other
key battleground states. According to the polling averages calculated by Real Clear Politics,
Trump trails by just 5 points in Ohio, 4 points in Florida and 2 points in North Carolina. Recent
polls have also put him level with Clinton in Nevada and Iowa." Lambert here: My view is that
triumphalism from the Clinton campaign - which now includes most of the political class, including
the press and both party establishments, and ignores event risk - is engineered to get early voters
to "go with the winner."
Our Revolution: "The senator hailed as a major accomplishment his delegates' work crafting
what he called the "strongest and most progressive" platform in the Democratic Party's history.
And he vowed to implement many of its planks" [
Seven Days ]. Sanders: "'If anybody thinks that that document and what is in that platform
is simply going to be resting on a shelf somewhere accumulating dust, they are very mistaken,'
he said. 'We are going to bring the platform alive and make it the blueprint for moving the Democrats
forward in Congress and all across this country." So, more than "values." However, where there's
less to hate in the Dem platform than usual, it's hardly adequate for the challenges facing the
country. Now, if the operational definition of "bring the platform alive" means "incorporate all
the Sanders planks the Dem establishment voted down," I'd be a lot happier. I haven't heard that
yet.
"... Everyone knows the expression "a wolf in sheep's clothing." Now, it seems the United States will invent the macho Republican in feminist, Democratic clothing. ..."
"... Bill Clinton had triangulated his presidency to Republican-hood. He had demolished Aid to Families With Dependent Children and bought into the bash-the-poor rhetoric of the right wing. He had passed a crime bill that targeted people of color; he had destroyed FDR's legacy, notably by abolishing the Glass-Steagall Act. ..."
"... Bill Clinton might not have inhaled marijuana, but he certainly had inhaled the poison of right-wing ideas. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton openly supported many of Bill Clinton's political measures. She used the terrible expression "superpredators," supported the crime bill and made a hash of health insurance reform . Liza Featherstone talks about Hillary Clinton's faux feminism , and she links her critique to class themes, which is as it should be. Feminists cannot be elite feminists or 1% feminists if they want to defend the rights of all women. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton's track record on issues of poverty, racial justice and justice for women is appalling. As a former member of the board of Walmart, she sided with the rich and powerful , which she also does when she gives speeches for Wall Street. ..."
"... On foreign policy issues, Hillary Clinton is not even an Eisenhower Republican, but a war hawk whose philosophy and shortsightedness is evidenced by the flippant way in which she advocated for war in Libya and the way in which she celebrated. "We came, we saw, he died," she said and laughed loudly. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton, like true neoliberals in the GOP, supported the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), so as Bill had said she supported the bond market and free trade. Now, she claims she did not, but, of course, she is lying. Her lies also have to do with Wall Street (she has not released the text of her speeches), support for people of color and her feminism. ..."
"... Feminism cannot be only about the equality of CEO compensations. Equality in CEO compensations in general should exist at a much-reduced level. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton is a 1% millionaire who now talks the progressive talk, but never really walked the progressive walk. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton is actually to the right of President Dwight D. Eisenhower -- "Ike." He refused to use the atom bomb in Asia, showing more geopolitical prudence than Hillary "we came and he died" Clinton. He also wanted to preserve the FDR advances that the Clintons have done so much to cancel or erase. ..."
"... the Republicans -- starting with Hillary Clinton's youth idol Barry Goldwater -- and the Democrats calling themselves "New Democrats" vied with each other to dismantle the New Deal ..."
"... GOP is not a political party any longer, but a radical insurgency ..."
"... The Democrats have become the Old Republicans and Hillary Clinton is more neocon than traditional conservative of the Eisenhower type. ..."
"... She is a pro-business, Koch-compatible lover of Wall Street who uses feminism like some pinkwashers or greenwashers use progressive agendas to sell regressive policies. Author Diana Johnstone calls her the " Queen of Chaos ." Clinton is the queen of deception, faux feminism and faux progressivism ..."
"... Charles Koch (whose hatred of progressivism is well documented by Jane Meyer in her book, Dark Money ) expressed some admiration for Bill and Hillary Clinton and said he could vote for Hillary this time around. ..."
...Everyone knows the expression "a wolf in sheep's clothing." Now, it seems the United States
will invent the macho Republican in feminist, Democratic clothing.
We're all Eisenhower Republicans here, and we are fighting the Reagan Republicans. We stand
for lower deficits and free trade and the bond market. Isn't that great?
Eisenhower Republicans were, by today's standards, quite moderate. The quote refers to the 1990s,
and already Bill Clinton had triangulated his presidency to Republican-hood. He had demolished
Aid to Families With Dependent Children and bought into the bash-the-poor rhetoric of the right wing.
He had passed a crime bill that targeted people of color; he had destroyed FDR's legacy, notably
by abolishing the Glass-Steagall Act. And he was so "tough on crime" that during the 1992 presidential
campaign season, he had gone back to his home state of Arkansas to witness the execution of Ricky
Ray Rector, who was "mentally deficient." Bill Clinton might not have inhaled marijuana, but
he certainly had inhaled the poison of right-wing ideas.
As we all know, Hillary Clinton openly supported many of Bill Clinton's political measures.
She used the terrible expression
"superpredators," supported
the crime bill and made a
hash of health
insurance reform. Liza Featherstone
talks about Hillary Clinton's faux feminism, and she links her critique to class themes, which
is as it should be. Feminists cannot be elite feminists or 1% feminists if they want to defend the
rights of all women.
Hillary Clinton's track record on issues of poverty, racial justice and justice for women
is appalling. As a former member of the board of Walmart, she
sided with the rich and powerful, which she also does when she gives speeches for Wall Street.
The really important question is how someone who has constantly sided with the rich can campaign
as a progressive, as a friend of people of color and even as a feminist? Michelle Alexander exposed
the hypocrisy of the situation in arguing that "Hillary
Clinton doesn't deserve the black vote."
On foreign policy issues, Hillary Clinton is not even an Eisenhower Republican, but a war
hawk whose philosophy and shortsightedness is evidenced by the flippant way in which she advocated
for war in Libya and the way in which she celebrated. "We came, we saw, he died,"
she said and laughed loudly.
This cruel statement does not take into account the mess and mayhem left behind after the intervention,
something President Obama calls a "shit
show" and his worst mistake. But it is the companion piece to her major fellow elite "feminist"
Madeleine Albright
declaring that killing half a million Iraqis is worth it.
Hillary Clinton, like true neoliberals in the GOP, supported the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA), so as Bill had said she supported the bond market and free trade. Now, she claims
she did not, but, of course, she is lying. Her lies also have to do with Wall Street (she has not
released the text of her speeches), support for people of color and her feminism.
... ... ...
Feminism cannot be only about the equality of CEO compensations. Equality in CEO compensations
in general should exist at a much-reduced level. In his book Listen, Liberal,
Thomas Frank tells the story of a Clinton convention meeting he attended and what he witnessed was
Hillary Clinton as "Ms. Walmart," pretending she cares about all women. Frank, who is genuinely worried
about rising inequality in the United States and racial justice, suggests that elite feminism
is worried about the glass ceiling for CEOs, but does not even worry about working-class women who
have "no floors" under them. Hillary Clinton is a 1% millionaire who now talks the progressive
talk, but never really walked the progressive walk.
It would indeed be a symbolic change if the US elected a woman president, but for the symbol
not to be empty, something more is needed. If a woman president does not improve the lot of the majority
of women, then what is the good of a symbol?
Hillary Clinton is actually to the right of President Dwight D. Eisenhower -- "Ike." He refused
to use the atom bomb in Asia, showing more geopolitical prudence than Hillary "we came and he died"
Clinton. He also wanted to preserve the FDR advances that the Clintons have done so much to cancel
or erase.
...the Republicans -- starting with Hillary Clinton's youth
idol Barry Goldwater -- and the Democrats calling themselves "New Democrats" vied with each other
to dismantle the New Deal and the Great Society programs that Democrats had set up.
Noam Chomsky argues that the GOP is not a political party any longer, but a radical insurgency,
for it has gone off the political cliff. The Democrats have become the Old Republicans and Hillary
Clinton is more neocon than traditional conservative of the Eisenhower type.
So Hillary Clinton, the Republican, is poised to win in November, but her Republicanism is
closer to George W. Bush's and even more conservative than Ronald Reagan's -- except on the societal
issues that have now reached a kind of quasi-consensus like same-sex marriage. She is a pro-business,
Koch-compatible lover of Wall Street who uses feminism like some pinkwashers or greenwashers use
progressive agendas to sell regressive policies. Author Diana Johnstone calls her the "Queen
of Chaos." Clinton is the queen of deception, faux feminism and faux progressivism, whose election
will be made easier by her loutish, vulgar, sexist loudmouth of an opponent.
In his book The Deep State, Mike Lofgren
quotes H.L. Mencken,
who gave away what explains the success of the political circus: "The whole aim of practical politics
is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an
endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives were past masters at this creation of
hobgoblins, but now Hillary Clinton, the opportunist, can outdo them and out-Republicanize them.
I think Ike would not like her; she might now be even more reactionary than Goldwater. Indeed,
Charles Koch (whose hatred of progressivism is well documented by Jane Meyer in her book,
Dark Money) expressed some admiration for Bill and Hillary Clinton and said he could vote
for Hillary this time around.
... ... ...
Pierre Guerlain is a professor
of American studies at Université Paris Ouest, Nanterre, France.
Hillary election means new wars and death of the US servicemen/servicewomen. So Khan gambit is
much more dangerous that it looks as it implicitly promoted militarism and endless "permanent war
for permanent peace".
Notable quotes:
"... Information warfare uses disinformation and propaganda to condition a population to hate a foreign nation or population with the intent to foment a war, which is the routine "business" of the best known U.S. think tanks. ..."
"... There are two levels to this information war. The first level is by the primary provocateur, such as the Rand Corporation, the American Enterprise Institute and the smaller war instigators found wherever a Kagan family member lurks. They use psychological "suggestiveness" to create a false narrative of danger from some foreign entity with the objective being to create paranoia within the U.S. population that it is under imminent threat of attack or takeover. ..."
"... Once that fear and paranoia is instilled in much of the population, it can then be manipulated to foment a readiness or eagerness for war, in the manner that Joseph Goebbels understood well. ..."
"... Nevertheless, showing the success that our primary war provocateurs have had in fomenting hostility and possibly war is that less militaristic and bellicose Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), ostensibly working for "peace," have adopted this false propaganda theme uncritically. ..."
"... The Carnegie Moscow Center Foundation, which includes Russians on its staff, is a prime example. Lately, it has routinely echoed the more provocative and facially false accusations made against Russia by the outright militaristic and war instigating U.S. think tanks. An example is in a recent article of Carnegie, entitled: " Russia and NATO Must Communicate Better. " ..."
"... So fanatics like the U.S. Generals whom we've seen at the recent political conventions and even worse, General Breedlove, are encouraged to be ever more threatening to the world's populations. ..."
"... Recognizing that must then be coupled with recognition of a U.S. law passed in 2012 providing for military detention of journalists and social activists as the Justice Department conceded in Hedges v. Obama. Add to that what the ACLU recently compelled the U.S. government to reveal in the "Presidential Policy Guidance" and it is plain to see which nation has become most "authoritarian, nationalistic, and assertive." It is the United States. ..."
"... As this was when the Politburo was allegedly at its height in subverting and subjugating foreign countries as foreign policy, it should be exactly on point in describing current U.S. foreign policy. ..."
"... That U.S. think tanks, such as Rand and the American Enterprise Institute, put so much effort into promoting war should not come as a surprise when it is considered their funding is provided by the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) which President Eisenhower warned us about. ..."
U.S. "think tanks" rile up the American public against an ever-shifting roster of foreign "enemies"
to justify wars which line the pockets of military contractors who kick back some profits to the
"think tanks," explains retired JAG Major Todd E. Pierce.
The New York Times took notice recently of the role that so-called "think tanks" play in corrupting
U.S. government policy. Their review of think tanks "identified dozens of examples of scholars
conducting research at think tanks while corporations were paying them to help shape government policy."
Unfortunately, and perhaps predictably, while the Times investigation demonstrates well that the
U.S. is even more corrupt – albeit the corruption is better disguised – than the many foreign countries
which we routinely accuse of corruption, the Times failed to identify the most egregious form of
corruption in our system. That is, those think tanks are constantly engaged in the sort of activities
which the Defense Department identifies as "Information War" when conducted by foreign countries
that are designated by the U.S. as an enemy at any given moment.
Information warfare uses disinformation and propaganda to condition a population to hate a foreign
nation or population with the intent to foment a war, which is the routine "business" of the best
known U.S. think tanks.
There are two levels to this information war. The first level is by the primary provocateur, such
as the Rand Corporation, the American Enterprise Institute and the smaller war instigators found
wherever a Kagan family member lurks. They use psychological "suggestiveness" to create a false
narrative of danger from some foreign entity with the objective being to create paranoia within the
U.S. population that it is under imminent threat of attack or takeover.
Once that fear and paranoia is instilled in much of the population, it can then be manipulated
to foment a readiness or eagerness for war, in the manner that Joseph Goebbels understood well.
The measure of success from such a disinformation and propaganda effort can be seen when the narrative
is adopted by secondary communicators who are perhaps the most important target audience. That is
because they are "key communicators" in PsyOp terms, who in turn become provocateurs in propagating
the false narrative even more broadly and to its own audiences, and becoming "combat multipliers"
in military terms.
It is readily apparent now that Russia has taken its place as the primary target within U.S. sights.
One doesn't have to see the U.S. military buildup on Russia's borders to understand that but only
see the propaganda themes of our "think tanks."
The Role of Rand
A prime example of an act of waging information war to incite actual military attack is the Rand
Corporation, which, incidentally, published a guide to information war and the need to condition
the U.S. population for war back in the 1990s.
A
scene from "Dr. Strangelove," in which the bomber pilot (played by actor Slim Pickens) rides a
nuclear bomb to its target in the Soviet Union.
Rand was founded by, among others, the war enthusiast, Air Force General Curtis LeMay, who was
the model for the character of Gen. Buck Turgidson in the movie "Dr. Strangelove." LeMay once stated
that he would not be afraid to start a nuclear war with Russia and that spirit would seem to be alive
and well at Rand today as they project on to Vladimir Putin our own eagerness for inciting a war.
The particular act of information warfare by Rand is shown in a recent Rand article: "How to
Counter Putin's Subversive War on the West." The title suggests by its presupposition that Putin
is acting in the offensive form of war rather than the defensive form of war. But it is plain to
see he is in the defensive form of war when one looks at the numerous provocations and acts of aggression
carried out by American officials, such as Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and General
Philip Breedlove, and the U.S. and NATO military buildup on Russia's borders.
Within this Rand article however can be found no better example of psychological projection than
this propagandistic pablum that too many commentators, some witless, some not, will predictably repeat:
"Moscow's provocative active measures cause foreign investors and international lenders to see
higher risks in doing business with Russia. Iran is learning a similar, painful lesson as it persists
with harsh anti-Western policies even as nuclear-related sanctions fade. Russia will decide its own
priorities. But it should not be surprised if disregard for others' interests diminishes the international
regard it seeks as an influential great power."
In fact, an objective, dispassionate observation of U.S./Russian policies would show it has been
the U.S. carrying out these "provocative active measures" as the instigator, not Russia.
Nevertheless, showing the success that our primary war provocateurs have had in fomenting hostility
and possibly war is that less militaristic and bellicose Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), ostensibly
working for "peace," have adopted this false propaganda theme uncritically.
The Carnegie Moscow Center Foundation, which includes Russians on its staff, is a prime example.
Lately, it has routinely echoed the more provocative and facially false accusations made against
Russia by the outright militaristic and war instigating U.S. think tanks. An example is in a recent
article of Carnegie, entitled: "Russia and NATO Must Communicate Better."
It begins: "The risk of outright conflict in Europe is higher than it has been for years and the
confrontation between Russia and the West shows no sign of ending. To prevent misunderstandings and
dangerous incidents, the two sides must improve their methods of communication."
Unfortunately, that is now true. But the article's author suggests throughout that each party,
Russia and the U.S./NATO, had an equal hand in the deterioration of relations. He wrote: "The West
needs to acknowledge that the standoff with Russia is not merely the result of Russia turning authoritarian,
nationalistic, and assertive," as if Western officials don't already know that that accusation was
only a propaganda theme for their own populations to cover up the West's aggressiveness.
Blaming Russia
So Americans, such as myself, must acknowledge and confront that the standoff with Russia is not
only not "merely the result of Russia turning authoritarian, nationalistic, and assertive,"
but it is rather, that the U.S. is "turning authoritarian, nationalistic," and even more "assertive,"
i.e., aggressive, toward the world.
Suz Tzu wrote that a "sovereign" must know oneself and the enemy. In the case of the U.S. sovereign,
the people and their elected, so-called representatives, there is probably no "sovereign" in human
history more lacking in self-awareness of their own nation's behavior toward other nations.
So fanatics like the U.S. Generals whom we've seen at the recent political conventions and even
worse, General Breedlove, are encouraged to be ever more threatening to the world's populations.
When that then generates a response from some nation with a tin-pot military relative to our own,
with ours paid for by the privileged financial position we've put ourselves into post-WWII, our politicians
urgently call for even more military spending from the American people to support even more aggression,
all in the guise of "national defense."
Recognizing that must then be coupled with recognition of a U.S. law passed in 2012 providing
for military detention of journalists and social activists as the Justice Department conceded in
Hedges v. Obama. Add to that what the ACLU recently compelled the U.S. government to reveal in the
"Presidential Policy Guidance" and it is plain to see which nation has become most "authoritarian,
nationalistic, and assertive." It is the United States.
The Presidential Policy Guidance "establishes the standard operating procedures for when the United
States takes direct action, which refers to lethal and non-lethal uses of force, including capture
operations against terrorist targets outside the United States and areas of active hostilities."
What other nation, besides Israel probably, has a governmental "Regulation" providing for assassinations
outside "areas of active hostilities?"
It should readily be evident that it is the U.S. now carrying out the vast majority of provocative
active measures and has the disregard for others complained of here. At least for the moment, however,
the U.S. can still hide much of its aggression using the vast financial resources provided by the
American people to the Defense Department to produce sophisticated propaganda and to bribe foreign
officials with foreign aid to look the other way from U.S. provocations.
It is ironic that today, one can learn more about the U.S. military and foreign policy from the
Rand Corporation only by reading at least one of its historical documents, "The Operational Code
of the Politburo." This is described as "part of a major effort at RAND to provide insight into
the political leadership and foreign policy in the Soviet Union and other communist states; the development
of Soviet military strategy and doctrine."
As this was when the Politburo was allegedly at its height in subverting and subjugating foreign
countries as foreign policy, it should be exactly on point in describing current U.S. foreign policy.
That U.S. think tanks, such as Rand and the American Enterprise Institute, put so much effort
into promoting war should not come as a surprise when it is considered their funding is provided
by the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) which President Eisenhower warned us about. That this U.S.
MIC would turn against its own people, the American public, by waging perpetual information war against
this domestic target just to enrich their investors, might have been even more than Eisenhower could
imagine however.
Todd E. Pierce retired as a Major in the US Army Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps in
November 2012. His most recent assignment was defense counsel in the Office of Chief Defense Counsel,
Office of Military Commissions. [This article first appeared at
http://original.antiwar.com/Todd_Pierce/2016/08/14/inciting-wars-american-way/]
"... an article loaded with innuendo has appeared on the front page of a major U.S. newspaper, located in Washington, DC, stating that Russia is engaged in widespread subversion in Europe and is trying to do the same on behalf of Donald Trump in the United States. But the evidence presented in the story does not support what is being suggested, and spreading tales about foreign-government misbehavior can have unintended consequences. It is particularly shortsighted and even dangerous in this case, as a stable relationship with a nuclear-armed and militarily very capable Moscow should rightly be regarded as critical. ..."
"... It is almost as if some journalists believe that deliberately damaging relations with Russia is a price worth paying to embarrass and defeat Trump. If that is so, they are delusional. ..."
But there is a certain danger inherent in the media's slanting its coverage to such an extent
as to be making the news rather than just reporting it. And when it comes to Russia, the way the
stories are reported becomes critically important, as there is a real risk that
media hostility toward Putin, even if deployed as a way to get at Trump, could produce a conflict
no one actually wants-just as the Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers' yellow journalism,
rife with "melodrama,
romance, and hyperbole," more or less brought about the Spanish-American War.
... ... ...
So an article loaded with innuendo has appeared on the front page of a major U.S. newspaper, located
in Washington, DC, stating that Russia is engaged in widespread subversion in Europe and is trying
to do the same on behalf of Donald Trump in the United States. But the evidence presented in the
story does not support what is being suggested, and spreading tales about foreign-government misbehavior
can have unintended consequences. It is particularly shortsighted and even dangerous in this case,
as a stable relationship with a nuclear-armed and militarily very capable Moscow should rightly be
regarded as critical.
It is almost as if some journalists believe that deliberately damaging relations with Russia is
a price worth paying to embarrass and defeat Trump. If that is so, they are delusional.
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National
Interest.
After Obama Victory, Shrieking White-Hot Sphere Of Pure Rage Early GOP Front-Runner For 2016
Sources say the screaming orb might be the only potential candidate that would tap into Republicans'
deep-seated, seething fury after this election.
Friday, August 26, 2016 at 03:49
PM
Obama certainly did nothing to put US into the nightmare of peace and prosperity, while Killary
will threw the US into perpetual war with bigger adversaries than Sunni goatherds.
What are
US "agents" doing on the ground in Syria?
"... And Mankiw was the economic adviser to Mitt Romney, the elitist Nazi who said 47% of the American people were his enemies and who was in favour of economic policies that would stripmine the country to put all its wealth in the offshore bank accounts of the kleptocrats. ..."
"... Which btw makes you wonder how anyone can call Mankiw an "economist". The guy's a Republican buttboy and that's all he is. ..."
"... Mankiw didn't enable the Republicans alone. Every two-bit intro macro prof who teaches from Mankiw has aided him. ..."
"... Real Time whatever at wsj are looking for reasons to keep the GOPster/free trade type progress going! A reason to oppose Trump and vote for Hillary? ..."
"... Trump is a very controversial figure, but he can be viewed as a disruptive politician and might put some pressure on neoliberal, and especially neocons, before they coopt him. Think of him as a proponent of Brexit II. Making the elections essentially a referendum on neoliberal globalization. ..."
"who has broken with many of the GOP's traditional positions on economic policy"
Not seeing much to like in "the GOP's traditional positions" where does this leave me? The
truth is all 45 surviving former members of the CEA can be wrong without making Trump right.
Indeed, see how far the US has "progressed" with these guys' advising since Nixon!
Decision Overload
When the deeply established insider "advisers" are against him, you can bet that he is an angry
outsider same as the rest of us. Look!
The most inefficient thing in our taxation system is the taxing of poor folks. Do you recognize
what that accomplishes? Poor folk taxation takes money away from the poor person's landlord, his
power company, his telephone company and more much more -- just slows down the economy plus administrative
overhead that is the cost of slamming on the brakes.
The Donald has proposed a $25,000 standard deduction which will protect the low-rollers who
have no deductions from tax-shelters. $50,000 for married couples! What a savings! What a relief
from the churning that has evolved from smoke and mirror politics.
"Harvard University economist Gregory Mankiw, who chaired the council under George W. Bush and
has been mentioned as a possible future Fed chairman, said recently on his blog that he would
not support Mr. Trump.
"I have Republican friends who think that things couldn't be worse than doubling down on Obama
policies under Hillary Clinton. And, like them, I am no fan of the left's agenda of large government
and high taxes," Mr. Mankiw wrote. "But they are wrong: Things could be worse. And I fear they
would be under Mr. Trump.""
Mankiw and Krugman mini-me Pro Growth Liberal agree on something.
And Mankiw was the economic adviser to Mitt Romney, the elitist Nazi who said 47% of the American
people were his enemies and who was in favour of economic policies that would stripmine the country
to put all its wealth in the offshore bank accounts of the kleptocrats.
Which btw makes you wonder how anyone can call Mankiw an "economist". The guy's a Republican
buttboy and that's all he is.
Mankiw didn't enable the Republicans alone. Every two-bit intro macro prof who teaches from
Mankiw has aided him.
I laugh when I imagine undergrad econ ten years from now: the textbooks will be full of Murray
Rothbard and Ayn Rand, and undergrad sessional lecturers will be drowning in cognitive dissonance
as they try to remain straight-faced while lecturing on the benefits of the gold standard and
eliminating the Federal Reserve.
pgl :
Stiglitz supports Clinton over Trump. No surprise but this is:
"I have known personally every Republican president since Richard Nixon," said Harvard University
economist Martin Feldstein, who chaired the council under President Ronald Reagan. "They all
showed a real understanding of economics and international affairs".
OK - Reagan did get a degree in economics but Krugman - who worked for Feldstein a the CEA
- tells a different story about this White House when it comes to macroeconomics, the role of
monetary policy, and in particular what was happening with the international aspects of our economy
during Reagan's first term. Volcker - once he was done with his damaging tight monetary policy
- tried to make a deal where he would lower interest rates in exchange for a reversal of that
1981 tax cut. The Reagan White House had no clue what the FED chair was even proposing even though
it would have been a very good idea.
ilsm :
Real Time whatever at wsj are looking for reasons to keep the GOPster/free trade type progress
going! A reason to oppose Trump and vote for Hillary?
Dowd is right! The best thuglican is a democrat.
likbez :
Hillary Clinton is dyed-in-wool neoliberal. So all she can do is to kick the can down the road.
All her elections promises are not worth the cost of the electrical energy that is used to depict
them on our screens.
Trump is a very controversial figure, but he can be viewed as a disruptive politician and
might put some pressure on neoliberal, and especially neocons, before they coopt him. Think of
him as a proponent of Brexit II. Making the elections essentially a referendum on neoliberal globalization.
If he wins, a lot of Washington neocon parasites might lose jobs (the cash for the neocons
comes mostly from defense contractors), that's why they crossed the party lines and that's why
neoliberal propaganda campaign against him is so vicious. Khan gambit was a nasty attempt to speedboat
him. It failed.
While Hillary gets a free pass from neoliberal press (ABC, CBS and NBC). Neoliberal presstitutes
(like George Stephanopoulos ) are especially vicious, behave like rabid dogs. Just listen to his
interview of Trump about Khan gambit at Democratic convention.
There is another view on Trump that deserves attention:
=== quote ===
Lupita 08.04.16 at 4:23 am 167
I think Trump is afraid the imperial global order presided by the US is about to crash
and thinks he will be able to steer the country into a soft landing by accepting that other
world powers have interests, by disengaging from costly and humiliating military interventions,
by re-negotiating trade deals, and by stopping the mass immigration of poor people. Plus
a few well-placed bombs .
Much has been written about the internet revolution, about the impact of people having
access to much more information than before. The elite does not recognize this and is still
organizing political and media campaigns as if it were 1990, relying on elder statesmen
like Blair, Bush, Mitterrand, Clinton, and Obama to influence public opinion. They are failing
miserably, to the point of being counterproductive.
I don't think something as parochial as racism is sustaining Trump, but rather the fear
of the loss of empire by a population with several orders of magnitude more information
and communication than in 2008, even 2012.
=== end of quote ===
But it is the deep state that dictates the course of the US, both in foreign policy and domestically,
probably from 1963, so the president now is more of a ceremonial figure that adds legitimacy to
the actual rule of deep state.
In any case discussion Hillary vs. Trump and questions of economics (neoliberalism vs. some
retrenchment in the direction of the New Deal) we should not miss the key, defining this election
fact that Hillary is a war criminal (crimes against peace are war crimes). See
http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/nuremberg-trials
From this point of view voting for Hillary is highly undesirable as this is an implicit cooperation
with the war criminal. That does not mean that people should vote for Trump. Who has his own set
of warts.
It has been suggested the appropriators owned by the war profiteers won't allocate money to fuel
the transports that take America's Soldiers and Marines home.
The lesser evil killed no one with a vote believing in fake WMD's. The lesser evil is not experienced
in keeping the neocons happy.
The lesser evil may decide body bags forever is not strategy.
Trump is the lesser evil.
Imagine what happens if the commander in chief says: stand down and steam for Pearl Harbor,
San Diego and Alameda.
What would all those US retirees do if the commander in chief shuttered those brigades in Germany?
If the crooked DNC cared about families of US' slain.....
The Khan con angered 5990 Gold Star families who are not Muslim and whose star are the result
of Hillary voting for AUMF righteously and acting out since 2003.
As well as veterans!
Gold star families why not pick 1/5999 rather than 1/14 Muslims?
"... Some Stooges have expressed a preference for Trump over Killary ..."
"... Bannon, personally, has not been accused of anti-Semitism, however. ..."
"... He's just less likely to touch off a global war than Clinton is. What happens to the United States of America is not my concern, and if a series of catastrophic national-leadership decisions cause it to collapse, that is America's business. I'm not saying it would not affect me, because it most certainly would – the collapse of the world's largest (or second-largest) single economy would affect everyone. ..."
Some Stooges have expressed a preference for Trump over Killary,…BUt iF–and I say IF -Trump
embraces these "alt-right' vermin…then he is just as unfit to be POTUS as Killary..
"There are, of course, many strains of thinking under the "alt-right" umbrella. Some factions
are preoccupied with a return to "traditional values," while others espouse a philosophy called
"Human Biodiversity": the belief that there are significant biological differences between people
of different races, which justifies treating them differently. (The other name for this is "scientific
racism.") Anti-Semitism is common, in various forms, ranging from Holocaust denial to full-bore
denunciations of Jews as agents of the collapse of white Christian society. Bannon, personally,
has not been accused of anti-Semitism, however.
The common thread, however, that connects members of these different factions is a shared desire
to protect Western civilization from what many refer to as "white genocide." This manifests in
opposition to things like immigration and multiculturalism, as well as a steadfast aversion to
political correctness and to establishment politics of all kinds, including Republican."
The 'alt-right' need to be exterminated every bit as much as fascist warmonger vermin.
Absolutely. Trump would make a terrible president. He's just less likely to touch off a global
war than Clinton is. What happens to the United States of America is not my concern, and if a
series of catastrophic national-leadership decisions cause it to collapse, that is America's business.
I'm not saying it would not affect me, because it most certainly would – the collapse of the world's
largest (or second-largest) single economy would affect everyone.
But it is up to Americans to
determine their nation's course, and I'm sure they do not welcome meddling any more than any other
country does. I will say their political crisis is appalling, and that their choice has come down
to Trump or Clinton is beyond appalling, but in the end it is Americans who must take responsibility
for that. That is America's business, and all of my disagreements with America stem from its activities
outside its own borders.
Also, all those rabbiting on about Russia showing a clear preference for Trump should take
note of Europe's oft-expressed and extremely public endorsement of Clinton.
Yes…this is a **real ** dilemma….super corrupt pathological lying (barking) warmonger psycho….OR….prone
to be manipulated by white supremacist ideology nutjob…
"... The clintons are a terminally vulgar and unethical couple ..."
"... Mr. Clinton always had an easy, breezy relationship with wrongdoing. But the Democratic Party overlooked the ethical red flags and made a pact with Mr. Clinton that was the equivalent of a pact with the devil. And he delivered. With Mr. Clinton at the controls, the party won the White House twice. But in the process it lost its bearings and maybe even its soul. ..."
The clintons are a terminally vulgar and unethical couple
Out of order quotes:
Mr. Clinton always had an easy, breezy relationship with wrongdoing. But the Democratic
Party overlooked the ethical red flags and made a pact with Mr. Clinton that was the equivalent
of a pact with the devil. And he delivered. With Mr. Clinton at the controls, the party won
the White House twice. But in the process it lost its bearings and maybe even its soul.
"... Washington Post, Salon, Slate, Think Progress ..."
"... Trump never overtly used the word "assassinate." He says he was just suggesting that advocates of the Second Amendment vote, and was being sarcastic. A sarcastic invocation to vote would sound very different. A sarcastic invocation to vote might be, "The American way to change things is to vote. But maybe you care so much about shooting, you won't be able to organize to vote." ..."
This piece is a follow-up of a Lakoff's article, Understanding
Trump , published by Common Dreams last month.
Responsible reporters in the media normally transcribe political speeches so that they can accurately
report them. But Donald Trump's discourse style has stumped a number of reporters. Dan Libit, CNBC's
excellent analyst is one of them. Libit writes:
His unscripted speaking style, with its spasmodic, self-interrupting sentence structure, has
increasingly come to overwhelm the human brains and tape recorders attempting to quote him.
Trump is, simply put, a transcriptionist's worst nightmare: severely unintelligible, and yet,
incredibly important to understand.
Given how dramatically
recent polls have turned on his controversial public utterances, it is not hyperbolic to say
that the very fate of the nation, indeed human civilization, appears destined to come down to
one man's application of the English language - and the public's comprehension of it. It has turned
the rote job of transcribing into a high-stakes calling. […]
Trump's crimes against clarity are multifarious: He often speaks in long, run-on sentences,
with frequent asides. He pauses after subordinate clauses. He frequently quotes people saying
things that aren't actual quotes. And he repeats words and phrases, sometimes with slight variations,
in the same sentence.
Some in the media ( Washington Post, Salon, Slate, Think Progress , etc.) have called
Trump's speeches "word salad." Some commentators have even attributed his language use to "early
Alzheimer's," citing "erratic behavior" and "little regards for social conventions." I don't believe
it.
I have been repeatedly asked in media interviews about such use of language by Trump. So far as
I can tell, he is simply using effective discourse mechanisms to communicate what his wants to communicate
to his audience. I have found that he is very careful and very strategic in his use of language.
The only way I know to show this is to function as a linguist and cognitive scientist and go through
details.
Let's start with sentence fragments. It is common and natural in New York discourse for friends
to finish one another's sentences. And throughout the country, if you don't actually say the rest
of a friend's sentence out loud, there is nevertheless a point at which you can finish it in your
head. When this happens in cooperative discourse, it can show empathy and intimacy with a friend,
that you know the context of the narrative, and that you understand and accept your friend's framing
of the situation so well that you can even finish what they have started to say. Of course, you can
be bored with, or antagonistic to, someone and be able to finish their sentences with anything but
a feeling of empathy and intimacy. But Trump prefers to talk to a friendly crowd.
Trump often starts a sentence and leaves off where his followers can finish in their minds what
he has started to say. That is, they commonly feel empathy and intimacy, an acceptance of what is
being said, and good feeling toward the speaker. This is an unconscious, automatic reaction, especially
when words are flying by quickly. It is a means for Trump to connect with his audience.
The Second Amendment Incident
Here is the classic case, the Second Amendment Incident. The thing to be aware of is that his
words are carefully chosen. They go by quickly when people hear them. But they are processed unconsciously
first by neural circuitry - and neurons operate on a thousandth-of-a-second time scale. Your neural
circuitry has plenty of time to engage in complex forms of understanding, based on what you already
know.
Trump begins by saying, "Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the Second Amendment."
He first just says "abolish," and then hedges by adding "essentially abolish." But having said "abolish"
twice, he has gotten across the message that she wants to, and is able to, change the Constitution
in that way.
Now, at the time the Second Amendment was written, the "arms" in "bear arms" were long rifles
that fired one bullet at a time. The "well-regulated militia" was a local group, like a contemporary
National Guard unit, regulated by a local government with military command structure. They were protecting
American freedoms against the British.
The Second Amendment has been reinterpreted by contemporary ultra-conservatives as the right of
individual citizens to bear contemporary arms (e.g., AK-47's), either to protect their families against
invaders or to change a government by armed rebellion if that government threatens what they see
as their freedoms. The term "Second Amendment" activates the contemporary usage by ultra-conservatives.
It is a dog-whistle term, understood in that way by many conservatives.
Now, no president or Supreme Court could literally abolish any constitutional amendment alone.
But a Supreme Court could judge that that certain laws concerning gun ownership could be unconstitutional.
That is what Trump meant by "essentially abolish."
Thus, the election of Hillary Clinton threatens the contemporary advocates of the 'Second Amendment.'
Trump goes on:
"By the way, and if she gets to pick [loud boos] - if she gets to pick her judges, nothing
you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know."
Here are the details.
" By the way ," marks a parallel utterance, one that does not linearly follow from what
was just said, but that has information relevant to what was just said.
"And" here marks information that follows from what was just said.
"If she gets to pick …" When said the first time, it was followed immediately by loud boos. The
audience could finish the if-clause for themselves, since the word "pick" in context could only be
about Hillary picking liberal judges. Trump goes on making this explicit, "if she gets to pick her
judges…"
"Gets to" is important. The metaphor here with "to" is that Achieving a Purpose Is Reaching a
Destination" with the object of "to" marking the pick. The "get" in "get to" is from a related metaphor,
namely, that Achieving a Purpose Is Getting a Desired Object. In both Purpose metaphors, the Achievement
of the Purpose can be stopped by an opponent. The "if" indicates that the achievement of the purpose
is still uncertain, which raises the question of whether it can be stopped.
"Her judges" indicates that the judges are not your judges, from which it follows that they will
not rule the way you want them to, namely, for keeping your guns. The if-clause thus has a consequence:
unless Hillary is prevented from becoming president, "her judges" will change the laws to take away
your guns and your Constitutional right to bear arms. This would be a governmental infringement on
your freedom, which would justify the armed intervention of ultra-conservatives, what Sharon Angle
in Nevada has called the "Second Amendment solution." In short, a lot is entailed - in little time
on a human timescale, but with lots of time on a neural timescale.
Having set this up, Trump follows the if-clause with "Nothing you can do, folks." This is a shortened
version in everyday colloquial English of "There will be nothing you can do, folks." That is, if
you let Hillary take office, you will be so weak that you will be unable to stop her. The "folks,"
suggests that he and the audience members are socially part of the same social group - as opposed
to a distant billionaire with his own agenda.
Immediately after "nothing you can do," Trump goes on: "Although the Second Amendment people,
maybe there is."
"Although" is a word used to contrast one possible course of events with an opposite possibility.
Trump has just presented a possible course of events that is threatening to ultra-conservative Second
Amendment advocates. "Although the Second Amendment people" calls up the alternative for those who
would act violently to protect their Second Amendment right.
"Maybe" brings up a suggestion. "Maybe there is" suggests that there is something the "Second
Amendment People" can do to prevent Hillary from taking office and appointing liberal judges who
would take away what they see as their Constitutional rights.
"I don't know" is intended to remove Trump from any blame. But it acts unconsciously in the opposite
way. It is like the title of the book I wrote, "Don't Think of an Elephant." The way the brain works
is that negating a frame activates the frame. The relevant frame for "Second Amendment people" is
use of arms to protect their rights against a government threatening to take away their rights. This
is about the right to shoot, not about the right to vote. Second Amendment conservative discourse
is about shooting, not about voting.
The point here is that Trump's use of language is anything but "word salad." His words and his
use of grammar are carefully chosen, and put together artfully, automatically, and quickly.
Trump never overtly used the word "assassinate." He says he was just suggesting that advocates
of the Second Amendment vote, and was being sarcastic. A sarcastic invocation to vote would sound
very different. A sarcastic invocation to vote might be, "The American way to change things is to
vote. But maybe you care so much about shooting, you won't be able to organize to vote."
He didn't say anything like that. And he chose his words very, very carefully.
Believe Me! Some People Say…
People in the media have asked me about Trump's use of "Believe me!" and "Many people say" followed
by a statement that is not true, but that he wants he audience to believe. Why does he use such expressions
and how do they work in discourse? To understand this, one needs to look at the concept of lying.
Most people will say that a lie is a false statement. But a study by linguists Linda Coleman and
Paul Kay pointed out more than 30 years ago that the situation is more complex.
If a statement happens to be false, but you sincerely believe that it is true, you are not lying
in stating it. Lying involves a hierarchy of conditions defining worse and worse lies. Here is the
hierarchy:
You don't believe it.
You are trying to deceive.
You are trying to gain advantage for yourself.
You are trying to harm.
As you add conditions in the hierarchy, the lies get worse and worse.
Though this is the usual hierarchy for lies, there are variations: A white lie is one that is
harmless. A social lie is one where deceit is general helpful, as in, "Aunt Susie, that was such
a delicious Jello mold that you made." Other variations include exaggeration, flattery, kidding,
joking , etc.
Lying is a form of uncooperative discourse. But most discourse is cooperative, and there are rules
governing it that the philosopher Paul Grice called "maxims" in his Harvard Lectures in 1967. Grice
observed that uncooperative discourse is created when the maxims are violated. Grice's maxims were
extended in the 1970's by Eve Sweetser in a paper on lying.
Sweetser postulated a Maxim of Helpfulness:
In Cooperative Discourse, people intend to help to help one another.
She then observed that there were two models used in helpful communication.
Ordinary Communication
If people say something, they are intending to help if and only if they believe it.
People intend to deceive, if and only if they don't intend to help.
Justified Belief
People have adequate reasons for their beliefs.
What people have adequate reason to believe is true.
Though this model does not hold for all situations (e.g., kidding), they are models that are used
by virtually everyone unconsciously all day every day. If I tell my wife that I saw my cousin this
morning, there is no reason to deceive, so I believe it (Ordinary Communication). And since I know
my cousin well, if I believe I saw him, then I did see him (Justified Belief). Such principles are
part of our unconsciously functioning neural systems. They work automatically, unless they become
conscious and we can attend to them and control them.
Trump uses these communication models that are in your brain. When he says "Believe me!" he is
using the principle of Justified Belief, suggesting that he has the requisite experience for his
belief to be true. When those in Trump's audience hear "Believe me!", they will mostly understand
it automatically and, unconsciously and via Justified Belief, will take it to be true.
When Trump says, "Many people say that …" both principles are unconsciously activated. If many
people say it, they are unlikely to all or mostly be deceiving, which means they believe it, and
by Justified Belief, it is taken to be true.
You have to be on your toes, listening carefully and ready to disbelieve Trump, to avoid the use
of these ordinary cognitive mechanisms in your brain that Trump uses for his purposes.
Is He "On Topic?"
Political reporters are used to hearing speeches with significant sections on a single policy
issue. Trump often goes from policy to policy to policy in a single sentence. Is he going off topic?
So far as I can discern, he always on topic, but you have to understand what his topic is. As
I observed in my Understanding Trump paper, Trump is deeply, personally committed to his version
of Strict Father Morality. He wants it to dominate the country and the world, and he wants to be
the ultimate authority in this authoritarian model of the family that is applied in conservative
politics in virtually every issue area.
Every particular issue, from building the wall, to using our nukes, to getting rid of inheritance
taxes (on those making $10.9 million or more), to eliminating the minimum wage - every issue is an
instance of his version of Strict Father Morality over all areas of life, with him as ultimately
in charge.
As he shifts from particular issue to particular issue, each of them activates his version of
Strict Father Morality and strengthens it in the brains of his audience. So far as I can tell, he
is always on topic - where this is the topic.
Always Selling
For five decades, Trump has been using all these techniques of selling and trying to make deals
to his advantage. It seems to have become second nature for him to use these devices. And he uses
them carefully and well. He is a talented charlatan. Keeping you off balance is part of his game.
As is appealing to ordinary thought mechanisms in the people he is addressing.
It is vital that the media, and ordinary voters, learn to recognize his techniques. When the media
fails to grasp what he is doing, it gives him an advantage. Every time someone in the media claims
his discourse is "word salad, " it helps Trump by hiding what he is really doing.
"Regret" or Excuse
One day after the above was written, Trump made a well-publicized statement of "regret."
"Sometimes, in the heat of debate and speaking on a multitude of issues, you don't choose the
right words or you say the wrong thing.
I have done that.
And believe it or not, I regret it.
And I do regret it, particularly where it may have caused personal pain.
Too much is at stake for us to be consumed with these issues. …"
He did not give any specifics.
What we have just seen is that he chooses his words VERY carefully. And he has done that here.
He starts out with "sometimes," which suggests that it is a rare occurrence on no particular occasions
- a relatively rare accident. He continues with a general, inescapable fact about being a presidential
candidate, namely, that he is always "in the heat of debate and speaking on a multitude of issues."
The words "heat" and "multitude" suggest that normal attention to details like word choice cannot
operate in presidential campaign. In short, it is nothing that he could possibly be responsible for,
and is a rare occurrence anyway.
Then he uses the word "you." This shifts perspective from him to "you," a member of the audience.
You too, if you were running for president, would naturally be in such uncontrollable situations
all the time, when "you don't choose the right words or you say the wrong thing." It's just a matter
of choosing "the right words." This means that he had the right ideas, but under natural, and inevitable
attentional stress, an unavoidable mistake happens and could happen to you: "you" have the right
ideas, but mess up on the "right words."
He then admits to "sometimes" making an unavoidable, natural mistake, not in choosing the right
ideas, but in word choice and, putting yourself in his shoes, "you say the wrong thing" - that is,
you are thinking the right thing, but you just say it wrong - "sometimes."
His admission is straightforward - "I have done that" - as if he had just admitted to something
immoral, but which he has carefully described as anything but immoral.
"And believe it or not, I regret it." What he is communicating with "believe it or not," is that
you, in the audience, may not believe that I am a sensitive soul, but I really am, as shown by my
statement of regret. He then emphasizes his statement of personal sensitivity: "And I do regret it,
particularly where it may have caused personal pain." Note the "may have caused." No admission that
he definitely DID "cause personal pain." And no specifics given. After all, they don't have to be
given, because it is natural, unavoidable, accidental, and so rare as to not matter. He states this:
"Too much is at stake for us to be consumed with these issues." In short, it's a trivial matter to
be ignored - because it is a natural, unavoidable, accidental mistake, only in the words not the
thoughts, and is so rare as to be unimportant. All that in five well-crafted sentences!
Note how carefully he has chosen his words. And what is the intended effect? He should be excused
because inaccurate word choice is so natural that it will inevitably occur again, and he should not
be criticized when the stress of the campaign leads inevitably to mistakes in trivial word choice.
But there is a larger effect. Words have meanings. The words he carefully uses, often over and
over, get across his values and ideas, which are all too often lies or promotions of racist, sexist,
and other un-American invocations. When these backfire mightily, as with the Khans, there can be
no hiding behind a nonspecific "regret" that they were just rare, accidental word choice mistakes
too trivial for the public to be "consumed with." This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Better late then never. That's bold attack we all need. After Khna gabmit, you need to nail Hillary
who is trying to drive on anti-Russian sentiment and demonization by neoliberal press of the opponent.
Bravo Trump !!!
Notable quotes:
"... "Hillary Clinton is a bigot who sees people of color only as votes, not as human beings worthy of a better future," the GOP presidential nominee declared at a rally here Wednesday night. "She's going to do nothing for African-Americans. She's going to do nothing for the Hispanics. She's only going to take care of herself, her husband, her consultants, her donors. These are the people she cares about." ..."
"... he likened his own campaign against the European establishment to the brash developer's insurgent bid for the White House. ..."
"Hillary Clinton is a bigot who sees people of color only as votes, not as human beings worthy
of a better future," the GOP presidential nominee declared at a rally here Wednesday night. "She's
going to do nothing for African-Americans. She's going to do nothing for the Hispanics. She's only
going to take care of herself, her husband, her consultants, her donors. These are the people she
cares about."
... ... ...
Trump has repeatedly likened his own campaign to Brexit in arguing for "peaceful regime change"
in the U.S. on Election Day. The mogul recently predicted that he would soon be known by the moniker
"Mr. Brexit."
Inviting the British politician to the stage at his Wednesday rally, the GOP nominee called it
an "honor" to stand with Farage, who all but endorsed Trump as he likened his own campaign against
the European establishment to the brash developer's insurgent bid for the White House.
Speaking to audience members who appeared somewhat baffled at his presence, Farage spoke of how
he and allies overcame opposition from the political establishment and even a set of foreign leaders
that included U.S. President Obama. As the crowd here booed, Farage pointedly accused Obama of talking
down to the British. "He treated us as if we were nothing," Farage said. "One of the oldest functioning
democracies in the world, and here he was telling us to 'vote remain.'"
As Trump stood over his shoulder, a smile on his face, Farage pointedly did not endorse Trump
- but he came very, very close. "I could not possibly tell you how you should vote in this election,"
he said. "But I will say this, if I was an American citizen, I wouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton
if you paid me!"
Farage urged Trump supporters to take advantage of the "fantastic opportunity" they face in November.
"You can go out. You can beat the pollsters. You can beat the commentators. You can beat Washington.
And you'll do it by doing what we did for Brexit in Britain. We had our own people's army of ordinary
citizens," he said. "Anything is possible if enough people are prepared to stand up against the establishment."
Walking back to the podium, Trump nodded, calling Election Day a chance for the country to "re-declare"
its independence. "It's time to recapture our destiny," he said.
Signpost 5
minutes ago
Words mean very little really. The proof is in
the pudding. These democrats are very skilled at
saying slick words and calling others racists.
That's basically a democrats main campaign
slogan. "You're a racist!"
But let's look for a moment at what they have
accomplished. After 8 years of a democrat
President black people are suffering. Look at the
inner cities. Detroit, Milwaukee, ect. We see the
anger and hopelessness. 58% of black youth are
unemployed. Illegal aliens get treated better
that black Americans. And the Hispanics only help
their own once they get control of anything.
Diversity isn't a Hispanic employers strong suit.
95 million Americans are out of work. But Obama
says the economy is thriving. The democrats know
how to say the slick words. But it is only their
elite who make any money. The rest of you are on
food stamps. So, do we want 4 more years like the
last 8? Someone like Clinton who will talk the bs
while your families go without? Or do you want
someone who can create jobs. As we can see by
looking at the Clinton foundation emails, she got
hers already. Wow. She was selling a possible
future presidency while she was Secretary of
State. She figured the American people would be
too dumb to find out.
Out with the democrats. Time to change the
batter.
Greg Collins 5
minutes ago
Where is Hillary Clinton can't give a press
conference answer real question American can tell
truth and you want to vote for a liar
misstatements YouTube video and email poor
judgment policy open border bring Syria Muslims
terrorist will come in and attack kill your
family this is what you are vote for and corrupt
foundation no thanks
crosswalkuser 4
minutes ago
With Hillary blatant corruption record it looks
as though its Hillary who could shoot someone and
still be elected as Americans are bent on having
a new Pantygon where they see have the generals
being women and the other half being gay men
matching the current media.
still rockin' 7
minutes ago
While Trump is a idiot, he is correct that the
only thing Hillary cares about with Blacks and
Hispanics are their votes. After that she will
keep them on the Democratic treadmill with no
possible chance of advancement for the masses.
For decades the Democrats have promised them
prosperity and given them just enough to live a
meager existence while lining their own pockets.
Some of the wealthiest Congressional politicians
are Democrats!
Ghassanids 1
hour ago
As someone who is branded as "Hispanic" by the
government, I am not looking to be taken care of
by Clinton nor Trump. Where is all this language
coming from? I'm just a normal citizen trying to
live out my term on Earth. What's the deal?
James D 3
hours ago
Any politician who talks about citizens as
belonging to some biologically defined group, as
if they all should think and vote alike based on
that biological similarity, is a shallow bigot.
It doesn't matter what biological feature they
decide to focus on at the moment, whether it be
gender, age, skin color, ethnicity, sexuality,
...... putting people into a box and stereotyping
them is disgusting bigotry.
Richard 3
hours ago
We have Nero and Caligula running for the
American presidency. The question is which one is
which?
"... recently, the paper's former Washington bureau chief, the veteran journalist Hedrick Smith, asked an important question: ..."
"... Smith, who traveled the country to write his latest book ..."
"... also serves as the executive editor of the Reclaim the American Dream website, where he keeps a keen eye on efforts to revitalize politics closest to where people live. In his op-ed essay he answered his own question by reporting that "a broad array of state-level citizen movements are pressing for reforms… to give average voters more voice, make elections more competitive and ease gridlock in Congress." ..."
"... There's a lot of energy stirring in the states, including efforts to create a fairer economy. Unlike our paralyzed and polarized Congress, state legislators - those with eyes to see and ears to hear - know the walking-wounded casualties from the long campaign against working people conducted by Big Business and rabid free-marketeers over the past three decades. Among the stunned and shell-shocked are millions of survivors barely hanging on after the financial crash of 2008 and the Great Recession that followed. They live down the street and around the corner, a mere few blocks from the state capitol. ..."
"... Here at BillMoyers.com , just as Hedrick Smith's essay appeared last weekend, we were finishing a small book - 95 pages - by one of those state legislators: Minnesota's David Bly. After teaching in the public schools for 30 years he retired and ran for the Minnesota House of Representatives, where he is now serving his fourth term. What he's seen close-up prompted him to write ..."
"... You can order a copy from the publisher's website . It is short in length but not of passion. Here, with permission, is an excerpt: ..."
"... The Spirit Level ..."
"... Capital in the 21 st Century ..."
"... Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal ..."
"... Winner-Take-All Politics ..."
"... Who Stole the American Dream? ..."
"... Citizen's United ..."
"... The Minneapolis Star Tribune ..."
"... Excerpted with permission from Levins Publishing. All rights reserved. ..."
"... Moyers & Company ..."
"... Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues , ..."
Our collapse from an "opportunity for all" middle-class economy to a "winner-take-all," dog-eat-dog
system is behind many problems we face as a society.
18 Comments
An ice sculpture reading Middle Class is displayed as people gather to protest before the beginning
of the Republican National Convention on August 26, 2012 in Tampa, Florida. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty
Images)
In The New York Times recently, the paper's former Washington bureau chief,
the veteran journalist Hedrick Smith, asked an important question: "Can
the States Save American Democracy?" Smith, who traveled the country to write his latest
book, Who Stole the American
Dream?, also serves as the executive editor of the
Reclaim the American Dream website, where he keeps
a keen eye on efforts to revitalize politics closest to where people live. In his op-ed essay he
answered his own question by reporting that "a broad array of state-level citizen movements are pressing
for reforms… to give average voters more voice, make elections more competitive and ease gridlock
in Congress."
There's a lot of energy stirring in the states, including efforts to create a fairer economy.
Unlike our paralyzed and polarized Congress, state legislators - those with eyes to see and ears
to hear - know the walking-wounded casualties from the long campaign against working people conducted
by Big Business and rabid free-marketeers over the past three decades. Among the stunned and shell-shocked
are millions of survivors barely hanging on after the financial crash of 2008 and the Great Recession
that followed. They live down the street and around the corner, a mere few blocks from the
state capitol.
Here at BillMoyers.com, just as Hedrick Smith's essay
appeared last weekend, we were finishing a small book - 95 pages - by one of those state legislators:
Minnesota's David Bly. After teaching in the public schools for 30 years he retired and ran for the
Minnesota House of Representatives, where he is now serving his fourth term. What he's seen close-up
prompted him to write We All Do Better: Economic Priorities for a Land of Opportunity. You
can order a copy from the publisher's
website. It is short in length but not of passion. Here, with permission, is an excerpt:
Not so long ago, the words "Land of Opportunity" really meant something for all Americans. We
pretty much took it for granted that each and every one of us should have the opportunity to develop
our God-given talents to reach our greatest potential. This didn't mean that everyone would choose
to use that opportunity, or that anyone would be forced to use it. It did, however, mean that everyone
had that opportunity…. As the late Sen. Paul Wellstone once said, "We all do better when we all do
better."
Things are changing, and not for the better. All too often, we hear stories of families evicted
from their homes when unemployment runs out, or senior citizens who must choose between buying groceries
and life-sustaining medications, or the single mother who can't get a job because she must spend
her time nursing her invalid son. We open the paper to read yet another story about the achievement
gap in our schools. We watch the news and are shocked to learn that the United States is the world's
leader in putting its citizens behind bars.
These kinds of thing don't happen, or at least shouldn't, when there is a nationwide commitment
for everyone to have what they need to develop their potential. This commitment goes beyond lip service
and political speeches. It involves deliberate policies that maintain what I call a "middle-class
economy." A middle-class economy is not one in which every single person makes a certain amount of
money. Even in a middle-class economy, some are rich and some are poor. But most of the people have
most of the money. Most of the people can take care of themselves and fully develop their potential.
Those that can't take care of themselves for any number of understandable reasons can count on the
rest of us to get them through the rough spots.
Right now we are in the process of losing our middle-class economy. We know this from news stories,
and far too many of us know it from bitter personal experience. This loss of our middle-class economy
and the resultant shift to a "winner-take-all" economy of rich and poor are behind most of the problems
with which we struggle as a society.
The Spirit Level by
Richard Wilkinson
and Kate Pickett helped me see how and why this is so. The authors demonstrate in powerful terms
how growing inequality is crippling both our society and our economy in ways that will make it harder
to address critical problems we face as a nation. Page after page of graphs illustrate how we have
fallen behind other developed nations in the things a well-functioning economy must provide. Wilkinson
and Pickett make a solid case that it is not so much the average income of a society that matters.
More important is how that income is distributed. Countries that have the most equal income distribution
do best on health and social indicators.
According to Wilkinson and Pickett, who are epidemiologists, income inequality is related to "lower
life expectancy, higher rates of infant mortality, shorter height, poor self-reported health, low
birth weight, AIDS and depression." They collected data from dozens of other rich countries on health,
level of trust, mental illness, drug and alcohol addiction, life expectancy, infant mortality, teenage
birth rates, obesity, children's educational performance, homicides, imprisonment and social mobility.
"What is most exciting about our research is that it shows that reducing inequality would increase
the well-being and quality of life for all of us," the authors say. Today we have a choice: use public
investment to reduce inequality or pay for the social harm caused by inequality.
Right now we are in the process of losing our middle-class economy.
Wilkinson and Pickett also
believe: "Modern societies will depend increasingly on being creative, adaptable, inventive, well-informed
and flexible, able to respond generously to each other and to needs wherever they arise. Those are
societies not in hock to the rich, in which people are driven by status insecurities, but of populations
used to working together and respecting each other as equals." Any search for economic salvation
that is motivated and driven by the greed of its individual participants is bound to fail.
Ours is the oldest modern democracy, but present-day policies and court decisions are undermining
our basic democratic principles. Immense power has been ceded to a cadre of financial elites who
have figured out how to buy their way into control of our government. The past 30 years have seen
two related trends: (1) an unraveling of benefits and opportunities for the vast majority of Americans,
and (2) a massive increase in wealth for a relative handful of people. Leading economists assure
us that if we don't take decisive action, we can expect more of the same. Economist Emmanuel Saez
has carefully analyzed the shift toward a rich-and-poor economy. He says, "The market itself doesn't
impose a limit on inequality, especially for those at the top." His partner in research, Thomas Piketty,
has further documented and explained income inequality in his book Capital
in the 21st Century. As I write this, the very wealthy are enjoying a good recovery
from the recession of 2008 while the vast majority of Americans fall further behind.
Our descent from an economy that provided for all of us to one that provides for only the few
has been no accident. Nor was it inevitable. The story of how government has gone from limiting greed
to encouraging it is chronicled in several recent books. Kim Phillips-Fein in Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade
Against the New Deal; Paul Pierson and Jacob S. Hacker in
Winner-Take-All Politics; and Hedrick Smith in Who Stole the American Dream?
tell much the same story in different ways. When the Supreme Court determined that money was speech
in 1976, things began to change quickly. The super-rich suddenly gained an advantage in their campaign
to silence the power of people and weaken our democracy. Today, with the Supreme Court decision on
the Citizen's United case, corporations are "people," and even misinformation and lies spread
by these strange new "people" are protected speech.
Economic value is created by law. We often use the words "free market" to describe our current
economic system, but that system, as much as any other, rests on a set of legal rules and a system
to enforce those rules. So it matters who writes the laws or what interests those laws serve. Similarly,
the distribution of wealth and the flow of capital can flow one way or the other with the stroke
of an official pen. Property rights and the distribution of wealth can deny liberty to some just
as easily as they bestow it on others. Amartya Sen, a Nobel Award-winning economist, argues that
hunger is not a product of the shortage of food. Instead, hungry people lack rights (the entitlement)
to eat. The law decides, or as Sen puts it, "The law stands between food availability and food entitlement.
Starvation deaths can reflect legality with a vengeance."
Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, who served 1930-41, argued that the Constitution protects
"liberty in a social organization which requires the protection of law against the evils which menace
the health, safety, morals and welfare of the people." Beginning with the founding of our nation,
we have a rich tradition of concern for equality and protection from the abuses that wealth, poorly
distributed, can bring about. As America waged war with Britain for independence over 200 years ago,
the revolutionary patriot and journalist super-patriot Tom Paine advocated that public employment
be utilized to assist those needing work, that a system of social security should provide for retirement
at age 60, and that the state should provide funds so that poor families could educate and care for
their children. In another example, the end of the Civil War saw the passage of amendments to the
Constitution that banned slavery and limited the degree to which states could discriminate against
their citizens. These amendments, in turn, broadened democracy and set us on a path that eventually
resulted in the establishment of voting rights for blacks and women.
So, how do we build and maintain an enduring middle-class economy? In my judgment, every middle-class
economy must be built on these five foundations:
Quality education for everyone
Health care for everyone
A world-class transportation system
Energy systems that maintain a clean and safe environment
Living wages for working people
Each of these is being challenged today by anti-democratic forces. Budget cuts are wreaking havoc
at all levels of education. College is harder to afford, increasingly results in crippling debt and
does not guarantee job prospects
The last 30 years have seen a corporate war against American workers.
We hear that we have the
best health care in the world, but the numbers tell us differently. Our health outcomes do not measure
up to the rest of the developed world because our system, even with the advances made with the Affordable
Care Act, does not assure universal access.
Prosperous economies require that goods and people can move around easily. Investment in transportation
infrastructure is essential. We all feel the cost as roads, bridges and public transportation are
neglected.
Environment, energy and land use go hand-in-hand in a middle-class economy. A clean, safe environment
supports good health and quality of life for everyone. Instead of moving forward on clean energy
and correcting harmful practices, we continue to rely on fossil fuels and to live with the economic
and environmental consequences.
The fifth foundation of a middle-class economy is living-wage jobs. Generations before us took
for granted that hard-working Americans would share in our prosperity. We have abandoned that understanding.
Wages for most Americans have flatlined in spite of continuing pressure from rising costs of life's
essentials. In a 2014 survey by the Pew Foundation, over 10 times as many respondents said their
incomes were falling behind the cost of living than said they were getting ahead.
The last 30 years have seen a corporate war against American workers. Corporation after corporation
shipped middle-class jobs to Third-World countries. Now, politicians across the country invariably
meet out-of-work industrial workers who ask them what they can do about the sell-off of jobs in America.
All too often, the politician has no response and no idea what to do. Some extreme free-market ideologues
even say that what is happening to so many works is actually a good thing, something that in the
long run will make our economy better off. Of course, many of those making such claims have high-paying
jobs, stable jobs representing the interests of the financial elite.
Here in Minnesota wages for new hires, adjusted for inflation, have been heading downward since
2006 and fell to $ll.64 in 2011. The minimum wage went from one of the lowest in the country to $9.50.
A family three (the average family size in Minnesota) would need an hourly wage of $l6.34 to make
it. How can anyone feel secure and support a family with that kind of discrepancy? People working
full-time deserve the dignity of a living wage, but our policies are moving us in the opposite direction.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune, for example, tells of a 59-year-old truck driver who lived
well on the 4l-cents-a-mile he made 16 years ago, but now he is making the exact same amount in the
face of much higher living costs. He works six days a week instead of the five he used to and still
can barely make ends meet.
These are by no means isolated cases in my home state or elsewhere. Economist Robert Reich wrote
this about the battered middle class: "Having been roughed up, they face years of catch-up to get
to where the once were. They feel poorer because they are poorer. They feel less secure because they
are less secure. The crisis's severity - and the fact that it surprised most 'experts' - shocked
them. The large income and wealth losses compounded their sense of vulnerability."
How do those of us in public office respond?
Former Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota tells the story of the working man who was standing in
line to pay his last respects to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. "Did you know the president?" a
reporter asked him. "No," the man said through tears, "but he knew me."
That is our obligation today - to close the distance between the governed and the governing by
rebuilding a middle-class economy. The five foundations of that economy have this in common: they
are all "we" concepts. We all benefit when they are in place, and we all suffer when they crumble.
When we work together toward our common good, we grow a middle-class economy. When we work against
each other as individuals, we are on the road to becoming a Third World economy. As much as I hate
to say it, this is exactly the path we are on.
Much of my book is concerned with my home state of Minnesota, where I serve in the state legislature.
But I'm sure you will also see that much of what I say about my home state applies just as much to
yours. We are all in this together. We all need to get our state and federal spending priorities
focused in a way that will make a difference. That way is the way of rebuilding our middle-class
economy and opportunity for all.
Excerpted with permission from Levins Publishing. All rights reserved.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 License.
Bill Moyers is the
managing editor of Moyers & Company and BillMoyers.com. His previous shows on PBS included
NOW with Bill Moyers and Bill Moyers Journal. Over the past three
decades he has become an icon of American journalism and is the author of many books, including
Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues,
Moyers on Democracy, and
Bill Moyers: On Faith & Reason. He was one of the organizers of the Peace Corps, a special
assistant for Lyndon B. Johnson, a publisher of Newsday, senior correspondent for CBS News and a
producer of many groundbreaking series on public television. He is the winner of more than 30 Emmys,
nine Peabodys, three George Polk awards.
David Bly is serving his fourth term in the Minnesota House of Representatives. He is the author
of We All Do Better.
He retired after teaching for 30 years in the Minnesota public school system. David Bly and his wife
Dominique live in Northfield, Minnesota.
I'll say one thing about Farage – I wish our members of congress could give speeches that were
half as entertaining as some of his are. He has some absolute classics on youtube, including the
'who the hell are you?' speech in the European Parliament.
"The People" (as in We The People), standing in line, want Hillary Clinton charged and tried
by a USA Court of Law.
The population, as a whole, is realizing that the Grifters have been lying to us about almost
everything.
It is that moment when it suddenly dawns on a person (they grok) that their wife/husband/boss/friend/mother/father……
is a sociopath . Suddenly ALL the chaos in their lives makes perfect sense. The
light goes on!
Former leader of the UK Independent Party Nigel Farage, credited for Brexit, addressed the
audience at a Trump campaign rally in Jackson, Mississippi on Wednesday night.
"You can beat the pollsters, you can beat the commentators, you can beat Washington," Farage
said to cheers. "If you want change, you better get your walking boots on."
"Anything is possible if enough decent people want to fight the establishment," Farage said.
"... Donald Trump keeps saying, "I think we have a movement here" to his audiences. At the Akron speech, he said "I am fighting for a peaceful regime change in our own country." ..."
"... I suspect that Donald Trump has awoken from The Great Slumber . ( Māyā means illusion, fraud, deception, magic that misleads and creates disorder) ..."
Re, "Donald Trump's road show has detoured this month to states with no political value to
a Republican nominee in a general election."
Donald Trump keeps saying, "I think we have a movement here" to his audiences. At the Akron
speech, he said "I am fighting for a peaceful regime change in our own country."
I suspect that Donald Trump has awoken from The Great Slumber . ( Māyā means illusion, fraud, deception, magic that misleads and creates disorder)
The latest ad from Hillary Clinton's campaign suggests that, if elected,
Donald Trump might launch nuclear weapons because he lacks the experience and
temperament to be president.
"In times of crisis, America depends
on steady leadership, clear thinking, and calm judgement," the narrator says.
"Because all it takes is one wrong move."
... ... ...
The strategy from the Clinton campaign is familiar. During the 2008 Democratic
primary fight with President Obama, Clinton released an ad questioning whether
the young senator would have the experience necessary to keep the country safe
when the
phone rang at 3 a.m.
Under neoliberalism like under communism political parties to become far more ideologically uniform
than they used to be. So we have hard neoliberal party and soft neoliberal party and voters are limited
between choosing Pepsi or Cola. And press became just presstitutes for political machine of the parties,
especially during election. Those despicable presstitutes now are afraid to talk about the issue facing
the country and denigrate to discussion personalities exclusively.
"Trump has laid bare journalism's [ pressitutes ]contradictions - reporters' desire to be critical
of politicians without criticizing anything they stand for "
Notable quotes:
"... The dems brand themselves as old time liberal to some constituencies. The repubs brand themselves as conservative to some constituencies. This works for dems and it works for repubs. The straw man arguments fill the boob tube and pass for democracy and self government. ..."
"... But this year, after so many years, standard baloney like "Bush kept us safe" did not placate the repub base, which is in a serious world of hurt (death rates of poorer middle aged white people are going up!). And the dems faced the most ground shaking challenge to the orthodoxy since Gene McCarthy, as millennials working 2 or 3 jobs saw that the "highest standard of living in the world" had the same relation to reality as pancake syrup has to …maple trees. ..."
"... We're at the beginning of the beginning – where the 99% is catching on that the vampire squid's gain is our loss. Its gonna be a bumpy ride… ..."
Hillary Clinton enjoys about a five-point polling lead over Donald Trump. One way to look at
this is that it's a margin, at this stage of a presidential race, that is rarely reversed.
Here's another way. The Democrats had a successful convention, the Republicans didn't. Clinton's
campaign has been smooth; Trump's has careened between disasters. She has reached out to independents
and Republicans; he has insulted the family of a soldier killed in Iraq, along with people with
disabilities, Latinos and women. Clinton has outspent him 3 to 1.
And she's only ahead by five percentage points.
I keep saying the Clinton campaign is like a hot air balloon with a tear in it. They have to keep
frantically pumping more hot air into it, simply to stay aloft.
Trump hasn't spent a dime on TV, either. (I'm sure that he isn't filling up Republican consultants'
rice bowls is one reason they hate him.)
Policy
UPDATE "No Need to Build The Donald's Wall, It's Built" [Tom
Dispatch]. Wait, wait. Obama's policy now is what Trump's would be? And Democrats >and Trump
are frothing and stamping over nothing? Is the problem that the wall's not beautiful? What?
fresno dan
UPDATE "No Need to Build The Donald's Wall, It's Built" [Tom Dispatch]. Wait, wait. Obama's
policy now is what Trump's would be? And Democrats and Trump are frothing and stamping over nothing?
Is the problem that the wall's not beautiful? What?
====================================== The dems brand themselves as old time liberal to some constituencies. The repubs brand themselves
as conservative to some constituencies. This works for dems and it works for repubs. The straw
man arguments fill the boob tube and pass for democracy and self government.
But it makes for a politics that is completely and totally irrelevant to most people. It is
designed not to address issues, and reality is its enemy.
But this year, after so many years, standard baloney like "Bush kept us safe" did not placate
the repub base, which is in a serious world of hurt (death rates of poorer middle aged white people
are going up!). And the dems faced the most ground shaking challenge to the orthodoxy since Gene
McCarthy, as millennials working 2 or 3 jobs saw that the "highest standard of living in the world"
had the same relation to reality as pancake syrup has to …maple trees.
We're at the beginning of the beginning – where the 99% is catching on that the vampire squid's
gain is our loss. Its gonna be a bumpy ride…
She can not offer anything as she is "kick the can down the road" neoliberal candidate serving financial
oligarchy, so playing fear card is her the only chance...
UPDATE "'You can get rid of Manafort, but that doesn't end the odd bromance Trump has with Putin,'
Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said in a statement" [Washington
Post]. That's our Democrats; gin up a war scare all to win Eastern Europeans in a swing state
(Ohio). That's what this article, read closely, boils down to, read carefully. (I love Mook's "bromance,"
so reminiscent of the Clinton campaign's vile BernieBro smear.)
UPDATE "Republicans in North Carolina are pulling out all the stops to suppress the state's reliably
Democratic black vote. After the Fourth Circuit court reinstated a week of early voting, GOP-controlled
county elections boards are now trying to cut early-voting hours across the state. By virtue of holding
the governor's office, Republicans control a majority of votes on all county election boards and
yesterday they voted to cut 238 hours of early voting in Charlotte's Mecklenburg County, the largest
in the state. 'I'm not a big fan of early voting,' said GOP board chair Mary Potter Summa, brazenly
disregarding the federal appeals court's opinion. 'The more [early voting] sites we have, the more
opportunities exist for violations'" [The
Nation]. Bad Republicans. On the other hand, if the Democrats treated voter registration like
a 365/24/7 party function, including purchasing IDs in ID states for those who can't afford them,
none of this would be happening.
"... "Companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing have pledged to increase the share of exports in their overall revenues, and they have been seeking major deals in East and Central Europe since the 1990s, when NATO expansion began," said William Hartung, director of the Arms & Security Project at the Center for International Policy. Hartung noted that as some nations ramp up spending, U.S. firms will be "knocking at the door, looking to sell everything from fighter planes to missile defense systems." ..."
Some good links here. How arms merchants benefit from tensions with Russia:
"Companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing have pledged to increase the share of exports in
their overall revenues, and they have been seeking major deals in East and Central Europe since
the 1990s, when NATO expansion began," said William Hartung, director of the Arms & Security Project
at the Center for International Policy. Hartung noted that as some nations ramp up spending, U.S.
firms will be "knocking at the door, looking to sell everything from fighter planes to missile
defense systems."
Anti-Russian hysteria and demonization of Trump is the key strategies for neoliberal media to secure
Hillary victory in November.
Anti-Russian hysteria is also a tool to maintain solidarity and suppress dissent against neoliberal
globalization. Those presstitutes will stop at nothing, even provocations and swiftboating are OK for them (See Khan
Gambit)
Notable quotes:
"... Oh, and I suppose Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton's vitriol is okay, right? Typical [neo]liberal ranting. Point the finger at someone else, but do the same thing and it's okay. ..."
"... When candidates wish to distinguish themselves or appeal to various segments of the electorate, there is nothing like a lot of demagoguery and fear mongering to bring attention to a candidate and his issues. ..."
"... It then becomes all the more necessary to drive hysteria and to rely on fear and the hyped common threat to maintain solidarity. While some may fantasize about a society run by women, what we know from experience is that women in power act and speak just like men, that is, they also act solely in their own parochial personal political interest and say whatever is necessary to win their next election. ..."
"... I think the divisions are easier to exploit in part because the society has become so greatly divided based of income inequality. ..."
"... WWII's impact on media tended to paper over many of the differences and tensions that have been present in American life. Aside from the period during WWII and in the few decades after, vitriol has been the norm in U.S. media going back to the 1790s. ..."
"... The media became more fragmented as well. Broadcast media also used to be seen as a public service. But in the 1970s the major networks started to understand that it could also be a profit center -- and you had another shift in values, where the public function took a back-seat to profit maximization. The market also has become more cut-throat as the media environment has become more fragmented. ..."
"... [Neo]Liberals are largely to blame - they regarded their opponents as "uneducated" "swivel-eyed" etc. They ruthlessly played "identity politics" for all it was worth. They shut down meaningful debate. ..."
"... This is very true. Screaming racist at anyone challenging the liberal orthodoxy of black = victim and white = oppressor . ..."
"... The same is true of ignoring the many black lives that are ended by the type of people the police frequently come into contact with - other young black men. ..."
"... Politics: policies are never discussed in detail in ANY election. The WHAT, HOW, WHERE, WHEN, WHY and COST is never provided in detail by the politicians. ..."
"... That is the disaster that what current politicians totally fail. That needs to change. Will such, I doubt it. The current so called political platforms or manifestos, are basically useless and used only for propaganda. ..."
"... You left out WHO does the dirty work of the politicians. ..."
"... I largely blame the media (sorry Guardian) for what's happening... the endless need for attention and eyeballs creates an ever louder echo chamber of increasingly extreme opinions masquerading as news, which simply creates a similarly extreme public discourse. ..."
"... I have always wondered if "spin" is taught in journalism schools, or if it is taught by newspapers after graduation from journalism school. ..."
"... I largely blame the media (sorry Guardian) for what's happening... the endless need for attention and eyeballs creates an ever louder echo chamber of increasingly extreme opinions masquerading as news, which simply creates a similarly extreme public discourse. ..."
"... Politically, the Reagan/Thatcher period broke the socially-democratic post-WWII consensus in favour of economic neo-liberalism, which became the new consensus... and once the Cold War was over, there was no real 'peace dividend' and the agreements for global free-trade/globalisation were struck. ..."
"... That lead to the banking crisis/collapse in 2008, and to the 'solution' whereby most governments imposed 'austerity' and debt on ordinary people to keep most of the bankers 'functional' and 'solvent' ...and not only were the bankers not adequately regulated to curtail their activities, but they carried on paying themselves mega-currency bonuses for using taxpayer guarantees to rescue their dysfunctional businesses. ..."
"... I agree, its an entirely artificial construct. And the globalists are in a position to punish countries like Britain for its Brexit decision. But they cannot destroy Britain. Rather, it is the globalists who may be destroyed by the nationalism spreading across the globe. Many globalists are actually terrified by all this. General Electric has read the tea leaves and is already reacting: ..."
"... GE's Immelt Signals End to 7 Decades of Globalization http://fortune.com/2016/05/20/ge-immelt-globalization/ ..."
"... Fascinating link. The global corporate overlords only respond to sustained political pressure. Brexit was a wakeup call for them and the November election in the U.S. may be another... ..."
Oh, and I suppose Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton's vitriol is okay, right? Typical
[neo]liberal ranting. Point the finger at someone else, but do the same thing and it's okay.
The only difference today is that Donald Trump doesn't take the finger pointing and Democratic
vitriol laying down, he fires it right back at them and guess what, he keeps winning!
Vitriolic and polemical speech has been a ubiquitous ritual since the earliest democracies.
When candidates wish to distinguish themselves or appeal to various segments of the electorate,
there is nothing like a lot of demagoguery and fear mongering to bring attention to a candidate
and his issues. In the end, self-interest motivates voters, and fear is the biggest self-interest
of all. Using the specter of the opposition to scare small children and those who think like them
is a time honored tradition and well alive today. Further, as groups begin to prosper and start
being assimilated into the broader society, the individual self-interests diverge and it becomes
harder to hold them together as a cohesive group whose votes can be counted on. It then becomes
all the more necessary to drive hysteria and to rely on fear and the hyped common threat to maintain
solidarity. While some may fantasize about a society run by women, what we know from experience
is that women in power act and speak just like men, that is, they also act solely in their own
parochial personal political interest and say whatever is necessary to win their next election.
Noam Chomsky talked about this in "The Corporation." Our division and increased level of emotional
isolation is a direct result of marketing attacks on the human psyche designed to get us to buy
more products and services. I'm not sure how much of it is Machiavellian and how much is just
pure greed reaping it's inevitable harvest.
A smart comment. Greed and fear are indeed the primary drivers of behaviour in many arenas now,
and it's partly driven by corporations. This-or-that, black-and-white thinking is largely a product
of high emotion, which essentially makes us 'stupid' and unable to reason.
The impact of viewing - consciously or unconsciously - dozens of ads a day on the Internet,
or hours of tranced staring at screens, may be shown to be a major factor in the increasingly
mesmerised state of the populace.
That and, as these venerable politicos point out, the demise of political nous generally.
Many excellent points. I think the divisions are easier to exploit in part because the society
has become so greatly divided based of income inequality. People have completely different
frames of reference in terms of their experience, and anxieties, and so it becomes easier to dismiss
the concerns of others out-of-hand as illegitimate. You can also overlay racism as part of the
equation, which has always been present with varying degrees of intensity in the U.S.
WWII's impact on media tended to paper over many of the differences and tensions that have
been present in American life. Aside from the period during WWII and in the few decades after,
vitriol has been the norm in U.S. media going back to the 1790s.
The idea of a media culture that was objective and bipartisan is a newer idea. It was codified
by things like the Fairness Doctrine as well, which tended to moderate, and censor, public discussion
through broadcast media. When the Fairness Doctrine fell apart you had people like Limbaugh go
national with a highly partisan infotainment model.
The media became more fragmented as well. Broadcast media also used to be seen as a public
service. But in the 1970s the major networks started to understand that it could also be a profit
center -- and you had another shift in values, where the public function took a back-seat to profit
maximization. The market also has become more cut-throat as the media environment has become more
fragmented.
[Neo]Liberals are largely to blame - they regarded their opponents as "uneducated" "swivel-eyed"
etc. They ruthlessly played "identity politics" for all it was worth. They shut down meaningful
debate. Now it's come back to bite them in the form of Donald Trump. They don't like it now
they are on the receiving end.
This is the type of over-stating a position that they are prone to. But saying that "liberals"
are largely to blame is no different to them pointing the finger at "the right" for all the issues.
There's plenty of blame to go around, and it's evenly spread.
They ruthlessly played "identity politics" for all it was worth. They shut down meaningful
debate.
This is very true. Screaming racist at anyone challenging the liberal orthodoxy
of black = victim and white = oppressor .
A prime example of one of the issues is BLM. Pushing the view that any black person killed
by the police as dying at the hand of a racist cop.
Using whole population stats to compare the chances of being shot by the police, instead of
comparing socio-economic groups. It's not exactly unbiased to compare the chances of a poor black
man, and a white lawyer, of being stopped or shot by the police.
The same is true of ignoring the many black lives that are ended by the type of people
the police frequently come into contact with - other young black men.
Until both sides are truthful about what's happening, nothing is going to change. Both sides
- police and young black men - currently approach an interaction with each other fearful of the
other. This is made worse on both sides by the rhetoric.
If you listen to BLM and its supporters, then every cop is racist and wamnts to kill them.
Why would you do what the police officer tells you if you think you're just opening yourself up
to a racist cop killing you?
On the other side, the police apparently often assume that every young black man they encounter
both has a gun, and thinks they're racist, and therefore operates on that assumption and goes
for a shoot first and be safe option.
Neither of these will get any better while there is this lying and entrenched positions on
either side. You could also ask why anyone who's white would support an organization which doesn't
appear to care about the white victims of the police (of which AIUI there are an equal number).
Or the black murder victims who aren't killed by the police.
Politics: policies are never discussed in detail in ANY election. The WHAT, HOW, WHERE, WHEN,
WHY and COST is never provided in detail by the politicians. Every thing in the politicians
mind is open ended, and may or may not be adopted, considered, or maybe a totally different thing
than what they were elected for.
That is the disaster that what current politicians totally fail. That needs to change.
Will such, I doubt it. The current so called political platforms or manifestos, are basically
useless and used only for propaganda.
I largely blame the media (sorry Guardian) for what's happening... the endless need for attention
and eyeballs creates an ever louder echo chamber of increasingly extreme opinions masquerading
as news, which simply creates a similarly extreme public discourse.
Even my beloved Guardian is succumbing, publishing more and more pointless newsy opinion pieces
and less and less fact-based, hard news. I don't want to read five takes on a single world event.
I'd rather read the facts about five different world events and feel more informed at the end
of the day.
I have always wondered if "spin" is taught in journalism schools, or if it is taught by newspapers
after graduation from journalism school.
It gets so far out, you wonder what journalists think the readers think. It would be great
to be in on a backroom discussion about headlines and all paraphrasing in articles at the Washington
Post and Guardian.
I'll bet they sit around and chuckle as they try to cook up positive or negative spins. Its
more than facts.
I largely blame the media (sorry Guardian) for what's happening... the endless need for attention
and eyeballs creates an ever louder echo chamber of increasingly extreme opinions masquerading
as news, which simply creates a similarly extreme public discourse.
Even my beloved Guardian is succumbing, publishing more and more pointless newsy opinion pieces
and less and less fact-based, hard news. I don't want to read five takes on a single world event.
I'd rather read the facts about five different world events and feel more informed at the end
of the day.
I suspect we're seeing the consequences of two events... one political, the other financial (heavily
determined by the political, which happened first).
Politically, the Reagan/Thatcher period broke the socially-democratic post-WWII consensus
in favour of economic neo-liberalism, which became the new consensus... and once the Cold War
was over, there was no real 'peace dividend' and the agreements for global free-trade/globalisation
were struck.
That lead to the banking crisis/collapse in 2008, and to the 'solution' whereby most governments
imposed 'austerity' and debt on ordinary people to keep most of the bankers 'functional' and 'solvent'
...and not only were the bankers not adequately regulated to curtail their activities, but they
carried on paying themselves mega-currency bonuses for using taxpayer guarantees to rescue their
dysfunctional businesses.
As the UK-EU Referendum result has proved, populist politicians spouting bullsh*t can succeed
in this environment; especially when 'decent politicians' abdicate their responsibilities.
I agree, its an entirely artificial construct. And the globalists are in a position to punish
countries like Britain for its Brexit decision. But they cannot destroy Britain. Rather, it is
the globalists who may be destroyed by the nationalism spreading across the globe. Many globalists
are actually terrified by all this. General Electric has read the tea leaves and is already reacting:
Fascinating link. The global corporate overlords only respond to sustained political pressure.
Brexit was a wakeup call for them and the November election in the U.S. may be another...
"... I believe in the two founding principles of Jacksonian Democracy, social justice and economic fairness. Right now, I think that the Democratic Party-my great party-has got away from some of this ..."
"... If Hillary Clinton is elected, and not Donald Trump, Rickers says that income inequality-and particularly the "gap" between "the rich and the poor" will get worse. Clinton's refusal to focus on issues that matter to middle class Americans of all political stripes-including Democrats-is why Rickers is calling on Democrats nationwide to join him in a push to elect Donald Trump president of the United States. ..."
"... his party "used to stand for working people," but "Hillary Clinton's record-NAFTA, SHAFTA, favored nation status for China, Glass-Steagall, I mean we could go on and on and on-she's not been a friend of rural America and rural America knows that and it's shining in the primaries and caucuses. It's a huge ABC feeling out here, Anybody But Clinton." ..."
"... Bova added that Trump's support for protecting Americans' hard earned benefits like Social Security and Medicare-things that Americans, he says, can't trust Hillary Clinton with-is why his fellow Democrats should back him for president ..."
"... These same folks, I believe, have been assured that Trump will also protect and seek to strengthen their Social Security and Medicare benefits, and finally, after 20 to 30 years, put their lives back on a level playing field by undoing the very so called free-trade, world-trade, global-trade agreements that that hollowed-out their jobs, their families, their communities, their businesses. That is a powerful reason, a survival reason, for them to want to vote to elect Trump President. ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... When asked about Clinton's supposed opposition to the Trans Pacific Partnership-she previously supported it more than 40 times, but now claims to be against it as voters rebel against the deal-Rickers laughed. "That's just ridiculous," Rickers said. "She is one of the architects of the complete opposite position. This woman will say anything if she thinks she'll get a vote or money for it." ..."
On the Trumpocrats PAC website is
a video of David "Mudcat" Saunders, another lifelong Democrat, talking with Fox News.
I'm a Democrat," Saunders, who worked for many prominent national Democrats over his career, says
in the interview video. "I believe in the two founding principles of Jacksonian Democracy, social
justice and economic fairness. Right now, I think that the Democratic Party-my great party-has got
away from some of this."
If Hillary Clinton is elected, and not Donald Trump, Rickers says that income inequality-and
particularly the "gap" between "the rich and the poor" will get worse. Clinton's refusal to focus
on issues that matter to middle class Americans of all political stripes-including Democrats-is why
Rickers is calling on Democrats nationwide to join him in a push to elect Donald Trump president
of the United States. Rickers said:
Otherwise, the gap is going to continue to increase between the rich and the poor because a
lot of people don't have the ability now to rise up whether they're underemployed or facing hard
times. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is talking about Planned Parenthood or whatever-which is all
great, but that's not what we need. We need people to be self-sufficient and feed their families.
Trump speaks to that, and there are people all across this country who are fed up with it-obviously,
that's what this election is kind of all about. You have party registrations switching by the
tens of thousands in Ohio and Pennsylvania and elsewhere, and there's a lot of people-they don't
want to be Republicans, but they don't like either party anymore. We're going to give them a place
or organize out of, you know? A home, if you will.
Saunders said in the Fox interview that his party "used to stand for working people," but
"Hillary Clinton's record-NAFTA, SHAFTA, favored nation status for China, Glass-Steagall, I mean
we could go on and on and on-she's not been a friend of rural America and rural America knows that
and it's shining in the primaries and caucuses. It's a huge ABC feeling out here, Anybody But Clinton."
Billy Bova, another lifelong Democratic operative from Mississippi who is supportive of the effort,
told Breitbart News that the answer for Democrats who feel Hillary Clinton does not support them
is to back Donald Trump for president. Bova said in an email:
If you have historically been a working class, middle class person in areas of America that
produced good paying, blue collar factory jobs, white collar factory related jobs, small business
jobs in your towns around the plants and factories, it would be hard not to support a Trumpocrats
effort in electing Donald Trump! Historically, many regular-working Democratic voters have always
been most interested in a candidate that supports economic issues, not so much social issues,
but bottom-line pocketbook, kitchen table money issues that can pay their bills and help their
children. Trump shoots directly at their pocketbooks, gives them hope for a better future.
Bova added that Trump's support for protecting Americans' hard earned benefits like Social
Security and Medicare-things that Americans, he says, can't trust Hillary Clinton with-is why his
fellow Democrats should back him for president. He said:
These same folks, I believe, have been assured that Trump will also protect and seek to
strengthen their Social Security and Medicare benefits, and finally, after 20 to 30 years, put
their lives back on a level playing field by undoing the very so called free-trade, world-trade,
global-trade agreements that that hollowed-out their jobs, their families, their communities,
their businesses. That is a powerful reason, a survival reason, for them to want to vote to elect
Trump President.
... ... ...
"I think there's a pretty sour taste in a lot of guys' mouths about Iraq and about what happened
there," Jim Webb Jr., a Marine veteran and Webb's son-who is also a Trump supporter-told the
Washington Post. "You pour time and effort and blood into something, and you see it pissed away,
and you think, 'How did I spend my twenties?'"
The Post cast Webb's son's comments in the light of him praising Trump's vow to end nation-building
type of foreign policy that Republicans drove under the Bush administration. While Trump's vows to
steer clear of establishment status quo type foreign policy has cost him a handful of votes among
GOP elites in Washington, D.C., so the thinking goes, it has won him many more actual voters across
America in places like Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Carolina-and
potentially even New York state.
... ... ...
JOBS, JOBS, JOBS: IT'S THE ECONOMY STUPID
When asked about Clinton's supposed opposition to the Trans Pacific Partnership-she previously
supported it more than 40 times, but now claims to be against it as voters rebel against the deal-Rickers
laughed. "That's just ridiculous," Rickers said. "She is one of the architects of the complete opposite
position. This woman will say anything if she thinks she'll get a vote or money for it."
And he said "hell no, absolutely no" he does not believe that Hillary Clinton is against the TPP.
"No way," Rickers said. "And she'll say something different when she's in front of another group.
Do you think she was saying that when she was being paid $250,000 a speech on Wall Street? No. And
she doesn't want anybody to know what she said there."
As for Trump, Rickers said he believes Trump on the issue of trade.
"At least during this campaign-I know he's said a lot of things in a lot of different directions,
but he's been pretty consistent that that is the foundation of his campaign, to rebuild the infrastructure
of the country," Rickers said. "I just wish he wouldn't get distracted all the time and just talk
about the main issue of his campaign, which is the rebuilding of the country."
On the Trumpocrats PAC website are videos of many other Democrats switching parties to vote for
Trump. David Abbott, a lifelong Democratic Party member and former local councilman from Kentucky,
switched parties to vote for Trump.
"... Yet after all this, Trump remains around 40% in the polls or better - and only about five points behind Hillary Clinton" [Brent Arends, MarketWatch ]. "n other words, in presidential election terms, it's still either party's race. ..."
"... Most elections see swings of several points between August and early November. Some see even bigger ones - at this point in 1988 Vice President George H.W. Bush looked like a no-hoper against Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. Bush went on to win by seven points. ..."
"... "Three of the top four nonfiction hardcover best sellers in the New York Times Book Review on Sunday were anti-Hillary Clinton screeds ('Hillary's America' by Dinesh D'Souza, 'Crisis of Character' by Gary Byrne, and 'Armageddon' by Dick Morris), and the fourth, 'Liars' by Glenn Beck, was a more general assault on the liberal agenda that certainly has no kind words for Clinton" [ MarketWatch ]. And they say people don't read books any more… ..."
"... Joyce was still keeping her vote a secret, but she thought she knew why people were so angry. 'I think it's more that we don't trust politicians, period,' she said. 'We've gotten to a point in the United States where they're all liars or they're all cheaters or they've all done something wrong and we're gonna blow that up. And so we don't trust any of them.' The other women were nodding. 'And I think," Joyce said, 'that's where Trump's power came from." Joyce is a volatility voter, then. ..."
"... Clinton and "welfare reform": "Having abandoned the maternalists' sentimental defense of motherhood as a sacred calling, most second-wave feminists had no terms in which to mount a convincing justification for income support to poor mothers. ..."
"... Hillary's support for the bill reveals the deep fault lines of class and race that fractured the second-wave feminist movement, as white middle-class women purchased their independence from domestic labor by shifting the burden to working-class women of color " [ N+1 ]. Remember Nannygate ? There you have it. ..."
"Yet after all this, Trump remains around 40% in the polls or better - and only about five
points behind Hillary Clinton" [Brent Arends,
MarketWatch ]. "n other words, in presidential election terms, it's still either party's race.
Most elections see swings of several points between August and early November. Some see even bigger
ones - at this point in 1988 Vice President George H.W. Bush looked like a no-hoper against Massachusetts
Gov. Michael Dukakis. Bush went on to win by seven points.
There is no reason to think this election
will be less volatile than the norm…. Right now the bookmakers give Trump about a 25% chance of
winning. That's high enough to be alarming. But what's worse: If I had to take a wager at these
levels, I'd take the over rather than the under. This race, terrifyingly, is still open."
"That remarkable fact underscores how virtually unchallenged Clinton has been on the advertising
airwaves, as Democratic and Republican strategists alike say she has gone deeper into the election
calendar than any non-incumbent president they can remember in the modern era without sustained,
paid opposition on television" [
Politico ]. So, if election 2016 were a WWF match, the [good|bad] guy would be fighting with
one hand behind his back, and getting pounded, for sure, but….
"Three of the top four nonfiction hardcover best sellers in the New York Times Book Review
on Sunday were anti-Hillary Clinton screeds ('Hillary's America' by Dinesh D'Souza, 'Crisis of
Character' by Gary Byrne, and 'Armageddon' by Dick Morris), and the fourth, 'Liars' by Glenn Beck,
was a more general assault on the liberal agenda that certainly has no kind words for Clinton"
[
MarketWatch ]. And they say people don't read books any more…
"Our research suggests yet another reason not to overreact to news stories about the newest
poll: Media outlets tend to cover the surveys with the most "newsworthy" results, which can distort
the picture of where the race stands" [
WaPo ]. Look! Over there! Another fluctuation well inside the margin of error!
UPDATE "Despite frequent claims of the 'women's vote' working in Democrats' favor, much depends
on which women. Individually, these women's views vary widely, just as the county they live in.
Lake County [Ohio] has been nearly evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. Collectively,
they make up a demographic that has reliably voted, and reliably voted Republican, in nearly every
election since 1972: Married women, especially white married women" [
NBC ]. Joyce was still keeping her vote a secret, but she thought she knew why people were
so angry. 'I think it's more that we don't trust politicians, period,' she said. 'We've gotten
to a point in the United States where they're all liars or they're all cheaters or they've all
done something wrong and we're gonna blow that up. And so we don't trust any of them.' The other
women were nodding. 'And I think," Joyce said, 'that's where Trump's power came from." Joyce is
a volatility voter, then.
UPDATE Re: Clinton and "welfare reform": "Having abandoned the maternalists' sentimental
defense of motherhood as a sacred calling, most second-wave feminists had no terms in which to
mount a convincing justification for income support to poor mothers. Other women were working;
why shouldn't they work too? But for middle-class women, work meant public recognition, self-determination,
the right to be seen as autonomous individuals and to participate in civic life. For welfare mothers,
especially black women, who made up two-thirds of all domestic workers by 1960, it meant watching
other women's children, preparing their food, and scrubbing their floors, services that professional
women increasingly relied on as they entered the workforce in greater numbers. The version of
welfare reform Bill Clinton envisioned was much more generous than the bill eventually passed
by the Republican Congress in 1996. It would have included child-care and job-placement programs - but
it would still have required welfare recipients to work. Hillary's support for the bill reveals
the deep fault lines of class and race that fractured the second-wave feminist movement, as
white middle-class women purchased their independence from domestic labor by shifting the
burden to working-class women of color " [
N+1 ]. Remember
Nannygate ? There you have it.
Assange also pointed to Hillary Clinton's relations with Saudi Arabia that have led to great
angst among Israel, a country that now worries where her allegiances fall in the region. "[Her
connection to Saudi Arabia] is extensive. The relations between Hillary and Saudi Arabia. The
Clinton Foundation and Saudi Arabia," opined Assange. "Saudi Arabia is probably the single
largest donor to the Clinton Foundation. You can see Hillary's arms export policies where she was
Secretary of State favoring Saudi Arabia extensively."
The whistleblower also blasted Clinton for her allegations that Trump is a secret Russian
agent saying that "there is a much deeper connection between Hillary Clinton and Russia on record
than there is with Donald Trump." Assange pointed to the fact that her top strategic consultant
John Podesta sits on the board of a Russian connected fund and her pay-to-play activities
with Moscow businessmen who would make donations to the Clinton Foundation and then miraculously
receive State Department clearance to undertake business in the US.
Perhaps his most damning statements were Clinton's financial links to radical Jihadist groups
in the Middle East and the State Department's policy of using Libya as conduit to get arms
to Syria.
"The US government, at the time that Hillary Clinton was in charge of US foreign policy, did
use Libya as a conduit to get arms to Jihadists in Syria," said Assange. "That is well
established not just by a range of our materials, but also by the investigative work of Sy Hersh."
Assange also called into question links between Hillary Clinton's former employer LaFarge, a
cement company that the presidential candidate served on the board of directors for, which is now
under investigation for contracting with the Daesh (known colloquially as ISIS) terror network in
Syria.
"La Monde found that [LaFarge] paid ISIS/Daesh money, taxes if you will, for their operations in
certain areas and they engaged in a variety of business deals," said Assange. "Hillary Clinton's
involvement is that money from LaFarge in 2015 and 2016 went to the Clinton Foundation. Why did
it go to that foundation? There is a long-time connection between Hillary Clinton and La Farge
because she used to be on the board."
The idea that Hillary Clinton can be viewed as Saudi candidate is not as crazy as it looks.
She feels the smell of money and that's the most important thing in life for her.
Notable quotes:
"... The [neoliberal] media has had a field day commenting on Donald Trump's words about cooperation with Russia against ISIS, labeling him a 'Kremlin agent' and a danger to the Western security order. But what about Hillary Clinton and her foundation's ties to the Saudis? If Trump is 'Moscow's man', does that make Clinton the candidate of Middle Eastern sheikdoms? ..."
"... The media have accused Moscow of every sin imaginable, from meddling in America's elections, to using Trump advisor Paul Manafort, who was called 'the Kremlin's man in Ukraine', to outright calling Trump himself a 'Russian agent' . ..."
"... Former NATO chief Anders Rasmussen joined the party bashing Trump recently, slamming him for having "his own views on the Ukrainian conflict," and adding that to top it all off, "he praises President Putin!" ..."
"... The Times' piece reported on the fact that the Clinton Foundation has accepted tens of millions of dollars from countries that the US State Department has repeatedly criticized for human rights abuses and discrimination against women. The offending countries purportedly include Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, and Brunei, along with Algeria. Riyadh, the paper noted, was "a particularly generous benefactor," giving between $10 and $25 million to the Clinton Foundation, with at least another $1 million donated by the 'Friends of Saudi Arabia' organization. ..."
"... the plot thickens. On Sunday, conservative US and British media revealed that Huma Abedin, a longtime friend and top aid to Clinton, had worked as an assistant editor for a radical Islamic Saudi journal for over a decade. The publication, called the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, featured everything from pieces opposed to women's rights, to articles blaming the US for the September 11 terror attacks. ..."
"... Abedin has long been accused by independent media in the US and elsewhere of having connections with Islamic organizations, including the Muslim Brotherhood, charges which have long been labeled as nothing more than a conspiracy theory. ..."
The [neoliberal] media has had a field day commenting on Donald Trump's words about cooperation
with Russia against ISIS, labeling him a 'Kremlin agent' and a danger to the Western security order.
But what about Hillary Clinton and her foundation's ties to the Saudis? If Trump is 'Moscow's man',
does that make Clinton the candidate of Middle Eastern sheikdoms?
The US media has been relentless in its efforts to sink Republican presidential candidate Donald
Trump's campaign, in part due to the candidate's string of friendly remarks and gestures toward Russia
and President Vladimir Putin. The media have accused Moscow of every sin imaginable, from
meddling in America's elections, to using Trump advisor Paul Manafort, who was
called 'the Kremlin's man in Ukraine', to outright calling Trump himself a
'Russian agent'.
Former NATO chief Anders Rasmussen joined the party bashing Trump recently,
slamming him for having "his own views on the Ukrainian conflict," and adding that to top it
all off, "he praises President Putin!"
Admittedly, Mr. Trump does seem very open to the idea of negotiating with Russia, and even partnering
with Moscow to tackle some of the greatest challenges facing the world today, including radical Islamist
terrorism. In that sense, he may really be the most 'Russia friendly' presidential candidate the
US has seen since 1945, not counting the early 1990s, when Washington's friendly overtures toward
Russia were based on the condition that Moscow does everything US officials tell it to.
Does that
make him a puppet to the Russians, the Kremlin and to Vladimir Putin personally? Not likely. Despite
all the media investigations and even more accusations, no substantiated evidence has been presented
demonstrating that Trump has any significant business or personal interests in Russia which would
create a conflict of interest. The businessman held a Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow a few years
ago, and tried, unsuccessfully, to build a Trump tower in the Russian capital. But he also has assets
around the world, in Scotland, Dubai, and in over a dozen other countries. Does that make him the
agent of these countries, too?
Amid the endless suspicions surrounding 'Kremlin Agent Trump', a story in the New York Times unassumingly
titled'Foundation Ties Bedevil Hillary Clinton's Presidential Campaign' almost slipped through
the cracks, before blowing up on national television.
The Times' piece reported on the fact that the Clinton Foundation has accepted tens of millions
of dollars from countries that the US State Department has repeatedly criticized for human rights
abuses and discrimination against women. The offending countries purportedly include Saudi Arabia,
the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, and Brunei, along with Algeria. Riyadh, the paper
noted, was "a particularly generous benefactor," giving between $10 and $25 million to the Clinton
Foundation, with at least another $1 million donated by the 'Friends of Saudi Arabia' organization.
The scandal didn't end there. Speaking to CNN reporter Dana Bash, Clinton Campaign manager Robby
Mook
could not coherently explain why the Clintons weren't willing to stop accepting donations from
foreign 'investors' unless Clinton became president of the United States. Instead, Mook tried to
divert the question to Donald Trump, saying the candidate has never revealed his financials, and
adding that Mrs. Clinton had taken "unprecedented" steps to being "transparent."
And the plot
thickens. On Sunday, conservative US and British media
revealed that Huma Abedin, a longtime friend and top aid to Clinton, had worked as an assistant
editor for a radical Islamic Saudi journal for over a decade. The publication, called the Journal
of Muslim Minority Affairs, featured everything from pieces opposed to women's rights, to articles
blaming the US for the September 11 terror attacks.
In one article in January 1996, Abedin's own mother wrote a piece for the journal, where she complained
that Clinton, who was First Lady at the time, was advancing a "very aggressive and radically feminist"
agenda which was un-Islamic and dangerous for empowering women.
Abedin has long been accused by independent media in the US and elsewhere of having connections
with Islamic organizations, including the Muslim Brotherhood, charges which have long been labeled
as nothing more than a conspiracy theory. But Sunday's story seems to have ruffled a few feathers
in some high places, with a Clinton campaign spokesperson
explaining (rather unconvincingly) to the New York Post that Abedin played no formal role in
the radical journal. "My understanding is that her name was simply listed on the masthead in that
periodical," the spokesman said.
These two stories, the first offering new details including dollar estimates about the money received
by the Clinton Foundation from the Saudis, and the second shedding light on her top advisor's apparent
ties to a Saudi journal propagating Islamist ideas, should lead the media to look for answers to
some very troubling questions. These should be the same kinds of questions asked earlier this summer,
when a formerly classified 28 page chapter of the 9/11 Commission Report was finally released, revealing
that Saudi officials had supported the hijackers who carried out the terrorist attacks against the
United States in 2001.
"... Eliot Cohen, or any member of the PNAC, calling Trump or anyone else 'fundamentally dishonest' is simply beyond the pale. It takes some serious nerve and arrogance for traitorous liars of this magnitude to be calling out Trump regardless of the veracity of their claims. ..."
"... Nothing pleases me more than the careerist parasites and wannabe czars of DC feeling compelled to justify their proven incompetence by slagging the guy who seems increasingly likely to be their boss. Now if only the other half of the DC cesspool can do the same, maybe something good can actually happen for the rest of the country. ..."
"... How terrific that the neocons are freaking out. Wait until the pharmaceuticals start hitting his healthcare proposals for bargaining down the cost of drugs. Good to have an outsider in the game. ..."
"... Instead of calling these opponents Neocons, we should be calling them the Israel Lobby. They will wage war against any politician who doesn't agree to make America's Middle East policy coextensive with that of Israel. They don't care if their attacks destroy the Republican Party, because their loyalties lie elsewhere. Their motto is rule or ruin. ..."
"... Whatever! There is one and only one reason why Bush-era foreign policy people are attacking Trump: He has rejected their extreme neocon warmongering. They want a president who will start whatever wars Netanyahu orders, and they think Trump will tell Netanyahu to go screw himself. ..."
The neocons in full revolt (or is it full revolting)!
God, I have not seen such unity within the neocon cabal since they were ginning up support for
the Iraq disaster. Trump does show how badly needed a full house cleaning and a serious
revamping of the foreign policy establishment is required. However, in this case, with Trump
being the complete wild card, I think a plan B is needed, whatever that might be.
It certainly is not Hillary! She has been embraced by high and mighty poobahs of the neocon
cabal so nothing changes with her in charge-more wars, more interventions, more regime
changes. We would keep trying until we get one right, as unlikely that might be.
PDXing, 3/3/2016 4:15 PM EST
Eliot Cohen, or any member of the PNAC, calling Trump or anyone else 'fundamentally
dishonest' is simply beyond the pale. It takes some serious nerve and arrogance for traitorous
liars of this magnitude to be calling out Trump regardless of the veracity of their claims.
David_Lloyd-Jones, 3/3/2016 3:41 PM EST [Edited]
Wey-yull, I'm no Republican, but FWIW I would think having Michael Chertoff and Robert
Zoellick against me would be winning the daily double.
All this and being condemned by The Mittens? Pure gravy. And people wonder why Trump is doing
so well? Seems pretty obvious to me.
There's only one hope for Rubio: where's Darth Cheney when you need him?
yibberat, 3/3/2016 3:23 PM EST
Nothing pleases me more than the careerist parasites and wannabe czars of DC feeling
compelled to justify their proven incompetence by slagging the guy who seems increasingly
likely to be their boss. Now if only the other half of the DC cesspool can do the same, maybe
something good can actually happen for the rest of the country.
And I hate Trump. But man this show is worth MANY buckets of popcorn.
Janine, 3/3/2016 12:58 PM EST
How terrific that the neocons are freaking out. Wait until the pharmaceuticals start
hitting his healthcare proposals for bargaining down the cost of drugs. Good to have an
outsider in the game.
JDavis, 3/3/2016 1:01 PM EST
The neocons will be quite happy in a Hillary administration. She's an even bigger warmonger
than Obama.
technokim, 3/3/2016 12:22 PM EST
Please tell me how any of these 50 self-purported national security and foreign policy
experts have done? Seems the world is less safe and increasingly more messed up as a direct
result of these "experts" actions and policies.
Uselessboy, 3/3/2016 12:37 PM EST
Conservatives certainly loved them when they were backing their unjustified Iraq invasion
and demanding respect for Bush even by those who thought he was breaking laws.
johng4, 3/3/2016 11:47 AM EST
Instead of calling these opponents Neocons, we should be calling them the Israel Lobby.
They will wage war against any politician who doesn't agree to make America's Middle East
policy coextensive with that of Israel. They don't care if their attacks destroy the
Republican Party, because their loyalties lie elsewhere. Their motto is rule or ruin.
JohnMIII, 3/3/2016 11:41 AM EST
Aren't these the same Necons that swore up and down that Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction and was such a serious threat we needed to launch an invasion costing thousands of
lives and trillions of dollars? They have zero credibility anymore. Who cares what they say?
DirtyConSanchez, 3/3/2016 7:32 AM EST
Poor little neocon warmongers squealing like stuck war pigs. Too bad, no more war
profiteering for you little piggies. The big bad orange furred wolf Donald is coming to eat
your bacon. And he has a 150 million strong wolfpack coming along to assist him.
Trump '16
JDavis, 3/3/2016 5:55 AM EST
Michael Hayden suggesting insubordination isn't surprising. He and Cheney have been mucking
up this country for years with the dirt they collected when Hayden was director of the NSA.
They don't respect the presidency. They want all power for themselves.
Jason Oneil, 3/3/2016 4:53 AM EST
Conservative???
What a joke. The neocons and the Israel Lobby are in total panic....Trump is not their puppet
who will let them hijack our country into endless wars based on lies.
Expose these traitors.
ObjectiveReader1, 3/3/2016 4:26 AM EST [Edited]
Doc Zakheim and Bob Zoellick?! I oppose Trump but these two dolts have no credibility.
Zakheim was Undersecretary of Defense and Pentagon Comptroller under Bush Jr. He worked on the
disastrous funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which were debt financed. In
the run up to the Iraq invasion, Zakheim publicly stated that Saddam was working on a nuclear
bomb. Why doesn't Zakheim send a Letter to the American people apologizing for his role in not
telling American taxpayers the truth about how much the Iraq war was going to cost.
Bob Zoellick was US Trade Rep under Bush Jr. He worked on Cafta. He's an open borders guy.
Free trade agreements like Nafta have hurt American workers. Bernie Sanders and Trump both
openly criticize nafta and the TPP.
Open Borders Zoellick and Iraq War neocon Zakheim have no credibility.
pamfah_99, 3/3/2016 3:34 AM EST
Don't these people realize that no one listens to them. They are the people who got us into
Bush's mess in the mid-East that we are still paying for. Never mind all our vets who were
killed and injured. They just don't understand what Trump represents. They think we are stupid
and we are not. Go ahead and try to run Trump - see what happens to you. And Romney - that
moron - remember that comment about the 47% or whatever it was. Talk about the establishment
and the absolute disregard we had for us. Who listens to him either. About time the
Republicans let democracy take its course and stop trying to act like Nazis. We, as Americans,
have to right to vote for whomever we please.
Miro23, 3/3/2016 2:27 AM EST [Edited]
Their problem with Trump always comes back to the same point:
He said, "We've spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people that, frankly, if they were
there and if we could have spent that $4 trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our
bridges, and all of the other problems - our airports and all the other problems we have - we
would have been a lot better off, I can tell you that right now.
We have done a tremendous disservice not only to the Middle East - we've done a tremendous
disservice to humanity. The people that have been killed, the people that have been wiped away
- and for what? It's not like we had victory. It's a mess. The Middle East is totally
destabilized, a total and complete mess. I wish we had the 4 trillion dollars or 5 trillion
dollars. I wish it were spent right here in the United States on schools, hospitals, roads,
airports, and everything else that are all falling apart!"
They've smashed up Iraq and Libya, want to do the same to Syria and get on with bombing
Iran using US blood and money. They're more AINO's (Americans In Name Only) than
"Neo-Conservative" and couldn't care less about parties, Republicans, Democrats. They just
want a President who will shut up and do what they want – like Bush, Rubio or Clinton or
Romney(?) or some other Muppet.
PoliticallyIncorrect4, 3/3/2016 1:53 AM EST
Guess what, nobody gives a damned sh$%#$%# about what these think.
The people who developed GW Bush's national security agenda of international interventionism
-with the Iraq war as the prime example of the perils of such approach- are in no position to
lecture anyone on national security or international issues.
We have tried the professional politicians and their advisers. It didn't work. Time to move
ahead with a completely new approach.
dbi, 3/3/2016 12:39 AM EST
The Washington Post is calling Frances Townsend "a foreign policy expert"? Give it up. The
woman pretends to know the smallest tidbit of information in the Pentagon and White House but
the fact is, she doesn't have a security clearance and is not in any of the special briefings
or secret meetings. She isn't cleared for anything and talks in gibberish. Michael Hayden was
fired and he, too, has no security clearance and no access to confidential and secret material
and meetings in the DoD. More gibberish. These people, like others mentioned, are bitter and
basically unemployed under President Obama. They just can't get over it and move on.
Manray9, 3/3/2016 12:11 AM EST [Edited]
This collection of so-called "Republican foreign policy experts" are all hip-deep in
complicity for the Iraq fiasco. Maybe Trump is on to something in calling out Republican
"leaders" on the nation's greatest national security and foreign policy disaster since
Vietnam? Many people in America, and especially Trump supporters, are disgusted with the
course of events created and managed by the same malefactors now attacking Trump. The GOP big
shots just don't get it.
FedEx Sect 120, 3/3/2016 5:16 AM EST
It is amazing to me how all of these war hawks are complaining now about being lied to
about weapons of mass destruction. Those of us who called it a lie then were being told that
they were being unpatriotic or better yet un-American. Wake up folk every time a Republican is
in office we go to war. Then the Democrats have to clean up their mess. Then get blamed for
not doing the cleanup fast enough while Republicans stand in the way and hinder the Democrats
for cleaning it up properly. If the Republican get in office get ready to see our children in
another war. Get ready to go back to high unemployment , high foreclosures, high losses in
your retirement plan, and high bank failures. Don't forget who propped up Bin Laden and Saddam
Hussein,; yeah your great Republican leader Ronald Reagan. War War War War War
Swift301, 3/3/2016 12:09 AM EST
Eliot Cohen? Trump is totally nuts on many levels but Eliot Cohen is well, just follow his
career path, an endless wimp for war whose policy views have resulted in the largest increase
of influence in the Middle East of Iran ever:
"Cohen has referred to the War on Terrorism as "World War IV".[6] In the run-up to the 2003
Invasion of Iraq, he was a member of Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a group of
prominent persons who pressed for an invasion."
These are the mouthbreathers who brought us the Iraq War, supported Libyan intervention,
and support Syrian intervention. Our foreign policy would be better if directed by a statue.
Are these idiots going to realize that they're making us all want to vote for him more and
more? It's like PNAC founders Kagan and Cohen endorsing Hillary - pretty sure it's having the
opposite effect of what they want.
Stephen Clark, 3/2/2016 10:58 PM EST
Whatever! There is one and only one reason why Bush-era foreign policy people are
attacking Trump: He has rejected their extreme neocon warmongering. They want a president who
will start whatever wars Netanyahu orders, and they think Trump will tell Netanyahu to go
screw himself.
"... Turns out, the Podesta Group founded by none other than John Podesta, Hillary's campaign chair and chief strategies, was retained by the Russian-owned firm UraniumOne in 2012, 2014, and 2015 to lobby Hillary Clinton's State Department based on John Podesta's longstanding relations with the Clinton family – he was the White House Chief of Staff under Bill Clinton. ..."
The FBI and Department of Justice have launched an investigation into whether the Podesta
Group has any connections to alleged corruption that occurred in the administration of former Ukrainian
President Viktor Yanukovych.
It seems like just yesterday that the top campaign official for Donald Trump found himself caught
in the middle of a political dragnet for his work as a lobbyist on behalf of Viktor Yanukovych with
the media clamoring about his purported ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a reason why
the Republican nominee was a less desirable candidate than Hillary Clinton. Wait, that was just yesterday?
It turns out that Hillary Clinton's campaign guru, head of the lobbying firm the
Podesta Group, has found himself smack dab in the middle of the same
criminal investigation spawned when devious political operatives decide to merge
international relations with campaign politics. For weeks, the pages of the
Washington Post, the Daily Beast, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal
have chimed that Trump is a "Putin pawn" as part of some maniacal plot by the Kremlin
to interfere with the US election.
Turns out, the Podesta Group founded by none
other than John Podesta, Hillary's campaign chair and chief strategies, was retained
by the Russian-owned firm UraniumOne in 2012, 2014, and 2015 to lobby Hillary
Clinton's State Department based on John Podesta's longstanding relations with the
Clinton family – he was the White House Chief of Staff under Bill Clinton.
Interestingly, UraniumOne's chairman used his family foundation to make four donations
totaling $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation from 2009 to 2013. Perhaps a more blatant
evidence of allegations that Hillary Clinton's State Department operated on a pay-to-play basis
is the fact that, as the New York Times reported last April, "shortly after the Russians
announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received
$500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was
promoting UraniumOne stock.
Not only are investigators wondering whether there was any impropriety in the lobbying
arrangement such as the provision of beneficial treatment by the State Department to an old
friend, but they are also probing the work that Viktor Yanukovych's regime paid the Podesta Group
to do while he was the head of the Ukrainian government.
The controversy for Podesta links to
his work for the Centre for a Modern Ukraine, a Brussels based organization that describes itself
as "an advocate for enhancing EU-Ukraine relations." Unfortunately for Mr. Podesta, the
organization has been described as "an operation controlled by Yanukovych" and tied to the former
leader's Party of Regions suggesting the Podesta Group may have been, like has been said of Paul
Manafort, tasked with greater reporting requirements pursuant to US law.
The Podesta Group quickly hired the white-shoe law firm Caplin & Drysdale as "independent,
outside legal counsel to determine if we were misled by the Centre for a Modern Ukraine or any
other individuals with regard to the Centre's potential ties to foreign governments or political
parties."
And the plot of the 2016 presidential election thickens.
"... You haven't heard much from the Democrats lately about foreign policy or global agendas – indeed virtually nothing at the Philadelphia convention and little worthy of mention along the campaign trail. ..."
"... But no one should be fooled: a Clinton presidency, which seems more likely by the day, can be expected to stoke a resurgent U.S. imperialism, bringing new cycles of militarism and war. The silence is illusory: Clintonites, now as before, are truly obsessed with international politics. ..."
"... A triumphant Hillary, more "rational" and "savvy" than the looney and unpredictable Donald Trump, could well have a freer path to emboldened superpower moves not only in Europe but the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Pacific. While the candidate has not revealed much lately, she is on record as vowing to "stand up" to Russia and China, face off against Russian "aggression", escalate the war on terror, and militarily annihilate Iran the moment it steps out of line (or is determined by "U.S. intelligence" to have stepped out of line) in its nuclear agreement with global powers. ..."
"... A new Clinton presidency can be expected to further boost the U.S./NATO drive to strangle and isolate Russia, which means aggravated "crises" in Ukraine and worrisome encounters with a rival military power in a region saturated with (tactical, "usable") nuclear weapons. Regime change in Syria? Hillary has indeed strongly pushed for that self-defeating act of war, combined with an illegal and provocative no-fly zone - having learned nothing from the extreme chaos and violence she did so much to unleash in Libya as Secretary of State. ..."
"... Democratic elites say little publicly about these and other imperial priorities, preferring familiar homilies such as "bringing jobs back" (not going to happen) and "healing the country" (not going to happen). Silence appears to function exquisitely in a political culture where open and vigorous debate on foreign-policy is largely taboo and elite discourse rarely surpasses the level of banal platitudes. And Hillary's worshipful liberal and progressive backers routinely follow the script (or non-script) while fear-mongering about how a Trump presidency will destroy the country (now that the Sanders threat has vanished). ..."
"... Who needs to be reminded that Hillary's domestic promises, such as they are, will become null and void once urgent global "crises" take precedence? The Pentagon, after all, always comes first. ..."
"... There is a special logic to the Clintonites' explosive mixture of neoliberalism and militarism. They, like all corporate Democrats, are fully aligned with some of the most powerful interests in the world: Wall Street, the war economy, fossil fuels, Big Pharma, the Israel Lobby. They also have intimate ties to reactionary global forces – the neofascist regime in Ukraine, Israel, Saudi Arabia, other Gulf states. ..."
"... Predictably, Trump's "unreliability" to oversee American global objectives has been an ongoing motif at CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. ..."
"... Jackie was reported as saying "that what worried President Kennedy during that very dangerous time was that a war might be started – not by men with self-control and restraint, but by little men, the ones moved by fear and pride." ..."
You haven't heard much from the Democrats lately about foreign policy or global agendas – indeed
virtually nothing at the Philadelphia convention and little worthy of mention along the campaign
trail. Hillary Clinton's many liberal (and sadly, progressive) supporters routinely steer away
from anything related to foreign policy, talk, talk, talking instead about the candidate's "experience",
with obligatory nods toward her enlightened social programs. There is only the ritual
demonization of that fearsome dictator, Vladimir Putin, reputedly on the verge of invading some hapless
European country. Even Bernie Sanders' sorry endorsement of his erstwhile enemy, not
long ago denounced as a tool of Wall Street, had nothing to say about global issues.
But no one should be fooled: a Clinton presidency, which seems more likely by the day, can be
expected to stoke a resurgent U.S. imperialism, bringing new cycles of militarism and war. The silence
is illusory: Clintonites, now as before, are truly obsessed with international politics.
A triumphant Hillary, more "rational" and "savvy" than the looney and unpredictable Donald Trump,
could well have a freer path to emboldened superpower moves not only in Europe but the Middle East,
Central Asia, and the Pacific. While the candidate has not revealed much lately, she is on record
as vowing to "stand up" to Russia and China, face off against Russian "aggression", escalate the
war on terror, and militarily annihilate Iran the moment it steps out of line (or is determined by
"U.S. intelligence" to have stepped out of line) in its nuclear agreement with global powers.
Under Clinton, the Democrats might well be better positioned to recharge their historical
legacy as War Party. One of the great political myths (and there are many) is that American liberals
are inclined toward a less belligerent foreign policy than Republicans, are less militaristic and
more favorable toward "diplomacy". References to Woodrow Wilson in World War I and Mexico, Harry
Truman in Korea, JFK and LBJ in Indochina, Bill Clinton in the Balkans, and of course Barack Obama
in Afghanistan (eight years of futile warfare), Libya (also "Hillary's War"), and scattered operations
across the Middle East and North Africa should be enough to dispel such nonsense. (As for FDR and
World War II, I have written extensively that the Pearl Harbor attacks were deliberately provoked
by U.S. actions in the Pacific – but that is a more complicated story.)
... ... ...
A new Clinton presidency can be expected to further boost the U.S./NATO drive to strangle
and isolate Russia, which means aggravated "crises" in Ukraine and worrisome encounters with a rival
military power in a region saturated with (tactical, "usable") nuclear weapons. Regime
change in Syria? Hillary has indeed strongly pushed for that self-defeating act of war,
combined with an illegal and provocative no-fly zone - having learned nothing from the extreme chaos
and violence she did so much to unleash in Libya as Secretary of State. There are currently
no visible signs she would exit the protracted and criminal war in Afghanistan, a rich source of
blowback (alongside Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Israel). Increased aerial bombardments against
ISIS in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and elsewhere? More deployments of American troops on the ground?
Such ventures, with potentially others on the horizon, amount to elaborate recipes for more
blowback, followed by more anti-terror hysteria, followed by more interventions.
Uncompromising economic, diplomatic, and military support of Israeli atrocities in Palestine?
Aggressive pursuit of the seriously mistaken "Asian Pivot", strategy, a revitalized effort to subvert
Chinese economic and military power – one of Clinton's own special crusades? No wonder the Paul Wolfowitzes
and Robert Kagans are delighted to join the Hillary camp.
No wonder, too, that billionaire super-hawk Haim Saban has pledged to spend whatever is needed
to get the Clintons back into the White House, convinced her presidency will do anything to maintain
Palestinian colonial subjugation. Meeting with Saban in July, Hillary again promised to "oppose any
effort to delegitimate Israel, including at the United Nations or through the Boycott, Divestment,
and Sanctions movement." She backs legislative efforts begun in several states to silence and blacklist
people working on behalf of Palestinian rights. For this her celebrated "pragmatism" could work quite
effectively.
Democratic elites say little publicly about these and other imperial priorities, preferring
familiar homilies such as "bringing jobs back" (not going to happen) and "healing the country" (not
going to happen). Silence appears to function exquisitely in a political culture where
open and vigorous debate on foreign-policy is largely taboo and elite discourse rarely surpasses
the level of banal platitudes. And Hillary's worshipful liberal and progressive backers
routinely follow the script (or non-script) while fear-mongering about how a Trump presidency will
destroy the country (now that the Sanders threat has vanished).
Amidst the turmoil Trump has oddly surfaced to the left of Clinton on several key global
issues: cooperating instead of fighting with the Russians, keeping alive a sharp criticism of the
Iraq war and the sustained regional chaos and blowback it generated, ramping down enthusiasm for
more wars in the Middle East, junking "free trade" agreements, willingness to rethink the outmoded
NATO alliance. If Trump, however haphazardly, manages to grasp the historical dynamics of blowback,
the Clinton camp remains either indifferent or clueless, still ready for new armed ventures – cynically
marketed, as in the Balkans, Iraq, and Libya, on the moral imperative of defeating some unspeakable
evil, usually a "new Hitler" waging a "new genocide". Who needs to be reminded that Hillary's
domestic promises, such as they are, will become null and void once urgent global "crises" take precedence?
The Pentagon, after all, always comes first.
... ... ...
...At the other extreme, Clinton emerges in the media as the most "rational" and "even-tempered"
of candidates, ideally suited to carry out the necessary imperial agendas. A tiresome mainstream
narrative is that Hillary is "one of the best prepared and most knowledgeable candidates ever to
seek the presidency." And she is smart, very smart – whatever her flaws. All the better
to follow in the long history of Democrats proficient at showing the world who is boss. The
media, for its part, adores these Democrats, another reason Trump appears to have diminished chances
of winning. Further, the well-funded and tightly-organized Clinton machine can count on somewhat
large majorities of women, blacks, and Hispanics, not only for the march to the White House but,
more ominously, to go along with the War Party's imperial spectacle of the day. Most anything – war,
regime change, bombing raids, drone strikes, treaty violations, JFK-style "standoffs" – can escape
political scrutiny if carried out by "humanitarian", peace-loving Democrats. Bill Clinton's
war to fight "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" in the Balkans, cover for just another U.S./NATO geopolitical
maneuver, constitutes the perfect template here.
There is a special logic to the Clintonites' explosive mixture of neoliberalism and militarism.
They, like all corporate Democrats, are fully aligned with some of the most powerful interests in
the world: Wall Street, the war economy, fossil fuels, Big Pharma, the Israel Lobby. They also have
intimate ties to reactionary global forces – the neofascist regime in Ukraine, Israel, Saudi Arabia,
other Gulf states.
... In March 121 members of the Republican "national security community", including the warmongers
Wolfowitz, Robert Kagan, and Brent Scowcroft, signed a public letter condemning Trump for not being
sufficiently dedicated to American (also Israeli?) interests. Trump compounded his predicament by
stubbornly refusing to pay homage to the "experts" – the same foreign-policy geniuses who helped
orchestrate the Iraq debacle. A more recent (and more urgent) letter with roughly the same message
has made its way into the public sphere. Predictably, Trump's "unreliability" to oversee
American global objectives has been an ongoing motif at CNN, the New York Times, the
Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal.
Returning to the political carneval that was the Democratic convention, amidst all the non-stop
flag-waving and shouts of "USA!" Hillary made what she thought would be an inspiring reference to
Jackie Kennedy, speaking on the eve of her husband's (1961) ascent to the White House. Jackie was
reported as saying "that what worried President Kennedy during that very dangerous time was that
a war might be started – not by men with self-control and restraint, but by little men, the ones
moved by fear and pride."
We can surmise that JFK was one of those "big men" governed
by "restraint". History shows, however, that Jackie's esteemed husband was architect
of probably the worst episode of international barbarism in U.S. history – the Vietnam War, with
its unfathomable death and destruction – coming at a time of the Big Man's botched CIA-led invasion
of Cuba and followed closely by the Cuban Missile Crisis, where the Big Man's "restraint" brought
the world frighteningly close to nuclear catastrophe. As for "fear" and "pride" – nothing permeates
JFK's biography of that period more than those two psychological obsessions.
Could it be that Hillary Clinton, however unwittingly, was at this epic moment – her breakthrough
nomination – revealing nothing so much as her own deeply-imperialist mind-set?
Carl Boggs is the author of The Hollywood War Machine, with
Tom Pollard (second edition, forthcoming), and Drugs, Power, and Politics, both published by
Paradigm.
No progressives worth their name would vote for Hillary. Betrayal of Sanders made the choice
more difficult, but still there no alternative. Clinton "No passaran!". Also "Clinton proved capable
of coming to an agreement with Sanders. He received good money,
bought a new house, published a book, and joined with Clinton, calling on his supporters to vote
for her"...
Crappy slogans like "hold
her feet to the fire" are lies. Has there ever been serious detail about that? I've seen this line over
and over. Hillary is dyed-in-the-wool neoliberal and will behave as such as soon as she get
into office. You can view her iether as (more jingoistic) Obama II or (equally reckless) Bush III.
If she wins, the next opportunity to check her neoliberal leaning will
be only during the next Persidential election.
Notable quotes:
"... ...was Clinton the better progressive choice against Sanders? Almost no Sanders-supporting Democratic voter would say yes to that. Not on trade, not on climate, not on breaking up too-big Wall Street banks, not on criminally prosecuting (finally) "too big to jail" members of the elite - not on any number of issues that touch core progressives values. ..."
"... It's time for progressives who helped Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders in the primary to take the lead on holding her accountable. ..."
"... She's now appointed two pro-TPP politicians to key positions on her campaign - Tim Kaine as her Vice President and Ken Salazar to lead her presidential transition team. It's time for progressives who helped Clinton beat Bernie Sanders in the primary to take the lead on holding her accountable. ..."
"... The choice of Salazar is a pretty good sign that as expected we'll be seeing the 'revolving door' in full force in a Clinton administration. As head of the transition he'll have enormous influence on who fills thousands of jobs at the White House and federal agencies. ..."
"... It is really important to stop referring to "job-killing trade deals" and point out every single time they are mentioned that the TPP, TTIP and TISA are about GOVERNANCE, not about "trade" in any sense that a normal person understands it. ..."
"... TPP & its ilk, like NAFTA and CAFTA before them, are about world government by multinational corporations via their Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions. ..."
"... Regulatory arb, slice of corruption, and like shareholder value memes an equity burnishing tool… ..."
"... One thing I liked about Thom Hartmann was he relentlessly drove home the point that the US succeeded, grew, and became the dominant economic power in the world through the use of TARIFFS. Tariffs are necessary. ..."
"... The nafta-shafta deals relinquish the right to even think about tariffs. You don't have a sovereign nation any more. ..."
"... You can visit the prosperous Samsung-suburb of Suwon, Korea and see all the abandoned manufacturing space (where Korea was just a step on the path to Vietnam and Bangladesh). ..."
"... Information revolution automation is substituting machines for human intelligence. Here the race to the bottom is a single step, and these "trade" deals are all about rules of governance that will apply when people have been stripped of all economic power. ..."
"... merely infinite wealth and power for a thin oligarchy of robot/machine owners? ..."
"... Globalization and Technologization is a canard they use to explain the impoverishment and death of the working class. ..."
"... The fact that auto manufactures moved plants to low wage, nonunion, right to work states actually highlights the fact that labor costs drive the decision where to locate manufacturing plants. ..."
...was Clinton the better progressive choice against Sanders? Almost no Sanders-supporting Democratic
voter would say yes to that. Not on trade, not on climate, not on breaking up too-big Wall Street
banks, not on criminally prosecuting (finally) "too big to jail" members of the elite - not on any
number of issues that touch core progressives values.
... ... ...
Becky Bond on the Challenge to Clinton Supporters
...Bond looks at what the primary has wrought, and issues this challenge to activists who helped
defeat Sanders: You broke it, you bought it. Will you now take charge in the fight to hold Clinton
accountable? Or will you hang back (enjoying the fruits) and let others take the lead? ("Enjoying
the fruits" is my addition. As one attendee noted, the Democratic Convention this year seemed very
much like "a jobs fair.")
Bond says this, writing in
The Hill (my emphasis):
Progressive Clinton supporters: You broke it, you bought it
It's time for progressives who helped Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders in the primary to
take the lead on holding her accountable.
With Donald Trump tanking in the polls, there's room for progressives to simultaneously
crush his bid for the presidency while holding Hillary Clinton's feet to the fire on the TPP
.
And yet:
She's now appointed two pro-TPP politicians to key positions on her campaign - Tim Kaine as her Vice President and Ken Salazar to lead her presidential transition team. It's
time for progressives who helped Clinton beat Bernie Sanders in the primary to take the lead on
holding her accountable.
... ... ...
Bond has more on Salazar and why both he and Tim Kaine are a "tell," a signal of things to come
from Hillary Clinton: "The choice of Salazar is a pretty good sign that as expected we'll be seeing
the 'revolving door' in full force in a Clinton administration. As head of the transition he'll have
enormous influence on who fills thousands of jobs at the White House and federal agencies."
It is really important to stop referring to "job-killing trade deals" and point out every single
time they are mentioned that the TPP, TTIP and TISA are about GOVERNANCE, not about "trade" in
any sense that a normal person understands it.
This is the evil behind the lie of calling these
"trade" agreements and putting the focus on "jobs." TPP & its ilk, like NAFTA and CAFTA before
them, are about world government by multinational corporations via their Investor State Dispute
Settlement (ISDS) provisions.
That's what's at stake; not jobs. The jobs will be lost to automation
anyway; they are never coming back. The TPP et al legal straight jackets do not sell out jobs,
that's already been done. No, what these phony trade agreements do is foreclose any hope of achieving
functioning democracies. Please start saying so!
I miss-typed above. Of course I meant TPP and not ttp.
Yes, WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA, etc., certainly killed jobs. However, those jobs are not coming back
to these shores. In the higher wage countries, "good" jobs - in manufacturing and in many "knowledge"
and "service" sectors - as well as unskilled jobs, are being or have been replaced with automated
means and methods.
Just a few examples: automobile assemblers; retail cashiers; secretaries; steelworkers; highway
toll collectors; gas station attendants. ETC. Here's what's happened so far just in terms of Great
Lakes freighters:
"The wheelman stood behind Captain Ross, clutching a surprisingly tiny, computerized steering
wheel. He wore driving gloves and turned the Equinox every few seconds in whatever direction the
captain told him to. The wheel, computer monitors and what looked like a server farm filling the
wheelhouse are indicative of changes in the shipping industry. Twenty years ago, it took 35 crew
members to run a laker. The Equinox operates with 16, only a handful of whom are on duty at once."
TPP, TTIP and TISA are about GOVERNANCE, not trade, and only very incidentally, jobs. The rulers
of the universe vastly prefer paying no wages to paying low wages, and whatever can be automated,
will be, eventually in low-wage countries as well as here and in Europe. A great deal of this
has already happened and it will continue. Only 5 sections of the TPP even deal with trade–that's
out of 29. Don't take this on my authority; Public Citizen is the gold standard of analysis regarding
these so-called "trade" agreements.
It took the OverClass several decades to send all those jobs away from our shores. It would
take several decades to bring those jobs back to our shores. But it could be done within a context
of militant belligerent protectionism.
Americans are smart enough to make spoons, knives and forks. We used to make them. We could
make them again. The only obstacles are contrived and artificial political-economic and policy
obstacles. Apply a different Market Forcefield to the American Market, and the actors within that
market would act differently over the several decades to come.
One thing I liked about Thom Hartmann was he relentlessly drove home the point that the US
succeeded, grew, and became the dominant economic power in the world through the use of TARIFFS.
Tariffs are necessary. They protect your industries while at the same time bringing in a lot of
revenue.
The nafta-shafta deals relinquish the right to even think about tariffs. You don't have a
sovereign
nation any more.
The first round of industrial revolution automation substituted machines for human/horse mechanical
exertion. We reached "peak horse" around 1900, and the move to low-wage/low-regulation states
was just a step on the global race to the bottom. You can visit the prosperous Samsung-suburb
of Suwon, Korea and see all the abandoned manufacturing space (where Korea was just a step on
the path to Vietnam and Bangladesh).
Information revolution automation is substituting machines for human intelligence. Here the
race to the bottom is a single step, and these "trade" deals are all about rules of governance
that will apply when people have been stripped of all economic power.
Will the rise of the machines lead to abundance for all, or merely infinite wealth and power
for a thin oligarchy of robot/machine owners? TPP and it's ilk may be the last chance for we the
people to have any say in it.
Manufacturing
is in decline due to Reagan's tax cuts and low investment. Globalization and Technologization
is a canard they use to explain the impoverishment and death of the working class.
@Squirrel – Labor costs, as you say, are a driving force; they are not the only one.
Notice that the products you mentioned are all large heavy items. In these cases the transportation
costs are high enough that the companies want their production to be close to their final market.
The lower cost of labor elsewhere is not enough to compensate for the higher shipping costs from
those locations. In addition, the wage gap between the US and other places has narrowed over the
past 20 years, mostly due to the ongoing suppression of wage gains in the US. Your examples are
exceptions that do not falsify the original premise that a huge amount of manufacturing has moved
to lower wage locations. And those moves are still ongoing, e.g., Carrier moving to Mexico.
The cost of manufactured goods has not fallen because the labor savings is going to profit
and executive compensation, not reduced prices.
The fact that auto manufactures moved plants to low wage, nonunion, right to work states actually
highlights the fact that labor costs drive the decision where to locate manufacturing plants.
"... All these elections are equally fake. At some point you're going to have to stop pecking B.F. Skinner's levers, because the pellets have stopped coming out. But there's no point reasoning with you till your extinction burst finally subsides. ..."
"... This is not a very good piece for several reasons, one being only in the nonsense universe of US mainstream discourse can Clinton be termed a 'centrist' or can someone be depicted as a bona fide 'progressive' and also be a supporter of Clinton. I wouldn't waste a moment trying to pressure 'Clinton progressives' on anything – there is no historical evidence she or Bill have ever had the slightest interest in the public interest. At best a 'Clinton progressive' might claim to be 'defending' some existing public good, but good luck there as well – as Trump is not the source of any real 'threat', that distinction belonging to the existing power elites (military, financial, corporate, legal, media etc.) Clinton serves. ..."
"... The idea that Clinton ever was 'open' to progressives reminds me of why the putrid Rahm Emmanuel could dismiss the left as a 'bunch of retards'. Time to make them eat those words by taking ourselves and our values and our thinking seriously enough we stop fearing not being taken 'seriously' by so loathsome a crew as the Clintons. ..."
Here in Temple Grandin's touchy-feely slaughterhouse, Sanders gets 45% of the vote and leads
them down Hillary's cattle chute for slaughter – not cooption, not marginalization, but the bolt
gun to the head, with lots of sadistic poleaxing straight out of an illegal PETA video. The surviving
livestock are auctioned off for flensing through gleeful trading in influence. This we learn,
is not beyond redemption. In some demented psycho-Quaker sense, perhaps. What the fuck WON'T you
put up with?
In this psychotic mindset, Kim Jong Un's 99.97% victory proves he's like twice as worthwhile
as any Dem. Write him in. Nursultan Nazarbayev, too, his 98% success speaks for itself. Write
him in. All these elections are equally fake. At some point you're going to have to stop pecking
B.F. Skinner's levers, because the pellets have stopped coming out. But there's no point reasoning
with you till your extinction burst finally subsides.
Then we can talk about how you knock over moribund regimes.
This is not a very good piece for several reasons, one being only in the nonsense universe
of US mainstream discourse can Clinton be termed a 'centrist' or can someone be depicted as a
bona fide 'progressive' and also be a supporter of Clinton. I wouldn't waste a moment trying to
pressure 'Clinton progressives' on anything – there is no historical evidence she or Bill have
ever had the slightest interest in the public interest. At best a 'Clinton progressive' might
claim to be 'defending' some existing public good, but good luck there as well – as Trump is not
the source of any real 'threat', that distinction belonging to the existing power elites (military,
financial, corporate, legal, media etc.) Clinton serves.
There are 3 critical issues 'progressives', Greens, lefties, libertarians and others must come
together en masse to resist: TPP immediately, US foreign policy of permanent wars of aggression
now involving the entire Muslim world and fossil fuels. Don't waste any time hoping to influence
Clinton (you won't) or fretting about Trump. First TPP, then anti-War/anti-fossil fuels.
I am convinced TPP can be beaten – not with 'Clinton activists', but with a broad coalition
of interests. And once it has been beaten, the supremely idiotic 'war on terror' is next up. Americans'
votes and electoral desires have been ignored and suppressed. Other legitimate means therefore
must be taken up and utilized to change critical policy failures directly.
The idea that Clinton ever was 'open' to progressives reminds me of why the putrid Rahm Emmanuel
could dismiss the left as a 'bunch of retards'. Time to make them eat those words by taking ourselves
and our values and our thinking seriously enough we stop fearing not being taken 'seriously' by
so loathsome a crew as the Clintons.
"... Until she demonstrated her vile nature as Secretary of State, the problem with Hillary has been the cast of miscreants she surrounds herself with such as John Podesta. Obama might have actually at least not surrounded herself with such vile people, but Hillary's 2007 henchmen were a sign she was unfit for any office. Trying to grab an empty suit, Obama, before he made connections just made sense. ..."
"... Other than that, she was First Lady and an unremarkable Senator. The line about Mos Eisley from Star Wars accurately describes the Senate. ..."
"... I think "progressive" is a such a mushy term it's hard to fit anybody into it on any criteria other than that they identify themselves as such. ..."
"... That's why there's never a real answer to "Progress in what direction?" And the progressives of today have no historical "bloodline" connection to the Progressives of the late 19th and early 20th century (except maybe some vague technocratic leanings, the 10% of that day). ..."
"... But if Hillary Clinton and Ezra Klein at al. get to call themselves progressive, it's a useless term ..."
"... All I ever hear from Clinton supporters (even those newly aligned former Bernie supporters), is 'because Trump'. They appear starry-eyed and brainwashed because she's 'not Trump'. I don't predict any of 'em pushing Clinton on any issues. ..."
"... Even if they tried, Clinton has already shown, IMO, that unless you have millions of dollars to throw at her feet you'll never get her attention, let alone force any change in her policies. ..."
"... 2020 starts on November 9. Even if Clinton seems legitimate on election day, she'll delegitimize herself in short order. She won't be able to help herself. ..."
"... IMO she already did that at the end of the campaign trail by choosing Kaine as her running mate, Salazar for her transition team (& suggesting Bill as economic advisor?). http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/hillary_clintons_choice_of_ken_salazar_comes_under_fire_video_20160818 ..."
"... Kaine, along with IIRC Rahm, purged the Democrats of activists from Howard Dean's 50-state strategy post-2006. ..."
"... Hillary is a lying war hawk. ..."
"... Too bad Sanders turned out to be a sheepdog for the D party. He really should get the best actor in a political campaign award. After he endorsed Clinton it was clear as day it was ALL one big performance. ..."
"... Young Sanders voters had a damned clear idea of the limits of what he was offering. They voted for him anyway, because he just sucked so much less than the jowly pair of creeps who stand before us now. ..."
"... Can anyone doubt that Hillary will pull a super-Obama once elected, rejecting all her promises and implementing their opposites once elected? It amazes me that many people do, that they think they will have some ability to control policy. If things get too hot in the kitchen politically speaking, isn't it OBVIOUS that a 2-pronged propaganda effort will be unleashed, to hide blatantly unpopular moves on the one hand, and/or talk them up as if they were falsely maligned and in the TINA category on the other. ..."
"... "This really matters. That Clinton is a better progressive choice than Trump is not much contested." Really? Reeeeaaaaa lly? Perhaps, as others have said way upthread, that is part of the problem right there. ..."
"... Reading the article at this link should help progressives get over their fear of a President Trump. That fear is the only thing preventing them from voting for someone other than Clinton. Maybe the progressives should consider the possibility that they have nothing to fear but fear itself. ..."
"... Because when he focuses on the last few-couple decades and especially the last few years, including CLINTON'S last few years, he makes serious sense. As well as his discussion of who has what military capabilities nowadays, and what a mistaken estimation of who has what military capabilities nowadays can lead the mistakers to lead their country into, box-canyon-of-no-return speaking-wise. ..."
Until she demonstrated her vile nature as Secretary of State, the problem with Hillary has
been the cast of miscreants she surrounds herself with such as John Podesta. Obama might have
actually at least not surrounded herself with such vile people, but Hillary's 2007 henchmen were
a sign she was unfit for any office. Trying to grab an empty suit, Obama, before he made connections
just made sense.
Other than that, she was First Lady and an unremarkable Senator. The line about Mos Eisley
from Star Wars accurately describes the Senate.
I think "progressive" is a such a mushy term it's hard to fit anybody into it on any criteria
other than that they identify themselves as such. I was there for the creation of the term, and
there was a lot of discussion about it in the blogosphere at the time. Basically, the conservatives
had managed, by dint of repetition, in making "liberal" a dirty word, so they needed rebranding.
That's all "progressive" is; a rebranding.
That's why there's never a real answer to "Progress
in what direction?" And the progressives of today have no historical "bloodline" connection to
the Progressives of the late 19th and early 20th century (except maybe some vague technocratic
leanings, the 10% of that day).
I never liked the word liberal and never self-identified as such. Even as a kid, I think I
intuited its connection back to Locke and classical liberalism. I had been calling myself progressive
for a while, as it seemed like a nice connection to the earlier progressive movement pushing back
against the first Gilded Age and a way of talking about the left that wasn't too scary for people
trapped in the liberal paradigm.
But if Hillary Clinton and Ezra Klein at al. get to call themselves progressive, it's a useless
term. I've reverted back to "leftist". I strongly doubt Hill and Ezra will want that. We'll see.
Sorry, but I saw this article as little more than wishful thinking.
"It's time for progressives who helped Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders in the primary to
take the lead on holding her accountable."
Not gonna happen.
Even if those supporting her were to 'make a little noise' over things they're opposed to, what
makes Bond think she'd listen? Wasn't the Dem convention revealing enough?
All I ever hear from Clinton supporters (even those newly aligned former Bernie supporters), is
'because Trump'.
They appear starry-eyed and brainwashed because she's 'not Trump'. I don't predict any of 'em
pushing Clinton on any issues.
Even if they tried, Clinton has already shown, IMO, that unless you have millions of dollars
to throw at her feet you'll never get her attention, let alone force any change in her policies.
2020 starts on November 9. Even if Clinton seems legitimate on election day, she'll delegitimize
herself in short order. She won't be able to help herself.
She also confirmed it at the convention by silencing those there to push for platform reform.
(I really had no idea just how much weight the head of a transition team carries until I watched
this video).
I'd like to add that although I will be in the voting booth come November, none of the presidential
candidates will get my vote. Trump is an ignorant egomaniac. Hillary is a lying war hawk. Johnson
is another right-wing looney. And Stein, while she has some really good stances, lied during the
CNN town hall (and I know because I actually read the Green Platform). I'm not even sure I will
vote for the Dem challenger to my lousy Repub senator because the challenger is just another party
hack who, like Hillary, only says what we want to hear.
Sanders did not "come out of nowhere".
I and others followed and heard him for years on the Tom Hartman show.
But I had gotten sick of hearing the talk but seeing no action and had stopped listening for at
least the past two years.
Also, the reason the "kids" took to him like wild was him calling for student loan cancellation.
And that's the god's truth.
Though his other messages about the rich looting us clean and needing to be stopped were what
any sane person in the country longed to hear and have changed.
Too bad Sanders turned out to be a sheepdog for the D party. He really should get the best actor in a political campaign award. After he endorsed Clinton it was clear as day it was ALL one big performance.
In my experience (6 years of pursuing a PhD late in life) young educated people today are so
much more savvy, less self-indulgent and broadly "grown up" than the peeved, aging boomers who
haunt this board…….. that this assertion is laugh-inducing.
Young Sanders voters had a damned clear idea of the limits of what he was offering. They voted
for him anyway, because he just sucked so much less than the jowly pair of creeps who stand before
us now.
Voting for someone who "sucked so much less" than the other candidates is not how a movement
gets started. If your assertion is correct, than things are not only looking dim for any reform
in the near future, but look equally bad for long range reform. Hate is too self consuming to
maintain constantly without renouncing ones humanity. Hope, as the histories of religions show,
can keep chugging along for millennia. "True believers" did start in the religious sphere and
transfer to other spheres of human endeavour.
I think what people have forgotten, or have no current experience with, is the actual radical,
and destructive nature of Capitalism as a social organizing structure. It is the ocean in which
we all swim or the air we all breathe, so take for granted – unreflectively. Commoners cannot
connect the misery they experience daily with the system they live under. Capitalists can only
double down on their life strategy. The second they hesitate, the game is up. It is an all or
nothing strategy. In America, you are given no breathing space. No tolerance for dissent.
A reformed capitalism ceases to be capitalism. Just as the divine right of Kings falls away
when individual liberty takes hold in the mind. The two thoughts are incompatible.
What is the capitalist goal? To control all- to exploit all? Don't capitalists already possess
that power in disguised form already? What is it that they want anyway? Power over individual
lives? Materially, the ruling elite have everything already, they have won the struggle of Owners
over Labor. We have come full circle to where the elite now require our public displays of affection
for their greatness once again. Freedom and liberty of the individual be dammed if not the right
individual.
If forced to express their vision for the human future, the ruling elite would be exposed as
the shallow frauds that they are. They have no vision other than the ceaseless striving for material
personal wealth. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are a logical result of an unrelenting capitalist
system. They are its products.
What is the logical end for capitalism? It is an ideology that needs competition to survive.
But what happens when there are no more foes to conquer? No more resources to exploit for profit?.
America is a nation of chaos because it is the leader of the capitalist world. It is not a
nation of diverse strength and stability. It is a teetering behemoth, struggling not to fall over
from neglect and self inflicted wounds perpetrated by sociopathic ideologues.
Hopefully, the con game has lost it's effectiveness as harsh reality sinks in. As always, its
having a plan ready to go and implement when the crash finally occurs. If the left does't have
that plan ready, we all deserve what comes.
I'm really baffled at the surprise felt at Hillary's choice of associates, and at the policy
decisions likely to follow. It reminds me of Condoleeza Rice statement that no one could have
seen 911 coming, when drills had been ongoing to handle exactly this eventuality.
Can anyone doubt that Hillary will pull a super-Obama once elected, rejecting all her promises
and implementing their opposites once elected? It amazes me that many people do, that they think
they will have some ability to control policy. If things get too hot in the kitchen politically
speaking, isn't it OBVIOUS that a 2-pronged propaganda effort will be unleashed, to hide blatantly
unpopular moves on the one hand, and/or talk them up as if they were falsely maligned and in the
TINA category on the other.
I state these opinions feeling on the one hand, as if I have 2 heads because this view seems
so marginal among the populace, but on the other feeling eerily vindicated, as if I've been seeing
a train coming down the track and striking a crowd of people, none of whom apparently saw or did
anything during its approach. Is not the political outcome obvious? Hasn't anyone else seen through
the level of propaganda diminishing her crimes as either nonexistent or unprosecutable?
Well, I can entertain myself watching the propaganda, and watching how far political and ethical
opinions can be twisted. Like the train metaphor, there's a certain macabre fascination to be
savored. This is undoubtedly corrosive to my ethical and moral sensibilities, but trivially compared
to all else.
God I hate the phony framing of "hold her feet to the fire". After she's elected there is simply
no way to do that. The only way her desired policies could be thwarted is by forcing enough members
of Congress not to vote for certain bills like the TPP. But even then, nothing we can do can force
her to change executive orders and executive branch policies or priorities.
Bond is not even going to do the feet-to-fire holding herself. She's assigning it to someone
else based on a standard she's devised. You broke it, you bought it. Give me a break.
If you want to send the democrat party a message, you deny them the win. Period. It's how elections
work. You don't get the job if your performance is piss poor.
All this wishy-washiness over giving an unsuitable candidate a job and then assigning someone
to stand guard over them to make sure they do it to your satisfaction when you've known from the
beginning that s/he won't is just a weak excuse for taking the easy way out.
You want to send a message to the democrat party that they better shape up now, you vote for
Trump. And hold HIS feet to the fire. Two birds, one stone
"Progressives who supported Clinton in the primary should use their leverage to ensure Clinton
makes good on her vow to stop TPP and keep other promises she made on the campaign trail to win
progressive votes. "
This is crapified politics that we've heard before, over and over. HOW are they going to "hold
her feet to the fire?" Has there ever been serious detail about that? I've seen this line over
and over, but it's NEVER operational, and more important, it can't be. The next opportunity is
4 long years off; she could be dead by then, so could they, and the Republicans will nominate
Cruz.
All that leaves is insurrectionary street action; anything else is easy to ignore, and they
know they have progressives hog-tied – hell, the progs did it to themselves.
This hogswill is nothing but the same lesser-evilism that got us here. I suspect GP agrees;
I'm responding to the quote.
I think "hold her feet to the fire" means progressives will get on all fours and act as an
Ottoman for Her Grace during a cold D.C winter's night. They seem to be doing it now.
"This really matters. That Clinton is a better progressive choice than Trump is not much contested."
Really? Reeeeaaaaa lly? Perhaps, as others have said way upthread, that is part of the problem
right there.
Perhaps people should consider the possibility that Clinton is the More Effective evil. Perhaps
a Trump Administration would be a bunch of sound and fury and clown car fire drills signifying
nothing. Whereas a Clinton Administration would be staffed and powered by Decromatic and Third
Way Cheneys who know where all the knobs, levers and buttons of power are. And they are determined
that what they want . . . they will get.
One of Ian Welsh's favorite commenters brought this link to his blog.
markfromireland PERMALINK
August 19, 2016
There are lots of reasons not to vote for Clinton and the suppurating corruption she represents.
Not letting her owners play with matches rates high among them
Some of the insulting language is harsh on the tender eyeballs of sensitive leftists. I would
suggest gritting one's teeth and powering through the relatively few insulting words and phrases.
Most of it is fact-based and evidence-supported reasoned reasons to prevent Clinton from getting
elected. Reading the article at this link should help progressives get over their fear of a President
Trump. That fear is the only thing preventing them from voting for someone other than Clinton.
Maybe the progressives should consider the possibility that they have nothing to fear but fear
itself.
Yes, one's eyeballs could be pretty tough and still find that one difficult. Still, it pays
to grind one's teeth and power through.
Because when he focuses on the last few-couple decades
and especially the last few years, including CLINTON'S last few years, he makes serious sense.
As well as his discussion of who has what military capabilities nowadays, and what a mistaken
estimation of who has what military capabilities nowadays can lead the mistakers to lead their
country into, box-canyon-of-no-return speaking-wise.
"... That means that out of all the TV channels we watch, the radio stations we listen to and the movies we see are owned by one of these six main corporations. ..."
"... People are almost "forced" to wonder if the media controls as well our public taste and interest. They control the information we receive, but not only that, they control exactly what we receive and the way we do, therefore they control what we think. Media companies do not care about how they can be more objective and provide people news and information with a neutral point of view (even thought it sounds contradictory). We could say that they "unintentionally" or "indirectly" tell us what to think and what to believe. ..."
"... The media's duty is to provide objective information to the public through newspapers, television and radio, in order for the public to make public as well as personal decisions in the diverse fields. ..."
Media ownership is becoming more and more concentrated these days as multi-billion dollar companies
such as News corporation, Time warner and Disney company control almost all the shares of the mass
media.
A total of six corporations control almost 90% of the mainstream media nowadays. That means that
out of all the TV channels we watch, the radio stations we listen to and the movies we see are owned
by one of these six main corporations. Is this a good or a bad situation? Is the fact that almost
the whole media is owned by a very few a positive or a negative aspect? Some argue that this brings
benefits to the free market, the multi-billion companies and ultimately, the viewers. On the other
hand, others say that this concentration of media ownership has a negative effect on the market and
on society as a whole (articleworld.org).
People are almost "forced" to wonder if the media controls as well our public taste and interest.
They control the information we receive, but not only that, they control exactly what we receive
and the way we do, therefore they control what we think. Media companies do not care about how they
can be more objective and provide people news and information with a neutral point of view
(even thought it sounds contradictory). We could say that they "unintentionally" or "indirectly"
tell us what to think and what to believe. A newspaper finds some news and automatically interprets
them, even though journalists try to focus on the facts, as many claim, they subconsciously have
and opinion about whatever subject they are reporting about. This takes us to the point of "lack
of diversity" that is a reality nowadays and that so many criticize. Danny Schechter, a television
producer, independent filmmaker, blogger, and media critic states that "we have many channels and
a tremendous lack of diversity." It wouldn't be strange to think that a news broadcast would withhold
information if it had a negative effect on the company.
From an international perspective, this situation of media merging is also beneficial for the
big conglomerates. For instance, News Corporation owns the top newspaper on 3 continents, that is
the Wall Street Journal in the U.S, The Sun in Europe and The Australian in Australia (Lutz, Jason,
2012). The positive aspect of this, is that the spreading of this "influence" is good for the company,
and at the same time, readers get what they want, which is reading that newspaper. However, the bad
aspect is that big conglomerates are big companies, and big companies main priority is always money,
above everything else. Getting more readers, viewers and listeners is for the one and only purpose
that matters to them: Money. That is what brings bad or "controversial" consequences, and one of
them is that in 2012, they avoided $875 million in U.S taxes (Lutz, Jason, 2012). That would have
been enough to double FEMA's budget, or to fund NPR for 40 years. Nonetheless, technically this cannot
be criticized since they are a private corporation after all. Another issue that is a big concern
in the European Union is the media transparency and plurality.
Transparency is an essential component
of pluralism (Stolte & Smith, 2010). Although the Council of Europe and the European Parliament have
brought out recommendations regarding media transparency in the last few years, these have not been
acted on. It is left to Member States to implement legislation regarding media ownership transparency,
and there is by no means a unified or standard approach to be found across Europe (Stolte & Smith,
2010). This is a big issue in the European Union. The media's duty is to provide objective information
to the public through newspapers, television and radio, in order for the public to make public as
well as personal decisions in the diverse fields.
It may sound scary -and it does to a lot of people- the fact that all our media is controlled
by a few big conglomerates, forming an oligopoly, with the power of doing -almost- whatever they
want. Also, it is true that this situation implies a very few and personal points of view, and the
opportunity for those big conglomerates to "control" in a way what goes out, and how it does. Making
the audience think in a certain way. This Infographic shows the media ownsership in the U.S currently.
This is a serious hit. And timing is perfect. Ukrainian government has connections to Hillary.
If this is not interference n US election, I do not know what is. And
Clinton Foundation ties to Ukraine are not investigated. Podesta firm (run by his brother) is
involved by this involvement is hashed down. There is an interesting implicit hypothesis
voiced in this article: the regime that replaced Yanukovich is less corrupt and less beholder to impoverishing
Ukraine for the benefit of neoliberals like Soros. But the truth is that the country is now is much
poor then it was under Yanukovich with his thieves. The best way to convert the country into debt slave
is to wage a war. That's exactly what new leaders immediately did. See
Ukraine denouement Michael Hudson.
Of course FBI will not be investigating that. Like they refuse to investigate things about Hillary.
Neoliberals are above the law, other people not so much.
Isicoff said that Trump is attempting to delegitimize the current political establishment. I
think he is correct if he means neoliberals (which MSM are afraid to call by name; imagine the same
situation with communists when members of communist party were prohibited to call themselves
communist; that would make communism closer to neoliberalism (which is essentially Trotskyism for
rich)
Notable quotes:
"... Another firm, the Podesta Group, headed by Tony Podesta, brother of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, was also recruited by a Manafort deputy and lobbied for the European Centre. In a lengthy statement Friday, the Podesta Group said it had retained another Washington law firm, Caplin & Drysdale,"to determine if we were misled by the Centre for a Modern Ukraine or any other individuals with regard to the Centre's potential ties to foreign governments or political parties." ..."
"... The lobbyists, political operators and former politicians are allowed to play all three roles interchangeably and that has (and continues) to lead to US foreign policies that consistently work AGAINST the best interests of the American people and the future well being of the country BUT in the in financial best interests of the special interests who own our elected officials and the mainstream media and thus call the shots. ..."
"... This current case is a very close parallel to the case presidential candidate John McCains' chief foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, who was a paid lobbyist for for the former Soviet republic of Georgia which explains McCain's insistent that the US should intervene in the Russian/Geogian conflict of 2008 by bombing the pass thru which Russian troops were streaming into Georgia following Georgia attempt to claim South Ossetia and Abkhazia by force of arms. Yes, contrary to US media reports that was was started by the Georgians when they decided to invade and take back by force a couple of disputed regions and killed a number of Russian peacekeeper in the process. ..."
"... So I guess this means that the FBI will give the Clinton Foundation similar scrutiny since Manafort's $12 million is chump change compared to the hundreds of millions the Clintons got from shady foreign governments in exchange for special favors. Yeah, right! Funny, I didn't know Manafort had more power in the US than the Clintons and so was more dangerous to national security. ..."
"... Typical Clinton Machine deflection and distraction from their own worse crimes. Typical pro Hillary Yahoo 'news.' Read Breitbart and the Daily Caller, folks if you want real investigative reporting. ..."
"... The FBI and Department of Justice have launched an investigation into whether the Podesta Group has any connections to alleged corruption that occurred in the administration of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. ..."
"... It turns out that Hillary Clinton's campaign guru, head of the lobbying firm the Podesta Group, has found himself smack dab in the middle of the same criminal investigation spawned when devious political operatives decide to merge international relations with campaign politics. For weeks, the pages of the Washington Post, the Daily Beast, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal have chimed that Trump is a "Putin pawn" as part of some maniacal plot by the Kremlin to interfere with the US election. ..."
"... The controversy for Podesta links to his work for the Centre for a Modern Ukraine, a Brussels based organization that describes itself as "an advocate for enhancing EU-Ukraine relations." Unfortunately for Mr. Podesta, the organization has been described as "an operation controlled by Yanukovych" and tied to the former leader's Party of Regions suggesting the Podesta Group may have been, like has been said of Paul Manafort, tasked with greater reporting requirements pursuant to US law. ..."
The Justice Department and the FBI are conducting a wide-ranging investigation into allegations
of corrupt dealings by the government of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, including
the hiring of Washington lobbyists for the regime by former Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort,
a senior law enforcement official confirmed to Yahoo News.
The investigation, which was first reported by CNN, began two years ago after Yanukovych fled
Kiev to Moscow and was replaced by the current government of Petro Poroshenko, the official said.
But the inquiry has expanded in recent weeks in the wake of the discovery of documents showing $12.7
million in payments to Manafort by Yanukovych's Party of Regions political party. Investigators are
also looking into reports that Manafort recruited two top Washington lobbying firms to advocate on
behalf of a Belgian nonprofit that investigators now believe may have served as a front for Yanukovych's
party. Neither of the firms, the Mercury Group and the Podesta Group, registered with the U.S. Justice
Department as foreign agents - a requirement if they represented a foreign government or political
party.
The disclosure of the Justice Department investigation came on the same day that Manafort stepped
down as Trump's campaign chairman - news that sent new shockwaves through Republican circles. Manafort,
who served for years as a campaign consultant to Yanukovych, declined requests for comment. But a
close associate of his who asked not to be identified explained his resignation this way: Manafort
"is not going to take orders or relinquish power to people like" Kellyanne Conway, the new Trump
campaign manager, and Steve Bannon, the newly named CEO of the campaign. The Manafort associate also
blamed the rapidly unfolding Ukraine allegations on "oppo research" being spread by Corey Lewandowski,
Trump's former campaign manager and a bitter foe of Manafort
Ken Gross, a lawyer at Skadden Arps, which represents the Mercury Group, one of the lobbying firms
recruited by Manafort, told Yahoo News that his firm has been "engaged to look into the matter" of
whether Mercury was required to register as a foreign agent with the Justice Department when, at
Manafort's request, it agreed to represent the Brussels-based European Centre for a Modern Ukraine
in 2012. Lobbying reports reviewed by Yahoo News show that the firms sought to burnish Yanokovych's
reputation and lobbied against congressional resolutions condemning the regime's treatment of political
opponents and opposing Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Another firm, the Podesta Group, headed by Tony Podesta, brother of Hillary Clinton's campaign
chairman, John Podesta, was also recruited by a Manafort deputy and lobbied for the European Centre.
In a lengthy statement Friday, the Podesta Group said it had retained another Washington law firm,
Caplin & Drysdale,"to determine if we were misled by the Centre for a Modern Ukraine or any other
individuals with regard to the Centre's potential ties to foreign governments or political parties."
The statement added: "When the Centre became a client, it certified in writing that 'none of the
activities of the Centre are directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed or
subsidized in whole or in part by a government of a foreign country or a foreign political party.'
We relied on that certification and advice from counsel in registering and reporting under the Lobbying
Disclosure Act rather than the Foreign Agents Registration Act. We will take whatever measures are
necessary to address this situation based on Caplin & Drysdale's review, including possible legal
action against the Centre."
Sevgil Musaieva, editor of Ukrainskaye Pravda, a newspaper that has conducted multiple investigations
into corruption under the Yanukovych regime, told Yahoo News that she first met with a team of FBI
agents at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev two years ago. At the time, the new government headed by Poroshenko
had asked the FBI for assistance in tracking down millions of dollars that it believed had been stolen
by Yanukovych and his associates before they fled Kiev. "The FBI came to Kiev and started an investigation,"
she said. They asked her detailed questions about what she knew about allegations of corrupt dealings
by the Yanukovych regime.
But sources familiar with the probe say it expanded after a Ukrainian anticorruption bureau discovered
a "black book" said to show "off-the-books" cash payments from the party to Manafort totaling $12.7
million between 2007 and 2012. Entries show that some of the payments were signed by a former member
of the Ukrainian Parliament who was also a board member of the European Centre. Documents also purportedly
show payments to the executive director of the center, according to a source familiar with the probe,
reinforcing suspicions that the group was fronting for Yanukovych's political party.
Sage
The lobbyists, political operators and former politicians are allowed to play all three
roles interchangeably and that has (and continues) to lead to US foreign policies that
consistently work AGAINST the best interests of the American people and the future well being
of the country BUT in the in financial best interests of the special interests who own our
elected officials and the mainstream media and thus call the shots.
Manafort is getting all this negative publicity only now, years AFTER the fact, because of two
reasons---1) the political/special interests are deathly afraid that a Trump victory because
they may not be able to control him and thus he might upset their lucrative apple cart that
has made them obscenely wealthy at the expense of the rest of the country; and 2)secondly
because that Manafort was backing the wrong horse in a race in which the special interests are
actively trying to isolate and surround Russian militarily in order to remove a potential
obstacle to their goal of global domination thru bought and paid for US politicians.
However, this incestuous and obscene criminal behavior involving lobbyist/political operator
has been going on for a long time and it much wider spread than is normally reported because
the special interest owed media usually has no reason to expose it; in fact they usually have
reason NOT to expose it.
This current case is a very close parallel to the case presidential candidate John McCains'
chief foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, who was a paid lobbyist for for the former
Soviet republic of Georgia which explains McCain's insistent that the US should intervene in
the Russian/Geogian conflict of 2008 by bombing the pass thru which Russian troops were
streaming into Georgia following Georgia attempt to claim South Ossetia and Abkhazia by force
of arms. Yes, contrary to US media reports that was was started by the Georgians when they
decided to invade and take back by force a couple of disputed regions and killed a number of
Russian peacekeeper in the process.
Of course Scheunemann, unlike Manafort, came out completely unscathed and totally untouched by
the media because war lover McCain supported the special interests' agenda because unlike
Manafort, he was aiding and abetting the same "horse" the neo-con State Dept and the CIA had
their bets on.
A Mcp
So I guess this means that the FBI will give the Clinton Foundation similar scrutiny since Manafort's
$12 million is chump change compared to the hundreds of millions the Clintons got from shady foreign
governments in exchange for special favors. Yeah, right! Funny, I didn't know Manafort had more power
in the US than the Clintons and so was more dangerous to national security.
Typical Clinton Machine deflection and distraction from their own worse crimes. Typical pro Hillary
Yahoo 'news.' Read Breitbart and the Daily Caller, folks if you want real investigative reporting.
Billy Willy
So you biased Hillary asslickers think we don;t know about her SAME issues? So report on this
you morons:
The FBI and Department of Justice have launched an investigation into whether the Podesta Group
has any connections to alleged corruption that occurred in the administration of former Ukrainian
President Viktor Yanukovych.
It seems like just yesterday that the top campaign official for Donald Trump found himself caught
in the middle of a political dragnet for his work as a lobbyist on behalf of Viktor Yanukovych with
the media clamoring about his purported ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a reason why
the Republican nominee was a less desirable candidate than Hillary Clinton. Wait, that was just yesterday?
It turns out that Hillary Clinton's campaign guru, head of the lobbying firm the Podesta Group,
has found himself smack dab in the middle of the same criminal investigation spawned when devious
political operatives decide to merge international relations with campaign politics. For weeks, the
pages of the Washington Post, the Daily Beast, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal have
chimed that Trump is a "Putin pawn" as part of some maniacal plot by the Kremlin to interfere with
the US election.
Turns out, the Podesta Group founded by none other than John Podesta, Hillary's campaign chair
and chief strategies, was retained by the Russian-owned firm UraniumOne in 2012, 2014, and 2015 to
lobby Hillary Clinton's State Department based on John Podesta's longstanding relations with the
Clinton family – he was the White House Chief of Staff under Bill Clinton.
Interestingly, UraniumOne's chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling
$2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation from 2009 to 2013. Perhaps a more blatant evidence of allegations
that Hillary Clinton's State Department operated on a pay-to-play basis is the fact that, as the
New York Times reported last April, "shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire
a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian
investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting UraniumOne stock.
Not only are investigators wondering whether there was any impropriety in the lobbying arrangement
such as the provision of beneficial treatment by the State Department to an old friend, but they
are also probing the work that Viktor Yanukovych's regime paid the Podesta Group to do while he was
the head of the Ukrainian government.
The controversy for Podesta links to his work for the Centre for a Modern Ukraine, a Brussels
based organization that describes itself as "an advocate for enhancing EU-Ukraine relations." Unfortunately
for Mr. Podesta, the organization has been described as "an operation controlled by Yanukovych" and
tied to the former leader's Party of Regions suggesting the Podesta Group may have been, like has
been said of Paul Manafort, tasked with greater reporting requirements pursuant to US law.
The Podesta Group quickly hired the white-shoe law firm Caplin & Drysdale as "independent, outside
legal counsel to determine if we were misled by the Centre for a Modern Ukraine or any other individuals
with regard to the Centre's potential ties to foreign governments or political parties."
Alan
The bummers FBI who just let off Hillary who should have been indicted and imprisoned? What a
shock that they are involved.
This
Maureen Dowd
column reminds me writing about Western capitalist society by some not too brainwashed Soviet
propagandists. She managed to put into anti-trump diatibe (which is a requirement for
NYT writers; to writing such column is a must; this is just a survival skill) some really damning
things about Hillary.
Notable quotes:
"... She's like Lyin' Lochte, just sorry she got caught. Hearing her apologize is as likely as seeing those 33,000 yoga emails. ..."
"... I'm sorry the Clintons didn't realize until now how bad it was to be using the State Department as a favor factory for big donors to the foundation. I'm all for pay-for-play, but only at my golf courses. ..."
"... I'm sorry Hillary had to besmirch poor Colin Powell by claiming he gave her the idea for private emails. Hasn't his reputation suffered enough pushing that phony war at the U.N.? ..."
I hated to ship Paul off to Siberia. But Jared and Corey told me I couldn't get swept up in an
international money-laundering scandal while I was accusing Hillary of doing favors at State for
a money launderer and Clinton Foundation donor.
... ... ...
I'm sorry Huma is posing for Vogue instead of keeping her husband, the pervert, from
sexting online again.
... ... ...
I'm sorry that while I'm being too honest, Crooked Hillary is never really sorry for all her
lies and illegal operations. She's like Lyin' Lochte, just sorry she got caught. Hearing her
apologize is as likely as seeing those 33,000 yoga emails.
I'm sorry the Clintons didn't realize until now how bad it was to be using the State
Department as a favor factory for big donors to the foundation. I'm all for pay-for-play, but
only at my golf courses.
I'm sorry Hillary had to besmirch poor Colin Powell by claiming he gave her the idea for
private emails. Hasn't his reputation suffered enough pushing that phony war at the U.N.?
"... Carla, you are right about the main focus of these trade deals. Sure, it's about degrading labor and avoiding sensible regulation. More importantly, it's about making an end run around democracy and enscouncing the profiteers above governments. The Clinton's, along with Obama, have consistently sided with these elites. ..."
"... Trump is against globalistion, bad trade deals, interminable foreign wars and wants to fix America by bringing back jobs, etc. The standard line is that Trump is - oh horror – "racist" because he wants to stop immigation. Therefore, etc. ..."
"... FedupPleb – My thought exactly. Trump has personality issues but many of his positions, sketchy as they are, are in the right ballpark. Clinton by contrast seems to be rated "progressive" mainly because of surprisingly enduring loyalty to the Democrat brand. ..."
"... The Clintonites are selling First Woman President as an Identity-Progressive goal and achievement. Just as the Obamazoids sold First Black President as an Identity-Progressive goal and achievement. ..."
"... No, he has called for a $10 minimum wage. http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/27/politics/donald-trump-minimum-wage Not great but not nuthin'. ..."
"... the bible thumping crowd. Those constituents are not internationalist or pro trade deals. They have been afraid of 'world government' as opposed to nationalism; they have wanted even more local control for decades. ..."
"... These 'allies' will move the ball. They will shake up the existing coalitions vs the stagnation and corruption we have now. Even as a switch between sets of oligarchs, if they keep Trump's promises, they will give the populace some breathing room. ..."
"... When a republican candidate, Trump, can push Hillary to the left on such major issues as on war and trade deals, is she really the progressive here? A true progressive would not need to be dragged or pushed to the left. These are MAJOR issues. ..."
"... Her warmonging and TPP support count against her. Her history in Haiti, etc., count against her. That's not to defend Trump as progressive in any meaningful sense. Just that Clinton is no improvement. ..."
"... Agreed. This is a joke and Becky Bond, whoever she is, is living in a fantasy world if she thinks these faux progressive careerists will do anything to jeopardize their cush positions (or chance at cush positions, pathetic as that is). ..."
"... I visit their blogs and watch them: its either outright Stockholm Syndrome (for those who had or have an ethical bone in their bodies) or insincere and dishonest posturing as "progressives" all around. They will hold Clinton as accountable as they held Obama. ..."
"... The Clinton supporters that live in her bubble are insiders will never betray her because they benefit from the jobs they hope/will have in her administration. ..."
"... "The narrative that it was the big bad obstructionist Republicans that stopped Obama's change is mostly false." I think it's totally false. If Obama had been who he portrayed on TV pre-election, the democrats would not have lost their seats in the next election. He gave the 2010 elections to the Republicans, so any obstruction from then on was his own creation. ..."
"... "The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence." ..."
"... Average voters are a group to be messaged/pandered to on a 2/4/6 year cycle and then ignored between election cycles. ..."
"... When a politician says he cares about the common man, see who he golfs with, see who he has dinner with, it's not the common man ..."
"... Y'all can hold her feet to the fire all you want. She has asbestos feet. She'll never know the difference. She'll never even feel it. ..."
"... Yea hard to say who is even being addressed. Nobodies voting for Clinton with voting as their main act of political participation? ..."
"... Left activists? Let's be realistic how many left activist support Clinton? ..."
"... This post greatly diminishes my esteem for the opinions of Gaius Publius. "Hold her accountable" as proposed? While we're at it we can bell the cat. Both major parties and government in this country at all levels National, State, and Local are captured beyond any accountability to the public. Our government is no longer interested in the Public Interest and as for the Public Good the term "Good" is only a synonym for a Commodity - as in goods and services. ..."
"... The spectacle of Sanders kneeling and kissing the Clinton ring, even though reasonably 'spun' as a necessity for political 'survival' by Sanders, has left a bitter taste in the mouths of the "true believers" who flocked to Sanders. ..."
"... The Democratic Party has shown the depths to which the Clinton cabal will sink in the pursuit of power. Wresting that power out of the hands of the Despicable Duo will perhaps be more trouble than splitting the Party would be. Thus, if "we broke it," why not carry on as one part of the 'new normal' Democratic Party Spectrum. ..."
"... I have always asked who would win an election if we voted by policy instead of by name in an election? Of course I am assuming that a candidate would tell the truth about their positions from the beginning and not change after they won. Trump, Stein and Johnson have been honest about their positions but Clinton changes with the wind. ..."
"... The ridicule is a badge of honor. It is the "laughter of fools". Both candidates of the major parties are unacceptable in their own way. To vote for either is to accept subjugation with a smile. Don't be fooled. Whatever happens in the election will be blamed on minor parties by the losing side. Vote your conscience and know that if you were to vote for either major party candidate you would be complicit in the destruction that will follow. ..."
"... She will be in office for eight years and all the Trumpers will fortify their positions and mobilize on an even greater scale when she is done reigning whatever hell she brings with her. I'm seeing Weimar Republic politics here, and I don't like it. ..."
"... I have seen it argued that the biggest benefit of sticking with one of the mainstream parties is the 'ground game,' or organizational templates already in place. ..."
"... The corollary of the earlier assertion of mine about "true believers" is that, except for insular or separatist movements, true believers act as cadres around which larger aggregates coalesce to form an effective party. Trump is effecting this with his courting of the 'second division' level of Republican operatives. The outpouring of negative propaganda from the 'top tier' Republicans suggests a semi panic mind set. The virulence of the anti Trump screeching reinforces the perception that the senior Republicans fear that they can lose to Trump in the power struggle. ..."
"... All very true, ambrit. The Greens have been on the margins for longer than they should have been because the myth of Nader spoiling the 2000 election has had lasting effect. Hell, I believed it myself until I took the time to take a second look this year. ..."
"... I'd like to think that I'm not particularly in the vanguard here, and that many other people have recognized that the Democratic party is beyond redemption. The only option for progressives is to start filling in the ranks, to be vocal and to be active. To find talented candidates for down ticket races. ..."
"... tradeunions in the UK are both stronger and more radical in their leadership and membership than in the USA ..."
"... voting rule in the usa are state-by-state and filled with various opportunities for suppressing votes. ..."
Carla, you are right about the main focus of these trade deals. Sure, it's about degrading
labor and avoiding sensible regulation. More importantly, it's about making an end run around
democracy and enscouncing the profiteers above governments. The Clinton's, along with Obama, have
consistently sided with these elites.
. That Clinton is a better progressive choice than Trump is not much contested.
But shouldn't it be?
Trump is against globalistion, bad trade deals, interminable foreign wars and wants to
fix America by bringing back jobs, etc. The standard line is that Trump is - oh horror – "racist"
because he wants to stop immigation. Therefore, etc.
But don't workers have a genuine interest in protecting the bargaining power of labour? If
a capitalist declares that he will import workers from Mexico or India or Russia, or just export
his entire production chain to China, because US labour is too expensive. Is it more "progressive"
to declare these worried workers racist, or backward, or too intellectual challenged to see the
benefits of a global supply chain and its cheap ipads for all still in salaried (i.e. unoutsourced)
employment.
But no matter. Hillary says nice things about hispanic-americans and has long ties to the black
community over the last few decades as their standard of living has stagnated with everyone else.
She supports LGBT rights and Trump probably doesn't even though I can't think of any negative
statements he may have made but OK Hillary is the more Progressive candidate OK. Obviously.
"Our nation stands together in solidarity with the members of Orlando's LGBT community."
This is a very dark moment in America's history. A radical Islamic terrorist targeted the nightclub
not only because he wanted to kill Americans, but in order to execute gay and lesbian citizens
because of their sexual orientation."
"It is a strike at the heart and soul of who we are as a nation. It is an assault on the
ability of free people to live their lives, love who they want and express their identity."
"I refuse to allow America to become a place where gay people, Christian people, and Jewish
people, are the targets of persecution and intimidation by radical Islamic preachers of hate
and violence, it's a "quality-of-life issue."
"If we want to protect the quality of life for all Americans – women and children, gay and
straight, Jews and Christians and all people – then we need to tell the truth about radical
Islam," he said.
FedupPleb – My thought exactly. Trump has personality issues but many of his positions,
sketchy as they are, are in the right ballpark. Clinton by contrast seems to be rated "progressive"
mainly because of surprisingly enduring loyalty to the Democrat brand.
The best definition of a brand I ever came across is "a compelling promise, reliably honoured".
How's that been working out for Dems in recent years?
The Clintonites are selling First Woman President as an Identity-Progressive goal and achievement.
Just as the Obamazoids sold First Black President as an Identity-Progressive goal and achievement.
Trump is of course against the minimum wage. Trump is interested in the power of labor, man
they can not pass legalized marijuana fast enough, and maybe I can pretend it all makes sense.
What Trump says doesn't matter (just like Clinton). Take a look at his VP and his advisors.
Pence is a dominionist nutjob and the rest of Trump's team are ultra-right-wing bible thumpers.
He may say he's against the TPP but his team is for it. As for the Constitution the Republicans
are always waving about, they really don't care what's in it unless they can use it to their advantage.
"take a look at his vp"-that selection was a bone he HAD to throw to the GOP bigwigs so he
could make it through the GOP convention. The VP will have no power in the Trump presidency, as
even the venerable Yves has pointed out. The only one who took control was Richard "the Bruce"
Cheney, and that was a special case.
The only way Pence will have power is if Trump gets whacked, which is indeed a possibility.
I'm not part of, but I have some direct personal experience with the bible thumping crowd.
Those constituents are not internationalist or pro trade deals. They have been afraid of 'world
government' as opposed to nationalism; they have wanted even more local control for decades.
These 'allies' will move the ball. They will shake up the existing coalitions vs the stagnation
and corruption we have now. Even as a switch between sets of oligarchs, if they keep Trump's promises,
they will give the populace some breathing room.
As I said to a coworker in a political discussion yesterday, there are very few issues
I would weigh above the Supreme Court, but Clinton's pro corporate, pro war stance has taken me
to that place.
I dispute that as a given also – When a republican candidate, Trump, can push Hillary to
the left on such major issues as on war and trade deals, is she really the progressive here? A
true progressive would not need to be dragged or pushed to the left. These are MAJOR issues.
Actually, there's evidence in her private speech (leaked emails, etc.) that Hillary is pretty
hostile to LGBT rights. Her public speech, of course, should be discounted as performative and
dishonest. I think Trump has made some very positive statements about the LGBT community, but
I can't point to a reference offhand. That could certainly be equally dishonest and performative.
But he doesn't have the same documented history of pandering that way, and unlike Hillary, he's
not an evangelical Christian. There's also evidence that in reality Hillary is quite racist, as
well.
I will step up and dispute that she's more progressive. I don't think she is. Her warmonging
and TPP support count against her. Her history in Haiti, etc., count against her. That's not to
defend Trump as progressive in any meaningful sense. Just that Clinton is no improvement.
How on earth does ANYONE [other than the FIRE industry, her neo-con pals and the climate killers]
"hold her accountable" or have any influence on her?
She's got the nomination, there's little doubt she'll win the election, she's got 100% of DNC
Dems behind her. WTF are folks supposed to do to have any sort of weight in a Clinton administration?
And if Ms. Bond is speaking to those close to Clinton, what makes her think they WANT to have
any influence for good?
Agreed. This is a joke and Becky Bond, whoever she is, is living in a fantasy world if
she thinks these faux progressive careerists will do anything to jeopardize their cush positions
(or chance at cush positions, pathetic as that is).
I visit their blogs and watch them: its either outright Stockholm Syndrome (for those who had
or have an ethical bone in their bodies) or insincere and dishonest posturing as "progressives"
all around. They will hold Clinton as accountable as they held Obama.
The Clinton supporters that live in her bubble are insiders will never betray her
because they benefit from the jobs they hope/will have in her administration. It is the mass
of voters who believed what she said are the ones that have to get out and hold her feet to the
fire. Most rolled over and said nothing as Obama's "change we can believe in" was only a slogan
to fool us. The narrative that it was the big bad obstructionist Republicans that stopped Obama's
change is mostly false. Obama never ever fought for real change. He talked a good game but did
nothing. The best way to make politicians listen to us is that we show up in mass (millions) in
DC and demand that government act in our behalf.
"The narrative that it was the big bad obstructionist Republicans that stopped Obama's
change is mostly false." I think it's totally false. If Obama had been who he portrayed on TV
pre-election, the democrats would not have lost their seats in the next election. He gave the
2010 elections to the Republicans, so any obstruction from then on was his own creation.
"The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized
groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government
policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence."
Average voters are a group to be messaged/pandered to on a 2/4/6 year cycle and then ignored
between election cycles.
My high school civics teacher (Los Angeles County public school) made a statement 30+ years
ago I still remember. "When a politician says he cares about the common man, see who he golfs
with, see who he has dinner with, it's not the common man"
About the only thing that needs to be updated in the statement is the "he" needs to be revised
to "he/she"
Perhaps the best the average citizen can hope for is that there are interest groups on both
sides on an issue, but a profitable business group with a rich source of funding vs a public interest
group depending on contributions seems mismatched.
Even when there are powerful business groups that differ on current policy, change is difficult,
for example US government price support for domestic sugar producers is opposed by the large sugar
industry consumers (candy makers, soft drink producers), but the TPP specifically leaves this
USA government subsidy in place.
Yea hard to say who is even being addressed. Nobodies voting for Clinton with voting as
their main act of political participation? Sometimes they might just be uninformed, or they
may have voted for her thinking she would fare better against Trump, or if better off they might
have voted their privilege, etc.. But they have no real power.
Left activists? Let's be realistic how many left activist support Clinton? I have no doubt
many supported Bernie while some may only support Stein etc. but Clinton? I have my doubts there
are almost ANY actual left activists who supported Clinton over Sanders (over Trump maybe, but
not over Sanders). But he means some talking head somewhere who isn't even an activist but has
a public platform? Those people have been bought and paid for.
This post greatly diminishes my esteem for the opinions of Gaius Publius. "Hold her accountable"
as proposed? While we're at it we can bell the cat. Both major parties and government in this
country at all levels National, State, and Local are captured beyond any accountability to the
public. Our government is no longer interested in the Public Interest and as for the Public Good
the term "Good" is only a synonym for a Commodity - as in goods and services.
I supported Sanders. The primary and convention made it clear that making change within the
system is no longer a real option. In the best of all possible worlds I feel it's time to tend
my garden - far away from the action and with my head held low.
The spectacle of Sanders kneeling and kissing the Clinton ring, even though reasonably
'spun' as a necessity for political 'survival' by Sanders, has left a bitter taste in the mouths
of the "true believers" who flocked to Sanders.
There should be little hope of those who embraced the cognitive dissonance that is the Clinton
campaign suddenly 'seeing the light' and pivoting to an internally activist position in the Democratic
Party. Far from righting the 'progressive' course of the Ship of State, many will conclude that
this is just another 'Ship of Fools.'
Any prospective transformative political movement needs a cadre of "true believers" to energize
and channel that energy in the "proper" direction. The Democratic Party has shown the depths
to which the Clinton cabal will sink in the pursuit of power. Wresting that power out of the hands
of the Despicable Duo will perhaps be more trouble than splitting the Party would be. Thus, if
"we broke it," why not carry on as one part of the 'new normal' Democratic Party Spectrum.
"True believers" respond to appeals to their better nature more readily than appeals to their
fear of 'others.' Real 'progressives' would rather live in a New Jerusalem than the White House
Outhouse.
The 'hostile takeover' of any political party requires a full housecleaning. Half measures will
not suffice.
I have always asked who would win an election if we voted by policy instead of by name
in an election? Of course I am assuming that a candidate would tell the truth about their positions
from the beginning and not change after they won. Trump, Stein and Johnson have been honest about
their positions but Clinton changes with the wind.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/25/443287/-
You'll want to scroll down, but Edwards won the debate focus groups and polled "undecideds"
in 2007 and 2008. Edwards was well to the left of Obama and Hillary from his campaign positions.
The ridicule is a badge of honor. It is the "laughter of fools". Both candidates of the
major parties are unacceptable in their own way. To vote for either is to accept subjugation with
a smile. Don't be fooled. Whatever happens in the election will be blamed on minor parties by
the losing side. Vote your conscience and know that if you were to vote for either major party
candidate you would be complicit in the destruction that will follow.
I would rather vote for what I want and not get it than to vote for what I don't want and get
it. –Eugene Debs. Sanders, you should have remembered the words of your hero whose picture hangs
on your office wall.
And on to the doom of a Trump presidency. The supposed logic that Hillary will "stop" Trump.
I guess people forget that all the right-wing populists that support Trump are not going anywhere.
They are having kids and they are rearing them in their toxic worldview. Hillary has done and
will do nothing to build an ideology that counters the Trump crowd. Cover our ears and our eyes
and it will all go away is the strategy. She will be in office for eight years and all the
Trumpers will fortify their positions and mobilize on an even greater scale when she is done reigning
whatever hell she brings with her. I'm seeing Weimar Republic politics here, and I don't like
it.
I have seen it argued that the biggest benefit of sticking with one of the mainstream parties
is the 'ground game,' or organizational templates already in place. The Greens are chided
for organizational weakness. Whether true or not, this "branding" of the Greens as feckless is
a major impediment to popular acceptance of the party. The marginalization of the Green Party
in the media magnifies whatever true weaknesses there are within the party.
The corollary of the earlier assertion of mine about "true believers" is that, except for
insular or separatist movements, true believers act as cadres around which larger aggregates coalesce
to form an effective party. Trump is effecting this with his courting of the 'second division'
level of Republican operatives. The outpouring of negative propaganda from the 'top tier' Republicans
suggests a semi panic mind set. The virulence of the anti Trump screeching reinforces the perception
that the senior Republicans fear that they can lose to Trump in the power struggle.
Even though the Sanders supporters have been 'schooled' in hard ball politics by the Clinton
camp, they still need a hope for success to motivate them to continue the struggle. The above
comments anet the Greens show a perception that the Greens cannot supply that success. It may
be all smoke and mirrors, but, absent some serious counter propaganda from the Green Party, the
ginned up MSM portrayal of the Greens as irrelevant is pretty much all the information the Sanders
supporters have to base a decision on. Get a Green governor, or some Green congresspeople, and
the Greens gain inestimable status. It may look like a chicken or egg puzzle, but better propaganda
is a good place to start.
It's time for the Greens to stop looking like victims and to start looking and acting like
victors.
Carla, you are right about the main focus of these trade deals. Sure, it's about degrading
labor and avoiding sensible regulation. More importantly, it's about rimning sn end rin around
democracy and ensconcing the profiteers above governments.
All very true, ambrit. The Greens have been on the margins for longer than they should have
been because the myth of Nader spoiling the 2000 election has had lasting effect. Hell, I believed
it myself until I took the time to take a second look this year.
I'd like to think that I'm not particularly in the vanguard here, and that many other people
have recognized that the Democratic party is beyond redemption. The only option for progressives
is to start filling in the ranks, to be vocal and to be active. To find talented candidates for
down ticket races.
Unfortunately, one of the ironies of the current Democratic party is that it still does have
some room for progressives in state and local office. That's why Zephyr Teachout is still a Democrat.
She can win without the full backing of the party. And, I suspect equally unfortunately, she reckons
that she would have a harder time running as a Green due to voter bias.
That's what needs to change. Voters need to see the Green party as a viable alternative. It
is indeed a chicken and egg problem. And that's why I see the Stein campaign as an important step
in helping rehabilitate the Green party in the minds of voters.
It is also critically important for progressives to not relent on our critique of neoliberalism
and the Democratic party. The so-called progressives like Adolph Reed and others who have already
capitulated need to be vigorously rejected.
If Stein can get enough support this year it may convince candidates of Teachout's caliber
that they can run successfully as Green party members and that will start the necessary momentum
to building the party from the local and state level upward.
Anyway, I've donated money to the Stein campaign and I've got my yard sign in front of my house
and my "none of the above" sticker on my truck. I'm doing what I can in my own way.
I'd like to make a couple of points to add to this little side discussion of the Sanders vs.
Corbyn compare and contrast.
tradeunions in the UK are both stronger and more radical in their leadership and membership
than in the USA. Union leadership in the usa is still wedded to the dem elite, sometimes against
the wishes of their members. There have been splits where some unions like nat nurses united and
chicago teachers unions have supported sanders and opposed elite dems, but imagine if uaw and
afscme had flipped on clinton. That would have really shaken things up. Insurgency plus institutional
support is much tougher for the elites to control.
voting rule in the usa are state-by-state and filled with various opportunities for
suppressing votes. Imagine if the rules were that anyone could join and vote if they paid
$5 and no 'purges' of voters or ridiculous rules like ny where you have to join 6 months in advance.
In fact the blairites/plp in england seem to be trying to recreate some of the same tricks and
traps that the dems used here.
"... You know, the light bulb over my head went on when Hillary said she was against the TPP "as currently written." Political speak for: she'll fiddle with some words, pronounce it fixed, and pass it ..."
"... her surrogates extol her penchant for "free trade" and are sure she will support it. ..."
You know, the light bulb over my head went on when Hillary said she was against the TPP
"as currently written." Political speak for: she'll fiddle with some words, pronounce it fixed,
and pass it.
And while she and Kaine claim now to be against the TPP, her surrogates extol her penchant
for "free trade" and are sure she will support it.
"... "Trump is a racist and his followers are racist and that's all you need to know" is a narrative thesis, like the narrative thesis that Trump is Putin's stooge, very convenient to Clinton's candidacy, but ultimately corrosive to American politics and political discourse. ..."
"... The Clinton campaign has whipped up a high dudgeon about racism and Putin and how unsuited Trump is, to be President. I don't disagree about the core conclusion: Trump does not seem to me to be suited to be President. That's hardly a difficult judgment: an impulsive, self-promoting reality teevee star with no experience of public office - hmmm, let me think about that for two seconds. But, the high dudgeon serves other purposes, to which I object strongly. ..."
"... People, who argue Trump might start a nuclear war out of personal pique because he insults people on teevee might want to examine Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion or the South China Sea. ..."
"... Everything should not be about electing Clinton. ..."
"... Pundits like Josh Marshall of TPM or Ezra Klein of Vox are betraying their public trust by carrying Clinton's water so slavishly. ..."
"... People, who argue Trump might start a nuclear war out of personal pique because he insults people on teevee might want to examine Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion or the South China Sea ..."
"... Or, as Ian Welsh points out, her position on Syria. She seems to have advocated for a no-fly zone in Syria after Russia came in, which would presumably put us in the position of shooting down Russian warplanes or having a good chance of doing so. Maybe if she does take on Kissinger as an advisor he'll tell her that superpower conflicts have to be done through proxies or they're too dangerous. ..."
"... This is what 40 years of two-party neoliberalism gives us: an unhinged demagogue or the point person for Democratic policies that have systematically gutted the middle class, screwed the poor, increase inequality, slowed productivity, caused multiple wars, and made them personally rich. ..."
"... The moral righteousness of identity politics adds in an element that goes way beyond the lazy failure to hold politicians accountable or the tendency to explain away their more Machiavellian maneuvers. There's both an actual blindness to the reactionary conservatism of equal opportunity exploitation and a peremptory challenge to any other claim or analysis. If police practices and procedures are trending in an authoritarian direction, they can only be challenged on grounds of racist effect or intent. The authoritarianism cannot be challenged on its own merit, so the building of the authoritarian state goes on unimpeded, since the principle that is challenged is not authoritarianism, but a particular claim of racism or sexism. ..."
"... As for LFC, he finished up his not a counter with "Assad and Putin are authoritarians (plus in Assad's case especially being a murderous thug), but I don't recall b.w. being too exercised about their authoritarianism." That's perfectly familiar [line] too: I well remember it from the GWB Iraq War days. Do you oppose the Iraq War? Well I never heard of you being very exercised about Saddam Hussein being a murderous thug. You must really support Saddam, or not really care about authoritarianism. The people who liked to say this were called the "Decents", a word like many other political words that was perfect because it meant exactly the opposite of what it sounded like. ..."
"... What's being critiqued is the idea that nothing but racism matters. What's being critiqued is the idea that it's useful or even correct to do mind-reading and to confidently pronounce that people who disagree with you do so because they're stupid and evil – excuse me, because they're racists. What I find illuminating here is the graphic evidence of why this approach is so toxic. People get furious and hostile when you call them bigots. It's an insult, not an invitation to dialog – because it doubles as a character judgment and as a personal attack. ..."
"... I am also saying, worry that the charge of racism may be all we have left that is capable of getting reforms. And, worry that charges of racism, without useful nuance, may not get the political reaction and reform one ought to desire. ..."
"... Police misconduct is not a problem solely and originally about race and racism ..."
I think all you've really shown is that blue-collar, less-educated people tend
to not know much about politics and to have the political attitudes of authoritarian followers
and Trump is willing to be demagogic enough to attract their attention as an alternative to the
status quo candidacy of Hillary Clinton.
"Trump is a racist and his followers are racist and that's all you need to know" is a narrative
thesis, like the narrative thesis that Trump is Putin's stooge, very convenient to Clinton's candidacy,
but ultimately corrosive to American politics and political discourse. It isn't a question
of whether statistics suggest racism is an efficient instrumental variable. It is a question of
whether this politics of invective and distraction is going anywhere good, could go anywhere good.
No one in these comment threads has been defending Trump or the political ignorance and resentments
of his supporters. Some of us have questioned the wisdom of a political tactic of treating them
as pariahs and dismissing their concerns and economic distress as fake or illegitimate.
The Clinton campaign has whipped up a high dudgeon about racism and Putin and how unsuited
Trump is, to be President. I don't disagree about the core conclusion: Trump does not seem to
me to be suited to be President. That's hardly a difficult judgment: an impulsive, self-promoting
reality teevee star with no experience of public office - hmmm, let me think about that for two
seconds. But, the high dudgeon serves other purposes, to which I object strongly.
Even though, and especially because Clinton is very likely to become President, her suitability
ought to be scrutinized. Not just boxed away as, "well, she is obviously better than Trump
so let's not even trouble our beautiful minds", when by the way it is not so obvious as
all that, as several commenters have tried to point out. People, who argue Trump might start
a nuclear war out of personal pique because he insults people on teevee might want to examine
Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion
or the South China Sea.
Everything should not be about electing Clinton. Clinton's election is pretty much
assured, despite her deep flaws as a candidate of the center-left (to wit, her war-mongering and
epic corruption and economic conservatism). Pundits like Josh Marshall of TPM or Ezra Klein
of Vox are betraying their public trust by carrying Clinton's water so slavishly. Ezra may
be gaining all important access to the Clinton White House comparable to what he had in Obama's
White House, but he spent his credibility with his readers to get it. And, he's deprived his readers
of the opportunity to learn about issues of vital importance, like the TPP and corporate business
power, or NATO expansion and the relationship with Russia, or the swirling vortex forming in the
Middle East where American Empire is going down the drain of failed invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan
and ill-conceived "alliances" with fundamentally hostile powers like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
I don't think these comment threads are a good place to campaign or advocate on the behalf
of any candidate. A modicum of advocacy might be welcome for the fodder it provides for reflective
rumination, but mirroring the Clinton campaign's themes seems to require systematic misreadings
of counter-argument and that has become disruptive. (RNB's volume and habitual tendentiousness
puts RNB into a special category in this regard.)
There ought to be room in this discussions to move the conversation to more of a meta-level,
where we consider trends and dynamics without the partisan's hyper-narrow focus.
BW: "People, who argue Trump might start a nuclear war out of personal pique because he
insults people on teevee might want to examine Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and
positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion or the South China Sea."
Or, as Ian Welsh points out, her position on Syria. She seems to have advocated for a no-fly
zone in Syria after Russia came in, which would presumably put us in the position of shooting
down Russian warplanes or having a good chance of doing so. Maybe if she does take on Kissinger
as an advisor he'll tell her that superpower conflicts have to be done through proxies or they're
too dangerous.
For the larger question of whether these comment threads are a good place to campaign or advocate,
I sort of come down in a different place than you do. If these comment threads were about good-faith
argument, then sure this kind of advocacy might be bad, but I don't think that most people here
are capable of good-faith argument even if they were attempting it (most of the time they aren't
attempting it). In that case the comment threads serve an alternate purpose of seeing what kinds
of beliefs are out there, at least among the limited group of people likely to comment on CT threads.
Of course people can be kicked out if they habitually make the threads too difficult to moderate
(or really, for whatever other reason an OP decides on), but the well has long since been poisoned
and one more drop isn't really going to do much more damage.
There's a reason the electorate hates both Trump and Clinton. This is what 40 years of
two-party neoliberalism gives us: an unhinged demagogue or the point person for Democratic policies
that have systematically gutted the middle class, screwed the poor, increase inequality, slowed
productivity, caused multiple wars, and made them personally rich.
Let's not forget the Clintons were the Democratic Party point people in causing the vast incarceration
of black men while simultaneously gutting welfare for black mothers and their children. (Yay 3rd
Way!) They were the point people for letting 300 million Chinese workers compete with American
workers. They deregulated the banks. And was there a war she didn't like?
So Layman finds that the 80% of the Evangelicals that support Trump are racist. And so are
the white voters in manufacturing regions. (Excuse me. "Principally" racist.) And Layman's exact
counterpart on some unnamed right-wing site thinks all the blacks voting for HRC are in it for
the welfare and affirmative action. (Yes, your exact counterpart. Oh, and they, like you, would
say blacks are "principally" scammers cause, you know, there are other minor reasons to vote HRC.)
I take a different view. I think most voters are going to have the taste of vomit in the their
mouths when they pull the lever.
If there's a populist politics in our future, it will have to have a
much sharper edge. It can talk about growth, but it has to mean smashing the rich and taking their
stuff. There's very rapidly going to come a point where there's no other option, other than just
accepting cramdown by the authoritarian surveillance state built by the neoliberals. that's a
much taller order than Sanders or Trump have been offering.
Fit for inscription (keeps me smashingly awake after hundreds of comments :-))
The moral righteousness of identity politics adds in an element that goes way beyond
the lazy failure to hold politicians accountable or the tendency to explain away their more
Machiavellian maneuvers. There's both an actual blindness to the reactionary conservatism of
equal opportunity exploitation and a peremptory challenge to any other claim or analysis. If
police practices and procedures are trending in an authoritarian direction, they can only be
challenged on grounds of racist effect or intent. The authoritarianism cannot be challenged
on its own merit, so the building of the authoritarian state goes on unimpeded, since the principle
that is challenged is not authoritarianism, but a particular claim of racism or sexism.
So in the same week that the Justice Department report on the Baltimore police force comes
out, showing systematic police discrimination - e.g. lots of people stopped in black neighborhoods,
esp. two in particular, for petty reasons or no reason, versus very few people stopped in other
neighborhoods - bruce wilder informs us that identity politics somehow prevents us from criticizing
police behavior on grounds of authoritarianism, that it can only be criticized on grounds of racism
(or subconscious racial bias) - of course, that wd appear to be a main problem w police behavior
in Baltimore and some other places.
"Rich where is the evidence people can no longer criticize police for broad authoritarianism?"
The last time I talked about this with faustusnotes, he told me that it was entirely understandable
and indeed good that Obama and the Democratic Party were passing laws to make non-violent protestors
even more likely to be arrested, because Obama was black and there was a scary white protestor
holding an assault rifle at a town meeting somewhere.
As for LFC, he finished up his not a counter with "Assad and Putin are authoritarians (plus
in Assad's case especially being a murderous thug), but I don't recall b.w. being too exercised
about their authoritarianism." That's perfectly familiar [line] too: I well remember it from the
GWB Iraq War days. Do you oppose the Iraq War? Well I never heard of you being very exercised
about Saddam Hussein being a murderous thug. You must really support Saddam, or not really care
about authoritarianism. The people who liked to say this were called the "Decents", a word like
many other political words that was perfect because it meant exactly the opposite of what it sounded
like.
Marc 08.14.16 at 2:09 am
What's being critiqued is the idea that nothing but racism matters. What's being critiqued
is the idea that it's useful or even correct to do mind-reading and to confidently pronounce that
people who disagree with you do so because they're stupid and evil – excuse me, because they're
racists.
What I find illuminating here is the graphic evidence of why this approach is so toxic. People
get furious and hostile when you call them bigots. It's an insult, not an invitation to dialog
– because it doubles as a character judgment and as a personal attack.
Now, when someone actually says something bigoted that's one thing. But that's not what's going
on, and that's why the pushback is so serious.
And – faustnotes – you're minimizing the real suffering of people by claiming that the mortality
rise in lower income US whites isn't real, and it certainly isn't important to you. I'm getting
zero sense of empathy from you towards the plight of these people – the real important thing is
to tell them why they're racist scum.
I think that the left has a moral obligation to try and build a decent society even for people
that don't like the left much. I think that working class voters across the Western world are
susceptible to racial appeals not because they're scum, but because they've been screwed by the
system and the left has nothing to offer them but moral lectures. And that's a failure that we
can address, and it starts with listening to people with respect. You can stand for your principles
without assuming bad faith, without mind-reading, and without the stereotyping.
For me at least, those are the grounds of debate, and they're very different in kind from pretending
that there is no such thing as racism.
I am aware that the claim of racism is potent and where it can be made to effect reform,
I am all in favor. Take what you can get, I say.
I am also saying, worry that the charge of racism may be all we have left that is capable
of getting reforms. And, worry that charges of racism, without useful nuance, may not get the
political reaction and reform one ought to desire.
Police misconduct is not a problem solely and originally about race and racism. I
hope Baltimore gets useful and effective reform.
"... Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul penned a scathing piece in the Washington Post accusing the Kremlin of intervening in the American election, based solely on the evidence of a harsh article regarding Clinton published by Sputnik News. Boy, was he wrong! ..."
"... On Wednesday night, Michael McFaul took to the Washington Post to opine that the article was part of a Kremlin-led conspiracy to subvert the American election, referring to the person running the Sputnik Twitter account (that particular day being me) as a "Russian official," before warning (threatening) that we "might want to think about what we plan to do" if Clinton becomes president. ..."
"... Pursuant to 18 US Code Chapter 115, I'd be writing this article to you from prison, if not awaiting a death sentence, if I were writing content ordered down to me by the Kremlin with a view towards subverting the American election. I am instead writing this piece from my favorite coffeeshop in downtown DC. I am not a Russian official. Our staff members are not Russian officials. We are not Kremlin controlled. We do not speak with Vladimir Putin over our morning coffee. ..."
"... In fact, the Atlantic Council's Ben Nimmo leveled a completely different view on Friday morning, calling our coverage "uncharacteristically balanced," but arguing that, because we report generally negative stories on both candidates, our real target is American democracy itself. ..."
"... It may surprise Mr. McFaul and Mr. Nimmo to learn that, in my previous work on political campaigns, I actually helped fundraise for Hillary Clinton - the candidate whose inner circle is now labelling my colleagues and I as foreign saboteurs. It is neither my fault nor Sputnik's fault that Secretary Clinton's campaign has devolved into one predicated upon fear and conspiracy, where the two primary lines are "the Russians did it" and that she is not Trump. ..."
"... The fact that more than 50% of the country dislikes both presidential candidates is not a Kremlin conspiracy. Would it be appropriate for us to present to our readers an alternate universe a la MSNBC, which defended Clinton's trustworthiness by saying she only perjured herself three times? ..."
"... Returning to the substance of the article to which Mr. McFaul took exception. This piece was written because it was newsworthy - it informed our readers and forced them to think. The provocative headline of the story was based on a statement by Trump that is a bit of a stretch (notice the air quotes on the title), but which highlights a major policy decision made by this administration that has not been properly scrutinized by the mainstream media. In the article, for those who actually read it, I refer to the 2012 DNI report that correctly calculated that Obama's policy in Syria would lead to the development of a Salafist entity controlling territory and that this outcome was "wanted." Hence, the title. ..."
"... Today, the Obama Administration grapples with a similar debate over whether to continue to support the "moderate rebels" in Syria, despite the fact that they have now melded with al-Nusra (an al-Qaeda affiliate until they rebranded), under the banner of the Army of Conquest in Syria. ..."
Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul penned a scathing piece in the Washington Post
accusing the Kremlin of intervening in the American election, based solely on the evidence of a harsh
article regarding Clinton published by Sputnik News. Boy, was he wrong!
My name is Bill Moran. A native Arizonan, I have worked on dozens of Democratic Party campaigns,
and am more recently a proud writer for Sputnik's Washington, DC bureau.
It also seems, as of Thursday morning, that I am the source of controversy between the United
States and Russia - something I never quite could have imagined - for writing an article that was
critical of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with a stinging headline and a harsh hashtag.
So, what is this controversy all about? This weekend I published a piece with the headline, "Secret
File Confirms Trump Claim: Obama, Hillary 'Founded ISIS' to Oust Assad." I also tweeted out this
story from our platform with the hashtag #CrookedHillary. Guilty as charged.
On Wednesday night,
Michael McFaul took to the Washington Post to opine that the article was part of a Kremlin-led
conspiracy to subvert the American election, referring to the person running the Sputnik Twitter
account (that particular day being me) as a "Russian official," before warning (threatening) that
we "might want to think about what we plan to do" if Clinton becomes president.
I feel it is necessary to pause, here, before having a substantive argument about the article's
merits and purpose within the public discourse, to address the severity of the accusation leveled
against me and Sputnik's staff (not by name until now), and its disturbing implications on freedom
of speech, dissent, and American democracy - implications that I hope Mr. McFaul, other public proponents
of the Hillary campaign, and the cadre of Russian critics consider.
Pursuant to 18 US Code Chapter 115, I'd be writing this article to you from prison, if not
awaiting a death sentence, if I were writing content ordered down to me by the Kremlin with a view
towards subverting the American election. I am instead writing this piece from my favorite coffeeshop
in downtown DC. I am not a Russian official. Our staff members are not Russian officials. We are
not Kremlin controlled. We do not speak with Vladimir Putin over our morning coffee.
Mr. McFaul worked side-by-side with the former Secretary of State in the Obama Administration, and
his routine accusations that Trump supporters are siding with Putin leaves me to imagine that he
is a Clinton insider if not a direct campaign surrogate. That such a public official would suggest
reprisals against those with differing viewpoints in the event that she wins is disturbing.
Our
outlet does not endorse or support any particular US presidential candidate, but rather reports news
and views for the day in as diligent a manner as we possibly can. This is evident in our very harsh
headlines on Trump, which Mr. McFaul failed to review before making his attack.
In fact, the Atlantic Council's Ben Nimmo leveled a completely different view on Friday morning,
calling our coverage "uncharacteristically balanced," but arguing that, because we report generally
negative stories on both candidates, our real target is American democracy itself.
It may surprise Mr. McFaul and Mr. Nimmo to learn that, in my previous work on political campaigns,
I actually helped fundraise for Hillary Clinton - the candidate whose inner circle is now labelling
my colleagues and I as foreign saboteurs. It is neither my fault nor Sputnik's fault that Secretary
Clinton's campaign has devolved into one predicated upon fear and conspiracy, where the two primary
lines are "the Russians did it" and that she is not Trump.
Donald Trump has the lowest approval rating since presidential polling began. Until recently,
Clinton had the second lowest approval rating since presidential polling began. Their numbers are
worse than even Barry Goldwater and George Wallace, in fact.
The fact that more than 50% of the country dislikes both presidential candidates is not a
Kremlin conspiracy. Would it be appropriate for us to present to our readers an alternate universe
a la MSNBC, which defended Clinton's trustworthiness by saying she only perjured herself three times?
There is a reason why both presidential candidates have received less than fawning coverage from
our outlet: they have not done anything to warrant positive coverage. My colleagues, also Americans,
like so many others in this country, wish they would.
Returning to the substance of the article to which Mr. McFaul took exception. This piece was
written because it was newsworthy - it informed our readers and forced them to think.
The provocative headline of the story was based on a statement by Trump that is a bit of a stretch
(notice the air quotes on the title), but which highlights a major policy decision made by this administration
that has not been properly scrutinized by the mainstream media.
In the article, for those who actually read it, I refer to the 2012 DNI report that correctly calculated
that Obama's policy in Syria would lead to the development of a Salafist entity controlling territory
and that this outcome was "wanted." Hence, the title.
Today, the Obama Administration
grapples with a similar debate over whether to continue to support the "moderate rebels" in Syria,
despite the fact that they have now melded with al-Nusra (an al-Qaeda affiliate until they rebranded),
under the banner of the Army of Conquest in Syria.
We do not pretend that these decisions exist in a vacuum with a clear right and wrong answer upon
which no two intelligent people differ, but this is a matter worthy of public discourse.
And what about that hashtag? Why would I use #CrookedHillary? I mean, I could have put #Imwithher,
but I wasn't trying to be ironic. When a hashtag is featured at the end of a sentence, its purpose
is for cataloging. Some people, usually non-millennials, use hashtags as text to convey a particular
opinion. I was not doing that. I also used #NeverTrump in a separate article.
But Mr. McFaul lazily cherry-picked, and then labeled (maybe unwittingly) Sputnik's American writers
traitors to this country.
Here are some headlines, This is a textbook example of demonization. Persistent attempt
not to discuss issues important for Americans and concentrate on personalities, making a show out of
election. Out of a hundred that I analyzed only one was positive, around a dozen were
neutral. Everything else were brazen, rabid dog style attack of neoliberals on Trump.
"... Trump is such a menace and defeating him is so important that I think freedom of speech should be limited temporarily (through informal ostracism and prudent editorial judgment, of course) and only pure HRC bots should be allowed to speak. But that is just my opinion, not my call. ..."
"... This is how I understand the Clintonbots. ..."
"... It is not enough to just vote for Clinton or support voting for Clinton against Trump. Let us also *pretend* that Clinton isn't more evil than her liberal supporters recognise, let us *pretend* that Donald Trump is unprecedented among Republicans, let us stop thinking and speaking what we think, let us do anything and say anything, use each and every conceivable argument, sacrifice all of our principles, honesty and future credibility in order to convince our followers and anyone still stupid enough to take our words seriously that Clinton is an angel of light and the difference between her and Trump is in no way less than the one between Heaven and Hell. ..."
> I do not think Crooked Timber should be featuring this hugely irresponsible line of thought
in their OP's. But that is my opinion, not my call.
Trump is such a menace and defeating him is so important that I think freedom of speech
should be limited temporarily (through informal ostracism and prudent editorial judgment, of
course) and only pure HRC bots should be allowed to speak. But that is just my opinion, not my
call.
> 1,2,3,4,5,6
This is how I understand the Clintonbots.It is not enough to just vote for Clinton or support voting for Clinton against Trump.
Let us also *pretend* that Clinton isn't more evil than her liberal supporters recognise, let
us *pretend* that Donald Trump is unprecedented among Republicans, let us stop thinking and speaking
what we think, let us do anything and say anything, use each and every conceivable argument, sacrifice
all of our principles, honesty and future credibility in order to convince our followers and anyone
still stupid enough to take our words seriously that Clinton is an angel of light and the difference
between her and Trump is in no way less than the one between Heaven and Hell.
Let us be completely uncritical of everything that she and her allies have ever done or
are doing at the moment, until the elections are over. Then, when she uses this free pass we have
given her to do the same things as President, we can be happy that at least we have saved the
world. And maybe, just maybe our absolute loyalty to the tribe and the establishment will be rewarded.
This is a very important article and I strongly recommend to read it in full to understand how neoliberal
propaganda works.
This is nice example of how difficult is for ordinary person to cut threw media lies and get to
the truth. So some level of brainwashing is inevitable unless you use only alternative media. Neoliberal
MSM are disgusting and are lying all the time, but unless you use WWW and foreign sources (like people
in the in the USSR did -- substitute radio for WWW, as it did not existed yet) that is not much else.
Notable quotes:
"... Donald Trump did something downright shocking for a debate a few days before an important Republican primary. He went after the country's last Republican president, George W. Bush. Hard. He went after the Republican Party's general foreign policy approach. Hard. ..."
"... Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake. All right? The war in Iraq, we spent $2 trillion, thousands of lives, we don't even have it. Iran has taken over Iraq with the second-largest oil reserves in the world. Obviously, it was a mistake. George Bush made a mistake. We can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East. I want to tell you. They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction, there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction. ..."
"... Trump said, "The World Trade Center came down during your brother's reign, remember that That's not keeping us safe." ..."
"... Compare that little vignette with this week, when Donald Trump repeatedly said that President Obama and Hillary Clinton were founders/co-founders/MVPs of ISIS. ..."
"... Washington Examiner ..."
"... DT: I don't care. He was the founder. His, the way he got out of Iraq was that that was the founding of ISIS, okay? ..."
Back in February, candidates for the Republican nomination for president debated each other in
South Carolina. The Saturday evening discussion was raucous. Donald Trump did something downright
shocking for a debate a few days before an important Republican primary. He went after the country's
last Republican president, George W. Bush. Hard. He went after the Republican Party's general foreign
policy approach. Hard.
Moderator John Dickerson asked him about his 2008 comments in favor of impeaching George W. Bush.
He had said that year that Bush had "lied" to get the United States into a war in Iraq.
Trump said to Dickerson:
Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake. All right? The war in Iraq, we spent
$2 trillion, thousands of lives, we don't even have it. Iran has taken over Iraq with the second-largest
oil reserves in the world. Obviously, it was a mistake. George Bush made a mistake. We can make
mistakes. But that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the
Middle East. I want to tell you. They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction,
there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction.
Jeb Bush attempted to defend his brother's honor, saying, "And while Donald Trump was building
a reality TV show, my brother was building a security apparatus to keep us safe. And I'm proud of
what he did."
Trump said, "The World Trade Center came down during your brother's reign, remember that
That's not keeping us safe."
And on it went. Yes, many in the crowd booed. Yes, many Republicans opposed his conspiracy theories
about George W. Bush. The media were able to report Trump's challenges to Republican foreign policy
without weighing in on the veracity of his claims. The most interesting thing of all? Trump
easily won the
South Carolina primary a week later with 33 percent of the vote.
Compare that little vignette with this week, when Donald Trump repeatedly said that President
Obama and Hillary Clinton were founders/co-founders/MVPs of ISIS. Even though the media had
more than shot their outrage wad for the week, the media doubled, tripled, even quadrupled down on
their outrage for the Wednesday night-Thursday news cycle. Here are six problems with the media's
complete meltdown over the remarks.
Why Did This Become an Issue Now and Not 7 Months Ago?
Republicans who oppose Trump
claim the media encouraged Trump when he was setting fire to Republican opponents but have fought
him tooth and nail in the general. Ammunition for that claim includes the distinct ways the media
have reacted to his long-standing claim that Obama and Clinton founded ISIS.
As the Washington
Examiner notes, Trump said this three times in January alone:
'They've created ISIS. Hillary Clinton created ISIS with Obama,' he said during a campaign
rally in Mississippi.
Trump restated the claim in an interview on CBS in July. 'Hillary Clinton invented ISIS
with her stupid policies,' he said. 'She is responsible for ISIS.'
He said it again during a rally in Florida one month later. 'It was Hillary Clinton – she
should take an award from them as the founder of ISIS.'
Needless to say, the media response to these comments was more bemused enabling than the abject
horror they reserved for this week. The full media meltdown over something Trump has been saying
all year long is at best odd and unbecoming. At worst, it suggests deep media corruption.
Hyperliteralism
Listen, Trump might be an effective communicator with his core audience,
but others have trouble understanding him. His speaking style couldn't be more removed from the
anodyne and cautious political rhetoric of our era. This can be a challenge for political journalists
in particular. His sentences run on into paragraphs. He avoids specificity or contradicts himself
when he doesn't. His sentences trail into other sentences before they finish. He doesn't play
the usual games that the media are used to. It's frustrating.
So the media immediately decided Trump was claiming that Obama had literally incorporated ISIS
a few years back. And they treated this literal claim as a fact that needed to be debunked.
Politifact gave the claim one of their vaunted "pants on fire" rulings: ... ... ...
The "fact" "check" admits that both President Barack Obama's leadership in Iraq and Hillary
Clinton's push to change regimes in Libya led to the explosion of ISIS but says that since Trump
said he really, totally, no-joke meant Obama and Clinton were co-founders, that they must give
him a Pants On Fire rating.
As for the CNN chyron which appears to be deployed never in the case of Hillary Clinton's many
serious troubles with truth-telling, or when Joe Biden told black voters that Republicans were
going to "put y'all back in chains," but repeatedly in the case of Donald Trump speaking hyperbolically,
this tweet is worth considering:
Failure to Do Due Diligence
On Thursday morning, Trump did a radio interview with
Hugh Hewitt. The media clipped one part of his answer and used it to push a narrative that Donald
Trump was super serial
about Obama literally going to Baghdad, attending organizational meetings, and holding bake sales
to launch his new organization ISIS.
Kapur's tweet went viral but so did about eleventy billion other reporter tweets making the
same point. The Guardian headline was "Trump reiterates he literally believes Barack Obama is
the 'founder of Isis'."
You really need to listen to the interview to get the full flavor of how unjournalistic this
narrative is.
Yes, Trump does reiterate over and over that Obama is the founder of ISIS. And yes, he says
he really meant to say Obama founded ISIS. But that's definitely not all. How hard is it to listen
for an additional minute or read an additional few words? The relevant portion of the interview
is from 15:25 to 16:53. So this is not a huge investment of your time.
First off, let's note for our hyperliteral media that Trump says "I'm a person that doesn't
like insulting people" a few seconds before Hewitt asks about the ISIS comments. (Fact check:
Pants on fire, amiright?) In this minute and a half, Trump says "I meant he's the founder of ISIS.
I do. He was the most valuable player. I give him the most valuable player award. I give her,
too, by the way, Hillary Clinton." Hewitt pushes back, saying that Obama is trying to kill ISIS.
Trump says:
DT: I don't care. He was the founder. His, the way he got out of Iraq was that that
was the founding of ISIS, okay?
Here, journalists and pundits, is your first slap across the face that maybe, just maybe, Trump
is not talking about articles of incorporation but, rather, something else entirely.
Hewitt says, yeah, but the way you're saying it is opening you up to criticism. Was it a mistake?
Trump says not at all. Obama is ISIS's most valuable player. Then Trump asks Hewitt if he doesn't
like the way he's phrasing all this! And here's where journalists might want to put on their thinking
caps and pay attention. Hewitt says he'd say that Obama and Hillary lost the peace and created
a vacuum for ISIS, but he wouldn't say they created it:
HH: I don't. I think I would say they created, they lost the peace. They created the Libyan
vacuum, they created the vacuum into which ISIS came, but they didn't create ISIS. That's what
I would say.
DT: Well, I disagree.
HH: All right, that's okay.
DT: I mean, with his bad policies, that's why ISIS came about.
HH: That's
DT: If he would have done things properly, you wouldn't have had ISIS.
HH: That's true.
DT: Therefore, he was the founder of ISIS.
HH: And that's, I'd just use different language to communicate it, but let me close with
this, because I know I'm keeping you long, and Hope's going to kill me.
DT: But they wouldn't talk about your language, and they do talk about my language, right?
Now, this is undoubtedly true. When people critique Obama's policies as Hewitt did, the media
either call the critic racist or ignore him. When Trump critiques Obama's policies, they do talk
about the way he does it. Maybe this means the message gets through to people.
No matter what, though, the media should have stuck through all 90 seconds of the discussion
to avoid the idiotic claim that Trump was saying Obama was literally on the ground in Iraq running
ISIS' operations. He flat-out admits he's speaking hyperbolically to force the media to cover
it.
Pretending This Rhetoric Is Abnormal
People accuse their political opponents of being
responsible for bad things all the time.
Clinton accused Trump of being ISIS' top recruiter. Bush's CIA and NSA chief said Trump was
a "recruiting
sergeant" for ISIS. Former NYC mayor Rudy Guiliani said Hillary Clinton could be considered
a
founding member of ISIS. Here was Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, just a few weeks ago, making
a completely false claim of Republican's literal ties to ISIS:
Carly Fiorina and Rick Santorum placed blame for ISIS on Obama and Clinton. Sen. John McCain
said Obama was "directly responsible" for the Orlando ISIS attack due to his failure to deal with
the terror group. President Obama said
he couldn't think of a more potent recruiting tool for ISIS than Republican rhetoric in support
of prioritizing help for Christians who had been targeted by the group. Last year, Vanity Fair
published a piece blaming George W. Bush for ISIS. Heck,
so did President
Obama. There are many other examples. This type of rhetoric may not be exemplary, but we shouldn't
pretend it's unique to Trump.
Missing Actual Problems with His Comments
Huge kudos to BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski
for avoiding the feigned outrage/fainting couch in favor of an important critique of Trump's comments.
He didn't pretend to be confused by what Trump was saying. By avoiding that silliness, he noticed
something much more problematic with Trump's comments.
Trump has cited the conservative critique of President Obama's Iraq policy - that the withdrawal
of troops in 2011 led to a power vacuum that allowed ISIS to flourish - in making the claim.
'He was the founder of ISIS, absolutely,' Trump said on CNBC on Thursday. 'The way he removed
our troops - you shouldn't have gone in. I was against the war in Iraq. Totally against it.'
(Trump was not against the war as he has repeatedly claimed.) 'The way he got out of Iraq was
that that was the founding of ISIS, OK?' Trump later said.
But lost in Trump's immediate comments is that, for years, he pushed passionately and forcefully
for the same immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq. In interview after interview in the later
2000s, Trump said American forces should be removed from Iraq.
Read the whole (brief) thing. One of the Trump quotes in the piece specifically has him acknowledging
the civil unrest in Iraq that led to ISIS flourishing. It's a devastating critique and a far smarter
one than the silly hysteria on display elsewhere.
We're Still Not Talking about Widespread Dissatisfaction with Our Foreign Policy
Let's think back to the opening vignette. Trump went into the South in the middle of the Republican
primary and ostentatiously micturated over George W. Bush's Iraq policy. The voters of South Carolina
rewarded him with a victory.
Here's the real scandal in this outrage-du-jour: by pretending to think that Trump was claiming
Obama had operational control over ISIS' day-to-day decision making, the media failed to cover
widespread dissatisfaction with this country's foreign policy, whether it's coming from George
W. Bush or Barack Obama.
Many Americans are rather sick of this country's way of fighting wars, where enemies receive
decades of nation-building instead of crushing defeats, and where threats are pooh-poohed or poorly
managed instead of actually dealt with.
Trump may be an uneven and erratic communicator who is unable to force that discussion in a
way that a more traditional candidate might, but the media shouldn't have to be forced into it.
Crowds are cheering Trump's hard statements about Obama and Clinton's policies in the Middle East
because they are sick and tired of losing men, women, treasure and time with impotent, misguided,
aimless efforts there.
The vast majority of Americans supported invading Iraq, even if
many of them deny they supported it now. Americans have lost confidence in both Republican
and Democratic foreign policy approaches. No amount of media hysteria will hide that reality.
Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is a senior editor at The Federalist. Follow her on Twitter at @mzhemingway
"... "Trump is a racist and his followers are racist and that's all you need to know" is a narrative thesis, like the narrative thesis that Trump is Putin's stooge, very convenient to Clinton's candidacy, but ultimately corrosive to American politics and political discourse. ..."
"... Not just boxed away as, "well, she is obviously better than Trump so let's not even trouble our beautiful minds", when by the way it is not so obvious as all that, as several commenters have tried to point out. People, who argue Trump might start a nuclear war out of personal pique because he insults people on teevee might want to examine Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion or the South China Sea. ..."
"... Everything should not be about electing Clinton. Clinton's election is pretty much assured, despite her deep flaws as a candidate of the center-left (to wit, her war-mongering and epic corruption and economic conservatism). Pundits like Josh Marshall of TPM or Ezra Klein of Vox are betraying their public trust by carrying Clinton's water so slavishly. ..."
"... People, who argue Trump might start a nuclear war out of personal pique because he insults people on teevee might want to examine Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion or the South China Sea ..."
"... Let's not forget the Clintons were the Democratic Party point people in causing the vast incarceration of black men while simultaneously gutting welfare for black mothers and their children. (Yay 3rd Way!) They were the point people for letting 300 million Chinese workers compete with American workers. They deregulated the banks. And was there a war she didn't like? ..."
"... If there's a populist politics in our future, it will have to have a much sharper edge. It can talk about growth, but it has to mean smashing the rich and taking their stuff. There's very rapidly going to come a point where there's no other option, other than just accepting cramdown by the authoritarian surveillance state built by the neoliberals. that's a much taller order than Sanders or Trump have been offering. ..."
I think all you've really shown is that blue-collar, less-educated people tend
to not know much about politics and to have the political attitudes of authoritarian followers
and Trump is willing to be demagogic enough to attract their attention as an alternative to the
status quo candidacy of Hillary Clinton.
"Trump is a racist and his followers are racist and that's all you need to know" is a narrative
thesis, like the narrative thesis that Trump is Putin's stooge, very convenient to Clinton's candidacy,
but ultimately corrosive to American politics and political discourse. It isn't a question
of whether statistics suggest racism is an efficient instrumental variable. It is a question of
whether this politics of invective and distraction is going anywhere good, could go anywhere good.
No one in these comment threads has been defending Trump or the political ignorance and resentments
of his supporters. Some of us have questioned the wisdom of a political tactic of treating them
as pariahs and dismissing their concerns and economic distress as fake or illegitimate.
The Clinton campaign has whipped up a high dudgeon about racism and Putin and how unsuited
Trump is, to be President. I don't disagree about the core conclusion: Trump does not seem to
me to be suited to be President. That's hardly a difficult judgment: an impulsive, self-promoting
reality teevee star with no experience of public office - hmmm, let me think about that for two
seconds. But, the high dudgeon serves other purposes, to which I object strongly.
Even though, and especially because Clinton is very likely to become President, her suitability
ought to be scrutinized. Not just boxed away as, "well, she is obviously better than
Trump so let's not even trouble our beautiful minds", when by the way it is not so obvious
as all that, as several commenters have tried to point out. People, who argue Trump might start
a nuclear war out of personal pique because he insults people on teevee might want to examine
Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and positions on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion
or the South China Sea.
Everything should not be about electing Clinton. Clinton's election is pretty much assured,
despite her deep flaws as a candidate of the center-left (to wit, her war-mongering and epic corruption
and economic conservatism). Pundits like Josh Marshall of TPM or Ezra Klein of Vox are betraying
their public trust by carrying Clinton's water so slavishly. Ezra may be gaining all important
access to the Clinton White House comparable to what he had in Obama's White House, but he spent
his credibility with his readers to get it. And, he's deprived his readers of the opportunity
to learn about issues of vital importance, like the TPP and corporate business power, or NATO
expansion and the relationship with Russia, or the swirling vortex forming in the Middle East
where American Empire is going down the drain of failed invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and
ill-conceived "alliances" with fundamentally hostile powers like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
I don't think these comment threads are a good place to campaign or advocate on the behalf
of any candidate. A modicum of advocacy might be welcome for the fodder it provides for reflective
rumination, but mirroring the Clinton campaign's themes seems to require systematic misreadings
of counter-argument and that has become disruptive. (RNB's volume and habitual tendentiousness
puts RNB into a special category in this regard.) There ought to be room in this discussions to
move the conversation to more of a meta-level, where we consider trends and dynamics without the
partisan's hyper-narrow focus.
@ 793 Hi Rich, that's a fair question. If memory serves, there were several very close calls under
Nixon more from errors in the 'fail safe' system. Nixon is a complicated amoral actor fairly obviously
guilty of some extremely serious crimes. He was not the only nasty actor at the time, however.
In the specific case you're describing, I don't think any president would have handled things
much differently. Russian missiles 90 miles from US soil during the cold war was unacceptable.
Many of our students have absolutely no idea of what life was like during the 20th century.
It's literally another world. The one we share today seems infinitely safer and more tolerant.
Cheers.
BW: "People, who argue Trump might start a nuclear war out of personal pique because he insults
people on teevee might want to examine Clinton's bellicose foreign policy record and positions
on, say, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, NATO expansion or the South China Sea."
Or, as Ian Welsh
points out, her position on Syria. She seems to have advocated for a no-fly zone in Syria after
Russia came in, which would presumably put us in the position of shooting down Russian warplanes
or having a good chance of doing so. Maybe if she does take on Kissinger as an advisor he'll tell
her that superpower conflicts have to be done through proxies or they're too dangerous.
For the larger question of whether these comment threads are a good place to campaign or advocate,
I sort of come down in a different place than you do. If these comment threads were about good-faith
argument, then sure this kind of advocacy might be bad, but I don't think that most people here
are capable of good-faith argument even if they were attempting it (most of the time they aren't
attempting it). In that case the comment threads serve an alternate purpose of seeing what kinds
of beliefs are out there, at least among the limited group of people likely to comment on CT threads.
Of course people can be kicked out if they habitually make the threads too difficult to moderate
(or really, for whatever other reason an OP decides on), but the well has long since been poisoned
and one more drop isn't really going to do much more damage.
T 08.13.16 at 9:13 pm
BW@798
Amen.
There's a reason the electorate hates both Trump and Clinton. This is what 40 years of two-party
neoliberism gives us: an unhinged demagogue or the point person for Democratic policies that have
systematically gutted the middle class, screwed the poor, increase inequality, slowed productivity,
caused multiple wars, and made them personally rich.
Let's not forget the Clintons were the Democratic Party point people in causing the vast
incarceration of black men while simultaneously gutting welfare for black mothers and their children.
(Yay 3rd Way!) They were the point people for letting 300 million Chinese workers compete with
American workers. They deregulated the banks. And was there a war she didn't like?
So Layman finds that the 80% of the Evangelicals that support Trump are racist. And so are
the white voters in manufacturing regions. (Excuse me. "Principally" racist.) And Layman's exact
counterpart on some unnamed right-wing site thinks all the blacks voting for HRC are in it for
the welfare and affirmative action. (Yes, your exact counterpart. Oh, and they, like you, would
say blacks are "principally" scammers cause, you know, there are other minor reasons to vote HRC.)
I take a different view. I think most voters are going to have the taste of vomit in the their
mouths when they pull the lever.
If there's a populist politics in our future, it will have to have a much sharper edge.
It can talk about growth, but it has to mean smashing the rich and taking their stuff. There's
very rapidly going to come a point where there's no other option, other than just accepting cramdown
by the authoritarian surveillance state built by the neoliberals. that's a much taller order than
Sanders or Trump have been offering.
Fit for inscription (keeps me smashingly awake after hundreds of comments :-))
The moral righteousness of identity politics adds in an element that goes
way beyond the lazy failure to hold politicians accountable or the tendency to explain away their
more Machiavellian maneuvers. There's both an actual blindness to the reactionary conservatism
of equal opportunity exploitation and a peremptory challenge to any other claim or analysis. If
police practices and procedures are trending in an authoritarian direction, they can only be challenged
on grounds of racist effect or intent. The authoritarianism cannot be challenged on its own merit,
so the building of the authoritarian state goes on unimpeded, since the principle that is challenged
is not authoritarianism, but a particular claim of racism or sexism.
So in the same week that the Justice Department report on the Baltimore police force comes
out, showing systematic police discrimination - e.g. lots of people stopped in black neighborhoods,
esp. two in particular, for petty reasons or no reason, versus very few people stopped in other
neighborhoods - bruce wilder informs us that identity politics somehow prevents us from criticizing
police behavior on grounds of authoritarianism, that it can only be criticized on grounds of racism
(or subconscious racial bias) - of course, that wd appear to be a main problem w police behavior
in Baltimore and some other places.
"... The problem with just sitting back and let you invade any country you like is that we all have to live in the world you make. You're certainly correct to point out that there are many things 'we foreigners' don't understand about America. ..."
"... What we do know is that whatever you tell yourself about the sacrifices US soldiers are making in your peacemaking wars in the ME, the overwhelming majority of those killed and wounded in modern US led military actions are not Americans. I fully believe that many Americans are intensely patriotic and love their country. I also believe that there are many subcultures within America that 'we foreigners' cannot understand. ..."
"... You believe your nation's commitment to its military is somehow special? Prove it. Instead we get American exceptionalism proudly on display. ..."
84@ The problem with just sitting back and let you invade any country you like is that
we all have to live in the world you make. You're certainly correct to point out that there are
many things 'we foreigners' don't understand about America.
What we do know is that whatever you tell yourself about the sacrifices US soldiers are
making in your peacemaking wars in the ME, the overwhelming majority of those killed and wounded
in modern US led military actions are not Americans. I fully believe that many Americans are intensely
patriotic and love their country. I also believe that there are many subcultures within America
that 'we foreigners' cannot understand.
What is also clear from your comment is that you, and perhaps some others, believe that this
love of country and rich tapestry of subcultures somehow makes Americans very, very special and
beyond criticism.
We understand this much: Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor – 68 civilian casualties.
The US response: "..on the night of March 9-10, 1945…LeMay sent 334 B-29s low over Tokyo from
the Marianas. Their mission was to reduce the city to rubble, kill its citizens, and instill terror
in the survivors, with jellied gasoline and napalm that would create a sea of flames. Stripped
of their guns to make more room for bombs, and flying at altitudes averaging 7,000 feet to evade
detection, the bombers, which had been designed for high-altitude precision attacks, carried two
kinds of incendiaries: M47s, 100-pound oil gel bombs, 182 per aircraft, each capable of starting
a major fire, followed by M69s, 6-pound gelled-gasoline bombs, 1,520 per aircraft in addition
to a few high explosives to deter firefighters. [25] The attack on an area that the US Strategic
Bombing Survey estimated to be 84.7 percent residential succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of
air force planners…
The Strategic Bombing Survey, whose formation a few months earlier provided an important signal
of Roosevelt's support for strategic bombing, provided a technical description of the firestorm
and its effects on Tokyo: The chief characteristic of the conflagration . . . was the presence
of a fire front, an extended wall of fire moving to leeward, preceded by a mass of pre-heated,
turbid, burning vapors . . . . The 28-mile-per-hour wind, measured a mile from the fire, increased
to an estimated 55 miles at the perimeter, and probably more within. An extended fire swept over
15 square miles in 6 hours . . . . The area of the fire was nearly 100 percent burned; no structure
or its contents escaped damage."
The survey concluded-plausibly, but only for events prior to August 6, 1945-that
"probably more persons lost their lives by fire at Tokyo in a 6-hour period than at any time
in the history of man. People died from extreme heat, from oxygen deficiency, from carbon monoxide
asphyxiation, from being trampled beneath the feet of stampeding crowds, and from drowning. The
largest number of victims were the most vulnerable: women, children and the elderly."
The raids continue for all the 'best' military reasons…
"In July, US planes blanketed the few remaining Japanese cities that had been spared firebombing
with an "Appeal to the People." "As you know," it read, "America which stands for humanity, does
not wish to injure the innocent people, so you had better evacuate these cities." Half the leafleted
cities were firebombed within days of the warning. US planes ruled the skies. Overall, by one
calculation, the US firebombing campaign destroyed 180 square miles of 67 cities, killed more
than 300,000 people and injured an additional 400,000, figures that exclude the atomic bombing
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." (My italics)
http://apjjf.org/-Mark-Selden/2414/article.html
kidneystones 08.03.16 at 12:59 am
@ 86 Both my parents served. My grand-fathers served, and most of my uncles and great-uncles
served – you know, the whole mess from being shot to dying in hospitals years after the war from
gas attacks. And I served, nothing special about any of this.
You believe your nation's commitment to its military is somehow special? Prove it. Instead
we get American exceptionalism proudly on display.
Should all the foreigners in your debt salute, or simply prostrate ourselves in awe?
After stealing money from states to help Hillary, Politburo of democratic Party (aka DNC) now it
trying to sink trump is the ocean of lies and distortions. That also helps to hide Hillary helath
problems and emailgate fiasco. Attack is the best form of defense.
Notable quotes:
"... A vote for Trump is a middle-finger vote [ to neoliberal world globalization] . A Trump voter does not have to believe that Trump will do anything for him, only that Trump breaking the system won't be worse for the voter than for the system. ..."
"... Obama had a very easy time of it in 2012. He had an opponent highly vulnerable to easily formulated populist attacks and with only muted appeal within the ranks of his own Party. It enabled Obama to run a very highly controlled and modulated campaign, aiming at a very narrow margin, but highly certain victory, a strategy that served Obama's neoliberal policy agenda well, since he neither had to attack the predatory wealth Romney the tax-dodging vampire capitalist symbolized, nor did he have to make extravagant populist promises to bring out additional electoral support. ..."
"... Clinton has to worry about low voter turnout. Democrats lose low turnout elections and the Democratic Party apparatus is weak in many States, including North Carolina, Ohio and Florida, which are usually considered battlegrounds. If Democratic turnout is low enough, Trump can put unusual states like New York in play. ..."
"... these things may cause a pivot with Trump standing in place. It would be a pivot to Trump attacking a broader range of establishment elites on a broader range of issues. ..."
"... Ian Welsh notes that the story of the Trump meltdown is also a ready-made story of "a stab-in-the-back" by elites stealing the election. Trump is the past Teflon Master on these kinds of gotcha fests, but if the Media pivots away from playing gotcha with Trump saying hateful and alarming things about immigration and race to Trump saying arguably true things about foreign policy or economic policy that are kept in an undiscussed box by the perverted norms of conventional wisdom, that might be enough of a broadening pivot. Unlikely, but maybe. ..."
"... Trump's candidacy is an attack on the legitimacy of elites and elite discourse. The news Media is as much an opponent as Clinton. If he baits them, even inadvertently, into doing a pivot for him, that's worrisome. ..."
"... even if the attacks on the legitimacy of Clinton, the Media, the Republican establishment won't get far enough to win the election for Trump, they portend badly for Clinton's Administration. ..."
A vote for Trump is a middle-finger vote [ to neoliberal world
globalization]. A Trump voter does not have to believe that Trump will do anything
for him, only that Trump breaking the system won't be worse for the voter than for the system.
bruce wilder 08.03.16 at 4:57 pm
Romney was in every respect a conventional candidate, one that protected the Republican brand
and, more importantly, protected the Democratic brand and the Obama brand.
Obama had a very easy time of it in 2012. He had an opponent highly vulnerable to easily
formulated populist attacks and with only muted appeal within the ranks of his own Party. It enabled
Obama to run a very highly controlled and modulated campaign, aiming at a very narrow margin,
but highly certain victory, a strategy that served Obama's neoliberal policy agenda well, since
he neither had to attack the predatory wealth Romney the tax-dodging vampire capitalist symbolized,
nor did he have to make extravagant populist promises to bring out additional electoral support.
Clinton, ironically and even paradoxically, has a harder task because Trump is a "worse" candidate
than Romney.
Laying down markers for governance, as RP puts it, poses challenges Obama did not face in 2012.
Carefully calibrating her campaign to get predictable responses and turnout will be much harder.
bruce wilder 08.03.16 at 9:51 pm
Layman @ 143
Yours seems to me like a sound if conventional analysis.
Clinton has to worry about low voter turnout. Democrats lose low turnout elections and
the Democratic Party apparatus is weak in many States, including North Carolina, Ohio and Florida,
which are usually considered battlegrounds. If Democratic turnout is low enough, Trump can put
unusual states like New York in play.
Also, attacks on Trump by establishment Republicans, who are worried about his violation of
norms and by the Media Wurlitzer staging a gotcha ("oh my gosh, Trump didn't know about Crimea!")
- these things may cause a pivot with Trump standing in place. It would be a pivot to Trump attacking
a broader range of establishment elites on a broader range of issues.
Ian Welsh notes that the story of the Trump meltdown is also a ready-made story of "a stab-in-the-back"
by elites stealing the election. Trump is the past Teflon Master on these kinds of gotcha fests,
but if the Media pivots away from playing gotcha with Trump saying hateful and alarming things
about immigration and race to Trump saying arguably true things about foreign policy or economic
policy that are kept in an undiscussed box by the perverted norms of conventional wisdom, that
might be enough of a broadening pivot. Unlikely, but maybe.
Trump's candidacy is an attack on the legitimacy of elites and elite discourse. The news
Media is as much an opponent as Clinton. If he baits them, even inadvertently, into doing a pivot
for him, that's worrisome.
Again, I am firmly in the camp that thinks he has little chance in the election, but like Ian
Welsh and others, I tend to think he's a proof of concept for a more disciplined demagogue and
that he's accelerating the loss of legitimacy for the whole political system, and even if the
attacks on the legitimacy of Clinton, the Media, the Republican establishment won't get far enough
to win the election for Trump, they portend badly for Clinton's Administration.
They feel danger for their cushy positions and military industrial complex profits. Of course
they are concerned and denounce the irresponsibility of Trump.
Notable quotes:
"... I think we reached peak "Trump is not like anything we've seen before" today when 50 top GOP national security officials, many of them veterans of the George W. Bush administration, actually came out and said, Trump "would put at risk our country's national security." ..."
"... just go back and read some of Jane Mayer's reporting on Mr. "we must live on the edge" Hayden ..."
"... my personal favorite, John Negroponte, the man who thought Kissinger was too soft on the North Vietnamese, a Reaganite veteran of the Central America wars who Stephen Kinzer famously described as "a great fabulist." ..."
"... Even by the Reagan Administration's standards of fantasy and duplicity -- I know this will come as news to some, but Donald Trump didn't make up the practice of constructing an alternative reality; remember that Ron Suskind interview with Karl "we create our own reality" Rove? -- Negroponte stood out, completely devising a Honduras of his imagination, which not only helped it become a staging ground for the devastation of the Contra war but also turned that country into a hellscape. ..."
"... Anyway, these are the people who are now being trotted out to denounce the irresponsibility of Trump. ..."
I think we reached peak "Trump is not like anything we've seen before" today when 50 top GOP
national security officials, many of them veterans of the George W. Bush administration, actually
came out and said, Trump "would put at risk our country's national security."
Among the signatories to this statement:
Michael Hayden (just go back and read some of Jane
Mayer's reporting on Mr. "we must live on the edge" Hayden),
my personal favorite, John Negroponte, the man who thought Kissinger was too soft on the North Vietnamese, a Reaganite
veteran of the Central America wars who Stephen Kinzer famously described as "a great fabulist."
Even by the Reagan Administration's standards of fantasy and duplicity -- I know this will come as
news to some, but Donald Trump didn't make up the practice of constructing an alternative reality;
remember that Ron Suskind interview with Karl "we create our own reality" Rove? -- Negroponte stood
out, completely devising a Honduras of his imagination, which not only helped it become a staging
ground for the devastation of the Contra war but also turned that country into a hellscape.
Anyway, these are the people who are now being trotted out to denounce the irresponsibility
of Trump.
As neocons are neoliberals with the gun, no wonder they switched the party and became Hillary
cheerleaders.
Robert Kagan
is dyed-in-the-wool neocon, one of the founders of
PNAC (which
promoted the idea of global neoliberal empire led by the USA and the use of 9/11 style event as
vital for converting the USA into national security state) and cheerleader of Iraq war. He is
also the husband of
Victoria Nuland, who was
instrumental in bringing into power
neo-Nazis in Ukraine. In
this WaPo column he conveniently forget about his own track record and the track record of his wife,
openly accused Trump of fascist tendencies while being unable to use the words "neocons wars" and
"neoliberal globalization" in the whole article even once
Notable quotes:
"... What he off ers is an attitude, an aura of crude strength and machismo, a boasting disrespect for the niceties of the democratic culture that he claims, and his followers believe, has produced national weakness and incompetence. ..."
"... His public discourse consists of attacking or ridiculing a wide range of "others" - Muslims, Hispanics, women, Chinese, Mexicans, Europeans, Arabs, immigrants, refugees - whom he depicts either as threats or as objects of derision. ..."
"... Trump is a negotiator. A fascist is a dictator. They have absolutely nothing in common. The neocon who wrote this propaganda is far more a fascist than Trump could ever be...demonstrated right here with his utilizing his media platform to spread propagandist lies...which is what Hitler did. ..."
"... You have no distaste for the strong man, Kagan. You have a distaste for not being in power. ..."
"... What does that say about those whose interests are served? What is your net worth Robert? How much did you make in the Bush administration, and how did you make it? What was the soldier cost? ..."
"... A Robert Kagan article lambasting the upcoming Reich in Israel will be forthcoming I assume. ..."
"... 'What these people do not or will not see is that, once in power, Trump will owe them and their party nothing". Just like GWB in 2000 and 2004? Where were your warnings then? ..."
But of course the entire Trump phenomenon has nothing to do with policy or ideology. It has
nothing to do with the Republican Party, either, except in its historic role as incubator of this
singular threat to our democracy. Trump has transcended the party that produced him. His growing
army of supporters no longer cares about the party. Because it did not immediately and fully
embrace Trump, because a dwindling number of its political and intellectual leaders still resist
him, the party is regarded with suspicion and even hostility by his followers. Their allegiance
is to him and him alone.
And the source of allegiance? We're supposed to believe that Trump's support stems from economic
stagnation or dislocation. Maybe some of it does. But what Trump offers his followers are not
economic remedies - his proposals change daily. What he off ers is an attitude, an aura of
crude strength and machismo, a boasting disrespect for the niceties of the democratic culture
that he claims, and his followers believe, has produced national weakness and incompetence.
His incoherent and contradictory utterances have one thing in common: They provoke and play on
feelings of resentment and disdain, intermingled with bits of fear, hatred and anger. His
public discourse consists of attacking or ridiculing a wide range of "others" - Muslims,
Hispanics, women, Chinese, Mexicans, Europeans, Arabs, immigrants, refugees - whom he depicts
either as threats or as objects of derision. His program, such as it is, consists chiefly of
promises to get tough with foreigners and people of nonwhite complexion. He will deport them, bar
them, get them to knuckle under, make them pay up or make them shut up.
... ... ...
This phenomenon has arisen in other democratic and quasi-democratic countries over the past
century, and it has generally been called "fascism." Fascist movements, too, had no coherent
ideology, no clear set of prescriptions for what ailed society. "National socialism" was a bundle
of contradictions, united chiefly by what, and who, it opposed; fascism in Italy was
anti-liberal, anti-democratic, anti-Marxist, anti-capitalist and anti-clerical. Successful
fascism was not about policies but about the strongman, the leader (Il Duce, Der Führer), in whom
could be entrusted the fate of the nation. Whatever the problem, he could fix it. Whatever the
threat, internal or external, he could vanquish it, and it was unnecessary for him to explain
how. Today, there is Putinism, which also has nothing to do with belief or policy but is about
the tough man who single-handedly defends his people against all threats, foreign and domestic.
Richard Elkind, 6/1/2016 4:06 PM EDT
Trump is a negotiator. A fascist is a dictator. They have absolutely nothing in common.
The neocon who wrote this propaganda is far more a fascist than Trump could ever
be...demonstrated right here with his utilizing his media platform to spread propagandist
lies...which is what Hitler did.
Faustfaust, 6/1/2016 3:57 PM EDT
Kagan,
A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. Excerpts:
"Rather than pursuing a comprehensive peace with the entire Arab world, Israel should
work jointly with Jordan and Turkey to contain, destabilize, and roll-back those entities
that are threats to all three".
"Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by
weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing
Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq - an important Israeli strategic objective in its own
right - as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambition"
"Most important, it is understandable that Israel has an interest supporting
diplomatically, militarily and operationally Turkey's and Jordan's actions against Syria,
such as securing tribal alliances with Arab tribes that cross into Syrian territory and are
hostile to the Syrian ruling elite".
"Syrian territory is not immune to attacks emanating from Lebanon by Israeli proxy forces".
Who are those proxy forces? ISIS? It seems so. These statements put you and your ilk in the
pot as corroborators for what has happened in the Middle East since it was written, and
foremost for Syria and its fallout.
Faustfaust, 6/1/2016 3:23 PM EDT
Robert Kagan,
You aren't afraid of strongmen. You prefer them as long as they are working for your interests
and those who you see as your group. Do you remember these excerpts in this letter to George
Bush that you signed in 2002?:
"As a liberal democracy under repeated attack by murderers who target civilians, Israel now
needs and deserves steadfast support.... We are both targets of what you have correctly called
an "Axis of Evil"... Israel is targeted... in part because it is an island of liberal,
democratic principles ...in a sea of tyranny, intolerance, and hatred... the United States
should lend its full support to Israel as it seeks to root out the terrorist network that
daily threatens the lives of Israeli citizens... Furthermore...we urge you to accelerate plans
for removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq... every day that Saddam Hussein remains in
power brings closer the day when terrorists will have not just airplanes... but chemical,
biological, or nuclear weapons"
In this letter you:
1. Are concerned about Israel and its citizens, and are willing to take extreme action on
their behalf, in a manner that is not reflected in your concern for American citizens.
You were willing to destroy nations in the Levant while you call "nazi" when Trump wants to
temporarily reduce travel for a group that has been prone to terrorism in the U.S. on a scale
that not even Israel as experienced.
Meanwhile, you have no issue with Israel's walls, population segregation, and ethnocentrism as
symbols of a strong man fascist government. While you spin language to paint Trump's
relatively mild suggestions as a sign of fascism, you have no issue cosigning the use of
liberal superlatives for Israel. Simply, your writing is disingenuous.
2. Have admitted to your support for the lie that the Iraq invasion was predicated upon, and
for Syria's destruction that is now occurring.
You have no distaste for the strong man, Kagan. You have a distaste for not being in
power.
JMater, 6/1/2016 8:47 AM EDT
Robert Kagan and the rest of the Israel firsters brought fascism to the US. They have used
the CUFI type of organizations and AIPaC and Wall Street money to brainwash Americans and
corrupt Washington to the core.
Faustfaust, 5/31/2016 7:45 PM EDT
"This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes (although there
have been salutes, and a whiff of violence) but with a television huckster, a phony
billionaire, a textbook egomaniac "tapping into" popular resentments and insecurities, and
with an entire national political party - out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or simply
out of fear - falling into line behind him".
Robert Kagan, the brave patriot sounding the alarm from his entrenched and curiously
across-the-aisle regular columnist position at the Washington Post.
Curiously, all of the mainstream writers in solidarity with the concerns of Trump supporters
in this democracy are silent.
What does that say about those whose interests are served? What is your net worth Robert?
How much did you make in the Bush administration, and how did you make it? What was the
soldier cost?
Has anyone in your immediate family ever served in the U.S. military?
Your World War II abuse is in bad taste Robert, and excessively disrespectful to the
population of this nation who your political class has asked to make an unconscionable regular
sacrifice for as long as this nation has existed. For shame.
Faustfaust, 5/31/2016 7:35 PM EDT
"Get right with the leader and his mass following or get run over".
Are you more comfortable with the Neocons running over the base? The number of people that
benefit in either situation seems skewed toward a small minority in your preference. Is this a
country of the politics of the minority?
"They praise the leader's incoherent speeches as the beginning of wisdom, hoping he will
reward them with a plum post in the new order. There are those who merely hope to survive.
Their consciences won't let them curry favor so shamelessly, so they mumble their pledges of
support, like the victims in Stalin's show trials, perhaps not realizing that the leader and
his followers will get them in the end anyway".
You are awfully bold with the allusions to genocidal regimes when addressing a population
whose families gave up hundreds of thousands of soldiers to save your people, while at the
same time Israel won't move a muscle to stop ISIS while they ethnically cleanse its region.
Private Subscriber, 5/31/2016 7:37 AM EDT
Mr. Kagan is a regular columnist for The Post whose biography is readily available. Every
column of his, including this one, is followed by a note that he served in President Reagan's
State Department.
The Post isn't remotely pathetic, but having little faith in the intelligence of other readers
and using the fourth-grade term "Shillary" is -- and I say that as a Sen. Sanders voter.
You seem awfully bold with the allusions to genocidal regimes as an argument against people
who want to reduce terrorism and have their immigration laws enforced, in light of your
support for a regime that is rabidly more ethno-nationalist in Israel.
You seem to be taking advantage of the emotions of people whom you obviously do not respect
nor appreciate. Perhaps you'll soon resort to drawing overly-simplistic illustrations of
political timelines embedded in cartoon explosives.
"A great number will simply kid themselves, refusing to admit that something very different
from the usual politics is afoot".
Well, let's be honest. It would not be unusual for Israel. These politics would be extremely
mild in Israel. A Robert Kagan article lambasting the upcoming Reich in Israel will be
forthcoming I assume.
'What these people do not or will not see is that, once in power, Trump will owe them and
their party nothing". Just like GWB in 2000 and 2004? Where were your warnings then?
Dodgers1, 5/31/2016 7:32 PM EDT
Before we talk about Trump, we should take a look at Obama, America's version of President
Snow in the movie "Hunger Games".
Edward Snowden, if he was ever kidnapped back to the United States, would most certainly be
persecuted by the State. If not for Snowden, we would have never have known about Obama's use
of technology to create and move forward with his version of a police state.
"... So, taking up CR's Nixon-McGovern analogy: Clinton risks coming into office as a thoroughly disliked President from day one. The level of suspicion and cynicism of expectation is very high. And, though Trump won't ever have a chance in the campaign, his way of attacking opponents is likely to intensify a broad spectrum of opinion that calls into question Clinton's legitimacy and real commitments. ..."
"... Nixon did experience pressure from the Republican Right, but he was also constrained by a Democratic Congress. If Nixon continued to govern as if the New Deal remained in place, it is because he faced a New Deal Congress. ..."
"... Clinton will face a similar problem, but it will be more of her own making, because her politics and her hold over the Democratic Party, depend on not challenging the Republican base of power in the States and in Congress. ..."
"... Trump might withhold an endorsement of Speaker Ryan for a few days, but the Democratic establishment isn't going to unseat Ryan, even though Ryan's district is one Obama won. ..."
"... One path to this whole thing coming apart is a new generation of much younger Democrats trying to gain power in States where the Republicans have been showing their true colors. They will have to fight the Democratic Establishment in Washington to do so, and fight very hard. ..."
"... The other is path is crisis. This is a politics of nominal stalemate, enabling a politics of sclerosis and corruption. ..."
"... These paths are far from mutually exclusive, but there's a very real risk that a fractured and weakened polity turns to authoritarianism. If your politics does not permit reasoned discussion and deliberation, authoritarianism is the alternative when some kind of adaptive reform is required by events. ..."
"... "Symbiosis" means the two sides work together, feed off each other. And, no I am not saying the Democrats in general feed off the Republicans, though obviously any two-party system locks the two Parties into a waltz in which one Party leads the other, with every step forward by one, a step back by the other. ..."
"... What I mean by "symbiosis" in this case is a more specific dynamic by which the Clintonites, who are corrupt centrists at best and reactionary conservatives at worst, keep control of the nominally progressive Party. ..."
"Anything can happen" is one of those things that people say and I suppose it is trivially true.
Certainly, if you are trying to sell click-thru's with alleged political news, you at the very
least want to preserve the possibility of (new) news. At this point, though, I fear that the affirmation,
"Trump could win this" suggests the opposite.
Clinton's campaign now faces the problem that
they have won . . . in August, but the election is in November.
Do they keep up the campaign, organized around "dangerous Donald"? Is there a risk of wearing
out its themes? Trump is in a box assigned to him by the Media. The Media have their canned narrative
thru which anything Trump says will be filtered. He's been neutered. The Media Publishers await
the spending of campaign cash, while the Editors have their orders.
Even Scott Adams has conceded that the Donald may have been bested by Clinton's "dangerous
Donald" propaganda and may be too inflexible in his personality to take any of the practical options
to come back.
What I would notice is that Clinton's campaign to get people to like her - "I'm with her" -
did not win. Clinton will win in November, certainly. But, she will take office as one of the
most seriously disliked politicians to win the Presidency in memory. I say this as someone who
voted for Tricky Dick Nixon over McGovern. Usually, the seriously disliked Presidents get elected
as Vice-President first. But, maybe she did - sorta. Maybe that's what her career as Secretary
of State did for her.
So, taking up CR's Nixon-McGovern analogy: Clinton risks coming into office as a thoroughly
disliked President from day one. The level of suspicion and cynicism of expectation is very high.
And, though Trump won't ever have a chance in the campaign, his way of attacking opponents is
likely to intensify a broad spectrum of opinion that calls into question Clinton's legitimacy
and real commitments.
Nixon did experience pressure from the Republican Right, but he was also constrained by a Democratic
Congress. If Nixon continued to govern as if the New Deal remained in place, it is because he
faced a New Deal Congress. Not just Democratic majorities, but long-standing majorities and committee
chairman who knew where the bodies were buried and how to pull the levers of power. That would
change only gradually with the seniority system scrapped in the mid-1970s and the New Deal politics
by which Congress critters played interests off against one another to maintain their own power
eroded decisively only in Reagan's second term, as trade liberalization and deregulation and other
policies took hold and the corporate executive class began their rise, driving changes in the
lobbyist culture and dynamic.
Clinton will face a similar problem, but it will be more of her own making, because her politics
and her hold over the Democratic Party, depend on not challenging the Republican base of power
in the States and in Congress. Clinton is not going to say to her minions, "OK, we've got this
won, let's funnel all the campaign money and effort into winning the House so we have opportunities
to govern effectively. Let's get Democratic Governors in place, so we can get Obamacare's Medicaid
expansion working properly without privatization."
Trump might withhold an endorsement of Speaker Ryan for a few days, but the Democratic establishment
isn't going to unseat Ryan, even though Ryan's district is one Obama won.
The Democratic Party - the rank and file and even the general run of Congress people - have
become much more "socialist" for lack of a better term, but they have no experience of power.
Few have served long in the Obama Administration. Most States are dominated by Republicans. In
some States, like Kansas and North Carolina, "dominated" really does mean dominated. Democrats
are a minority in Congress and the old leadership is retiring.
One path to this whole thing coming apart is a new generation of much younger Democrats trying
to gain power in States where the Republicans have been showing their true colors. They will have
to fight the Democratic Establishment in Washington to do so, and fight very hard.
The other is path is crisis. This is a politics of nominal stalemate, enabling a politics of
sclerosis and corruption.
These paths are far from mutually exclusive, but there's a very real risk that a fractured
and weakened polity turns to authoritarianism. If your politics does not permit reasoned discussion
and deliberation, authoritarianism is the alternative when some kind of adaptive reform is required
by events.
bruce wilder 08.10.16 at 5:00
pm
Faustusnotes misreads me on Benghazi. (What else is new?) I was not saying, "both sides do
it". That's not my point. My point is that the Right's obsessions with Benghazi (and with the
email server) are gifts to Clinton. They take issues where Clinton's bad judgment is on display,
and they transform them into a circus where what is on display instead is the Right's lunacy.
The Benghazi hearings made Clinton look good, if that were possible; embattled, persecuted
unwarrantedly. No sane person would want to pay much attention and the superficial takeaway
impression is that there is no there, there in Rightwing accusations and fantasizing.
"Symbiosis"
means the two sides work together, feed off each other. And, no I am not saying the Democrats
in general feed off the Republicans, though obviously any two-party system locks the two Parties
into a waltz in which one Party leads the other, with every step forward by one, a step back
by the other.
What I mean by "symbiosis" in this case is a more specific dynamic by which the Clintonites,
who are corrupt centrists at best and reactionary conservatives at worst, keep control of the
nominally progressive Party.
"... What I see is a Reagan, or a Bush, cheerfully admitting to American exceptionalism and in the need to kill at will. What frightens me is the inability of Americans to realize outsiders see pretty much the same willingness to kill at will from a Clinton, or Obama. ..."
"... And the truly frightening part is where team blue supporters insist that everyone pretend every 4 years that a Clinton, or Obama, is somehow less willing to kill at will than a Romney, or a Trump. ..."
"... We have a video of one political candidate laughing at murder, who 'never' holds press conferences, running to replace a president who expanded and entrenched the Bush-Cheney security state and who suppresses dissent and whistle-blowing with the vigor of a Nixon. Outsiders have learned to survive every 'too crazy to be true' you people elect. Of course, that's not as easy if one happens to live in the wrong part of the world. ..."
@491 This is very good, Corey. I think you are precisely right about how (ahem) informed outsiders
view the 'enormous' differences between the two political parties. What I see is a Reagan, or
a Bush, cheerfully admitting to American exceptionalism and in the need to kill at will. What
frightens me is the inability of Americans to realize outsiders see pretty much the same willingness
to kill at will from a Clinton, or Obama.
And the truly frightening part is where team blue supporters insist that everyone pretend every
4 years that a Clinton, or Obama, is somehow less willing to kill at will than a Romney, or a
Trump.
We have a video of one political candidate laughing at murder, who 'never' holds press conferences,
running to replace a president who expanded and entrenched the Bush-Cheney security state and
who suppresses dissent and whistle-blowing with the vigor of a Nixon. Outsiders have learned to
survive every 'too crazy to be true' you people elect. Of course, that's not as easy if one happens
to live in the wrong part of the world.
Re: Republican weakness. That's sure to be a much-studied topic. At the state level Republicans
are very strong. As 'racist' and 'sexist' as it is to say, the uniqueness of electing an African-American
and then, perhaps, the woman he defeated speak very positively about the US in general. This stuff
matters to you and that's nothing to be ashamed of.
"... We're seeing right now in real time exactly the same denunciations of one candidate by virtually all media outlets, all elite Dems, and many elite Republicans. When there were a number of candidates and two races and two outsiders, much of the press bias may have slipped beneath the radar. ..."
"... At some point probably very soon Trump is going to be the real underdog. Not the underdog of imagination, no longer a billionaire whining about not being treated fairly. But the target of an unrelenting series of negative news stories and TV and radio commercials that leave no doubt in the minds of most voters that Trump has much less of a chance of winning than Hillary. ..."
"... The anti-Trump stories are probably white noise already to many neutrals. Trump supporters stopped listening to the media long ago. ..."
"... When the NYT, MSNBC, Bill Mahr, and on and on and on all tell people they can't possibly vote for Trump, how do you think folks are going to respond? I mean, about being told they don't actually have a choice. Cause that's what's happening now. ..."
"... And the same people telling folks they don't have a choice are precisely the same people who predicted/promised that Trump would never win the nomination. Trump just needs to stay in the game. If he's within five points in October, I still say he edges it. ..."
We're seeing right now in real time exactly the same denunciations of one candidate by virtually
all media outlets, all elite Dems, and many elite Republicans. When there were a number of candidates
and two races and two outsiders, much of the press bias may have slipped beneath the radar.
At
some point probably very soon Trump is going to be the real underdog. Not the underdog of imagination,
no longer a billionaire whining about not being treated fairly. But the target of an unrelenting
series of negative news stories and TV and radio commercials that leave no doubt in the minds
of most voters that Trump has much less of a chance of winning than Hillary.
The anti-Trump stories
are probably white noise already to many neutrals. Trump supporters stopped listening to the media
long ago.
When the NYT, MSNBC, Bill Mahr, and on and on and on all tell people they can't possibly vote
for Trump, how do you think folks are going to respond? I mean, about being told they don't actually
have a choice. Cause that's what's happening now.
And the same people telling folks they don't have a choice are precisely the same people who
predicted/promised that Trump would never win the nomination. Trump just needs to stay in the
game. If he's within five points in October, I still say he edges it.
"... The difference is the media and the elites are openly producing elite narratives in a manner that really do make Trump the underdog. Trump won the nomination by claiming the media elites and most of the politicians in both parties are in the pockets of the rich. That's an argument that continues to resonate. ..."
"... The fact is that Trump and Sanders are both the result of a system that works precisely the way Trump and Saunders describe it. A significant block of voters understand that. ..."
"... These voters are extremely unlikely to be distracted by any stories on any topic. Their focus is on jobs and the indifference of the media and politicians of both political parties to the need for jobs. ..."
"... Trump's experience in the construction trades matters to voters because infrastructure construction provides short-terms and long-term jobs and training programs. Trump went to Detroit and described the city as HRC's blueprint for America. ..."
"... The problem for the media, the Democrats, and their supporters is that practically nobody sees HRC as anything but the ultimate insider agent of the rich, who happens to wear a dress. She first got to the WH as a political wife. She was parachuted into a safe Senate seat to start her 'run for office.' She was awarded a plum position in the administration in large part to placate her followers and heal some of the 'Clintons and their supporters are all racists' wounds. After leaving the administration, she and her husband earned millions which poured into a private foundation. The DNC and the Dems colluded to keep her only opponent from winning. The DOJ just ruled the Clintion Cash Cow to be beyond investigation. And now, this ultimate insider is re-packaging herself as 'the best darn change-agent' president 'women as tissues' has ever seen. And then there are the drones. ..."
"... The media can't cover the issues fairly because the issues confirm their chosen candidate can't be trusted on the issues that most Americans care about most. Most voters, including HRC voters, understand the difference between scare stories and solutions. ..."
"... Suffice to say a counter-narrative exists: one in which Trump has committed very few of the crimes which the gullible routinely swallow as fact ..."
"... Minds are made up, truth has to be sacrificed in order to 'prevent the end of mankind.' Rest assured, we'd be hearing precisely the same 'end of the world' spew were Bush, or any other placeholder the candidate ..."
"... The choice between HRC and Bush is essentially no choice ..."
"... The choice between HRC and Trump may actually be less of a choice than many believe ..."
"... Take a chance with Trump, or settle in for 4-8 more years of Obama, only worse ..."
"... Voters decide in November. I still say Trump edges it, at least ..."
Trump won the nomination by claiming the media and the elites rig the system against outsiders
like Bernie and him and that the media and elites of both parties are indifferent to the
problems and concerns of many, many voters.
The same thing is occurring in real-time now. The difference is the media and the elites are
openly producing elite narratives in a manner that really do make Trump the underdog. Trump won
the nomination by claiming the media elites and most of the politicians in both
parties are in the pockets of the rich. That's an argument that continues to resonate.
The fact is that Trump and Sanders are both the result of a system that works precisely the
way Trump and Saunders describe it. A significant block of voters understand that.
Voters also understand that HRC/Bush are simply the current/past iterations of a system that
denies any voice to ordinary voters. There will be no real change, except on the periphery and
that's the function of the elections – in a very real sense we're living the living, breathing
embodiment of Burke's conservatism.
Yes, LGBT rights are a good thing. After that, what?
kidneystones 08.10.16 at 11:28 pm
The fact is that a great many voters have seen their wages go down, or remain stagnant, over the
past two decades as they read stories day to day of a soaring stock market and all kinds of economic
good times.
These voters are extremely unlikely to be distracted by any stories on any topic. Their focus
is on jobs and the indifference of the media and politicians of both political parties to the
need for jobs.
Trump's experience in the construction trades matters to voters because infrastructure construction
provides short-terms and long-term jobs and training programs. Trump went to Detroit and described
the city as HRC's blueprint for America.
The problem for the media, the Democrats, and their supporters is that practically nobody sees
HRC as anything but the ultimate insider agent of the rich, who happens to wear a dress. She first
got to the WH as a political wife. She was parachuted into a safe Senate seat to start her 'run
for office.' She was awarded a plum position in the administration in large part to placate her
followers and heal some of the 'Clintons and their supporters are all racists' wounds. After leaving
the administration, she and her husband earned millions which poured into a private foundation.
The DNC and the Dems colluded to keep her only opponent from winning. The DOJ just ruled the Clintion
Cash Cow to be beyond investigation. And now, this ultimate insider is re-packaging herself as
'the best darn change-agent' president 'women as tissues' has ever seen. And then there are the
drones.
The media can't cover the issues fairly because the issues confirm their chosen candidate can't
be trusted on the issues that most Americans care about most. Most voters, including HRC voters,
understand the difference between scare stories and solutions.
Both candidates traffic in scare stories. Only one offers solutions that resonate with voters.
That candidate wins.
kidneystones 08.11.16 at 12:32 am
Actually, as we can see now. An awful lot of people are betting the farm that enough voters buy
into that narrative. As I mentioned above, the people promulgating precisely this myth have been
doing just that ever since he began running for office to no great effect.
Suffice to say a counter-narrative exists: one in which Trump has committed very few of the
crimes which the gullible routinely swallow as fact. Unless, of course, you and the vast majority
here are about to assert a complete lack of confirmation bias on this matter.
Minds are made up, truth has to be sacrificed in order to 'prevent the end of mankind.' Rest
assured, we'd be hearing precisely the same 'end of the world' spew were Bush, or any other placeholder
the candidate.
The choice between HRC and Bush is essentially no choice.
The choice between HRC and Trump may actually be less of a choice than many believe. We're
unlikely to get to that discussion any time soon.
No jobs, shitty schools and roads mean more votes for Trump.
Take a chance with Trump, or settle in for 4-8 more years of Obama, only worse. Many voters
have already decided. As we can see, the swing states are indeed swinging.
Voters decide in November. I still say Trump edges it, at least.
"... I don't see Trump as fascist in any workable, or historically grounded use of the term. ..."
"... The US government is an enormous cash-cow for an immense number of special interests. The notion that the PACs and special interests will just pack-up shop and write off the money they plan to make with a Bush/HRC in power is absurd. They'll hobble Trump they same way they handcuffed Carter, and start playing the same sorts of games. ..."
@ 592 'With Trump, X is fascism (roughly) which is why I'm against Trump in spite of the very
real possibility that a lot of his threats will turn out to be just empty talk.'
Recognizing
this is a blog comments section and that a certain degree of rhetorical excess is expected, I'd
be very curious to learn which 'threats' make Trump a 'fascist.'
I don't see Trump as fascist in any workable, or historically grounded use of the term.
I'm not at all confident in Trump's ability to pull the levers of government, hence my own
skepticism that he'll actually be able to rebuild the US economy in the way he's promising, or
achieve many, any of his foreign policy goals. However, I see no evidence whatsoever to support
the notion that any of his most fervent supporters would support abrogating any, or even some
parts of the constitution. He is absolutely running as some kind of 'time to clean up Washington'
populist. I'm certain, however, that those currently wielding power through their stooges in both
parties are entirely willing to make defying Trump a wise and enriching decision.
The US government is an enormous cash-cow for an immense number of special interests. The
notion that the PACs and special interests will just pack-up shop and write off the money they
plan to make with a Bush/HRC in power is absurd. They'll hobble Trump they same way they handcuffed
Carter, and start playing the same sorts of games.
If anyone does plan on seriously trying to make the case Trump is a fascist to me, at
least, they'll need to cite policy positions from Trump's web site. And we know how few are willing
to endure that....
A leaked email from a top DNC official in May shows that Democratic insiders were really leery
of Clinton's strategy of trying to claim Trump is completely different from Republicans past and
present. As this official points out, that strategy actually runs the risk of harming down-ballot
Democrats running for office in Congress and state legislatures. It may help Clinton, but it's
not good for the party. It also shows that the line that so many have swallowed about Trump being
so different was actually a deliberate meme cultivated by Clinton's people, which then trickled
down the food chain of the media and so on down the line, and that it ran in the face of how other
DNC officials (and heavy-hitting members of Congress) wanted to frame the debate.
Here's the text of the email from Luis Miranda, the DNC official:
Hi Amy, the Clinton rapid response operation we deal with have been asking us to disaggregate
Trump from down ballot Republicans. They basically want to make the case that you either stand
with Ryan or with Trump, that Trump is much worse than regular Republicans and they don't want
us to tie Trump to other Republicans because they think it makes him look normal.
They wanted us to basically praise Ryan when Trump was meeting Ryan, or at a minimum to
hold him up as an example. So they want to embrace the "Republicans fleeing Trump" side, but
not hold down ballot GOPers accountable.
That's a problem. I pushed back that we cannot have our state parties hold up Paul Ryan
as a good example of anything. And that we can't give down ballot Republicans such an easy
out. We can force them to own Trump and damage them more by pointing out that they're just
as bad on specific policies, make them uncomfortable where he's particularly egregious, but
asking state Parties to praise House Republicans like Ryan would be damaging for the Party
down ballot.
Can you help us navigate this with Charlie? We would basically have to throw out our entire
frame that the GOP made Trump through years of divisive and ugly politics. We would have to
say that Republicans are reasonable and that the good ones will shun Trump. It just doesn't
work from the Party side. Let me know what you think.
Thanks, – Luis.
P.S. – – that strategy would ALSO put us at odds with Schumer, Lujan, Pelosi, Reid, basically
all of our Congressional Democrats who have embraced our talking points and have been using
them beautifully over the last couple of weeks to point out that GOPers in Congress have been
pushing these ugly policies for years. Trying to dump this approach would probably not work
with Members of Congress, it's worse than turning an aircraft carrier, we would lose 3/4 of
the fleet. Let me know what you think. It might be a good strategy ONLY for Clinton (which
I don't believe), I think instead she needs as many voices as possible on the same page.
Here's Trump's actual position on immigration and the deportations. Needless to say, some will
find it plenty offensive. But it's radically different from what you've described. Were Hayden
and company trashing a Dem, they'd be roundly and rightly condemned as precisely the same a-holes
who've done so much damage over the years. But with Trump as the target, GOP clowns speak with
the authority of god. Perfect.
"... ...As for the neocons, I'm quite sure that the real reason they hate him is because they think he actually might make peace with Russia and possibly deviate from the imperial agenda in other ways. In this, I have no sympathy for them.... ..."
"... The similarities between the ways the vox crowd and vulgar Marxists view politics is really striking." ..."
"... But 50 neocons some of them war criminals did issue a statement against.. ..."
> F Foundling @ 705: In any case, [solidarity] doesn't need to be irrational or to have to
do with narcissism (as suggested in 687) any more than acting in your own personal interests needs
to be irrational or to have to do with narcissism.
Thank you for thoughtful remarks @ 705
and @694.
"Rational" and "irrational" can be a cause of great confusion. It is not some virtue I wish
to ascribe, but, rather, to my mind, a matter of gamesmanship. As a strategy, not an ethic, solidarity
is a way of committing one's self irrationally to not reconsider one's interests.
The rat, betraying solidarity, is rational and selfish and calculating. Upholding solidarity
requires an irrational ethic to trump strategic reconsideration.
There can certainly be an element of enlightened self-interest in a commitment to solidarity.
We hope this gift of the self to the community is not done stupidly or without some deliberate
consideration of consequences.
But, in the game, in the political contest where solidarity matters, where elite power is confronted,
solidarity entails a degree of passionate commitment and even self-sacrifice. Whether expressed
as an individual act of "altruistic punishment" or the common unwillingness to cooperate with
the powers-that-be in a labor strike, there has to be a willingness to bear costs and forego opportunities.
People have to be a bit mad to want justice.
bruce wilder 08.13.16 at 12:47
am
engels and others may appreciate Michael Pettis on the Trump phenomenon.
He wrote this piece
back in March and for reasons I cannot quite fathom he tried to tie in the Jacksonians - as if
Donald Trump is some faded reprint of Andrew Jackson. But, ignore the part about the Jacksonians
in American history and pay attention to what he says about his friend who is a supporter of Trump.
It will complement Doug Henwood nicely, I suspect. And, Pettis has nothing nice to say about Trump - so no fear!
...As for the neocons, I'm quite sure that the real reason they hate him is because they
think he actually might make peace with Russia and possibly deviate from the imperial agenda in
other ways. In this, I have no sympathy for them....
The reason so many foreign policy pundits ... are opposed to trump is not because of the possibility
of making peace with Russia, but because they're liberal internationalists. They support the US
led international order, think US hegemony is generally a force for good, and oppose powers and
actors which will undermine the [neo]liberal order...
Reasons someone on a middle income from an economically declining region might support trump(that
aren't racism)
Ronan(rf),
"Reasons someone on a middle income from an economically declining region might support
trump(that aren't racism)
(1) support for other institutions (military , family, religion) mentioned above.
(2) people don't vote individually but as a member of a group. Being a relatively prosperous
member of a declining demographic has psychological consequences and perceived collective responsibilities.
(3) middle income business owners are not a stable group.(socially or economically)
(4) who do you think Is voting in these regions ? The poor in the US are less likely to
vote.
The similarities between the ways the vox crowd and vulgar Marxists view politics is really
striking."
Bruce thinks narcissism can be healthy, F. Foundling thinks it is excessive by definition. I understand
it in what I think is the classical sense as a relation which is properly directed at others turned
in on the individual. 'Narcissistic solidarity' would mean something like 'standing with oneself'-a
conceptual absurdity. (I agree with the broader point that solidarity isn't inherently altruistic
and doesn't preclude self-interest though.)
"... How many ordinary Americans under the age of 40 can look in the mirror and find the stuff of not one, but two autobiographies? That certainly speaks a remarkable level of – what shall we call it? Well, probably not modesty. ..."
"... 'if you don't support O, you're David Duke in a dress' stuff. No need to dredge up the practical politics of Hope and Change at this late date. ..."
@ 668 "Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign,
according to The New Yorker. "I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy
directors."
"But there's more evidence that he's batshit crazy. He declaimed that he knew more
about ISIS than all the generals. He will trust no one's judgment but his own."
So, your argument is that Obama (your Muslim socialist) should never have been trusted to be
in the Oval Office.
And that by these, your standards, Trump is no crazier than the current Democratic president.
Oh, you don't need to. That boat sailed the moment you decided to make Obama level hubris grounds
for ineligibility. Obama's 'accomplishments prior to entering the Senate in 2004 are the stuff
of legend to the clueless, of course.
How many ordinary Americans under the age of 40 can look in the mirror and find the stuff
of not one, but two autobiographies? That certainly speaks a remarkable level of – what shall
we call it? Well, probably not modesty.
My life twice – plenty for everyone like to learn from! The perfect preparation for
a great presidency. That and my love of basketball. That's what makes me so smart! Did anyone
notice I'm young, black and handsome? Ignore that, please.
And we are where we are. I've elided the 'if you don't support O, you're David Duke in
a dress' stuff. No need to dredge up the practical politics of Hope and Change at this late date.
"... "You have to start off by saying, 'I want to thank the American people, especially Monica and Gennifer Flowers," anticipated a top Clinton ally with close ties to the campaign. "Nobody who is a friend of hers is going to want to say that in debate prep." ..."
This year in particular, it's a job that nobody close to Clinton is particularly eager to take
on. "You have to start off by saying, 'I want to thank the American people, especially Monica
and Gennifer Flowers," anticipated a top Clinton ally with close ties to the campaign. "Nobody who
is a friend of hers is going to want to say that in debate prep."
... ... ...
"It's a complicated debate prep," agreed Shrum. "The Clinton challenge is to prepare for the crazy
Trump who will probably show up, some kind of toned-down Trump, and the somewhere-in-between Trump."
Trump could spend 90 minutes berating Clinton for helping to found ISIS, Democrats said, or he could
turn on the moderator and the media so that Clinton simply becomes a bystander rather than a participant.
He could even devote real time to preparation and surprise Clinton by his substance on the issues.
Trust the crooks in Ukraine to come up with
'documentary evidence' which can be used to show Trump is really Putin's man. I wonder how
big an IMF package Hillary had to promise them? Or did she strike a deal with Porky to get Crimea
back?
In the New York Times , of course; the Democrats' FOX News. They'd like to see a home
girl win.
I disagree. And not only regarding his extraordinarily dubious periodization of US political history.
This baloney about Republicanism does not make much sense. Also since the 1963 deep state became
the dominant political force and parties and elections became more of a legitimization show. .
I see Trump more like a reaction on hardships inflicted by neoliberal globalization on the
USA common folk. So he is standard bearer of the strata of population hit by globalization, the
strata which standard of living was dropping for the last two-three decades. Professional classes
and financial oligarchy support Hillary, but blue color workers switched to Trump by large numbers.
Trade union bosses expect that 50% or more of membership will vote for Trump. That's their way
to say "f*ck you" to neoliberal establishment and so far they are saying it pretty politely, if
we do not count several recent riots (which mainly involved black population). Now the neoliberal
elite is afraid that even the slightest trigger can produce uncontrollable situation.
That's why Hillary adopted a part of Sanders platform and is now against TPP (only until November:-)
A lot of people are just fed up.
That's why neocons such as Cruze and, especially, Rubio and Jeb! were defeated by Trump, and
why only machinations of DNC allowed Hillary to be crowned over Sanders (Sanders betrayal also
played a role).
This is a situation perfect for "color revolution" (what we miss is just a capable and well
financed three letter agency of some foreign power
In other words the US elite partially lost the control of ordinary people and MSM no longer can
brainwash them with previous efficiency because after 2008 the key idea of "trickle down economy"
- that dramatically rising inequality will provide Untermensch with enough crumps from the table
of Masters of the Universe (financial oligarchy) were proven to be false.
Financial oligarchy does not want to share even crumps and decent job almost totally disappeared.
Switch to contractor jobs and outsourcing means a significant drop in standard of living for,
probably, 80-90% of population. Unemployment after university graduation is now pretty common.
While neoliberalism managed to survive the crisis of 2008 the next crisis of neoliberalism
is probably close (let's, say, can happen within the current decade). The economic plunder of
the xUSSR economic space helped to delay this crisis for a decade or more, but now this process
is by-and-large over (although Russia still is a piece of economic space to fight for - so its
dismembering or color revolution is always in cards and not only for geopolitical reasons) . Secular
stagnation does not play well with neoliberal globalization, so nationalistic movements are on
the rise in different parts of the globe, including Europe. The "plato oil" situation does not
help either. So here all bets are off.
Note an unprecedented campaign of demonization of Trump in neoliberal media and attempt to
link him to Putin, playing on pre-existing Russophobia of the population. I especially like "Khan
gambit" (essentially swiftboating of Trump) and recent campaign salivating over the "assassination
attempt" on Hillary by inflating one (unfortunate) Trump remark completely our of proportion.
And that's only the beginning.
While the MSM has gone out of its way to question every plausible unintended consequence(s)
of Donald Trump's new
"extreme" vetting for immigrants, perhaps it is worth looking at some of the current
questions the US Immigration Services asks and compare those to Trump's proposals. They may not be
that far off.
To recap, Trump proposed an ideological test of "Islamic sympathizers" to be admitted,
focusing on issues including religious freedom, gender equality and gay rights.
And while some have
questioned
the validity of a test, and whether a presumed terrorist would even be honest in said test, the
experts and political pundits should take a look at what the US currently asks individuals.
Have you ever been involved in, or do you seek to engage in, money laundering?
Are you coming to the United States to engage in prostitution or unlawful commercialized vice
or have you been engaged in prostitution or procuring prostitutes within the past 10 years?
Have you ever committed or conspired to commit a human trafficking offense in the United States
or outside the United States?
Do you seek to engage in terrorist activities while in the United States or have you ever
engaged in terrorist activities?
Are you a member or representative of a terrorist organization?
Have you ever ordered, incited, committed, assisted, or otherwise participated in genocide?
Have you ever committed, ordered, incited, assisted or otherwise participated in torture?
Have you, while serving as a government official, been responsible for or directly carried
out, at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom?
Have you ever been directly involved in the coercive transplantation of human organs or bodily
tissue?
Evidently, if any of the US allies (e.g. Saudi Arabia) answered these questions honestly, they
would not be admitted to the US. But, perhaps the best question still being asked to all
immigrants is as follows:
Have you ever been or are you now involved in espionage or sabotage; or in terrorist
activities; or genocide; or between 1933 and 1945 were involved, in any way, in persecutions associated
with Nazi Germany or its allies?
If the US government currently engages in these and other questionings, is it that far off to
ask if you are anti gay rights, anti Semitic or pro sharia law?
The Hidden Subtext Behind Putin's Third Slovenia Visit
Putin is no stranger to the ex-Yugoslav republic of Slovenia. In fact, in June 2001, when Slovenia
was still neither an EU nor a NATO member state, it was chosen as a neutral meeting place for the
first official meeting between him and the U.S. president George W. Bush. Ironically, the meeting
took place in the Brdo Castle near Kranj, one of the long-time Communist leader Tito's summer residences.
At that time, the U.S. high level officials did everything they could to flatter Putin and get him
to accept their hegemonic geopolitical agenda for Eastern Europe, Russia, and Eurasia in general.
For instance, during the press conference that followed their two-hour long discussions, Bush stated
that he could fully trust Putin in international matters because "he's an honest, straight-forward
man who loves his country. He loves his family. We share a lot of values. I view him as a remarkable
leader. I believe his leadership will serve Russia well."[1]
But, when Putin, unlike Yeltsin, whose hand-picked successor he was, proved unwilling to play
along with the U.S. plans, his stature in the U.S. foreign policy discourse quickly deteriorated
from that of "a remarkable leader" and an honest patriot to that of a brutal dictator and even "a
thug"…
####
Read on, read on!
The UNSG bid certainly looks like part of it though I doubt anyone from the Western blocs inc.
asia would be favorable, let alone balanced towards Russia. I'm not sure that Washington is stupid
enough to pick a fight with Europe over the Balkans, but then again Washington has a long record
of their actions causing blowback to their 'allies' and saying "Tough. That's the price for riding
on our coattails."
Must only be a matter of time then, when the US government discovers that Vladimir Putin might
have met Melania Trump (even if they just brushed past each other in a matter of seconds with
both of them looking away from each other) and BINGO! – the connection between Lord Sauron
and his robot Donald Trump is finally revealed.
Thos pressitute now talking not stop and ties of Trump and Russia. I wonder when rumors about
connections of Putin and Melania surface...
Notable quotes:
"... The article, very tendentious and rambling in the Post's normal diffuse style, short on facts, continues on page A10, half page above the fold, with the banner headline across the top "Russian meddling in European politics similar to DNC hack." ..."
"... Then in the Outlook section, page B4, in the continuation of an article about conspiracy theories, there is a large, very unflattering picture of a frowning Mr. Putin, captioned "Is Russian President Vladimir Putin controlling Donald Trump ? That's one conspiracy theory floating around the 2016 campaign." ..."
"... No doubt much of this is campaign related. Russia/Putin have been elected the sticks to beat Mr. Trunp with. If it continues until the election, however, it's likely public opinion, manufactured though it is, will be receptive to military action against Russia, as Hillary and her likely advisors have hinted openly, in Syria and the Ukraine. ..."
"... WAPO's anti-Russia/Putin articles are part of this agenda: The New Cold War but this time it's different. ..."
"... "The new Cold War is even more pointless than the first. Russia was cooperating with the West, and the Russian economy was integrated into the West as a supplier of raw materials. The neoliberal economic policy that Washington convinced the Russian government to implement was designed to keep the Russian economy in the role of supplier of raw materials to the West. Russia expressed no territorial ambitions and spent very little on its military. ..."
"... The new Cold War is the work of a handful of neoconservative fanatics who believe that History has chosen the US to wield hegemonic power over the world. Some of the neocons are sons of former Trotskyists and have the same romantic notion of world revolution, only this time it is "democratic-capitalist" and not communist. The new Cold War is far more dangerous than the old, because the respective war doctrines of the nuclear powers have changed. The function of nuclear weapons is no longer retaliatory. Mutually Assured Destruction was a guarantee that the weapons would not be used. In the new war doctrine nuclear weapons have been elevated to first-use in a preemptive nuclear attack. Washington first took this step, forcing Russia and China to follow. ..."
"... Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes have raised tensions dramatically ..."
"... William Perry, Secretary of Defense in the Clinton regime, recently spoke of the danger of nuclear war being launched by false alarms resulting from such things as faulty computer chips. Fortunately, when such instances occurred in the past, the absence of tension in the relationship between the nuclear powers caused authorities on both sides to disbelieve the false alarms. Today, however, with constant allegations of pending Russian invasions, Putin demonized as "the new Hitler," and the buildup of US and NATO military forces on Russia's borders, a false alarm becomes believable ..."
For those that haven't seen it, this morning's Sunday Washington Post features several prominent
anti-Russia/Putin articles. One page A1, above the fold, is the headline "Russia's tactic's roil
Europe", with subordinate headlines "INTERVENTION IN NEIGHBOR'S POLITIC'S" (all caps) and "Kremlin's
alleged role in DNC hack is similar. The article, very tendentious and rambling in the Post's normal
diffuse style, short on facts, continues on page A10, half page above the fold, with the banner headline
across the top "Russian meddling in European politics similar to DNC hack."
A large picture of Red
Square is labeled "The Kremlin is visible to the right of a women looking at her smartphone in Red
Square. Russia has tried hard in recent years tout European countries to its side bankrolling the
countries extremist political parties and working to fuel a backlash against migrants."
Below that there's a small picture of Mr. Putin, looking very worried, captioned ""President Vladimir
Putin sought to build support for his vision, favoring authoritarian leaders over democratically
elected ones." The article says essentially the same thing, in a diffuse, very rambling manner.
Then in the Outlook section, page B4, in the continuation of an article about conspiracy theories,
there is a large, very unflattering picture of a frowning Mr. Putin, captioned "Is Russian President
Vladimir Putin controlling Donald Trump ? That's one conspiracy theory floating around the 2016 campaign."
No doubt much of this is campaign related. Russia/Putin have been elected the sticks to beat
Mr. Trunp with. If it continues until the election, however, it's likely public opinion, manufactured
though it is, will be receptive to military action against Russia, as Hillary and her likely advisors
have hinted openly, in Syria and the Ukraine.
Latest Seymour Hersh on Syria and other White House lies
Can you summarize what is Turkey's role in the ceaseless clash and bloodletting in Syria?
The Erdogan government was a covert supporter of the ISIS war against the Bashar al-Assad
government in Syria for years, rearming ISIS fighters, buying seized Syrian oil from the ISIS
at discount prices, and keeping the borders between Turkey and Syria, especially in Hakkari
province, open for a steady stream of anti-Assad jihadists from around the world who wanted
to join in the war against Syria. There also is evidence that some anti-Syrian factors in the
United States have welcomed the Erdogan support or, at the least, looked away when necessary.
Erdogan's constantly expanding extremism and grab for power was ignored, more or less, by many
in the mainstream US media until early this year, and President Obama, for reasons not known,
has yet to fully share the intelligence about Erdogan's political and religious obligations
with the nation.
The irony, or tragedy, of Erdogan's move to extremism is that throughout much of the last
decade he was seen as being fully in the Ataturk tradition in Turkey -- that of a strong leader
with strong religious beliefs who made sure that his nation remained secular. That is no longer
true, as the recent coup, and Erdogan's extremist response to it, has made clear. Those called
by Erdogan to go to the street and attack the army when the coup began to fail were not fighting
in support of democracy, as widely reported at first, but as Islamists fighting a secular military.
[.] "The new Cold War is even more pointless than the first. Russia was cooperating with the
West, and the Russian economy was integrated into the West as a supplier of raw materials.
The neoliberal economic policy that Washington convinced the Russian government to implement
was designed to keep the Russian economy in the role of supplier of raw materials to the West.
Russia expressed no territorial ambitions and spent very little on its military.
The new Cold War is the work of a handful of neoconservative fanatics who believe that
History has chosen the US to wield hegemonic power over the world. Some of the neocons are
sons of former Trotskyists and have the same romantic notion of world revolution, only this
time it is "democratic-capitalist" and not communist.
The new Cold War is far more dangerous than the old, because the respective war doctrines
of the nuclear powers have changed. The function of nuclear weapons is no longer retaliatory.
Mutually Assured Destruction was a guarantee that the weapons would not be used. In the new
war doctrine nuclear weapons have been elevated to first-use in a preemptive nuclear attack.
Washington first took this step, forcing Russia and China to follow.
The new Cold War is more dangerous for a second reason. During the first Cold War American
presidents focused on reducing tensions between nuclear powers. But the Clinton, George
W. Bush, and Obama regimes have raised tensions dramatically .
William Perry, Secretary of Defense in the Clinton regime, recently spoke of the danger
of nuclear war being launched by false alarms resulting from such things as faulty computer
chips. Fortunately, when such instances occurred in the past, the absence of tension in the
relationship between the nuclear powers caused authorities on both sides to disbelieve the
false alarms. Today, however, with constant allegations of pending Russian invasions, Putin
demonized as "the new Hitler," and the buildup of US and NATO military forces on Russia's borders,
a false alarm becomes believable ."[.]
~ ~ ~ ~
It has a great deal to do with keeping the greedy MISC fed and NATO relevant. {MISC -> military
industrial surveillance companies}
Emphasis mine.
What about Hillary Clinton my friend ? What a presstitute...
Notable quotes:
"... The media are completely biased...And spread utter lies about Trump, while Hillary immediately hires Debbie wasserman Schultz after she resigned in disgrace when exposed by DNC leaks/Europeans as cheating and colluding against another candidate. ..."
"The media is like an extension of the DNC at this point. They'll intentionally misinterpret
or exaggerate anything Trump says to try to help Hillary win the election," said a 50-year-old
college professor from California.
Of all the risible, most easily shucked off charges, this one takes the toupee. You cannot misinterpret
or exaggerate this:
"Barack Hussein Obama is the creator of ISIS. I mean...he's the literal inventor of ISIS."
Let that treasonous libel stand for the innumerable times Trump has demonstrated that he's a mental
dwarf, a vicious idiot, an unhinged loon. And that's calling it like it is, on his
express terms.
This man belongs in one of two cells: a padded one where he can be safe from his own mental
illnesses or a prison one for his financial shenanigans, death threats against others, incitement
to violence, "cruel and inhumane" abuse of his first wife (the actual charges that stuck, the
rape ones were retracted) and treason. I guess money really can buy anything.
But hell, I'd settle for seeing him safely ensconced in his own Towers. Anywhere but the White
House.
Thete's a certain sort of university-educated, somewhat cosmopolitan person, who probably places
a premium on rationality and an expectation that the world works in reasonably orderly manner.
And they're not just on the left. They read the newspaper - the Guardian or the Telegraph or the
New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. They plan their careers and their retirements.
And they cannot CONCEIVE of how Trump supporters (or many Brexit supporters) see the world.
They don't get it; they can't wrap their heads around the anger and resentment. And they can't
believe that that there are tens of MILLIONS of people like that. All of whom will vote.
Just as we've seen with recent mass shootings, the rational cannot process the IRrational.
'. . . he was trying to be distasteful/politically incorrect as usual, which is why I will
vote for the man. PC has ventured into thought policing on things, and along with the ultra
surveillance state we have moved towards, I don't want to be answering questions by the Gestapo
after I text a tacky joke to someone.'
This amazes me. It shouldn't, as it seems to be a commonly-held sentiment even here, but it
amazes me that people like this feel they have such a strong need to say "tacky" - or, more realistically,
racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic - things that somehow they stand no chance of being able
to continue saying unless an unhinged 70-year old man who is widely denounced for being
disreputable is elected to represent them. It just does not add up as a pile of emotions, let
alone as part of a political platform. This guy also seems to have such a poor grasp of history
and a hysteric sense of melodrama as to believe that someone who criticizes him for making "a
tacky joke" (or possibly just makes him feel awkward for having done so?) is the equivalent of
"the Gestapo." He's more melodramatic about the reception his jokes might receive than a maladjusted
teen who acts out in class.
I'm a former Democrat...And I'm voting for trump. Hillary Clinton is one of the most blatantly
corrupt politician I have ever seen.
The media are completely biased...And spread utter lies about Trump, while Hillary immediately
hires Debbie wasserman Schultz after she resigned in disgrace when exposed by DNC leaks/Europeans
as cheating and colluding against another candidate.
Hillary didn't address this disgusting, illegal, unethical behavior , but she rewards and condones
cheating voters with a JOB.
A good reason to vote for Trump, a very good reason whatever his other
intentions, is that he
does not want a war with Russia.
Hillary and her elite ventriloquists
threaten just that. Note the anti-Russian hysteria coming from her and her
remoras.
Such a war would be yet another example of the utter control of
America by rich insiders. No normal American has anything at all to gain by
such a war. And no normal American has the slightest influence over whether
such a war takes place, except by voting for Trump. The military has become
entirely the plaything of unaccountable elites.
A martial principle of great wisdom says that military stupidity comes in
three grades: Ordinarily stupid; really, really,
really
stupid; and
fighting Russia. Think Charles XII at Poltava, Napoleon after Borodino, Adolf
and Kursk.
Letting dilettantes, grifters, con men, pasty Neocons, bottle-blonde ruins,
and corporations decide on war is insane. We have pseudo-masculine dwarves
playing with things they do not understand. So far as I am aware, none of these
fern-bar Clausewitzes has worn boots, been in a war, seen a war, or faces any
chance of being in a war started by themselves. They brought us Iraq,
Afghanistan, and Isis, and can't win wars against goatherds with AKs. They are
going to fight…Russia?
A point that the tofu ferocities of New York might bear in mind is that wars
seldom turn out as expected, usually with godawful results. We do not know what
would happen in a war with Russia. Permit me a tedious catalog to make this
point. It is very worth making.
When Washington pushed the South into the Civil War, it expected a conflict
that might be over in twenty-four hours, not four years with as least 650,000
dead. When Germany began WWI, it expected a swift lunge into Paris, not four
years of hideously bloody static war followed by unconditional surrender. When
the Japanese Army pushed for attacking Pearl, it did not foresee GIs marching
in Tokyo and a couple of cities glowing at night. When Hitler invaded Poland,
utter defeat and occupation of Germany was not among his war aims. When the US
invaded Vietnam, it did not expect to be outfought and outsmarted by a
bush-world country. When Russia invaded Afghanistan it did not expect…nor when
America invaded Afghanistan, nor when it attacked Iraq, nor….
Is there a pattern here?
The standard American approach to war is to underestimate the enemy,
overestimate American capacities, and misunderstand the kind of war it enters.
This is particularly true when the war is a manhood ritual for masculine
inadequates–think Kristol, Podhoretz, Sanders, the whole Neocon milk bar, and
that mendacious wreck, Hillary, who has the military grasp of a Shetland pony.
If you don't think weak egos and perpetual adolescence have a part in deciding
policy, read up on Kaiser Wilhelm.
Now, if Washington accidentally or otherwise provoked a war with Russia in,
say, the Baltics or the Ukraine, and actually used its own forces, where might
this lead, given the Pentagon's customary delusional optimism? A very serious
possibility is a humiliating American defeat. The US has not faced a real enemy
in a long time. In that time the armed forces have been feminized and
social-justice warriorified, with countless officials having been appointed by
Obama for reasons of race and sex. Training has been watered down to benefit
girl soldiers, physical standards lowered, and the ranks of general officers
filled with perfumed political princes. Russia is right there at the Baltic
borders: location, location, location. Somebody said, "Amateurs think strategy,
professionals think logistics." Uh-huh. The Russians are not pansies and they
are not primitive.
What would Washington do, what would New York make Washington do, having
been handed its ass in a very public defeat? Huge egos would be in play, the
credibility of the whole American empire. Could little Hillary Dillary Pumpkin
Pie force NATO into a general war with Russia, or would the Neocons try to go
it alone–with other people's lives? (Russia also has borders with Eastern
Europe, which connects to Western Europe. Do you suppose the Europeans would
think of this?) Would Washington undertake, or try to undertake, the national
mobilization that would be necessary to fight Russia in its backyard? Naval
war? Nukes in desperation?
And, since Russia is not going to invade anybody unprovoked, Washington
would have to attack. See above, the three forms of military stupidity.
The same danger exists incidentally with regard to a war with China in the
South China Sea. The American Navy hasn't fought a war in seventy years. It
doesn't know how well its armament works. The Chinese, who are not fools, have
invested in weaponry specifically designed to defeat carrier battle groups. A
carrier in smoking ruins would force Washington to start a wider war to save
face, with unpredictable results. Can you name one American, other than the
elites, who has anything to gain from war with China?
What has
any
normal American, as distinct from the elites and
various lobbies, gained from any of our wars post Nine-Eleven? Hillary and her
Neocon pack have backed all of them.
It is easy to regard countries as suprahuman beings that think and take
decisions and do things. Practically speaking, countries consist of a small
number of people, usually men, who make decisions for reasons often selfish,
pathologically aggressive, pecuniary, delusional, misinformed, or actually
psychopathic in the psychiatric sense. For example, the invasion of Iraq, a
disaster, was pushed by the petroleum lobbies to get the oil, the arms lobbies
to get contracts, the Jewish lobbies to get bombs dropped on Israel's enemies,
the imperialists for empire, and the congenitally combative because that is how
they think. Do you see anything in the foregoing that would matter to a normal
American? These do not add up to a well-conceived policy. Considerations no
better drive the desire to fight Russia or to force it to back down.
I note, pointlessly, that probably none of America's recent
martial catastrophes would have occurred if we still had
constitutional government. How many congressmen do you think
would vote for a declaration of war if they had to tell their
voters that they had just launched, for no reason of
importance to Americans, an attack on the homeland of a
nuclear power?
There are lots of reasons not to vote for
Clinton and the suppurating corruption she represents. Not
letting her owners play with matches rates high among them
"For Michael Morell, as with many other CIA careerists, his strongest suit seemed to be pleasing
his boss and not antagonizing the White House" His loyalty is to qhoewver occupies White House, not
necessarily to the truth. "Morell [was] at the center of two key fiascoes: he "coordinated the
CIA review" of Secretary of State Colin Powell's infamous Feb. 5, 2003 address to the United Nations
and he served as the regular CIA briefer to President George W. Bush. Putting Access Before Honesty"
Rise of Another CIA Yes Man – Consortiumnews
Notable quotes:
"... Let the bizarreness of that claim sink in, since it is professionally impossible to recruit an agent who is unwitting of being an agent, since an agent is someone who follows instructions from a control officer. ..."
"... However, since Morell apparently has no evidence that Trump was "recruited," which would make the Republican presidential nominee essentially a traitor, he throws in the caveat "unwitting." Such an ugly charge is on par with Trump's recent hyperbolic claim that President Obama was the "founder" of ISIS. ..."
"... Looking back at Morell's record, it was not hard to see all this coming, as Morell rose higher and higher in a system that rewards deserving sycophants. I addressed this five years ago in an article titled "Rise of Another CIA Yes Man." That piece elicited many interesting comments from senior intelligence officers who knew Morell personally; some of those comments are tucked into the end of the article. ..."
As for Morell's claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin is somehow controlling Donald Trump,
well, even Charlie Rose had stomach problems with that and with Morell's "explanation." In the Times
op-ed, Morell wrote: "In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr.
Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."
Let the bizarreness of that claim sink in, since it is professionally impossible to recruit an
agent who is unwitting of being an agent, since an agent is someone who follows instructions from
a control officer.
However, since Morell apparently has no evidence that Trump was "recruited," which would make
the Republican presidential nominee essentially a traitor, he throws in the caveat "unwitting." Such
an ugly charge is on par with Trump's recent hyperbolic claim that President Obama was the "founder"
of ISIS.
Looking back at Morell's record, it was not hard to see all this coming, as Morell rose higher
and higher in a system that rewards deserving sycophants. I addressed this five years ago in
an article
titled "Rise of Another CIA Yes Man." That piece elicited many interesting comments from senior intelligence
officers who knew Morell personally; some of those comments are tucked into the end of the article.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour
in inner-city Washington. He is a 30-year veteran of the CIA and Army intelligence and co-founder
of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). McGovern served for considerable periods
in all four of CIA's main directorates.
"... "She is the one that caused all this problem with her stupid policies," Trump said, referring to Hillary Clinton. "You look at what she did with Libya, what she did with Syria. Look at Egypt, what happened with Egypt, a total mess. She was truly - if not the - one of the worst secretaries of state in the history of the country. She talks about me being dangerous. She's killed hundreds of thousands of people with her stupidity." ..."
"... Trump is absolutely right. Hillary voted for the invasion of Iraq, which killed a million people. As I've pointed out , it wasn't just an immoral decision - it was a stupid one ..."
"... As secretary of state, Clinton never met a war she didn't love. Under her watch and following her counsel, the United States armed radical jihadis who are now terrorists , helped topple Moammar Gaddafi , expanded a civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Libyans and reduced one of the most advanced nations in Africa into a failed state . Then she turned around and did the same exact thing to Syria. ..."
"... Psychology Today ..."
"... Ted Rall , syndicated writer and the cartoonist for ANewDomain.net ..."
"... is the author of the book " Snowden ," the biography of the NSA whistleblower. ..."
There is, on the other hand, something wonderfully refreshing about Donald Trump's gleeful deployment
of the S-word.
"She is the one that caused all this problem with her stupid policies," Trump said,
referring
to Hillary Clinton. "You look at what she did with Libya, what she did with Syria. Look at Egypt,
what happened with Egypt, a total mess. She was truly - if not the - one of the worst secretaries
of state in the history of the country. She talks about me being dangerous. She's killed hundreds
of thousands of people with her stupidity."
Trump is absolutely right. Hillary voted for the invasion of Iraq, which killed a million
people. As I've pointed out,
it wasn't just an immoral decision - it was a stupid one, since anyone with a half a brain could
see at the time that Saddam probably didn't have WMDs, and that Bush's war would be a disaster.
Let Hillary's supporters take offense. How is unfair, wrong or intemperate to call out a foreign
policy record that fits the dictionary definition of "stupid" - doing the same thing over and over,
even though it never works? Stupid is as stupid
does. Hillary is stupid, especially on foreign policy, and Trump is right to say so.
Winner or loser, Trump has done political debate in America a huge favor by freeing "stupid" from
the rhetorical prison of words and phrases polite people aren't allowed to use.
Interestingly, stupid people aren't all losers and losers aren't always stupid in Trumpworld.
Hillary Clinton has one hell of a resume, which she has parlayed into a
big pile of cash. She is, by Trump standards, a winner (albeit a stupid one). If I met Trump,
I'd ask him if a smart person can be a loser (possible example: he
called the obviously smart Russell Brand a loser, but also a "dummy").
Pre-Trump, American politics and culture suffered from a lack of stupid-calling. I am serious.
"There has been a long tradition of anti-intellectualism in America, unlike most other Western
countries," Ray Williams
wrote last year in Psychology Today. Insults reflect a society's values. Americans value
macho masculinity, good looks and youth, so our top slurs accuse their victims of being effeminate,
weak, ugly, fat, old and outdated. In France, where the life of the mind is prized so much that one
of the nation's
top-rated
TV shows featured philosophers and auteurs discussing politics and culture over cigarettes, there
are few things worse than being called stupid and having it stick. A society that ranks "stupid"
as of its worst insults lets it be known that being smart is at least as important as being tough
or hot or buff.
So, Donald Trump, thanks for dropping those S-bombs.
Ted Rall, syndicated writer and the cartoonist for
ANewDomain.net, is the author of the book "Snowden,"
the biography of the NSA whistleblower.
"... Neo McCarthyism witch hunt against Trump instead of debate of a proper national policy is a sign of corrupted neoliberal media. They want the preservation and expantion of thier global empire at any cost for american people. ..."
"... Reckless branding of Trump as Russian agent is coming from Clinton campaign and it needs to stop ..."
Neo McCarthyism witch hunt against Trump instead of debate of a proper national policy is a sign
of corrupted neoliberal media. They want the preservation and expantion of thier global empire at
any cost for american people.
Reckless branding of Trump as Russian agent is coming from Clinton campaign and it needs to stop
On Thursday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump
apologized for comments that have been widely construed as calling for the assassination of Hillary
Clinton. "I apologize," Mr. Trump said, clearly struggling with the second word as he addressed supporters
at a campaign event in Philadelphia. "I misspoke, okay? It happens. Get over it."
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump had warned supporters, "If she gets to pick her judges-nothing you can do,
folks. Although, the Second Amendment people-maybe there is, I don't know."
Speaking on CNN later that day, campaign spokesperson Katrina Pierson insisted that Trump meant
"that people that support their Second Amendment rights need to come together and get out and stop
Hillary Clinton from winning in November." When it was pointed out that Trump was referring to what
might happen after the election, Ms. Pierson explained, "He was saying what could happen. He doesn't
want that to happen."
The Clinton campaign, many in the media, and even prominent Republicans rejected this interpretation.
Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said, "This is simple-what Trump is saying is dangerous. A person
seeking to be the president of the United States should not suggest violence in any way."
Clinton's running mate, Tim Kaine, told reporters after an event in Texas, "Nobody who is seeking
a leadership position, especially the presidency, the leadership of the country, should do anything
to countenance violence."
Dan Rather, the former CBS news anchor, posted in Facebook that Trump "crossed a line with dangerous
potential. By any objective analysis, this is a new low and unprecedented in the history of American
presidential politics."
Writing in the Washington Post, Joe Scarborough, former Republican congressman and current
host of the MSNBC show "Morning Joe," called for "every Republican leader" to denounce Trump's assassination
suggestion and revoke their endorsement of the controversial candidate.
Regarding Trump's comment on the Second Amendment, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said, "I don't believe
this to be a serious statement." But Sessions added, "You absolutely shouldn't joke about it. It's
contrary to what we believe in."
Former CIA director Michael Hayden chimed in, "You aren't just responsible for what you say; you're
responsible for what people hear."
With his poll numbers plummeting, Trump was in full damage-control mode in Philadelphia. After
apologizing for his misstatement, he went on to say, "I'm a truth-teller. All I do is tell the truth.
But some people-some people misinterpret me. On purpose, on accident, I don't know. I was not calling
for the assassination of Hillary. Please. I'm not a violent person. Never. Never violent. My friends
can tell you. What I meant to call for was the assassination of terrorists or potential terrorists,
okay? And there are lots of them, people, I'm telling you, in Afghanistan and Iraq and wherever.
Men, women, and children. Guns, not guns. Wedding parties. Doesn't matter. Drones would work fine,
right?"
The response was immediate and overwhelmingly positive. President Barack Obama said, "Contrary
to my early statement, I now believe that Donald Trump is, indeed, fit to be president of the United
States."
Fifty prominent Republican foreign policy and national security experts-among them Hayden and
other veterans of George W. Bush's administration-signed a letter endorsing Trump's candidacy. "Donald
Trump is the answer to America's daunting challenges," the letter began, and went on to note that
"without a doubt, he possesses the single most important quality required of an individual who aspires
to be President and Commander-in-Chief, with command of the U.S. nuclear arsenal."
Leon Panetta, Obama's former CIA director and Defense Secretary, told the Washington Post, "As
I have said on numerous occasions, we need a leader who is strong and decisive, who has the respect
of our generals and admirals, and the trust of our troops, especially our Special Forces, who maintain
U.S. credibility around the world. I now am comfortable with either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton
winning the presidency." At the Democratic National Convention, in July, Panetta had condemned Trump
because he "asks our troops to commit war crimes, endorses torture…and praises dictators."
On his morning show, Scarborough appeared to be reconciling with the Trump campaign. He said,
"I've been telling people for years that torture works. I know it works. You know it works. Donald
Trump knows it works. This is going to make members of the mainstream media and Democratic Party
uncomfortable, but you can make the argument, can't you, that shooting a member of al-Qaeda or ISIS,
even a U.S. citizen, causes less pain than waterboarding."
Nancy Lindborg, president of the U.S. Institute of Peace, issued a statement that said, "While
we applaud Mr. Trump's support for measured counterterrorism, we contend that diplomacy, reconciliation,
and no-fly zones are also necessary to achieve the U.S. goal of peace in the Middle East and remove
Assad from power in Syria."
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who has received criticism for refusing to withdraw his endorsement of
Trump, was heard joyfully singing his favorite campaign song, "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran."
The Clinton campaign, though, remained skeptical of Trump's correction. Mook stated, "Trump has
zero foreign policy experience. Only one candidate in this race has the experience, knowledge, temperament,
and judgment to call for assassination. Only one of the candidates was in the room when the decision
was made to take out Osama bin Laden. Only one candidate has been privy to the president's kill list.
And that's Hillary Clinton. The track record is there."
On his FiveThirtyEight blog, Pollster Nate Silver wrote, "We now anticipate seeing a bump in Trump's
numbers, especially among college-educated voters."
David said...
For the demented people that say that Trump and Hillary
are the same thing, two things:
1. You're clearly not
rational and observing reality, you're reacting out of
some sense of immature pique.
2. Remember Nader and W. Bush. Tell me why Nader giving
W. Bush the White was a good thing.
But the real reason to fear Trump is not Trump. Trump
is the Republican base, but he has little skills as a
politician. The next Trump will be more to right, more
resentful, more white nationalist, and possibly more
dangerous.
The real danger to our democracy, sadly enough, is the
Republican bigoted base.
Don't believe me? Check the comments of right wing
websites. It's there in plain sight.
Reply
Friday, August 12, 2016 at 01:11 PM
likbez said in reply to David ...
The vote will be not "for" Hillary or Trump.
The vote will be against Hillary or Trump.
As Hillary is a war criminal by Nuremberg trial
standards she is like Kelvin absolute zero in evilness.
You just can't be more evil.
Can any intelligent person vote for her ?
Reply
Sunday, August 14, 2016 at 03:59 PM
Peter K. said...
The neoliberal totebaggers have given us a world of slow
growth and increasing anger and unrest.
Brexit. Trump.
Sanders. Corbyn. Etc.
I think they somehow feel if they can just make to the
finish line and elect Hillary things will be fine.
I am hoping Trump loses by a record margin. I hope the
GOP suffers badly.
Then the totebaggers will gloat but their problems will
just have started. The DNC email leaks show the problem.
It wasn't just a a few bad apples. They were doing their
job. It's who the totebaggers are. Like PGL. Like Sanjait.
It's like the Blairites trying unsuccessfully to limit the
vote in the Labour leadership election.
Hillary was bragging about how she received an average
donation of $44 in recent months.
She's just copying Sanders, stealing his mojo.
I dont' think Sanjait is going to enjoy the coming
revolution.
Nor will totebagger trash like PGL. He'll try to divert
the discussion with stuff like Gerald Friedman whose
analysis the Sanders campaign didn't even commission.
But it's easy to see through his BS. It's sad, really.
"... I have trouble believing that the GOP elite and pundit's horror regarding Trump is really about what he says or what policies he proposes. These are the same people who embraced Palin (and many other conspicuously terrible candidates) after all. I suspect their real problem with him is that he got the nomination without having to successfully pass through their approval process. ..."
"... They simply become apoplectic at the prospect of the great unwashed succeeding in getting the candidate they want rather than the one that's the overlord's choice ..."
I have trouble believing that the GOP elite and pundit's horror regarding
Trump is really about what he says or what policies he proposes. These are the
same people who embraced Palin (and many other conspicuously terrible
candidates) after all. I suspect their real problem with him is that he got the
nomination without having to successfully pass through their approval process.
They simply become apoplectic at the prospect of the great unwashed succeeding
in getting the candidate they want rather than the one that's the overlord's
choice.
Same thing probably goes for Sanders and Corbyn. Sure they really do
hate some of their policy positions (fuzzy as they are in Trump's case) but
that would seem like it would be of lesser concern to them than anything which
would reduce the power they've had to decide who the voters get to choose from.
"... One good thing that might come out of the fractious primaries, conventions and final election is that the two-party structure that controls the U.S. political system might fracture, if not fragment, into something unanticipated. If so, a new multi-party system might emerge and change the nation's political landscape. ..."
"... the whole world was watching ..."
"... David Rosen is the author of Sex, Sin & Subversion: The Transformation of 1950s New York's Forbidden into America's New Normal (Skyhorse, 2015). He can be reached at [email protected] ; check out www.DavidRosenWrites.com . ..."
The 2016 presidential election has been a roller-coaster ride with the last two
establishment-party candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, shoving and
pushing, snapping, slapping and snarling their way to the finish line. How the
November election turns out is an open question.
One good thing that might come out of the fractious primaries,
conventions and final election is that the two-party structure that controls
the U.S. political system might fracture, if not fragment, into something
unanticipated. If so, a new multi-party system might emerge and change the
nation's political landscape.
The election's winner, whether Democrat or Republican, is likely to usher in
a period of unexpected instability, even disruption, as the parties seek to
regain control over the electoral system, the American voter. They may fail.
Both parties are poised for possible break-up, but along very different
ideological lines.
The Republicans have been splintering since the 2010 election when the
rightwing Tea Party insurgency captured a significant slice of the
Congressional delegation. They ushered in a period of legislative gridlock
that has soured the American public on the do-nothing Washington.
Trump's presidential run has further fragmented traditional Republicans, but
in unanticipated ways. Conventional party "moderates" and "conservatives,"
like Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz, respectively, have been jettisoned. An
opportunistic huckster, a 21st century P.T. Barnum, is reconfiguring
the party's identity. Many mainstream stalwarts are jumping ship, refusing to
support the candidate. Nevertheless, he is appealing to an apparently large
and receptive segment of dissatisfied white working- and middle-class males,
let alone some of the 1 percent. Whether Trump wins or loses, a very different
Republican Party is likely to emerge.
The Democrats were destabilized by the disruptive 1968 Chicago convention,
when the whole world was watching; in the race of the two VPs, Richard
Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey. It collapsed following the '72 election when
Nixon routed Sen. George McGovern (SD). Mr. Clinton's victory in '92
reconstituted the party, establishing the formative neo-liberal period of
globalization when the U.S. flourished; a Mrs. Clinton victory in 2016 might
codify economic and social stagnation, furthering Pres. Obama's new normal to
nowhere.
Bernie Sanders unexpected popular appeal, especially among younger voters,
disrupted the Clinton machine's well-scripted plan. The WikiLeak revelations
as to the complicity of party officials in attempting to suppress Sanders
campaign only confirmed what most people already knew - the game is rigged. In
2016 election's new-speak, all Democrats are "progressives." How long after
the truce between Clinton "liberals" and Sanders "radicals" will the
progressive fiction of unity prevail?
Pres. Obama's 2008 campaign was based on the promise of "hope" and, over the
last eight years, hope has dissipated from American politics and life. Trump,
a masterful fear monger, has caught the spirit of this disillusionment,
proclaiming that he alone can "Make American Great America." Clinton champions
unity among the nation's divergent populace - whether in terms of racial, class
and gender sectors - and has called for a program to stay the course.
Both candidates - and their respective parties - are sitting on ticking time
bombs, of profound economic instability and social insecurity. No one knows
what's coming. Most threatening, incipient movements threaten to disrupt the
political order. Something altogether new might be in the works.
* * *
Today's U.S. political system was fashioned out of numerous incidents of
disruption that occurred over the last two centuries. Three factors have
driven this disruption - internal party splits, third-party alternatives and
charismatic insurgents. Each disruptive episode is uniquely distinct and
offers valuable insight into the formation of the nation's political culture.
The fragmentation that might follow from the 2016 presidential election could
prefigure a fundamental realignment of political power in U.S. politics.
Two of the most consequential political disruptions in U.S. history set the
parameters of modern American life. The first involved the collapse of the
Whig Party and the rise of the (original) Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln,
defining the Civil War era. The second involved Theodore Roosevelt's break
with the (modern) Robber-Baron Republicans in the pre-WW-I era that set the
stage for the rise of the Progressive movement, followed by the Great
Depression, F. D. Roosevelt's New Deal and rise of modern state capitalism.
Among third-party threats, two stand out. In 1856, the Know-Nothing's
American Party backed Millard Fillmore for president and secured nearly 1
million votes, a quarter of all votes cast. A century later, in 1948, racists
Southern Democrats launched the "Dixiecrat" that, a quarter-century later,
would become part of Nixon's "Southern Strategy" and remake the Republican
Party.
With regard to party fragmentation, two campaign splits stand out. In 1964,
many moderate Republicans, including Governors Nelson Rockefeller (NY) and
George Romney (MI), opposed conservative Sen. Barry Goldwater's presidential
run. In 1972, McGovern's electoral defeat marked the party's near collapse
until Clinton's '92 neo-liberal resuscitation.
Finally, the insurgent Eugene Debs, the nation's leading socialist at the
turn of the 20th century, challenged the corporatist political
system. He ran for president five times and was sentenced to a 10 years prison
term for opposing U. S. entry into WW-I. Ralph Nader continued this tradition,
but never – including the 2000 presidential election – achieved the level of
support that Debs received.
* * *
A possible break-up of the traditional two-party system might involve, for
example, the two parties morphing into four parties. In this scenario, each
major party would split into two factions, establishment and radical, whether
of the left for Democrats or right for Republicans – whatever left and right
might mean. These parties will likely include Libertarian and Green parties,
but also a host of single-issue, far-left groupings as well as white, Christian
nationalist.
A clock is ticking; the current political system is being squeezed by the
demands of a new capitalist global order. In the U.S., how this possible
political realignment works out – or if it doesn't – depends on changes in
demographics and economics. The changing composition of the American people,
of ethnic makeup, age-cohort and social class, is one axis of tension; and the
social economy, of wages and growing inequality, is a second.
The U.S. might well be a "better" - more politically representative -
country if it fragments along lines suggested by European democracies. At
least more voices would be added to the political mix, thus giving expression
to the complexity of the social and economic realignment remaking the nation.
The great tyranny of American democracy is that the 1 percent continues to
rule. The 1 percent wrote the Constitution and, as two leading
economists of the colonial economy, Jeffrey Williamson and Peter Lindert,
report, "Around 1774, the top one percent of free wealthholders in the
thirteen colonies held 12.6 percent of total assets, while the richest ten
percent held a little less than half of total assets." Two-centuries later, in
2010, the 1 percent still controls Congress as well as 35 percent of the
nation's wealth. It's time for change.
Join
the debate on Facebook
David Rosen is the author of
Sex, Sin & Subversion: The Transformation of 1950s New York's Forbidden into
America's New Normal (Skyhorse, 2015). He can be reached at [email protected];
check out www.DavidRosenWrites.com.
More articles by: David
Rosen
"... I am surprised a that so many commenters leave out the elephant in the root - the fact that by standards of Nuremberg trials Hillary Clinton is a war criminal. ..."
"... I'll briefly sum up the case by noting again Hillary Clinton, like Bill before her, is a creation of the former Democratic Leadership Council. When the Republicans started their journey to the far right the DLC captured the right of center people. That's the moderate Republican base. That was the answer to the southern strategy. Keep some social progressiveness. Remember GBW's compassionate Republicanism? We're going to get a Republican President, but we're going to make believe that she's a progressive Democrat. ..."
"... You are absolutely right that Hillary is a moderate Republican in a sheep skin of Democrat. That was Bill Clinton "Third Way" strategy from the very beginning. Essentially selling the Party to Wall Street. This "neoliberalization" of Democratic Party worked extremely well for Democratic brass for almost three decades. ..."
"... Professor Bacevich had shown that the main driver of the US militarism is neocons domination of the US foreign policy, and, especially, neocons domination in State Department regardless of whether Republicans or Democrats are in power. They profess that the US that is uniquely qualified to take on the worldwide foes of peace and democracy, forgetting, revising, or ignoring the painful lessons of World War II, Vietnam, and Iraq. And that establishing and maintaining the neoliberal empire is worth the price we pay as it will take the USA into the period of unprecedented peace. ..."
I am surprised a that so many commenters leave out the elephant in the root - the fact that
by standards of Nuremberg trials Hillary Clinton is a war criminal.
Hillary Clinton is certainly not the only one, but she is the only one running for president.
Equally credible cases can be made against W, Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld.
Each supported an illegal war in which thousands of American lives were sacrificed for Big
Oil, and in which hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were murdered.
Each subscribes to belligerent, interventionist military policy. Each supports an American
Empire foreign policy.
Each supports arming the world. Each supports Israel's occupation and war against the Palestinian
people.
Each supports regime change, by force or stealth, where such will benefit US corporate or military
interests. Even at the expense of democratically elected governments.
== end of quote ===
How can any intelligent person vote for a war criminal ?
Jack August 14, 2016 6:27 pm
Oh no, not another HRC the criminal posts. War criminal in this case. Email fraud previously.
Failure of duty in Libya. Oh, remember Vincent Foster. Murder no less.
Trump is a sociopath and HRC has her delusional detractors. What good do they do? Well they
draw attention away from HRC's real worst traits.
I'll briefly sum up the case by noting again Hillary Clinton, like Bill before her, is
a creation of the former Democratic Leadership Council. When the Republicans started their journey
to the far right the DLC captured the right of center people. That's the moderate Republican base.
That was the answer to the southern strategy. Keep some social progressiveness. Remember GBW's
compassionate Republicanism? We're going to get a Republican President, but we're going to make
believe that she's a progressive Democrat.
All the definitions have changed since the '60s. She not a criminal. She's just put on a different
colored cloak to demonstrate her flexibility. Americans are apparently not yet ready for a good
old fashioned New Deal Democrat. Workers are afraid of unions. Americans never could stay out
of a good fight. And Democrats since the '70s have learned to love bankers and recognize that
if you let bankers have yet more money they'll shed some your way. Roosevelt didn't need their
cash. He had his family's banking empire. And he had real compassion. He was an old style Keynesian.
He understood the importance of the government spending money on the nation, and that the nation
would return that money to the wealthy as they spent it to stay alive.
Beverly Mann August 14, 2016 7:08 pm
Bingo.
Zachary Smith August 14, 2016 8:02 pm
To likbez August 14, 2016 5:44 pm
I agree that Hillary Clinton is many kinds of criminal. I also agree with the others that it no
longer matters in the US.
Nixon = unprosecuted treason. Reagan = unprosecuted treason. Bush Sr. = unprosecuted criminal in Iran Contra and more.
(Clinton 1 is a black hole for me in terms of information – I just don't know enough to say.)
Bush Jr. = unprosecuted torturer and war crimes in Iraq. Obama = unprosecuted drone killer and war crimes in Libya & Syria.
That's the Leaders. On down the ladder US policemen routinely kill people. Many are cold-blooded
executions. Very seldom is there any prosecution. Even rarer than that is a conviction.
Big Bankers plundered the US in 2008. Not a single prosecution that I know about.
... ... ...
US citizens are becoming numbed to violence by the sheer frequency frequency. And increasingly
have their noses in their handheld devices tuning out all the news. Having learned almost no history,
they're suckers for nearly any glib line from very talented propagandists.
A very nasty piece of work is about to become President of the US of A. She has done many things
for which better humans than her are in prison. If the email hackers produce actual evidence of actual
crimes, she will NOT be prosecuted. At the very worst the TPP-loving Neocon Kaine will become president.
This is the US in 2016.
likbez, August 14, 2016 10:23 pm
Jack,
You are absolutely right that Hillary is a moderate Republican in a sheep skin of Democrat. That
was Bill Clinton "Third Way" strategy from the very beginning. Essentially selling the Party to
Wall Street. This "neoliberalization" of Democratic Party worked extremely well for Democratic
brass for almost three decades.
You are probably wrong in your underestimation of the danger of the "new American militarism"
(Professor Bacevich coined the term) factor in the US foreign policy -- the desire to subdue all
other countries and establish global neoliberal empire. Which as Zachary Smith observed makes
each and every President since Clinton a war criminal, unless we adopt the Roman dictum "Winners
[in a war] are never sent to the court of law".
Professor Bacevich had shown that the main driver of the US militarism is neocons domination
of the US foreign policy, and, especially, neocons domination in State Department regardless of
whether Republicans or Democrats are in power. They profess that the US that is uniquely qualified
to take on the worldwide foes of peace and democracy, forgetting, revising, or ignoring the painful
lessons of World War II, Vietnam, and Iraq. And that establishing and maintaining the neoliberal
empire is worth the price we pay as it will take the USA into the period of unprecedented peace.
Bacevich scored a direct hit on the foundations of the American national security state with
this scathing critique, and demolishes the unspoken assumptions that he believes have led the
United States into a senseless, wasteful, and counter-productive perpetual war for perpetual peace.
These assumptions clearly visible in "Khan gambit" are as following: the USA has the unique
responsibility to intervene wherever it wants, for whatever purpose it wants, by whatever means
it wants -- and the supporting "trinity" of requirements for the USA to maintain a global military
presence, to configure its military forces for global power projection, and to counter threats
by relying on a policy of global interventionism.
The driving force in all recent wars is the desire to protect and enlarge the neoliberal empire.
That means that election of Hillary means war.
After Trump's asinine quip about a 2nd amendment "solution" to stopping
Clinton's presidential run, her campaign manager, Robby Mook, had
this
to say:
"What Trump is saying is dangerous. A person seeking to be the President
of the United States should not suggest violence in any way."
A presidential candidate should not suggest violence in
any
way?!?
Really?
This coming from a high-level supporter of a candidate who…
…has supported
every
war during her political career?
…supported the use of civilian-butchering cluster bombs by Israel in Gaza?
…supported the brutal invasions by the Saudi dictatorship of Bahrain and
Yemen?
…enthusiastically pushed for the bombing of Libya that turned it into a
failed state?
…threatened use of nuclear weapons vs. Iran?
…supported the military coups against the elected governments in Honduras
and Egypt, turning both into violence-ridden basket cases?
…adores as her mentor the arch war criminal Henry Kissinger, orchestrator of
the tortures and killings of 10s of thousands?
Tell me, please, Clinton supporters, how is this not "suggest[ing] violence
in any way."
Is it because threats of violence don't count when they're promoted against
human beings who aren't Americans? Go ahead, probe the deeply caustic,
Trump-like racism behind that assumption.
Last Friday, four days before Trump issued his violent threat and a few
weeks after the constitution-waiving stunt at the Democratic convention, the
ACLU and a federal court finally forced the release of the Obama
administration's patently
unconstitutional guidelines
[2]
for killing people with drones (
nearly
90%
of whom were not the intended targets).
And yesterday, while the Republican sociopath was issuing his threat, the
Obama State Department approved the sale of more than
$1
billion in arms to Saudi Arabia
, no doubt to continue its bloody invasion
of Yemen, where the UN recently estimated that
two-thirds of the civilian casualties
are caused by Saudi air strikes.
Where was the Democratic and Republican outrage against those very real,
violent threats?
When Clinton wins the November election, will we stoop ever farther into an
Orwellian world as our first "feminist" president continues to shovel billions
in arms to arguably the most anti-feminist dictatorship on the planet? Where
violence against people doesn't count as violence due to their nationality
and/or the color of their skin?
If you're outraged about Trump's barbarous suggestion of 2
nd
Amendment "solutions" to elections, please don't stop there. Get your blood
boiling and then also, and just as forcefully, challenge Clinton's own
barbarous "solutions."
"A third of the members of the United Nations have felt Washington's
boot, overturning governments, subverting democracy, imposing blockades and
boycotts. Most of the presidents responsible have been liberal – Truman,
Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama…"
"One of the more violent presidents, Obama gave full reign to the
Pentagon war-making apparatus of his discredited predecessor. He prosecuted
more whistleblowers – truth-tellers – than any president. He pronounced
Chelsea Manning guilty before she was tried. Today, Obama runs an
unprecedented worldwide campaign of terrorism and murder by drone."
"In 2009, Obama promised to help "rid the world of nuclear weapons" and
was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. No American president has built more
nuclear warheads than Obama."
This is what happens when the Lame Stream Media gets a guest that doesn't fit the narrative and
handily puts the anchor in her place. They deflect and end the interview!
"... News Media bias. Excellent Lou Dobbs discussion with Newt Gingrich. Worthy of your time to Watch short Video ..."
"... Newt Gingrich: ..."
"... The elite media is dedicated to defeating Trump .. Trump should pattern his campaign on the model of Truman…media had written him off. ..."
"... And the elite media in newsroom after newsroom is dedicated to defeating Trump and I think every chance they get to try to get him off message, they will, ..."
News Media bias. Excellent Lou Dobbs discussion with Newt Gingrich. Worthy of your time to Watch
short Video
Newt Gingrich:
The elite media is dedicated to defeating Trump .. Trump should pattern his campaign
on the model of Truman…media had written him off.
"The elite media understands that if they allow Donald Trump to communicate directly
to the American people, he's just plain going to beat them. And he's going to win, and Hillary
is going to lose
And the elite media in newsroom after newsroom is dedicated to defeating Trump and I
think every chance they get to try to get him off message, they will," he said. "I
hope that Donald Trump will take, as his model, Harry Truman's campaign in 1948 where the entire
elite media had written Truman off and he came back, he pounded away, and he won the presidency
despite every expectation of the national establishment. I think Trump has the same opportunity
this year."
[more on Vid..Hillary's comment she short-circuited will return to hurt. What else did she
short-circuit? listen]
"... What struck me in the article was a conflict between attributing the DNC hack and a possible Clinton hack that the authors didn't even attempt to address. They claim analysts are very confident that Russian hackers, working for the government, hacked the DNC. But as to the possibility that anyone hacked Clinton's private server; well, if they did, they would have been way to savvy to leave any traces that they'd done so. A DNC hack; those sloppy Russian government hackers did it. A personal server; a real pro job. ..."
"... Hillary - if elected - will inherit economy in recession or on the brink of it, and her main preoccupation will be dealing with mounting domestic unrest, as well as with the wars she'll inherit from Obama. However she may want to, she'll be in no position to start another war. ..."
"... The US Dept of State is an equal-opportunity criminal syndicate ..."
"... There is always money for war, just no money for commons. ..."
"... Amazing how even the most obvious facts are denied by the largest margin of people - in spite of the truth being available to the contrary. People believed Goebbels and are now believing the propaganda from the cesspool of the totalitarian establishment, because they WANT TO. ..."
"... Regarding the to Nazi-standards evolving propaganda of the Western establishment, it would be helpful if people would stop 'googling' misinformation from the CIA 'search' engine aka data collection agency. There are other search engines available that will not skew the results. ..."
"... Psychological projection is a theory in psychology in which humans defend themselves against their own unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others.[1] For example, a person who is habitually rude may constantly accuse other people of being rude. It incorporates blame shifting. ..."
"... ...New emails showing ( the worse evil ) Hillarys lies and corruption would be perfect PR to highlight for one of Trump's principle core messages of Washintons and especially Hitlarys corruption. ..."
"... The war monger industries, think tanks, and DOD want a bigger war. They don't have to kill Obama, they are waiting for the Killary and are using every dirty trick to get her elected. ..."
"... We're sort of behind schedule on that DoD memo that Wesley Clark saw after 9/11 that said the US would "take out" seven countries in five years. Iraq, Syria, and Libya are basket cases. Somalia and Sudan aren't much better. That leaves Lebanon and Iran. ..."
"... People know that those aren't true threats to us so following the Brzezinski/PNAC doctrine of not allowing any country to rise in any region leads us to real powers Russia and China. I wonder if Vegas has any odds on which country we'll be at war with next. And will we do it directly or via some sad-sack like Ukraine? ..."
"... Excellent points. The propaganda process to convince the American people to accept war with Russia (Syria and Iran) has been going on for several years now (the military budgets are just beginning their upward ramp due to Russia). The process is nearly identical to what Bush and the neocons did with Saddam and the invasion of Iraq. And propaganda through the mass media is effective--upwards to 70% of the American people supported Bush's invasion. ..."
"... Hillary's brain will not survive the pressure of a presidency when half the country thinks she is liar and untrustworthy. Her health is already suspicious and she may collapse after her election as there would be huge demands on her. The next president of the USA won't be Hillary Clinton for long, it will be Tim Kayne. ..."
"... No doubt there could well be a lot more in what The Don doesn't say. But this election will be about low voter turn out. Record lows. Everyone is nauseous. Trump has his cult following. Hilary disgraced the Bernistas - none of them will vote for Hilary. Hilary has no one except the neocon rats who have jumped ship. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton's Embrace of Kissinger Is Inexcusable. Bernie Sanders should call on her to repudiate him as the war criminal he is. https://www.thenation.com/article/hillary-clintons-embrace-of-kissinger-is-inexcusable/ ..."
"... As for the discussion on running out of money for wars ... well al-CIAduh/IS is much cheaper than the US uniformed armed forces, or the same people through the revolving door fighting as mercenaries. The KSA/GCC have been footing the bill ... because the same forces they're directing outwards will devastate them if and when they turn around and go for them directly. As times get harder for al-CIAduh/IS ... up against the Russians, Syrians, Iranians, Hezbulla ... it's got to occur to them that there's a much easier, much larger paycheck available in turning around and robbing the bank that's been feeding them rations. ..."
"... William Casey-CIA Director "We will know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ..."
"... William Casey-CIA Director "We will know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ..."
"... The New York Times is selling a world-view. You can't sell anyone anything they don't want to buy. The American public, having detected that their leaders have no idea how to bring them safely out of the wood of the "new economics", of the air economy, is begging to be told a story that - if we all close our eyes and believe real hard - will bring magic, fairy princess economy back to life. Life was OK ... nostalgia makes it better ... back when we used to hate the Russians. Let's hate 'em again. It's kind of a cargo cult mentality. ..."
"... Many times, back then, I would confront my comrades with the assertion that the mass produced media outlets (MPMO), such as the New York Times were nothing more than propaganda machines. "Hip" as they might have been, they just could not handle this concept. ..."
"... I also investigated the world of the eleetoids very deeply -- and I had several unique opportunities to do so. They are certainly not at all like us. They are generally quite vain and oddly shallow. Money, power, and organized violence are one and the same to them. Wall Street, Washington D.C., and the pentagon constellation are all on the same page. Crucially, none of these eleetoids is anywhere near what could be deemed sane. Their minds are profoundly warped just because they are what they are. ..."
"... And they are easily capable of setting off Armageddon. War and the proliferation of misery is not their goal in the end, much worse, it is simply a consequence, a symptom if you will, of their insanity. ..."
"... WADC and NYC attract psychopathy, so naturally our two choices for November are Alpha Psychopaths. That doesn't mean that the necrotic American ship of state will alter its course, only settle lower in the water, come to a gradual stop, tip downward at the bow, and then break in half. The psychopaths are The Vampire and will fly away, caww, caww, caww, leaving all the hoi polloi, the Little People, to drink and to drown. ..."
"... In some ways the rules of engagement for Syria are reminiscent of the restrictions placed on U.S. special operators in El Salvador in the 1980s. The U.S. forces in that tiny country helped train the embattled government's counter-insurgency forces. But they were not allowed to go into battle with the forces they trained. ..."
"... The people who have brainwashed the Americans are the problem just like in Hitler's time. Those global plutocratic families have been controlling the narrative for centuries and they seem to have convinced you it is the US citizens who are to blame for falling for the propaganda this time. ..."
Another example that so-called news in U.S. media is often more propaganda than valid
information is this NYT
piece on the "hack" of the Democratic National Committee:
WASHINGTON - A Russian cyberattack that targeted Democratic politicians was bigger than it first
appeared and breached the private email accounts of more than 100 party officials and groups,
officials with knowledge of the case said Wednesday.
...
A "Russian cyberattack"? How can the NYT claim such, in an opening paragraph, when even the Director
of U.S. National Intelligence
is unable to make such a judgement?
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, speaking about the hack of Democratic Party emails,
said on Thursday the U.S. intelligence community was not ready to "make the call on attribution"
as to who was responsible.
All the NYT lays out to backup its claim of a "Russian" hack is an anonymous Intelligence Committee
staffer who claims U.S. intelligence agencies "have virtually no doubt" about it. If that were true
why would the boss of these intelligence agencies publicly point out such doubts?
There is not even any evidence that the publishing of emails incriminating the DNC for manipulating
the Democratic primaries were the result of any "hack". It might have well been an insider who copied
the material and handed them to Wikileaks for publication. After the leak the DNC data analyst Seth
Rich was mutilated and murdered near his home in Washington DC. The case was obviously no robbery.
Julian Assange of Wikileaks pointed out that the circumstances of Rich's death are suspicious. I
first attributed that claim to Assange's typical exaggerations, but
the facts speak for themselves. The case indeed looks very much like a targeted killing. Who
did it and and why?
The "Russia is guilty" claim for whatever happened, without any proof, is becoming a daily diet
fed to the "western" public. A similar theme is the "barrel bombing" of (the
always same ) "hospitals" in Syria which is claimed whenever the Syrian government or its allies
hit some al-Qaeda
headquarter .
What struck me in the article was a conflict between attributing the DNC hack and a possible Clinton
hack that the authors didn't even attempt to address. They claim analysts are very confident that
Russian hackers, working for the government, hacked the DNC. But as to the possibility that anyone
hacked Clinton's private server; well, if they did, they would have been way to savvy to leave
any traces that they'd done so. A DNC hack; those sloppy Russian government hackers did it. A
personal server; a real pro job.
Hillary - if elected - will inherit economy in recession or on the brink of it, and her main preoccupation
will be dealing with mounting domestic unrest, as well as with the wars she'll inherit from Obama.
However she may want to, she'll be in no position to start another war.
America is in severe and accelerating decline, and simply has no resources for more wars.
The Dems and Repubs. always vie to wage the 'best, most just, necessary, wars.' Wars as in merciless
bombing and decimation and installation of a puppet Gvmt, not against and adversary who presents
a threat.
For B. Clinton, that was smashing Yugoslavia (plus various other, Africa etc.), while later
the Repub. Bushies concentrated on Iraq (but see Billy C on that, plus Iran sanctions…) and Afghanistan.
The two join together under Obama-Killary: Lybia and Syria. (Leaving much aside.)
Not of course that IRL the division is clear, it isn't, but that is what is used to bamboozle
the public. One war is baaaad, horrible, another is ee-ssential for security, and so all grinds
on, with one switch after another, year by year, nothing changes, with millions of deaths, maimed,
displaced, landscapes, agriculture, towns, whole countries, destroyed.
6 America is in severe and accelerating decline, and simply has no resources for more wars.
America prints fiat currency at will and posts numbers on computer terminals. The value of
this currency is indicated by its position as the petro-dollar. This arrangement is enforced by
American hegemony and illegitimate partnerships with other despotic governments which support
and maintain it's dominance as the world's most important currency.
There is always money for war, just no money for commons.
Amazing how even the most obvious facts are denied by the largest margin of people - in spite
of the truth being available to the contrary.
People believed Goebbels and are now believing the propaganda from the cesspool of the totalitarian
establishment, because they WANT TO.
Anybody that has ever had, or still has a shred of critical thinking left, will KNOW. The totalitarian,
corporate establishment, that has been inbreeding since thousands of years, is going for the kill.
The kill of 'democracy', the kill of freedom of speech, the killing of the 'pursuit of happiness'
and a new cold war among the different ethnicities on planet earth.
Therefore the so called 'racists' are actually 'Ethnicists' - denying ethnicities differing
from the white man the right to live. The right to exterminate non-white sub-humans at will.
Regarding the to Nazi-standards evolving propaganda of the Western establishment, it would
be helpful if people would stop 'googling' misinformation from the CIA 'search' engine aka data
collection agency. There are other search engines available that will not skew the results.
This is the result in regards to the tactics of the Western establishments' propaganda: It's called 'Psychological Projection' and has worked for millennia. To find out more about
it, one can look at the Wikipedia entry, or search anew for other sources:
Psychological projection is a theory in psychology in which humans defend themselves against
their own unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence
in themselves while attributing them to others.[1] For example, a person who is habitually rude
may constantly accuse other people of being rude. It incorporates blame shifting.
...New emails showing ( the worse evil ) Hillarys
lies and corruption would be perfect PR to highlight for one of Trump's principle core messages
of Washintons and especially Hitlarys corruption. But no instead of sitting back and letting the
new corruption unfold for himself to take advantage, the moronic narcissistic Trump has to make
it about him self again by saying his idiocies and outrages which diverts from his core message
that got him so much success.
Trump(et) needs to rely on getting fake liberals to be discouraged, apathetic or a vote for
third party, but Trump the King moron himself is driving these people into Hillarys camp.
The transition from Obama to Hillary mirrors the transition from Kennedy to Johnson. The
war monger industries, think tanks, and DOD want a bigger war. They don't have to kill Obama,
they are waiting for the Killary and are using every dirty trick to get her elected. Much
bigger wars are coming after January.
... ethnic cleansing that the modern Israeli's simply copy ...
Here we go with the US-Israel equivalence meme that is being pushed by the usual suspects.
As though nothing was learned in the last 80-120 years or so. If that were so, then Israel
might find itself in an even more precarious position. Actually, some might well say that Israel is turning back the clock to pre-modern
times, and joining with other reactionary forces to do so.
We're sort of behind schedule on that DoD memo that Wesley Clark saw after 9/11 that said the
US would "take out" seven countries in five years. Iraq, Syria, and Libya are basket cases. Somalia
and Sudan aren't much better. That leaves Lebanon and Iran.
People know that those aren't true
threats to us so following the Brzezinski/PNAC doctrine of not allowing any country to rise in
any region leads us to real powers Russia and China. I wonder if Vegas has any odds on which country
we'll be at war with next. And will we do it directly or via some sad-sack like Ukraine?
Excellent points. The propaganda process to convince the American people to accept war with
Russia (Syria and Iran) has been going on for several years now (the military budgets are just
beginning their upward ramp due to Russia). The process is nearly identical to what Bush and the
neocons did with Saddam and the invasion of Iraq. And propaganda through the mass media is effective--upwards
to 70% of the American people supported Bush's invasion.
January is already too late as this process has been going on for several years. The hysteria
is now building to a crescendo and is pretty much impossible to stop with reasoned arguments.
Speaking of influencing elections. The Ukrano-nazis look to be building up troop levels on
the Crimean border to show off horrible Russian/Putin aggression. Looks like the Ukrano-nazis
are willing to kill off a bunch of their own soldiers for propaganda effect.
Hillary's brain will not survive the pressure of a presidency when half the country thinks she
is liar and untrustworthy. Her health is already suspicious and she may collapse after her election
as there would be huge demands on her.
The next president of the USA won't be Hillary Clinton for long, it will be Tim Kayne.
No doubt there could well be a lot more in what The Don doesn't say. But this election will be
about low voter turn out. Record lows. Everyone is nauseous.
Trump has his cult following. Hilary disgraced the Bernistas - none of them will vote for Hilary.
Hilary has no one except the neocon rats who have jumped ship.
Will she be able to excite Obamas #HopeAndChange army...? I don't see them getting out of bed
sorry - and it's why you see #NeverTrump. It doesn't matter what Trump does, dem voter turn out
will be at historic lows.
The Guardian stated yesterday that Putin is ramping up for the 'invasion' (sic) of Crimea, but
went out of their way to leave the impression it was a Russian invasion, and not invasion by NATO,
behind a current World Bank-funded $10Bs looted from US taxpayers to rebuild Eastern Ukraine roads
and bridges to military load capacity, ... just another wholly illegal and pro-war act by the
ZIMF-WB to an unconstitutional dual-Israel junta coup leadership in Kiev, and made in violation
to a non-NATO state, with no expectation the 'loans' would ever be paid back, ...just as $35B
IMF loaned, then Kerry backstopped with US taxpayer savings, will never be repaid. Ever.
The 'War of Crimea' is necessary for many political purposes, but primarily to cover up that
July 2015 looting of $50B from the US Treasury by Kerry and the RINO Congress for war grift to
Ukraine that will never be repaid, stolen from SS and disability funds.
And behind that War of Crimea will come a US Militarized Police State of One Thousand Years,
to cover The Chosen's wholly illegal, usurious, odious, onerous synthetic CDS 'scheme' to transfer
all of WS's Exceptionalist *gambling debts* onto the backs of our grandchildren, when WS should
be tarred and feathered, then beaten with birch switches.
Instead, we get US Congress bleeting for Bibi and clapping at attention until the blood runs
from their fingernails down their arms, afraid to be the first to stop clapping. New America is
Kim Jung Un on steroids in 2017.
Tick tock! What's the plan to protect the US Constitution? Where's the patriot sitrep?
This stuff pervades the corporate media across the board :
A Rush to Judgment on Russian Doping . If war is the continuation of politics by other means,
'news' is the continuation of war by other means.
As for the discussion on running out of money for wars ... well al-CIAduh/IS is much cheaper
than the US uniformed armed forces, or the same people through the revolving door fighting as
mercenaries. The KSA/GCC have been footing the bill ... because the same forces they're directing
outwards will devastate them if and when they turn around and go for them directly.
As times get harder for al-CIAduh/IS ... up against the Russians, Syrians, Iranians, Hezbulla
... it's got to occur to them that there's a much easier, much larger paycheck available in turning
around and robbing the bank that's been feeding them rations.
When the oil-archies go up in smoke the free for all will begin in earnest ... 'protecting
world security'. Then US/Israeli troops will land in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar put out the
fires, grab the checkbooks, reseat their clients under the new dispensation. That'll be their
plan anyway. As Obama said, Hillary's will be his third term ... they hope. Pick the low-hanging
fruit on the way to Moscow and Beijing.
I liked the guy with the videos of no people at the Hillary rally. I liked Newt comparing Trump
to Truman ... they do seem so alike, on more than the Dewey Defeats Truman level. Harry was as
utterly unprepared as Donald is to be POTUS, and was whipsawed by the same old domestic gangsters
oblivious to the consequences of their free-flowing gravy-train at home.
While a good post, I wonder why b. would say "I first attributed that claim to Assange's typical
exaggerations..." I've not found him to exaggerate, typically, but I have found the MSM to want
us to believe that he does... Also, it is Marcy Wheeler (a woman), not Marc (this mistake has
been made here before).
A friend in Silicon Valley - with a seven-member family all voting for B Sanders - reported that
there seemed to be little doubt primaries were stolen. His polling station was managed by guys
with IT background (S. Valley, after all) - who witnessed manipulations, including the purging
of all provisional ballots.
The bottom line on this is ... ya gotta wanna believe. The New York Times is selling a world-view.
You can't sell anyone anything they don't want to buy. The American public, having detected that
their leaders have no idea how to bring them safely out of the wood of the "new economics", of
the air economy, is begging to be told a story that - if we all close our eyes and believe real
hard - will bring magic, fairy princess economy back to life. Life was OK ... nostalgia makes
it better ... back when we used to hate the Russians. Let's hate 'em again. It's kind of a cargo
cult mentality.
A measure of just how disjoint we all are. There's no there there where our
memories of America were, we need a magic spell to bring tinker belle back to life, so we can
fly back to never-never land again, live happily ever after. Things are very, very bad for the
USA.
I was an anti-Vietnam war protester. For the most part we were very loosely organized, or even
not at all organized. We were hippies, doing the whole mid-60s to mid-70s thing. Our city decided
to actually have the fire department stage a pro-war protest -- Strange times indeed!
Many times, back then, I would confront my comrades with the assertion that the mass produced
media outlets (MPMO), such as the New York Times were nothing more than propaganda machines. "Hip"
as they might have been, they just could not handle this concept. They were totally appalled
that I could dare to claim this. I was sort of like their first "conspiracy theorist". The comments
above reveal how times have changed. Even if they are still in psychological thrall to the propaganda
machinery, the seed of dark doubt has now been sewn in their bewildered hearts.
I also investigated the world of the eleetoids very deeply -- and I had several unique
opportunities to do so. They are certainly not at all like us. They are generally quite vain and
oddly shallow. Money, power, and organized violence are one and the same to them. Wall Street,
Washington D.C., and the pentagon constellation are all on the same page. Crucially, none of these
eleetoids is anywhere near what could be deemed sane. Their minds are profoundly warped just because
they are what they are.
And they are easily capable of setting off Armageddon. War and the proliferation of misery
is not their goal in the end, much worse, it is simply a consequence, a symptom if you will, of
their insanity.
@blues | Aug 12, 2016 5:19:22 AM | 54 "I was an anti-Vietnam war protester.
God bless you for that.
I'm still shocked how many people in Israel, Ukraine, ME, the Commonwealth, USA, Poland, are
eager to go to war because of twisted ideologies, money, stupidity, or some inner demons, sinful
desires.
May be we need another war after all, just to get rid of them, since they pose a mortal danger
to their host societies and cannot be restored to humanity in peaceful ways?
39;How does John Bolton fit with Trumps call for better Russian relations?I'd say he's thinking
of him like he thought of Newt, which is not much.
He does have to placate the warmongers a little bit,or else they'll call him soft on terror.
Stop getting hysterical over unknown unknowns.:)
He said he was being sarcastic about Obomba and IsUS,but again,like a jury,the American people
are given info that can't be taken back.Of course its true,and I guarantee it will come up again,as
we are still almost 3 months to the election.
And the propaganda,as someone mentioned,is unbelievable,and yes the word should be stricken
from the rolls.
WADC and NYC attract psychopathy, so naturally our two choices for November are Alpha Psychopaths.
That doesn't mean that the necrotic American ship of state will alter its course, only settle
lower in the water, come to a gradual stop, tip downward at the bow, and then break in half. The
psychopaths are The Vampire and will fly away, caww, caww, caww, leaving all the hoi polloi, the
Little People, to drink and to drown.
In some ways the rules of engagement for Syria are reminiscent of the restrictions placed on U.S.
special operators in El Salvador in the 1980s. The U.S. forces in that tiny country helped train
the embattled government's counter-insurgency forces. But they were not allowed to go into battle
with the forces they trained.
Roger Carstens, a former lieutenant colonel for the Green Berets who trained local forces in
Iraq and Afghanistan, told me there are good battlefield reasons for allowing the adviser to fight
with the forces he trains. "They gain legitimacy and credibility and they show your partner forces
that you share the risk," he said.
Carstens also said that fighting alongside indigenous troops is a kind of vetting process.
"The instructor gets to see whether the forces he is training have absorbed their training," which
he said is important to evaluate how effective they are.
This is debatable and a lot of nuance is absent from the statement. All debt is not the same,
and in fact for a sovereign that has only liabilities in it's own currency the only debt that
matters is that owed by the citizens to private banks. Will wait for an open thread to revisit.
The Americans are the problem.
They're not interested in foreign policy.
So if Trump can give them jobs and safety abroad, he may bomb the rest of the world.
We can't exclude he appoints a person like John Bolton.
@ From the Hague wrote "The Americans are the problem".............
The people who have brainwashed the Americans are the problem just like in Hitler's time. Those
global plutocratic families have been controlling the narrative for centuries and they seem to
have convinced you it is the US citizens who are to blame for falling for the propaganda this
time.
We will never overcome the Western sick form of social organization if we continue to blame
the wrong folks. We need to end private finance and return all those grifted earnings to the global
commons along with neutering inheritance globally so no one individually/family can control social
policy.
And then the media would not be the brainwashing mechanism it is now building credence for
more wars.
Arguments of Sanders supporters against Hillary are not perfectly applicable to Hillary vs Trump
contest.
Notable quotes:
"... If Bernie does not get the nomination it will be the wilderness for the Democrats - no young voters no independents - unless they can conjure a principled candidate somehow from somewhere. ..."
"... You'll then cycle back to the lesser of two evils, that Democrats like Obama and Clinton are needed to help the poor blacks and minorities. To me this is a myth. The poor get fucked no matter what party is in office. ..."
"... What planet African Americans are doing "better off" on is unknown. What is known is that President Obama is about to leave office with African Americans in their worst economic situation since Ronald Reagan . ..."
"... Of course not. But when you have an issue you can continually put bandaids on the symptoms or you can perform a root cause analysis and then proceed to fix these root causes. The fact is that politicians are disinclined to put the needs of voters first, they tend to pay lip service to the needs of voters, while spending 60% of their time interacting with rich donors, who are very good are articulating their needs, as they hand over large sums of money. This system creates a log jam to reform. If we can return the immutable link to the voters interests, and congress them reform of economic distortions that support racism become far far easier. Motive of change and motives of votes become transparent. ..."
"... the world is divided in two, half who are nauseated by the above and the other half who purr in admiration at the clever way Clinton has fucked the public once again. As Mencken said democracy is that system of government in which it is assumed that the common man knows what he wants and deserves to get it good and hard. ..."
"... I don't believe her core statements. Sorry but as a person I just can't buy into the package. Both republicans and democrats on a vague macro level will try to lower unemployment but neither will talk about falling participation. Clinton had already proved she's probably as likely as Trump to get bullets flying. It's her judgement. She's part of the same old we need to intervene yet never understanding the real issues. I despise her unflinching support of Saudi Arabia. That policy is insane!!! Etc etc etc. ..."
"... I believe both parties represent essentially the same with small regional differences . ..."
"... One wonders what makes them call themselves Democrats? ..."
"... Certainly not economic and political justice, peace, democracy, or integrity in governance. ..."
"... Yes, it's been the single most shocking revelation of the entire election year for me as well. Not just the cynicism of the rank-and-file, but the arrogance and isolation of our corrupt Democratic party elite, many of whom still don't seem to grasp that a revolt by progressive Democrats and Independents is already under way. This is one of the forms it may take. ..."
"... Hilary Clinton has various comments that reveals somebody who certainly fits the psychopath spectrum. Among the lowest of the low was "We came, we saw, he died!" Accompanied by a cackle of laughter. This was announced in full view of the media and public when Gadhaffi was overthrown by US assistance. Are some Democrats so brainwashed that they think a woman president is the answer regardless of what kind of person that woman is? Since when do decent people in politics exult in death like this? Libya's murdered leader was no angel but Hitler he was not and as older people have told me, the deaths of Hitler and Stalin and the like were greeted publicly with muted and dignified relief by western representatives. ..."
"... Wake up Democrats. At least read a book called The Unravelling by an American journalist whose name I forget. This heartbreaking book says it all about the realities for the non privileged and non powerful in todays' America. ..."
"... If Clinton is the Dem nominee it does more than give me shivers. Heck, I view Hillary as demonstrably more dangerous with foreign policy. ..."
"... Both their economic/domestic policies do little or worse for the current situation. Both are untrustworthy and any rhetoric on policy is highly questionable (although Clinton is certainly the worst in this regard). About the only good thing between either is that Trump is willing to question our empire abroad, which is well overdue (meanwhile Clinton seems to want to expand it). ..."
"... Uh huh and your supporting a person: That voted for the Iraq War, destabilized Libya, Benghazi, gave tacit approval to a military junta in Honduras as Secretary of State, called black youth super predators, supports trade agreements that destroy our own manufacturing jobs, takes more money from special interests than her constituency, has made millions in speeches from the bank lobby and won't disclose the transcripts......yeah she's real HONEST. ..."
"... Money buys the influence to be selected as a candidate. Normally. 99% of the time. Sometimes a Huey Long populist breaks through the process and scares the fuck out of the power structures. But you know how candidates are selected. Poor smart people never get to run for president unless they build a populist power base. The existing political parties defer to donors. Donors like the Koch Brothers, who happily funded Bill Clinton and the DLC made their preferences clear. They didn't invest in a fit of altruistic progressivism. They wanted the DNC to swing right. And voila it did and Bill was anointed as the "one" to run. Don't be so naive. ..."
Robin is relentless is arguing AGAINST, but he is quite light on arguing for anything. It is an
interesting question as to what he stands for.
His main argument is that zero information from "right wing" press is true. He seems unaware
that at times, actual facts are presented or not presented or suppressed by either media outlet,
depending on their corporate ownership and management slant of what should be reported. Me? I
read everything and decide if something is a fact. It is strange that factual reporting about
the actual many many FOIA lawsuits only gets printed in right wing press. They of course have
an agenda, but does not negate the facts they report. Like Clinton being allowed to be deposed
in a civil FOIA suit. That is a fact, with quotes from the Judge. CNN? I guess they couldn't afford
to report this factual development.
When you only read the press looking for a partisan set of narratives, you end up being partisan
and ill informed. When you read all the flavours of press in an desire to inform yourself, when
your goal is not a narrative but factual accounts of the truth, then you can be better informed.
So we have partisans, who only view Fox and we also have partisans who only view CNN. Both are
as bad as each other. One must be capable of decreeing the motives of each, and discarding the
nonfactual narratives, and then one can be fully informed.
Robin makes the assumption that facts only occur in his selected set of informational partisan
sources. Why? Because he is partisan. This then enables him to argue against a narrative, rather
than support his own narrative. He plays the neat trick of simply discarding any factual reporting
from places like Breibart. One can see interesting lacks of coverage on google search.
"Libel is a method of defamation expressed by print, writing, pictures, signs, effigies, or any
communication embodied in physical form that is injurious to a person's reputation, exposes a
person to public hatred, contempt or ridicule, or injures a person in his/her business or profession."
So surely in America, Clinton with her wealth would take some legal action? I would if I
had her money, and wealth. Interesting that she has not? Perhaps you could write to her and
suggest she defend herself in a real and palpable way?
Yes and a lot of the press are trying to bury the news about another Sanders success. When you
look at how many voting districts he comes out top in, in is a large percentage. Clinton tends
to get closer or take the district if their is a higher population density.
The influence of the super delegates is a scandal in a "democratic process".
First I would be very careful taking what G gives, it is nowadays "fixing" news like Fox. Most
reliable, if speaking about polls the word can be used, is results of metastudies:
If Bernie does not get the nomination it will be the wilderness for the Democrats - no young voters
no independents - unless they can conjure a principled candidate somehow from somewhere.
Clinton won't cut it and she won't beat Trump. Trump will out her on every crooked deal she
has been involved in.
You'll then cycle back to the lesser of two evils, that Democrats like Obama and Clinton are needed
to help the poor blacks and minorities. To me this is a myth. The poor get fucked no matter what
party is in office.
Is this is a Fox News plant article? yeah yeah, let's vote Clinton who promises a continuation
of Obama's policies. Will Trump make this much worse? Maybe. Trump or Clinton will in my opinion
do little to improve these issues quoted below. You have a different opinion. Great.
"Like the rest of America, Black America, in the aggregate, is better off now than it was when
I came into office," said President Obama on December 19, in response to a question by Urban Radio
Networks White House Correspondent April Ryan.
What planet African Americans are doing "better off" on is unknown. What is known is that
President Obama is about to leave office with African Americans in their worst economic situation
since Ronald Reagan . A look at every key stat as President Obama starts his sixth year in
office illustrates that.
Unemployment. The average Black unemployment under President Bush was 10 percent. The average
under President Obama after six years is 14 percent. Black unemployment, "has always been double"
[that of Whites] but it hasn't always been 14 percent. The administration was silent when Black
unemployment hit 16 percent – a 27-year high – in late 2011 .
Poverty. The percentage of Blacks in poverty in 2009 was 25 percent; it is now 27 percent.
The issue of poverty is rarely mentioned by the president or any members of his cabinet. Currently,
more than 45 million people – 1 in 7 Americans – live below the poverty line.
The Black/White Wealth Gap. The wealth gap between Blacks and Whites in America is at a 24-year
high. A December study by PEW Research Center revealed the average White household is worth $141,900,
and the average Black household is worth $11,000. From 2010 to 2013, the median income for Black
households plunged 9 percent.
Income inequality. "Between 2009 and 2012 the top one percent of Americans enjoyed 95 percent
of all income gains, according to research from U.C. Berkeley," reported The Atlantic. It was
the worst since 1928. As income inequality has widened during President Obama's time in office,
the president has endorsed tax policy that has widened inequality, such as the Bush Tax cuts.
Education: The high school dropout rate has improved during the Obama administration. However,
currently 42 percent of Black children attend high poverty schools, compared to only 6 percent
of White students. The Department of Education's change to Parent PLUS loans requirements cost HBCU's more than $150 million and interrupted the educations of 28,000-plus HBCU students.
SBA Loans. In March 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported that only 1.7 percent of $23 billion
in SBA loans went to Black-owned businesses in 2013, the lowest loan of SBA lending to Black businesses
on record. During the Bush presidency, the percentage of SBA loans to Black businesses was 8 percent
– more than four times the Obama rate.
"All the equations showed strikingly uni- form statistical results: racism as we have measured
it was a significantly disequalizing force on the white income distribution, even when other factors
were held constant. A 1 percent increase in the ratio of black to white median incomes (that is,
a 1 percent decrease in racism) was associated with a .2 percent decrease in white inequality,
as measured by the Gini coefficient. The corresponding effect on top 1 percent share of white
income was two and a half times as large, indicating that most of the inequality among whites
generated by racism was associated with increased income for the richest 1 percent of white families.
Further statistical investigation reveals that increases in the racism variable had an insignifi-
cant effect on the. share received by the poorest whites and resulted in a decrease in the income
share of the whites in the middle income brackets."
"What I said, and still maintain, is that the struggle against racism is as important as the struggle
against other forms of oppression, including those with economic and financial causes."
We can agree on this statement. However, do we need to recognise that legislation alone will
not solve racism. A percentage of poor people turn against the "other" and apportion blame for
their issues.
" that campaign finance and banking reform will fix everything"
Of course not. But when you have an issue you can continually put bandaids on the symptoms
or you can perform a root cause analysis and then proceed to fix these root causes. The fact is
that politicians are disinclined to put the needs of voters first, they tend to pay lip service
to the needs of voters, while spending 60% of their time interacting with rich donors, who are
very good are articulating their needs, as they hand over large sums of money. This system creates
a log jam to reform. If we can return the immutable link to the voters interests, and congress
them reform of economic distortions that support racism become far far easier. Motive of change
and motives of votes become transparent.
"The various forms of discrimination are not separable in real life. Employers' hiring and
promotion practices; resource allocation in city schools; the structure of transportation sys-
tems; residential segregation and housing quality; availability of decent health care; be- havior
of policemen and judges; foremen's prejudices; images of blacks presented in the media and the
schools; price gouging in ghetto stores-these and the other forms of social and economic discrimination
interact strongly with each other in determining the occupational status and annual income, and
welfare, of black people. The processes are not simply additive but are mutually reinforcing.
Often, a decrease in one narrow form of discrimination is accompanied by an increase in another
form. Since all aspects of racism interact, an analysis of racism should incorporate all its as-
pects in a unified manner."
My thesis is this: build economic equality and the the pressing toxins of racism diminish.
But yeah dismiss Sanders as a one issue candidate. he is a politician, which I acknowledge. He
has a different approach to clinton who will micro triangulate constantly depending on who she
in front of. I find his approach ore honest. Your mileage may vary.
" money spent on campaigns does not correlate very highly to winning"
No but overall money gets to decide on a narrow set of compliance in the candidates. But it
still correlates to winning. Look at the Greens with no cash. Without the cash, they will never
win. Sanders has proved that 1. We do not need to depend on the rich power brokers to select narrowly
who will be presented as a candidate. 2. He has proved that a voter can donate and compete with
corporate donations. I would rather scads of voter cash financing rather than corporate cash buying
influence. ABSCAM was a brief flash, never repeated to show us what really happens in back rooms
when a wad of cash arrives with a politician. That we cannot PROVE what happens off the grid,
we can and should rely on common sense about the influence of money. 85% of the American people
believe cash buys influence. The only influence on a politician should be the will of the people.
Sure, corporates can speak. Speech is free. Corporate cash as speech is a different matter. It
is a moral corruption.
"most contributions come after electoral success"
Yes part of the implied contract of corporates and people like the Koch Brothers: Look after
us and we will look after you. We will keep you in power, as long as you slant the legislation
to favour us over the voters.
You do realise the Clinton Foundation bought the assets of the DLC, a defunct organisation.
Part of the assets are the documents and records that contain the information about the Koch Brothers
donations and their executives joining the "management" of the DLC. Why would a Charity be interested
in the DLC documents? Ah it is a Clinton Foundation. Yeah yeah, there is no proof of anything
is there. No law was broken. Do I smell something ? Does human nature guide my interpretation
absent a clear statement from the Foundation of this "investment"?? Yes.
We have to start SOMEWHERE. Root causes are the best place to start.
Democrat or Republican, Blacks and Whites at the bottom are thrown in a race for the bottom
and this helps fuel the impoverishment of both. It is fuel to feed racism. My genuine belief.
Why is it wrong for democrats to pick their own party leader? Also Obama beat Hilary last time
so what's Bernies problem now? Also why moan about a system that's been in place for decades now,
surely the onus was on Sanders to attract more middle of the road dem voters? Finally I'm sure
republicans would also love to vote in Sanders, easy to demolish with attack ads before the election
(you'll note they've studiously ignored him so far).
the world is divided in two, half who are nauseated by the above and the other half who purr in
admiration at the clever way Clinton has fucked the public once again. As Mencken said democracy
is that system of government in which it is assumed that the common man knows what he wants and
deserves to get it good and hard.
explain to me why the blacks and Hispanics vote for her because it is a mystery to me. She
stands for everything they have had to fight against. So you have a 1%er-Wall St.-invade
Iraq-subprime-cheat the EU-Goldman Sachs-arms dealing-despot cuddling-fuck the environment
coalition. And blacks and Hispanics too? Are they out of their minds?
BERNIE SANDERS - OR ZIG AGAINST ZAG
.
If the American people don't come to their senses and give Bernie Sanders the Democratic nomination,
we're going to end up with a choice between Zig and Zag. Zig is Donald Trump, and Zag is Hillary
Clinton. To paraphrase Mort Sahl back in the sixties, the only difference between the two is if
Donald 'Zig' Trump sees a Black child lying in the street, he'd simply order his chauffeur to
run over him. If Hillary 'Zag' Clinton saw the kid, she'd also order her chauffeur to run over
him, but she'd weep, and go apologize to the NAACP, after she felt the bump.
.
WAKE UP, BLACK PEOPLE!!!
Giving aid to the Republicans? If you honestly believe that any criticisms I have is worse than
what I discuss, you need to give up politics and get a hobby. Trump will for example use her FOIA/email
issues like a stick to beat her with. This is not Soviet Russia where we all adopt the party line.
I'm not not ever have been a member of the Democratic Party. I COULD have been this year. Now?
Never. The solution to the nations problems will come from outside this party.
I prefer neither. You love fearmongering about how worse it will be under trump. Hmmm. I don't
buy that tale. Take Black family incomes. In the toilet. Under either party it goes south. Abortion?
Like slavery nothing ...... Nothing is going to change. It's too late to change that one. But
it's a useful tool to make us believe ONLY Clinton can protect us. Economically the Democrats
are essentially the same as the Republicans, more of the same corporate welfare. Would Clinton
cut Social Security? Maybe. I don't believe her core statements. Sorry but as a person I just
can't buy into the package. Both republicans and democrats on a vague macro level will try to
lower unemployment but neither will talk about falling participation. Clinton had already proved
she's probably as likely as Trump to get bullets flying. It's her judgement. She's part of the
same old we need to intervene yet never understanding the real issues. I despise her unflinching
support of Saudi Arabia. That policy is insane!!! Etc etc etc.
You believe a black family gays and women will sing Kumbaya under Clinton and all will be well.
I believe both parties represent essentially the same with small regional differences .
It would be perhaps remotely marxist if he said comrades. But even that was used by democrats,
socialists and even fascists and nazists so I would say that no, there is nothing marxist about
it. One of his central messages is that we need to come together and improve our society, that
we are all the same, without race or religion, with the same needs and fears as humans.
I even disagree with people saying that he promotes class struggle, he is talking about
fair share and he is an ardent supporter of following the laws even when they are against his
ideology, which is something that radicals do not tend to do. Radicals do not give a damn
about laws and neither do Marxists or far-right wingers, fascists etc. Those groups believe in
changing the society through struggle into a model that fits their idea of the world whatever
that may be. He simply states his beliefs and suggests laws to adjust the society to human
needs, to eat, to live, to prosper in an equal footing.
It is a rather sad commentary on how the bar of integrity and honesty has been so lowered
that it doesn't even faze them
One wonders what makes them call themselves Democrats? Their stance on gun and abortion issues?
Certainly not economic and political justice, peace, democracy, or integrity in governance.
Yes, it's been the single most shocking revelation of the entire election year for me as well.
Not just the cynicism of the rank-and-file, but the arrogance and isolation of our corrupt Democratic
party elite, many of whom still don't seem to grasp that a revolt by progressive Democrats and
Independents is already under way. This
is one of the forms it may take.
Recharging is always a good idea ... and never more so than in an election year as turbulent,
crazy, uplifting, disillusioning, energizing, maddening and fascinating as this one. I'll also
be away (for weeks) toward the end of this month.
Before you go, here's Carl Bernstein's interview with Don Lemon, in case you missed it:
Hilary Clinton has various comments that reveals somebody who certainly fits the psychopath spectrum.
Among the lowest of the low was "We came, we saw, he died!" Accompanied by a cackle of laughter.
This was announced in full view of the media and public when Gadhaffi was overthrown by US assistance.
Are some Democrats so brainwashed that they think a woman president is the answer regardless of
what kind of person that woman is? Since when do decent people in politics exult in death like
this? Libya's murdered leader was no angel but Hitler he was not and as older people have told
me, the deaths of Hitler and Stalin and the like were greeted publicly with muted and dignified
relief by western representatives.
Add to that the continual lies that are being aired in public and this is why the USA has lost
its way.
Hillary will not see that one criminal in the financial world of the USA will face justice for
their mafia-like actions and destruction of billions of dollars and assets while stealing the
savings of Americans and non Americans. President Obama hasn't done it and he is not the buddy
Hilary is to these people.
And since when does the USA have the ethical superiority to attack countries like Russia for cronyism
etc? This is unbelievable - a presidential nominee candidate is being investigated by the FBI
and she doesn't stand down?
Wake up Democrats. At least read a book called The Unravelling by an American journalist whose
name I forget. This heartbreaking book says it all about the realities for the non privileged
and non powerful in todays' America.
I recall David Bowie's beautiful song This Is Not America. The Bernie supporters understand
that, all power to him, those who think like him, and his supporters.
Please. She lost that race in South Carolina when her husband, along with Geraldine Ferraro,
called Obama being president a fairy tale and an affirmative action candidate, respectively.
You can't win with only minority support, but you can't win without any of it if you are a
Dem. Up until SC, the Clintons had minority support in the bag--most black people had never
heard of Obama. Things changed real fast.
Like its not obvious? There is now no paper trail to enable ensuring computer votes are true.
A man on the moon can now ensure who is going to be President, that was said by a premier computer
security expert.
Along with extensive disenfranchisement, numerous ways its pretty clear these outcomes are
preordained. Guess I am not going to be voting for either of the two appointed runners, its
pointless. I will vote for Bernie when its time in California.
And to branch out a bit, there are so many empty stock phrases to choose from in her 2016 campaign
alone, including "I'm with her" and "Breaking down barriers" courtesy of her 2008 campaign manager,
Mark Penn. Speaking of Penn, there's a hilarious little passage in "Clinton, Inc" (p. 65) which
describes Penn running through possible campaign slogans for 2008. "Penn began to walk through
all the iterations of Hillary slogans: Solutions for America, Ready for a change, Ready to lead,
Big challenges, Real Solutions; Time to pick a President... but then he seem to get a little lost...Working
for change, Working for you. There was silence, then snickers as Penn tried to remember all the
bumper stickers which run together sounded absurd and indistinguishable. The Hillary I know."....
Oy. ^__^
But to pick out my favorite Hillary statement of the week, in honor of her close associate
and fellow gonif, Hillary superdelegate, Sheldon Silver, who recently got 12 years in the slammer:
In 2000, Silver was integral in Clinton's Senate campaign. According to The New York Times,
Silver helped Hillary lobby members of the state assembly for their support
So I guess the former speaker of the NY assembly is just gonna have to vote for Hillary
from behind bars, instead of at the DNC? How "super-inconvenient."
If Clinton is the Dem nominee it does more than give me shivers. Heck, I view Hillary as demonstrably
more dangerous with foreign policy. Both use identity politics as a decisive issue- which only
is a distraction from their lack of policy.
Both their economic/domestic policies do little or
worse for the current situation. Both are untrustworthy and any rhetoric on policy is highly questionable
(although Clinton is certainly the worst in this regard). About the only good thing between either
is that Trump is willing to question our empire abroad, which is well overdue (meanwhile Clinton
seems to want to expand it).
If it's between those two I vote Green and take the 'Jesse Ventura' option: vote anyone not
Dem or Rep. Both parties are two corrupt subsidiaries of their corporate masters.
Most effective senator for the last 35 years and as Mayor or Burlington stopped corporate real
estate developers from turning Burlington into Aspen east coast version.
She voted for the Iraq war, being investigated by the FBI for her emails, there was Benghazi,
turning Libya into a ISIS hotbed, allowed a military junta to assassinate a democratically elected
president in Honduras and said nothing,
takes $675k from Goldman for 3 speeches and refuses to disclose the transcripts because she
KNOWS it'll hurt her, voted for trade deals that's gutted manufacturing in the USA....should I
go on?
So please please explain how Hillary Rodham Clinton is going to wave a wand and fix racism? I
already know she will not fix poverty, she will slap a few ersatz bandaids onto bills that won't
pass and like the spoiled child will seek praise every time mommy gets him to shit on the potty.
You might recall a guy called Martin Luther King. he had some words about economic fairness and
poverty.
"" In the treatment of poverty nationally, one fact stands out: there are twice as many
white poor as Negro poor in the United States. Therefore I will not dwell on the experiences
of poverty that derive from racial discrimination, but will discuss the poverty that affects white
and Negro alike . "
nihilism: the rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life
is meaningless. The belief that nothing in the world has a real existence.
You love that word but rejection of the dysfunctional state of DNC politics is NOT
nihilism. Moral corruption around campaign finance is real. Moral corruption around money and
lobbyists is real. The desire to fix this, this is real. Seeking real change is not nihilism.
But yes, if it pleases you to continue in every other post with this word, do so. It's misuse
says more about you than Sanders.
Please tell me exactly how much HRC has done for the U.S.? I'm from NYC and when she brought her
carpet bagging ass here and as a 2 term senator she pushed 3 pieces of legislation thru. If you
look at Bernie Sanders voting record:
He's been one of the most effective senators in Congress and has been able to get things done
with cooperation from both sides of the aisle.
So tell me again, what's she done that's so notable?
Uh huh and your supporting a person:
That voted for the Iraq War, destabilized Libya, Benghazi, gave tacit approval to a military junta
in Honduras as Secretary of State, called black youth super predators, supports trade agreements
that destroy our own manufacturing jobs, takes more money from special interests than her constituency,
has made millions in speeches from the bank lobby and won't disclose the transcripts......yeah
she's real HONEST......riiigggghhhhttttt....
Money buys the influence to be selected as a candidate. Normally. 99% of the time. Sometimes
a Huey Long populist breaks through the process and scares the fuck out of the power structures.
But you know how candidates are selected. Poor smart people never get to run for president unless
they build a populist power base. The existing political parties defer to donors. Donors like
the Koch Brothers, who happily funded Bill Clinton and the DLC made their preferences clear. They
didn't invest in a fit of altruistic progressivism. They wanted the DNC to swing right. And voila
it did and Bill was anointed as the "one" to run. Don't be so naive.
"... Reading Time for the 1st time in decades made me feel better because I could not read it, at least not the way they intended it. It was like trying to compile FORTRAN with a source file written in C. I don't understand their language anymore so the reading experience is like looking for errors in your source code. Kind of liberating in a way. ..."
"... Everyone is recognizing the only way to become a Billionaire for now on is paying off politicians and becoming an extension of the federal government. Write rules in your favor or get the economic mercenaries whether they be the military - CIA - or the state department and take over a country a la Confessions of a Economic Hitman. Hillary is preferred since now you can induce a seizure and she turns into a signature pad with amnesia ..."
"... Circulation around 3 million copies. Probably covers most waiting rooms across the country and a few Grandmas. ..."
"... Here's a TIME magazine cover the day after 9/11/2016 when he gives his memorial dedication to those that perished that day with his unwavering pledge for the only investigation that matters!... ..."
Had to pick up and glance through a copy of Time recently before a dental appt. The other choices
were People, Good Housekeeping and some sales literature for dental equipment and other torture
gear.
Reading Time for the 1st time in decades made me feel better because I could not read it, at
least not the way they intended it. It was like trying to compile FORTRAN with a source file written
in C. I don't understand their language anymore so the reading experience is like looking for
errors in your source code. Kind of liberating in a way.
Everyone is recognizing the only way to become a Billionaire for now on is paying off politicians
and becoming an extension of the federal government. Write rules in your favor or get the economic mercenaries whether they be the military - CIA
- or the state department and take over a country a la Confessions of a Economic Hitman. Hillary is preferred since now you can induce a seizure and she turns into a signature pad
with amnesia
Here's a TIME magazine cover the day after 9/11/2016 when he gives his memorial dedication to those
that perished that day with his
unwavering pledge for the only investigation that matters!...
"... No wonder this man at a Trump campaign rally yesterday in Kissimmee, Florida, gave the finger
to CNN producer Noah Gray and other journalists, shouting, "Go home! You are traitors! I am an American
patriot!" ..."
Now we have CNN anchor Chris
Cuomo - former ABC News correspondent and "20/20" co-anchor, son of the late New York governor
Mario Cuomo, and brother of current New York governor Andrew Cuomo - confirming what so many suspect.
In June 2014, Cuomo openly admitted on camera that the media have abandoned all pretenses at journalistic
objectivity, but instead give Hillary Clinton "a free ride" and are her "biggest" promoters. At the
time, although Hillary had not yet declared she would run for the presidency, she was already getting
donations for her then-nonexistent presidential campaign.
Cuomo said:
"It's a problem because she's [Hillary Clinton] doing what they call in politics 'freezing
pockets,' because the donors are giving her money thinking she's going to run, that means they're
not going to have available money for other candidates if she doesn't. And I don't think she's
going to give it to them. We [the media] couldn't help her any more than we have, she's
got just a free ride so far from the media, we're the biggest ones promoting her campaign, so
it had better happen. "
No wonder this man
at a Trump campaign rally yesterday in Kissimmee, Florida, gave the finger to CNN producer Noah
Gray and other journalists, shouting, "Go home! You are traitors! I am an American patriot!"
"... she is living in a glass house funded by Goldman Sachs and should be throwing no stones. ..."
"... Clinton's been courting endorsements from billionaires Meg Whitman, Warren Buffett and Michael Bloomberg. Her own son-in-law is a "hedge fund guy", and the Wall Street Journal reported that "hedge fund money has vastly favored Clinton over Trump" to the tidy sum of $122m. Being bothered by what this portends for our economic future this is not a vote for Trump. ..."
"... She has embraced the endorsement of neocon John Negroponte and is even reportedly courting the endorsement of Henry Kissinger. As secretary of state, Clinton controversially supported not designating the 2009 ouster of Honduran president Manuel Zelaya as a coup ..."
"... turning a critical lens on the presidential candidate who supported the war that killed their son does not equate supporting her opponent. ..."
While she made fun of Trump on the stump for
having "a dozen or so economic advisers he just named: hedge fund guys, billionaire guys, six
guys named Steve, apparently," she is living in a
glass house funded by Goldman Sachs and should be throwing no stones.
They're not named Steve, but Clinton's been courting endorsements from billionaires
Meg Whitman,
Warren Buffett and Michael Bloomberg. Her own son-in-law is a
"hedge fund guy", and the Wall Street Journal
reported that "hedge fund money has vastly favored Clinton over Trump" to the tidy sum of
$122m. Being bothered by what this portends for our economic future this is not a vote for Trump.
And though Trump is hinting to his supporters that they might want to use the second amendment
to possibly assassinate Clinton or justices of the supreme court is disgusting, let's not forget
Clinton saying in May 2008 that she had to stay in that primary
because "Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California" and, ho hum, you never know
what might happen to presumptive nominee Barack Obama.
I bring this all up not to draw parallels between Clinton and Trump. She is clearly the more
capable person suited to preside over this corrupt,
perpetually and criminally violent enterprise known as the United States of America. But
let's not act like Clinton is a dove when it comes to matters of life and death.
She has
embraced the endorsement of neocon John Negroponte and is even reportedly courting the
endorsement of Henry Kissinger. As secretary of state, Clinton controversially supported not
designating the 2009 ouster of Honduran president Manuel Zelaya as a
coup, even though he was woken up by armed soldiers and
forced onto a plane and out of his country in his pajamas. She has since
defended her role in that situation, which has led to hell for women, children and
environmentalists, including the
assassination of indigenous activist Berta Cáceres. And as senator, Clinton
supported the Iraq war, a vote which helped lead to the death of US army captain Humayun
Khan.
Captain Khan's parents have valiantly and admirably taken on Trump and his ugly Islamophobia.
But turning a critical lens on the presidential candidate who supported the war that killed
their son does not equate supporting her opponent.
This article was written two years ago. Still current...
Notable quotes:
"... She was responding, but seemed a little off. I figured she was just distracted and didn't feel like it was worth her time. ..."
"... I kept going, but was starting to get frustrated. I decided I would ask her something I hadn't really planned on. I said, 'Ms. Clinton, some have suggested that you aren't healthy enough or are too old to pursue the presidency. Do you have a comment on that?' ..."
"... I knew I had crossed a line for her right away. She snapped back, 'It's my turn. I've done my time, and I deserve it.' Then she stormed off. ..."
"... When you consider her history of fainting spells, likely the result of strokes and the verbal gaffes she's made recently, you have to wonder if she isn't losing her mental faculties. ..."
"... Let's face it, she's not a rank amateur when it comes to politics. She's always demonstrated a talent for verbal manipulation and deception. But suddenly it's as if her mask has slipped exposing her ugly, arrogant sense of entitlement. ..."
"... I guarantee there's a lot of hand wringing going on in Democrat circles right now. They have a lot invested in Hillary as their best and only shot at replacing Obama. Between revelations about her health, her age, the gaffes she's made, the failure of her book, her low approval numbers… They're sweating bullets. ..."
The story goes that a freelance journalist Samuel Rosales-Avila was granted a short interview with
Hillary after her LA book signing. He wanted to do a article for a Hispanic publication and was
surprised when Hillary granted him a 20 minute meeting.
He got more than he bargained for…
I started asking Ms. Clinton questions. Mostly policy stuff, really focused on immigration.
She was responding, but seemed a little off. I figured she was just distracted and didn't feel
like it was worth her time.
I kept going, but was starting to get frustrated. I decided I would ask her something I hadn't
really planned on. I said, 'Ms. Clinton, some have suggested that you aren't healthy enough or
are too old to pursue the presidency. Do you have a comment on that?'
I knew I had crossed a line for her right away. She snapped back, 'It's my turn. I've done
my time, and I deserve it.' Then she stormed off.
After she left, one of her handlers came up to me and told me he would need the recording of
our interview and that it was now 'off the record'. I was shocked and disappointed, but it was
clear that it wasn't a negotiation.
Hillary's posse isn't denying that the meeting took place, but without that recording we only
have his version of what transpired.
When you consider her history of fainting spells, likely the result of strokes and the verbal
gaffes she's made recently, you have to wonder if she isn't losing her mental faculties.
Let's face it, she's not a rank amateur when it comes to politics. She's always demonstrated a
talent for verbal manipulation and deception. But suddenly it's as if her mask has slipped exposing
her ugly, arrogant sense of entitlement.
I guarantee there's a lot of hand wringing going on in Democrat circles right now. They
have a lot invested in Hillary as their best and only shot at replacing Obama. Between
revelations about her health, her age, the gaffes she's made, the failure of her book, her low
approval numbers… They're sweating bullets.
This lesser evilness trap is a standard trick inherent in two party system setup, designed to prevent
voting for third party candidate and essentially limiting public discourse to selection between two
oligarchy stooges. Moreover Hillary is definitely greater evil. Invoking of Nader to justify voting
for Hillary is pure neoliberal propaganda designed to get the establishment candidate (who has significant
and dangerous for any politician, to say nothing about POTUS, health problems) into White House. that
why neoliberal MSM are baking non-stop at Trump, trying exaggerate any his misstep to galactic proportions.
...
Notable quotes:
"... Michael, in a recent article that you penned on your website, you argued that Hillary Clinton's campaign is using a very clever strategy in that it is trying to associate criticism of Clinton with support for Trump and therefore support for Russia, which in the end is anti-American ..."
"... Trump opposes the neocon line toward Russia, and because he criticizes NATO, Russia benefits. Therefore Putin must have stolen the leaks and put them out, to make America weaker, not stronger, by helping the Trump campaign by showing the DNC's dirty tricks toward Bernie's followers. ..."
"... Most of all, Hillary is still the war candidate. Trump already has said, "Look at what she did to Libya." By displacing Libya, she turned its arms cache over to terrorist groups that have become ISIS, Al-Nusra, and the other terrorist in the Near East. So she's the Queen of Chaos. Finally, she's the candidate of Wall Street, given the fact even the Koch Brothers have said they're not going to back Trump, they're going to back Hillary because she's on their side. George Soros and most other big moguls and billionaires are now siding with the Democratic Party, not Trump. ..."
"... She is a candidate of Wall Street and she is as you say, now being supported even by the neocons. They're holding fundraisers for her. And the Koch brothers and so on. ..."
"... Trump will win if he can make the election all about Hillary, and Hillary will win if she can make the election all about Trump. ..."
"... "America needs an ineffective president. That's much better than an effective president that's going to go to war with Russia, that's going to push for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that's going to protect Wall Street, and that's going to oppose neoliberal austerity." ..."
"... I am absolutely terrified of Hillary Clinton becoming President. She strikes me as having psychopathic tendencies. I mean, just look at the scandals she and Bill have been involved in, and then when she gets caught, she lies, feigns ignorance, deflects, blames others, lies some more. Power and money are her goals. ..."
"... I'm sure he will quash TPP, renegotiate nafta and be less belligerent with Russia. But what will happen when he and his non-government-indoctrinated team of advisers finally see every bit of redacted and "confidential" information that has been routinely hidden from the public and lied about for decades? ..."
"... The loss of sovereignty inherent in the "trade" agreements and incoherent Middle East policies, to name a few "strategies" this country is pursuing, have a larger purpose. We private citizens have just not been privy to it. How private citizen Trump will proceed if he is elected and comes to know the government's deepest, darkest secrets is anybody's guess. ..."
"... I think its a safe assumption that if Trump is elected he will be carefully 'minded' to ensure he can't gain access to information that would upset the applecart. ..."
"... As for Donnie taking down TPP and being the peace candidate, I think people should sit down and take a few deep breaths. As a New Yorker who's observed him for his entire public life, and as a 90 second scanning of his career demonstrates, the man cannot be trusted to speak truthfully about anything ..."
"... You're right. He'll make a good court jester. That's about it. as for "the man cannot be trusted to speak truthfully about anything" reminds me of someone who gets on TeeVee and does that well. And he really didn't have any experience but he got himself good handlers and others who ran the country. ..."
"... Exactly right! Trump is dangerous…to the establishment. And the establishment is what we have to get rid of. ..."
"... As flawed a character as Trump is, he still represents our last chance to challenge the establishment. It won't be a pretty presidency – but it will be entertaining – however the alternative is the ultimate horror show. Plus you are gambling that Clinton won't start a nuclear war and end the human race. Why would anyone in their right mind touch that wager? ..."
"... It is unlikely that Trump will be able to deport more people than Obama's record breaking administration. ..."
"... Obama actually ended up rejecting Clinton's continuous advice for more more more military intervention. ..."
"... I agree with you that Trump is not likable, and an unknown. The problem is that the known is despicable. Neither, let me repeat, neither candidate should be anywhere near this close to the White House. ..."
"... You have obviously chosen the despicable hateful war mongering devil you know. Others are willing to roll the dice with the guy who has incoherently at least given a nod to the idea that war with Russia is not a smart plan, and that our current military choices are not effective – not to mention a far more coherent case that our trade policy is screwed up and needs to be changed. ..."
"... Trump wants to stop "illegal" immigration so that poor Americans can have jobs. Illegals lower wages (because American employers pay them less), they increase rents (supply and demand), and they cost a fortune in medical and educational costs. He's for "legal" immigration when the country needs more workers. I don't think that is being racist, although he doesn't have a very nice way of saying things. ..."
"... Muslim immigration stopped until they can be properly vetted? That's just being prudent and careful, but again he could say things in a much kinder way. ..."
"... He's a wild man, but at least he's upfront about it. I see her as being a narcissist that just hides it better than he does. She could get us all killed. ..."
"... While Trump is upfront (yikes, I know), I see Hillary as the secretive, conniving, manipulative, scheming, backstabbing type. When someone slights Trump, out comes his response right back at them. It's over. But I would not want to cross her. I see her as cold, with very, very little conscience. I mean, would you ever have tried to pull off the scandals she has been involved in? No. She seeks power and money, and look out if you ever got in her way. She never says she's sorry, not really. Most you get out of her is she made a "mistake". ..."
"... Her outright aggression towards Russia, Syria, Libya, Ukraine should give you a hint of what lurks inside. And she doesn't attack these countries to better the U.S. She's doing it solely for her own person gain: money into the Clinton Foundation, business for her speech-giving husband, all to further the Clinton's. ..."
"... IMO, a very dangerous person, a very dangerous couple. And she has said, if she's elected, she will put Bill Clinton in charge of "economic affairs"! Can you just imagine what more deregulation will do for the banks? He repealed Glass-Steagall and brought us the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, as well as NAFTA. Get ready to hear a "huge" sucking sound if Hillary is elected. The place will be gutted. ..."
"... Perhaps with a hateful, racist, despicable con man trying to tell them what to do, congress just might re-assert its authority instead of acting as a rubber stamp. Which is the LOTE – Trump antagonizing congress into gridlock or HRC manipulating them into moar war? ..."
"... It sounds like you're talking about HRC when you're talking about Trump. She coined the term "super predators" so they could enrich the private prison industry by filling the jails with black people, she has waged wars against brown people in the middle east for no particular reason except corporate profits and power, no respect for their theocracies or the delicate balance that "supposed" tyrants there accomplished that had enduring peace there (some may argue). Where has Trump exhibited such hatred and racism? His policies? What policies? No one that has worked for him ever described him as hateful, racist or despicable. Stop believing the propaganda on TV. ..."
"... You might think Obama doesn't like us, the 99%, but Hillary probably hates us. Pay attention, the most "effective evil" is the evil to fear. ..."
"... If it's not close in my state, I will vote 3rd party. If it is close, I'll vote for Clinton over Trump. There is a good interview with Chomsky on this on youtube which I'm too lazy to look up right now. ..."
"... "Hillary took the lead role in the White House's efforts to pass a corporate-friendly version of "health reform." Along with the big insurance companies the Clintons deceptively railed against, the "co-presidents" decided from the start to exclude the popular health care alternative – single payer – from the national health care "discussion." (Obama would do the same thing in 2009.) ..."
"... Beyond backing by a citizen super-majority, Himmelstein noted, single-payer would provide comprehensive coverage to the nation's 40 million uninsured while retaining free choice in doctor selection and being certified by the Congressional Budget Office as "the most cost-effective plan on offer." ..."
"... That whole article deals with the "fake liberalism" exhibited by the Clinton's and Obama. It says they only "pretend" to care. ..."
"... clinton is the more effective evil for another reason; she is respected by other neoliberals who rule the world in other countries. even if trump wanted to pass the TPP, TTIP and TISA, the intense dislike of him would make it easier to reject the bills in countries like Canada, Australia, the EU. A Hillary presidency would just about guarantee they'd sign. ..."
"... it's common knowledge that the current "rigged" system, as Donald Trump keeps calling it, has been instrumental in bringing American politics and government to their present state of dysfunction at local, state and national levels. Americans hate and despise this elitist system; everyone is disgusted with the political donor class whose billions of dollars underwrite the election-rigging televised attack ads that dominate it. ..."
"... At the Demo Convention Bernie Sanders neatly pinpointed the topics with which this bogus system is obsessed: "Let me be as clear as I can be. … This election is not about political gossip. It's not about polls. It's not about campaign strategy. It's not about fundraising. It's not about all the things the media spends so much time discussing." ..."
"... Do you see it as possible that empowered citizens will truly be willing to take on big capital, even when big capital goes to war on them? I'm skeptical ..."
"... The evil to fear is the most effective evil. Hillary IS both sides of the aisle and Congress will allow her all her neocon neoliberal desires, Trump is neither side of the aisle and would be ineffective because he doesn't belong to the neoliberal neocons, he's not an insider and obviously won't play their games. ..."
"... Oh heck yes. This is a fight that has been going on for decades with battles like the War Powers Act and Nixon's impeachment. Supposedly the Founding Fathers didn't want an all powerful chief executive and thought that Congress would be the dominant force. But in modern times, even before Clinton v Trump, we already had gone much too far in the direction of a caudillo. Internally one person with a bully pulpit will never be able to change the current course and overseas presidents have a frightening amount of power that they can wield and then dare Congress to do something about it afterwards. ..."
"... HRC has got the big corporate money behind her, the media too. Trump is fighting an uphill battle. If you watch CNN, which I watch very little of, they spend almost the whole time pulling apart what Trump has said, and very, very little press on Hillary's email, the Clinton Foundation, etc. ..."
"... They are going after Trump with all that they have. They want the status quo to remain, and they are very worried that he might change it. Hillary is Wall Street, multinational corporations, arms dealers, weapons manufacturers, the military-industrial complex ..."
"... "When you join the dots to Trump also preaching a policy revolt against the insatiable corporate jaws feeding on trillions of dollars of public budgets in Washington, the meaning becomes clear. But that connected meaning is blacked out. In its place, the corporate media and politicians present an egomaniac blowhard bordering on fascism who preaches hate, racism and sexism. ..."
"... He is on record saying he will cut the Pentagon's budget "by 50%". No winning politician has ever dared to take on the military-industrial complex, with even Eisenhower only naming it in his parting speech. ..."
"... Trump also says that the US "must be neutral, an honest broker" on the Israeli-Palestine conflict – as unspeakable as it gets in US politics ..."
"... Hillary and her team will try to paint Trump as a lover of Putin, as a racist, bigot, bring the narrative down to this only. This way, no one ends up talking about the corporate elites she represents. Good, read some more, crittermom, and open your eyes even more. There's a lot more going on than meets the eye. ..."
"... Recently I asked a wise person I know what historically follows an oligarchy (which is what I believe we have been in for awhile now). He told me that an oligarchy is usually followed by a dictatorship. ..."
"... A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy". ..."
"... How could Trump become a dictator? Congress will be hostile. Judiciary will be hostile. Pentagon will be hostile (didn't you see all those generals and admirals, in uniform, literally lining up behind Clinton?) Civil administration will be sullen, uncooperative, and leaking like crazy. ..."
"... Trump does not have his own freestanding parallel state organization, ready to move in and take over the bureaucracy and the armed forces. It would be physically impossible for Trump to attempt a mass purge. ..."
"... Just think: if you elect Trump, you would actually get to see the US Constitution's fabled "checks and balances" come into play for once in your life! ..."
"... How could Trump become a dictator? ..."
"... This is complete rhetorical garbage, the same kind of nonsense displayed when he is shock quoted and only the narrative supporting text is copied (such as the convenient omission that the fabled day in which Clinton could be assassinated would be "horrible"). It also fits well with the Democrats' habit of burying themselves instead of putting up a fight. ..."
"... While Trump is a buffoon who might lead us into bad situations as he stumbles around, Hillary Clinton displays an undeniable and proven malice aforethought that he does not. ..."
PERIES: So Michael, in a recent article that you penned on your website, you argued that Hillary
Clinton's campaign is using a very clever strategy in that it is trying to associate criticism of
Clinton with support for Trump and therefore support for Russia, which in the end is anti-American
. Now, this type of association game, which is supposed to make it difficult for Sanders supporters
to criticize Clinton, what implication does this have on the overall politics in this country?
HUDSON: Well, it certainly changed things in earlier elections. The Republican convention was
as is normal, all about their candidate Trump. But surprisingly, so was the Democratic convention.
That was all about Trump too – as the devil. The platform Hillary's running on is "I'm not Trump.
I'm the lesser evil."
She elaborates that by saying that Trump is Putin's ploy. When the Democratic National Committee
(someone within it, or without) leaked the information to Wikileaks, the Democrats and Hillary asked,
"Who benefits from this"? Ah-ha. Becaue Trump opposes the neocon line toward Russia, and because
he criticizes NATO, Russia benefits. Therefore Putin must have stolen the leaks and put them out,
to make America weaker, not stronger, by helping the Trump campaign by showing the DNC's dirty tricks
toward Bernie's followers.
Then Assange did an Internet interview and implied that it was not a cyberwar attack but a leak
– indicating that it came from an insider inn the DNC. If this is true, then the Democrats are simply
trying to blame it all on Trump – diverting attention from what the leaks' actual content!
This is old-fashioned red baiting. I saw it 60 years ago when I was a teenager. I went to a high
school where teachers used to turn in reports on what we said in class to the FBI every month. The
State Department was emptied out of "realists" and staffed with Alan Dulles-type Cold Warriors. One
couldn't talk about certain subjects. That is what red-baiting does. So the effect at the Democratic
Convention was about Hillary trying to avoid taking about her own policies and herself. Except for
what her husband said about "I met a girl" (not meaning Jennifer Flowers or Monica Lewinski.)
The red baiting succeeded, and the convention wasn't about Hillary – at least, not her economic
policies. It was more about Obama. She tied herself to Obama, and next to Trump = Putin, the convention's
second underlying theme was that Hillary was going to be Obama's third term. That's what Obama himself
said when he came and addressed the convention.
The problem with this strategy is it's exactly the problem the Republicans faced in 2008, when
voters turned against George Bush's administration. Voters wanted change. And they do today. Hillary
did not say "I'm going to have hope and change from the last years of Obama." She said, in effect,
"I'm not going to change anything. I'm going to continue Obama's policies that have made you all
so prosperous." She talked about how employment is rising and everyone is better off.
Well, the problem is that many people aren't better off than the last eight years. Ten million
families have lost their homes, and most peoples' budgets are being squeezed. Obama saved the banks
not the economy. So Trump's line and the Republican line in this election could well be: "Are you
really better off than you were eight years ago? Or, are you actually worse off? Where are all your
gains? You're further in debt. You're having more difficulty meeting your paychecks, you're running
up your student loans. You're really not better off and we're going to be the party of hope and change."
Hillary can't really counter that with the policies she has. Trump and the Republicans can say
that even though she disavowed the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the trade agreement with Europe,
all the Democratic representatives that voted for the TPP have won re-nomination, and it's still
on the burner.
Most of all, Hillary is still the war candidate. Trump already has said, "Look at what she
did to Libya." By displacing Libya, she turned its arms cache over to terrorist groups that have
become ISIS, Al-Nusra, and the other terrorist in the Near East. So she's the Queen of Chaos. Finally,
she's the candidate of Wall Street, given the fact even the Koch Brothers have said they're not going
to back Trump, they're going to back Hillary because she's on their side. George Soros and most other
big moguls and billionaires are now siding with the Democratic Party, not Trump.
What did Hilary actually say at the convention besides "I'm not Trump, Trump is worse." She's
trying to make the whole election over her rival, not over herself.
PERIES: Okay, so everything you say about Hillary Clinton may be true, and it's more in your favor
that it is true. She is a candidate of Wall Street and she is as you say, now being supported
even by the neocons. They're holding fundraisers for her. And the Koch brothers and so on. So
when we opened this interview we were talking about what the Bernie Sanders supporters should now
do, because Trump is starting to appeal like he's the candidate of ordinary people. So what are they
to do?
HUDSON: Well, if the election is between the most unpopular woman candidate in America and the
most unpopular male candidate, the winner is going to be whoever can make the election fought over
the other person. Trump will win if he can make the election all about Hillary, and Hillary will
win if she can make the election all about Trump. It looks like she's able to do this, because
Trump is even more narcissistic than she is.
EndOfTheWorld- totally agree with you. I just shake my head at Bernie. Diametrically opposed
to Clinton, he suddenly turns around and embraces her! What? I will never understand that.
"America needs an ineffective president. That's much better than an effective president
that's going to go to war with Russia, that's going to push for the Trans-Pacific Partnership,
that's going to protect Wall Street, and that's going to oppose neoliberal austerity."
He's right too. I am absolutely terrified of Hillary Clinton becoming President. She strikes
me as having psychopathic tendencies. I mean, just look at the scandals she and Bill have been
involved in, and then when she gets caught, she lies, feigns ignorance, deflects, blames others,
lies some more. Power and money are her goals.
She has called Putin "Hitler", said she wants to expand NATO, and again said she wants to take
out Assad. Well, how is she going to do that when Russia is in there? God, she is scary. I just
hope that there's a big Clinton Foundation email leak to finish her off.
Trump is out there, but at least he wants to try to negotiate peace (of course, if war wasn't
making so many people rich, it would be stopped tomorrow). He's questioning why NATO is necessary,
never mind its continual expansion, and he wants to stop the TPP.
God, I'd be happy with even one of the above. Hillary will give us TPP, more NATO, more war,
and a cackle. Please, if anyone has some loose emails hanging around, now is the time!
I honestly don't think there's any way to predict what Donald Trump will do if elected. He's
effectively a private citizen who, all of a sudden, will have access to every government secret
and lie, and no culpability for any of it. It's almost impossible to imagine what that would be
like.
And it's what makes him so "dangerous."
I'm sure he will quash TPP, renegotiate nafta and be less belligerent with Russia. But
what will happen when he and his non-government-indoctrinated team of advisers finally see every
bit of redacted and "confidential" information that has been routinely hidden from the public
and lied about for decades?
The loss of sovereignty inherent in the "trade" agreements and incoherent Middle East policies,
to name a few "strategies" this country is pursuing, have a larger purpose. We private citizens
have just not been privy to it. How private citizen Trump will proceed if he is elected and comes
to know the government's deepest, darkest secrets is anybody's guess.
I think its a safe assumption that if Trump is elected he will be carefully 'minded' to
ensure he can't gain access to information that would upset the applecart. I doubt he would
be able to get much done as there would be an establishment consensus to keep him firmly under
wraps. He would mostly busy himself with jetting around meeting foreign leaders and he might actually
be quite productive at that.
or he'll pass what he campaigns on which is standard Republican policy (sometimes) through
an entirely Republican legislature duh. So tax cuts, cuts to regulation etc.. Really he's campaigning
on these things and they CAN pass a Republican congress.
Yes, if Donnie is elected, we'll see some form of a Regency; that's what Pence is there for.
Donnie will be Clown Prince, while more traditionally evil Republican/DC technocrats "run" things.
It would be a re-doing of the Reagan/Bush-Baker and Bush/Cheney dynamic, as seen on reality TV.
As for Donnie taking down TPP and being the peace candidate, I think people should sit
down and take a few deep breaths. As a New Yorker who's observed him for his entire public life,
and as a 90 second scanning of his career demonstrates, the man cannot be trusted to speak truthfully
about anything. Does he lie exactly the way Hillary does? Of course not, she's the accomplished
professional, while Donnie spins plates and tries to misdirect by finding someone to insult when
they fall and shatter.
Vote for Hillary or not (I most likely won't, but can't predict much of anything in this all-bets-are-off
opera buffa), but by believing anything Donnie says, you risk being the chump he already thinks
you are.
You're right. He'll make a good court jester. That's about it. as for "the man cannot be
trusted to speak truthfully about anything" reminds me of someone who gets on TeeVee and does
that well. And he really didn't have any experience but he got himself good handlers and others
who ran the country.
Exactly right! Trump is dangerous…to the establishment. And the establishment is what we
have to get rid of.
When was the last time a political candidate in any country was as hated by the establishment
as Trump is? That's all you need to know. As flawed a character as Trump is, he still represents
our last chance to challenge the establishment. It won't be a pretty presidency – but it will
be entertaining – however the alternative is the ultimate horror show. Plus you are gambling that
Clinton won't start a nuclear war and end the human race. Why would anyone in their right mind
touch that wager?
It is unlikely that Trump will be able to deport more people than Obama's record breaking
administration. Something, that for all her rhetoric, there is no reason to believe that
Clinton will change. As for waging war, we have a whole lot of information that for all his massive
drone wars and interventions in the Middle East, Obama actually ended up rejecting Clinton's
continuous advice for more more more military intervention.
I agree with you that Trump is not likable, and an unknown. The problem is that the known
is despicable. Neither, let me repeat, neither candidate should be anywhere near this close to
the White House.
You have obviously chosen the despicable hateful war mongering devil you know. Others are
willing to roll the dice with the guy who has incoherently at least given a nod to the idea that
war with Russia is not a smart plan, and that our current military choices are not effective –
not to mention a far more coherent case that our trade policy is screwed up and needs to be changed.
Once again, people are choosing from known despicable, unknown possibly lesser possibly greater
despicable, and unlikely to win third parties or write ins – everyone can only do that for themselves.
One New York reporter (sorry, I don't have the link) said that he has watched Trump his whole
life and he said, though he could say many bad things about Trump, racism wasn't one of them.
He said he had never in all his years of watching him known Trump to be racist in any way.
Trump wants to stop "illegal" immigration so that poor Americans can have jobs. Illegals
lower wages (because American employers pay them less), they increase rents (supply and demand),
and they cost a fortune in medical and educational costs. He's for "legal" immigration when the
country needs more workers. I don't think that is being racist, although he doesn't have a very
nice way of saying things.
Muslim immigration stopped until they can be properly vetted? That's just being prudent
and careful, but again he could say things in a much kinder way.
He's a wild man, but at least he's upfront about it. I see her as being a narcissist that
just hides it better than he does. She could get us all killed.
While Trump is upfront (yikes, I know), I see Hillary as the secretive, conniving, manipulative,
scheming, backstabbing type. When someone slights Trump, out comes his response right back at
them. It's over. But I would not want to cross her. I see her as cold, with very, very little
conscience. I mean, would you ever have tried to pull off the scandals she has been involved in?
No. She seeks power and money, and look out if you ever got in her way. She never says she's sorry,
not really. Most you get out of her is she made a "mistake".
Her outright aggression towards Russia, Syria, Libya, Ukraine should give you a hint of
what lurks inside. And she doesn't attack these countries to better the U.S. She's doing it solely
for her own person gain: money into the Clinton Foundation, business for her speech-giving husband,
all to further the Clinton's.
IMO, a very dangerous person, a very dangerous couple. And she has said, if she's elected,
she will put Bill Clinton in charge of "economic affairs"! Can you just imagine what more deregulation
will do for the banks? He repealed Glass-Steagall and brought us the Commodity Futures Modernization
Act, as well as NAFTA. Get ready to hear a "huge" sucking sound if Hillary is elected. The place
will be gutted.
That's preposterous about Donnie not being racist. When the Central Park Five (released from
prison and compensated by the state for false impisonment) were arrested, Donnie took out full
page ads for days in the NYC papers, all but calling for those (innocent) boy's lynching. He was
raised in an explicitly racist milieu – his father arrested at a KKK tussle in Queens in the 1920's,
and successfully sued by the Nixon DOJ for his discriminatory rental policies…) and has a long
history of saying ignorant, absurd and racist things about "The Blacks."
"Clinton is awful, but that doesn't mean it's a better idea to elect a hateful, racist,
despicable con man"
Perhaps with a hateful, racist, despicable con man trying to tell them what to do, congress
just might re-assert its authority instead of acting as a rubber stamp. Which is the LOTE – Trump
antagonizing congress into gridlock or HRC manipulating them into moar war?
It sounds like you're talking about HRC when you're talking about Trump. She coined the
term "super predators" so they could enrich the private prison industry by filling the jails with
black people, she has waged wars against brown people in the middle east for no particular reason
except corporate profits and power, no respect for their theocracies or the delicate balance that
"supposed" tyrants there accomplished that had enduring peace there (some may argue). Where has
Trump exhibited such hatred and racism? His policies? What policies? No one that has worked for
him ever described him as hateful, racist or despicable. Stop believing the propaganda on TV.
Hatred and racism is exhibited in leaders by being a war monger and gutting this nation with
the TPP and lousy trade deals that sell off our national sovereignty and democracy. You might
think Obama doesn't like us, the 99%, but Hillary probably hates us. Pay attention, the most "effective
evil" is the evil to fear.
I am with
Noam Chomsky on this. If it's not close in my state, I will vote 3rd party. If it is close,
I'll vote for Clinton over Trump. There is a good interview with Chomsky on this on youtube which
I'm too lazy to look up right now.
But as Pat said above, everyone must make up his or her own mind.
Has there ever been any evidence that this type of strategic voting has ever done any good
whatsoever or ever had its intended result? Just speculation but I'm guessing that only a very
few of the very politically astute would even bother. I say vote your conscience regardless and
let the chips fall where they may.
Not the voters fault that this is the best the two major parties could come up with.
Speaking of revolution, I emailed Chomsky yesterday and he replied. The below is my message
to him.
Professor Chomsky,
In the last years of his life, Martin Luther King, Jr. organized the Poor People's Campaign,
which essentially planned to occupy Capitol Hill. The campaign still happened after his death,
but not enough people showed up for it to have a great impact.
I've begun to advocate what would essentially be a continuation of the Poor People's
Campaign, but with a broader focus on the numerous crises facing humanity: climate change,
poverty, illegal wars, etc.
Would you possibly be interested in providing rhetorical support for this action?
Thank you so much for your efforts to make a better world.
The below is Chomsky's reply.
It was a wonderful and very important initiative, cruelly undermined by his assassination.
I hope you manage to revive it.
Butch – "…she helped lead the fight for universal health care." Did she now? Here's a good
quote on how she felt about universal health care:
"Hillary took the lead role in the White House's efforts to pass a corporate-friendly version
of "health reform." Along with the big insurance companies the Clintons deceptively railed against,
the "co-presidents" decided from the start to exclude the popular health care alternative – single
payer – from the national health care "discussion." (Obama would do the same thing in 2009.)
"David, tell me something interesting." That was then First Lady Hillary Clinton's weary and
exasperated response – as head of the White House's health reform initiative – to Harvard medical
professor David Himmelstein in 1993. Himmelstein was head of Physicians for a National Health
Program. He had just told her about the remarkable possibilities of a comprehensive, single-payer
"Canadian style" health plan, supported by more than two-thirds of the U.S. public. Beyond
backing by a citizen super-majority, Himmelstein noted, single-payer would provide comprehensive
coverage to the nation's 40 million uninsured while retaining free choice in doctor selection
and being certified by the Congressional Budget Office as "the most cost-effective plan on offer."
clinton is the more effective evil for another reason; she is respected by other neoliberals
who rule the world in other countries. even if trump wanted to pass the TPP, TTIP and TISA, the
intense dislike of him would make it easier to reject the bills in countries like Canada, Australia,
the EU. A Hillary presidency would just about guarantee they'd sign.
I love Michael Hudson. But like everyone commenting here he is needlessly thinking inside the
crumbling box of America's existing top-down, money-driven system of political discourse. So what
is it that keeps us from thinking outside this godawful box? I think we're all so deeply and habitually
embedded in the mode of being status quo critics that we're unable to enter the problem-solving
mode of finding alternatives to it. But to make government work in America, we need to think in
both modes.
So let's think outside the box for a minute. After all, it's common knowledge that the
current "rigged" system, as Donald Trump keeps calling it, has been instrumental in bringing American
politics and government to their present state of dysfunction at local, state and national levels.
Americans hate and despise this elitist system; everyone is disgusted with the political donor
class whose billions of dollars underwrite the election-rigging televised attack ads that dominate
it.
At the Demo Convention Bernie Sanders neatly pinpointed the topics with which this bogus
system is obsessed: "Let me be as clear as I can be. … This election is not about political gossip.
It's not about polls. It's not about campaign strategy. It's not about fundraising. It's not about
all the things the media spends so much time discussing." Yet like all presidential candidates
this year Bernie didn't take the next, logical step: he didn't call for the creation of a new
political discourse system. (Note that Hillary alone among the top three candidates never, ever
has a bad word to say against the current system.)
OK, so what might a new system look like? First off, it would be non-partisan, issue-centered
and deliberative. And citizen-participatory. It would make citizens and governments responsive
and accountable to each other in shaping the best futures of their communities. That's its core
principal.
More specifically, the format of a reality TV show like The Voice or American Idol could readily
be adapted to create ongoing, prime-time, issue-centered searches for solutions to any and all
of the issues of the day. And of course problem-solving Reality TV is just of any number of formats
that could work for TV. Other media could develop formats tap their strengths and appeal to their
audiences.
Thanks to the miracle of modern communications technologies, there's nothing to stop Americans
from having a citizen-participatory system of political discourse that gives all Americans an
informed voice in the political and government decisions that affect their lives. Americans will
flock in drove to ongoing, rule-governed problem-solving public forums that earn the respect and
trust of citizens and political leaders alike. When we create them, governments at local, state
and national levels will start working again. If we don't, our politics will continue to sink
deeper into the cesspool we're in now.
Do you see it as possible that empowered citizens will truly be willing to take on big
capital, even when big capital goes to war on them? I'm skeptical, unless there is a real
socialist-ish movement out there educating and politicizing. In other words, while the political
system is indeed broken, the economy is also broken and it is hard to see "empowered" citizens
fixing the economy. What I think would happen is the politicians elected by these empowered citizens
would be opposed by big business and the politicians they own, nothing good would get done, and
there would be a business-financed media drumbeat that more democracy has been "proven" not to
work.
I don't think our political problems can be solved simply be electing better politicians –
though of course we do need better politicians.
The evil to fear is the most effective evil. Hillary IS both sides of
the aisle and Congress will allow her all her neocon neoliberal desires, Trump is neither side
of the aisle and would be ineffective because he doesn't belong to the neoliberal neocons, he's
not an insider and obviously won't play their games.
I have not had nearly the hardship you have had crittermom and I have not lived as long either,
but at 27, and being someone who has been discontent with social structure since middle school,
I have absolutely had enough. Genetics, environment, the combination of internal-external factors,
whatever it was I have always had a very ("annoying" and sarcastic) curiousity or oppositional
approach to things, especially things people do not question and accept as is (religion, government…).
Growing older has only led me to greater understanding of the pit we reside within and how
we probably will not get out. This election season in particular has been ridiculously… indescribable.
The utter incompetence of our selfish administrations is finally coming to a head and people are
completely oblivious, pulling the same stale BS that we have seen every four years since before
I was born.
Bernie totally blew it but, outside your hardship, don't ever think you effort was a waste.
For once an honest candidate appeared who was backed by the policies we need and you supported
that (as I did). That is the most we can do at this point. Bernie the man should absolutely be
criticized because he wanted a "revolution" then sold out to the Junta instead of biting back
when it would have really sent a message to the people and high rollers. He wasn't willing to
sacrifice what was necessary to make a stand. Instead he sided with the people that have made
careers sacrificing citizens like you–and that is terrible. The reality these people live in and
teach to others is such a lie.
Oh heck yes. This is a fight that has been going on for decades with battles like the War
Powers Act and Nixon's impeachment. Supposedly the Founding Fathers didn't want an all powerful
chief executive and thought that Congress would be the dominant force. But in modern times, even
before Clinton v Trump, we already had gone much too far in the direction of a caudillo. Internally
one person with a bully pulpit will never be able to change the current course and overseas presidents
have a frightening amount of power that they can wield and then dare Congress to do something
about it afterwards.
So despite his potty mouth there's something to be said for Mr. Trump Goes to Washington. By
the time he figures out how to be caudillo it may be time for another election.
crittermom – HRC has got the big corporate money behind her, the media too. Trump is fighting
an uphill battle. If you watch CNN, which I watch very little of, they spend almost the whole
time pulling apart what Trump has said, and very, very little press on Hillary's email, the Clinton
Foundation, etc.
They are going after Trump with all that they have. They want the status quo to remain,
and they are very worried that he might change it. Hillary is Wall Street, multinational corporations,
arms dealers, weapons manufacturers, the military-industrial complex. Who would have thought
that the guy running for the right wants to keep jobs in America, wants to stop wars, and the
one on the left is for the monied class! Right is left and left is right. Upside down world.
The following article is old now, from April, but it gives you an idea of "Why the Establishment
Hates Trump" and what he is planning on doing. Watch them go after him; they will vilify him.
"When you join the dots to Trump also preaching a policy revolt against the insatiable
corporate jaws feeding on trillions of dollars of public budgets in Washington, the meaning
becomes clear. But that connected meaning is blacked out. In its place, the corporate media
and politicians present an egomaniac blowhard bordering on fascism who preaches hate, racism
and sexism.
But the silenced policies he advocates are more like jumping into a crocodile pit. He
is on record saying he will cut the Pentagon's budget "by 50%". No winning politician has ever
dared to take on the military-industrial complex, with even Eisenhower only naming it in his
parting speech.
Trump also says that the US "must be neutral, an honest broker" on the Israeli-Palestine
conflict – as unspeakable as it gets in US politics.
Big Pharma is also called out with "$400 billion to be saved by government negotiation of
prices". The even more powerful HMO's are confronted by the possibility of a "one-payer system",
the devil incarnate in America's corporate-welfare state."
Hillary and her team will try to paint Trump as a lover of Putin, as a racist, bigot, bring
the narrative down to this only. This way, no one ends up talking about the corporate elites she
represents. Good, read some more, crittermom, and open your eyes even more. There's a lot more
going on than meets the eye.
So I don't usually post here, just mostly read what other folks have to say.
Recently I asked a wise person I know what historically follows an oligarchy (which is
what I believe we have been in for awhile now). He told me that an oligarchy is usually followed
by a dictatorship.
So if that is the case is Trump going to take us into the land of dictatorship (which I believe
is highly likely) or are any of us going to be able to tread water for a little longer with HRC
(who I agree is ugh a non-choice but hopefully the lesser of the two evils).
Looking this up I found the concept of the Tytler Cycle. Interesting and scary. This is off
wikipedia:
Two centuries ago, a somewhat obscure Scotsman named Tytler made this profound observation:
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the
majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority
always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses
because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a
monarchy".
Anyway can someone refute this for me so I can sleep tonight? Thanks, in advance.
How could Trump become a dictator? Congress will be hostile. Judiciary will be hostile.
Pentagon will be hostile (didn't you see all those generals and admirals, in uniform, literally
lining up behind Clinton?) Civil administration will be sullen, uncooperative, and leaking
like crazy.
Trump does not have his own freestanding parallel state organization, ready to move in
and take over the bureaucracy and the armed forces. It would be physically impossible for
Trump to attempt a mass purge.
So exactly how the hell would Trump impose his will on the American masses? Answer: No Way.
President Trump can only be a relatively weak president.
Just think: if you elect Trump, you would actually get to see the US Constitution's fabled
"checks and balances" come into play for once in your life!
Thank you! The same question I have been asking repeatedly throughout this charade. Everyone's
favorite line is "Trump will be a dictator [be afriad]!" The obvious question… how
?!
How is Trump going to have the same or any more power within or over the system than any president
before him?? What is a reasonable strategy with which he could upend and create domination over
this system with? This is complete rhetorical garbage, the same kind of nonsense displayed
when he is shock quoted and only the narrative supporting text is copied (such as the convenient
omission that the fabled day in which Clinton could be assassinated would be "horrible"). It also
fits well with the Democrats' habit of burying themselves instead of putting up a fight.
I have felt for a long time but have struggled to put into words the deep, strong aversion
I have towards Clinton (et al.)and that I feel any time I read about her or see her. There is
a phrase in the song Art War , by the Knack, that caught my ear; what I originally heard as, "malice
of forethought". To me this represents the idea that terrible, harmful, far-reaching, incompetent
decisions are made completely on purpose. After doing some research I discovered that the phrase
is actually "malice aforethought", related to murderous intent in legal definitions. A
second, more appropriate
definition here is "a general evil and depraved state of mind in which the person is unconcerned
for the lives of others". This represents my internal shuddering exactly – a sort of willful, deadly
incompetence.
While Trump is a buffoon who might lead us into bad situations as he stumbles around, Hillary
Clinton displays an undeniable and proven malice aforethought that he does not.
"... Michael, in a recent article that you penned on your website, you argued that Hillary Clinton's campaign is using a very clever strategy in that it is trying to associate criticism of Clinton with support for Trump and therefore support for Russia, which in the end is anti-American ..."
"... Trump opposes the neocon line toward Russia, and because he criticizes NATO, Russia benefits. Therefore Putin must have stolen the leaks and put them out, to make America weaker, not stronger, by helping the Trump campaign by showing the DNC's dirty tricks toward Bernie's followers. ..."
"... Most of all, Hillary is still the war candidate. Trump already has said, "Look at what she did to Libya." By displacing Libya, she turned its arms cache over to terrorist groups that have become ISIS, Al-Nusra, and the other terrorist in the Near East. So she's the Queen of Chaos. Finally, she's the candidate of Wall Street, given the fact even the Koch Brothers have said they're not going to back Trump, they're going to back Hillary because she's on their side. George Soros and most other big moguls and billionaires are now siding with the Democratic Party, not Trump. ..."
"... She is a candidate of Wall Street and she is as you say, now being supported even by the neocons. They're holding fundraisers for her. And the Koch brothers and so on. ..."
"... Trump will win if he can make the election all about Hillary, and Hillary will win if she can make the election all about Trump. ..."
"... "America needs an ineffective president. That's much better than an effective president that's going to go to war with Russia, that's going to push for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that's going to protect Wall Street, and that's going to oppose neoliberal austerity." ..."
"... I am absolutely terrified of Hillary Clinton becoming President. She strikes me as having psychopathic tendencies. I mean, just look at the scandals she and Bill have been involved in, and then when she gets caught, she lies, feigns ignorance, deflects, blames others, lies some more. Power and money are her goals. ..."
"... I'm sure he will quash TPP, renegotiate nafta and be less belligerent with Russia. But what will happen when he and his non-government-indoctrinated team of advisers finally see every bit of redacted and "confidential" information that has been routinely hidden from the public and lied about for decades? ..."
"... The loss of sovereignty inherent in the "trade" agreements and incoherent Middle East policies, to name a few "strategies" this country is pursuing, have a larger purpose. We private citizens have just not been privy to it. How private citizen Trump will proceed if he is elected and comes to know the government's deepest, darkest secrets is anybody's guess. ..."
"... I think its a safe assumption that if Trump is elected he will be carefully 'minded' to ensure he can't gain access to information that would upset the applecart. ..."
"... As for Donnie taking down TPP and being the peace candidate, I think people should sit down and take a few deep breaths. As a New Yorker who's observed him for his entire public life, and as a 90 second scanning of his career demonstrates, the man cannot be trusted to speak truthfully about anything ..."
"... You're right. He'll make a good court jester. That's about it. as for "the man cannot be trusted to speak truthfully about anything" reminds me of someone who gets on TeeVee and does that well. And he really didn't have any experience but he got himself good handlers and others who ran the country. ..."
"... Exactly right! Trump is dangerous…to the establishment. And the establishment is what we have to get rid of. ..."
"... As flawed a character as Trump is, he still represents our last chance to challenge the establishment. It won't be a pretty presidency – but it will be entertaining – however the alternative is the ultimate horror show. Plus you are gambling that Clinton won't start a nuclear war and end the human race. Why would anyone in their right mind touch that wager? ..."
"... Obama actually ended up rejecting Clinton's continuous advice for more more more military intervention. ..."
"... I agree with you that Trump is not likable, and an unknown. The problem is that the known is despicable. Neither, let me repeat, neither candidate should be anywhere near this close to the White House. ..."
"... You have obviously chosen the despicable hateful war mongering devil you know. Others are willing to roll the dice with the guy who has incoherently at least given a nod to the idea that war with Russia is not a smart plan, and that our current military choices are not effective – not to mention a far more coherent case that our trade policy is screwed up and needs to be changed. ..."
"... Trump wants to stop "illegal" immigration so that poor Americans can have jobs. Illegals lower wages (because American employers pay them less), they increase rents (supply and demand), and they cost a fortune in medical and educational costs. He's for "legal" immigration when the country needs more workers. I don't think that is being racist, although he doesn't have a very nice way of saying things. ..."
"... Muslim immigration stopped until they can be properly vetted? That's just being prudent and careful, but again he could say things in a much kinder way. ..."
"... He's a wild man, but at least he's upfront about it. I see her as being a narcissist that just hides it better than he does. She could get us all killed. ..."
"... Perhaps with a hateful, racist, despicable con man trying to tell them what to do, congress just might re-assert its authority instead of acting as a rubber stamp. Which is the LOTE – Trump antagonizing congress into gridlock or HRC manipulating them into moar war? ..."
"... It sounds like you're talking about HRC when you're talking about Trump. She coined the term "super predators" so they could enrich the private prison industry by filling the jails with black people, she has waged wars against brown people in the middle east for no particular reason except corporate profits and power, no respect for their theocracies or the delicate balance that "supposed" tyrants there accomplished that had enduring peace there (some may argue). Where has Trump exhibited such hatred and racism? His policies? What policies? No one that has worked for him ever described him as hateful, racist or despicable. Stop believing the propaganda on TV. ..."
"... You might think Obama doesn't like us, the 99%, but Hillary probably hates us. Pay attention, the most "effective evil" is the evil to fear. ..."
"... If it's not close in my state, I will vote 3rd party. If it is close, I'll vote for Clinton over Trump. There is a good interview with Chomsky on this on youtube which I'm too lazy to look up right now. ..."
"... Professor Chomsky, ..."
"... In the last years of his life, Martin Luther King, Jr. organized the Poor People's Campaign, which essentially planned to occupy Capitol Hill. The campaign still happened after his death, but not enough people showed up for it to have a great impact. I've begun to advocate what would essentially be a continuation of the Poor People's Campaign, but with a broader focus on the numerous crises facing humanity: climate change, poverty, illegal wars, etc. Would you possibly be interested in providing rhetorical support for this action? ..."
"... Thank you so much for your efforts to make a better world. ..."
"... It was a wonderful and very important initiative, cruelly undermined by his assassination. I hope you manage to revive it. ..."
"... clinton is the more effective evil for another reason; she is respected by other neoliberals who rule the world in other countries. even if trump wanted to pass the TPP, TTIP and TISA, the intense dislike of him would make it easier to reject the bills in countries like Canada, Australia, the EU. A Hillary presidency would just about guarantee they'd sign. ..."
"... Do you see it as possible that empowered citizens will truly be willing to take on big capital, even when big capital goes to war on them? I'm skeptical ..."
"... The evil to fear is the most effective evil. Hillary IS both sides of the aisle and Congress will allow her all her neocon neoliberal desires, Trump is neither side of the aisle and would be ineffective because he doesn't belong to the neoliberal neocons, he's not an insider and obviously won't play their games. ..."
"... All You Zombies" ..."
"... The Snake That Eats Its Own Tail, Forever and Ever. I know where I came from-but where did all you zombies come from? ..."
"... I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once-and you all went away. So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light. You aren't really there at all. There isn't anybody but me-Jane-here alone in the dark. ..."
"... I miss you dreadfully! ..."
"... Oh heck yes. This is a fight that has been going on for decades with battles like the War Powers Act and Nixon's impeachment. Supposedly the Founding Fathers didn't want an all powerful chief executive and thought that Congress would be the dominant force. But in modern times, even before Clinton v Trump, we already had gone much too far in the direction of a caudillo. Internally one person with a bully pulpit will never be able to change the current course and overseas presidents have a frightening amount of power that they can wield and then dare Congress to do something about it afterwards. ..."
PERIES: So
Michael, in a recent article that you penned on your
website, you argued that Hillary Clinton's campaign is using a very clever
strategy in that it is trying to associate criticism of Clinton with support
for Trump and therefore support for Russia, which in the end is
anti-American
. Now, this type
of association game, which is supposed to make it difficult for Sanders supporters
to criticize Clinton, what implication does this have on the overall politics
in this country?
HUDSON: Well, it certainly changed things in earlier elections. The Republican
convention was as is normal, all about their candidate Trump. But surprisingly,
so was the Democratic convention. That was all about Trump too – as the devil.
The platform Hillary's running on is "I'm not Trump. I'm the lesser evil."
She elaborates that by saying that Trump is Putin's ploy. When the Democratic
National Committee (someone within it, or without) leaked the information to
Wikileaks, the Democrats and Hillary asked, "Who benefits from this"? Ah-ha.
Becaue
Trump opposes the neocon line toward Russia, and because he criticizes
NATO, Russia benefits. Therefore Putin must have stolen the leaks and put them
out, to make America weaker, not stronger, by helping the Trump campaign by
showing the DNC's dirty tricks toward Bernie's followers.
Then Assange did an Internet interview and implied that it was not a cyberwar
attack but a leak – indicating that it came from an insider inn the DNC. If
this is true, then the Democrats are simply trying to blame it all on Trump
– diverting attention from what the leaks' actual content!
This is old-fashioned red baiting. I saw it 60 years ago when I was a teenager.
I went to a high school where teachers used to turn in reports on what we said
in class to the FBI every month. The State Department was emptied out of "realists"
and staffed with Alan Dulles-type Cold Warriors. One couldn't talk about certain
subjects. That is what red-baiting does. So the effect at the Democratic Convention
was about Hillary trying to avoid taking about her own policies and herself.
Except for what her husband said about "I met a girl" (not meaning Jennifer
Flowers or Monica Lewinski.)
The red baiting succeeded, and the convention wasn't about Hillary – at least,
not her economic policies. It was more about Obama. She tied herself to Obama,
and next to Trump = Putin, the convention's second underlying theme was that
Hillary was going to be Obama's third term. That's what Obama himself said when
he came and addressed the convention.
The problem with this strategy is it's exactly the problem the Republicans
faced in 2008, when voters turned against George Bush's administration. Voters
wanted change. And they do today. Hillary did not say "I'm going to have hope
and change from the last years of Obama." She said, in effect, "I'm not going
to change anything. I'm going to continue Obama's policies that have made you
all so prosperous." She talked about how employment is rising and everyone is
better off.
Well, the problem is that many people aren't better off than the last eight
years. Ten million families have lost their homes, and most peoples' budgets
are being squeezed. Obama saved the banks not the economy. So Trump's line and
the Republican line in this election could well be: "Are you really better off
than you were eight years ago? Or, are you actually worse off? Where are all
your gains? You're further in debt. You're having more difficulty meeting your
paychecks, you're running up your student loans. You're really not better off
and we're going to be the party of hope and change."
Hillary can't really counter that with the policies she has. Trump and the
Republicans can say that even though she disavowed the Trans-Pacific Partnership
and the trade agreement with Europe, all the Democratic representatives that
voted for the TPP have won re-nomination, and it's still on the burner.
Most of all, Hillary is still the war candidate. Trump already has said, "Look
at what she did to Libya." By displacing Libya, she turned its arms cache over
to terrorist groups that have become ISIS, Al-Nusra, and the other terrorist
in the Near East. So she's the Queen of Chaos. Finally, she's the candidate
of Wall Street, given the fact even the Koch Brothers have said they're not
going to back Trump, they're going to back Hillary because she's on their side.
George Soros and most other big moguls and billionaires are now siding with
the Democratic Party, not Trump.
What did Hilary actually say at the convention besides "I'm not Trump, Trump
is worse." She's trying to make the whole election over her rival, not over
herself.
PERIES: Okay, so everything you say about Hillary Clinton may be true, and
it's more in your favor that it is true.
She is a candidate of Wall Street and
she is as you say, now being supported even by the neocons. They're holding
fundraisers for her. And the Koch brothers and so on.
So when we opened this
interview we were talking about what the Bernie Sanders supporters should now
do, because Trump is starting to appeal like he's the candidate of ordinary
people. So what are they to do?
HUDSON: Well, if the election is between the most unpopular woman candidate
in America and the most unpopular male candidate, the winner is going to be
whoever can make the election fought over the other person.
Trump will win if
he can make the election all about Hillary, and Hillary will win if she can
make the election all about Trump.
It looks like she's able to do this, because
Trump is even more narcissistic than she is.
EndOfTheWorld- totally agree with you. I just shake my head at Bernie.
Diametrically opposed to Clinton, he suddenly turns around and embraces her!
What? I will never understand that.
"America needs an ineffective president. That's much better than an
effective president that's going to go to war with Russia, that's going to
push for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that's going to protect Wall Street,
and that's going to oppose neoliberal austerity."
He's right too.
I am absolutely terrified of Hillary Clinton becoming
President. She strikes me as having psychopathic tendencies. I mean, just
look at the scandals she and Bill have been involved in, and then when she
gets caught, she lies, feigns ignorance, deflects, blames others, lies some
more. Power and money are her goals.
She has called Putin "Hitler", said she wants to expand NATO, and again
said she wants to take out Assad. Well, how is she going to do that when
Russia is in there? God, she is scary. I just hope that there's a big
Clinton Foundation email leak to finish her off.
Trump is out there, but at least he wants to try to negotiate peace (of
course, if war wasn't making so many people rich, it would be stopped
tomorrow). He's questioning why NATO is necessary, never mind its continual
expansion, and he wants to stop the TPP.
God, I'd be happy with even one of the above. Hillary will give us TPP,
more NATO, more war, and a cackle. Please, if anyone has some loose emails
hanging around, now is the time!
I honestly don't think there's any way to
predict what Donald Trump will do if elected.
He's effectively a private citizen who, all of a
sudden, will have access to every government
secret and lie, and no culpability for any of
it. It's almost impossible to imagine what that
would be like.
And it's what makes him so "dangerous."
I'm sure he will quash TPP, renegotiate nafta
and be less belligerent with Russia. But what
will happen when he and his
non-government-indoctrinated team of advisers
finally see every bit of redacted and
"confidential" information that has been
routinely hidden from the public and lied about
for decades?
The loss of sovereignty inherent in the
"trade" agreements and incoherent Middle East
policies, to name a few "strategies" this
country is pursuing, have a larger purpose. We
private citizens have just not been privy to it.
How private citizen Trump will proceed if he is
elected and comes to know the government's
deepest, darkest secrets is anybody's guess.
I think its a safe assumption that if
Trump is elected he will be carefully
'minded' to ensure he can't gain access to
information that would upset the applecart.
I doubt he would be able to get much done as
there would be an establishment consensus to
keep him firmly under wraps. He would mostly
busy himself with jetting around meeting
foreign leaders and he might actually be
quite productive at that.
or he'll pass what he campaigns on
which is standard Republican policy
(sometimes) through an entirely
Republican legislature duh. So tax cuts,
cuts to regulation etc.. Really he's
campaigning on these things and they CAN
pass a Republican congress.
Yes, if Donnie is elected, we'll
see some form of a Regency; that's
what Pence is there for.
Donnie will be Clown Prince,
while more traditionally evil
Republican/DC technocrats "run"
things. It would be a re-doing of
the Reagan/Bush-Baker and
Bush/Cheney dynamic, as seen on
reality TV.
As for Donnie taking down TPP and
being the peace candidate, I think
people should sit down and take a
few deep breaths. As a New Yorker
who's observed him for his entire
public life, and as a 90 second
scanning of his career demonstrates,
the man cannot be trusted to speak
truthfully about anything. Does he
lie exactly the way Hillary does? Of
course not, she's the accomplished
professional, while Donnie spins
plates and tries to misdirect by
finding someone to insult when they
fall and shatter.
Vote for Hillary or not (I most
likely won't, but can't predict much
of anything in this all-bets-are-off
opera buffa), but by believing
anything Donnie says, you risk being
the chump he already thinks you are.
You're right. He'll make a
good court jester. That's about
it. as for "the man cannot be
trusted to speak truthfully
about anything" reminds me of
someone who gets on TeeVee and
does that well. And he really
didn't have any experience but
he got himself good handlers and
others who ran the country.
Exactly right! Trump is dangerous…to the
establishment. And the establishment is what
we have to get rid of.
When was the last
time a political candidate in any country
was as hated by the establishment as Trump
is? That's all you need to know. As flawed a
character as Trump is, he still represents
our last chance to challenge the
establishment. It won't be a pretty
presidency – but it will be entertaining –
however the alternative is the ultimate
horror show. Plus you are gambling that
Clinton won't start a nuclear war and end
the human race. Why would anyone in their
right mind touch that wager?
It is unlikely that Trump will be able to deport more people than Obama's record breaking administration. Something, that for all her rhetoric, there is no reason to believe that Clinton will change. As for waging war, we have a whole lot of information that for all his massive drone wars and interventions in the Middle East,
Obama actually ended up rejecting Clinton's continuous advice for more more more military intervention.
I agree with you that Trump is not likable, and an unknown. The problem is that the known is despicable. Neither, let me repeat, neither candidate should be anywhere near this close to the White House.
You have obviously chosen the despicable hateful war mongering devil you know. Others are willing to roll the dice with the guy who has incoherently at least given a nod to the idea that war with Russia is not a smart plan, and that our current military choices are not effective – not to mention a far more coherent case that our trade policy is screwed up and needs to be changed.
Once again, people are choosing from known despicable, unknown possibly lesser possibly greater despicable, and unlikely to win third parties or write ins – everyone can only do that for themselves.
One New York reporter (sorry, I don't have the link) said that he has watched Trump his whole life and he said, though he could say many bad things about Trump, racism wasn't one of them. He said he had never in all his years of watching him known Trump to be racist in any way.
Trump wants to stop "illegal" immigration so that poor Americans can have jobs. Illegals lower wages (because American employers pay them less), they increase rents (supply and demand), and they cost a fortune in medical and educational costs. He's for "legal" immigration when the country needs more workers. I don't think that is being racist, although he doesn't have a very nice way of saying things.
Muslim immigration stopped until they can be properly vetted? That's just being prudent and careful, but again he could say things in a much kinder way.
He's a wild man, but at least he's upfront about it. I see her as being a narcissist that just hides it better than he does. She could get us all killed.
While Trump is upfront (yikes, I know), I see Hillary as the secretive, conniving, manipulative, scheming, backstabbing type. When someone slights Trump, out comes his response right back at them. It's over. But I would not want to cross her. I see her as cold, with very, very little conscience. I mean, would you ever have tried to pull off the scandals she has been involved in? No. She seeks power and money, and look out if you ever got in her way. She never says she's sorry, not really. Most you get out of her is she made a "mistake".
Her outright aggression towards Russia, Syria, Libya, Ukraine should give you a hint of what lurks inside. And she doesn't attack these countries to better the U.S. She's doing it solely for her own person gain: money into the Clinton Foundation, business for her speech-giving husband, all to further the Clinton's.
IMO, a very dangerous person, a very dangerous couple. And she has said, if she's elected, she will put Bill Clinton in charge of "economic affairs"! Can you just imagine what more deregulation will do for the banks? He repealed Glass-Steagall and brought us the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, as well as NAFTA. Get ready to hear a "huge" sucking sound if Hillary is elected. The place will be gutted.
That's preposterous about Donnie not being racist. When the Central Park Five (released from prison and compensated by the state for false impisonment) were arrested, Donnie took out full page ads for days in the NYC papers, all but calling for those (innocent) boy's lynching. He was raised in an explicitly racist milieu – his father arrested at a KKK tussle in Queens in the 1920's, and successfully sued by the Nixon DOJ for his discriminatory rental policies…) and has a long history of saying ignorant, absurd and racist things about "The Blacks."
"Clinton is awful, but that doesn't mean it's a better idea to elect a hateful, racist, despicable con man"
Perhaps with a hateful, racist, despicable con man trying to tell them what to do, congress just might re-assert its authority instead of acting as a rubber stamp.
Which is the LOTE – Trump antagonizing congress into gridlock or HRC manipulating them into moar war?
It sounds like you're talking about HRC when you're talking about Trump. She coined the term "super predators" so they could enrich the private prison industry by filling the jails with black people, she has waged wars against brown people in the middle east for no particular reason except corporate profits and power, no respect for their theocracies or the delicate balance that "supposed" tyrants there accomplished that had enduring peace there (some may argue). Where has Trump exhibited such hatred and racism? His policies? What policies? No one that has worked for him ever described him as hateful, racist or despicable. Stop believing the propaganda on TV.
Hatred and racism is exhibited in leaders by being a war monger and gutting this nation with the TPP and lousy trade deals that sell off our national sovereignty and democracy.
You might think Obama doesn't like us, the 99%, but Hillary probably hates us. Pay attention, the most "effective evil" is the evil to fear.
I am with
Noam Chomsky
on this. If it's not close in my state, I will vote 3rd party. If it is close, I'll vote for Clinton over Trump. There is a good interview with Chomsky on this on youtube which I'm too lazy to look up right now.
But as Pat said above, everyone must make up his or her own mind.
Has there ever been any evidence that this type of strategic voting has ever done any good whatsoever or ever had its intended result?
Just speculation but I'm guessing that only a very few of the very politically astute would even bother.
I say vote your conscience regardless and let the chips fall where they may.
Not the voters fault that this is the best the two major parties could come up with.
Speaking of revolution, I emailed Chomsky yesterday and he replied. The below is my message to him.
Professor Chomsky,
In the last years of his life, Martin Luther King, Jr. organized the Poor People's Campaign, which essentially planned to occupy Capitol Hill. The campaign still happened after his death, but not enough people showed up for it to have a great impact.
I've begun to advocate what would essentially be a continuation of the Poor People's Campaign, but with a broader focus on the numerous crises facing humanity: climate change, poverty, illegal wars, etc.
Would you possibly be interested in providing rhetorical support for this action?
Thank you so much for your efforts to make a better world.
The below is Chomsky's reply.
It was a wonderful and very important initiative, cruelly undermined by his assassination. I hope you manage to revive it.
Butch – "…she helped lead the fight for universal health care." Did she now? Here's a good quote on how she felt about universal health care:
"Hillary took the lead role in the White House's efforts to pass a corporate-friendly version of "health reform." Along with the big insurance companies the Clintons deceptively railed against, the "co-presidents" decided from the start to exclude the popular health care alternative – single payer – from the national health care "discussion." (Obama would do the same thing in 2009.)
"David, tell me something interesting." That was then First Lady Hillary Clinton's weary and exasperated response – as head of the White House's health reform initiative – to Harvard medical professor David Himmelstein in 1993. Himmelstein was head of Physicians for a National Health Program. He had just told her about the remarkable possibilities of a comprehensive, single-payer "Canadian style" health plan, supported by more than two-thirds of the U.S. public. Beyond backing by a citizen super-majority, Himmelstein noted, single-payer would provide comprehensive coverage to the nation's 40 million uninsured while retaining free choice in doctor selection and being certified by the Congressional Budget Office as "the most cost-effective plan on offer."
clinton is the more effective evil for another reason; she is respected by other neoliberals who rule the world in other countries. even if trump wanted to pass the TPP, TTIP and TISA, the intense dislike of him would make it easier to reject the bills in countries like Canada, Australia, the EU. A
Hillary presidency would just about guarantee they'd sign.
I love Michael Hudson. But like everyone commenting here he is needlessly thinking inside the crumbling box of America's existing top-down, money-driven system of political discourse. So what is it that keeps us from thinking outside this godawful box? I think we're all so deeply and habitually embedded in the mode of being status quo critics that we're unable to enter the problem-solving mode of finding alternatives to it. But to make government work in America, we need to think in both modes.
So let's think outside the box for a minute. After all, it's common knowledge that the current "rigged" system, as Donald Trump keeps calling it, has been instrumental in bringing American politics and government to their present state of dysfunction at local, state and national levels. Americans hate and despise this elitist system; everyone is disgusted with the political donor class whose billions of dollars underwrite the election-rigging televised attack ads that dominate it.
At the Demo Convention Bernie Sanders neatly pinpointed the topics with which this bogus system is obsessed: "Let me be as clear as I can be. … This election is not about political gossip. It's not about polls. It's not about campaign strategy. It's not about fundraising. It's not about all the things the media spends so much time discussing." Yet like all presidential candidates this year Bernie didn't take the next, logical step: he didn't call for the creation of a new political discourse system. (Note that Hillary alone among the top three candidates never, ever has a bad word to say against the current system.)
OK, so what might a new system look like? First off, it would be non-partisan, issue-centered and deliberative. And citizen-participatory. It would make citizens and governments
responsive
and
accountable
to each other in shaping the best futures of their communities. That's its core principal.
More specifically, the format of a reality TV show like The Voice or American Idol could readily be adapted to create ongoing, prime-time, issue-centered searches for solutions to any and all of the issues of the day. And of course problem-solving Reality TV is just of any number of formats that could work for TV. Other media could develop formats tap their strengths and appeal to their audiences.
Thanks to the miracle of modern communications technologies, there's nothing to stop Americans from having a citizen-participatory system of political discourse that gives all Americans an informed voice in the political and government decisions that affect their lives. Americans will flock in drove to ongoing, rule-governed problem-solving public forums that earn the respect and trust of citizens and political leaders alike. When we create them, governments at local, state and national levels will start working again. If we don't, our politics will continue to sink deeper into the cesspool we're in now.
Do you see it as possible that empowered citizens will truly be willing to take on big capital, even when big capital goes to war on them? I'm skeptical, unless there is a real socialist-ish movement out there educating and politicizing. In other words, while the political system is indeed broken, the economy is also broken and it is hard to see "empowered" citizens fixing the economy. What I think would happen is the politicians elected by these empowered citizens would be opposed by big business and the politicians they own, nothing good would get done, and there would be a business-financed media drumbeat that more democracy has been "proven" not to work.
I don't think our political problems can be solved simply be electing better politicians – though of course we do need better politicians.
The evil to fear is the most effective evil.
Hillary IS both sides of the aisle and Congress will allow her all her neocon neoliberal desires, Trump is neither side of the aisle and would be ineffective because he doesn't belong to the neoliberal neocons, he's not an insider and obviously won't play their games.
I have not had nearly the hardship you have had crittermom and I have not lived as long either, but at 27, and being someone who has been discontent with social structure since middle school, I have absolutely had enough. Genetics, environment, the combination of internal-external factors, whatever it was I have always had a very ("annoying" and sarcastic) curiousity or oppositional approach to things, especially things people do not question and accept as is (religion, government…).
Growing older has only led me to greater understanding of the pit we reside within and how we probably will not get out. This election season in particular has been ridiculously… indescribable. The utter incompetence of our selfish administrations is finally coming to a head and people are completely oblivious, pulling the same stale BS that we have seen every four years since before I was born.
Bernie totally blew it but, outside your hardship, don't ever think you effort was a waste. For once an honest candidate appeared who was backed by the policies we need and you supported that (as I did). That is the most we can do at this point. Bernie the man should absolutely be criticized because he wanted a "revolution" then sold out to the Junta instead of biting back when it would have really sent a message to the people and high rollers. He wasn't willing to sacrifice what was necessary to make a stand. Instead he sided with the people that have made careers sacrificing citizens like you–and that is terrible. The reality these people live in and teach to others is such a lie.
Oh heck yes. This is a fight that has been going on for decades with battles like the War Powers Act and Nixon's impeachment. Supposedly the Founding Fathers didn't want an all powerful chief executive and thought that Congress would be the dominant force. But in modern times, even before Clinton v Trump, we already had gone much too far in the direction of a caudillo. Internally one person with a bully pulpit will never be able to change the current course and overseas presidents have a frightening amount of power that they can wield and then dare Congress to do something about it afterwards.
So despite his potty mouth there's something to be said for Mr. Trump Goes to Washington. By the time he figures out how to be caudillo it may be time for another election.
crittermom – HRC has got the big corporate money behind her, the media too. Trump is fighting an uphill battle. If you watch CNN, which I watch very little of, they spend almost the whole time pulling apart what Trump has said, and very, very little press on Hillary's email, the Clinton Foundation, etc.
They are going after Trump with all that they have. They want the status quo to remain, and they are very worried that he might change it. Hillary is Wall Street, multinational corporations, arms dealers, weapons manufacturers, the military-industrial complex. Who would have thought that the guy running for the right wants to keep jobs in America, wants to stop wars, and the one on the left is for the monied class! Right is left and left is right. Upside down world.
The following article is old now, from April, but it gives you an idea of "Why the Establishment Hates Trump" and what he is planning on doing. Watch them go after him; they will vilify him.
"When you join the dots to Trump also preaching a policy revolt against the insatiable corporate jaws feeding on trillions of dollars of public budgets in Washington, the meaning becomes clear. But that connected meaning is blacked out. In its place, the corporate media and politicians present an egomaniac blowhard bordering on fascism who preaches hate, racism and sexism. But the silenced policies he advocates are more like jumping into a crocodile pit. He is on record saying he will cut the Pentagon's budget "by 50%". No winning politician has ever dared to take on the military-industrial complex, with even Eisenhower only naming it in his parting speech. Trump also says that the US "must be neutral, an honest broker" on the Israeli-Palestine conflict – as unspeakable as it gets in US politics. Big Pharma is also called out with "$400 billion to be saved by government negotiation of prices". The even more powerful HMO's are confronted by the possibility of a "one-payer system", the devil incarnate in America's corporate-welfare state."
Hillary and her team will try to paint Trump as a lover of Putin, as a racist, bigot, bring the narrative down to this only. This way, no one ends up talking about the corporate elites she represents. Good, read some more, crittermom, and open your eyes even more. There's a lot more going on than meets the eye.
So I don't usually post here, just mostly read what other folks have to say.
Recently I asked a wise person I know what historically follows an oligarchy (which is what I believe we have been in for awhile now). He told me that an oligarchy is usually followed by a dictatorship.
So if that is the case is Trump going to take us into the land of dictatorship (which I believe is highly likely) or are any of us going to be able to tread water for a little longer with HRC (who I agree is ugh a non-choice but hopefully the lesser of the two evils).
Looking this up I found the concept of the Tytler Cycle. Interesting and scary. This is off wikipedia:
Two centuries ago, a somewhat obscure Scotsman named Tytler made this profound observation: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy".
Anyway can someone refute this for me so I can sleep tonight? Thanks, in advance.
Congress will be hostile. Judiciary will be hostile.
Pentagon will be hostile (didn't you see all those generals and admirals, in uniform,
literally
lining up behind Clinton?)
Civil administration will be sullen, uncooperative, and leaking like crazy.
Trump does not have his own freestanding parallel state organization, ready to move in and take over the bureaucracy and the armed forces. It would be
physically impossible
for Trump to attempt a mass purge.
So exactly how the hell would Trump impose his will on the American masses? Answer: No Way.
President Trump can only be a relatively weak president.
Just think: if you elect Trump, you would actually get to see the US Constitution's fabled "checks and balances" come into play for once in your life!
Thank you! The same question I have been asking repeatedly throughout this charade. Everyone's favorite line is "Trump will be a dictator [be afriad]!" The obvious question…
how
?! How is Trump going to have the same or any more power within or over the system than any president before him?? What is a reasonable strategy with which he could upend and create domination over this system with? This is complete rhetorical garbage, the same kind of nonsense displayed when he is shock quoted and only the narrative supporting text is copied (such as the convenient omission that the fabled day in which Clinton could be assassinated would be "horrible"). It also fits well with the Democrats' habit of burying themselves instead of putting up a fight.
I have felt for a long time but have struggled to put into words the deep, strong aversion I have towards Clinton (et al.)and that I feel any time I read about her or see her. There is a phrase in the song
Art War
, by the Knack, that caught my ear; what I originally heard as, "malice of forethought". To me this represents the idea that terrible, harmful, far-reaching, incompetent decisions are made completely on purpose. After doing some research I discovered that the phrase is actually "malice aforethought", related to murderous intent in legal definitions. A
second, more appropriate definition
here is "a general evil and depraved state of mind in which the person is unconcerned for the lives of others". This represents my internal shuddering exactly–a sort of willful, deadly incompetence.
While Trump is a buffoon who might lead us into bad situations as he stumbles around, Hillary Clinton displays an undeniable and proven malice aforethought that he does not.
crittermom – HRC has got the big corporate money behind her, the
media too. Trump is fighting an uphill battle. If you watch CNN, which I
watch very little of, they spend almost the whole time pulling apart
what Trump has said, and very, very little press on Hillary's email, the
Clinton Foundation, etc.
They are going after Trump with all that they have. They want the
status quo to remain, and they are very worried that he might change it.
Hillary is Wall Street, multinational corporations, arms dealers,
weapons manufacturers, the military-industrial complex. Who would have
thought that the guy running for the right wants to keep jobs in
America, wants to stop wars, and the one on the left is for the monied
class! Right is left and left is right. Upside down world.
"... the U.S. system never has been democratic. It is a show–a very expensive one–that the capitalist class puts on every two years in order to control the citizenry and to provide a justification for U.S. imperialism. ..."
"... Now, the capitalist class that controls Rome is no longer national, but transnational, being based on the transnational corporations and financial institutions and enjoying the full support of the transnational capitalist media. ..."
"... new poles: Globaliists vs. Antiglobalists. ..."
"... Donald Trump is an antiglobalist. That's the reason he deserves the full support of all those who oppose the transnational capitalist class and its institutions, including the EU, NATO, the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank and the OECD, to name just a few. ..."
"... However, the election should not be about appearances but about policies. Obama sounded intelligent, but his policies all come out of the globalist think tanks, the CIA (his mum's former employer) and the neocon asylum in Washington. So chose: someone who sounds like a television personality with great positions, or… well we all know what Clinton stands for. ..."
"... submissives to the atomisation of all systems that might afford self-sufficiency to societies, that makes everybody absolutely dependent on and therefore subservient to international finance and it's program of enslavement. ..."
"... Sanders was clearly the sheep-dog, and I won't be surprised if an e-mail showing that reality appears. ..."
"... spitting in the face of the latest generation of suckers who thought that the elite plutocracy of the USA could be 'reformed' from within. ..."
"... sheepdog is accurate. I have been calling him a sheepdog since 2014 and predicting, correctly, that he would both lose the nomination and endorse Hillary. This was inevitable since he SAID he would endorse her from the start of his so-called campaign. ..."
"... If the majority of people in the USA are really thinking that voting for either Hillary or the Donald is worse than having unprotected sex with an HIV+ hooker, then the Independent would barely need any publicity. They'd just need to be on the ballot. ..."
"... Course, the Establishment might get cute and put a far-right nutcase up as 'another Independent' so as they would have someone who'd do as they were told no matter what. ..."
"... The Boy Wonder's credentials as a card-carrying New World Order shill haven't really been in question since January this year – when he penned this fact-free Russophobic screed: ..."
"... Owen Jones has lost all credibility with his quest for publicity at any price. He'd sell his granny for whatever he could get if it served his interests. He's a hypocrite and a propagandist opportunist. He doesn't give a fig about the Syrians, the Palestinians, the Yemeni or anyone else but himself. At best he is a worthless egocentric loser who wants to be heard, whatever drivel he is spouting and is a traitor to the socialist/centrist movement, his only loyalty is to himself. Nothing he writes or says can be taken seriously anymore. ..."
So, even though Clinton also isn't progressive, or honest, or sane, and even though she has no
interest in helping the disadvantaged or rebuilding social infrastructure, and even though she
conducted state business on a private email server so no one would be able to tell what nefarious
and illegal, and potentially insanely dangerous things she was doing, and even though she
presided over the Honduras debacle, and even though she authorised and gloated over the illegal
murder of a foreign head of state, and even though she has threatened to "obliterate" Iran and
take the confrontations with Russia and China to new heights that really might result in WW3, we
absolutely have to get behind her because – hello – she isn't Trump. And anyhow if we
get her to be POTUS and make sure there are lots of lovely Democrats in Congress, maybe we can
ask them to please do some of the socialist things Bernie talked about. They will probably say
yes, of course And anyhow, Owen's not sure if he mentioned this but Hillary isn't Trump…
Yes, this is what passes for political analysis when the neolibs are slipping you wads of cash
to endorse the unendorsable, the discredited and the morally broken.
The likes of Jones are paid to surrender their dignity and ethics and pretend this macabre farce
is something called "democracy", and to sell the decaying relics offered up for candidacy as if
they were real choices. That doesn't mean we have to pretend to believe them. If I were a US
citizen I'd take the only truly free choice left and decline to play this game of fake reality
any longer. And if we all did that, the game would be over, wouldn't it.
anonymous, July 27, 2016
I am a 57-year-old U.S. citizen. To disabuse those Europeans who both live in smaller
countries and have the blessing of a parliamentary system, the U.S. system never has been
democratic. It is a show–a very expensive one–that the capitalist class puts on every two
years in order to control the citizenry and to provide a justification for U.S. imperialism.
The citizens are convinced that they don't have to do a thing in order to make the "democracy"
work, and that if they don't like the results that either they are to blame or it is useless
to oppose the system. And outside of Rome, people are told that the Roman way is best because
it is legitimized by the vote of the citizens.
Now, the capitalist class that controls Rome is no longer national, but transnational,
being based on the transnational corporations and financial institutions and enjoying the full
support of the transnational capitalist media. And as the rise of the Alt-Right shows,
the old communist vs. far-right poles have become obsolete with the utter defeat and
assimilation of the Marxist left, and have been replaced with new poles: Globaliists vs.
Antiglobalists.
Donald Trump is an antiglobalist. That's the reason he deserves the full support of all
those who oppose the transnational capitalist class and its institutions, including the EU,
NATO, the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank and the OECD, to name just a few. There are not a
few "progressives" and "leftists" who refuse to support Trump because he doesn't sound
intelligent.
However, the election should not be about appearances but about policies. Obama sounded
intelligent, but his policies all come out of the globalist think tanks, the CIA (his mum's
former employer) and the neocon asylum in Washington. So chose: someone who sounds like a
television personality with great positions, or… well we all know what Clinton stands for.
dahoit, August 7, 2016
I agree totally, Trump is the answer for American recovery.
But the zionists want no part of America First and Israel on its own.
And that is why the MSM and web sites everywhere are in full throat propaganda mode for the
Hell Bitch.
I have never seen anything like this before, and the American people can see the fix is in,
but over our dead bodies, if necessary. I'm pissed to shite at this massive mis and
disinformation bliztkrieg.
It will backfire, just like all their attempts to marginalize him during the primaries.
physicsandmathsrevision, July 26, 2016
He's happy to support Clinton's murderous Jewish racist agenda. All perceived threats to
Israel must be destroyed. Iraq, Libya, Syria and (next up) Iran.
This is where leftist centrists think is a good place to stand in this terrifying age during
which we must endure the brain-dead analysis of commentators who, in truth, are most easily
understood as simple submissives to the establishment will … a will that everyone is afraid to
recognise as being dominated by Jewish money and its globalist anti-commutarian agenda….submissives
to the atomisation of all systems that might afford self-sufficiency to societies, that makes
everybody absolutely dependent on and therefore subservient to international finance and it's
program of enslavement. Are 'gays' a new officer class in this operation?
OffG Editor, July 26, 2016
The phrase "a Jewish racists agenda" should qualify for some award for unintended and
self-defeating irony.
If you can tell me how it clarifies, exlains or expands your point then I'll recognise you
have a valid reason for adding it that isn't racist or intentionally self-sabotaging.
proximity1, July 27, 2016
IF YOU can tell me how the remark is not arguably quite true based on a fair and honest
review of facts, then I'll recognise your valid objection to it.
But, as it seems to me, the simple fact that Clinton's policies aren't solely confined* to the
outrages which the writer describes as a "murderous Jewish racist agenda," does not make that
observation any the less true- does it!?
What, other than that, are you objecting to?
Richard Le Sarcophage, July 28, 2016
Sanders was clearly the sheep-dog, and I won't be surprised if an e-mail showing that
reality appears. He is, in fact, with his total and immediate roll-over, even as the
corruption of the process was categorically exposed by the e-mails, making no pretense
otherwise, spitting in the face of the latest generation of suckers who thought that the
elite plutocracy of the USA could be 'reformed' from within. He was the geriatric Obama,
dispensing more Hopium for the dopes. And when Clinton feigns adoption of Sanders policy, like
not signing the TPP, she is LYING.
Diana, July 28, 2016
Sanders' own campaign called him the "youth whisperer", but sheepdog is accurate. I
have been calling him a sheepdog since 2014 and predicting, correctly, that he would both lose
the nomination and endorse Hillary. This was inevitable since he SAID he would endorse her
from the start of his so-called campaign. Perhaps he did so hoping that the DNC would
play fair, but that goes to show you he's no socialist. A real socialist would have been able
to size up the opposition, not made any gentleman's agreements with them and waged a real
campaign.
rtj1211, July 26, 2016
So far as I'm aware, there must be a mechanism for an Independent to put their name on the
ballot.
If the majority of people in the USA are really thinking that voting for either Hillary or
the Donald is worse than having unprotected sex with an HIV+ hooker, then the Independent
would barely need any publicity. They'd just need to be on the ballot.
Course, the Establishment might get cute and put a far-right nutcase up as 'another
Independent' so as they would have someone who'd do as they were told no matter what.
But until the US public say 'da nada! Pasta! Finito! To hell with the Democrats and the GOP!',
you'll still get the choice of 'let's invade Iran' or 'let's nuke Russia'. You'll get the
choice of giving Israel a blowjob or agreeing to be tied up and have kinky sex with Israel.
You'll get the choice of bailing out Wall Street or bailing out Wall Street AND cutting social
security for the poorest Americans. You'll get the choice of running the USA for the bankers
or running the USA for the bankers and a few multinational corporations.
Oh, they'll have to fight for it, just as Martin Luther King et al had to fight for civil
rights. They may have the odd candidate shot by the CIA, the oil men or the weapons men.
Because that's how US politics works.
But if they don't want a Republican or a Republican-lite, they need to select an independent
and vote for them.
The rest of us? We have to use whatever influence we have to try and limit what they try to do
overseas…….because we are affected by what America does overseas…….
reinertorheit, July 26, 2016
Holy Schmoley, Batman!
The Boy Wonder's credentials as a card-carrying New World Order shill haven't really been
in question since January this year – when he penned this fact-free Russophobic screed:
Perhaps the most laughable thing in it is that he claims to be speaking for "the British Left"
mohandeer, July 26, 2016
Owen Jones has lost all credibility with his quest for publicity at any price. He'd
sell his granny for whatever he could get if it served his interests. He's a hypocrite and a
propagandist opportunist. He doesn't give a fig about the Syrians, the Palestinians, the
Yemeni or anyone else but himself. At best he is a worthless egocentric loser who wants to be
heard, whatever drivel he is spouting and is a traitor to the socialist/centrist movement, his
only loyalty is to himself. Nothing he writes or says can be taken seriously anymore.
"Clinton's false assassination outrage" was launched to suppress damaging new emails rulors the
Clinton goons are behind asssainatin of GNC staffer, who may have been the source of email leaks scandal
articles
Notable quotes:
"... I distinctly recall HRC pacing the 2008 DNC stage, furiously red-faced, making a thinly veiled reference to Obama and the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, then later shouting with great exasperation, "Ären't you going to 'do' anything about this (guy)", using 'do' in the full Mafia 'Trail of 50 Bodies' sense. ..."
"... How can one be so blind not to see that it's Hitlary, who is surrounded by the bloodthirsty CIA people pushing openly for world war? ..."
"... Hillary's false 'The Russians are coming!' is having as widespread and as dire results as anything the Trump has said. Her program is institutional, with the guy 'who used to run the CIA' - right - plugging assassinations himself, and Hillary pledging to continue Obama's program of murdering 'suspects' and everyone surrounding them, or just people who seem to be acting like you'd think 'suspects' might - while viewing them through an 8 or 10,000 mile long drinking straw. ..."
"... Actually, that's not the video where she made both those statements, but rather an after-play pre-rehearsed news event to immediately replace in the viewers' minds what was actually said, and the shocking raw horror of her psychopathy. ..."
"... "We came, we saw, he died, caww, caww, caww!" Remember, she'd just watched Ghadaffi be anally raped to death with a bayonet on closed-circuit satellite feed to the War Room. And that was her psychopathic response. ..."
"... Trump has a huge advantage over his opponents and critics. He's not a bribed, corrupt politician. The Dems and Republicans are all in the pockets of the Owners of the Military/ Industrial/ Security/ Trade/ pro-Israel Complex. They, and their followers, aren't allowed to stray from the Handed-down Wisdom script. It's an insurmountable obstacle for the anti-Trump crowd and b's perspective, (their) outrage (and fake sincerity) only helps Trump, and can only get worse. ..."
"... I suspect that Clinton will have some bad news in terms of leaked emails and ties between state department and Clinton foundation so by November when elected she will be embroiled in legal fights. ..."
"... The effect of all that hysterical shouting and screaming of the Hillary-bots: All members and all supporters of the NRA now know exactly what's on stake. ..."
"... the Charlie Rose interview with ex-CIA chief Morrell who is backing Clinton: Kill Russians and Iranians, threaten Assad,' https://www.rt.com/usa/355291-morrell-kill-russians-clinton/ ..."
"... Today's outing at The Wall Street Journal via ZH: Latest Hillary Email Scandal Reveals State Department "Favors" To Clinton Foundation http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-10/latest-hillary-email-scandal-shows-state-department-favors-clinton-foundation ..."
"... A TIME magazine cover recently depicted a headline "Can Hillary be Stopped". Were the editors of TIME suggesting she be assassinated? The media is merely a propaganda tool used to influence our every thought from buying toothpaste to voting for one of two candidates who will be "empty suits" (unless someone comes along who will resist the proffered script) called "President of the USA" - ..."
"... The internet has been an efficient tool to awaken the people... TPTB (or TPTA) are not adjusting too well. Rather than falsely present a "close race" as is their usual MO, they have persuaded almost 100% of the media to pile on Trump - they think people are too stupid to realize what is going on - same thing with the "polls" - with the "swing states" etc. People are NOT buying it this go round though. Obama's hope & change and subsequent same ol same ol has done alot to "change" people to no longer hope. Then along comes Trump - definitely not one of the establishment. ..."
"... The more the TPTB pile on Trump's every utterance, and the more they IGNORE the blatant crimes of HRC... imho, the more people will be inclined to vote Anybody But Clinton. Again, in my opinion, many Democrats will stay at home on election day. When in our history of elections has a candidate stolen an election and that fact been verified, and the guilty candidate as much as said to the Party "Deal with It"? ..."
"... Apologize for the tirade, but I have been a Democrat (actually a LEFTY) for almost 7 decades... in this election cycle most democrats are gleeful over what they see as the decline of the Republican Party, totally BLIND to the evaporation of the Democratic Party. I will never again work or vote for a Democrat - local or national. ..."
"... "The election will likely be decided on voter turn-out and get-out-the-vote volunteering efforts." If the primaries had been so decided Hillary would not still be in the race. Elections, no less than primaries, are decided by the (corrupt) vote counting. https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2016/06/24/smoking-gun-approximately-15-of-bernies-votes-were-flipped-to-clinton-in-california/ ..."
"... Richard Charnin has documented the mathematical impossibility of the results in quite a few primaries. ..."
"... HAHAHA I think more than half the country understands The Washington Post sells lies, bias and bullshit ..."
"... Killary campaign is unravelling fast imho. Her health problems are all over the net, Assange seems to be hinting at the fact that Seth Rich (goog) was a source, the leaker of DNC mails. (Imho he was a conduit rather than source but who am I.) ..."
"... Who cares if he's clean? What matters is that he's not a war criminal, and can't be bought. That he can't be bought is why the Establishment is so dead-set against him. ..."
"... I can't understand your position, given your interest in Russia. Surely you're aware that Hillary would make Obama's relaunching of the Cold War look like a little skirmish? And she would not rest until Syria is destroyed like Libya. One of her advisers has said that he hopes she will kill Russians and Iranians in Syria; another said that NATO is too concerned about ISIS, and attention should go back to overthrowing the legitimate secular Syrian government. ..."
I distinctly recall HRC pacing the 2008 DNC stage, furiously red-faced, making a thinly veiled
reference to Obama and the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, then later shouting with great exasperation,
"Ären't you going to 'do' anything about this (guy)", using 'do' in the full Mafia 'Trail of 50
Bodies' sense.
The Cgiseb Trotskyist Now has already rewritten that out of history.
Back then HRC was speaking without notes, ...directly from her psychopathic brain. Trump was
clearly reading from a teleprompter, and you can gargle all you want about that, but the intent
was clear, 'crystal', as they say in the halls of Mossad-CIA: 'Do' HRH if she is selected. Who
do?
Then you have to wonder at the cynosure behind the curtain, and their intent, ...which seems
to me to be clearly to foment civil war, resolving the inevitable stall and flat spin death spiral
of QEn 'goosed' and 'juiced' global markets, so the looting can begin.
Chinyowinh made a compelling prediction that Bernie was a ruse to round up the Left and deliver
them with roses and chocolates to Hillary on a silver plate, which he did; and also that Donald
is a ruse to round up Right Wing Rabbinicals, Sovereigntists, Patriots and Crypto-Zionists, and
drive them all off Nut Bar Cliff in a hand basket, which he is.
But that prediction, which seems to have come true, doesn't answer intent. What is the intent
of the Chosen controlling all three houses of government, of course, forming a Holy Zionist Kleptocracy.
Why? What is their goal, besides enslaving all the Earners?
Their Solution is all-out civil war, and killing off all the useless EBC mouths to feed.
Then you have to wonder why nobody has 'done' the cynosures yet, as the bodies pile up.
Why do we let the cynosure control dissent? Why do we let them hector in the arguments?
Why waste a NY nanosecond even talking about this psyop brainwashing stress positioning?
"Those incoherent remarks were certainly off-the-cuff babble without a prepared script. Difficult
to follow even if someone were interested in doing so."
If this is the best that can be said about a candidate, it is not a recommendation. "Vote Trump,
he has most incoherent remarks!"
Most importantly, b correctly observes that Trump, a remarkably successful candidate, uses
highly emotional barely coherent speech (or incoherent, if you are charitably inclined), so to
compete with him one has to use methodical clear arguments and not an ounce of "false outrage".
Just compare with GOP propaganda in the preceding week: there was a deal with Iran allowing access
to "frozen" (de-facto, stolen money that belong to the state of Iran), and as a part of that deal
some money were sent to Iran before restoring banking connections. Clearly, it was a mean trick
on the side of Obama administration, as they are delaying the restoration of normal banking transactions,
but GOP is no in full false outrage about "illegal payment", "treason" and so on.
How about the outrage that Democrats do not use expression "Islamist radical" often enough
(or some other expression).
Emotional and rather base arguments are the specialty of GOP, so it is only fitting to respond
in kind. In a counter-narrative, GOP is bent on supplying every right wing psychopath with a ton
of machine guns and ammo so they can dispatch LGT folks, social workers, abortion clinics, the
public in shopping malls (then and now an armed psychopath is simply, a-politically insane) and
liberal politicians. This is an angle directed at "soccer mom" demographic.
And the situation is a bit scary. American gun nuts are numerous, organized, full of homicidal
fantasies (check what "stopping power" means, one of their favorite phrases) and, quite regrettably,
they have means to realize their fantasies when angry, depressed etc.
The media bias against Trump has reached unprecedented proportions.
I don't know he can be still considered a part of the establishment. Instead of futile speculations about what Trump did not say fueled by the lame-scream media
disinformation people should be talking about this:
How can one be so blind not to see that it's Hitlary, who is surrounded by the bloodthirsty
CIA people pushing openly for world war? Are you high on something bad to claim that Killary will be "slow decline" instead of immediate,
violent confrontation with the anti-empire block?!
Hillary's false 'The Russians are coming!' is having as widespread and as dire results as anything
the Trump has said. Her program is institutional, with the guy 'who used to run the CIA' - right
- plugging assassinations himself, and Hillary pledging to continue Obama's program of murdering
'suspects' and everyone surrounding them, or just people who seem to be acting like you'd think
'suspects' might - while viewing them through an 8 or 10,000 mile long drinking straw.
From the Olympics come the Americans ... booing the silver medal winning Russian, and her American
competitors labeling her a cheater.
There comes also a '
selfie ' from a young South Korean gymnast, with her new friend from North Korea. There is
talk of the USA and its stooges in South Korea making her pay for her 'impure hatred' of the imperially
defined other, her own flesh and blood!
World wide now ... who do love and who do you hate? The Americans? the Koreans? I'm loving
the two young Koreans in their selfie myself. Feel sorry for the twisted American swimmers. Amazing
they can still float with all the thick bile of hatred weighing them down.
Actually, that's not the video where she made both those statements, but rather an after-play
pre-rehearsed news event to immediately replace in the viewers' minds what was actually said,
and the shocking raw horror of her psychopathy.
"We came, we saw, he died, caww, caww, caww!" Remember, she'd just watched Ghadaffi be anally
raped to death with a bayonet on closed-circuit satellite feed to the War Room.
And that was her psychopathic response.
Here is an example. A still shot of Jackie climbing over the back of the limo as a Secret Service
agent rushes up to the limo, and shot from what angle and azimuth, you might ask, since the far
ground was level, except by a telephoto spotting scope.
There are 1000's of examples like this from the 9/11 recasting, that's what the Cgiseb Trotskyist
Now media people are for, to alter reality in real time, or very near to it.
19 Arabs who could not fly a Cessna flew two 757s through fighter jet maneuvers with full tanks
at full payload dropped two skyscrapers for the first time in history, and two other mythical
757s accomplished what Einstein never did: "They just vaporized!"
"Hillary just meant that we need a good Vice President, ...you know, just in case."
Cheney instituted a $5.8B domestic media Black Ops program, that continues to this day, and
both Red Donald and Blue Hillary are owned by the same cartels that control the Ops.
Trump has a huge advantage over his opponents and critics. He's not a bribed, corrupt politician.
The Dems and Republicans are all in the pockets of the Owners of the Military/ Industrial/ Security/
Trade/ pro-Israel Complex. They, and their followers, aren't allowed to stray from the Handed-down
Wisdom script. It's an insurmountable obstacle for the anti-Trump crowd and b's perspective, (their)
outrage (and fake sincerity) only helps Trump, and can only get worse.
He is catering for his core voters who made him win the primary but that group won't get him
elected in the general election.
He needs utter amnesia to change his image till October, and youtube and social media will
make sure he does not get a chance.
I suspect that Clinton will have some bad news in terms of leaked emails and ties between state
department and Clinton foundation so by November when elected she will be embroiled in legal fights.
It would be nice to see the Republican and Democrat Parties split.
Wikipedia on the National Rifle Association of America (NRA):
Membership surpassed 5 million in May 2013.
The effect of all that hysterical shouting and screaming of the Hillary-bots:
All members and all supporters of the NRA now know exactly what's on stake.
Brilliant PR from Trump; simple, effective and costless.
"Clinton's false assassination outrage" has accomplished its intent to suppress damaging emailo
scandal articles on the front pages, and especially viral on the internet is
"The ex-CIA chief, who worked with Clinton while she was secretary of state, told CBS This Morning
co-host Charlie Rose that Iran and Russia should "pay a big price" in Syria – and by that he meant
killing them."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
MSM global has it in the bag for Clinton but over the next weeks we will read the connections
between her office and pay-for-play Clinton Foundation.
Not surprised. Quite revealing the list of CF Board of Directors. There is a descriptor for
this that escapes one's capacity to spell. SO, HRC's Chief of Staff served on the CF Board, (2004-2009) then to State Department and back
to the Board (2013-present).
"Rudy Giuliani went to bat for Donald Trump during the Republican nominee's campaign rally in
Fayetteville, North Carolina"
I listened to Donald Trump's speech in Wilmington and what he said very clearly was that
if Hillary Clinton were elected president she would get to appoint judges to the Supreme Court
and among the other things that they would do to destroy us would be to do away with the Second
Amendment and your right to bear arms.
In my view, Trump was speaking to the ballot box... those who support the 2nd amendment (some
of whom have probably never voted) turning out in November in enough numbers to "stop Hillary"
A TIME magazine cover recently depicted a headline "Can Hillary be Stopped". Were the editors of TIME suggesting she be assassinated? The media is merely a propaganda tool used to influence our every thought from buying toothpaste
to voting for one of two candidates who will be "empty suits" (unless someone comes along who
will resist the proffered script) called "President of the USA" -
The internet has been an efficient tool to awaken the people... TPTB (or TPTA) are not adjusting
too well. Rather than falsely present a "close race" as is their usual MO, they have persuaded
almost 100% of the media to pile on Trump - they think people are too stupid to realize what is
going on - same thing with the "polls" - with the "swing states" etc. People are NOT buying it
this go round though. Obama's hope & change and subsequent same ol same ol has done alot to "change"
people to no longer hope. Then along comes Trump - definitely not one of the establishment.
The more the TPTB pile on Trump's every utterance, and the more they IGNORE the blatant crimes
of HRC... imho, the more people will be inclined to vote Anybody But Clinton. Again, in my opinion,
many Democrats will stay at home on election day. When in our history of elections has a candidate
stolen an election and that fact been verified, and the guilty candidate as much as said to the
Party "Deal with It"?
Apologize for the tirade, but I have been a Democrat (actually a LEFTY) for almost 7 decades...
in this election cycle most democrats are gleeful over what they see as the decline of the Republican
Party, totally BLIND to the evaporation of the Democratic Party. I will never again work or vote
for a Democrat - local or national.
Did you know that exit polls which document that Candidate B is winning are changed (falsified)
to agree with the corrupt counting that holds Candidate C the winner? It's official, nonsecret
policy of the companies that do exit-polling. Richard Charnin has documented the mathematical
impossibility of the results in quite a few primaries.
Killary campaign is unravelling fast imho. Her health problems are all over the net, Assange seems to be hinting at the fact that Seth
Rich (goog) was a source, the leaker of DNC mails. (Imho he was a conduit rather than source but
who am I.)
What is nuts about the personal-server e-mails is that what is important now, as everyone seems
to have copies, is who releases what when! (Assange, FBI, judiciary, others, possibly Trump …)
Some commentators correctly insist the personal server-classified info. etc. is secondary to
the Clinton Foundation Slush Fund, imho simply a bribery-influence-peddling-dark-deals *criminal*
enterprise. That angle seems to be also slowly coming to the surface.
So someone must be blamed and accused! The only candidate is Putin.
However it is Killary who is tied to 'shady' deals with Russia, the Uranium One matter.
Link from NYT, chosen on purpose as *MSM* o-so-supportive of the PTB, sober and prudent supposedly,
mealy-mouthed + covering up, obfuscating liars, according to others.
The cockamamie is strong in these parts, any ol' codswallop is being bought at full market value.
Has any one stopped long enough in spinning gold out of straw to consider candidate Trump's
remarks as reference to the constitution without waving the bloody flag which such reference usually
entails? A reasonable estimate of the percentage of the public having some sound knowledge of
the constitution is vanishingly small outside their familiarity with the second amendment which
would run upwards to 60% or slightly greater. This is the cost of not teaching civics in school.
Trump's reference can only be understood as such, nothing more, nothing less.
The balderdash suggestion that the intent of liquidation was present is a factor only in the
twisted imaginations of a few media manipulators. To give those manipulations any currency is
at great risk (don't believe), give those enhancing currency wide berth (don't trust), don't be
going selling the family milch cow for a handful of magic beans to that lot (run away as fast
as you can). Interesting times to live in - indeed.
It is interesting to observe that in a highly polarized political landscape, like we see currently
in USA (but also in a number of other countries, like Poland and Turkey), there is a wide belief
that the candidate/president/leader of the other side is so awful that if only the public fully
understood this awfulness he/she would become un-electable.
But, alas, it does not happen. In a milder times this was called "teflon effect", the most
obnoxious dirt goes away after a gentle spray with water. But as the adversaries are perceived
in increasingly demonic turns, perhaps a better metaphor is a vampire swiftly shrugging off any
attempt to wound it and kill.
"Wampira można zabić przebijając jego serce drewnianym kołkiem, najlepiej osinowym, albowiem
osika w wierzeniach Słowian miała moc odpędzania złych duchów." "One can kill a vampire by stabbing
it through the heart with a wooden stake, and best of all, made of aspen, as in the Slavic lore,
aspen had the ability to shun away the evil spirits". Vampires actually come from Slavic folk
lore, I was actually surprised that Americans think that any type of wooden stake could be used.
I guess "silver bullet" is a method closer to the imagination and home arsenal of contemporary
Americans.
Thus we can see the quests for a silver bullet or for a stake made of a proper type of wood.
How many times adversaries were cheered by the news that from now on, nobody could elect a Clinton,
or Mr. Trump? Quite notably, e-mails proved to be worthless. You can make a stake out of e-mails
and then drive it through a witch as many times as you want and she does not even need to regenerate:
no traces of a wound can be observed at all! A more sober analysis would show that there are no
records of e-mails dispelling evil spirits, killing vampires etc.
YouTube videos are perhaps a sterner material. But alas, showing the public that Mrs. Clinton
reports a killing with a maniacal glee is a total non-issue in U.S. of A. As of now, it is inconclusive
if it increased or decreased her popularity. Surely she became a darling of neocons and homicidal
retirees from CIA, and there exists a demographic that detests it, but the pluses and minuses
in electoral sense are so small that no one even tried to measure them.
And here comes sober foreign policy of Mr. Trump. He would pick fights only in American interests,
e.g. he does not overly care about Crimea and Latvia, thus kissing good bye to the vote of ethnic
Latvians and Ukrainians, but promises to shoot down Ruskies if they approach our ships and planes
too closely. So, on the credit side, no proxy wars for dubious reasons, on the debit side, WWIII
for no reason whatsoever. Promises to unleash torture programs above and beyond recent non-negligible
American experience also have a reception that is too mixed to assess.
And indeed, periodically we learned about an exhalation of the Trumpian orifice that should
bury his chances once for all. In general, Madam Secretary played that by the book. Mad dog attacks
are done only by proxy. She can make a declaration of virtue: "You will never see me singing praises
of foreign dictators and strongmen who do not love America". And who would not make little modest
requirement, "praise the strongmen only if they love America"? Trump, apparently, for him it suffices
that Putin calls him a genius (although that can be deconstructed as a love for America, and exquisite
taste to boot.) But her attacks remains proper, grammatical and dignified.
Charles Hugh Smith (blogger) is a nice chap, afaik sincere, consistent, with a big following for
long years. Has this perhaps counter-intuitive post up recently. For interest, plurality of opinion,
etc.:
I think that the linked article is a satire. Look at that passage:
Hillary has exhibited the typical flaw of liberal Democrats: fearful of being accused as being
soft on Russia, Syria, Iran, terrorism, etc. or losing whatever war is currently being prosecuted,
liberal Democrats over-compensate by pursuing overly aggressive and poorly planned policies.
The forward-thinking elements of the Deep State are not averse to aggressive pursuit of what they
perceive as American interests, but they are averse to quagmires and policies that preclude successful
maintenance of the Imperial Project.
"Forward-thinking elements of the Deep State". This is really funny. That really calls for
some definition of the Deep State. In USA, it is not that deep, I mean, denizens do not need to
hide in cellars, abandoned mines etc. although some members could have private bomb shelters and
other measures allowing to survive nuclear war. Instead we have a ruling class that socializes
(mostly) in public, where we can discern money people, power people, media people and intelligentsia,
think tanks and obedient sectors of the academia. The few who are "forward thinking" may be found
among FORMER members or acquaintances of the current members, but those, by definition, have no
decision making capacities.
GOP side of the ruling class is split: some would prefer a serial rapist over anyone who does
not believe in decreasing taxes, regulations etc. and Trump, for all his faults, is not THAT bad.
Additionally, an entire generation grew on hating anything related to Clintons. Other have various
grievances. In particular, the Koch brothers who are close to the center of deep power in GOP
side openly bet against Trump, working to assure that GOP will remain in the majority of both
houses of Congress. In that scenario, Clinton will harmless. Importantly, from Koch perspective,
overly energetic support of Trump may cost the majority in the Senate and dangerously weaken it
in the House.
Democratic side of the ruling class is in the minority (at least, within their class) so it
is more cohesive. Whatever minor foibles may be presented by HRC, there are barbarian at the gates
that have to be repelled. As Trump the Barbarian approaches the capital, they recognize the familiar
annoyance and will the their best to stop him.
"Amid the media-hyped furor over Donald Trump's 2nd Amendment comments and Wikileaks' suggestions
about the untimely death of DNC-staffer Seth Rich, we thought it perhaps of note that Democratic
strategist, and CNN host, has publicly called for the "illegal assassination of that son-of-a-bitch"
Julian Assange...
Meet Bob Beckel - Democratic strategist, CNN host (former Fox host), and clear "treasonous, traitor"
Assange-hater...
This strikes us as very dangerous talk... We wonder if he is being questioned or investigated
for such a public and unquestionable demand for someone to be murdered? Forget due process...
"just kill the son of a bitch."
Hitlary is a known absolute, unspeakable evil, there is a guarantee she'll escalate dramatically
the world tensions. She's has done sbsolutely NOTHING positive during her campaign, zilch, nada.
She's MSM's favorite. We have no chance for safe, normal life if she has presidential powers.
Trump, as many others observed, is an enigma, far less risky. Keeps us guessing but has already
inflicted some real damage to the evil empire. MSM has played some really dirty, biased game against
him. If he forfeits on his promises, his voters will tear him into pieces.
Personally I suggest voting AGAINST Killary, NOT for Trump.
There is absolutely no equivalence between these two alternatives.
While the Clinton campaign tries to make everybody believe that Trump was calling for the assassination
of Hillary, Hillary or someone associated very likely assassinated the DNC Wikileaks leaker Seth
Rich a couple of weeks ago. The Russia did the hack is as bogus as the North Korea hacked Sony
story and the most significant whistleblowing has up till now been done by individuals (Manning
and Snowden). The Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was shot in the back with no
motives for his murder as all his belongings were still on him.
Strangely silent is the mainstream media about the fitness of the Democrat candidate.
And causes for concern are growing. Without considering any statements she has made or positions
she has taken, and without presuming to speculate on psychiatric diagnoses, one can point to
certain observations. ..
Videos widely circulated on the internet are, if authentic, very concerning. One shows prolonged,
inappropriate laughter; another, strange head movements. In a third, she appeared momentarily
dazed and confused, and lost her train of thought.
Strangely silent indeed. (I found out about that post from a
piece at Breitbart , which mentions that Clinton's top aid said in an email that she is "often
confused".)
As much as I try to ignore the election travesty playing out, I can't help but notice Hillary
is getting sloppy about her murders. What her and Bill could do in their previous roles they can't
do now without drawing unwanted attention. This is why it's so important to own the press/newz.
This is a psychopathic strategy of yesteryear, yet Hillary's handlers cling to it desperately.
I'm not suggesting Hillary herself controls the press. Her masters are the same masters the NYT,
WaPo, CNN and network newz answer to. Whether you buy into the whole psychopath-this and psychopath-that
conspiracy, you have to admit Hillary (and Obama for that matter) go ballistic about 'leakers'.
Far more so than you would expect ANY normal, powerful person to react. Denial and counter-accusations
are 'normal'. Killing (or wishing the death) of leakers is not.
The usual tactic (for psychopaths) is to immediately blame someone else for something they
themselves are guilty of. Funny how Hillary's camp went nuts over Trump's reference to Second
Amemdment people changing the law. Who the hell would interpret this - literally - as Trump suggesting
they assassinate Hillary? You have to have a seriously sick and twisted mind to see that to begin
with, and then wage a futile campaign of outrage about it in the media. Even Hillary supporters
are starting to ask WTF??
Thanks, I missed the fact that Dr. Susan Berry is the author of that piece. I clicked on her
name and found this:
"Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons,
observes that "strangely silent is the mainstream media about the fitness" for presidential office
of Hillary Clinton. At AAPS' website, Orient summarizes the concerns about Clinton's health that
she says are growing:"
Dr. Orient has a lengthy article there, here are the last three paras:
"... The U.S. has had problems with incompetent leaders in the White House before. Mrs. Woodrow
Wilson (the "First First Lady President") was effectively President for the last year and a
half of her husband's term after he suffered a disabling stroke. She managed to conceal the
seriousness of Wilson's condition for a long time. This was the reason for the 25th amendment
to provide for replacing the President in case of disability.
While the U.S. government knows more and more about our medical histories and other aspects
of our lives, many details about the President are a secret. The press appears to care more
about the tax returns of Republican candidates than the medical records of Democrat Presidents
or candidates. And Secretary Clinton's public appearances have been rather carefully controlled.
Is it conceivable that Hillary supporters would really be voting for Huma Abedin, Clinton's
top aide, or for the First First Husband President, Bill Clinton? The American people are entitled
to know the objective medical facts about Secretary Clinton."
It's proven that Hellary ALREADY STOLE the nomination from Sanders.
Trump has not cheated in the elections so far.
So no, there is no equivalence here.
Indeed. I guess that Western democracy has become so degraded that many people can't grasp
or even notice this difference.
The way the system is rigged has been clear for some time, at least since Bill Clinton's second
term. You have two parties that are more or less identical in terms of the policies they implement,
except on social wedge issues. The candidate of both parties is pre-selected by the establishment.
What was unusual about the current election is that there were insurgencies in both
parties. The Republican insurgency succeeded; the Democratic one failed. That alone is reason
enough to vote for the Republican in this election (something I never even considered doing before).
The Establishment is freaking out about Donald Trump for one reason: they didn't pick him
. The Establishment is freaking out because the natural order of things is that we pick
the presidential candidates and we run the country to serve ourselves, i.e. the financial-political
elites.
Donald Trump's candidacy upsets this neofeudal natural order, and thus he (and everyone
who supports him) is anathema to the Establishment…
Just in case one has forgotten, don't we all know what our "constitutionalist" ammosexuals are
capable of? Who can forget Ammo-on Bundy and all the related fun at
Malheur?
And do you really believe The Donald is clean? What NYC property developer and
builder isn't mobbed up? I'm sure he's slid plenty of envelopes of cash across tables to state
and local politicians. Isn't most of the New York legislature under indictment? Or just the leadership?
Here is Jersey, our official motto is "The Pay-to-Play State."
And of course his penchant for shady business deals and bankruptcies fully vouches for
his undeniable probity.
Yeah, both Hilary and Bill look pretty used up. Spent. For what...? Haha... Great entertainment.
You seppos put on a great show. Would be pretty funny except for the fact you're all holding a
gun to your head and everyone else's.
I enjoy Bill still though. A yank I like. The Secret of Oz and The Money Masters are
essential viewing for those who want to know HOW they rig it. Here is something i posted in the
US Election thread, tho suits here now. Makes a great point about social media figures, the unspoken
polls...(what is the future...or...perhaps the now...?)
@133 Demian
Yeah, Orwellian indeed...
I am in no doubt she is suffering. I remember Trump ripping her a new hole when she failed
to appear with Bernie and O'Malley during a televised debate. Trump questioned her stamina
then, and while Trump draws sell out crowds each day, sometimes twice a day, she is appearing
only 3 times before Oct 9 I think.
You cant hide from what she's got. And she's got it bad.
Haha...Trump, yeah hes a buffoon, but he's more MSM than the MSM itself and is playing it like
a flute... Plus he's causing all sorts of chaos. Destroyed the Republicans already, Dems next.
Who cares if he's clean? What matters is that he's not a war criminal, and can't be bought.
That he can't be bought is why the Establishment is so dead-set against him.
I can't understand your position, given your interest in Russia. Surely you're aware that
Hillary would make Obama's relaunching of the Cold War look like a little skirmish? And she would
not rest until Syria is destroyed like Libya. One of her advisers has said that he hopes she will
kill Russians and Iranians in Syria; another said that NATO is too concerned about ISIS, and attention
should go back to overthrowing the legitimate secular Syrian government.
Doesn't the world have enough instability? It would just get worse under Hillary. Yet you refuse
to acknowledge that Trump is, at the very least, the lesser evil, apparently out of a liberal
smugness and dislike for his populism.
And I don't understand why you can't see this from the Russian point of view. Lavrov keeps
on talking about how the world is becoming multipolar, but that US elites refuse to accept this
new reality. It is obvious that Trump understands and accepts this new reality. That's why US
foreign policy types hate him.
I've long respected
Austin Bay
, and
so I found
this article of his
making the case for voting for Trump to be of interest,
and I think it deserves an audience.
Everyone who reads this blog regularly knows I've struggled long and hard with
the question of whether I can stomach voting for Trump, and I expect I'll probably
struggle with it right up to the moment of truth in the voting booth. But I've
long said that I respect those who will vote for him and are convinced it is the
right thing to do, although I also respect those who will not. There are
arguments-good arguments-to be made on either side.
Bay comes down on the pro-Trump side, and reminds us of some of Trump's good
points:
He won the nomination by boldly and relentlessly addressing difficult
political and social issues that his opponents preferred to either avoid or
carefully finesse. He damned political and media hacks who run down America.
When racist fanatics murdered cops Trump demanded law and order.
Bay feels that NeverTrumpers are fooling themselves as to the effects of their
non-support:
NeverTrumpLand's childish Sore Losers don't thwart the ambitions of
America's all-too-real Captain Crook-Hillary Clinton-and her privileged Clinton
Foundation cronies. Quite the opposite. In GetRealLand Sore Losers become
Crooked Hillary's political tools.
That's why I've never been part of the NeverTrump movement-my reluctance to
facilitate the election of Hillary Clinton. But I realize that many NeverTrumpers
are propelled into that camp by their belief that Trump would not necessarily be
better than Clinton-rather, that he and she would
both
be extremely bad,
just in different ways. Weighing a future that features a known and more
predictable type of badness (Clinton) with a more unknown and unpredictable type
of badness (Trump) would be hard enough, but it's compounded in this election by
what Donald Rumsfeld
might
call
the
unknown unknowns
of
both
of these candidates.
"... broadly, fascism is an alliance of the state, the corporation, and the military, anyone who doesn't see that today needs to go back to their textbooks. ..."
"... The only way they have avoided complete revolt has been endless borrowing to fund entitlements, once that one-time fix plays out the consequences will be apparent. The funding mechanism itself (The Fed) has even morphed into a neo-liberal tool designed to enrich Capital while enslaving Labor with the consequences. ..."
"... The article I cited above in Vox canvasses the opinion of five serious students of fascism, and none of them believe Trump is a fascist. I'd be most interested in knowing what you have been reading. ..."
"... If anything it is merely a very crude descriptive model of the political process. It doesn't define fascism as a particular set of beliefs that make it a distinct political ideology that can be differentiated from other ideologies ..."
"... Indeed by your standard virtually every state that has ever existed has to a greater or lesser extent been "fascist". ..."
"... My objection to imprecise language here isn't merely pedantic. The leftist dismissal of right wing populists like Trump (or increasingly influential European movements like Ukip, AfD, and the Front national) as "fascist" is a reductionist rhetorical device intended to marginalize them by implying their politics are so far outside of the mainstream that they do not need to be taken seriously. ..."
"Fascism" has become the prefered term of abuse applied indiscriminately by the right thinking
to any person or movement which they want to tar as inherently objectionable, and which can therefore
be dismissed without the tedium of actually engaging with them at the level of ideas.
Most of the people who like to throw this word around couldn't give you a coherant definition
of what exactly they understand it to signify, beyond "yuck!!"
In fairness even students of political ideology have trouble teasing out a cosistent system
of beliefs, to the point where some doubt fascism is even a coherent ideology. That hardly excuses
the intellectual vacuity of those who use it as a term of abuse, however.
Precisely 3,248 angels can fit on the head of a pin. Parsing the true definition of "fascism"
is a waste of time, broadly, fascism is an alliance of the state, the corporation, and the
military, anyone who doesn't see that today needs to go back to their textbooks.
As far as the definition "neo-liberalism" goes, yes it's a useful label. But let's keep it
simple: every society chooses how resources are allocated between Capital and Labor. The needle
has been pegged over on the Capital side for quite some time, my "start date" is when Reagan busted
the air traffic union. The hideous Republicans managed to sell their base that policies that were
designed to let companies be "competitive" were somehow good for them, not just for the owners
of the means of production.
The only way they have avoided complete revolt has been endless borrowing to fund entitlements,
once that one-time fix plays out the consequences will be apparent. The funding mechanism itself
(The Fed) has even morphed into a neo-liberal tool designed to enrich Capital while enslaving
Labor with the consequences.
fascism is an alliance of the state, the corporation, and the military, anyone who doesn't
see that today needs to go back to their textbooks
Which textbooks specifically?
The article I cited above in Vox canvasses the opinion of five serious students of fascism,
and none of them believe Trump is a fascist. I'd be most interested in knowing what you
have been reading.
As for your definition of "fascism", it's obviously so vague and broad that it really doesn't
explain anything. To the extent it contains any insight it is that public institutions (the state),
private businesses (the corporation) and the armed forces all exert significant influence on public
policy. That and a buck and and a half will get you a cup of coffee. If anything it is merely
a very crude descriptive model of the political process. It doesn't define fascism as a particular
set of beliefs that make it a distinct political ideology that can be differentiated from other
ideologies (again, see the Vox article for a discussion of some of the beliefs that are arguably
characteristic of fascist movements). Indeed by your standard virtually every state that has ever
existed has to a greater or lesser extent been "fascist".
My objection to imprecise language here isn't merely pedantic. The leftist dismissal of
right wing populists like Trump (or increasingly influential European movements like Ukip, AfD,
and the Front national) as "fascist" is a reductionist rhetorical device intended to marginalize
them by implying their politics are so far outside of the mainstream that they do not need to
be taken seriously. Given that these movements are only growing in strength as faith in traditional
political movements and elites evaporate this is likely to produce exactly the opposite result.
Right wing populism isn't going to disappear just because the left keeps trying to wish it away.
Refusing to accept this basic political fact risks condemning the left rather than "the fascists"
to political irrelevance.
Even many center-left outlets barely touched on the massive mission creep. To give some
perspective, Slate, Mother Jones, and Buzzfeed News all
ran more stories about Trump's dust-up with an infant than they did on what was effectively
the start of a new war. ABC
World News Tonight mentioned the Libyan air strikes for only 20 seconds, 13 minutes into
the show, and NBC
Nightly News didn't mention the air strikes at all. The president's announcement that
the United States is bombing a new country has become entirely banal.
Stiglitz: AUG 5, 2016 8
Globalization and its New Discontents
NEW YORK – Fifteen years ago, I wrote a little book, entitled Globalization
and its Discontents, describing growing opposition in the developing world
to globalizing reforms. It seemed a mystery: people in developing countries
had been told that globalization would increase overall wellbeing. So why
had so many people become so hostile to it?
Now, globalization's opponents in the emerging markets and developing
countries have been joined by tens of millions in the advanced countries.
Opinion polls, including a careful study by Stanley Greenberg and his associates
for the Roosevelt Institute, show that trade is among the major sources
of discontent for a large share of Americans. Similar views are apparent
in Europe.
How can something that our political leaders – and many an economist
– said would make everyone better off be so reviled?
One answer occasionally heard from the neoliberal economists who advocated
for these policies is that people are better off. They just don't know it.
Their discontent is a matter for psychiatrists, not economists.
But income data suggest that it is the neoliberals who may benefit from
therapy. Large segments of the population in advanced countries have not
been doing well: in the US, the bottom 90% has endured income stagnation
for a third of a century. Median income for full-time male workers is actually
lower in real (inflation-adjusted) terms than it was 42 years ago. At the
bottom, real wages are comparable to their level 60 years ago.
The effects of the economic pain and dislocation that many Americans
are experiencing are even showing up in health statistics. For example,
the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, this year's Nobel laureate, have
shown that life expectancy among segments of white Americans is declining.
Things are a little better in Europe – but only a little better.
Branko Milanovic's new book Global Inequality: A New Approach for the
Age of Globalization provides some vital insights, looking at the big winners
and losers in terms of income over the two decades from 1988 to 2008. Among
the big winners were the global 1%, the world's plutocrats, but also the
middle class in newly emerging economies. Among the big losers – those who
gained little or nothing – were those at the bottom and the middle and working
classes in the advanced countries. Globalization is not the only reason,
but it is one of the reasons.
Under the assumption of perfect markets (which underlies most neoliberal
economic analyses) free trade equalizes the wages of unskilled workers around
the world. Trade in goods is a substitute for the movement of people. Importing
goods from China – goods that require a lot of unskilled workers to produce
– reduces the demand for unskilled workers in Europe and the US.
This force is so strong that if there were no transportation costs, and
if the US and Europe had no other source of competitive advantage, such
as in technology, eventually it would be as if Chinese workers continued
to migrate to the US and Europe until wage differences had been eliminated
entirely. Not surprisingly, the neoliberals never advertised this consequence
of trade liberalization, as they claimed – one could say lied – that all
would benefit.
The failure of globalization to deliver on the promises of mainstream
politicians has surely undermined trust and confidence in the "establishment."
And governments' offers of generous bailouts for the banks that had brought
on the 2008 financial crisis, while leaving ordinary citizens largely to
fend for themselves, reinforced the view that this failure was not merely
a matter of economic misjudgments.
In the US, Congressional Republicans even opposed assistance to those
who were directly hurt by globalization. More generally, neoliberals, apparently
worried about adverse incentive effects, have opposed welfare measures that
would have protected the losers.
But they can't have it both ways: if globalization is to benefit most
members of society, strong social-protection measures must be in place.
The Scandinavians figured this out long ago; it was part of the social contract
that maintained an open society – open to globalization and changes in technology.
Neoliberals elsewhere have not – and now, in elections in the US and Europe,
they are having their comeuppance.
Globalization is, of course, only one part of what is going on; technological
innovation is another part. But all of this openness and disruption were
supposed to make us richer, and the advanced countries could have introduced
policies to ensure that the gains were widely shared.
Instead, they pushed for policies that restructured markets in ways that
increased inequality and undermined overall economic performance; growth
actually slowed as the rules of the game were rewritten to advance the interests
of banks and corporations – the rich and powerful – at the expense of everyone
else. Workers' bargaining power was weakened; in the US, at least, competition
laws didn't keep up with the times; and existing laws were inadequately
enforced. Financialization continued apace and corporate governance worsened.
Now, as I point out in my recent book Rewriting the Rules of the American
Economy, the rules of the game need to be changed again – and this must
include measures to tame globalization. The two new large agreements that
President Barack Obama has been pushing – the Trans-Pacific Partnership
between the US and 11 Pacific Rim countries, and the Transatlantic Trade
and Investment Partnership between the EU and the US – are moves in the
wrong direction.
The main message of Globalization and its Discontents was that the problem
was not globalization, but how the process was being managed. Unfortunately,
the management didn't change. Fifteen years later, the new discontents have
brought that message home to the advanced economies.
"... Hillary is definitely both a staunch dyed-in-the-wool neocon ("We came, we saw, he died", anti-Russia stance, appointment of Kagan and Nuland, her role in Syria, etc.) and "born again" ( deviating from Goldwater platform after marriage) neoliberal much like Slick Willie was/is. ..."
"... "long ago, conservatives decided to harness racial resentment to sell right-wing economic policies to working-class whites, especially in the South." ..."
"... Isn't the corollary to this that the Clintons harnessed racial resentment to sell neo-lib economic policies to poor blacks, especially in the South? ..."
"... Classist elitism, cultural chauvinism, standing pat in the economic center, bland words about small plans, neoconservative foreign policy & recruiting of capital-class Republicans are back in the driver's seat. This is the Democratic Party once again without a Sanders campaign to worry about. ..."
"... What strikes me as telling and important is that the New York Times was reporting on conservatives or neocons moving to support Hillary Clinton as early as July 2014. The sense being that Clinton was, in particular, a foreign policy conservative: ..."
"... Dismantling of Orthodox hegemony in east Europe.... Hapsburg at the neocon rise. Regime change in Moscow was in the strategy when Strobe Talbot brought in Mrs. Kagan in 1993 and Bill Clinton started arming Croatia and backing separatists in Bosnia and Kosovo. ..."
"... Clinton voted for universal war and then as SecState implemented it bad and hard. ..."
Check out Clintons in Serbia, who is Victoria Nuland, and on whose advisory committee is her husband
Robert Kagan?
You have a very limited and benign view of neocon and neoliberals.
Likbez said in reply to ilsm... , -1
An excellent comment. I am with you ilsm --
Hillary is definitely both a staunch dyed-in-the-wool neocon ("We came, we saw, he died",
anti-Russia stance, appointment of Kagan and Nuland, her role in Syria, etc.) and "born again"
( deviating from Goldwater platform after marriage) neoliberal much like Slick Willie was/is.
Anybody who tried to deny this denies the reality.
Police state?
Wall st sponsors
Debt reduction with stimulus?
Immigration, what demalarkey is that?
Energy is happening with tech.
Neocon, just war is pushing Putin around! She negotiated with Qaddafi! She and Kerry on
Assad, Benghazi shipping point to ISIS in 2012.
Clinton doesn't need to move to the center to beat Trump, since she is already in the center.
She's picking up a number of disaffected Republicans already without doing anything. Trump and
his campaign are a circus. Her advisers are probably recommending that she remain inoffensively
silent and allow Trump to continue eating his own tail.
Meanwhile, every result one would realistically have expected from the Democrats disposing
of the Sanders campaign has indeed come to pass. Classist elitism, cultural chauvinism, standing
pat in the economic center, bland words about small plans, neoconservative foreign policy & recruiting
of capital-class Republicans are back in the driver's seat. This is the Democratic Party once
again without a Sanders campaign to worry about.
ilsm -> Dan Kervick... ,
Yup!
anne : ,
What strikes me as telling and important is that the New York Times was reporting on conservatives
or neocons moving to support Hillary Clinton as early as July 2014. The sense being that Clinton
was, in particular, a foreign policy conservative:
Are they getting ready to ally themselves with Hillary Clinton?
ilsm -> anne... ,
Dismantling of Orthodox hegemony in east Europe.... Hapsburg at the neocon rise. Regime change
in Moscow was in the strategy when Strobe Talbot brought in Mrs. Kagan in 1993 and Bill Clinton
started arming Croatia and backing separatists in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Peggy Noonan: Trump 'doesn't have the skill set needed now' http://washex.am/2aAIwqk via @DCExaminer
- Aug 5
Conservative Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan said
Donald Trump doesn't have what it takes to win the White House.
In her latest column, Noonan wrote that the celebrity businessman has been unable to "take
yes for an answer" from the voters who made him the Republican presidential nominee.
"This is what became obvious, probably fatally so: Mr. Trump is not going to get serious
about running for president," she wrote. "He does not have a second act, there are no hidden
depths, there will be no 'pivot.' It is not that he is willful or stubborn, though he may be,
it's that he doesn't have the skill set needed now - discretion, carefulness, generosity, judgment.
There's a clueless quality about him."
After the GOP convention two weeks ago, Trump enjoyed a slight bump in national and some state-level
polls against Hillary Clinton, only to suffer a series of setbacks caused by his own controversial
comments.
As a result, his numbers have fallen in more recent polls and Clinton's have risen in light
of intense media scrutiny on Trump.
"All the damage done to him this week was self-inflicted," Noonan wrote. "The arrows he's taken
are arrows he shot.
I think this week marked a certain coming to terms with where the election is going. Politics
is about trends and tendencies. The trends for Donald Trump are not good, and he tends not to
change.
All the damage done to him this week was self-inflicted. The arrows he's taken are arrows he
shot. We have in seven days witnessed his undignified and ungrateful reaction to a Gold Star family;
the odd moment with the crying baby; the one-on-one interviews, which are starting to look like
something he does in the grip of a compulsion, in which Mr. Trump expresses himself thoughtlessly,
carelessly, on such issues as Russia, Ukraine and sexual harassment; the relitigating of his vulgar
Megyn Kelly comments from a year ago; and, as his fortunes fell, his statement that he "would
not be surprised" if the November election were "rigged." Subject to an unprecedented assault
by a sitting president who called him intellectually and characterologically unfit for the presidency,
Mr Trump fired back - at Paul Ryan and John McCain.
The mad scatterbrained-ness of it was captured in a Washington Post interview (*) with Philip
Rucker in which five times by my count-again, the compulsion-Mr. Trump departed the meat of the
interview to turn his head and stare at the television. On seeing himself on the screen: "Lot
of energy. We got a lot of energy." Minutes later: "Look at this. It's all Trump all day long.
That's why their ratings are through the roof." He's all about screens, like a toddler hooked
on iPad. ...
*- Donald Trump's Washington Post interview
should make Republicans panic http://wpo.st/Q4gq1
ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs... , -1
"Skill set" like the "set" that has the US squander $2T in war spending, endure huge casualties,
inflict massive collateral damage and is worse off than when Clinton voted for all of it.
When the Donald calls a general or administration official inept he means the above.
ilsm -> sanjait... , -1
One so easily conned not allowed in Oval Office.
Demalarkey. Crooked Hillary was conned like Colin Powell, the great equivocators.
Her vote was the switch that turned it all on!
Did she ever give a speech anywhere saying the Overseas Contingency Operations appropriation
were bad? Has she ever proposed ending it all? Send links.
But worse she equivocates about marked e-mails which at best show ignorance, and expects ignorance
from the audience.
Which is all right with the administration (DoJ) flying cover for her.
ilsm -> EMichael... , -1
HEH!
Clinton voted for universal war and then as SecState implemented it bad and hard.
"... It's the rigging of our economy – the increasingly tight nexus between wealth and political power. Big money has been buying political clout to get laws and regulations that make big money even bigger." ..."
"... Odds are that Clinton, now worth $100 million due to public service, will milk the system for all its worth, becoming the first to become a billionaire via public service. Reckoning? LOL! ..."
"... Aren't we used to the robber barons running the joint, yet? Clinton endorsed by the in crowd, including water boarders. ..."
"... Hillary is so well qualified to send everything to Wall St and get US into regime change in the former Soviet Union see how well it worked in Iraq, Afghanistan Libya... ..."
"... Logisticians do planning with the ops guys, we are the guys that tell "strategists": "you don't have transport etc to get there..." Been doing a bit of 'thought exercising' on the fighting for Estonia under defending small countries is "just war" meme. I could see the Clintons installing a fascist in Talinn like they did in Kyiv....... ..."
"... All because the democrats went from the party of perpetual small conventional profitable wars against third world guerillas and goatherds to taking on Russia run by evil. ..."
"... Trump did not have Qaddafi or anyone else done! ..."
Robert Reich--Democratic Party needs to start reckoning with reality, too.
"In a Gallup poll taken in mid-July, before the conventions, 82 percent said America was
on the wrong track. In an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll just before that, 56 percent said
they preferred a candidate who would bring sweeping changes to the way the government functioned,
no matter how unpredictable those changes might be.
The major issue the public is reacting to isn't terrorism or racism. We didn't see these
numbers after 9/11. We didn't even get these sorts of responses in the late 1960s, when American
cities were torn by riots and when the Vietnam War was raging.
It's the rigging of our economy – the increasingly tight nexus between wealth and political
power. Big money has been buying political clout to get laws and regulations that make big
money even bigger."
Odds are that Clinton, now worth $100 million due to public service, will milk the system
for all its worth, becoming the first to become a billionaire via public service. Reckoning?
LOL!
ilsm -> JohnH...
Aren't we used to the robber barons running the joint, yet? Clinton endorsed by the in crowd,
including water boarders.
Hillary is so well qualified to send everything to Wall St and get US into regime change in
the former Soviet Union see how well it worked in Iraq, Afghanistan Libya....
I am betting on nuclear winter before climate disaster.
ilsm -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron... , -1
Logisticians do planning with the ops guys, we are the guys that tell "strategists": "you
don't have transport etc to get there..." Been doing a bit of 'thought exercising' on the fighting
for Estonia under defending small countries is "just war" meme. I could see the Clintons installing
a fascist in Talinn like they did in Kyiv.......
Russia moves in to "protect" Russian nationals (the reason for NATO was so Russia would
not move in to West Germany to protect socialists from US puppets).
The US' deployable armor brigade arrives to kasserns smoldering, gets chewed up and the B-61
start falling.
You could model a nuclear exchange that stops with a Red Army tank division irradiated.....
I see it going 99 Red Balloons.
All because the democrats went from the party of perpetual small conventional profitable wars
against third world guerillas and goatherds to taking on Russia run by evil.
ilsm -> ilsm... , -1
Then the demalarkey* comes up with: if US don't start WW III the small countries will get their
own nukes like Israel............
Not much different than US holding on to the button, but throws out a new range of MAD thought
exercises.
*"Oh my!! Trump will let everyone get nukes!"
ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs... , -1
I do not want crooked Hillary followed by a junior military officer with the "football". What
she knows about operation security and who advises her. Is quite troubling.
"... It makes me wonder if we ought not to be discussing Clinton in the frame of "The Ego Candidate". It's tempting to characterize Trump for that label, given his boastfulness which does seem to be part of his character. But for all that, Trump comes across to me as mostly law-abiding, and someone who recognizes and observes limits. Clinton neither recognizes or observes anything of the kind, and she is limited only by what she cannot get away with. ..."
Sayyyyyy…..didn't someone here theorize, right after the news broke that
the DNC's emails had been hacked, and Hillary blamed the Russians so people
would forget what she and the rest of the coven did to Sanders, that the
actual attacker was more likely someone much closer to home?
Enter the
Disgruntled US Intelligence Worker . According to US government whistleblower
William Binney, somebody in the NSA released Hillary's and the DNC's emails,
infuriated at Teflon Hillary's non-stick escape from any accountability
for her hijinks.
The headline suggests he knows, but the body of the story suggests he
is just speculating, though. But it raises a valid point – the NSA probably
has all those emails, including the 30,000 she deleted on the grounds that
they were 'personal'.
At some point between now and November, is anyone in the media going
to put the questions about the likelihood of NSA possession of, and therefore
ease of FBI access thereto, the "missing" emails to Director Comey? Or will
TPTB just smile grimly and pray no further leaks arrive to shatter the Narnian
alternative reality world they inhabit?
What an excellent article, quite a bit more authoritative than the one I
cited although it helpfully offers the same source, and it shapes some more
pieces of the puzzle which now make more sense. The compromising of intelligence
personnels' identities was something that, to the best of my knowledge,
was never discussed in any stories on her email peccadilloes. Intelligence
agencies quite properly despise anyone who casually blows the cover of its
operatives. It makes me wonder if we ought not to be discussing Clinton
in the frame of "The Ego Candidate". It's tempting to characterize Trump
for that label, given his boastfulness which does seem to be part of his
character. But for all that, Trump comes across to me as mostly law-abiding,
and someone who recognizes and observes limits. Clinton neither recognizes
or observes anything of the kind, and she is limited only by what she cannot
get away with.
Thanks for posting that revealing corroborative piece.
From a pro-Russian blog... Applebaum is essentially a tool...
Notable quotes:
"... While Applebaum does not think that Trump has a direct relationship to Putin, the American Presidential Candidate has been using lines from Russian propaganda, which suggests that he is probably getting the information from his staff; ..."
"... I couldn't watch it; as soon as I saw Applebaum's horsey face come up on the screen I felt queasy and had to turn it off. I did stay long enough to hear her characterize Manafort's work for Viktor Yanukovych as perhaps the defining moment in his career, working for Ukrainian oligarchs. ..."
"... Apfelbaum's hatred of Trump, and that of Atlanticists, stems from the fact that Trump does not share the Atlanticists' aggressive foreign policy agenda. The founding tenet and pillar of Atlanticism – is implacable hostility to Russia. Trump deviates from that, hence the reason why Trump is so loathed and viewed as a heretic by Atlanticists. ..."
"... Well, she wrote a book about the gulags which received 'critical acclaim'. She is married to Radislaw Sikorski, onetime Polish Foreign Minister and who was once under consideration for NATO Secretary-General, and who is now a member of Petro Poroshenko's 'Foreign Advisory Council'. She hates Russia as if she were a native Pole. And that's…about it. She loved Georgie Bush enough to bear his children if he had asked, and in general she is a big fan of America kicking sand in everybody's face all around the world and making them eat dirt with its big, powerful military. As I said, she is a diehard conservative – but these are strange times, and the Republican candidate has refused to say how much he loves Israel and hates Russia, while there is by far a better chance that America will return to its ass-kicking ways under Hillary Clinton, so that's the way Annie is leaning this time around. ..."
"... Not to mention the numerous sources of information on how Israel influences US foreign policy and how often Satanyahu flies to Washington to lecture O'Bomber on what he's supposed to do. ..."
"Trump is surrounded by people close to Russia in a way that is very unusual not only
in American politics but in American business as well;"
While Applebaum does not think that Trump has a direct relationship to Putin, the American
Presidential Candidate has been using lines from Russian propaganda, which suggests that he is
probably getting the information from his staff;
Applebaum says that it is rare for another country to influence U.S. politics, and Trump's
campaign was only interested in the Ukraine platform and not much else;
DNC hack: "the use of illicitly stolen information to affect and shape politics is something
that the Kremlin has been working on for a decade."
"He is surrounded by people close to Russia in a way that is very unusual not only in American
politics but in American business as well," says Anne Applebaum, an award-winning author and Washington
Post columnist, when speaking about Donald Trump and his entourage. Paul Manafort and Carter Page
, two individuals who manage and advise Trump, both have ties to Russia.
While Applebaum does not think that Trump has a direct relationship to Putin, the American
Presidential Candidate has been using lines from Russian propaganda, which suggests that he is
probably getting the information from his staff.
"He seems to have a special interest in Russia and Ukraine. I'm guessing because of who's around
him." Applebaum says that it is rare for another country to influence U.S. politics, and Trump's
campaign was only interested in the Ukraine platform and not much else.
Applebaum also touches upon the recent DNC hacks and says that all fingers point at Russia:
"the use of illicitly stolen information to affect and shape politics is something that the Kremlin
has been working on for a decade."
Hromadske's Nataliya Gumenyuk spoke to Anne Applebaum, award-winning author and Washington
Post columnist via Skype on July 31st, 2016.
I couldn't watch it; as soon as I saw Applebaum's horsey face come up on the screen I felt queasy
and had to turn it off. I did stay long enough to hear her characterize Manafort's work for Viktor
Yanukovych as perhaps the defining moment in his career, working for Ukrainian oligarchs.
Somebody better let Tony "shirtfront" Abbott know that he might be establishing the defining
moment in his career. Because that's what he's doing; working for Ukrainian oligarchs. And Applebaum
did not seem to intend it as a compliment. Mustn't forget Tony "War Criminal" Blair, or Anders
"Fogh of War" Fogh Rasmussen.
The Democrats and their supporters – and we should remember there was a time when Annie Applebaum
would not cross the street to spit on Hillary Clinton if she burst into flames, because Annie
is as Republican as they come – have to keep up the noise about Putin hacking the DNC so that
voters do not ask, "Yeah, but is the information that was released true? And why do political
figures have a right to hide that stuff from us? Don't they work for us?"
Apfelbaum is far more restrained in this interview, than she is on her twitter feed and her Washington
Post column. Where she repeatedly insinuates that Trump is a Russian agent, plant, spy or a "Siberian
candidate".
Tony "the Geordie" Abbott, Tony "JP Morgan" Blair and Anders Fogh "cartoons" Rasmussen are
all good and noble Atlanticist, therefore one cannot equate them with Paul Manafort – a professional
influence peddler. This how Apfelbaum would rationalise the difference and draw a distinction.
Whether Apfelbaum is a Republican or Democrat, I don't know. She has worked outside the US
most of her career and adult life, her interests are foreign affairs. And when it comes to foreign
policy, the two US parties pursue exactly the same policies and objectives – that of expanding
US power and maintaining US ascendency.
Apfelbaum's hatred of Trump, and that of Atlanticists, stems from the fact that Trump does
not share the Atlanticists' aggressive foreign policy agenda. The founding tenet and pillar of
Atlanticism – is implacable hostility to Russia. Trump deviates from that, hence the reason why
Trump is so loathed and viewed as a heretic by Atlanticists.
Trump's opinions and statements on Russia, Ukraine, Crimea and NATO has made Atlanticists apoplectic
– as any US-Russia detente or rapprochement would ruin the careers of countless Atlanticist DC
policy wonks, hacks, academics, and propagandists.
Well, she wrote a book about the gulags which received 'critical acclaim'. She is married to Radislaw
Sikorski, onetime Polish Foreign Minister and who was once under consideration for NATO Secretary-General,
and who is now a member of Petro Poroshenko's 'Foreign Advisory Council'. She hates Russia as
if she were a native Pole. And that's…about it. She loved Georgie Bush enough to bear his children
if he had asked, and in general she is a big fan of America kicking sand in everybody's face all
around the world and making them eat dirt with its big, powerful military. As I said, she is a
diehard conservative – but these are strange times, and the Republican candidate has refused to
say how much he loves Israel and hates Russia, while there is by far a better chance that America
will return to its ass-kicking ways under Hillary Clinton, so that's the way Annie is leaning
this time around.
Reformed Judaism = women rabbis, gender equality, women and girls allowed to read Torah, bat mitzvah
celebrations, secular and social justice warrior values, being able to eat food prepared by non-Jews
" … Applebaum says that it is rare for another country to influence U.S. politics, and Trump's
campaign was only interested in the Ukraine platform and not much else …"
I guess Annie Apples doesn't read DailyCaller.com much, does she?
Not to mention the numerous sources of information on how Israel influences US foreign policy
and how often Satanyahu flies to Washington to lecture O'Bomber on what he's supposed to do.
"... Anyone not willing to jump to Hillary is a "Bernie Bro"-not willing to vote for anyone but Bernie. Why? Because, Trump. Forget the will of the people, the democratic process, or "voting one's conscience"-Trump trumps all hesitation. We simply cannot afford to give Trump any chance of winning. ..."
For months now, the Hillary campaign has vigorously argued that Bernie supporters have to fall in
line to support the Democratic National Committee's favorite candidate.
Anyone not willing to jump to
Hillary is a "Bernie Bro"-not willing to vote for anyone but Bernie. Why? Because, Trump. Forget the
will of the people, the democratic process, or "voting one's conscience"-Trump trumps all hesitation.
We simply cannot afford to give Trump any chance of winning.
After a week in which Donald Trump insulted babies and their mothers and war heroes and their
families, and threw in fire marshals for good measure, the scariest thing to come out of his team
of thugs and political mercenaries is this: the suggestion that civil unrest could follow if he's
denied the presidency.
When the Supreme Court handed George W. Bush the White House in 2000 even though he lost the
popular vote, Al Gore graciously conceded and faded away. When Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama
four years ago although his internal polls showed a Republican triumph, he congratulated the winner
and went off to rediscover his many grandchildren.
Despite party-machine manipulation and considerable voting of the dead, the American institution
that produces a peaceful transfer of power has survived.
But this year, facing a likely trouncing in November, Trump has signaled that he will try to
bring down our democracy with him. His overlooked comment - "I'm afraid the election is going
to be rigged" - is the opening move in a scheme to delegitimize the outcome.
Because Trump is consistently barbaric and such a prolific liar, it's hard to sustain outrage
over any one of his serial scandals. But his pre-emptive attack on the electoral process is very
troubling.
To understand what Trump is up to, listen to his doppelgänger, the veteran political operative
Roger Stone. He will say things that even Trump will not say, usually as a way to allow Trump
to later repeat some variant of them.
It was Stone who called a CNN commentator a "stupid Negro" and accused the Gold Star parents
of Capt. Humayun Khan of being Muslim Brotherhood agents. And it was Stone who threatened to give
out the hotel room numbers of unsupportive Republicans at the party convention, the better for
the Trumpian mob to find them.
He tastes the food for the king to make sure it's not poison. If it doesn't kill Roger Stone,
it will not kill Donald Trump.
Picking up on Trump's rigged-election meme, Stone told a right-wing news outlet that the electoral
fix was already in: "The government will be shut down if they attempt to steal this and swear
Hillary in." The outcome is fair only if Trump wins.
"If there's voter fraud, this election will be illegitimate, the election of the winner will
be illegitimate, we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience," he said.
It would be laughable if the campaign were simply laying down the grand excuse for the label
that will follow the tyrant from Trump Tower after Nov. 8 - loser. But Trump has crossed all barriers
of precedent and civility, from waging an openly racist campaign to loose talk about nuclear weapons.
He has challenged the independence of the judiciary system, and called for a religious test for
entry into this nation. With this latest tactic, he's trying to destabilize the country itself
after he's crushed.
Let's talk about the basis for his sore loser uprising - the gaming of the system. Trump's
casinos were rigged, as are all gambling parlors, in favor of the house. Italian soccer is rigged.
But there is virtually no evidence of modern American elections being fixed.
Studying national elections from 2000 to 2014, and looking at 834 million ballots cast, Justin
Levitt of Loyola Law School found a total of 31 instances of credible voter fraud. Yes, 31. The
Bush administration, after a five-year investigation concluding in 2007, found no evidence of
any organized effort to skew federal elections. A federal judge in Wisconsin found that "virtually
no voter impersonation occurs."
Trump's evidence? "I just hear things and I just feel it." Yeah, he hears things. Like Russia
not actually taking over Crimea. Like President Obama not being an American citizen. Like the
N.F.L. writing him an imaginary letter. "The voter ID situation has turned out to be a very unfair
development," he said this week. "We may have people vote 10 times."
He's right about the unfairness of voter identification, but not in the way he means it. As
a slew of recent court rulings have shown, Republican-led efforts to deny the vote to millions
of citizens has rigged the system against the poor, the disabled, ethnic minorities. A voter-
suppression law in North Carolina targeted blacks "with almost surgical precision," an appeals
court ruled.
Nationwide rigging, though difficult to do in a system with more than 9,000 voting jurisdictions,
is more likely to come from Russian efforts at hacking voting machines, given Vladimir Putin's
apparent attempt to tip things in favor of his fellow authoritarian, the unstable Donald Trump.
With his inability to process basic information, Trump has gone down this road before. After
the 2012 contest, which Romney lost by nearly five million votes, Trump said: "This election is
a total sham and travesty. We are not a democracy." The last statement, judging by the groundwork
he's doing for this November, looks more like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"Going forward it's like a hundred-to-one advantage, Clinton over Trump...In the current US
presidential race, there is no real contest at all in terms of support by the oligarchs - and
their support tends to be decisive."
But then there's this:
Julian Assange Special: Do Wikileaks Have the Email That'll Put Clinton in Prison?
...From 23rd July - WikiLeaks Just Revealed Mainstream Media Works Directly With Hillary, DNC http://theantimedia.org/wikileaks-media-dnc-hillary/ One of the most damning findings of the leak is the fact Clinton and the DNC have worked closely
with, manipulated, and bullied media outlets.
No doubt the Anti-Trump sentiment is rampant in the MSM and now even a good deal of alternate
media I pick up... but any cursory glance at Hilary vs Trump youtube viewing numbers would give
anyone a fair idea of the state of play. Trumps any publicity is good publicity will eventually
pay dividends.
"... Some powerful figures clearly want any winding down of this 'new' Cold War dead in its tracks. Trump's questioning of the hostilities with Russia, of the purpose of NATO, and of the costs to the US of it being a global hegemon have turned them cold. ..."
"... Especially, if those who reject it, and who opt to stay out of the globalised order, find that they can so do – and emerge empowered and with their influence enhanced? If the political 'rules-based order' does erode, what then will be the future for the inter-connected, and presently shaky, US-led, global financial order and governance?" ..."
""Some powerful figures clearly want any winding down
of this 'new' Cold War dead in its tracks. Trump's questioning of the hostilities with
Russia, of the purpose of NATO, and of the costs to the US of it being a global hegemon
have turned them cold.
Does he (Trump) not understand, (these 'ancien régime' figures seem to say,) that
rapprochement and entente with Putin now, could bring the whole structure tumbling down?
It could collapse America's entire foreign policy? Without a clear Russian 'threat' (the
'threat' being now a constant refrain in the US Beltway), what meaning has NATO? – and
without NATO, why should Europe stay "on side, and [do] the right thing". And if
Damascus, Moscow and Tehran succeed in emerging with political credit and esteem from
the Syria conflict, what price then, the US-led "rules-based" global order?
Especially,
if those who reject it, and who opt to stay out of the globalised order, find that they
can so do – and emerge empowered and with their influence enhanced? If the political
'rules-based order' does erode, what then will be the future for the inter-connected,
and presently shaky, US-led, global financial order and governance?"
"... The Sanders' campaign, like the Obama phenomenon before it, does not offer a program or strategic direction for addressing the current crisis and contradictions of Western capitalist societies. Instead, it is an expression of the moral and political crisis of Western radicalism. This crisis – which is reflective of the loss of direction needed to inform vision, and fashion a creative program for radical change – is even more acute in the U.S. than Western Europe. Yet, what unites both radical experiences is a tacit commitment to Eurocentrism and the assumptions of normalized white supremacy. ..."
"... I don't like Trump's shrillness, and I don't like Baraka's either. He's too fast and loose with accusations of white supremacy. ..."
"... As the author of this posts makes clear, against Trump are only his words, but against Hillary are her actions. In that sense, it is no contest: Hillary loses. ..."
"... It's Putin we need to worry about. Putin is in league with Space Aliens and they are plotting to destroy the American 21st Century. The Space Aliens have leased a Weather Control Machine to Putin and Putin has set the thermostat on high! Worse yet, it's a 100 year lease. It will last the entire century! ..."
"... Well written! I grow tired of westerners' talk about how peace loving they are, as if by just saying you are for peace makes it so. It's perfectly clear what Clinton represents and how anti-peace she is. Yet so many westerners, especially outside the USA, would choose Clinton while also believing how much they support peace in the world. Thus Trump becomes a convenient excuse to vote for more endless war. Very easy to turn him into the nuclear bomb Prez as one can then support Clinton and claim to be for peace. ..."
"... As I write this it is clearer to me what a rare gem Bernie coulda been. ..."
"... Jingoism; assertions that the 21st century will be the "American Century"; odes to "American Exceptionalism"; ..."
The Sanders' campaign, like the Obama phenomenon before it,
does not offer a program or strategic direction for addressing the
current crisis and contradictions of Western capitalist societies.
Instead, it is an expression of the moral and political crisis of
Western radicalism. This crisis – which is reflective of the loss
of direction needed to inform vision, and fashion a creative
program for radical change – is even more acute in the U.S. than
Western Europe. Yet, what unites both radical experiences is a
tacit commitment to Eurocentrism and the assumptions of normalized
white supremacy.
In their desperate attempt to defend Sanders and paint his
critics as dogmatists and purists, the Sanders supporters have not
only fallen into the ideological trap of a form of narrow "left"
nativism, but also the white supremacist ethical contradiction that
reinforces racist cynicism in which some lives are disposable for
the greater good of the West.
I don't like Trump's shrillness, and I don't like Baraka's
either. He's too fast and loose with accusations of white supremacy.
As the author of this posts makes clear, against Trump are only his
words, but against Hillary are her actions. In that sense, it is no contest:
Hillary loses.
As Obama's tenure has made abundantly clear, words mean
nothing; only actions and facts do. I think this is why the media hates
Trump so: they make their living off words and so think they matter. But
they do only if they describe actions and facts, not gossip. All the
reporting about Trump consists of repeating what he says. So what? He is a
politician. Apart from his lack of experience he's a big question mark. But
lack of experience didn't stop people from voting for Obama.
It's Putin we need to worry about. Putin is in league with Space
Aliens and they are plotting to destroy the American 21st Century. The Space
Aliens have leased a Weather Control Machine to Putin and Putin has set the
thermostat on high! Worse yet, it's a 100 year lease. It will last the
entire century!
To make matters even worse, the Space Aliens have provided Putin with
alien probiotics. This will extend Putin's life by 100 years. We will never
get regime change in Russia! At least not without nuclear intervention.
The diabolical plan is to roast the western world. This will be the end
of the American Century! The Space Aliens also developed miniaturizing
technology a millennia ago. They can fit more of their kind into space ships
that way. The economic growth plan then is to beam the miniaturizing beam at
China and India. The population will shrink to 2 inches tall, which is
pretty short even for the Chinese. They will have much less resource and
environmental impact on the Earth. But they will not devalue their
currencies, resulting in steady growth and they will become the largest and
second largest economies in the world!
I'm sure you agree this is pretty scary stuff and you, your children, and
grandchildren should be scared to death that these powerful forces are
conspiring against our American Century.
Hillary is the only one that knows how to get things done and save us!
Well written! I grow tired of westerners' talk about how peace loving
they are, as if by just saying you are for peace makes it so. It's perfectly
clear what Clinton represents and how anti-peace she is. Yet so many
westerners, especially outside the USA, would choose Clinton while also
believing how much they support peace in the world. Thus Trump becomes a
convenient excuse to vote for more endless war. Very easy to turn him into
the nuclear bomb Prez as one can then support Clinton and claim to be for
peace.
This exercise of moral shenanagans grows tiresome after 18 years. I'd
like to say we have fair weather ethical values in our Sodom and Gomorrah
society. However i don't even think we rate that highly any longer. Moral
hypocrisy is really all we are now capable of. So bring on all the peace
loving westerners to kiss the ring of the next neocon President!
I posit that there is a gresham dynamic of sorts in politics. If I remember
right, this is where bad behavior goes unpunished in an industry and that leads
to only "cheaters" in the space because all the ethical players in the space
can't compete and need to / elect to drop out.
If this is right, then it should be no surprise that outsiders to politics
(representing ethics) don't have the professional "expertise" held by the
insiders. I see it as a straight up trade between ethics and expertise, and we
have been relying on experts too long.
Said another way, I think an ethical person can learn expertise much better
than an expert person can learn ethics.
As I write this it is clearer to me what a rare gem Bernie coulda been.
Professor Wray wastes a whole lot of column inches arguing against Trump
without really offering anything other than a long list of evidence-based
reasons not to vote for Clinton, while regurgitating the tried-and-true LOTE
argument to not vote for Stein (or Johnson, who for reasons unclear to me has
been deemed to be completely untenable by every thinking critic's estimate).
In a landmark statement this week, our commander-in-chief has deemed Trump
somehow fundamentally unqualified to hold that esteemed office. Really? Those
of us with memories that extend beyond the last news cycle might recall the
exact same arguments levied against Obama eight years ago from his opponents on
the right. "He's a 'community organizer', whatever that is," they would claim
about the first term senator, "What has he ever run besides a canned food
drive?"
The right-wing who feared that somehow Obama would be sworn in on Monday and
on Tuesday take their guns away, close Guantanamo and bring all those captives
to criminal trial here on the mainland (whatever threat that entailed, I'm
still not sure), give free health care to everyone at the expense of all their
friends in the health care and pharma industries, and nationalize flagging
industries and banks like some kind of black Lenin… their list of eventually
unrealized worries went on and on.
What was the left's argument to allay these overblown fears during the 2008
campaign? Checks and balances. "Anything the president does has to go through
both houses of Congress" they would claim, and that, the government wisely laid
down by our founding fathers, would prevent this first-term senator from
turning us into a socialist state. Where are those 'checks and balances'
arguments now?
A brash demeanor isn't enough of a reason to not vote for someone, yet we
are supposed to believe that Trump is going to somehow cast off the shackles of
democracy and crown himself dictator based solely on his demagogic personality.
Claiming that Trump won't be able to conduct himself with the esteem required
for that high office, pundits have become armchair psychologists and labeled
the guy a borderline psychotic while comedians beholden to their major media
paymasters have jumped on this bandwagon to have us thinking the guy is nothing
more than an egotistical loon who, by the way, also secretly wants to screw his
daughter.
He's a racist because he wants to have a better control of the border where
thousands of illegal immigrants cross every year, often at their own peril.
He's beholden to nameless Russian oligarchs, we are led to believe without any
real evidence to support the claim. He secretly doesn't want to be president
and is doing this only to stoke that massive ego, we are told by pundits who
have not been correct in any of their other predictions. Maybe he's a secret
democratic plant, we've been told, placed there by Clinton and the DNC to
guarantee her coronation. I honestly can't believe the level of nonsense this
election has generated.
Anything to deflect attention from the fact that Trump is the only major
party candidate left who is honestly questioning aloud the validity of NATO,
criticizing the effects of globalization, asking what advantage it gives us to
antagonize Russia thirty years after the cold war supposedly ended, wondering
whether regime change is the best option on the table while Iraq, Egypt, Libya,
and Syria offer solid examples to the contrary, and whether massive trade deals
cannot be negotiated in such a way that the middle class American worker
doesn't lose in the end.
Instead we are told to look at his funny hair, marvel at his orange skin,
and to count how many times he uses the words 'huge' and 'great'. He eats KFC
with a fork and knife. He hates Muslims because he thinks all their women are
oppressed and told that it is the man's job to do the talking. The list of
deflections away from his policy plans and how they compare and contrast with
his opponent gets longer by the day.
In the end, Professor Wray adds literally nothing to this discussion–
paragraph after paragraph offer plenty of reasons to distrust and dislike
Clinton, plenty of reasons in his mind that voting for a third party is a
wasted vote, but simply nothing to counter the legitimate arguments offered by
Trump to change the direction this country has been headed for the last two
decades.
With all the fearmongering about Trump potentially having his finger on the
nuclear button, I have yet to see anyone bring up Clinton statements during the
last presidential campaign regarding Iran and 'all options being on the table'
which of course meant nukes and her willingness to use them.
Jingoism; assertions that the 21st century will be the "American
Century"; odes to "American Exceptionalism";
more than an Ode! That is a bromide direct from the Neocon
Project for the
New American Century
(PNAC) Redbook!
Neocons are Political Party agnostics, they migrate opportunistically. HRC
is just the latest Host opportunity. That is a strategic advantage they wield.
No party affiliation inertia. Changelings from the Dark Side
Question for Lambert.
I didnt ask yesterday after you stated that no qualified candidate is slated
for this POTUS general election cycle, (I happen to agree).
So tell me, who do you feel was the last qualified POTUS?
This goes to the strategy voting against perceived greater evils.
"... Clinton's campaign has such strong persuasion going right now that she is successfully equating her actual misdeeds of the past with Trump's imaginary mental issues and imaginary future misdeeds ..."
UPDATE "Clinton's campaign has such strong persuasion going right now that she is successfully
equating her actual misdeeds of the past with Trump's imaginary mental
issues and imaginary future misdeeds" [
Scott Adams ].
This is a Rovian strategy: Assault the enemy's strength. You've got to admire
the effrontery: The candidate who didn't raise a voice against the Iraq War and
tipped the administration in favor of war with Libya (which we're now bombing again) paints their
opponent as a lunatic warmonger.
Earlier this week, GOP nominee Donald Trump was quick to respond to criticism
by the parents of fallen U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan, saying that their son
wouldn't have died if he'd been commander-in-chief.
Now, ex-Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is saying the exact something
- but this time, it's in a panelist discussion on CNN, the
Daily Beast
reports.
"If Donald Trump was the president, Captain Khan would be alive today because
he never would have engaged in a war that didn't directly benefit this country.
He's been very clear about that fact and said I don't support Iraq and I don't
support Afghanistan," Lewandowski stated.
Then anchorman Chris Berman jumped in, rebutting that Trump supported the war -
he cited a 2002 interview with Howard Stern in his defense.
Instead of the Khan family being a political pawn of Hillary Clinton - who's
using their child's death for political expediency - they should be praising
Trump's anti-Islamic State group, anti-terror policies.
Clinton is an enabler
of unnecessary destruction
, whereas Trump is laser-focused on targeting and
taking out the people who will harm our society the most. The Khan's son was a
freedom fighter of the first order - it's a shame that his own parents are
standing on his grave, promoting a woman who couldn't care less about veterans or
members of the United States' military.
We must
keep America first
and always stand up to terrorism - even if it's not
politically correct.
"... Anti-Russian hysteria in America reached its apogee this week as Democrats tried to divert attention from embarrassing revelations about how the Democratic Party apparatus had rigged the primaries against Bernie Sanders by claiming Vlad Putin and his KGB had hacked and exposed the Dem's emails. ..."
"... Unnamed US 'intelligence officials' claimed they had 'high confidence' that the Russian KGB or GRU (military intelligence) had hacked the Dem's emails. These were likely the same officials who had 'high confidence' that Iraq had nuclear weapons. ..."
"... And what a joy for the war party that those dastardly Ruskis are now back as Enemy Number One. Much more fun than scruffy Arabs. The word is out: more stealth bombers, more warships, more missiles, more troops for Europe. The wicked Red Chinese will have to wait their turn until Uncle Sam can deal with them. ..."
"... I always find conventions depressing affairs. Rather than the cradle of democracy, they remind me of clownish Shriners Conventions. Or as the witty Democratic advisor Paul Begala said, `Hollywood for ugly people.' What, I kept wondering, is the rest of the world thinking as it watching this tawdry spectacle? ..."
"... One thing that that amazed me was the Convention's lack of attention to America's longest ever war that still rages in the mountains of Afghanistan. For the past thirteen years, America, the world's greatest military and economic power, has been trying to crush the life out of Afghan Pashtun mountain tribesmen whose primary sin is fiercely opposing occupation by the US and its local Afghan opium-growing stooges. ..."
"... But the war was far from being 'almost won.' The US-installed puppet regime in Kabul of President Ashraf Ghani, a former banker, holds on only thanks to the bayonets of US troops and the US Air Force. Without constant air strikes, the US-installed Ghani regime and its drug-dealing would have been swept away by Taliban and its tribal allies. ..."
"... So the US remains stuck in Afghanistan. Obama lacked the courage to pull US troops out. Always weak in military affairs, Obama bent to demands of the Pentagon and CIA to dig in lest the Red Chinese or Pakistan take over this strategic nation. The US oil industry was determined to assure trans-Afghan pipeline routes south from Central Asia. India has its eye on Afghanistan. Muslims could not be allowed to defeat the US military. ..."
"... This longest of wars has cost nearly $1 trillion to date – all of its borrowed money – and caused the deaths of 3,518 US and coalition troops, including 158 Canadians who blundered into a war none of them understood. ..."
"... No one has the courage to end this pointless war. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Afghans are being killed. Too bad no one at the Democratic or Republican Conventions had time to think about the endless war in forgotten Afghanistan. ..."
Anti-Russian hysteria in America reached its apogee this week as Democrats tried to divert
attention from embarrassing revelations about how the Democratic Party apparatus had rigged the primaries
against Bernie Sanders by claiming Vlad Putin and his KGB had hacked and exposed the Dem's emails.
This was rich coming from the US that snoops into everyone's emails and phones across the globe.
Remember German chancellor Angela Merkel's cell phone being bugged by the US National Security Agency?
Unnamed US 'intelligence officials' claimed they had 'high confidence' that the Russian KGB
or GRU (military intelligence) had hacked the Dem's emails. These were likely the same officials
who had 'high confidence' that Iraq had nuclear weapons.
Blaming Putin was a master-stroke of deflection. No more talk of Hillary's slush fund foundation
or her status as a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs and the rest of Wall Street. All attention was focused
on President Putin who has been outrageously demonized by the US media and politicians.
Except for a small faux pas – a montage of warships shown at the end of the Democratic Convention
is a blaze of jingoistic effusion embarrassingly turned out to be Russian warships!
Probably another trick by the awful Putin who has come to replace Satan in the minds of many Americans.
And what a joy for the war party that those dastardly Ruskis are now back as Enemy Number
One. Much more fun than scruffy Arabs. The word is out: more stealth bombers, more warships, more
missiles, more troops for Europe. The wicked Red Chinese will have to wait their turn until Uncle
Sam can deal with them.
I always find conventions depressing affairs. Rather than the cradle of democracy, they remind
me of clownish Shriners Conventions. Or as the witty Democratic advisor Paul Begala said, `Hollywood
for ugly people.' What, I kept wondering, is the rest of the world thinking as it watching this tawdry
spectacle?
One thing that that amazed me was the Convention's lack of attention to America's longest
ever war that still rages in the mountains of Afghanistan. For the past thirteen years, America,
the world's greatest military and economic power, has been trying to crush the life out of Afghan
Pashtun mountain tribesmen whose primary sin is fiercely opposing occupation by the US and its local
Afghan opium-growing stooges.
The saintly President Barack Obama repeatedly proclaimed the Afghan War over and staged phony
troops withdrawals. He must have believed his generals who kept claiming they had just about defeated
the resistance alliance, known as Taliban.
But the war was far from being 'almost won.' The US-installed puppet regime in Kabul of President
Ashraf Ghani, a former banker, holds on only thanks to the bayonets of US troops and the US Air Force.
Without constant air strikes, the US-installed Ghani regime and its drug-dealing would have been
swept away by Taliban and its tribal allies.
So the US remains stuck in Afghanistan. Obama lacked the courage to pull US troops out. Always
weak in military affairs, Obama bent to demands of the Pentagon and CIA to dig in lest the Red Chinese
or Pakistan take over this strategic nation. The US oil industry was determined to assure trans-Afghan
pipeline routes south from Central Asia. India has its eye on Afghanistan. Muslims could not be allowed
to defeat the US military.
Look what happened to the Soviets after they admitted defeat in Afghanistan and pulled out. Why
expose the US Empire to a similar geopolitical risk?
With al-Qaida down to less than 50 members in Afghanistan, according to former US defense chief
Leon Panetta, what was the ostensible reason for Washington to keep garrisoning Afghanistan? The
shadowy ISIS is now being dredged up as the excuse to stay.
This longest of wars has cost nearly $1 trillion to date – all of its borrowed money – and
caused the deaths of 3,518 US and coalition troops, including 158 Canadians who blundered into a
war none of them understood.
No one has the courage to end this pointless war. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Afghans
are being killed. Too bad no one at the Democratic or Republican Conventions had time to think about
the endless war in forgotten Afghanistan.
"... President Obama has been a failed leader who along with Secretary of State Clinton created a foreign policy that has destabilized the world and made it an unsafe place. He is the one who is unfit to be President and Hillary Clinton is equally unfit. ..."
"... Obama-Clinton have single-handedly destabilized the Middle East, handed Iraq, Libya and Syria to ISIS, and allowed our personnel to be slaughtered at Benghazi. ..."
"... They have produced the worst recovery since the Great Depression. They have shipped millions of our best jobs overseas to appease their global special interests. They have betrayed our security and our workers, and Hillary Clinton has proven herself unfit to serve in any government office. ..."
"... She is reckless with her emails, reckless with regime change, and reckless with American lives. Our nation has been humiliated abroad and compromised by radical Islam brought onto our shores. We need change now. ..."
President Obama slams Republican nominee for president Donald Trump at a joint press conference with
the prime minister of Singapore at the White House Tuesday morning. Obama said Trump does not have
the judgment, temperament or understanding to occupy the Oval Office. Obama scolded Trump for his
"attack on a Gold Star family."
The president implored Republicans to un-endorse him and asked what does it say about the Republican
party that Trump is their standard bearer. This isn't an "episodic gaffe," this is daily and weekly,
Obama said. Obama called on Republicans to repudiate and condemn the party's nominee.
"There has to come a point at which you say somebody who makes those kinds of statements doesn't
have the judgment, the temperament, the understanding to occupy the most powerful position in the
world," Obama said at the event with PM Lee Hsien Loong.
"There has to be a point in which you say this is somebody I can't support for president of United
States," the president said. "There has to be a point in which you say 'enough.'"
"I recognize that they all profoundly disagree with myself or Hillary Clinton on tax policy or
on certain elements of foreign policy," Obama said of Republicans. "But you know, there have been
Republican presidents with whom I disagreed with but I didn't have a doubt that they could function
as president."
From President Obama's press conference:
OBAMA: I think the Republican nominee is unfit to serve as president. I said so last week. He
keeps on proving it. The notion that he would attack a Gold Star family, that [General] Hayden
-- had made such extraordinary sacrifices on behalf of our country, the fact that he does not
appear to have basic knowledge around critical issues in Europe, the Middle East, in Asia.
It means that he is woefully unprepared. This is not just my opinion. What's been interesting
has been the repeated denunciations of his statements by leading Republicans. Including the Speaker
of the House, the Senate Majority Leader, prominent Republicans like John McCain.
The question they have to ask themselves is if you are repeatedly having to say in very strong
terms that what he has said is unacceptable, why are you still endorsing him? What does this say
about your party, that this is your standard bearer?
This isn't a situation where you have an episodic gaffe. This is daily, and weekly, where they
are distancing themselves from statements he's making. There has to be a point in which you say,
this is not somebody I can support for president of the United States. Even if he purports to
be a member of my party. And, you know, the fact that that has not yet happened makes some of
these denunciations ring hollow.
I don't doubt their sincerity. I don't doubt that they were outraged about some of the statements
that Mr. Trump and his supporters made about the Khan family. But there has to come a point at
which you say somebody who makes those kinds of statements doesn't have the judgment, the temperament,
the understanding to occupy the most powerful position in the world. Because a lot of people depend
on the White House getting stuff right. And this is different than just having policy disagreements.
I recognize that they all profoundly disagree with myself or Hillary Clinton on tax policy
or on certain elements of foreign policy. But you know, there have been Republican presidents
with whom I disagreed with but I didn't have a doubt that they could function as president...
There has to come a point in which you say, enough. And the alternative is that the entire
party, the Republican party, effectively endorses and validates the positions that are being articulated
by Mr. Trump. And as I said in my speech last week, I don't think that actually represents the
views of a whole lot of Republicans out there.
President Obama has been a failed leader who along with Secretary of State Clinton created
a foreign policy that has destabilized the world and made it an unsafe place. He is the one who
is unfit to be President and Hillary Clinton is equally unfit.
Obama-Clinton have single-handedly destabilized the Middle East, handed Iraq, Libya and
Syria to ISIS, and allowed our personnel to be slaughtered at Benghazi. Then they put Iran
on the path to nuclear weapons. Then they allowed dozens of veterans to die waiting for medical
care that never came. Hillary Clinton put the whole country at risk with her illegal email server,
deleted evidence of her crime, and lied repeatedly about her conduct which endangered us all.
They released criminal aliens into our country who killed one innocent American after another
-- like Sarah Root and Kate Steinle -- and have repeatedly admitted migrants later implicated
in terrorism. They have produced the worst recovery since the Great Depression. They have
shipped millions of our best jobs overseas to appease their global special interests. They have
betrayed our security and our workers, and Hillary Clinton has proven herself unfit to serve in
any government office.
She is reckless with her emails, reckless with regime change, and reckless with American
lives. Our nation has been humiliated abroad and compromised by radical Islam brought onto our
shores. We need change now.
Alex Junces consider the Hillary is illegitamete candidate that stole primaries from Sanders and
she intend to steal general elections.
The Alex Jones Channel - YouTube
Former Bush adviser Karl Rove scolds Republican nominee Donald Trump for getting off message
and missing campaign opportunities. In an appearance on the FOX News Channel on Wednesday morning
Rove listed a litany of items Trump could have brought attention to rather than express his
indignation at treatment by the media and the Khan family.
"Let's take last Friday," Rove started. "Rather than engaging in a battle with the Khan family
over the death of their son. What if that day Donald Trump had taken the economic report that
showed 1% GDP growth and excoriated her for having nothing but the same policies as Barack Obama
that put us here. He could have used that Friday and Saturday and beaten her up on the economy
and displayed his expertise, his agenda, his issues and be seen with blue-collared workers and
small business people."
"What if on Sunday rather than starting to talk about how the elections were rigged because the
debates were scheduled on the same day as big NFL football games 18 months ago, incidentally, and
also excoriating the fire marshals in Colorado Springs and Columbus for enforcing the fire codes.
What if he had spent the afternoon and evening of Sunday focused in on
Hillary Clinton's interview with Chris Wallace on FOX News Sunday where she lied again
about the emails and also gave him a big, fat juicy target on the economy saying my answer is
I'm going to set up an infrastructure bank, 'to seed it with taxpayer dollars' and then 'get
investors involved' in order to make money off of using taxpayer dollars for infrastructure
projects. Both of those seem to me to be a much better way to go," Rove said.
Presidential contender Donald Trump is challenging the "pussy generation" manifested by President
Obama and the religion of political correctness, film legend Clint Eastwood recently told Esquire
magazine.
In a father-son interview featured in the
September 2016 issue of the men's magazine, Eastwood explains he prefers Trump's more cut-to-the-chase,
no-nonsense approach of getting his message across.
ESQ: Your characters have become touchstones in the culture, whether it's Reagan invoking
"Make my day" or now Trump … I swear he's even practiced your scowl.
CE: Maybe. But he's onto something, because secretly everybody's getting tired
of political correctness, kissing up. That's the kiss-ass generation we're in right now. We're
really in a pussy generation. Everybody's walking on eggshells. We see people accusing people
of being racist and all kinds of stuff. When I grew up, those things weren't called racist. And
then when I did Gran Torino, even my associate said, "This is a really good script, but
it's politically incorrect." And I said, "Good. Let me read it tonight." The next morning, I came
in and I threw it on his desk and I said, "We're starting this immediately."
ESQ: What is the "pussy generation"?
CE: All these people that say, "Oh, you can't do that, and you can't do this,
and you can't say that." I guess it's just the times.
ESQ: What do you think Trump is onto?
CE: What Trump is onto is he's just saying what's on his mind. And sometimes
it's not so good. And sometimes it's … I mean, I can understand where he's coming from, but I
don't always agree with it.
ESQ: So you're not endorsing him?
CE: I haven't endorsed anybody. I haven't talked to Trump. I haven't talked
to anybody. You know, he's a racist now because he's talked about this judge. And yeah, it's a
dumb thing to say. I mean, to predicate your opinion on the fact that the guy was born to Mexican
parents or something. He's said a lot of dumb things. So have all of them. Both sides. But everybody-the
press and everybody's going, "Oh, well, that's racist," and they're making a big hoodoo out of
it. Just fucking get over it. It's a sad time in history.
Speaking of his stunt at the 2012 RNC in which he spoke to an empty chair intended to represent
Obama, the 86-year-old director stated the president is pretty much the embodiment of the "pussy
generation" due to his lack of efforts to strike deals with Congress throughout his tenure.
CE: It was silly at the time, but I was standing backstage and I'm hearing
everybody say the same thing: "Oh, this guy's a great guy." Great, he's a great guy. I've got
to say something more. And so I'm listening to an old Neil Diamond thing and he's going, "And
no one heard at all / Not even the chair." And I'm thinking, That's Obama. He doesn't
go to work. He doesn't go down to Congress and make a deal. What the hell's he doing sitting in
the White House? If I were in that job, I'd get down there and make a deal. Sure, Congress are
lazy bastards, but so what? You're the top guy. You're the president of the company. It's your
responsibility to make sure everybody does well. It's the same with every company in this country,
whether it's a two-man company or a two-hundred-man company… . And that's the pussy generation-nobody
wants to work.
While Eastwood hasn't formally endorsed Trump, the Million Dollar Baby actor did admit
he would vote for the businessman over Clinton, as she is set to continue Obama's disastrous agenda.
ESQ: But if the choice is between her and Trump, what do you do?
CE: That's a tough one, isn't it? I'd have to go for Trump … you know, 'cause
she's declared that she's gonna follow in Obama's footsteps. There's been just too much funny
business on both sides of the aisle. She's made a lot of dough out of being a politician. I gave
up dough to be a politician. I'm sure that Ronald Reagan gave up dough to be a politician.
Eastwood and his son, Scott, later clarified their positions on being labeled the "anti-pussy
party."
ESQ: Politically, you're the Anti-Pussy party?
SE: That's right. No candy-asses.
CE: Yeah, I'm anti–the pussy generation. Not to be confused with pussy.
SE: All of us are pro-pussy.
Eastwood is just the latest in a growing chorus of voices speaking out against the burgeoning
system of political correctness, which threatens an Orwellian control of language and the population
at large.
If the election was already "in the bag" for Hillary Clinton, President Obama wouldn't be working
overtime to convince the GOP to dump Trump.
Instead, he'd be encouraging Trump to speak out more if his words were helping Hillary – but that's
not the case at all.
Obama is signaling that the globalists are losing and Hillary is falling too far behind for the
technocrats to rig the election in her favor.
"The president implored Republicans to un-endorse him and asked what does it say about the Republican
party that Trump is their standard bearer," Real Clear Politics reported. "Obama called on Republicans
to repudiate and condemn the party's nominee."
In other words, the president is the Wizard of Oz panicking after Trump pulled the curtain to
expose the globalists as the evil they are – and not the saviors of humanity they portray themselves
to be.
It's also revealing that Obama made his desperate declaration right after Trump warned the general
election is being rigged just like the Democratic nomination, which was rigged in favor of Hillary
Clinton – despite the majority of Democrats supporting Bernie Sanders.
"As the leaked DNC emails illustrated, the establishment pre-selected Hillary from the start and
the primary process was a complete charade to give the illusion of democratic choice," Paul Joseph
Watson & Alex Jones stated. "As the Observer's Michael Sainato writes, 'Instead of treating Sanders
as a viable candidate for the Democratic ticket, the DNC worked against him and his campaign to ensure
Clinton received the nomination.' The elite chose Hillary before any of the primary votes came in,
and vowed to select her regardless of the result."
"How in any way is this not a rigged process, as Trump rightly pointed out?"
Did Trump just let the genie out of the bottle the globalists won't be able to put back in? It
appears so.
"Government's been around for as long as history's been around and I think they've exhausted their
experimentation," Ron Paul once said. "We've had some experiments with individual liberty and one
great experiment was here and I think right now we're seeing the fruitions of how we left that experiment
in the last 100 years and it continues yet there's a spirit right now amongst the people who are
starting to realize that."
"... The whole U.S. political and media establishment is right now running a full fledged anti-Trump campaign. ..."
"... rumors or outright lies. ..."
"... Some spat over a dead soldier who the Clinton campaign (ab)used for her campaign gets way overblown. Unfounded rumors that some Republicans are going to replace Trump are just a repetition of the same nonsense that spread a month ago. It only heightens the media's lack of credibility. It is similar to the claims that "the Assad regime will fall any minute now". We have heard for the last five years and no one believes it. Unsourced claims that Trump asked why the U.S. can not use nukes are not credible. Especially when they are transported by a lowlife like MSNBC's Scarborough and immediately denied . If true at all, the issues is likely taken out of context. ..."
"... On the other side, news about Clinton actively lying is so obviously suppressed by the New York Times that even its public editor laments about it. CNN claims that Hillary meets "boisterous crowds" when no-one shows up. ..."
"... This wont work. This imbalance is not sustainable. The Clinton campaign managers who orchestrate this onslaught are shooting their wads prematurely. ..."
"... That's what they've been doing for months now in UK against Corbyn - and there the election is four years away. ..."
"... Mockery, sham, inane, insipid, and other akin words well describe the efforts by the Propaganda System to promote the most immoral candidate ever nominated for president over the second most immoral candidate ever nominated for president all while ignoring the most moral and worthy candidate for president--Dr. Jill Stein. ..."
"... Bernie(the fake candidate) Sanders was used to placate and herd in the mass of youngsters and progressives and folks who are outright sick and tired only to then softly ease them down ,possibly into the Hillary camp; also so said grouping can feel that they were close and actually had a chance and democracy is indeed real. ..."
"... 10,000 expected for Trump Rally in Daytona Beach, Florida. At 1 PM Thousands already jammed in the hallways of the Ocean Center for 3 PM Rally. Meanwhile, Hillary must bring in high school students to fill seats. ..."
"... In fact, I never seen such a politically brave guy in Americas recent history of zionist collaboration. ..."
"... Khizr Khan used to work for a law firm that has the Saudi Arabian regime and apparently the Clintons or the Clinton Foundation as clients. Khizt Khan is a lawyer and his law firm offers to arrange visa for wealthy foreigners and given his previous employment that probably means that his clients include Saudi Arabians. I just can't understand why such a man would feel strongly about a temporary ban on entry into the United States for Muslims. ..."
"... You did not mention the firm Khizr-Khan worked for did Hillary Clinton's taxes.. Khizr Khan has all sorts of financial, legal, and political connections to the Clintons through his old law firm, the mega-D.C. firm Hogan Lovells LLP. That firm did Hillary Clinton's taxes for years, starting when Khan still worked there involved in, according to his own website, matters "firm wide"-back in 2004. ..."
"... The Clinton political machine has rigged the process, against Sanders, and gone to some lengths to conceal the shame of it. At the convention in Philadelphia, they looked most odd; while the Party was showing itself be a some kind of schitzophrenic monster, gulping down the high octane fuel of unreality. They can bear no real resemblance to the Party of Franklin Roosevelt, although they come to the Convention wearing clothes made out of his skin. ..."
"... They have become republicans with a crisis of identity. ..."
"... I read that NBC piece on the plot. The word for the day.; "Irreparable consequences." ..."
"... Does it strike anyone else that the Khan story just sort of vanished all of a sudden. For several days - nothing else in the media. It seemed to drop off sharply yesterday. Normally, I see stories about Khan and his involvement with the Clintons, sharia law, immigration, the disappearing website, etc... and would attribute it to a weak attempt to deflect news coverage but I wonder... ..."
"... And Trumps counter-attack on the Khans. At first I had the knee-jerk response "he's gone too far this time". On reflection, the Democrat MO to attack opponents using some sympathetic figure with a lot of "moral authority" - could be someone who has lost a loved one, or a disabled person, ... - on the theory that the person being attacked can't fight back. In a way, I applaud Trump for having none of that (while at the same time being annoyed that he took the bait). The Khans made an free decision to be at the DNC convention and leverage their tragedy to attack Trump. While I feel for them, they can't have it both ways. ..."
"... How on earth could mainstream media even think anyone would watch their stupid propaganda, I feel sorry for Trump with all this propaganda in ALL western states. And no republicans seems to help him! What the hell!? Are they rooting for democrats? ..."
"... Ukraine renames Moscow Avenue to Bandera Avenue http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1c4_1470238094 ..."
"... Pat Buchanan examines the fact that Trump's the "Peace Candidate," and notes how that's playing in Peoria, http://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/trump-the-peace-candidate/ ..."
"... "Behind the war guarantees America has issued to scores of nations in Europe, the Mideast and Asia since 1949, the bedrock of public support that existed during the Cold War has crumbled." ..."
"... As I've written elsewhere, myself and others's analysis of Trump vs HRC leads us to conclude that Trump's the lesser evil, and is indeed a peace candidate compared to HRC's nonstop belligerence and warmongering. The Propaganda System will do its best to paint Trump as the greater evil, but that will be a very hard task as most of the public no longer sees that System as credible. ..."
"... I stumbled upon this. Its fun to read. http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/02/american-elections-weapons-of-mass-distraction/ ..."
"... Stein deserves far more serious attention and exposure then she's getting here (U.S.). ..."
"... Yesterday someone posted a link to the interview with Bashar al-Assad. (Thnx BTW). He was asked his opinion about the next president several times probably to smear him as a Trump supporter. He kept saying that their campaign talk doesn't matter and that it's their actions. But @17:40 he said this, "We always hope that the next president will be much wiser than the previous one." We hope for the same thing here in the us and we keep being disappointed. ..."
"... Hope isn't going to do the trick, it's time the American people took matters into their own hands. Start marching...against war, against unemployment, homelessness, infrastructure falling apart, prisons everywhere, swindles in the tune of Trillions etc. I could go on... ..."
"... Zioinism is just a manifestation of the problem ..."
"... Problem is, the bludgeoning tool is showing signs of cracking. Trump or Hillary, both will go out of their way to finally break it. That sad, because I love this country. ..."
"... Consider foreign policy, the focus of discussions here. Is it important what and when did Clinton know about the attack on the consulate in Benghazi? Not really. It is important that the entire policy of regime change in Libya is FUBAR. It starts from a simple observation that aging Kaddafi was sufficiently pliable to give the West all (almost all?) benefits of control without the cost. But given the chaotic situation that ensued, indeed it was better to pursue some influence than playing it "risk free" (from Empire perspective, shared by Clinton and her tormentors). ..."
"... Not all Jews are Zionists. Not all Jews agree with Israel's policies. Many Jews are victims as they are preyed upon for their support and vilified for protesting/objecting. ..."
The whole U.S. political and media establishment is right now running a full fledged anti-Trump
campaign. The points this drive brings up are minor issue, rumors or outright lies.
It is premature to run such a campaign now. One can not tell the same story over and over again
for nearly a 100 days. People will either get tired of it or will endorse Trump as the poor small
boy that everyone is bullying and beating up.
Some spat over a dead soldier who the Clinton campaign (ab)used for her campaign gets way
overblown. Unfounded
rumors that some Republicans are going to replace Trump are just a repetition of the same nonsense
that spread a month ago. It only heightens the media's lack of credibility. It is similar to the
claims that "the Assad regime will fall any minute now". We have heard for the last five years and
no one believes it. Unsourced claims that Trump
asked why the U.S. can not use nukes are not credible. Especially when they are transported by
a lowlife like MSNBC's Scarborough and immediately
denied . If true at all, the issues is likely taken out of context.
On the other side, news about Clinton actively lying is so obviously suppressed by the New
York Times that even its public editor
laments about it. CNN
claims
that Hillary meets "boisterous crowds" when no-one shows up.
This wont work. This imbalance is not sustainable. The Clinton campaign managers who orchestrate
this onslaught are shooting their wads prematurely.
It does not matter that Trump
indeed has small hands or that he fibs on every details. The majority of the people hate Clinton.
This media campaign will fall back on her. She will be perceived as the bully increasing her already
strong negatives.
Posted by b on August 3, 2016 at 12:49 PM |
Permalink
Many years ago a lady, who knew from personal experience, mentioned that talumdists (some of whom
run the U.S. government, the U.S. media, the U.S. economy, U.S. academia, etc.) have no sense
of proportion and no sense of timing - except in music. She knew exactly the truth of what she
was stating.
Mockery, sham, inane, insipid, and other akin words well describe the efforts by the Propaganda
System to promote the most immoral candidate ever nominated for president over the second most
immoral candidate ever nominated for president all while ignoring the most moral and worthy candidate
for president--Dr. Jill Stein.
I don't watch mainstream media for years now, too disgusting for my appetite, but I will venture
to say this:
The election years in the U.S have been for decades now carnivals. Now that there are two official
runners, we are now entering the 'Magician Show' phase, fast forward, the 'power' behind the curtain
(Israel-firsters, AIPAC, international talmudists i.e) will/are using Trump as the sleight of
hand, while Hillary will be ushered in as the prestige. Simple as that. Its all orchestrated.
Has been for so long. Power in the U.S is very well protected.
Bernie(the fake candidate) Sanders was used to placate and herd in the mass of youngsters
and progressives and folks who are outright sick and tired only to then softly ease them down
,possibly into the Hillary camp; also so said grouping can feel that they were close and actually
had a chance and democracy is indeed real.
I cant find it anymore, but not long ago I saw a newspaper clipping of a picture on a major
U.S newspaper showing Trump's grandchildren visiting him in his office and lo and behold, among
the many portraits and pictures Trump had hanging on his wall was one that stuck out to me. It
was a portrait of King Solomon's Temple with Hebrew writing on it. The man is a full fledged Zionist
and on the take. Hillary is the same or worse, since the 'powers' have sooo much on here and her
husband she will make a good blackmail abled POTUS.
That's my take, and no, I don't have or need a tin foil hat. Mark my words.
10,000 expected for Trump Rally in Daytona Beach, Florida. At 1 PM Thousands already jammed
in the hallways of the Ocean Center for 3 PM Rally. Meanwhile, Hillary must bring in high school
students to fill seats.
4;Correctamundo; A bunch of wacko ancient anti-religious hypocrites control US, and want no part
of America First. The only nationalism permitted is zionism's.
Can b list Trumps fibs? I haven't seen any, although he has walked back some statements, but that
isn't a fib, its just re-evaluation.
In fact, I never seen such a politically brave guy in Americas recent history of zionist
collaboration.
off topic...but
To my fellow barflies, please take the time to watch this moving and special video. Its kind of
long but well worth it.
It essentially made me proud to be American again, when I see my fellow countrymen engaging
in this sort of thing, especially the Senator. Very moving indeed.
Khizr Khan used to work for a law firm that has the Saudi Arabian regime and apparently the
Clintons or the Clinton Foundation as clients. Khizt Khan is a lawyer and his law firm offers
to arrange visa for wealthy foreigners and given his previous employment that probably means that
his clients include Saudi Arabians. I just can't understand why such a man would feel strongly
about a temporary ban on entry into the United States for Muslims.
What I really can't understand is why Khizr Khan supports HRC, since she voted for the war
that killed his son. That the son might not have come to the United States and jined the military
if Trump's ban had been in place just reinforces that point. I really wonder what his pay-off
is. I really hope it's been worth the loss of a son.
It goes without saying it's nonsense, but I hope a few readers here will take the time, if
they open it for comments, to voice their opposition to his absurd, warmongering narrative.
Much or most of the organized, over the top attacks on Trump [who is, in and of himself, a
buffoon] is coming from Zionist/Neocon interests who fear he won't attack Syria and Iran for Israel,
and to some extent by the organized Jewish community per se who fear he might enforce immigration
law.
You did not mention the firm Khizr-Khan worked for did Hillary Clinton's taxes.. Khizr
Khan has all sorts of financial, legal, and political connections to the Clintons through his
old law firm, the mega-D.C. firm Hogan Lovells LLP. That firm did Hillary Clinton's taxes for
years, starting when Khan still worked there involved in, according to his own website, matters
"firm wide"-back in 2004.
It also has represented, for years, the government of Saudi Arabia in the United States. Saudi
Arabia, of course, is a Clinton Foundation donor which-along with the mega-bundlers of thousands
upon thousands in political donations to both of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaigns in 2008
and 2016-plays right into the "Clinton Cash" narrative.
The electorate in the US will blunder into the new leadership, with no help, -- and much hindrance
-- from the corporate media. Some people will know what they are doing when they cast their vote,
-- while others will feel their way along the walls of uncertainty, like sleepwalkers. As usual,
a huge percent will not vote at all.
The Clinton political machine has rigged the process, against Sanders, and gone to some
lengths to conceal the shame of it. At the convention in Philadelphia, they looked most odd; while
the Party was showing itself be a some kind of schitzophrenic monster, gulping down the high octane
fuel of unreality. They can bear no real resemblance to the Party of Franklin Roosevelt, although
they come to the Convention wearing clothes made out of his skin.
They have become republicans with a crisis of identity.
These pols are all rageaholics who worship the power that comes out of the barrel of a gun,
the broad power of coersion; and they act as if people are fooled by their honey-coated words
and painted smiles. They are vanguards of the empire, the apostles of expansion and exceptionalism.
These candidates all have fancy educations, and have always dwelt near the very top of the power
bubble. Yet their minds contain many vast intellectual deserts.
Yesterday, Pres. Obama told the Republicans they needed disavow Trump or words to that effect.
Struck me as exactly not what a sitting Dem president should say about a Repub nominee, especially
Trump since he seems quite capable of shooting himself in the foot and other areas of his anatomy
(no dirty joke implied, just that he's a loose cannon).
Obama could have made a simple comment about not picking on dead soldiers without trying to
look like he's telling the Repubs what to do.
I'm sure there must be some Repubs who have told the Dems they should not have nominated Hillary...unless
they WANT her impeached. But, if so, it's not getting much attention.
Sen. Warren Simpson was on WNYC today, warning that Obama's attack might well backfire and
hurt Hillary. Hhhmmm, maybe that's a plan?
Who can tell with this horrible choice provided to American voters.
I read that NBC piece on the plot. The word for the day.; "Irreparable consequences."
People will either get tired of it or will endorse Trump as the poor small boy that everyone
is bullying and beating up
Also, there is this being offered - "Trump is running to lose."
The establishment, disconnected from joeandjill's anger, is fighting to maintain the status
quo forgetting the old adage – Americans love and support the underdog."
= = = = = =
@ ben 3
The "electoral college" system will decide"
When that system was envisaged, there were paper ballots. Do not dismiss the popular vote and
the "winner-take-all electors" states. Electors are selected by a two part process. This is the
age of computer rigging. Loading votes to deliver key states and the required 270 votes of the
electors made easy.
Key your eye on GEMS. No, not precious stones.
If this checks out you may no longer have one person-one vote.
A fascinating read:
"US election shocker: is this how the vote will be rigged?"
by Jon Rappoport Votes are being counted as fractions instead of as whole numbers
As we know, there are a number of ways to rig an election. Bev Harris, at blackboxvoting.org,
is exploring a specific "cheat sheet" that has vast implications for the Trump vs. Hillary contest.
It's a vote-counting system called GEMS.
"Our testing [of GEMS] shows that one vote can be counted 25 times, another only one one-thousandth
of a time, effectively converting some votes to zero."
"This report summarizes the results of our review of the GEMS election management system, which
counts approximately 25 percent of all votes in the United States. The results of this study demonstrate
that a fractional vote feature is embedded in each GEMS application which can be used to invisibly,
yet radically, alter election outcomes by pre-setting desired vote percentages to redistribute
votes.
This tampering is not visible to election observers, even if they are standing in the room
and watching the computer. Use of the decimalized vote feature is unlikely to be detected by auditing
or canvass procedures, and can be applied across large jurisdictions in less than 60 seconds."
[..]
I agree that the timing of this onslaught seems wrong - it's too early. An attack like this,
you go for the knockout punch. If that doesn't happen - then what? There's a lot of time between
now and November. I have always thought that this campaign, more than most, will be driven by
events out of the candidates control - terrorist attacks, cop shootings, the markets, etc...
Obama's screed against Trump - what's up with that? Is he hoping to do for Trump what he's
done for gun sales? He might be better off endorsing him.
Does it strike anyone else that the Khan story just sort of vanished all of a sudden. For
several days - nothing else in the media. It seemed to drop off sharply yesterday. Normally, I
see stories about Khan and his involvement with the Clintons, sharia law, immigration, the disappearing
website, etc... and would attribute it to a weak attempt to deflect news coverage but I wonder...
And Trumps counter-attack on the Khans. At first I had the knee-jerk response "he's gone
too far this time". On reflection, the Democrat MO to attack opponents using some sympathetic
figure with a lot of "moral authority" - could be someone who has lost a loved one, or a disabled
person, ... - on the theory that the person being attacked can't fight back. In a way, I applaud
Trump for having none of that (while at the same time being annoyed that he took the bait). The
Khans made an free decision to be at the DNC convention and leverage their tragedy to attack Trump.
While I feel for them, they can't have it both ways.
So Trump saying he has sacrificed as much as someone in the military who was killed, is not insane
ludicrous BS ? Hahaha... I guess that fits in the minor issue category for B because he was still
wants to keep telling a lie the trump is a genius. Oops, at least not in his latest useless piece.
Backtracking much ?
Oh and Trump whoring himself out to the Israeli genocide lobby is a minor issue ?
What is so genius about right wing fucktards who are sick to death of the corrupt political
system and themselves being screwed screwed over by the class war, desperately waiting for a lying
not job piece of shit to say the system is corrupt and rigged, all the while Trump being guilty
of the same in his corporate life.
That really is self lying cowards among the population desperate to hear what they want to
hear and create a self lying loop of endless delusion with deliberate omissions of awfulness from
their baseless chosen cult leader.
Same can be said for the atrociously war loving fake leftists cheering for the most evil woman
on the planet Hitlery Clinton.
How on earth could mainstream media even think anyone would watch their stupid propaganda,
I feel sorry for Trump with all this propaganda in ALL western states. And no republicans seems
to help him! What the hell!? Are they rooting for democrats?
"Trump then told the New York Times that a Russian incursion into Estonia need not trigger
a U.S. military response.
"Even more shocking. By suggesting the U.S. might not honor its NATO commitment, under Article
5, to fight Russia for Estonia, our foreign policy elites declaimed, Trump has undermined the
security architecture that has kept the peace for 65 years.
"More interesting, however, was the reaction of Middle America. Or, to be more exact, the nonreaction.
Americans seem neither shocked nor horrified. What does this suggest?
"Behind the war guarantees America has issued to scores of nations in Europe, the Mideast
and Asia since 1949, the bedrock of public support that existed during the Cold War has crumbled."
As I've written elsewhere, myself and others's analysis of Trump vs HRC leads us to conclude
that Trump's the lesser evil, and is indeed a peace candidate compared to HRC's nonstop belligerence
and warmongering. The Propaganda System will do its best to paint Trump as the greater evil, but
that will be a very hard task as most of the public no longer sees that System as credible.
Another unfortunate faux pas was committed by the intelligent, calm-speaking and otherwise
logical Jill Stein in the selection of a black guy named Barak as her Veep.
The name is: Baraka. You may want to
read a bit on
his views, work history and positions. Baraka has got just about everything right that is expressed
by MoA repeatedly.
Brief discussion of Stein's meeting in Moscow with RT organized Policy experts is
here . At a dinner several days after with Putin (and others) Vlade said:
Putin noted, "What I would like to say, something really unexpected, when I was watching this
material. When I was listening to your comments, politicians from other countries, you know
what I caught myself thinking about? I agree with them, on many issues."
Stein deserves far more serious attention and exposure then she's getting here (U.S.).
I encourage people... especially U.S. voters and Bernie supporters, to now rely on media reports
about her but take a few hours and go through her website. Her positions on just about everything...
and all the BIG ones, are impressive and make more sense then anything I've heard from any candidate
since I can remember. I encourage folks to write letters demanding she be included in the debates.
Jill Stein? You got to be kidding , right? Just like Bernie, she's just another member of the
'tribe/race' that are putting on this charade that is the U.S election. These people are in the
final stages of pulling off the greatest coup in world history and the American people hardly
know it. That's horrifying. This is the Opus Magnum folks. Read the last 2000, or 1000 or 500,
or 200 years of world history and one knows where this will lead. It's going to be dark.
Americans....your children and grandchildren are going to curse at your graves if you don't
wake up.
13 & 17. You're both right. It's a shame Trump didn't go after this fact or that the DEMs/Hillary/Media
complex are playing races against each other. He should have said that yes, he has not sacrificed
a son on an "elective war" as a Pope once called it but that Hillary has not sacrificed either
while voting for and pushing for wars.
Yesterday someone posted a link to the interview with Bashar al-Assad. (Thnx BTW). He was
asked his opinion about the next president several times probably to smear him as a Trump supporter.
He kept saying that their campaign talk doesn't matter and that it's their actions. But @17:40
he said this, "We always hope that the next president will be much wiser than the previous one."
We hope for the same thing here in the us and we keep being disappointed.
Hope isn't going to do the trick, it's time the American people took matters into their
own hands. Start marching...against war, against unemployment, homelessness, infrastructure falling
apart, prisons everywhere, swindles in the tune of Trillions etc. I could go on...
The Democratic NC has turned into an advertisement for more and endless war. Complete with
hoorah's of USA!! USA!!
Less, of course. And it would also stop the insane policy of taking America and using it as
a bludgeoning tool against the Arabic, African, NovoRuss and hell, maybe even the Persian peoples.
Zioinism is just a manifestation of the problem, as Zionism is rather a new thing. Problem
is, the bludgeoning tool is showing signs of cracking. Trump or Hillary, both will go out of their
way to finally break it. That sad, because I love this country.
"The majority of the people hate Clinton. This media campaign will fall back on her. She
will be perceived as the bully increasing her already strong negatives."
This is a stretch. According to recent polls, Clinton has 54% "unfavorable" rating, and Trump
has 64%. And not surprisingly, libertarian and green tickets poll better than usual. Especially
libertarian, which marks dissatisfaction of the right side of the public.
If I were a politician, I would forbid my stuff from reading b without a red pen to underline
all statements to disagree with. Number one, that the opponent should not be attacked over unimportant
details. It defies historical record! Profound nonsense if usually difficult to explain. In particular,
it requires an explanation, so you miss the ever important sector of the public that is immune
to explanations. By the way of contrast, inconsequential details are easy to convey.
Consider foreign policy, the focus of discussions here. Is it important what and when did
Clinton know about the attack on the consulate in Benghazi? Not really. It is important that the
entire policy of regime change in Libya is FUBAR. It starts from a simple observation that aging
Kaddafi was sufficiently pliable to give the West all (almost all?) benefits of control without
the cost. But given the chaotic situation that ensued, indeed it was better to pursue some influence
than playing it "risk free" (from Empire perspective, shared by Clinton and her tormentors).
Another foreign policy example, the issue of Iran and "the deal". Trump promises even worse
approach than executed by Obama. Why? This is fully consistent with the basic plank of his philosophy,
help those that pay their dues. And Saudis and other Gulfies manifestly pay their dues. Unlike
Latvia and Ukraine. In any case, Trump is attacking here on inconsequential details, which shows
that he understands the basics of the political craft.
Finally, "Clinton risks being perceived as a bully". Trump is uniquely positioned to get scant
sympathy. Bullying somewhat frail Sanders would be risky, but Trump?
Not all Jews are Zionists. Not all Jews agree with Israel's policies. Many Jews are victims
as they are preyed upon for their support and vilified for protesting/objecting.
The Us intervention were dictate by needs of global corporation that control the US foreigh
policy. And they need to open market, press geopolitical rivals (Ukraine, Georgia) and grab
resources (Iraq, Libya). The American people are now hostages in their own country and can do
nothing against the establishement militaristic stance. They will fight and die in unnecessary wars
of neoliberal globalization.
Notable quotes:
"... With Democrats howling that Vladimir Putin hacked into and leaked those 19,000 DNC emails to help Trump, the Donald had a brainstorm: Maybe the Russians can retrieve Hillary Clinton's lost emails. Not funny, and close to "treasonous," came the shocked cry. Trump then told the New York Times that a Russian incursion into Estonia need not trigger a U.S. military response ..."
"... Behind the war guarantees America has issued to scores of nations in Europe, the Mideast and Asia since 1949, the bedrock of public support that existed during the Cold War has crumbled. We got a hint of this in 2013. Barack Obama, claiming his "red line" against any use of poison gas in Syria had been crossed, found he had no public backing for air and missile strikes on the Assad regime. The country rose up as one and told him to forget it. He did. We have been at war since 2001. And as one looks on the ruins of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen, and adds up the thousands dead and wounded and trillions sunk and lost, can anyone say our War Party has served us well? ..."
"... The first NATO supreme commander, General Eisenhower, said that if U.S. troops were still in Europe in 10 years, NATO would be a failure. In 1961, he urged JFK to start pulling U.S. troops out, lest Europeans become military dependencies of the United States. Was Ike not right? Even Barack Obama today riffs about the "free riders" on America's defense. Is it really so outrageous for Trump to ask how long the U.S. is to be responsible for defending rich Europeans who refuse to conscript the soldiers or pay the cost of their own defense, when Eisenhower was asking that same question 55 years ago? ..."
"... In 1997, geostrategist George Kennan warned that moving NATO into Eastern Europe "would be the most fateful error of American policy in the post-Cold War era." He predicted a fierce nationalistic Russian response. Was Kennan not right? ..."
With Democrats howling that Vladimir Putin hacked into and leaked those 19,000 DNC emails
to help Trump, the Donald had a brainstorm: Maybe the Russians can retrieve Hillary Clinton's lost
emails. Not funny, and close to "treasonous," came the shocked cry. Trump then told the New York
Times that a Russian incursion into Estonia need not trigger a U.S. military response.
Even more shocking. By suggesting the U.S. might not honor its NATO commitment, under Article
5, to fight Russia for Estonia, our foreign policy elites declaimed, Trump has undermined the security
architecture that has kept the peace for 65 years. More interesting, however, was the reaction of
Middle America. Or, to be more exact, the nonreaction. Americans seem neither shocked nor horrified.
What does this suggest?
Behind the war guarantees America has issued to scores of nations in Europe, the Mideast and
Asia since 1949, the bedrock of public support that existed during the Cold War has crumbled. We
got a hint of this in 2013. Barack Obama, claiming his "red line" against any use of poison gas in
Syria had been crossed, found he had no public backing for air and missile strikes on the Assad regime.
The country rose up as one and told him to forget it. He did. We have been at war since 2001. And
as one looks on the ruins of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen, and adds up the thousands
dead and wounded and trillions sunk and lost, can anyone say our War Party has served us well?
On bringing Estonia into NATO, no Cold War president would have dreamed of issuing so insane a
war guarantee. Eisenhower refused to intervene to save the Hungarian rebels. JFK refused to halt
the building of the Berlin Wall. LBJ did nothing to impede the Warsaw Pact's crushing of the Prague
Spring. Reagan never considered moving militarily to halt the smashing of Solidarity.
Were all these presidents cringing isolationists? Rather, they were realists who recognized that,
though we prayed the captive nations would one day be free, we were not going to risk a world war,
or a nuclear war, to achieve it. Period. In 1991, President Bush told Ukrainians that any declaration
of independence from Moscow would be an act of "suicidal nationalism."
Today, Beltway hawks want to bring Ukraine into NATO. This would mean that America would go to
war with Russia, if necessary, to preserve an independence Bush I regarded as "suicidal."
Have we lost our minds?
The first NATO supreme commander, General Eisenhower, said that if U.S. troops were still
in Europe in 10 years, NATO would be a failure. In 1961, he urged JFK to start pulling U.S. troops
out, lest Europeans become military dependencies of the United States. Was Ike not right? Even Barack
Obama today riffs about the "free riders" on America's defense. Is it really so outrageous for Trump
to ask how long the U.S. is to be responsible for defending rich Europeans who refuse to conscript
the soldiers or pay the cost of their own defense, when Eisenhower was asking that same question
55 years ago?
In 1997, geostrategist George Kennan warned that moving NATO into Eastern Europe "would be
the most fateful error of American policy in the post-Cold War era." He predicted a fierce nationalistic
Russian response. Was Kennan not right? NATO and Russia are today building up forces in the
eastern Baltic where no vital U.S. interests exist, and where we have never fought before - for that
very reason. There is no evidence Russia intends to march into Estonia, and no reason for her to
do so. But if she did, how would NATO expel Russian troops without air and missile strikes that would
devastate that tiny country? And if we killed Russians inside Russia, are we confident Moscow would
not resort to tactical atomic weapons to prevail? After all, Russia cannot back up any further. We
are right in her face.
On this issue Trump seems to be speaking for the silent majority and certainly raising issues
that need to be debated.
How long are we to be committed to go to war to defend the tiny Baltic republics against a
Russia that could overrun them in 72 hours?
When, if ever, does our obligation end? If it is eternal, is not a clash with a revanchist
and anti-American Russia inevitable?
Are U.S. war guarantees in the Baltic republics even credible?
If the Cold War generations of Americans were unwilling to go to war with a nuclear-armed
Soviet Union over Hungary and Czechoslovakia, are the millennials ready to fight a war with Russia
over Estonia?
Needed now is diplomacy. The trade-off: Russia ensures the independence of the Baltic republics
that she let go. And NATO gets out of Russia's face. Should Russia dishonor its commitment, economic
sanctions are the answer, not another European war.
I'm Hillary goddamn Clinton. I'm a political prodigy, have been since I was 16. I have an insane
network of powerful friends. I'm willing to spend the next eight years catching shit on all sides,
all so I can fix this fucking country for you. And all you little bitches need to do is get off your
asses one goddamn day in November.
"Oh but what about your eeeemaaaaillls???" Shut the fuck up. Seriously, shut the fuck up and listen
for one fucking second...
But you know what? I don't fucking care. If I gave two shits about the haters I would've dropped
the game decades ago.
"... Shame on you Bernie. You stain yourself by endorsing crooked, lying, corrupt
and immoral Hillary. Bernie, you are part of the corrupt establishment and SOLD
OUT your supporters. ..."
"... Crooked Hillary is a criminal and should go to jail. "LOCK HER UP". How
could you let a criminal running for US president? This b**** has no morals, is
a world-class pathological liar and corrupt to the bone. Look at what the Clintons
DID not what they preached. The cancerous corruption of Democrats is so widespread
all the way to the top. Below are just some of many immoral things that the corrupt
Clintons did: ..."
"... What's dark and negative is that Hillary won't have a press conference.....is
she afraid of the questions that she'll have to answer? Ya know, like, why did you
lie to the American people about basically EVERYTHING regarding your personal, unsecured
server? ..."
"... Hillary faces hacking and heckling, and the heckling are mostly from within
the party supporters ..."
"Remember this," Trump said during a rally Friday in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
"Trump is going to be no more Mr. Nice Guy." And for the first time he encouraged
his supporters' anti-Clinton chants of "lock her up."
"I've been saying let's just beat her on Nov. 8," Trump said, "but you know
what? I'm starting to agree with you."
TT
WOW! The DEMOCRATIC PARTY HAS NOMINATED CROOKED, LYING, IMMORAL AND CORRUPT
HILLARY. The Democrats' primary was totally rigged behind the scenes to
PRE-SELECT crooked Hillary as the only nominee from the beginning according
to leaked DNC emails. This is an election CRIME committed by the Democratic
Party. CROOKED HILLARY should be a DISQUALIFIED DEMOCRAT CANDIDATE from
the beginning. The Clintons are evil people and corrupt to the bone. SATAN
IS TAKING OVER THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
Shame on you Bernie. You stain yourself by endorsing crooked, lying,
corrupt and immoral Hillary. Bernie, you are part of the corrupt establishment
and SOLD OUT your supporters.
Crooked Hillary is a criminal and should go to jail. "LOCK HER UP".
How could you let a criminal running for US president? This b**** has no
morals, is a world-class pathological liar and corrupt to the bone. Look
at what the Clintons DID not what they preached. The cancerous corruption
of Democrats is so widespread all the way to the top. Below are just some
of many immoral things that the corrupt Clintons did:
HOME EMAIL SYSTEM - Crooked Clinton installed a home email system
FOR WORK while secretary of state to hide shady communications between
her and unfriendly foreign governments related to quid pro quo transactions
to the Clinton Foundation in exchange for influence on U.S. policy while
she was Secretary of State. Crooked HILLARY DELETED 33,000 emails to
avoid criminal prosecution. This crooked would not delete these emails
if they were truly personal. This b**** sold out USA and committed TREASON.
LIES AFTER LIES - Crooked Clinton's lies after lies to Congress,
FBI and Americans on Bosnia sniper fire, Benghazi attack, her home email
system, etc.
ELECTION RIGGING – Crooked Clinton colluded with DNC to rig 2016
primary according to 19,000 leaked DNC emails released by WikiLeaks.
DNC PRE-ANOINTED crooked Hillary as the only nominee from the beginning
according to leaked DNC emails.
CLINTON FOUNDATION – this is basically a front company so immoral
Clintons can pocket through implicit bribery and money laundering. While
abusing the public office, the Clintons have used the Clinton Foundation,
which is based in Canada for non-disclosure policy of charitable contributors,
to make "quid pro quo" deals with special interests and foreign governments.
The Clinton Crime Syndicate (Foundation) KEEPS 93% OF DONATIONS and
only donates 7% to the charities. They list 93% of the income taken
in as used for "Administrative Expenses".
CORRUPTION OF DEMOCRATS ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP - A FIX was in through
a SECRET meeting between immoral Bill Clinton and corrupt AG Loretta
Lynch NOT to charge Crooked Hillary on home-based emails and made her
ABOVE THE LAW. AG Loretta Lynch is the boss of FBI director James Comey.
CROOKED HILLARY IS TRULY AN IMMORAL LOW-LIFE WHITE TRASH - After
leaving the White House, crooked Hillary was forced to return an estimated
$200,000 in White House furniture, china, silverware, and artwork that
she had stolen. HOW COULD YOU VOTE FOR THIS TRASH TO BE US PRESIDENT?
QUID PRO QUO case out of many - THE CLINTON SCHOOL KICKBACKS. In
April 2015, Bill Clinton was forced to abruptly resign from his lucrative
perch as honorary chancellor of Laureate Education, a for-profit college
company. The reason for Clinton's immediate departure: Clinton Cash
revealed, and Bloomberg confirmed, that Laureate funneled Bill Clinton
$16.46 million over five years while Hillary Clinton's State Department
pumped at least $55 million to a group run by Laureate's founder and
chairman, Douglas Becker, a man with strong ties to the Clinton Global
Initiative. Laureate has donated between $1 million and $5 million (donations
are reported in ranges, not exact amounts) to the Clinton Foundation.
CLINTON THEFT OF RELIEF FUNDS FOR HAITI EARTHQUAKE - Here's what
really happened. The Clinton Foundation selected Clayton Homes, a construction
company owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, to build temporary
shelters in Haiti. Buffett is an active member of the Clinton Global
Initiative who has donated generously to the Clintons as well as the
Clinton Foundation. The contract was supposed to be given through the
normal United Nations bidding process, with the deal going to the lowest
bidder who met the project's standards. UN officials said, however,
that the contract was never competitively bid for. Clayton offered to
build "hurricane-proof trailers" but what they actually delivered turned
out to be a disaster. The trailers were structurally unsafe, with high
levels of formaldehyde and insulation coming out of the walls. There
were problems with mold and fumes. The stifling heat inside made Haitians
sick and many of them abandoned the trailers because they were ill-constructed
and unusable.
The Clintons also funneled $10 million in federal loans to a firm called
InnoVida, headed by Clinton donor Claudio Osorio. Osorio had loaded its
board with Clinton cronies, including longtime Clinton ally General Wesley
Clark; Hillary's 2008 finance director Jonathan Mantz; and Democratic fundraiser
Chris Korge who has helped raise millions for the Clintons. Normally the
loan approval process takes months or even years. But in this case, a government
official wrote, "Former President Bill Clinton is personally in contact
with the company to organize its logistical and support needs. And as Secretary
of State, Hillary Clinton has made available State Department resources
to assist with logistical arrangements." InnoVida had not even provided
an independently audited financial report that is normally a requirement
for such applications. On the basis of the Clinton connection, InnoVida's
application was fast-tracked and approved in two weeks. The company defaulted
on the loan and never built any houses. An investigation revealed that Osorio
had diverted company funds to pay for his Miami Beach mansion, his Maserati,
and his Colorado ski chalet. He pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering
in 2013, and is currently serving a twelve-year prison term on fraud charges
related to the loan.
And these are only 2 examples of the dozens of thefts the Clintons and
their cronies did just to Haiti.
DONALD TRUMP, as the Republican presidential candidate, is truly an OUTSIDER
who goes against the corrupt PROFESSIONAL DEMOCRAT POLITICIANS who have
led USA in a wrong track of economic and military disadvantage for the last
eight years. SINCE CROOKED HILLARY BECAME SECRETARY OF STATE IN 2009 WITH
FAILED FOREIGN POLICY, USA has been unsafe and being attacked by RADICAL
ISLAMIC TERRORISTS MORE THAN EVER BEFORE. American citizens are ANGRY of
these corrupt PROFESSIONAL politicians like crooked, lying, immoral and
corrupt HILLARY. VOTE TRUMP 2016.
The West has been blinded and lured by the big Chinese market. However,
it forgot that it has been dealing with a Communist China inside its disguising
Capitalist shell. The Chinese GDP has increased from $303B in 1980 to current
around $11,000B, an increase of more than 35 times along with Intellectual
Property thefts from the West worth a few trillions of dollars and millions
and millions of job losses in the West. Only top few % in the West including
the corrupt CLINTONS were significantly benefited from the BAD trade deals
with China. The Americans are getting poorer while the Chinese are getting
MUCH richer due to BAD trades deals with the West.
That was why Donald Trump, who is NOT racist but puts USA first, said
the trade deals with China are all BAD that cost millions and millions of
domestic jobs. BOYCOTT Chinese-made products and BRING BACK JOBS FROM CHINA.
VOTE TRUMP 2016 AND TRUMP WILL RE-NEGOTIATE ALL BAD TRADE DEALS, BRING JOBS
BACK AND REBUILD US MANUFACTURING.
The liberal mainstream media is pro-Clinton. It is getting paid big from
the crooked Clinton campaign and putting out LYING POLL NUMBERS and ARTICLES
TO BASH TRUMP. A majority of people thought crooked Hillary should have
been INDICTED. People in government would be in JAIL or lose their jobs
at least if they just have done 10% of what crooked Hillary has done. This
is a tremendous US national security implication. HAVE YOU NOTICED THAT
USA HAS BEEN ON A DOWN HILL BIG TIME IN TERMS OF BEING RESPECTED BY PEOPLE
AROUND THE WORLD AND FOREIGN DIPLOMACY SINCE CROOKED HILLARY BECAME SECRETARY
OF STATE IN 2009 ??? Hacking of the crooked Clinton's home, low-secured
private email system by foreign agents would have caused tremendous damage
to USA since 2009.
Russian agents along with agents from other countries like China or Iran
most likely have hacked the crooked Clinton's home, low-secured private
email system and retrieved all her emails including nationally sensitive
emails, shady communications between her and unfriendly foreign governments
related to quid pro quo transactions to the Clinton Foundation in exchange
for influence on U.S. policy while she was Secretary of State. Crooked HILLARY
DELETED 33,000 emails to avoid criminal prosecution, sold out USA and committed
TREASON.
Chitta
Did HRC say that these new jobs will be created offshore?
The 23 million jobs in Bill C's time that she brags about have long been
shipped offshore with the support of Bill and Hillary. What a hypocrite!
anonymous
Mr. Trump: the convention is over, the nominees are in place.
Take the gloves off.
Clinton has literally endless amounts of factual material you can work
with.
Stick to the documented facts:
• No hyperbole
• No exaggeration
• No undocumented assumptions
• Vet everything first
Then, unload on her with all barrels.
Relentlessly.
Maggie
She should be facing jail time with all the money she and Bill were given
for favors to big business, foreign countries and personal friends. Remember
in 1978 when she turned $1,000 into $100,000 in one year playing the commodities
market? Pretty good for someone who never played the market before. Maybe
if we all had some insider info, we'd be "lucky," too.
Tomahawk
Hillary is horribly amazing. She wants to con her sheep into believing
Trump cannot be trusted with the nuclear codes when she can't even be trusted
with emails.....lol
Stathis
What's dark and negative is that Hillary won't have a press conference.....is
she afraid of the questions that she'll have to answer? Ya know, like, why
did you lie to the American people about basically EVERYTHING regarding
your personal, unsecured server?
AAR
Correction
Hillary faces hacking and heckling, and the heckling are mostly from
within the party supporters
We should not believe any reporting of MSM. Even 'Guccifer 2.0' can be just
a smoke screen designed to protect a disgruntled insider, who leaked this information
to Wikileaks. Moreover intelligence agencies understand the NSA intercept all the
communication and store at least "envelope" for a long time. Large download is instantly
noticeable. I am not sure the Putin does not want to see Clinton as the president.
She is compromised enough to face impeachment, and that might prevent her from unleashing
new wars. In any case with republican congress she needs to fight for her life.
They really want her in jail.
Notable quotes:
"... 'The true identity of the hacker that sent the cat among the Democratic
party pigeons, at the most damaging moment for Hillary Clinton, remains the subject
of conjecture for lack of firm proof. The leading suspects may well be one or more
of her party opponents.' ..."
"... The evidence presented so far that the hack is by the Russian government
reminds me of the Iraq WMD evidence. Very dodgy. But, the media did its job. Russia
has been convicted. My twitter feed is fully convinced since the "experts" have
said so. ..."
With a situation which is changing so rapidly as the present, assessments
of Russian 'intentions' are very difficult.
However, before making conjectures about what the Russian authorities
might do in the future, it is prudent to start by trying to make as accurate
assessment as we can of what they have, and have not, done up until now.
If indeed the GRU are responsible for supplying WikiLeaks with the DNC
materials, that would represent a very major 'escalation' in 'political
warfare'.
At the moment, however, while it is perfectly possible that either they,
or the SVR or FSB – whose 'patch' this would more normally be – are responsible,
the available evidence is a mess.
In relation to 'Debka File', the Colonel's injunction to assess source
and content separately applies in spades.
So without simply accepting it, one should also not simply dismiss claims
made in a recent piece on their site entitled 'The DNC e-mails were not
hacked by Russian GRU.'
'The true identity of the hacker that sent the cat among the Democratic
party pigeons, at the most damaging moment for Hillary Clinton, remains
the subject of conjecture for lack of firm proof. The leading suspects may
well be one or more of her party opponents.'
What 'DebkaFile' point to is a central tension in the claims by 'CrowdStrike'
and others.
On one hand, according to the conventional wisdom – recycled on SST by
'herb' – the hacks into the DNC networks are likely to have required much
more than the capabilities of a solitary hacker, but were the product of
the kind of sophisticated operation which points to a state agency.
On the other, apparently this very sophisticated operation could be cracked
by 'CrowdStrike' in two hours – and had left obvious signatures.
A more general claim is made in the 'DebkaFile' piece on which people
better informed than myself may have a view:
'Russia's cyber warfare system is still mostly a "black hole" for the
West. Although it is highly effective, very little is known about its methods
of operation, organizational structures, scale of cooperation with counterparts
in other countries, and the tools and resources at its disposal.
"Had any branch of Russian intelligence been responsible for the hacking
the Democratic party's servers, no obvious signatures, such as the terms
'Fancy Bear, and 'Cozy Bear' that were discovered, would have been left
behind for investigators to find."
In exchanges in response to the analysis by 'TTG', who clearly has an
extensive familiarity with this whole field, 'herb' linked to a widely-quoted
analysis by Professor Thomas Rits of King's College, London. A cybersecurity
expert to whom I linked, Jeffrey Carr, has now produced a detailed critique
of Rits, under the title 'Can Facts Slow the DNC Breach Runaway Train?'
At the end of the piece are links to his two earlier articles, 'Faith-Based
Attribution' and 'The DNC Breach and the Hijacking of Common Sense', which
I would most strongly recommend to anyone interested in the problems of
attributing responsibility for the hack.
The three pieces by Carr produce, in my view, highly cogent support for
the scepticism expressed by 'DebkaFile' about the notion that 'CrowdStrike'
had actually established that either the GRU, or the FSB/SVR, had hacked
the DNC servers.
Of course, this does not mean that one can discount the possibility that
Russian state authorities had hacked into them. It would seem to me extremely
probable that some of them had.
However, the 'CrowdStrike' report is smelling to me more and more of
an 'information operation' aimed at 'damage limitation'.
A key reason for this is that the report, and discussion of this, obfuscates
an absolutely central problem. Even if the company had, within two hours,
identified penetration operations by the GRU and the FSB/SVR, this would
quite clearly not establish beyond reasonable doubt that the only possible
suspect in relation to the handing over of the materials to WikiLeaks was
either or both of these agencies.
One could only assert this with confidence, if CrowdStrike could guarantee
1. that they were able to identify all possible successful hackings into
the system over the relevant period, and 2. that they could rule out the
possibility that successful hacks had been made by people who could have
obtained the relevant materials and handed them over to WikiLeaks.
The question of whether they were said anything to the DNC about how
they had ruled out these possibilities has barely been discussed in the
MSM coverage.
But this also brings us to the question of what 'Guccifer 2.0' is attempting
to hide. That at the minimum he is not quite what he portrays himself as
being is evident.
That said, any one of a multitude of plausible hypotheses about his role
– including, incidentally, the possibility that he is actually acting on
behalf of Americans who want to see Hillary Clinton exposed – suggests he
would be to a greater or lesser extent 'making smoke'.
What the observations of 'TTG' and Sam Peralta suggested was that the
self-portrait by 'Guccifer 2.0' of himself as a particularly brilliant hacker
obscures the actual situation.
When I put their observations to a software engineer acquaintance who
is well versed in the technicalities, he strongly agreed, and elaborated
on some of the technical issues.
A key problem seems to be that, for a range of reasons, crucial networks
go on using old software. Keeping old software secure, in the face of constantly
evolving threats, requires relevant expertise and hard work. Commonly it
doesn't get it – and it seems that the DNC servers were a pretty easy target.
But in relation to hacking into such systems, what counts is not sheer
brilliance. It is a combination of thorough technical knowledge and sheer
persistence and hard graft.
Now it may well be the case that the claims by 'Guccifer 2.0' about his
own brilliance are simply a case of vainglory. However, it may also be possible
that both 'CrowdStrike' and he have a disguised common interest in obscuring
the fact that the range of people who had the technical competence to hack
into the DNC servers was great.
By the same token, the range of people who had a motive to hack into
these servers and were in a position to employ people with the relevant
technical competence may also have been very considerable.
This has all kinds of implications. For one thing, if the suggestion
that the hacking required the capabilities of a state organisation is false,
then the obvious way for a state organisation to preserve 'deniability'
would be to get hold of competent individuals, using systems and approaches
which had not been used in previous hacks.
What is not obvious is why such any competent intelligence organisation
should leave the kind of easily accessible 'metadata' on documents which
are supposed to establish that 'Guccifer 2.0' is a front for the GRU. It
is not clear to me whether the documents in question have been subjected
to critical examination by competent – and independent – analysts.
However, if the 'metadata' really can be shown to exist, I think the
comment by Carr about the use of the name of Dzerzhinsky is to the point:
"OK. Raise your hand if you think that a GRU or FSB officer would add
Iron Felix's name to the metadata of a stolen document before he released
it to the world while pretending to be a Romanian hacker. Someone clearly
had a wicked sense of humor."
In his most recent piece, Carr links to remarks from a 1968 paper by
Sherman Kent, founder of the analytical tradition in the CIA, entitled 'Estimates
and Influence.'
In it, Kent used the metaphor of 'pyramid'. Good intelligence assessment
starts off with a 'base' of reliably ascertainable fact – on the basis of
which it may be possible to construct a structure which ends up with a definite
'apex', but may not.
The reverse method is to start with a desired 'apex' and then attempt
to construct a 'pyramid' which will support it. As Kent puts it:
"There it floats, a simple assertion screaming for a rationale. This,
then, is worked out from the top down. The difficulty of the maneuver comes
to a climax when the last stage in the perverse downward deduction must
be joined up smoothly and naturally with the reality of the base. This operation
requires a very considerable skill, particularly where there is a rich supply
of factual base-material. Without an artfully contrived joint, the whole
structure can be made to proclaim its bastardy, to the chagrin of its progenitor."
Of course, one can simply fabricate large elements of the 'base'.
As the release of 'hacked' material seems likely to continue, establishing
a reliable 'base' on which we can begin to build a structure leading to
a credible 'apex' seems a matter of some moment.
A key part of it, obviously, is working out what kinds of people might
have had a motive.
In relation to Putin, I think one needs to keep in mind both that he
may very much want to avoid seeing a new Clinton Presidency – for reasons
with which I have every sympathy. Equally, however, there are strong 'downsides'
in using this kind of means to prevent it, and if they are involved, it
will have been through means preserving 'deniability.'
The 'metadata' claims, however, make me think that the suggestion by
'DebkaFile' that people should be looking closer to home should be taken
seriously.
The evidence presented so far that the hack is by the Russian government
reminds me of the Iraq WMD evidence. Very dodgy. But, the media did its
job. Russia has been convicted. My twitter feed is fully convinced since
the "experts" have said so.
July 26th, 2016 |
LawNewz
A high profile law firm is now caught up in the DNC WikiLeaks mess. A group of
Bernie Sanders
supporters filed a class action lawsuit against the Democratic
National Committee, and the now-former chairwoman,
Debbie Wasserman-Shultz
.
In a letter sent Monday
, they are demanding that attorneys from Perkins Coie LLP be
removed from the case due to a conflict of interest. New emails discovered through the
WikiLeaks dump show that attorneys from the law firm have given strategy advice to hurt
Sanders, well before he dropped out. To add fuel to their claim, they've now discovered
that attorneys from Perkins Coie are representing both the Democratic National Committee
and Clinton's campaign.
The
lawsuit
, which was actually filed before the leaks, claims that the DNC "actively
concealed its bias" from its donors and supporters backing
Bernie Sanders
. The
plaintiffs say the recent emails only give them more evidence that the Democratic
National Committee was on board with
Hillary Clinton
from the start.
My suggestion is that the DNC put out a statement saying that the
accusations the Sanders campaign are not true. The fact that CNN notes
that you aren't getting between the two campaigns is the problem. Here,
Sanders is attacking the DNC and its current practice, its past practice
with the POTUS and with Sec Kerry. Just as the RNC pushes back directly
on Trump over "rigged system",
the DNC should push back DIRECTLY
at Sanders
and say that what he is saying is false and harmful
the Democratic party. [emphasis added]
"What we have here is evidence from the Wikileaks
database that the same attorneys that are appearing in our case and representing the DNC
in the Southern District of Florida were previously attorneys for the Clinton campaign
or they were providing advice to the DNC that was adverse to Bernie Sanders," attorney
Jared Beck
said in a video posted on line.
While it might "smell" funny, the fact that Elias gave "advice" to the DNC is not
illegal, according to the Campaign Legal Center.
"This email exchange pertains to a perfectly legal joint fundraising committee that
includes the Clinton campaign, the DNC and a bunch of state Democratic Party committees.
The coordination laws/rules don't restrict this type of interaction,"
Paul Ryan,
the Campaign Legal Center's deputy executive director told
LawNewz.com
.
However, attorneys for Bernie Sanders supporters contend that the federal court rules
bar Perkins Coie lawyers from representing the DNC as defense counsel in the case. They
say that the Perkins Coie attorneys may become "potential material witnesses" or
"defendants" in the case and should be disqualified. They plan to file an official
motion in court.
Beck's firm
is
representing about 150 supporters of Bernie Sanders in the proposed class action
lawsuit.
"My email account shows that I've been getting 10 emails per minute from people
around the country that want to join the lawsuit," Beck said. The DNC is attempting
to get the lawsuit dismissed on procedural grounds, they contend that it was never
properly served. Several emails sent to Clinton's lawyer Marc Elias have not been
returned. (He is also listed as the attorney for the DNC on the class action
lawsuit). If we hear back from him, we will update this article accordingly.
Why those unknown forces (probably a disgruntled insider) leaked this bombshell so late. At this
point it does not affect Sanders chances to beat Hillary.
Notable quotes:
"... "The same people on the Clinton team who made enormous efforts to claim her private email server-which operated unencrypted over the Internet for three months, including during trips to China and Russia, and which contained top-secret national-security data-was not hacked by the Russians now are certain that the DNC server was hacked by the Russians" http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/unpacking-the-dnc-emails/ ..."
"... The British government has learned that Vladimir Putin recently sought significant quantities of malware from Africa. ..."
"... Well, golly, if you're going to create a bright, shiny object to distract people from the actual content of the e-mails, why not blame little green men from Mars? I mean, seriously, isn't what this is all about – deflecting away from what the DNC was up to, so as to keep as much of it as possible from further tarnishing the already-clouded view of both the process and the major candidate whom it benefited? ..."
"... And in addition to this little bit of obviousness, how can it possible have escaped anyone with a functioning brain that this escalating hysteria about the DNC hack was noticeably absent with respect to Clinton's own email operation? ..."
"... I also find it deeply and almost-hilariously ironic that we're all supposed to be livid at the idea of some foreign government trying to manipulate the US elections when not only is the Democratic Party's flagship organization flagrantly engaged in trying to manipulate the outcome, but the AMERICAN MEDIA wouldn't know what to do with itself if it wasn't constantly fking around with the entire process. ..."
"... Looks like another false flag propaganda ploy. The Obama Admin flares up with phony indignation and immediately swears there will be more sanctions. The FBI wants to prosecute ( or is it persecute) the messenger instead of investigating the real crimes. The e-mails and their contents are real. The noise is to cover up this fact! ..."
"... The CNN poll in yesterday's Links shows Trump beats Hillary by huge margins (12 points) on the economy and terrorism. She beats him on foreign policy (and nothing else). Dragging in Russian hackers and foreign intelligence services plays to her strength. ..."
"... In reality, politically motivated attacks like this are almost always domestic in origin. To go to Wikileaks specifically I expect an inside whistleblower is responsible. The same thing happened to Sony and the Swiss banks. Elites simply don't understand how many people they work with are disgusted by their policies. To them this is a perfectly believable thing. ..."
"... It reminds me very much of the French Fries to Freedom Fries movement. If you have a critical mass of people in on the fun, it can work, at least for a time. But what happens when most people don't care about being excommunicated from the DNC Serious People List? ..."
"... Obvious clues pointing back at a known adversary…strategically-timed leaks from anonymous intelligence sources…vague statements on the record from the President and other high-level officials…stories fed to sympathetic media outlets…yep, sounds a lot like the playbook used by the Bush White House for the run-up to the Iraq War. Except there's no way that the Democrats would ever ..."
"... No matter who is responsible for the hack, I'm just glad that the information about the DNC corruption is out in the open. I'm disappointed that this didn't happen before June 7, when California, New Jersey, and several other states had their primaries. Better late than never, I guess. ..."
"... why hadn't our press revealed this? ..."
"... It's now so routine to spin-doctor aggressively that the elites have lost any sense of whether what they are saying is credible or not. ..."
"... I thought Trump's comments today about wanting the Russians to find Hillary's emails were genius. He fans the flames of this whole Russia-Putin thing on day 3 of the Dem convention and what are the media outlets talking about? Plus, Hillary's campaign, in it's rebuttal to Trump, is indirectly reminding everyone that her homebrew server was putting national security at risk. ..."
Washington's Blog asked the highest-level NSA whistleblower in history, William Binney – the NSA
executive who created the agency's mass surveillance program for digital information, who served
as the senior technical director within the agency, who managed six thousand NSA employees, the 36-year
NSA veteran widely regarded as a "legend" within the agency and the NSA's best-ever analyst and code-breaker,
who mapped out the Soviet command-and-control structure before anyone else knew how, and so predicted
Soviet invasions before they happened ("in the 1970s, he decrypted the Soviet Union's command system,
which provided the US and its allies with real-time surveillance of all Soviet troop movements and
Russian atomic weapons") – what he thinks of such claims:
Edward Snowden says the NSA could easily determine who hacked Hillary Clinton's emails:
Evidence that could publicly attribute responsibility for the DNC hack certainly exists
at #NSA , but DNI traditionally
objects to sharing.
The mainstream media is also trumpeting the meme that Russia was behind the hack, because it
wants to help Trump get elected. In other words, the media is trying to deflect how damaging the
email leaks are to Clinton's character by trying to somehow associate Trump with Putin. See e.g.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/us/politics/kremlin-donald-trump-vladimir-putin.html
Who's right?
Binney responded:
Snowden is right and the MSM is clueless. Here's what I said to Ray McGovern and VIPS with
a little humor at the end. [McGovern is a 27-year CIA veteran, who chaired National Intelligence
Estimates and personally delivered intelligence briefings to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George
H.W. Bush, their Vice Presidents, Secretaries of State, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many other
senior government officials. McGovern is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity ("VIPS" for short).]
Ray, I am suspicious that they may have looked for known hacking code (used by Russians). And,
I'm sure they were one probably of many to hack her stuff. But, does that mean that they checked
to see if others also hacked in?
Further, do they have evidence that the Russians downloaded and later forwarded those emails
to wikileaks? Seems to me that they need to answer those questions to be sure that their assertion
is correct. Otherwise, HRC and her political activities are and I am sure have been prime targets
for the Russians (as well as many others) but without intent of course.
I would add that we proposed to do a program that would monitor all activity on the world-wide
NSA network back in 1991/92. We called it "Wellgrounded." NSA did not want anyone (especially
congress) to know what was going on inside NSA and therefore rejected that proposal. I have not
read what Ed has said, but, I do know that every line of code that goes across the network is
logged in the network log. This is where a little software could scan, analyze and find the intruders
initially and then compile all the code sent by them to determine the type of attack. This is
what we wanted to do back in 1991/92.
The newest allegation tying the Clinton email hack to Russia seems to be
all innuendo .
Binney explained to us:
My problem is that they have not listed intruders or attempted intrusions to the DNC site.
I suspect that's because they did a quick and dirty look for known attacks.
Of course, this brings up another question; if it's a know attack, why did the DNC not have
software to stop it? You can tell from the network log who is going into a site. I used that on
networks that I had. I looked to see who came into my LAN, where they went, how long they stayed
and what they did while in my network.
Further, if you needed to, you could trace back approaches through other servers etc. Trace
Route and Trace Watch are good examples of monitoring software that help do these things. Others
of course exist … probably the best are in NSA/GCHQ and the other Five Eyes countries. But, these
countries have no monopoly on smart people that could do similar detection software.
Question is do they want to fix the problems with existing protection software. If the DNC
and OPM are examples, then obviously, they don't care to fix weakness probably because the want
to use these weaknesses to their own advantage.
Why is this newsworthy?
Well, the mainstream narrative alleges that the Clinton emails are not important … and that it's
a conspiracy between Putin and Trump to make sure Trump – and not Clinton – is elected.
But there are other issues, as well …
For example, an allegation of hacking could
literally lead to
war .
So we should be skeptical of such serious and potentially far-reaching allegations – which may
be true or may be false – unless and until they are proven .
Yup, as a former server admin it is patently absurd to attribute a hack to anyone in particular
until a substantial amount of forensic work has been done. (read, poring over multiple internal
log files…gathering yet more log files of yet more internal devices, poring over them, then –
once the request hops out of your org – requesting logfiles from remote entities, poring over
*those* log files, requesting further log files from yet more upstream entities, wash rinse repeat
ad infinitum)
For example, at its simplest, I would expect a middling-competency hacker to find an open wifi
hub across town to connect to, then VPN to server in, say, Tonga, then VPN from there to another
box in Sweden, then connect to a PC previously compromised in Iowa, then VPN to yet another anonymous
cloud server in Latvia, and (assuming the mountain dew is running low, gotta get cracking) then
RDP to the target server and grab as many docs as possible. RAR those up and encrypt them, FTP
them to a compromised media server in South Korea, email them from there to someones gmail account
previously hacked, xfer them to a P2P file sharing app, and then finally access them later from
a completely different set of servers.
In many cases where I did this sort of analysis I still ended up with a complete dead end:
some sysadmins at remote companies or orgs would be sympathetic and give me actual related log
files. Others would be sympathetic but would not give files, and instead do their own analysis
to give me tips. Many never responded, and most IPs ended up at unknown (compromised) personal
PCs, or devices where the owner could not be found anyway.
If the hacker was sloppy and left other types of circumstantial evidence you might get lucky
– but that demographic mostly points back to script kiddies and/or criminal dweebs – i.e., rather
then just surreptitiously exfiltrating the goods they instead left messages or altered things
that seemed to indicate their own backgrounds or prejudices, or left a message that was more easily
'traced'. If, of course, you took that evidence at face value and it was not itself an attempt
at obfuscation.
Short of a state actor such as an NSA who captures it ALL anyway, and/or can access any log
files at any public or private network at its own whim – its completely silly to attribute a hack
to anyone at this point.
So, I guess I am reduced to LOL OMG WTF its fer the LULZ!!!!!
hah, well I had a nice long answer but cloudflare blocked me. heh…apparently it doesnt like
certain words one uses when describing this stuff. Understandable!
I guess try looking up 'phishing' and 'privilege elevation' on wikipedia. Former is easiest,
latter gives you street cred.
Just to clarify on the "…If the hacker was sloppy and left other types of circumstantial evidence…"
– this is basically what I have seen reported as 'evidence' pointing to Russia: the Cyrillic keyboard
signature, the 'appeared to cease work on Russian holidays' stuff, and the association with 'known
Russian hacking groups'.
Thats great and all, but in past work I am sure my own 'research' could easily have gotten
me 'associated' with known hacking groups. Presumably various 'sophisticated' methods and tools
get you closer to possible suspects…but that kind of stuff is cycled and recycled throughout the
community worldwide – as soon as anything like that is known and published, any reasonably competent
hacker (or org of hackers) is learning how to do the same thing and incorporating such things
into their own methods. (imitation being the sincerest form of flattery)
I guess I have a lot more respect for the kinds of people I expect to be getting a paycheck
from foreign Intelligence agencies then to believe that they would leave such obvious clues behind
'accidentally'. But if we are going to be starting wars over this stuff w/Russia, or China, I
guess I would hope the adults in the room don't go all apesh*t and start chanting COMMIES, THE
RUSSIANS ARE COMING!, etc. before the ink is dry on the 'crime'.
Even then, I fail to see why this person (foreign, domestic, professional, amateur, state-sponsored,
or otherwise) hasn't done us a great service by exposing the DNC corruption in the first place.
Hell, I would love to give them the Medal of Freedom for this and (hopefully) the next boot to
drop! :)
There is a problem with those who argue that these are sophisticated Nation State attackers
and then point to the most basic circumstantial evidence to support their case. I'd bet that,
among others, the Israelis have hacked some Russian servers to launch attacks from and have some
of their workers on a Russian holiday schedule. Those things have been written about in attack
analysis so much over the last 15-20 years that they'd be stupid not to.
Now, I'm not saying the Israelis did it. I'm saying that the evidence provided so far by those
arguing it is Russia is so flaky as to prove that the Russia accusers are blinded
or corrupted by their own political agenda.
Oh, "they" just use the system management features baked right into the embedded computers
either the ones inside the "secure server" itself or (much more convenient and easy to do), they
attack the cheap-ish COTS lapdog that the support techie will be using to access the "secure server"
with:
– if there's a non-NSA evidence the attacks originated from Russia, then someone wanted the
world to know it was from Russia (or was just a private snoop).
– even if there was a technical evidence that the attack originated from Russia, unless it
could be tied very specifically to an institution (as opposed to a "PC in Russia"), it does not
prove that it was Russia. All it proves that someone using a computer in Russia initiated it.
Well phooey. My theory now goes up in smoke: Here we can clearly see an attempt at disinformation
from a Russian Operative, likely FSB – possibly from Putin's inner circle.
We know this through 2 things:
A.) The name, 'Vlad' – inequivocally a Russian given name, and not a common one at that.
B.) Note the slightly wrong grammar: "…a non-NSA evidence…" & "..was a technical evidence".
Clearly not a native English speaker.
See how easy that was? Yves, no need for log files to track IP here…case closed. In Soviet
Russia, crow eats me.
Anyone gots some nuke launch codes handy? 00000000 doesn't work for me anymore…
The recently murdered DNC Date Director Seth Rich being the leaker, or at least knowing who
the leaker was, as was hinted at recently by Julian Assange himself, makes a far more interesting
conspiracy theory.
Ten days after the murder of promising Democratic staffer Seth Rich, the Washington D.C.
slaying remains unsolved and police say they have no suspects in the crime.
Rich, a Jewish data analyst for the Democratic National Committee who worked on polling
station expansion, was shot and killed as he walked home on Sunday, July 10.
Police told Rich's parents that they believed his death was the result of a botched robbery.
Though Rich's killer did not take his wallet or phone, D.C. Police Commander William Fitzgerald
said that "there is no other reason (other than robbery) for an altercation at 4:30 in the
morning" at a community meeting on Monday.
The meeting was meant to address the recent uptick in robberies in the Bloomingdale neighborhood
near Howard University. Police reports say robberies in the area are down 20%, but an investigation
by the Washington Post found that armed robberies are actually up over 20% compared
with July 2015.
Of course there is absolutely no proof of Seth Rich's involvement, but I suppose it is a reasonable
surmise, as George Will recently said about the Russia allegations! In any case a possible crypto-BernieBro
tech-guy mole from within the DNC, as the source of the DNCLeaks, would make a much better made-for-TV
movie than the Russian theory. And if it was an internal mole, what better way to cover their
tracks than to leave some "traces" of a Russian hack.
Its one thing for Republicans to resort to the old chestnut of red scare mongering, but for
the Democrats to use the same ammo they once had lobed at them is surreal….
"The same people on the Clinton team who made enormous efforts to claim her private email
server-which operated unencrypted over the Internet for three months, including during trips to
China and Russia, and which contained top-secret national-security data-was not hacked by the
Russians now are certain that the DNC server was hacked by the Russians"
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/unpacking-the-dnc-emails/
Well, golly, if you're going to create a bright, shiny object to distract people from the
actual content of the e-mails, why not blame little green men from Mars? I mean, seriously, isn't
what this is all about – deflecting away from what the DNC was up to, so as to keep as much of
it as possible from further tarnishing the already-clouded view of both the process and the major
candidate whom it benefited?
And in addition to this little bit of obviousness, how can it possible have escaped
anyone with a functioning brain that this escalating hysteria about the DNC hack was noticeably
absent with respect to Clinton's own email operation?
I also find it deeply and almost-hilariously ironic that we're all supposed to be livid
at the idea of some foreign government trying to manipulate the US elections when not only is
the Democratic Party's flagship organization flagrantly engaged in trying to manipulate the outcome,
but the AMERICAN MEDIA wouldn't know what to do with itself if it wasn't constantly fking around
with the entire process.
I'm not sure we're ever coming out of this rabbit-hole-to-hell.
Looks like another false flag propaganda ploy. The Obama Admin flares up with phony indignation
and immediately swears there will be more sanctions. The FBI wants to prosecute ( or is it persecute)
the messenger instead of investigating the real crimes. The e-mails and their contents are real.
The noise is to cover up this fact!
"Why play the Russian/Putin/Trump card with the DNC email hack?" – An excellent question for
which you have provided a logical potential answer. Beyond that, this generally seems like an
act of desperation. I am nowhere near an expert on the details of hacking like the two who have
commented above, but what I see is a desperate attempt to capture the "stupid" vote. The whole
Democrat dog and pony show being put on now only serves to make those who will vote for Hillary
no matter what, feel self satisfied that they are right minded. What matters though is how they
connect with those not inclined to vote for her. In their logic it follows that the HIllary crowd
basically believes that anyone who would consider voting for Trump is very stupid, and this is
a desperate attempt to convince the "stupid's" to vote for Hillary. I have no idea how Trump will
act if he is elected President, but the critical factor for me is that there is now overwhelming
evidence that the entire Democrat establishment is just like Hillary (as made clear by Mr. Comey):
They are either grossly negligent and incompetent, or criminals who are not being prosecuted.
Anyone but her and her merry band of thieves will leave us all better off after November.
The association the Dems want to create is "scary foreign people support Trump".
The CNN poll in yesterday's Links shows Trump beats Hillary by huge margins (12 points)
on the economy and terrorism. She beats him on foreign policy (and nothing else). Dragging in
Russian hackers and foreign intelligence services plays to her strength.
In reality, politically motivated attacks like this are almost always domestic in origin.
To go to Wikileaks specifically I expect an inside whistleblower is responsible. The same thing
happened to Sony and the Swiss banks. Elites simply don't understand how many people they work
with are disgusted by their policies. To them this is a perfectly believable thing.
I also wonder whether there are significant numbers of Poles and Eastern Europeans generally
in the industrial precincts in some swing states; a vote against Russia in the form of a vote
against Trump might appeal to them.
I doubt it's that strategic–looks more like classic red-baiting (minus any communism but saying
"Russia" still evokes the same emotional response for people of a certain age) of the sort a former
Goldwater girl like Hillary would understand all too well.
Linking the hack and delivery of DNC emails to WIkiLeaks by Putin as a way of helping Trump
may strategically backfire.
Agreed. There are so many moving parts at this point the blowback looks to happen more rapidly
than they can manage perception, especially with things online. They spent so much time segmenting
and dismissing the various developments as disparate conspiracy theories, and now in one fell
swoop they've both legitimized critiques and connected them together (they run the risk that even
criticism that isn't true will still stick more than it otherwise would have). I'm not sure they
fully realize what they've done yet. It's a simple equation to them: Wikileaks = Bad. Russia =
Bad. Wikileaks + Russia = DoubleBad.
It reminds me very much of the French Fries to Freedom Fries movement. If you have a critical
mass of people in on the fun, it can work, at least for a time. But what happens when most people
don't care about being excommunicated from the DNC Serious People List?
Obvious clues pointing back at a known adversary…strategically-timed leaks from anonymous
intelligence sources…vague statements on the record from the President and other high-level officials…stories
fed to sympathetic media outlets…yep, sounds a lot like the playbook used by the Bush White House
for the run-up to the Iraq War. Except there's no way that the Democrats would ever do
something so shady.
Admin feeds story to crony media –> media report story as if independently sourced –> admin
then uses those reports to corroborate its own claims
It's not like they can reasonably deny anymore that they do this. The DNC leak provides hard
evidence. So plant your stories now, before there's a run!
Hey why fix our cybersecurity problems when we can just bomb Russia instead? To a hammer with
bombs everything looks like a nail.
Perhaps the biggest tell regarding our clueless, and mostly geriatric, establishment is their
superstitious misunderstanding of modern technology. Every toddler these days probably knows that
you don't put controversial material in emails or on cellphones unless you are willing to take
the kind of precautions Snowden talks about. The notion of ginning up an international conflict
over hacking is like Hollywood's idea of five years in jail for stealing one of Meryl Streep's
movies. The punishment doesn't fit the crime.
Plus of course there's the immense irony of the US, home of the NSA, getting huffy about other
countries doing the same thing. As always with out elites it's "do as we say, not as we do."
No matter who is responsible for the hack, I'm just glad that the information about the
DNC corruption is out in the open. I'm disappointed that this didn't happen before June 7, when
California, New Jersey, and several other states had their primaries. Better late than never,
I guess.
1. Before the evidence comes out: "The DNC is secretly sabotaging Sanders? Laughable conspiracy
theory!"
2. After the evidence comes out: "There's nothing new here, everyone knew this was happening,
it made no difference anyway! Sore loser."
Was flipping through 'convention' last night and happened upon Bernie's face as they try to
thank/bury him. It was the look of resignation to corruption, like Mr. Smith's just before Claude
Rains goes extra-Hollywood, tries to off himself, then says 'Arrest me', etc.
Bernie, you should have just run against both of them, damn the torpedoes.
It doesn't matter if Russia hacked it or someone else. The really important issue this brings
up is why hadn't our press revealed this? Why do we need to here about this from outsiders? And
why, now that it has been released, do they spend the bulk of their time speculating on the source
and not the content? Me thinks it's because our corporate main stream media, that merely masquerades
as a press entity, was complicit.
I think the leaked emails establish that the DNC was working closely with the 'press'. Anyone
who watched CNN during the primary season would not be surprised at the revelation that the 'press'
was complicit in the coronation of Hillary.
The DNCLeaks showed that the DNC (aka the Clinton Machine) was heavily influencing,
if not totally controlling, much of the mass media, using it to smear HRC's rivals and to
whitewash her crimes.
This fascist totalitarian control of the mass media by the DNC/Clinton campaign
has been exposed but that doesn't mean it has stopped! It hasn't. Ergo, one
will see minimal to no coverage, or whitewashing or diversionary coverage.
Why isn't it just as grave a concern that the primary contest of one of the 2 major political
parties was rigged to favor one candidate? Heck, people worried more about deflategate.
an aside: "A separate story pointed out that Trump's primary banking relationships are with
mid-sized players, and that makes sense too. He's be a third-tier account at a too-big-to-fail
banks (see here on how a much richer billionaire was abused by JP Morgan). Trump would get much
better service at a smaller institution. "
From what I've read at NC I think everyone would get much better service at a smaller
bank than at a TBTF.
"I joked early on that in the Obama administration that its solution to every problem was
better propaganda. What is troubling is how so many other players have emulated that strategy.
It's now so routine to spin-doctor aggressively that the elites have lost any sense of
whether what they are saying is credible or not. And as a skeptical consumer of media,
I find it uncomfortable to be living in an informational hall of mirrors."
It's no coincidence that trust in institutions is at an all-time low.
Eroded public trust translates to crappy, Banana Republic economies - and politics so venal that
it requires constant deceit to (mal)function.
On the upside, the dwindling credibility of institutions is providing opportunities for outlets
like The Young Turks (via YouTube), which take a lot of time unpacking propaganda and looking
for alternative perspectives. Ditto 'The Real News Network' (RNN). And ditto NC.
When I hear the "reporters" and "newscasters" on our American MSM speak, it reminds me of something
Wolfgang Leonhard taught: "Pravda lies in such a a way that not even the opposite of what they
say is true."
Huh. It is clear and irrefutable that the NSA (ie, the USA) has hacked Germany, France, Britain,
Japan, etc, etc, etc, etc. So…since hacking is an "act of war" we are now at war with our allies.
Yes?
Or does a war-worthy hack HAVE to originate in Russia (or China) to be an "act of war"? If
the USA is doing it it's an act of peacylove?
If the issue is the hack itself and its perpetrator(s), as opposed to the content of the hack,
I remain curious about the inattention to this fact: One of the documents in the DNC cache released
by Wikileaks was an excel spreadsheet of Trump donors. I haven't heard
anyone question the origin of a document that would itself appear to be the product of a hack
by the DNC (the only other possibility that comes to mind is a mole inside the Trump campaign).
I certainly haven't seen a request by the Trump campaign or anybody else for an FBI investigation
of what would seem to be prima facie evidence of a hack by the DNC of Trump computers in violation
of 18 U.S.C. § 1030.
But, then, there's been relative silence, generally, by the DNC with regard to leaks of donor
information. At least I haven't seen any PR-ly apology by the DNC, or Trump's organization for
that matter, for the insecure storing of donor information and a promise that steps have been
taken to make sure it doesn't happen again. Maybe I just missed that public apology. But I also
wonder if there isn't a reluctance to draw any attention whatsoever to that now public information.
Trump's affection for Putin and all things Russian has been known for years. In Russia, however,
Trump is considered to be clownish. Putin's affection for Trump might best be characterized as
condescending. Trump is the preference of the Putin crowd. And why not? Russian oligarch money
has been flowing into Trump's coffers for at least a decade. Why? Well, after four bankruptcies,
where else is Trump going to borrow money? There is solid evidence of financial ties between Trump
advisors and Putin's circle. Try the website Ballotpedia and look up "Carter Page," Trump's advisor
on all things Russian. Other examples are out there.
That said, I would not absolutely eliminate Putin and his operatives of conspiring with hackers
to obtain and then release documents that would denigrate the Democratic party and HRC.
I find it interesting that Trump telegraphed to the world a skeptical view of NATO allies,
especially the Putin-coveted Baltics, and signaled that he might not come to their defense if
attacked. Those views were expressed in an interview with the New York Times on Thursday, July
21. These comments, predictably, set off alarms all across Europe, and had Republicans scrambling
to backpedal. And then the next day, come the DNC leaks.
And now rumors of Scalia's assassination are being floated again! Distraction after distraction!
KKR, Blackstone, Apollo, etc al, have bankrupted HUNDREDS of companies each. Yet they not only
do they have no trouble borrowing money, they are eagerly pursued by Wall Street.
Trump has never gone bankrupt personally. He had four companies go bankrupt. Trump has started
and operated hundreds of corporate entities. That makes his ratio of bankruptcies way lower than
average and thus means he's a good credit, and much better than private equity. I'm not about
to waste time tracking it down, but the media has already reported on who Trump's regular lender
is, and it's a domestic financial institution, but not one of the TBTF banks.
In addition, I had a major NYC real estate developer/syndicator, a billionaire, in the late
1980s. The early 1990s recession hit NYC real estate very hard and every developer was in serious
trouble. My former client and Trump were the only big NYC developers not to have to give up major
NY properties to the banks.
And as far as your NATO remarks are concerned, you've clearly not been paying attention. Trump
has been critical of the US role in NATO for months, and has already gotten plenty of heat for
that.
Finally, as even the New York Times was forced to concede, the timing of the hacks was all
wrong to be intended to help Trump. It started long before he was a factor on the Republican side.
The DNC hired Crowdstrike to get 2 major Russian hacks off the DNC network prior to this guccifer2.0
nonsense.
You write: "Binney explained to us:
My problem is that they have not listed intruders or attempted intrusions to the DNC site. I suspect
that's because they did a quick and dirty look for known attacks."
But they have listed the initial intruders, see links below.
Binny keeps describing how he would check his LAN back in 1991. His experience is that of a
dinosaur. This article is a mess, conflating the Hrc email scandal with the DNC scandal. What
is at issue, as stated in the FAIR link, is whether the leak to gawker and wiki etc was perpetrated
by a lone Romanian hacker or by the Russian government, not whether the DNC was spied upon by
the Russian; it was.
I am not arguing the the Clinton campaign did not figure out how to use this to their advantage,
guccifer 2.0 and crowd strike stuff both came out in June but was not the subject of much crowing
until now…
> not whether the DNC was spied upon by the Russian; it was.
Based on what evidence? So many blanket statements we're supposed to accept as fact. No.
Guccifer 1.0, who is Romanian, hacked Sidney Blumenthal's email. Generally speaking, Romanians
like many Eastern Europeans hate Russia. Guccifer 1.0 was extradited to the US and made various
statements to the press about Clinton's private email server. I'm not aware of anything he said
about the DNC.
Guccifer 2.0 released DNC documents to the public and apparently to WikiLeaks. There is no
evidence he is Russian or connected to the Russians.
The mainstream media is also trumpeting the meme that Russia was behind the hack, because it
wants to help Trump get elected. In other words, the media is trying to deflect how damaging the
email leaks are to Clinton's character by trying to somehow associate Trump with Putin. See e.g.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/us/politics/kremlin-donald-trump-vladimir-putin.html "
don't you mean MSM wants to get Clinton elected, not Trump?
think the sentence was trying to express the idea that "Russia" "wants to help Trump get elected–the
"it" referring to "Russia" and not to "mainstream media"–as that idea is the predicate of a meme
that the mainstream media is trumpeting.
Always better to repeat the noun you are referring to, rather than use a pronoun, where use
of a pronoun could create ambiguity, as "it" (or should I have said, " such use" ?) did here.
Did any one see the recent docu ' Zero days' re STUXNET worm (invented by combined efforts
of US _NSA,CIA + Israeli intelligent +?UK) introduced into the NET to take down the Nulc program
in IRAN!
There is fascinating discussion and the threat of cyber terrorism from any one from any where
to the infra structures – Energy grid, transportation ++
It has lot of bearing on this Hillary E-mail gate scandal
Did you bother reading the comments earlier in this thread by JacobiteInTraining and Hacker,
who confirm that the claims don't stand up to scrutiny?
And you appear not to have been following this at all. Right after the story broke, a hacker
who called himself Guccifer 2.0 posted two sets of DNC docs and said more were coming, which was
presumed even then to be a Wikileaks releases (Assange had separately said lots of material on
Clinton was coming).
Because Hillary's campaign has insisted that national security was not compromised with her
use of a homebrew email server. Which would be the higher value target to a foreign intelligence
service – email she used as sec state, or the DNC server? Which would probably have better security
– the homebrew server, or the DNC server? If you buy into the idea that the Russians hacked the
DNC server, you have to admit there is a _strong_ probability they hacked her personal server
as well. I find it kindof amusing that her campaign, in it's response to Trump today, is basically
making the same point (even though it hasn't sunk in yet).
That's why it's relevant.
I can't speak to what security Hillary had in place. But I can say with 100% certainty that
it is I direly easier to secure a small network for one or two people over a large network that
has 100s or 1000s.
I have been working in network security for 20 years. I guarantee that I could build a small
network that would be close to impossible to break into regardless of the ability of the attacker.
So I reject the premise that we should presume that Hillary was hacked
I suggest you get up to speed on this story before making assumptions and assertions based
on them. It has been widely reported that Hillary's tech had no experience in network security
whatsoever, so the issue re the size of the network is irrelevant.
Bryan Pagliano's
resume , which the State Department recently turned over to Judicial Watch, shows he had
neither experience nor certification in protecting email systems against cyber security threats
His main qualification seems to be that he had been an IT director for the Clinton campaign
in 2006. CNN points out he was hired at State as a "political appointee":
Again, irrelevant to my point. The fact that the DNC mail servers were hacked does NOT mean
that Clinton's mail servers were hacked. Clinton's mail servers may have been hacked and Assange
is claiming that he has documents that prove it was. But, to date, no evidence has been provided
to show that her mail servers were hacked.
What we DO know is that the State Department mail servers were hacked, at least twice and at
least once by the Russians.
Regardless, none of this has anything to do with whether the Russians hacked the DNC mail servers
and whether they gave that information to Wikileaks.
Crowdstrike ,
Fiedlis Cybersecurity , and Mandiant all independently corroborated that it was the Russians.
The German government corroborated that an SSL cert found on the DNC servers was the same cert
that was used to infiltrate the German Parliament.
guccifer 2.0 is some guy that made a claim that made a claim the day AFTER Crowdstrike released
their report. He/She offered no evidence to support their claim.
So perhaps 3 different professional IT security companies are incompetent, despite all evidence
to the contrary, or Guccifer 2.0 is just some guy trying to take credit for something they didn't
do or it is a Russian agent trying to actively distract people from the actual culprits.
It is possible that the Russians weren't the ones to give the docs to wikileaks. But they almost
certainly were the ones who perpetrated an attack into the DNC mail servers. That in itself is
a huge problem.
I'm curious, is your background on the computer side or the policy side? You're making some
leaps where I think I follow your meaning, but the actual logic/evidence/warrant isn't there,
so I'm not sure exactly what you're claiming.
Aside from questions of whether elements of the Russian government attacked the DNC,
for example, you imply that the Russians were the only people attacking the DNC. Do you
have any technical reason to conclude that? Or is it just sloppy sentence construction, and you
didn't mean to imply that? Because at a policy level, it seems a reasonably solid understanding
of the world we inhabit that elements of many foreign governments attack US computer
systems, both for active penetration of documents and for more passive denial of service by legitimate
users. For goodness sakes, elements of the USFG itself attack US computer systems.
Anyone who can stand up straight for 5 minutes without falling over backwards and has half
a brain and an ounce of institutional memory knows it wasn't the Russkies who dropped the email
dime on the DNC shenanigans…
I thought Trump's comments today about wanting the Russians to find Hillary's emails were
genius. He fans the flames of this whole Russia-Putin thing on day 3 of the Dem convention and
what are the media outlets talking about? Plus, Hillary's campaign, in it's rebuttal to Trump,
is indirectly reminding everyone that her homebrew server was putting national security at risk.
This whole Russia-Putin connection thing won't work – it really isn't that believable in the
first place, the timing is suspect, and a lot of people in this country really don't care that
deeply about Putin one way or the other.
20 years ago, America was very pleased about how the elections had gone in Russia
But now it is the other way around. At granny Hillary's HQ they have become so hysterical
over the topic "Russian is manipulating our elections and pushing for Trump" that even McFaul
has become indignant:
After Flame and Stixnet worms as well as Snowden revelations, the US now is on receiving end its
own sophisticated method of attacks which make finding the origin almost impossible.
Notable quotes:
"... Mook's "Russians under the bed" gaslighting is useful on a number of fronts: Ginning up war fever for an October surprise ; setting up a later McCarthy-ite purge of Trump supporters, Clinton skeptics, or even those prematurely anti-Trump ; and if we're truly blessed, a real shooting war ; some damned thing in the Baltic or the Black Sea, or wherever the Kagan clan points to on the map in the war room. And it's always useful to be able to convert one's opponents to enemies by accusing them of treason, especially in an election year. ..."
"... Yup, as a former server admin it is patently absurd to attribute a hack to anyone in particular until a substantial amount of forensic work has been done. (read, poring over multiple internal log files…gathering yet more log files of yet more internal devices, poring over them, then – once the request hops out of your org – requesting logfiles from remote entities, poring over *those* log files, requesting further log files from yet more upstream entities, wash rinse repeat ad infinitum). ..."
"... For example, at its simplest, I would expect a middling-competency hacker to find an open wifi hub across town to connect to, then VPN to server in, say, Tonga, then VPN from there to another box in Sweden, then connect to a PC previously compromised in Iowa, then VPN to yet another anonymous cloud server in Latvia, and (assuming the mountain dew is running low, gotta get cracking) then RDP to the target server and grab as many docs as possible. RAR those up and encrypt them, FTP them to a compromised media server in South Korea, email them from there to someones gmail account previously hacked, xfer them to a P2P file sharing app, and then finally access them later from a completely different set of servers. ..."
"... most IPs ended up at unknown (compromised) personal PCs, or devices where the owner could not be found anyway. ..."
"... If the hacker was sloppy and left other types of circumstantial evidence you might get lucky – but that demographic mostly points back to script kiddies and/or criminal dweebs – i.e., rather then just surreptitiously exfiltrating the goods they instead left messages or altered things that seemed to indicate their own backgrounds or prejudices, or left a message that was more easily 'traced'. If, of course, you took that evidence at face value and it was not itself an attempt at obfuscation. ..."
"... Short of a state actor such as an NSA who captures it ALL anyway, and/or can access any log files at any public or private network at its own whim – its completely silly to attribute a hack to anyone at this point ..."
"... That's great and all, but in past work I am sure my own 'research' could easily have gotten me 'associated' with known hacking groups. Presumably various 'sophisticated' methods and tools get you closer to possible suspects…but that kind of stuff is cycled and recycled throughout the community worldwide – as soon as anything like that is known and published, any reasonably competent hacker (or org of hackers) is learning how to do the same thing and incorporating such things into their own methods. (imitation being the sincerest form of flattery) ..."
"... There is a problem with those who argue that these are sophisticated Nation State attackers and then point to the most basic circumstantial evidence to support their case. I'd bet that, among others, the Israelis have hacked some Russian servers to launch attacks from and have some of their workers on a Russian holiday schedule. Those things have been written about in attack analysis so much over the last 15-20 years that they'd be stupid not to. ..."
"... Now, I'm not saying the Israelis did it. I'm saying that the evidence provided so far by those arguing it is Russia is so flaky as to prove that the Russia accusers are blinded or corrupted by their own political agenda. ..."
"... Problem #1: The IP address 176.31.112[.]10 used in the Bundestag breach as a Command and Control server has never been connected to the Russian intelligence services. In fact, Claudio Guarnieri , a highly regarded security researcher, whose technical analysis was referenced by Rid, stated that "no evidence allows to tie the attacks to governments of any particular country." ..."
"... This post is not about today's ..."
"... Carr makes the point that even supposed clues about Russian involvement ("the default language is Cyrillic!") are meaningless as all these could be spoofed by another party. ..."
"... Separately it just shows again Team Clinton's (and DNC's) political deviousness and expertise how they –with the full support of the MSM of course –have managed to deflect the discussion to Trump and Russia from how the DNC subverted US democracy. ..."
"... Absent any other evidence to work with, I can accept it as credible that a clumsy Russian or Baltic user posted viewed and saved docs instead of the originals; par for the course in public and private bureaucracies the world over. It would have been useful to see the original Properties metadata; instead we get crapped up copies. That only tells me the poster is something of a lightweight, and it at least somewhat suggests that these docs passed through multiple hands ..."
"... Absolutely agree. Breed the stupid, use the stupid. how long can an idiocratic system last. I need to emigrate. ..."
"... "If the electorate doesn't meet your standards, lower them." ..."
"... One guy on Twitter, even with 10 million followers, can't overcome the Mighty Wurlitzer of the media all blasting the "Looke, over there! Baddie Rooskies!" tout ensemble ..."
"... The thing that most bothers me is that this is supportive of the Kagans and Hillary's push to foment a shooting war with Russia. The so-called metadata that they point to is all something that could very easily be created by an amateur who was actually given access to the DNC's server(s). The "investigator" who issued the conclusion has no record of integrity. ..."
"... Yes, the logical endgame of a 'Trump is a Russian stooge' strategy is that the stronger Trump is in the polls, the greater the incentive to stage an October Surprise with Russia. Something tells me that this lot would quite happily risk a nuclear war if it gave them a better chance of winning an election. ..."
"... … all of which does indeed show a smoking gun, but not the same smoking gun as is being reported. What is shown is that, in addition to the fact that a technical investigation being made by reasonably competent people, a PR team has also been brought in to design the messaging, disseminate the message to the public and create the "right" optics for the story. Such PR / media management teams are fully-paid up members of the Credentialed Class. As such, they want to be seen to earn their money and prove they should get more of it from their elite benefactors in the future. This has an almost inevitable consequence that they will seize on what was probably a suggestive-but-not-conclusive piece of evidence from an investigating team and embellish it with a conclusion which isn't proven or even supported by the actual evidence. Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction" (which, of course, didn't exist) is perhaps the best-known example of this phenomena. ..."
"... When you set up a new computer, one of the things a setup routine gets the user to answer is the location of the PC and the input language. This, amongst many other things, sets the code pages used for backwards compatibility in text files which don't support Unicode. It is so easy to forget this has ever been set by a hacker who then merrily goes on to write their hack completely oblivious to the fact they've given - if they are not very careful - the location of their home country away. Or, at least, their native language. If I get chance I'll send a screen shot of a typical application and how a user might be completely unaware of how they are disclosing their location / language if I can hook up to an anonymous hosting service) which might make it a bit clearer for readers. ..."
"... As I've described above, it is a trivial task to "spoof" a PC into looking like it was being used by a Russian, Korean, Chinese, whatever, based person or group. You either do it during the PC setup process or else you can with a few clicks change the default locale on any PC or other operating system. Hey-presto. You can now produce what looks like "Russian" (or any other language) flavoured text and cunningly have these tell-tale code pages appear in your malicious code or similar. ..."
"... In other words, the Cyrillic attribute indicates that the posted docs are not originals ..."
"... Which is telling. The DNC never disavowed the e-mails. They just simply said "See, it's those damn Russians up to their old tricks again". It's like watching an episode of "Maury" when someone gets caught cheating, then try to 1) blame someone/something else for the cheating 2) then apologize for said cheating (ONLY because they got caught) and say "c'mon, baby, let's move on from this"… ..."
"... I wonder if it would be overly technodeterminist to argue one of the primary reasons for displacement of journalists and other human knowledge interpreters by machines and algorithms was the NSA's secret need to make sense of their massive telemetry and data as the Cold War ended and the Information Age and Comparative Advantage became ossified neoclassical economic theory and practice. ..."
"... The Russians are trying to rig the elections by exposing how we tried to rig the elections! THIS MEANS WAR! ..."
"... The childish, credulous, transparently Machevellian propagandizing by the DNC here, especially the deflection in place of serious scientific analysis, is beyond contemptible: it's staggering. But it works because over a quarter century after PCs started showing up on desks the vast majority of the public still don't know as much about how these machines work as most of those living in the 1930's groked about their automobiles (which were in far shorter supply). The world is becoming more complex by the minute, and unless folks start to knuckle down and start learning how it really works they're going to be doomed to be mere passengers on a runaway train. ..."
"... Even if there was a way to determine exactly when and were the malicious code was made, wouldn't there be a good chance it could have been used by someone else. I would imagine everyone in that "industry" would find bits of the others work and incorporate it into their own. What better way to throw people off the trail than to incorporate pieces from different groups for just that purpose. Especially if you know a forensic examination would be looking for those clues. Also how about a "script kiddie" or non-sophisticated actor getting ahold of it and using it like any other tool. ..."
"... Hacker's link to the ars technica article below is the most detailed explanation I have seen relating these intruders to previous attacks, and Yves link to the Carr article is handy for readers because he includes a chart to cross reference the various names that each of the known russian intruders. ..."
"... "Symbol manipulators - like those in the Democrat-leaning creative class - often believe that real economy systems are as easy to manipulate as symbol systems are." ..."
"... "One cannot stress enough the point about APTs being, first and foremost, a new attack doctrine built to circumvent the existing perimeter and endpoint defenses. It's a little similar to stealth air fighters: for decades you've based your air defense on radar technology, but now you have those sneaky stealth fighters built with odd angles and strange composite materials. You can try building bigger and better radars, or, as someone I talked to said, you can try staring more closely at your existing radars in hope of catching some faint signs of something flying by, but this isn't going to turn the tide on stealthy attackers. Instead you have to think of a new defense doctrine." ..."
"... Really the DNC and Hill-bots are looking foolish on this. I have some very well-educated friends going full "red scare" on Facebook. Too easy to troll them by agreeing and exaggerating just a little too much! ..."
"... Besides wasn't Hillary the one against xenophobia? Wasn't she all about building bridges and not (fire!) walls? Now it seems it's OK to blame shiit on foreigners! So it becomes a question of WHICH foreigners we should blame. Trump says Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and China while Clinton says Russia. Let the voters decide! ..."
"... But while the comparisons to McCarthyism write themselves, another uncanny historic parallel is the run-up to the Iraq War. First we have these damn Hackers of Mass Disruption (HMD) trying to manipulate a US election (by showing the DNC actually did manipulate an election!). Next we will have our intelligence services and perhaps "trusted sources" like Curveball informing us Putin did it. Will Theresa May quickly crank out a dossier and some posh-sounding Brits confirm the HWD allegations? Obama will have to hurry to get the war going in time but Colin Powell will be called out of retirement to present the hacking evidence to the UN. Putin will be given a deadline for surrendering ALL his HMD. UN inspectors will sent in but not find any traces of HMD. Debka and the New York Times will insist Putin is hiding his HMD in the Moscow metro or perhaps he has sent them all to a third-party nation for safekeeping? The Washington Post will remind us of how the Kurds were brutalized by HMD cracking into the PKK's main servers. The tension will build to an unbearable crescendo. ..."
"... One of the e mails said the price of a private dinner with Hill is $200,000. Wow. In my case, I wouldn't give two cents for this. In fact, she would have to pay me at least a few grand, and I would split the scene as soon as possible. ..."
"... That article also goes into stated Russian doctrine about intent to use whatever means necessary to, in my words, protect themselves. As it is pretty obvious to me that America is the global bully these days. ..."
"... I'm not sure where this Jeffrey Carr guy came from but his company previously indicated the Russians were behind the Sony hack. And his argument was based on linguistic comparisons of the errors made in the English statements issued by the fake group claiming the hack. Not based on code at all. Seems like he's a character that shows up to muddy the waters. Don't assume he's an ally just because his arguments support your thesis. ..."
"... Clinton is trying to market herself as the Serious/Safe candidate, and instead her campaign is acting all CT hysterical. This whole Putin-hack thing is sabotaging her own brand. ..."
"... Hillary's brand was always just branding. In 2007, she ran as the candidate ready to take that 3 am phone call because of her experience. What experience? Selecting White House China for state functions? Raising money for the White House restoration? I liked the Christmas decorations Hillary had. Her followers believed her brand would win the day, and they simply ignored Obama largely won because of Hillary's poor foreign policy record. ..."
"... So she went out and bargained herself into State to get the foreign policy experience and now has a record on it that should have every sane person saying keep her away from sharp objects and things that go boom. Instead we once again have her running on taking that 3 am phone call while her team is acting like the twelve year old whose parents told her there are monsters home alone for the first time thinking that the refrigerator is a monster because she never heard it cycle on before. ..."
"... After the hackers were "shocked, shocked" when they saw the true operation of the DNC, then they decided to leak the information. This could suggest the leak may have been done, not to harm USA democracy, but to improve it by getting the DNC to behave in a fair and ethical manner in the future. ..."
"... The Democratic Party establishment is selling a used car knowing there's no way of getting a verifiable title history for the vehicle. To weave the narrative here, a few basic statements are made which may (perhaps) be technically true, as a foundation, but perhaps grossly misleadingly so. ..."
"... Perhaps at least one Russian at some point hacked the DNC. It is implied that _only_ this/these Russians hacked the DNC. It is implied that the WikiLeaks doc-dump came from this same set of people. "An IP address was found" is a very passive statement then used similarly. It's possible a templatized kit had a default address (maybe even commented out) and was used in more than one place. Kits like this may be used by a single player or entity (in the case of a state actor, perhaps, though it seems potentially sloppy) or may be used by someone who purchased them or stole them from someone else. Only a few leading statements, eliding particular details, are necessary to promulgate a crafted narrative, when injected into the echo chamber and laundered through friendly or credulous security firms for expert confirmation. ..."
"... Some U.S. intelligence officials suspect that Russian hackers who broke into Democratic Party computers may have deliberately left digital fingerprints to show Moscow is a "cyberpower" that Washington should respect. ..."
"... If one watches ' ZERO DAYS' docu on how STUXNET/worm/olypic game was invented/manufactured by the combined efforts of US – cyber command @NSA, +CIA and Isralei intelligence +UK?) and planted into the NET in bringing down the Iran's Nucl program, most of us are way, way behind in understanding cyber terrorism! They were clueless and firing their Nucl experts for incompetence! ..."
Hillary Clinton's campaign manager is alleging that Russian hackers are leaking Democratic
National Committee emails critical of Bernie Sanders in an effort to help Donald Trump win the
election in November.
It comes on the heels of "changes to the Republican platform to make it more pro-Russian,"
Robby Mook told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union" Sunday.
"I don't think it's coincidental that these emails were released on the eve of our convention
here, and I think that's disturbing," he said.
Mook's "Russians under the bed"
gaslighting is useful on a number of fronts: Ginning up war fever for
an October surprise
; setting up a later McCarthy-ite
purge of Trump supporters, Clinton skeptics, or even those
prematurely anti-Trump
; and
if
we're truly blessed, a real shooting war ; some damned thing in the Baltic or the Black Sea,
or wherever
the
Kagan clan points to on the map in the war room. And it's always useful to be able to convert
one's opponents to enemies by accusing them of treason, especially in an election year.
However, in this short post I want to focus on a much narrower question: Can we ever know who
hacked the DNC email? Because if we can't, then clearly we can't know the Russians did. And so I
want to hoist
this by alert reader JacobiteInTraining from comments :
Yup, as a former server admin it is patently absurd to attribute a hack to anyone in particular
until a substantial amount of forensic work has been done. (read, poring over multiple internal
log files…gathering yet more log files of yet more internal devices, poring over them, then –
once the request hops out of your org – requesting logfiles from remote entities, poring over
*those* log files, requesting further log files from yet more upstream entities, wash rinse repeat
ad infinitum).
For example, at its simplest, I would expect a middling-competency hacker to find an open wifi
hub across town to connect to, then VPN to server in, say, Tonga, then VPN from there to another
box in Sweden, then connect to a PC previously compromised in Iowa, then VPN to yet another anonymous
cloud server in Latvia, and (assuming the mountain dew is running low, gotta get cracking) then
RDP to the target server and grab as many docs as possible. RAR those up and encrypt them, FTP
them to a compromised media server in South Korea, email them from there to someones gmail account
previously hacked, xfer them to a P2P file sharing app, and then finally access them later from
a completely different set of servers.
In many cases where I did this sort of analysis I still ended up with a complete dead end:
some sysadmins at remote companies or orgs would be sympathetic and give me actual related log
files. Others would be sympathetic but would not give files, and instead do their own analysis
to give me tips. Many never responded, and most IPs ended up at unknown (compromised) personal
PCs, or devices where the owner could not be found anyway.
If the hacker was sloppy and left other types of circumstantial evidence you might get lucky
– but that demographic mostly points back to script kiddies and/or criminal dweebs – i.e., rather
then just surreptitiously exfiltrating the goods they instead left messages or altered things
that seemed to indicate their own backgrounds or prejudices, or left a message that was more easily
'traced'. If, of course, you took that evidence at face value and it was not itself an attempt
at obfuscation.
Short of a state actor such as an NSA who captures it ALL anyway, and/or can access any log
files at any public or private network at its own whim – its completely silly to attribute a hack
to anyone at this point.
So, I guess I am reduced to LOL OMG WTF its fer the LULZ!!!!!
Just to clarify on the "…If the hacker was sloppy and left other types of circumstantial evidence…"
– this is basically what I have seen reported as 'evidence' pointing to Russia: the Cyrillic keyboard
signature, the 'appeared to cease work on Russian holidays' stuff, and the association with 'known
Russian hacking groups'.
That's great and all, but in past work I am sure my own 'research' could easily have gotten
me 'associated' with known hacking groups. Presumably various 'sophisticated' methods and tools
get you closer to possible suspects…but that kind of stuff is cycled and recycled throughout the
community worldwide – as soon as anything like that is known and published, any reasonably competent
hacker (or org of hackers) is learning how to do the same thing and incorporating such things
into their own methods. (imitation being the sincerest form of flattery)
I guess I have a lot more respect for the kinds of people I expect to be getting a paycheck
from foreign Intelligence agencies then to believe that they would leave such obvious clues behind
'accidentally'. But if we are going to be starting wars over this stuff w/Russia, or China, I
guess I would hope the adults in the room don't go all apesh*t and start chanting COMMIES, THE
RUSSIANS ARE COMING!, etc. before the ink is dry on the 'crime'.
The whole episode reminds me of
the Sony hack , for which Obama
also blamed a demonized foreign power. Interestingly - to beg the question here - the blaming
was also based on a foreign character set in the data (though Hangul, not Korean). Look! A clue!
JacobiteInTraining's methodology also reminds me of NC's coverage of Grexit. Symbol manipulators
- like those in the Democrat-leaning creative class - often believe that real economy systems are
as easy to manipulate as symbol systems are. In Greece, for example, it really was a difficult technical
challenge for Greece to reintroduce the drachma, especially given the time-frame, as contributor
Clive remorselessly showed. Similarly, it's really not credible to hire a consultant and get a hacking
report with a turnaround time of less than a week, even leaving aside the idea that the DNC just
might have hired a consultant that would give them the result they wanted (because who among
us, etc.) What JacobiteInTraining shows us is that computer forensics is laborious, takes time, and
is very unlikely to yield results suitable for framing in the narratives proffered by the political
class. Of course, that does confirm all my priors!
There is a problem with those who argue that these are sophisticated Nation State attackers
and then point to the most basic circumstantial evidence to support their case. I'd bet that,
among others, the Israelis have hacked some Russian servers to launch attacks from and have some
of their workers on a Russian holiday schedule. Those things have been written about in attack
analysis so much over the last 15-20 years that they'd be stupid not to.
Now, I'm not saying the Israelis did it. I'm saying that the evidence provided so far by those
arguing it is Russia is so flaky as to prove that the Russia accusers are blinded
or corrupted by their own political agenda.
Update [Yves, courtesy Richard Smith] 7:45 AM. Another Medium piece by Jeffrey
Carr,
Can Facts Slow The DNC Breach Runaway Train? who has been fact-checking this story and comes
away Not Happy. For instance:
Thomas Rid wrote:
One of the strongest pieces of evidence linking GRU to the DNC hack is the equivalent of
identical fingerprints found in two burglarized buildings: a reused command-and-control address - 176.31.112[.]10 - that
was hard coded
in a piece of malware found both in the German parliament as well as on the DNC's servers.
Russian military intelligence was identified by the German domestic security agency BfV as
the actor responsible for the Bundestag breach. The infrastructure behind the fake MIS Department
domain was also linked to the Berlin intrusion through at least one other element, a
shared SSL
certificate.
This paragraph sounds quite damning if you take it at face value, but if you invest a little
time into checking the source material, its carefully constructed narrative falls apart.
Problem #1: The IP address 176.31.112[.]10 used in the Bundestag breach as a Command and Control
server has never been connected to the Russian intelligence services. In fact,
Claudio Guarnieri , a highly regarded security researcher,
whose technical analysis was
referenced by
Rid, stated that "no evidence allows to tie the attacks to governments of any particular country."
Mind you, he has two additional problems with that claim alone.
This piece is a must read if you want to dig further into this topic.
NOTES
[1] More than a talking point but, really, less than a narrative. It's like we need a new word
for these bite-sized, meme-ready, disposable, "throw 'em against the wall and see if they stick"
stories; mini-narrative, or narrativelette, perhaps. "All the crunch of a real narrative, but none
of the nutrition!"
[2] This post is not about today's Trump moral panic, where the political class is frothing
and stamping about The Donald's humorous (or ballbusting, take your pick) statement that he
"hoped" the Russians had hacked the 30,000 emails that Clinton supposedly deleted from the email
server she privatized in her public capacity as Secretary of State before handing the whole flaming
and steaming mess over to investigators. First, who cares? Those emails are all about yoga lessons
and Chelsea's wedding. Right? Second, Clinton didn't secure the server for three months. What did
she expect? Third, Trump's suggestion is just dumb; the NSA has to have that data, so just ask them?
Finally, to be fair, Trump shouldn't have uttered the word "Russia." He should have said "Liechtenstein,"
or "Tonga," because it's hard to believe that there's a country too small to hack as fat a target
as Clinton presented; Trump was being inflammatory. Points off. Bad show.
For those interested, the excellent interviewer Scott Horton just spoke with Jeffrey Carr,
an IT security expert about all this. It's about 30 mins:
Jeffrey Carr, a cyber intelligence expert and CEO of Taia Global, Inc., discusses his fact-checking
of Josh Marshall's TalkingPointsMemo article that claims a close alliance between Trump and
Putin; and why the individuals blaming Russia for the DNC email hack are more motivated by
politics than solid evidence.
Carr makes the point that even supposed clues about Russian involvement ("the default language
is Cyrillic!") are meaningless as all these could be spoofed by another party.
Separately it just shows again Team Clinton's (and DNC's) political deviousness and expertise
how they –with the full support of the MSM of course –have managed to deflect the discussion to
Trump and Russia from how the DNC subverted US democracy.
and again, we see the cavalier attitude about national security from the clinton camp, aggravating
the already tense relationship with russia over this bullshit, all to avoid some political disadvantage.
clinton doesn't care if russia gets the nuclear launch codes seemingly, but impact her chances
to win the race and it's all guns firing.
Well yeah, and I could be a bot, how do you know I'm not?
Absent any other evidence to work with, I can accept it as credible that a clumsy Russian or
Baltic user posted viewed and saved docs instead of the originals; par for the course in public
and private bureaucracies the world over. It would have been useful to see the original Properties
metadata; instead we get crapped up copies. That only tells me the poster is something of a lightweight,
and it at least somewhat suggests that these docs passed through multiple hands.
But that doesn't mean A) the original penetration occurred under state control (or even in
Russia proper), much less B) that Putin Himself ordered the hack attempts, which is the searing
retinal afterimage that the the media name-dropping and photo-illustrating conflation produces.
Unspoofed, the Cyrillic fingerprints still do not closely constrain conclusion to A, and even
less to B.
Yes, I made the same point below in terms of the intrusion ("hack") on the DNC itself too.
The running away with a conclusion based on easily-created evidence says a lot about the people
saying it.
"The running away with a conclusion based on easily-created evidence says a lot about the people
saying it." Clive, I don't think that this can be emphasized enough. These are the people representing
to be competent to run our country. I made the point yesterday: Trump voters are mostly stupid;
this kind of argument will attract those stupid people to Hillary; let's run with it. God help
us.
1. Who cares if the Russians did it?
2. Why were they able to?
3. Are the releases real? Are these actual emails from the DNC? Appears so given their response.
4. Trump once again bungled a prime opportunity. I'm pretty concerned that if a political strategy
cannot be summed up in 140 characters, it's beyond his ability to cope.
It's getting harder and harder to place limits on the catastrophe that either of these "choices"
will be.
One guy on Twitter, even with 10 million followers, can't overcome the Mighty Wurlitzer of
the media all blasting the "Looke, over there! Baddie Rooskies!" tout ensemble to divert
attention from the content of the DNC e-mails. And the Dems were hitting that theme regularly
in the convention speeches, which meant the MSM could replay it that way too.
The thing that most bothers me is that this is supportive of the Kagans and Hillary's push
to foment a shooting war with Russia. The so-called metadata that they point to is all something
that could very easily be created by an amateur who was actually given access to the DNC's server(s).
The "investigator" who issued the conclusion has no record of integrity.
Yes, the logical endgame of a 'Trump is a Russian stooge' strategy is that the stronger Trump
is in the polls, the greater the incentive to stage an October Surprise with Russia. Something
tells me that this lot would quite happily risk a nuclear war if it gave them a better chance
of winning an election.
The comment I wanted to make was around the "Cyrillic keyboard". This is interesting because
it has all the characteristics of:
a) an investigation into an intrusion incident being undertaken by someone who is pretty
skilled and knows a reasonable amount about how to start their analysis and what to look for,
where to look for it and so on
b) the investigator or investigators finding something interesting - in this case the "Cyrillic
keyboard"
c) non-technical people being told of the investigator's findings but not getting the technicalities
of it or some PR type saying "yeah, but can you tell me what this means in simple terms" and
ending up missing an important subtlety and then telling equally ignorant reporters the mis-information
who repeat it verbatim
d) the story or stories, as published, then being wrong in a way that the media outlets
telling the stories don't realise makes them embarrassingly inept to people who really understand
the technical side of things
… all of which does indeed show a smoking gun, but not the same smoking gun as is being reported.
What is shown is that, in addition to the fact that a technical investigation being made by reasonably
competent people, a PR team has also been brought in to design the messaging, disseminate the
message to the public and create the "right" optics for the story. Such PR / media management
teams are fully-paid up members of the Credentialed Class. As such, they want to be seen to earn
their money and prove they should get more of it from their elite benefactors in the future. This
has an almost inevitable consequence that they will seize on what was probably a suggestive-but-not-conclusive
piece of evidence from an investigating team and embellish it with a conclusion which isn't proven
or even supported by the actual evidence.
Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction" (which, of course, didn't exist) is perhaps
the best-known example of this phenomena.
To try to set the record straight, what I think was discovered in the DNC email hack was a
file or files (or code in a malicious payload) - the specifics depend on the hack itself and what
attack vector it used - which had a Cyrillic code page set.
This goes back to the mechanics of how you actually write a hack / virus / malicious web page
/ whatever. You have to, at its most basic, write the code. You don't do this using a word processor.
You do it using a text editor (albeit often a very fancy one in an Integrated Development Environment
- a special piece of software to help you write code). But regardless, the code itself is in "plain
text".
But "plain text" isn't actually that plain. Non Latin languages use different code pages for
8-bit plain text (I'll have to skim over the lower level complexity here for the sake of brevity).
But this means that a subtle footprint can get left behind on certain types of files which may
be used as the payload for an intrusion into a computer system or even end up being compiled into
code which delivered into the target system.
When you set up a new computer, one of the things a setup routine gets the user to answer is
the location of the PC and the input language. This, amongst many other things, sets the code
pages used for backwards compatibility in text files which don't support Unicode. It is so easy
to forget this has ever been set by a hacker who then merrily goes on to write their hack completely
oblivious to the fact they've given - if they are not very careful - the location of their home
country away. Or, at least, their native language. If I get chance I'll send a screen shot of
a typical application and how a user might be completely unaware of how they are disclosing their
location / language if I can hook up to an anonymous hosting service) which might make it a bit
clearer for readers.
(and this can so easily catch out the unwary; I recall one horrid incident I gave Yves when,
in trying to submit an article for her to run on Naked Capitalism, I tried to make life easier
by submitting it in "plain text" so that WordPress wouldn't find it so difficult to handle the
formatting. Big mistake! I didn't realise until much grief had been caused that because I'd set
my PC up with a Japanese locale, my supposedly nice, simple "plain text" files I was sending had
Japanese encoding. WordPress, expecting US English encoding, was completely befuddled and Yves
had to try to manually correct dozens of spurious / misplaced characters).
This is not, though, a "keyboard". It does affect the "keyboard" setup. But no reasonably sophisticated
technical person would ever describe this as a "keyboard". Hence my conclusion that, following
an explanation which I've just given readers above (and I'll happily concede it is a rather tortuous
subject to get ones head around if you're not an IT expert), some fairly inept media manager ran
away with the idea this was something to do with a Russian PC being used, because of the "Cyrillic
keyboard".
So it was the pesky Russians then ?
Erm, no, not necessarily. As I've described above, it is a trivial task to "spoof" a PC into
looking like it was being used by a Russian, Korean, Chinese, whatever, based person or group.
You either do it during the PC setup process or else you can with a few clicks change the default
locale on any PC or other operating system. Hey-presto. You can now produce what looks like "Russian"
(or any other language) flavoured text and cunningly have these tell-tale code pages appear in
your malicious code or similar.
But as the comment in the above article makes clear, this is really dumb and not at all the
sort of thing a sophisticated state-backed actor would end up doing. It is however precisely the
sort of thing that a sophisticated state-backed actor would do if they wanted to make it *appear*
as if the Russians were responsible.
It makes me cry to see clicking on "Properties" equated with "pretty skilled".
Also, the docs were last saved through an older version of MSWord, one that the DNC is almost
certainly not running in-house (because of licensing and Microsoft Office Update, although it
can probably be found on the odd State or County level Party desktop).
In other words, the Cyrillic attribute indicates that the posted docs are not originals
. The DNC could have disavowed the docs as partially or completely fabricated, on that basis
alone.
The DNC could have disavowed the docs as partially or completely fabricated, on that
basis alone.
Which is telling.
The DNC never disavowed the e-mails. They just simply said "See, it's those damn Russians up
to their old tricks again". It's like watching an episode of "Maury" when someone gets caught
cheating, then try to 1) blame someone/something else for the cheating 2) then apologize for said
cheating (ONLY because they got caught) and say "c'mon, baby, let's move on from this"…
Ha, great minds, my friend… this is what I edited out of that post:
And in the larger context, it's like my neighbor peering across their driveway seeing me
in bed with somebody else's spouse, and when they tell the not-my-spouse's spouse about it
I respond with "You're not supposed to be looking in my window!" and calling the cops to arrest
my neighbor for snooping (without a FISA permit, egads).
It's a deflection. It discredits my neighbor's story to the not-my-spouse's spouse.
And snooping is wrong! Not supposed to do it! Somebody mention this to the NSA as well! Although,
granted, so far the NSA seem to be a lot better at keeping everybody's secrets (assuming they
can even sort meaning out of their data, which I question).
In other words, it's okay when the NSA does it, because they don't tell what they know, the
way those awful awful Russians do.
the NSA seem to be a lot better at keeping everybody's secrets (assuming they can even sort
meaning out of their data, which I question).
Between 1984 and 1987 I was stationed at Offutt AFB as a satellite operator. Because my off
base roommate worked for Electronic Security Command(ESC) as a cryptologic linguist flying around
in unpressurized planes with earphones on, my military social circle consisted largely of airmen(all
men) who worked for NSA and some of them would go to Ft. Meade on TDY. They were an elite, heterogeneous,
cosmopolitan bunch who shared a common belief that their jobs weren't directly evil because it
was impossible to find the man hours to analyze it: "last night the best thing I picked up in
Nicaragua was an abuela giving tips for mole."
I wonder if it would be overly technodeterminist to argue one of the primary reasons for displacement
of journalists and other human knowledge interpreters by machines and algorithms was the NSA's
secret need to make sense of their massive telemetry and data as the Cold War ended and the Information
Age and Comparative Advantage became ossified neoclassical economic theory and practice.
Aren't these whiners (Weiners? See, selfie dicks on display) the same set of people who tell
us the Security State is just fine, because, "if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing
to hide, and no reason to be afraid!"?
Combining two comments as I worry about our country, our democracy: Where have we gone wrong?
"It makes me cry" as "It's getting harder and harder to place limits on the catastrophe that either
of these "choices" will be."
Absolutely accurate. I fell into the simplification trap myself with my own 'Cyrillic keyboard'
reference in comment, but your explanation is perfect.
Admittedly I am getting a little older (and don't do much work anymore with International OSes)
but my own first introduction to a variant of this issue was with older IIS web server ISAPI extensions
and other widgets where using something as prosaic as notepad.exe (which you normally don't expect
to do anything nefarious) causing prod web servers at a large corporation to all go 'boom' and
fall over, dead.
Turns out that when you modified a previously-working plain-text extension config file originally
in (as I recall) ANSI, update it, then accidentally saved it as UNICODE things like quotation
marks et al become…different…even, threatening… ;)
Long since patched of course. Perhaps I need to patch myself too – perhaps with some fine Scotch!
Used wordpad for that, eh. Could have been worse. I've seen HR guys in the UK running a localized
version of Office copy and paste "text" from an Excel sheet originally composed on in a Scandanavian
locale completely wreck the rendering of their data. For awhile I tried getting people to use
Sublime or Notepad++ set to UTF-8 for that sort of exercise, but the ubiquity of text mangling
tools out there is overwhelming.
The childish, credulous, transparently Machevellian propagandizing by the DNC here, especially
the deflection in place of serious scientific analysis, is beyond contemptible: it's staggering.
But it works because over a quarter century after PCs started showing up on desks the vast majority
of the public still don't know as much about how these machines work as most of those living in
the 1930's groked about their automobiles (which were in far shorter supply). The world is becoming
more complex by the minute, and unless folks start to knuckle down and start learning how it really
works they're going to be doomed to be mere passengers on a runaway train.
And, it's not that hard. But I think people's mental bandwidths are overloaded with:
a) work (not pay, just work),
b) "entertainment",
c) media deluge (info+fiction=media!),
d) magical thinking / myths (only geeks can understand it!),
e) ever smaller devices with little tiny screens!!!
Well, that sort of thing makes life interesting eh? Clive's horror story of Japanese locale
mucking up an article submission made me cringe in sympathy.
GEDIT OR BUST!!!
or wait – did gedit go ahead and withdraw, thus endorsing Hillery? In which case I guess its
back to the typewriter… :p
This is a good point. They are shamelessly preying on naive peoples' lack of understanding
of computers. They are also shamelessly preying on naive peoples' trust in experts, which has
serious downstream effects when these "experts" are debunked.
Even if there was a way to determine exactly when and were the malicious code was made, wouldn't
there be a good chance it could have been used by someone else. I would imagine
everyone in that "industry" would find bits of the others work and incorporate it into their own.
What better way to throw people off the trail than to incorporate pieces from different groups
for just that purpose. Especially if you know a forensic examination would be looking for those
clues. Also how about a "script kiddie" or non-sophisticated actor getting ahold of it and using
it like any other tool.
Clive: Also, there are varieties of Cyrillic, depending on the language. Bulgarian has a few
more characters, as does Ukrainian. So would "Russian" even be identifiable from the settings?
Maybe it all went through Montenegro and we are seeing ghosts of Montenengrin.
To extend the question: If the computer has as its setting the Roman alphabet, I'm assuming
that language isn't identified, because language on a computer is aseparate setting (for the user)
from alphabet. So are we in a situation where someone is seeing a Roman letter and then announces
that the document was originally in Hungarian?
(yep, Clive's cut-out-and-keep guide to pretending you're a nefarious Russian sneakypants trying
to besmirch the good name of the DNC. Or Trump. Or whoever:
1) Set up your PC as being located in Russia and having a language of Russian (Cyrillic).
2) Open notepad (in windows, similar for other O/S'es)
3) Create your incriminating text (e.g. "I think Bernie is really stinky and we really should
make sure Hillary wins because she is a woman and so on, all those other really good reasons…
signed Debbie Wasserman Schultz").
4) Click "Save"
5) Change the encoding to something not Unicode-ey e.g.
ANSI
6) Get out your Rolodex and hit the phones of your favourite friendly media outlets
Clive, I'm interested in what you think about the apt28 and apt29 intrusions on the DNC servers.
Hacker's link to the ars technica article below is the most detailed explanation I have seen
relating these intruders to previous attacks, and Yves link to the Carr article is handy for readers
because he includes a chart to cross reference the various names that each of the known russian
intruders.
For your convenience, here is the link I am referring to:
"Symbol manipulators - like those in the Democrat-leaning creative class - often believe
that real economy systems are as easy to manipulate as symbol systems are."
What a great observation! This speaks to so much of what ails modern western society.
"Symbol manipulators" reflects the way lawyers and most policy wonks are trained to believe
that the social construction of reality is all that matters.
"One cannot stress enough the point about APTs being, first and foremost, a new attack doctrine
built to circumvent the existing perimeter and endpoint defenses. It's a little similar to stealth
air fighters: for decades you've based your air defense on radar technology, but now you have
those sneaky stealth fighters built with odd angles and strange composite materials. You can try
building bigger and better radars, or, as someone I talked to said, you can try staring more closely
at your existing radars in hope of catching some faint signs of something flying by, but this
isn't going to turn the tide on stealthy attackers. Instead you have to think of a new defense
doctrine."
Really the DNC and Hill-bots are looking foolish on this. I have some very well-educated friends
going full "red scare" on Facebook. Too easy to troll them by agreeing and exaggerating just a
little too much!
Besides wasn't Hillary the one against xenophobia? Wasn't she all about building bridges and
not (fire!) walls? Now it seems it's OK to blame shiit on foreigners! So it becomes a question
of WHICH foreigners we should blame. Trump says Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and China while Clinton
says Russia. Let the voters decide!
But while the comparisons to McCarthyism write themselves, another uncanny historic parallel
is the run-up to the Iraq War. First we have these damn Hackers of Mass Disruption (HMD) trying
to manipulate a US election (by showing the DNC actually did manipulate an election!). Next we
will have our intelligence services and perhaps "trusted sources" like Curveball informing us
Putin did it. Will Theresa May quickly crank out a dossier and some posh-sounding Brits confirm
the HWD allegations? Obama will have to hurry to get the war going in time but Colin Powell will
be called out of retirement to present the hacking evidence to the UN. Putin will be given a deadline
for surrendering ALL his HMD. UN inspectors will sent in but not find any traces of HMD. Debka
and the New York Times will insist Putin is hiding his HMD in the Moscow metro or perhaps he has
sent them all to a third-party nation for safekeeping? The Washington Post will remind us of how
the Kurds were brutalized by HMD cracking into the PKK's main servers. The tension will build
to an unbearable crescendo.
Finally, and regretfully, in October, Operation Data Security will be launched. After a very
brief but exceedingly violent confrontation, In the end no HMD will be found in Russia. On the
other hand since most of the tens of millions of US soldiers who died were drafted from working
class families, the war will be declared a victory anyway since now Trump does not have hardly
any angry working class whites left to vote for him!
There's much more to it than that. If you don't kneejerk it away, it asks you to consider that
the government can't be relied upon to thoroughly pursue the charges against her. It also builds
on what has been, to me, the surprising acceptance that the Wikileaks DNC emails are valid, not
fabricated. It then dissolves the honorific constraints indignantly invoked by the Times re "investigating
a former secretary of state," exposing those invocations as rationalizing a coverup. In short,
it treats her as a perp for whom we need reliable informants to help bring down, and we need to
rely on the Russians/Wikileaks, not the Times, or the Post, or the AG.
I think we're looking at a 5-star legitimation crisis accelerator.
If Russia has Clinton's emails … I do want them to release them.
If Chuck Norris has them I want Chuck to release them.
The very idea that our Government has them (read NSA) and will not release them because they
would damage Clinton scares me a whole lot more than the idea that espionage today includes hacking
unsecured servers.
So … please … pretty please … whoever has them … release them.
One of the e mails said the price of a private dinner with Hill is $200,000. Wow. In my case,
I wouldn't give two cents for this. In fact, she would have to pay me at least a few grand, and
I would split the scene as soon as possible.
1. Donald Trump is a fascist demagogue
2. Donald Trump is Hitler, Super Hitler, a Devil
3. Donald Trump is being aided by Russia and loves Putin
4. Donald Trump is guilt of treason, is a Russian agent
5. Bill Clinton mostly likely gave Trump advice and/or encouragement to run in the 2016 race
I apologize for not being able to dig into this as much as I'd like. Yesterday, the loggers
at my remote doomstead dropped some trees on one of the garden plots and the day job as an Information
Security manager hasn't been much easier.
There is a decent, but still biased thus not linked, article on ArsTechnica "How DNC, Clinton
campaign attacks fit into Russia's cyber-war strategy" that provides better evidence that the
DNC was targeted by the Russians. That alone doesn't link the Russians to the release and I haven't
had the time to dig deeply into the evidence to fully understand it.
That article also goes into stated Russian doctrine about intent to use whatever means necessary
to, in my words, protect themselves. As it is pretty obvious to me that America is the global
bully these days.
So we've got a DNC using whatever underhanded tactics it can draw upon to corrupt democracy.
Yet both Hillary at the State and then the DNC for the primaries do practically nothing to protect
themselves from state actors who have declared an intention to do the same? That sounds like a
foreign policy blindspot that should be a disqualifier.
Not really. Carr is putting down a British professor's sloppy claims that apt28 and apt29 are
related to the GRU. But the agencies analysing the breach never pointed to the GRU. Crowd strike
suggests FSB or SVR, and fidelis agrees on the involvement of apt28 and apt29 but does not attribute
a source. Carr is saying the hack is Russian but could be non governmental.
I'm not sure where this Jeffrey Carr guy came from but his company previously indicated the
Russians were behind the Sony hack. And his argument was based on linguistic comparisons of the
errors made in the English statements issued by the fake group claiming the hack. Not based on
code at all. Seems like he's a character that shows up to muddy the waters. Don't assume he's
an ally just because his arguments support your thesis.
The most interesting thing I ran into when looking up the Sony hack was that Sony told everyone
to shut up about it in December and threatened to sue the media it they persisted with the story.
Kinda makes you go hmmmm.
I suspect the author meant that the encoding used in the files represented the standard Hangul
character set (used in South Korea), and not the variant of the Hangul character set used in North
Korea (which differs in the number and ordering of characters, and hence is encoded differently).
Anyway, CJK character sets and encodings are just hell. I absolutely see Clive's file encoded
in EUC-JP or Shift_JIS royally screwing up the CMS editor of NakedCapitalism.
Clinton is trying to market herself as the Serious/Safe candidate, and instead her campaign
is acting all CT hysterical. This whole Putin-hack thing is sabotaging her own brand.
Today, while reading Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables , I unexpectedly came
across a passage which fittingly describes the DNC:
They are practiced politicians, every man of them, and skilled to adjust those preliminary
measures which steal from the people, without its knowledge, the power of choosing its own rulers…This
little knot of subtle schemers will control the convention, and, through it, dictate to the party.
Maybe Will Rogers was off the beam, then, given current events and past performance, with his
comment that "I don't belong to any organized political party. I'm a Democrat!"
At least as to the people close to the center of the beast, the ones who use the parties as
just a set of tools to keep the mopes in check…
Hillary's brand was always just branding. In 2007, she ran as the candidate ready to take that
3 am phone call because of her experience. What experience? Selecting White House China for state
functions? Raising money for the White House restoration? I liked the Christmas decorations Hillary
had. Her followers believed her brand would win the day, and they simply ignored Obama largely won
because of Hillary's poor foreign policy record.
So she went out and bargained herself into State to get the foreign policy experience and now
has a record on it that should have every sane person saying keep her away from sharp objects
and things that go boom. Instead we once again have her running on taking that 3 am phone call
while her team is acting like the twelve year old whose parents told her there are monsters home
alone for the first time thinking that the refrigerator is a monster because she never heard it
cycle on before.
I have no respect for her average supporter. And even less respect for the press. The contempt
the people who really pull the strings in her camp show they obviously have little regard for
the intelligence of either group.
After all the "democracy" promotion the USA has done around the world, perhaps the entire DNC
hack should be re-cast as an attempt to determine exactly how the USA democracy functions by a
curious group.
This is somewhat akin to an interested grad student, as the hackers may have thought "Why not
find how a professional democratic organization, the Democratic National Committee, works?"
After the hackers were "shocked, shocked" when they saw the true operation of the DNC, then
they decided to leak the information. This could suggest the leak may have been done, not to harm USA democracy, but to improve it
by getting the DNC to behave in a fair and ethical manner in the future.
Instead, we've watched the DNC, while not denying their documented behavior, argue that their
behavior should not have been exposed by an alleged "wrong" group.
Perhaps more damaging blackmail information is being saved to use against HRC if she is elected?
The Democratic Party establishment is selling a used car knowing there's no way of getting
a verifiable title history for the vehicle. To weave the narrative here, a few basic statements
are made which may (perhaps) be technically true, as a foundation, but perhaps grossly misleadingly
so.
Perhaps at least one Russian at some point hacked the DNC. It is implied that _only_ this/these
Russians hacked the DNC. It is implied that the WikiLeaks doc-dump came from this same set of
people. "An IP address was found" is a very passive statement then used similarly. It's possible
a templatized kit had a default address (maybe even commented out) and was used in more than one
place. Kits like this may be used by a single player or entity (in the case of a state actor,
perhaps, though it seems potentially sloppy) or may be used by someone who purchased them or stole
them from someone else. Only a few leading statements, eliding particular details, are necessary
to promulgate a crafted narrative, when injected into the echo chamber and laundered through friendly
or credulous security firms for expert confirmation.
I would be curious to know when the Russian hack was supposed to have happened. I would also
be curious what other hacks of the DNC are believed to have or known to have happened. It might
even be interesting to know whether particular individuals' accounts or machines were compromised
on the way in, as the incestuous relationships between Democratic Party organizations make it
quite possible such a compromise might cross to another organization and increase the likelihood
of compromise there. I'm imagining a future Clinton Foundation document dump, perhaps.
I haven't read any comments that highlight the smell of extreme desperation coming from the
Clinton camp?
Sanders efforts had already gotten the DNC droogs soiling their pants, add Trumps momentum
and likely trajectory to the mix, and this is what you get, panic, and poor judgement.
I expect internal leaks and dissertions from the campaign soon.
While attribution of malware attacks is rarely simple or conclusive, during the course of
this investigation I uncovered evidence that suggests the attacker might be affiliated with
the state-sponsored group known as Sofacy Group (also known as APT28 or Operation Pawn Storm).
Although we are unable to provide details in support of such attribution, previous work by
security vendor FireEye suggests the group might be of Russian origin, however no evidence
allows to tie the attacks to governments of any particular country.
Sofacy, aka Fancy Bear, is a well known Advanced Persistent Threat. APTs are generally regarded
government backed given their abilities and resources but it is not always verifiable. Sofacy
generally focuses on NATO aligned government and military sites and has also focused on Ukrainian
targets in recent years.
So it cannot be 100% confirmed that the Russian government is involved, it is the most likely
backer of the hacking group.
Which does not mean that Trump had any knowledge or involvement in the attack or that the Russians
are necessarily backing Trump.
Some U.S. intelligence officials suspect that Russian hackers who broke into Democratic
Party computers may have deliberately left digital fingerprints to show Moscow is a "cyberpower"
that Washington should respect.
Three officials, all speaking on condition of anonymity, said the breaches of the Democratic
National Committee (DNC) were less sophisticated than other cyber intrusions that have been
traced to Russian intelligence agencies or criminals.
NO has no clue re DNC e-mail leak! how or who did it. Just narration of speculations!
If one watches ' ZERO DAYS' docu on how STUXNET/worm/olypic game was invented/manufactured
by the combined efforts of US – cyber command @NSA, +CIA and Isralei intelligence +UK?) and planted
into the NET in bringing down the Iran's Nucl program, most of us are way, way behind in understanding
cyber terrorism! They were clueless and firing their Nucl experts for incompetence!
There is extensive discussion of that subject by various NET security Cos incl Symantec, Kaparnisky
(russia), Israeli cyber terrorism expert, even officials/non officials from NSA, cyber command, CIA,
all over the World
It is NOT THAT EASY to trace the hacker's foot prints! This was about 6-8 years ago! WE all
are just groping in the dark, like 7 blind men describing the 'elephant'!
"... This propaganda is for retards. They make it sound like hacking is trivial.
Maybe if the idiot administrators of the DNC computers left them without passwords.
I have overseen web attached computer systems at a university for over 20 years
and have never had them hacked. Disable all the vulnerable daemons and block most
ports. Run a firewall and regulate SSH access. They have tried but they never succeeded.
..."
"... Then we have the obvious one: if the hackers are from Russia, then so what?
Does Putin tell every Russian hacker what to do. Perhaps Putin personally hacked
these servers. Those system logs have exactly zero to say about who are the hackers.
Only Hollywood fiction does the cyber realm extend into the physical realm. Then
the issue is why is incriminating evidence of Democratic Party wrongdoing Russia's
problem? Seriously, why is the screeching about Russian hacking and not Russian
"fraud" or something else? What happened to transparency? These alleged Russian
hackers did not release personal information. They released information of wrong
doing in a public organization. ..."
"... Same-same likee FireEye, which said almost word-for-word the same tired
old shit back in 2014, when the Russians supposedly hacked some other U.S. system.
Coded during working hours in Moscow, just as if (1) hackers keep normal working
hours like accountants and grocery clerks, and (2) Moscow is the only place in the
world at Moscow's latitude. There's only an hour's difference between Moscow and
Jerusalem, for example. And although the coding of the malware was brilliant, causing
seasoned professionals to shake their heads in admiration…once again, the Russians
slipped up, and coded on Cyrillic keyboards. Sure they did. But I'll let you read
the article. ..."
"... When Captain Dickhead says "I'm sure beyond a reasonable doubt", what he
means is, "Nobody can prove I'm not sure, because nobody knows". And everyone in
the west will believe poor Hillary is the victim of the dastardly Russians, no problem,
although the screwing Bernie Sanders got is likely to be much more on their minds
come voting time, and not where the information came from. Is somebody else interested
in the outcome of the U.S. election besides Russia? You decide. ..."
This propaganda is for retards. They make it sound like hacking is trivial.
Maybe if the idiot administrators of the DNC computers left them without
passwords. I have overseen web attached computer systems at a university
for over 20 years and have never had them hacked. Disable all the vulnerable
daemons and block most ports. Run a firewall and regulate SSH access. They
have tried but they never succeeded.
If the DNC computers are configured like Hillary's personal email server
then this is deliberate. They claim that the hackers are from Russia but
they have zero evidence. Some IP logs can be faked without any effort. It's
not like there is some bank level security over system logs.
Then we have the obvious one: if the hackers are from Russia, then
so what? Does Putin tell every Russian hacker what to do. Perhaps Putin
personally hacked these servers. Those system logs have exactly zero to
say about who are the hackers. Only Hollywood fiction does the cyber realm
extend into the physical realm. Then the issue is why is incriminating evidence
of Democratic Party wrongdoing Russia's problem? Seriously, why is the screeching
about Russian hacking and not Russian "fraud" or something else? What happened
to transparency? These alleged Russian hackers did not release personal
information. They released information of wrong doing in a public organization.
Remind you of anything? Same-same likee FireEye, which
said almost word-for-word the same tired old shit back in 2014, when
the Russians supposedly hacked some other U.S. system. Coded during working
hours in Moscow, just as if (1) hackers keep normal working hours like accountants
and grocery clerks, and (2) Moscow is the only place in the world at Moscow's
latitude. There's only an hour's difference between Moscow and Jerusalem,
for example. And although the coding of the malware was brilliant, causing
seasoned professionals to shake their heads in admiration…once again, the
Russians slipped up, and coded on Cyrillic keyboards. Sure they did. But
I'll let you read the article.
When Captain Dickhead says "I'm sure beyond a reasonable doubt",
what he means is, "Nobody can prove I'm not sure, because nobody knows".
And everyone in the west will believe poor Hillary is the victim of the
dastardly Russians, no problem, although the screwing Bernie Sanders got
is likely to be much more on their minds come voting time, and not where
the information came from.
Is somebody else interested in the outcome of the U.S. election besides
Russia? You decide.
"... Seems Putin controls Trump and Clinton! The man is amazing. ..."
"... Hold on there, Clintonites - Both I and the World remember seeing Madame
Clinton herself hand over to Putin that gigantic red Reset button. ..."
"... So now, of course - he's resetting EVERYTHING! And you, dear lady, you
gave it to him! I rest my case. ..."
"... Putin is god--it is well-known scientific fact. He actually controls the
weather and even Earth's rotation speed. Russians always knew it, now, with the
advancement of information technologies (also controlled by Putin--ah yes, he, not
Al Gore, invented the internet) decadent West can witness his powers and omnipresence.
Remember Katrina? Putin! Remember the water main break in NYT--also Putin. I had
a constipation last week--damn Putin. Got rid of constipation and back to normal
BMs--Putin's hand was definitely in it. If you look attentively at HRC for 20+ minutes
you will see Putin's image surfacing on her face. ..."
"... In an interview Andrew Bacevich spoke about what he saw at various institutes,
academic, etc. conferences he attended as an academic which I believe has effected
his later known books. He noted among other things, that there was an inability
for empathic thinking. He did not mean sympathy, but rather the act of trying to
understand the actions of other people. I think the phrase is to treat people as
rational actors. As horrific as Hitler was, historians dug into his motivations
for example, for his invasion of the Soviet Union. ..."
"... The propaganda demonization of Putin and the Russians is part of the same
playbook republicans and the neocons used to fertilize the field of popular belief
for the justification of war and invasion of Iraq to the American people (but now
followed by democrats). Every one of those articles is a bit of propaganda manure
which will eventually sprout the seeds of conflict and war. ..."
"... What I find alarming about all of this Putin bashing and Hillary using
it in her campaign is that I am seeing many of my acquaintances who identify as
liberal/progressive Democrats are becoming more and more anti-Russian. ..."
"... I like a good meme as much as the next guy, but there wasn't any putin-did-it
in that Reuters article about the ferry accident in NY. ..."
"... 'But Russia is secretly plotting even more nefarious schemes. Putin is
infiltrating Europe. And not only Europe.' US regime would never infiltrate europe...its
already there! ..."
"... All I can say here is ... this is Sheer Comedy Gold. Hollywood couldn't
make this stuff up. ..."
"... PS - anyone know what Putin does on the seventh day? ..."
"... @60 He really is versatile. No sooner had he finished rigging the Brexit
vote than he was off to France in a truck. Then he was spotted in Kabul. This week
he has been busy making trouble in Germany and he still finds time to fake HRC's
emails. The man must be stopped! ..."
"... Indeed. Democrats have become hysterical and unhinged in all things regarding
Clinton. I have been reading a few Democrat partisan sites. With the DNC blaming
Putin/Russians for the release of the DNC emails, the partisans are demanding what
amounts to McCarthy era witch hunts, and some strong immediate NATO action against
the Russians for the evil act. One supporter had a posting showing how the Russians
plan to invade the Baltics with graphics showing the invasion route -- good grief.
It is curious to see that those not buying the propaganda are drawing comparisons
to the witch hunts of the 1950s'. ..."
"... When I post or talk to partisan Dems I don't get accused of supporting
Trump but called a Putin lackey/stooge. ..."
"... Thanks for quote-will use it . You did something readers of anti-Russian/Putin
propaganda don't do. Actually listen to or read what Putin says. I am still puzzled
even though I shouldn't be when I read descriptions of Putin in the Western media,
and then read what he actually said or acted on: two people from two different planets.
I was listening to Stephen Cohen, and he said the same thing. Nobody bothers to
read what Putin says, forget his actions. ..."
M of A - Clinton Asserts Putin Influence On Trump - After Taking Russian
Bribes
Off topic but still within context of the West's "lets bash Russia/Putin
at every chance we get"..
Seems the BBC and their assorted groupies just got eggs all over their
collective faces after the IOC ruled that Russian athletes can compete in
the olympics. The British press are crying foul - dunno if they're afraid
of losing to Russian athlete or something.
This whole doping thing stunk from day one.. All the accusers pretends
they never dope before. But then, anything to humiliate Russia and Putin
will do. How many American athletes have been caught doping - yet nobody
called for a blanket ban on the American Olympic team. The hypocrisy is
just beyond stupid!!!
Watch this space, won't be long before we see a campaign to oust the
current OIC chief..lol
Clinton/Kaine certainly confident that the MSM will not report. For all
the money given to the Clinton's it didn't prevent the Ukraine disasters.
Of course, Ukraine may not have been a concern among the particular oligarchs
who made these bribes.
Putin is god--it is well-known scientific fact. He actually controls
the weather and even Earth's rotation speed. Russians always knew it, now,
with the advancement of information technologies (also controlled by Putin--ah
yes, he, not Al Gore, invented the internet) decadent West can witness his
powers and omnipresence. Remember Katrina? Putin! Remember the water main
break in NYT--also Putin. I had a constipation last week--damn Putin. Got
rid of constipation and back to normal BMs--Putin's hand was definitely
in it. If you look attentively at HRC for 20+ minutes you will see Putin's
image surfacing on her face.
In an interview Andrew Bacevich spoke about what he saw at various institutes,
academic, etc. conferences he attended as an academic which I believe has
effected his later known books. He noted among other things, that there
was an inability for empathic thinking. He did not mean sympathy, but rather
the act of trying to understand the actions of other people. I think the
phrase is to treat people as rational actors. As horrific as Hitler was,
historians dug into his motivations for example, for his invasion of the
Soviet Union.
So we get with Putin not a rational understanding of what he does and
why, but rather cartoon psychological and religious explanations which cannot
be argued against as they defy rationality. How can one argue against people
calling Putin evil as that person has not invoked a rational argument.
The propaganda demonization of Putin and the Russians is part of
the same playbook republicans and the neocons used to fertilize the field
of popular belief for the justification of war and invasion of Iraq to the
American people (but now followed by democrats). Every one of those articles
is a bit of propaganda manure which will eventually sprout the seeds of
conflict and war.
What I find alarming about all of this Putin bashing and Hillary using
it in her campaign is that I am seeing many of my acquaintances who identify
as liberal/progressive Democrats are becoming more and more anti-Russian.
By the time she becomes president there will be a majority of Democrats
clamoring for war against Russia. This is something to worry about. Recall
that liberal Democrat Truman got us involved in the Korean war and it was
liber LBJ that led us to war in Vietnam. I recall very clearly how the liberal
press in the US was advocating for and supporting war in Vietnam between
1964 and 1968. The liberalists of all liberal Democrats Hubert Humphrey
was leading that charge.
Democratic Party partisans are losing their common sense in this effort
to back Clinton. A year ago I could carry on rational discussion with those
I know about how unwise our Ukraine policy is -- today when I try to defend
Russia I am accused of backing Trump.
'But Russia is secretly plotting even more nefarious schemes. Putin
is infiltrating Europe. And not only Europe.' US regime would never infiltrate
europe...its already there!
@60 He really is versatile. No sooner had he finished rigging the Brexit
vote than he was off to France in a truck. Then he was spotted in Kabul.
This week he has been busy making trouble in Germany and he still finds
time to fake HRC's emails. The man must be stopped!
Yes, yes, it's all true; Vladimir Putin, master of the universe; the
Whirlwind; omnipotent; everywhere and nowhere all at the same time.
I'm so glad people are waking up to reality. :-)
Indeed. Democrats have become hysterical and unhinged in all things
regarding Clinton. I have been reading a few Democrat partisan sites. With
the DNC blaming Putin/Russians for the release of the DNC emails, the partisans
are demanding what amounts to McCarthy era witch hunts, and some strong
immediate NATO action against the Russians for the evil act. One supporter
had a posting showing how the Russians plan to invade the Baltics with graphics
showing the invasion route -- good grief. It is curious to see that those
not buying the propaganda are drawing comparisons to the witch hunts of
the 1950s'.
When I post or talk to partisan Dems I don't get accused of supporting
Trump but called a Putin lackey/stooge.
@ Relis 44
Thanks for quote-will use it . You did something readers of anti-Russian/Putin
propaganda don't do. Actually listen to or read what Putin says. I am still
puzzled even though I shouldn't be when I read descriptions of Putin in
the Western media, and then read what he actually said or acted on: two
people from two different planets. I was listening to Stephen Cohen, and
he said the same thing. Nobody bothers to read what Putin says, forget his
actions.
Putin should hire an agent and get a role on the TV series SHIELD as
the new head of HYDRA. And then attend comic-cons giving out autographs.
Fort-Russ has the video of '
Putin's full speech ' at St. Petersburg International Economic Forum
- 2016 with subtitles, I
transcribed the subtitles , if any one else is interested in reading
what he actually said on the subject of the US auto-missile defense in Romania
and Poland.
Clinton mafia and corrupt MSM like Guardian cannot deny the reality of what they wrote, so
they focus on how the information came out. "But voters don't care where the info came from. What voters
care about (for a change) is what the democrats actually wrote to each other, thinking their words were
"safe" (i.e., their hubris and arrogance is coming back to bite them in the ass). And the DNC are completely
guilty, based on their own words." "So, the media is lockstep quiet about their outting as
utterly disingenuous manipulators and distorters of the political process. And they are crying
foul at full volume at the Russians for allegedly daring to affect the political process by introducing
the truth of the situation. Apparently, some folk never learn, can never be taught a lesson.
So what's the solution?"
Notable quotes:
"... The first report by the Guardian's own correspondent, Alan Yuhas, and the one in today's newspaper, includes responses both from the Clinton team and from Sanders. But the Clinton response does not just get a mention, it dictates the entire theme of the Guardian story: that the leaks themselves are of little consequence. The real story, apparently, is an unproven and deflectionary claim by the Clinton camp that Russia is behind the leak. The headline says it all: "Hillary Clinton campaign blames leaked DNC emails about Sanders on Russia". ..."
"... The story itself does not tell us anything about the leaks until the sixth ..."
The pattern is unmistakable in both the UK and US – and I apologise for sounding like a stuck record.
Liberal mainstream media prove over and over again their aversion to telling us the news straight.
They conspire – I can think of no fairer word – with the political elites in Washington and London
to spin and subvert stories damaging to their mutual interests, even when the facts are driving real
events in an entirely different direction.
A perfect illustration is the story of the Democratic
party's leaked emails, which reveal that the national leadership was actively seeking to swing the
primaries battle in Hillary Clinton's favour by harming Bernie Sanders. One leaked email (there are
more to come, apparently) shows officials trying to highlight Sanders' "faith" – it is unclear whether
the goal was to play up his Jewishness or his supposed atheism, or both.
As Sanders says, this is "outrageous" activity by the Democratic National Committee (DNC), even
if it is hardly surprising. He, and we, knew it was happening during the primaries, even if it wasn't
being reported, just as we know the British parliamentary Labour party has been trying to undermine
its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, since he was elected last summer, even if everyone denies it. The difference
with the Democratic party scandal is we now have the proof.
It is worth examining the Guardian's coverage of this affair. It's like a masterclass in
Pravda-style journalism – and entirely illustrative of how the Guardian is not reporting news
but framing debates to protect its political interests: they have been rock solid behind the status-quo
candidacy of Clinton rather than Sanders ("let's focus on the fact she's woman rather than that she's
the spokeswoman for the military-industrial complex"), just as they seem ready to back anyone for
British PM as long as it's not Jeremy Corbyn, including Theresa May.
The DNC email leak story broke badly for the Guardian, with the first reports arriving
Sunday UK time, when the paper does not publish. A bland Associated Press
report appears to be the first time the story runs on its website, too early for responses from
the main actors.
The
first report by the Guardian's own correspondent, Alan Yuhas, and the one in today's newspaper,
includes responses both from the Clinton team and from Sanders. But the Clinton response does not
just get a mention, it dictates the entire theme of the Guardian story: that the leaks themselves
are of little consequence. The real story, apparently, is an unproven and deflectionary claim by
the Clinton camp that Russia is behind the leak. The headline says it all: "Hillary Clinton campaign
blames leaked DNC emails about Sanders on Russia".
This is exactly what the Clinton team wanted: for the media to focus on her phony outrage
rather than our justified outrage that the party system is rigged to make sure ordinary voters
cast their ballots the way the Democrat leadership want them cast.
The story itself does not tell us anything about the leaks until the sixth paragraph.
Before that we have lots of Clinton camp indignation about Russia interfering in US domestic politics
– as though this story is primarily yet another chance to knock Vladimir Putin and his supposed best
pal, Donald Trump, Clinton's chief rival for the presidency. Even when we finally reach mention of
the leaks, they are glossed over, with it unclear what the substance of these emails was and why
they are significant.
This is stenographic journalism that has become entirely the norm in the Guardian (if you
don't believe me, just scroll back through my blog posts to see more examples).
The real angle – the one that should have the been the focus of the story, at least based on news
value – is buried near its end: Sanders' demand that DNC chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, should
resign. That angle as the lead would have highlighted its true news interest: evidence of corrupt
practices at the DNC. It would have allowed the Guardian to focus on the nature of the leaked
emails rather get sidetracked into Clinton's anti-Russia spiel.
Proof that this was the real news story is confirmed by the fact that, soon after the Guardian
published its report, Wasserman Schultz did, in fact, resign. The real scandal, rather than the Washington
spin, finally cornered the Guardian very belatedly to
run the story online in a more realistic fashion.
The fact that it took more than 24 hours and three attempts before the story was reported in a
way any first-year journalism student would understand it had to be covered is not to the Guardian's
credit. It is to its shame. This was a desperate damage limitation operation by the Clinton camp
that was (yet again) actively supported and assisted by the Guardian.
Social media is changing many things. But one of the clearest examples is in the way it is bypassing
mainstream media gatekeepers like the Guardian and allowing the facts to speak for themselves.
Jill Stein will probably siphon off Bernie supporters who would have otherwise voted for
Shillary.
As Republican nominee Donald Trump twitted Sanders "sold out to Crooked Hillary Clinton." He was
right. Actually Sanders supporter "were more than eager to list the reasons that Mrs. Clinton
deserved to be incarcerated," and were quite capable of doing so. "Lock her up" slogan became quite
popular.
June 24, 2016 was the day Bernie became a BOUGHT-AND-PAID-FOR-SHILLARY-FOR-HILLARY. Or wait,
is that what happened?
Is Bernie selling his soul to the greatest criminal mastermind in
American history, who emailed four dead Americans to Benghazi while Whitewatering Vince Foster
with LIES, LIES, SO MANY LIES? Or is that just something your Republican dad believes? (Dear
old dad, awwwwww.)
The Trump campaign also issued a
press release
saying that Sanders has now joined forces with a "rigged system," providing the
list of elitist policies he now supports by endorsing Hillary:
The candidate who ran against special interests is endorsing
the candidate who embodies special interests.
The candidate who ran against TPP is endorsing the candidate
who helped draft the TPP.
The candidate who ran in opposition to globalization is running
against the candidate who has led the push for globalization.
The candidate who warned that open borders destroy the working
class is endorsing the candidate with the most open borders policy in our history.
The candidate who wants to reform H1-B visas is endorsing the
candidate who supported lifting the caps on H1-B visas.
The candidate who wants less war is endorsing the candidate who
launched wars in Iraq and Libya and would lead us to a new war in Syria.
The candidate who wants to get money out of politics is voting
for the candidate who has made a career out of making money from politics.
"... Johnson goes in for the kill. "If you're still feeling the Bern, and feeling burned because the Clinton machine rolled over your ideals, there is another option. The Libertarian party nominee will be on the ballot on all 50 states. ..."
Due to the explosion of uncovered intrigue and foul play from within the DNC, chaos as erupted
within the Democratic party. Long story short, the DNC conspired to screw over Bernie Sanders in
favor of Hillary Clinton.
Sanders could have taken the ball and run with it, but instead punted. Regardless of all the foul
play, Sanders has told his supporters that they need to vote for Hillary. This resulted in
Sanders' own supporters turning on him, and with such intensity, that he couldn't reign them back
in.
So now we seem to have Democrat apostates, much like those seen in the Republican party who
wouldn't tolerate Trump. And like those wayward Republicans, these Democrats are likely looking
for a new home.
Enter Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson, who is wasting no time in
reaching out to these former Bernie supporters with a video on Facebook.
"You
think Hillary Clinton is going to stand up for your civil rights?" said
Johnson, going on to talk about how the ACLU gave him the highest score in
Presidential politics, higher than Obama and Ron Paul.
Johnson then went on to remind the viewers about Clinton's pro-war past, and
how she regularly boasts about her decision to bomb Libya. He even puts the
expansion of ISIS's power at her feet.
"Is anything going to change if Hillary Clinton is elected President?" he
asks. "Unlike Hillary Clinton, I never supporting bombing Libya. I never
supported the Iraq War."
He even attacked her back and forth history with bad decisions regarding
criminal justice. "I've always stood up for drug policy, and criminal justice
reform."
Then Johnson goes in for the kill. "If you're still feeling the Bern,
and feeling burned because the Clinton machine rolled over your ideals, there
is another option. The Libertarian party nominee will be on the ballot on all
50 states."
Various polls have Johnson at different states of
approval, from 13% to 9%, but one thing is for sure. Johnson's support is growing daily, and with
these new developments coming out of the DNC, the Libertarian candidate may see a surge.
"... If destroying Syria is the way we "help" Israel, how many other nations must the U.S. destroy to "help" Israel? And before John Hagee's braindead disciples start shouting "Destroy them all!" I remind you that Syria and other parts of the Middle East is the historic home of millions of Christians going back to the time of the Apostle Paul. ..."
"... On the whole, Neocons and Neolibs are people without conscience. At their core, they have no allegiance to the United States or any other country. They are globalists. The only god they serve is the god of power and wealth, and they don't care how many people--including Americans--they kill to achieve it. The blood of millions of dead victims around the world is already dripping from their murderous hands. ..."
Why isn't the Mainstream Media (MSM) in America reporting the fact that Hillary Clinton admitted
in public that the U.S. government created Al Qaeda, ISIS, Al Nusra, etc.? Why does the MSM refuse
to tell the American people that the United States has not ever actually fought ISIS but instead
has surreptitiously and very actively supported ISIS and the other radical Muslim terrorists in the
Middle East? Why has the media refused to reveal the fact that ever since Russia started to fight
a true offensive war against ISIS the terrorist organization has been reduced to almost half?
I'll tell you why: the MSM is nothing more than a propaganda machine for the U.S. government--no
matter which party is in power. The MSM doesn't work for the U.S. citizenry. It doesn't even work
for its corporate sponsors. It works for the Washington Power Elite permanently ensconced in D.C.
(and yes, those same Power Elite control most of those media corporate sponsors).
It is a sad reality that if one wants to get accurate news reporting, one must mostly bypass the
U.S. propaganda media and look to sources outside the U.S. Here is a Canadian publication that covered
the Hillary admission:
"The following video features Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton acknowledging that America
created and funded Al Qaeda as a terrorist organization in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war:
"'Let's remember here the people we are fighting today we funded them twenty years ago.
"'Let's go recruit these mujahideen.
"'And great, let them come from Saudi Arabia and other countries, importing their Wahabi brand
of Islam so that we can go beat the Soviet Union.'"
"What she does not mention is that at no time in the course of the last 35 years has the US ceased
to support and finance Al Qaeda as a means to destabilizing sovereign countries. It was 'a pretty
good idea', says Hillary, and it remains a good idea today:
"Amply documented, the ISIS and Al Nusrah Mujahideen are recruited by NATO and the Turkish High
command, with the support of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel.
"The more fundamental question:
"Should a presidential candidate who candidly acknowledges that 'We created Al Qaeda' without
a word of caution or regret become president of the US, not to mention Hillary's commitment to waging
nuclear war on Russia if and when she becomes president of the United States of America."
The report continues:
"The Global War on Terror (GWOT) is led by the United States. It is not directed against Al Qaeda.
"Quite the opposite: The 'Global War on Terrorism' uses Al Qaeda terrorist operatives as their
foot soldiers.
"'Political Islam' and the imposition of an 'Islamic State' (modeled on Qatar or Saudi Arabia)
is an integral part of US foreign policy."
The report further states:
"It is a means to destabilizing sovereign countries and imposing 'regime change'.
"Clinton's successor at the State Department, John Kerry is in direct liaison with Al Nusra, an
Al Qaeda affiliated organization in Syria, integrated by terrorists and funded by the US and its
allies.
"In a bitter irony, John Kerry is not only complicit in the killings committed by Al Nusra, he
is also in blatant violation of US anti-terrorist legislation. If the latter were to be applied to
politicians in high office, John Kerry would be considered as a 'Terror Suspect'".
Think it through, folks: the U.S. government creates the radical Islamic terror networks that
justify America's "Global War On Terror" which directly results in millions of refugees (and no doubt
plants terrorists among them) flooding Europe. At the same time, it purposely refuses to protect
our own borders and even forces states and local communities to accept hundreds of thousands of Muslim
refugees (but the government is not sending any Christian refugees to America, even though a sizable
percentage of the refugees include Christians also) and pushes NATO to the doorstep of Russia, which
to any objective observer could only be regarded as an overt incitement to war.
Furthermore, why doesn't the MSM report the words of Hillary saying that the "best way to help
Israel" is to destroy Syria? Why doesn't the media acknowledge that official U.S. foreign policy
is to foment perpetual war, not in the name of the safety and security of the United States, but
in the name of "helping" Israel?
Here is how the same Canadian publication covers this part of the story:
"A newly-released Hillary Clinton email confirmed that the Obama administration has deliberately
provoked the civil war in Syria as the 'best way to help Israel.'
"In an indication of her murderous and psychopathic nature, Clinton also wrote that it was the
'right thing' to personally threaten Bashar Assad's family with death.
"In the email, released by Wikileaks, then Secretary of State Clinton says that the 'best way
to help Israel' is to 'use force' in Syria to overthrow the government."
It continues:
"Even though all US intelligence reports had long dismissed Iran's 'atomic bomb' program as a
hoax, (a conclusion supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency), Clinton continues to use
these lies to 'justify' destroying Syria in the name of Israel."
And again:
"The email proves--as if any more proof was needed--that the US government has been the main sponsor
of the growth of terrorism in the Middle East, and all in order to 'protect' Israel.
"It is also a sobering thought to consider that the 'refugee' crisis which currently threatens
to destroy Europe, was directly sparked off by this US government action as well, insofar as there
are any genuine refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria.
"In addition, over 250,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict, which has spread to
Iraq--all thanks to Clinton and the Obama administration backing the 'rebels' and stoking the fires
of war in Syria."
If destroying Syria is the way we "help" Israel, how many other nations must the U.S. destroy
to "help" Israel? And before John Hagee's braindead disciples start shouting "Destroy them all!"
I remind you that Syria and other parts of the Middle East is the historic home of millions of Christians
going back to the time of the Apostle Paul.
The truth is, Hillary (and the rest of the grubby gaggle of Neocons) doesn't give a tinker's dam
about Israel. Neocons such as Hillary Clinton simply use Israel (and the misguided passions of Christians
and conservatives who blindly support Israel) as cover to accomplish their real agenda: manipulating
world governments to the enrichment and empowerment of themselves.
Donald Trump is untested. But if Hillary should be elected, I'm confident she would not make it
through her first term without taking us into another G.W. Bush-type war (or worse)--except she will
also add the attempted disarmament of the American people to her nefarious agenda.
That's what Neocons do: they foment war. To their very soul, they are warmongers. And never forget
that Hillary Clinton is a true-blue Neocon. Or if the word "Neoliberal" sounds better to you in describing
Hillary, so be it. They both mean the same thing: WAR.
Here is a good explanation of how both Neocons and Neolibs are working from the same script:
On the whole, Neocons and Neolibs are people without conscience. At their core, they have
no allegiance to the United States or any other country. They are globalists. The only god they serve
is the god of power and wealth, and they don't care how many people--including Americans--they kill
to achieve it. The blood of millions of dead victims around the world is already dripping from their
murderous hands.
And if you think my indictment against the Neocons is an exaggeration, Paul Craig Roberts (Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury under President Ronald Reagan) was even more scathing in his condemnation
of them:
"The remaining danger is the crazed American neoconservatives. I know many of them. They are completely
insane ideologues. This inhuman filth has controlled the foreign policy of every US government since
Clinton's second term. They are a danger to all life on earth. Look at the destruction they have
wreaked in the former Yugoslavia, in Ukraine, in Georgia and South Ossetia, in Africa, in Afghanistan
and the Middle East. The American people were too brainwashed by lies and by political impotence
to do anything about it, and Washington's vassals in Europe, UK, Canada, Australia, and Japan had
to pretend that this policy of international murder was 'bringing freedom and democracy.'
"The crazed filth that controls US foreign policy is capable of defending US hegemony with nuclear
weapons. The neoconservatives must be removed from power, arrested, and put on international trial
for their horrendous war crimes before they defend their hegemony with Armageddon.
"Neoconservatives and their allies in the military/security complex make audacious use of false
flag attacks. These evil people are capable of orchestrating a false flag attack that propels the
US and Russia to war."
"... Well, it's obvious that Hillary wanted to keep some information from the public finding out. The information that she wanted to keep from the public probably didn't concern national security so much as her own private dealings. Nobody, I think, in American history has merged their public service as secretary of state or president with their private gains to the extent that Hillary really has. And by that I mean the Clinton Foundation, overall. ..."
"... She's going to Saudi Arabia, she's going to Europe, she's going to the Near Eastern countries. Saudi Arabia has asked her–and this is all very public–we want more arms. We want to buy arms in America. We know that Saudi Arabia is one of the major contributors to the Clinton Foundation. ..."
"... Well, lo and behold, the military-industrial complex is one of the big contributors to the Clinton Foundation, as is Saudi Arabia, and many of the parties who are directly affected by her decisions. Now, my guess is what she didn't want people to find out, whether on Freedom of Information Act or others, are the lobbying she's doing for her own foundation, which in a way means her wealth, her husband's wealth, Bill Clinton's wealth, and the power that both of them have by getting a quarter billion dollars of grants into the foundation during her secretary of state. ..."
"... We don't have any evidence one way or the other. So certainly there is no evidence. There is only the appearance of what looks to me to be an inherent conflict of interest with the foundation. ..."
On Thursday morning, the media fest and political fest around Hillary Clinton's email scandal
continued, as the head of the FBI, James Comey, spoke at a congressional House oversight committee.
Here's a little clip of what was said there. But let me just foreshadow–maybe the emails aren't the
real issue that should be in front of these hearings. Now, here's the chairman of the House Oversight
Committee, Jason Chaffetz, questioning James Comey and a bit of his answer.
JASON CHAFFETZ: It seems to a lot of us that the average Joe, the average American, that if they
had done what you laid out in your statement, that they'd be in handcuffs. And I think there is a
legitimate concern that there is a double standard. Your name isn't Clinton, you're not part of the
powerful elite, that Lady Justice will act differently.
JAMES COMEY: I believe this investigation was conducted consistent with the highest traditions
of the FBI. Our folks did it in an apolitical and professional way. There are two things that matter
in a criminal investigation of a subject. And so when I look at the facts we gathered here–as I said,
I see evidence of great carelessness. But I do not see evidence that is sufficient to establish that
Secretary Clinton, or those with whom she was corresponding, both talked about classified information
on email, and knew when they did it they were doing something that was against the law. So give that
assessment of the facts and my understanding of the law, my conclusion was, and remains, no reasonable
prosecutor would bring this case. No reasonable prosecutor would bring the second case in 100 years
focused on gross negligence.
JAY: Now joining us from New York is Michael Hudson. Michael's a Distinguished Research Professor
of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. His latest book is Killing the Host: How
Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy. Thanks for joining us, Michael.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Good to be back here, Paul.
JAY: First, let's talk a little bit about what we just heard. The chairman of the House Oversight
Committee says, is there a double standard here? Somebody else might be in handcuffs, and Hillary
Clinton's not being charged. I guess a lot of people are asking that question. The FBI director says
this doesn't rise to the level of criminality; it's carelessness. I don't know the law well enough.
I'm certainly not a lawyer. But it seems to me that the deliberate, willful decision to use a private
server–and some people have said one of the reasons could be to avoid Freedom of Information Act
requests–and I don't know if that rises to the level of criminality. But it's sure wrong.
HUDSON: Well, it's obvious that Hillary wanted to keep some information from the public finding
out. The information that she wanted to keep from the public probably didn't concern national security
so much as her own private dealings. Nobody, I think, in American history has merged their public
service as secretary of state or president with their private gains to the extent that Hillary really
has. And by that I mean the Clinton Foundation, overall.
Here's the problem, you can imagine. She's going to Saudi Arabia, she's going to Europe, she's
going to the Near Eastern countries. Saudi Arabia has asked her–and this is all very public–we want
more arms. We want to buy arms in America. We know that Saudi Arabia is one of the major contributors
to the Clinton Foundation. On the other hand, Hillary's in a position to go to Raytheon, to
Boeing, and say look, do I have a customer for you. Saudi Arabia would love to buy your arms. Maybe
we can arrange something. I'm going to do my best. By the way, you know, my foundation is–you know,
I'm a public-spirited person and I'm trying to help the world. Would you like to make a contribution
to my foundation?
Well, lo and behold, the military-industrial complex is one of the big contributors to the
Clinton Foundation, as is Saudi Arabia, and many of the parties who are directly affected by her
decisions. Now, my guess is what she didn't want people to find out, whether on Freedom of Information
Act or others, are the lobbying she's doing for her own foundation, which in a way means her wealth,
her husband's wealth, Bill Clinton's wealth, and the power that both of them have by getting a quarter
billion dollars of grants into the foundation during her secretary of state.
JAY: As far as we know, there's no direct evidence that she did precisely what you're saying.
And
That they actually say–"Give money to the foundation; I will facilitate such-and-such a contract."
There's no evidence of that, correct?
HUDSON: That's right. And partly there's no evidence because her private emails are not subject
to [inaud.]. They're not subject to finding out this. We don't have any evidence one way or the
other. So certainly there is no evidence. There is only the appearance of what looks to me to be
an inherent conflict of interest with the foundation.
JAY: And there's no direct evidence that any abnormal amount of money has gone to Bill Clinton,
in terms of fees and expenses. One can assume he's well-compensated. But it does have charitable
status, it has to file a 990. They are under charitable law regulations, and so far I don't know
of any reporting that says that they have violated the–.
HUDSON: You're right. The advantage of being under charitable law is it's in a foundation that–you
can look at it in effect as your savings account. And you can treat it–you can do with a foundation
whatever you want.
Now, if you or I had a quarter billion dollars, what we'd want to do is influence policy. Influence
the world. Well, that's what they want to do. They want to use the foundation to support policies
that they want. And here we're not dealing with unexplained enrichment. This isn't money that comes
into them that goes into an offshore account in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands. It's hidden in
plain sight. It's all the foundation. It's tax-exempt. It's legitimate. So she's somehow been able
to legitimize a conflict of interest, and what that used to be called corruption in office. Or at
least the appearance of what could be corruption in office.
And the fact is, that is what there has been a blacked-out screen painted over it, and we don't
have any idea what she's been saying to these affected parties that not only has she been dealing
with, the secretary of state, but it turned out to be major contributors to her and Bill's foundation.
JAY: Now, the reason the emails rose to such prominence is because it was the potential of criminal
charges. That seems to have ended now. The Clinton foundation certainly has been reported upon in
various places in the mainstream press. It never rose to the same level of attention as the emails.
But why do you think that is? Because you think there's enough fodder there that that could have
been quite a media fest. Feast, I should say.
HUDSON: Well, there's no direct link between the foundation that says it's existing to promote
various social purposes, and Hillary's actions as secretary of state. But there's such overlap there.
I can't think of any public official at cabinet level or above, in memory who's ever had an overlapping
between a foundation that they had and had control, personally, and their public job. So there's
never been so great a blurring of categories.
JAY: So why isn't this a bigger issue in the media? Corporate media?
HUDSON: I don't–I think the media are supporting Hillary. And that's a good question. Why are they
supporting her so much with all of this? Why aren't they raising this seemingly obvious thing? I
think the media want two things that Hillary wants. They want the trade agreements to essentially
turn over policy to, trade policy to corporations, and regulatory policy to–.
JAY: You're talking
about TTIP and [TTP].
HUDSON: [They're neocons.] They're the agreement of politics. If the media agree with her politics
and says, okay, we want to back her because she's backing the kind of world we want, a neocon world,
a neoliberal world, then they're going to say, this is wonderful. We can now distract attention onto
did she leak a national secret. Well, the secrets that are really important aren't the national classification
secrets. They're the personal, personal, the big-picture secrets. And it's the big picture we don't
have a clue of as a result of all of these erasures.
JAY: Okay, thanks very much for joining us, Michael.
HUDSON: Good to be here.
JAY: And thank you for joining us on the Real News Network.
"... Sanders was always just the shiny carrot used to attract the naive youth and rope them in to Clinton's campaign. It's all a charade as it's always been. ..."
"... Well Clinton is a neoliberal. They believe in destroying someone's whole life for making a mistake once. So perhaps she is getting a taste of her own medicine. ..."
"... bernie is a accomplice sell out….sanders sold out to the criminal psychopath clinton…what a disappointment he turned out to be... ..."
"... In different manner, Mr Trump has shaken the Republican Party to its foundations. He too has been subject to a devious counter-campaign. Thus, this is a unique moment for the USA: each of the two dominant political parties is reeling and given the right push shall either reform or fall. ..."
"... Victoria Nuland and Hunter Biden as instrumental supporters of a fascist coup in the Ukraine...fascist coup. Support for Nazis. "We came, we saw; he died", said Hilary Rodham Clinton following the bloody Benghazi incident. There you have two excellent examples of Fascism and Authoritarianism, M.C.. Words and acts. ..."
"... Sanders is trying to hold back the tide for change , and he will be found out. He is an utter hypocrite, who is reneging on everything that he said so recently. The Democrats are a party for the 1% ---whoever is the leader. A new, mass party of socialism is urgently needed. ..."
"... Trump is a Bully, Hillary is a War Criminal. If Bernie won't lead a REVOLT--then We, the People will. ..."
"... Loons. Hillary Clinton is just Dick Cheney without the long, ah, nose... ..."
"... Hillary is indisputably a Neoliberal and Necon (warmonger), she's a threat to humanity. ..."
"... Actually Hillary Clinton is perched quite a bit to the right of the Party. ..."
"... Let me correct the record: it is nuts to support a candidate that is trusted by only 28% of the population! Nate Silver came out with a new projection that shows Hillary will lose to Trump. In a poll with a three way race Hillary, Trump, and with Johnson opposing Trump, Hillary STILL loses to Trump even though Johnson got a nice little chunk of the right leaning voters... ..."
"... How is somebody not going to jail? And, why isn't there talk of holding a fair and Democratic primary? ..."
"... HRCand DWS brought it on themselves. I am a registered democrat. I wanted a relatively clean establishment democrat without looming scandals to run. That didn't happen because Hillary ran. ..."
"... She gives me the heebie jeebies. Julian Assange has apparently got something on her which will deliver the coup de grace. I am loving Wikileaks at the moment. ..."
"... I hope Clinton will become less and less popular in the run up to the election, what would be fantastic is if we see Bernie running as an independent, America needs to have real democracy for once. ..."
"... People say lock her up ..."
"... No, she's above the law. As ex-Guardian columnist states so eloquently, there are 2 sets of laws in America---1 for elites like the Clintons, and another for everybody else. ..."
Sanders was always just the shiny carrot used to attract the naive youth and rope them in to Clinton's
campaign. It's all a charade as it's always been.
Well Clinton is a neoliberal. They believe in destroying someone's whole life for making a
mistake once. So perhaps she is getting a taste of her own medicine.
Mr Sanders is wrong to continue support for Clinton.
Not only has Clinton admitted wilful breach of sensible electronic communication security arrangements
but also her associates, likely with her tacit blessing, have done all in their power to undermine
Mr Sanders. Allegations of vote rigging (e.g. excluding people entitled to vote, closing polling
stations in locations where support for Clinton is thin, and strong presumptive statistical evidence
that voting machines have been tampered with) give little credence to Clinton being fit for the
presidency.
Even Mr Trump has condemned this behaviour and I don't believe that wholly to be through political
opportunism.
There is an open offer for Mr Sanders to jump ship and front the Green Party. Else, he could
stand as an independent democrat. What Mr Sanders must not do is lie down and accept having been
shafted. He has pledged support to Clinton. He did this without full knowledge of the facts of
Clinton's duplicity. Thus he is no longer honour bound to stick to his word. Indeed, by accepting
the manipulated would-be status quo he becomes tainted by Clinton's malodorous persona.
Mr Sanders is of an age when it soon shall be increasingly difficult to meet the physical demands
of running for high office. This is his one and only chance for the presidency. Regardless of
whether he succeeds, his stab at the presidency will give heart to a huge number of disenchanted
US voters and bring about major changes to the Democratic Party establishment, to its electoral
procedures and to its longer term policy platform; an alternative being collapse of that party
and replacement by an entity better suited to the 21st century.
In different manner, Mr Trump has shaken the Republican Party to its foundations. He too has
been subject to a devious counter-campaign. Thus, this is a unique moment for the USA: each of
the two dominant political parties is reeling and given the right push shall either reform or
fall.
Victoria Nuland and Hunter Biden as instrumental supporters of a fascist coup in the Ukraine...fascist
coup. Support for Nazis. "We came, we saw; he died", said Hilary Rodham Clinton following the
bloody Benghazi incident. There you have two excellent examples of Fascism and Authoritarianism,
M.C.. Words and acts.
Remember how Team Clinton kept pushing the lie about Bernie supporters throwing chairs at the
Nevada convention? I think I saw that mentioned in articles here more than once as well.
Who needs to look at facts would be you and the other willfully blind Hillary supporters.
Notably, the FBI DID NOT investigate this law...why didn't the Hillary loyalist, Loretta Lynch,
include this one as part of their investigation? Hmmm. I wonder...
Hillary Clinton broke this law.
http://www.justice.gov/usam/criminal-resource-manual-1663-protection-government-property-protection-public-records-and
Subsection (b) of 18 U.S.C. § 2071 contains a similar prohibition specifically directed at custodians
of public records. Any custodian of a public record who "willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes,
mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys (any record) shall be fined not more than $2,000
or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified
from holding any office under the United States." While the range of acts proscribed by this subsection
is somewhat narrower than subsection (a), it does provide the additional penalty of forfeiture
of position with the United States.
Sanders is trying to hold back the tide for change , and he will be found out. He is an utter hypocrite,
who is reneging on everything that he said so recently. The Democrats are a party for the 1% ---whoever
is the leader. A new, mass party of socialism is urgently needed.
Let me correct the record: it is nuts to support a candidate that is trusted by only 28% of the
population! Nate Silver came out with a new projection that shows Hillary will lose to Trump.
In a poll with a three way race Hillary, Trump, and with Johnson opposing Trump, Hillary STILL
loses to Trump even though Johnson got a nice little chunk of the right leaning voters...
Who is nuts, now, dude?
HRCand DWS brought it on themselves. I am a registered democrat. I wanted a relatively clean establishment
democrat without looming scandals to run. That didn't happen because Hillary ran.
I wanted a clean looking election with few glaring conflicts of interests. That didn't happen
because DWS didn't step down and high level party members couldn't keep their mouths shut over
email.
Now, we're expected to smile, nod, look the other way, and vote for Hillary. I will do that
this time, but, if Hillary loses, I will never support her again.
She gives me the heebie jeebies. Julian Assange has apparently got something on her which will deliver the coup de grace. I am loving Wikileaks at the moment.
I hope Clinton will become less and less popular in the run up to the election, what would be
fantastic is if we see Bernie running as an independent, America needs to have real democracy
for once.
No, she's above the law. As ex-Guardian columnist states so eloquently, there are 2 sets of laws
in America---1 for elites like the Clintons, and another for everybody else.
"... More than 1,000 people from as far as Seattle and Florida participated in the first of what are expected to be many Sanders rallies during the convention, which formally begins Monday. ..."
"... anger at Hillary Clinton and the Democratic establishment was not cooled ..."
"... At the front of the parade was a flag with the Democratic donkey flying upside down. Further animating the protest was the release by WikiLeaks of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee showing party efforts to undermine Mr. Sanders's candidacy, reinforcing a widespread view among marchers that party leaders had stacked the deck against him. ..."
"... "It's not just young people who are furious. There are people who have been Democrats for decades and are completely angry," said Kimberly Cooper, 59, of Florida. "Now with the WikiLeaks thing, I am finished supporting her." ..."
"... Numerous marchers said they would support Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate. They rejected the argument that not voting for Mrs. Clinton would help Mr. Trump. ..."
More than 1,000 people from as far as Seattle and Florida participated in the first of what are
expected to be many Sanders rallies during the convention, which formally begins Monday. The march,
led by a banner proclaiming "Help End Establishment Politics, Vote No on Hillary," was far larger
than any of the protest marches last week in Cleveland at the Republican National Convention.
... ... ...
But the unreconstructed anger at Hillary Clinton and the Democratic establishment was not cooled,
despite Mr. Sanders's endorsement of Mrs. Clinton two weeks ago.
At the front of the parade was a flag with the Democratic donkey flying upside down. Further animating
the protest was the release by WikiLeaks of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee
showing party efforts to undermine Mr. Sanders's candidacy, reinforcing a widespread view among marchers
that party leaders had stacked the deck against him.
"It's not just young people who are furious. There are people who have been Democrats for
decades and are completely angry," said Kimberly Cooper, 59, of Florida. "Now with the WikiLeaks
thing, I am finished supporting her."
Brandon Gorcheff, of Youngstown, Ohio, who held a handmade sign reading "Move Left" that spoofed
the Clinton campaign's arrow logo, said nothing could get him to support Mrs. Clinton. Michelle
Cyr, who flew to Philadelphia from Bath, Me., said, "The Democratic Party is so out of touch with
its constituents."
Joshua Brown, an alternate delegate from North Carolina who supports Mr. Sanders, a Vermont senator,
said he was concerned that people would desert the party in the fall, either abstaining or voting
for a third-party candidate and bolstering Mr. Trump's chances.
... ... ...
Numerous marchers said they would support Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate. They rejected
the argument that not voting for Mrs. Clinton would help Mr. Trump.
It is interesting how quickly the elite lost control. Revolutionary situation indeed.
Notable quotes:
"... Every time Clinton's name was mentioned thereafter, the crowd erupted into chaos: Sanders supporters shouting against Clinton supporters. ..."
"... As Cummings talked about how proud his late father would be of the people in the room, Sanders' supporters shouted, "No TPP, No TPP," in reference to the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. ..."
When Rev. Cynthia Hale mentioned Hillary Clinton for the first time during the invocation, the
floor erupted into boos.
Clinton supporters began chanting, "Hil-la-ry, Hil-la-ry," but they were quickly drowned out
by chants of "Bernie, Bernie!"
Bernie Sanders supporter and organizer Billy Taylor held a coffin painted with donkeys during a
march Sunday in Philadelphia. He told NPR he applied for protest permits to "stop any Hillary
supporters from obtaining permits."
Every time Clinton's name was mentioned thereafter, the crowd erupted into chaos: Sanders
supporters shouting against Clinton supporters.
... ... ...
A Democratic Party official tells Tamara that the Sanders and Clinton campaigns have tried to
work together to present a united front. Early into the convention, it was clear those talks and
the message from Sanders had not swayed the delegations.
Rep. Marcia Fudge, from Ohio, was shouted down many times as she tried to get through some
procedural motions.
"I intend to be fair," she said as the crowd booed. "I am going to be respectful of you and I
want you to be respectful of me. We are all Democrats and we need to act like it."
The same thing happened as Rep. Elijah Cummings delivered a speech centering on social
justice.
As Cummings talked about how proud his late father would be of the people in the room,
Sanders' supporters shouted, "No TPP, No TPP," in reference to the Trans-Pacific Partnership
agreement.
Seems the Clinton and her assorted groupies just need a scapegoat :-). Seems Putin controls Trump
and Clinton! The man is amazing.
Notable quotes:
"... From Bloomberg - "If the Democrats can show the hidden hand of Russian intelligence agencies, they believe that voter outrage will probably outweigh any embarrassing revelations, a person familiar with the party's thinking said' ..."
"... Ha! Fat chance. I'm thinking the American voter is going to start sending Thank You notes to the Kremlin! As usual, their heads are stuck so far up the arse of their donkey they incapable of gauging Main Street sentiment. ..."
"... She is just a symptom of the DNC disease. And yes, she'll take the fall for the team, but make no mistake, the cancer remains and will continue to metastasize. ..."
Russia is weaponizing everything : Word files, federalism, finance and Jedi mind tricks - everything
is transformed into a weapon if Russia or its president Putin is imagined to come near it.
Putin, the President of the Russian Federation, is influencing, manipulating and controlling many
"western" politicians, parties and movements - in Europe AND in the United States.
Here are,
thanks
to Mark Sleboda , a partial list
of political entities and issue Putin secretly manipulates and controls:
Putin is
in cahoots with the Republican presidential candidate Trump -
claims the Clinton
campaign . Putin is behind, it asserts, the leak of the DNC emails which prove that the Democratic
National Committee
has been working against Sanders to promote Hillary Clinton. The leak of the DNC emails, says
the Clinton campaign, is ..:
.. further evidence the Russian government is trying to influence the outcome of the election.
The Clinton campaign has not looked thoroughly enough into Putin's schemes. Reveal we can that
Putin has penetrated U.S. politics even deeper than thought - right down into the Clinton Foundation
and the
Clinton family itself:
As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009
to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium
One's chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million.
That money, surely, had no influence on then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's decisions? And
what about her husband?
Mr. Clinton received $500,000 ... from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin
These undisputed facts demonstrate that Putin is indeed waging influence by bribing U.S. politicians.
But the Clinton campaign is be a bit more hesitant in pointing these out.
Clinton/Kaine certainly confident that the MSM will not report.
For all the money given to the Clinton's it didn't prevent the Ukraine disasters. Of course,
Ukraine may not have been a concern among the particular oligarchs who made these bribes.
HOw could this anti-russian hysteria/bashing go on, I mean the level of paranoia and disinformation
against Russia and Putin is plain crazy.
From Bloomberg - "If the Democrats can show the hidden hand of Russian intelligence agencies,
they believe that voter outrage will probably outweigh any embarrassing revelations, a person
familiar with the party's thinking said'
Ha! Fat chance. I'm thinking the American voter is going to start sending Thank You notes
to the Kremlin! As usual, their heads are stuck so far up the arse of their donkey they incapable
of gauging Main Street sentiment.
Funny though, Schultz takes her orders from Obama, as the Chairman of the Party, the DNC Board
of Directors and team Hillary. Period. If any blame should go around it should splash onto all
individuals NOT just Schultz.
She is just a symptom of the DNC disease. And yes, she'll take the fall for the team, but
make no mistake, the cancer remains and will continue to metastasize.
"... So, there you have it. The guy who suspected his campaign was being intentionally
marginalized by the party apparatus learns in fact he, his campaign and most importantly,
his voters were indeed intentionally marginalized by the leadership of the Democratic
Party. The chairman of the Party is Barack Obama. He appoints the Director who we
all know is Wasserman Schultz. Thus, the entirety of the DNC leadership knowingly
and with intent marginalized Sanders and his voters. Yet, Sanders remains loyal
and naively believes his voters will stay with him if he sticks with the party and
their chosen candidate that screwed him and them. ..."
"... His response reminds me of battered wife syndrome. He has absolutely bonded
with his abusers. He is a sick man as in mentally impaired, maybe fatigued, and
should seriously consider some rest. ..."
"... I cannot imagine learning after years of planning, hard work and personal
sacrifices being made to fulfill my lifelong ambition to get within a whisker of
achieving my goals, only to learn within weeks after capitulating, that my entire
life's effort was undermined from the beginning by the very apparatus I aligned
with, albeit as an Indy, for decades. An apparatus that must remain neutral. ..."
"... Think about all that man has put himself, his family, his workers, his
voters through this last year. His efforts were ginormous. Yet, within less than
48 hours the man dismisses the gravity of how his life's work was deliberately,
with intent, sabotaged by the DNC and goes onto say it's not important, the issues
are. ..."
"... Sure the issues are important to his voters but their learning the DNC
put their resources behind their chosen candidate vs remaining neutral as their
Bylaws require, would seriously piss me off. Hell it does piss me off and I'm not
even a Sanders supporter. ..."
"... And why on earth would any of Sanders voters ever believe that the same
party that marginalized him and his efforts would ever give weight to the issues
he's fighting for! ..."
"... AFAICT he got very little for his support (will he get a cabinet position
for himself?). He didn't have to endorse Hillary. He doesn't have to speak at the
Convention (but he will tonight). ..."
For those who have a Twitter account, checkout #dncleak or #dncleaks on the
latest over the Wikileaks release of the DNC emails.
Here's one -"Hillary Clinton is now blaming the Russians for leaking the
emails. Like that makes it any better that you rigged the primary."
Sanders to Chuck Todd on the leaks -
Todd: "So just to sum up here, these leaks, these emails, it hasn't
given you any pause about your support for Hillary Clinton?"
Sanders: "No, no, no. We are going to do everything that we can
to protect working families in this country. And again, Chuc, I know media
is not necessarily focused on these things. But what a campaign is about
is not Hillary Clinton, it's not Donald Trump. It is the people of this
country, blah blah blah..."
"[...] And I'm going to go around the country discussing them [issues] and
making sure Hillary Clinton is elected president."
So, there you have it. The guy who suspected his campaign was being intentionally
marginalized by the party apparatus learns in fact he, his campaign and most
importantly, his voters were indeed intentionally marginalized by the leadership
of the Democratic Party. The chairman of the Party is Barack Obama. He appoints
the Director who we all know is Wasserman Schultz. Thus, the entirety of the
DNC leadership knowingly and with intent marginalized Sanders and his voters.
Yet, Sanders remains loyal and naively believes his voters will stay with him
if he sticks with the party and their chosen candidate that screwed him and
them.
UNFRIGGINBELIEVABLE!
His response reminds me of battered wife syndrome. He has absolutely
bonded with his abusers. He is a sick man as in mentally impaired, maybe fatigued,
and should seriously consider some rest.
I cannot imagine learning after years of planning, hard work and personal
sacrifices being made to fulfill my lifelong ambition to get within a whisker
of achieving my goals, only to learn within weeks after capitulating, that my
entire life's effort was undermined from the beginning by the very apparatus
I aligned with, albeit as an Indy, for decades. An apparatus that must remain
neutral.
Think about his response to Todd. Think about all that man has put himself,
his family, his workers, his voters through this last year. His efforts were
ginormous. Yet, within less than 48 hours the man dismisses the gravity of how
his life's work was deliberately, with intent, sabotaged by the DNC and goes
onto say it's not important, the issues are.
If I were a Bernie supporter I'd be starting a campaign to convince that
man to take some serious time off. Go fishing. Go for hikes whatever. Just get
away from the bubble and clear your head and soul.
Sure the issues are important to his voters but their learning the DNC
put their resources behind their chosen candidate vs remaining neutral as their
Bylaws require, would seriously piss me off. Hell it does piss me off and I'm
not even a Sanders supporter.
And why on earth would any of Sanders voters ever believe that the same
party that marginalized him and his efforts would ever give weight to the issues
he's fighting for!
His response reminds me of battered wife syndrome.
You are assuming that Sanders is a victim instead of a conspirator.
Why
would anyone give any politician in our corrupt system the benefit of the
doubt? Even one that seems to be against 'the system'?
Why didn't Bernie release more than one year of tax returns?
Especially since Hillary cited this as a reason not to release
the transcripts of her speaches to Goldman Sachs.
Why didn't Bernie use the emails against Hillary after the State
Department Inspector General released their report?
This official report clearly demonstrated that Hillary
had consistently misled the nation about her emails.
Why didn't Bernie attack Obama's record on Black/Minority affairs?
Obama's support is part of the reason that Blacks/Minorities
were voting for Hillary. Obama never went to Feruson or New York
or Baltimore. Obama's weak economic stimulous and austerity policies
have been very bad for blacks/minorities. Obama bailed out banks
that targeted minorities for toxic loans. Etc.
Why does Bernie, at 74-years old, care more about Hillary (which
he calls a friend of 25 years) and the Democratic Party than his principles?
AFAICT he got very little for his support (will he get a
cabinet position for himself?). He didn't have to endorse Hillary.
He doesn't have to speak at the Convention (but he will tonight).
In a YouTube video about the lawsuit, Jason Beck said there were six claims to the case. The
first is fraud against the DNC and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, stating that they broke legally
binding agreements by strategizing for Clinton.
The second is negligent misrepresentation.
The third is deceptive conduct by claiming they were remaining neutral when they were not. The
fourth is is retribution for monetary donations to Sanders' campaign.
The fifth is that the DNC broke its fiduciary duties during the primaries by not holding a
fair process. And the sixth is for negligence, claiming that the DNC did not protect donor
information from hackers.
"... Robert Mackey would like you to know that many in the Arab-speaking world are doing some genuine soul-searching about their culture's own role in the emergence of ISIS and that these conspiracy theories have simply been a haven for the obstinate and the self-deluded; Muslims who are too afraid to look themselves and their societies in the mirror. ..."
"... Ha, ha. "Washington." What buffoons! ..."
"... In a report this week on the blistering efficiency and military prowess of ISIS, ABC News reporter James Gordon Meek got an incredibly great, short answer as to where the Islamic State gained its technical expertise: "Probably the Chechens," a U.S. official said. ..."
"... ISIS, or ISIL, or the Islamic State-whatever you want to call it-was nearly dead in 2007, after U.S. forces in Iraq and local Sunni tribes successfully joined forces against the group. It wasn't until the Syrian uprisings that it reemerged as a potent force, after a failed merger with the al-Qaida-affiliated Syrian rebel group al-Nusra, lead most of al-Nusra's foreign-born jihadis to defect to ISIS . ..."
"... "Foreign-born jihadis" here meaning career Islamists like the Chechen groups, which have been conducting terror campaigns, kidnappings, and suicide bombings in Russia , with a reasonable degree of success, for over 15 years now. Some of the most prominent leaders now fighting with ISIS are Chechens: the ginger-bearded "rising star" Omar al-Shishani and the group's Che Guevara, Muslem al-Shishani (the unnervingly studly viking face pictured above). In addition to Saudi and Pakistani assistance, many of the Chechens were led and supported by the CIA-trained Afghan mujahideen, up-to-and-including Osama bin Laden: ace mentors, in other words, with proven experience in a professional terror setting. ..."
"... When not actively defending the Chechen extremists with weirdly bipartisan neocon-neoliberal advocacy groups , policy makers and government officials in Washington have turned a proactively blind eye to Chechen Islamist activities in Russia and here in the United States with infamously fatal consequences. Both the 9/11 Commission Report and FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley have shown that senior-level officials refused to classify Islamic terrorists in Chechnya-like their then-leader Ibn al Khattab who had direct contact with bin Laden-as actual terrorists, thus preventing the FBI from properly investigating "20th hijacker" Zaccarias Moussaoui before 9/11. ..."
"... A big part of the reason for this sensitivity is that covertly letting the Saudis and their Islamic radicals chip away at the oil-rich rubble on the fringes of the collapsed Soviet empire has been America's favored strategy for collecting the spoils of the Cold War. ..."
"... "The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army," a former CIA analyst told Swiss journalist Richard Labévičre back in the late 1990s . "The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia." ..."
Wise Men of Foreign Affairs have jumped at the chance
to debunk a wild rumor that Hillary Clinton bragged about creating ISIS in her new memoir-truly
an easy layup in the annals of punditry. The rumor even got the name of Clinton's memoir wrong. But,
that's OK: The remaining facts still allow America to feel guilty.
According to
at least one Egyptian blogger, the conspiracy theory-complete with fake quotes from a fantasy
version of Clinton's memoir entitled Plan 360-emerged from the hothouse of Egypt's Pro-Mubarak/Pro-Military
Facebook pages: a social circle in which it is already de rigueur to suggest that the U.S.
and the Muslim Brotherhood secretly conspired to orchestrate the Arab Spring. This screenshot of
a Facebook page for the Egyptian military's counter-terrorism and special operations unit,
Task Force 777, and its reconnaissance
special operations unit, Task Force 999, depicts one of the earliest appearances of the fake Clinton
quotes:
Leaving aside for the moment the question of why Clinton would brag about this covert operation,
in progress, in her memoir, what foreign policy objectives could possibly be achieved by America
manufacturing ISIS? Like: Why do that? To what ends?
One version involves Israel (obviously), and something about balkanizing Israel's Mid-East neighbors
to both justify their nefarious Zionist expansion, or whatever, and remove opposition to it. Another
version,
as The Week pointed out Tuesday, claims that the U.S. would plan to recognize an ISIS
caliphate and that this caliphate would turn out to be (somehow) very amenable to America's strategic
and economic interests.
The hashtag #HilaryClintonsMemoirs (
#مذكرات_هيلاري_كلينتون)
quickly started trending across social media in the region,
Huffington Post UK reported, "with satirical tweets mocking the theory with outlandish claims
about what else the Secretary of State might have written-like a secret CIA plot to close all the
restaurants in Cairo and replace them with McDonalds."
Good one, the Middle East. I'm lovin' it.
Not everyone appreciated the Middle East's jokes, however.
Writing in his "Open Source" column for the
New York Times, Robert Mackey would like you to know that many in the Arab-speaking world
are doing some genuine soul-searching about their culture's own role in the emergence of ISIS and
that these conspiracy theories have simply been a haven for the obstinate and the self-deluded; Muslims
who are too afraid to look themselves and their societies in the mirror.
For instance, the Lebanese scholar Ziad Majed
wrote
on his blog that at least six factors from the recent history of the Middle East helped give
birth to the militant movement, including "despotism in the most heinous form that has plagued
the region," as well as "the American invasion of Iraq in 2003," and "a profound crisis, deeply
rooted in the thinking of some Islamist groups seeking to escape from their terrible failure to
confront the challenges of the present toward a delusional model ostensibly taken from the seventh
century."
That sort of introspection is not for everyone, of course, so a popular conspiracy theory has
spread online that offers an easier answer to the riddle of where ISIS came from: Washington.
Ha, ha. "Washington." What buffoons!
Let's learn a valuable lesson from the psychological projections of these weak-willed Third World
plebes: desert Archie Bunkers and izaar-clad Tony Sopranos too parochial in their worldview
and too much in denial of their own culpability to face this present danger.
America is better than that.
Let us examine with clear eyes all the ways in which our own democratically elected government-in
Washington-is responsible for where ISIS came from.
U.S. Policy in Chechnya
In a report this week on the blistering efficiency and military prowess of ISIS, ABC News
reporter James Gordon Meek got
an incredibly great, short answer as to where the Islamic State gained its technical expertise:
"Probably the Chechens," a U.S. official said.
ISIS, or ISIL, or the Islamic State-whatever you want to call it-was nearly dead in 2007,
after U.S. forces in Iraq and local Sunni tribes successfully joined forces against the group. It
wasn't until the Syrian uprisings that it reemerged as a potent force, after a failed merger with
the al-Qaida-affiliated Syrian rebel group al-Nusra,
lead most of al-Nusra's foreign-born jihadis to defect to ISIS.
"Foreign-born jihadis" here meaning career Islamists like the Chechen groups, which have been
conducting
terror
campaigns, kidnappings, and suicide bombings in Russia, with a reasonable degree of success,
for over 15 years now. Some of the most prominent leaders now fighting with ISIS are Chechens:
the ginger-bearded "rising star" Omar al-Shishani and
the group's Che Guevara, Muslem al-Shishani (the unnervingly studly viking face pictured above).
In addition to Saudi and Pakistani assistance, many of the Chechens were led and supported by the
CIA-trained Afghan mujahideen, up-to-and-including Osama bin Laden: ace mentors, in other words,
with proven experience in a professional terror setting.
When not actively defending the Chechen extremists with
weirdly
bipartisan neocon-neoliberal advocacy groups, policy makers and government officials in Washington
have turned a proactively blind eye to Chechen Islamist activities in Russia and here in the United
States with infamously fatal consequences. Both
the 9/11 Commission Report and
FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley have shown that senior-level officials refused to classify Islamic
terrorists in Chechnya-like their then-leader Ibn al Khattab who had direct contact with bin Laden-as
actual terrorists, thus preventing the FBI from properly investigating "20th hijacker" Zaccarias
Moussaoui before 9/11. Another pre-9/11 FBI investigation, this time into a Florida summer camp
run by the Saudi-funded
World Assembly
of Muslim Youth (WAMY), discovered that the group was showing children videos praising Chechen
bombers, only to be pulled off the case according to an FBI memo,
ID 1991-WF-213589, uncovered by
Greg Palast for the BBC and Vice.
Upon further digging by Palast:
Several insiders repeated the same story: U.S. agencies ended the investigation of the bin
Laden-terrorist-Chechen-jihad connection out of fear of exposing uncomfortable facts. U.S. intelligence
had turned a blind eye to the Abdullah bin Laden organisation [yes, WAMY was run by a bin Laden
brother] because our own government was more than happy that our Saudi allies were sending jihadis
to Afghanistan, then, via WAMY, helping Muslims to fight in Bosnia then, later, giving the Russians
grief in Chechnya. The problem is that terrorists are like homing pigeons – they come home to
roost.
As Joe Trento of the National Security News Service, who helped me on the investigation, said,
"It would be unseemly if [someone] were arrested by the FBI and word got back that he'd once been
on the payroll of the CIA What we're talking about is blow-back. What we're talking about is embarrassing,
career-destroying blow-back for intelligence officials."
A big part of the reason for this sensitivity is that covertly letting the Saudis and their
Islamic radicals chip away at the oil-rich rubble on the fringes of the collapsed Soviet empire has
been America's favored strategy for collecting the spoils of the Cold War.
"The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries
worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army,"
a former CIA analyst told Swiss journalist Richard
Labévičre back in the late 1990s. "The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains
of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia."
Granted: The events of September 11th made this
grand strategy
a little tricky, domestically, but as you may have noticed over the past few years,
particularly in Russian-allied Syria, it's mostly back on track.
"... "And I'm talking about the establishment Democrats and the establishment Republicans who are much more interested in holding on to power and their positions than they are about their party or about their country." "This is really very sad, and I hope that more people will wake up and see what's happening," Carson said. ..."
"I knew that there was corruption, but the level of corruption throughout the political system
is overwhelming," Carson said Sunday on Fox News. "And I'm talking about the
establishment
Democrats and the establishment Republicans who are much more interested in holding on to power
and their positions than they are about their party or about their country." "This is
really very sad, and I hope that more people will wake up and see what's happening," Carson said.
"... Krugman has joined the ranks of the neocons, as well as the neoliberals, and they're terrified that they're losing control of the Republican Party. For the last half-century the Republican Party has been pro-Cold War, corporatist. And Trump has actually, is reversing that. Reversing the whole traditional platform. And that really worries the neocons. ..."
"... But finally came Trump's speech, and this was for the first time, policy was there. And he's making a left run around Hillary. He appealed twice to Bernie Sanders supporters, and the two major policies that he outlined in the speech broke radically from the Republican traditional right-wing stance. And that is called destroying the party by the right wing, and Trump said he's not destroying the party, he's building it up and appealing to labor, and appealing to the rational interest that otherwise had been backing Bernie Sanders. ..."
"... So in terms of national security, he wanted to roll back NATO spending. And he made it clear, roll back military spending. ..."
"... Well, being realistic has driven other people crazy. Not only did Krugman say that Trump would, quote, actually follow a pro-Putin foreign policy at the expense of America's allies, and he's referring to the Ukraine, basically, and it's at–he's become a lobbyist for the military-industrial complex. But also, at the Washington Post you had Anne Applebaum call him explicitly the Manchurian candidate, referring to the 1962 movie, and rejecting the neocon craziness. This has just driven them nutty because they're worried of losing the Republican Party under Trump. ..."
"... In economic policy, Trump also opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the TTIP trade and corporate power grab [inaud.] with Europe to block public regulation. And this was also a major plank of Bernie Sanders' campaign against Hillary, which Trump knows. ..."
"... And this may be for show, simply to brand Hillary as Wall Street's candidate. But it also seems to actually be an attack on Wall Street. And Trump's genius was to turn around all the attacks on him as being a shady businessman. He said, look, nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it. Now, what that means, basically, as a businessman, he knows the fine print by which they've been screwing the people. So only someone like him knows how to fight against Wall Street. After all, he's been screwing the Wall Street banks for years [inaud.]. And he can now fight for the population fighting against Wall Street, just as he's been able to stiff the banks. ..."
"... When it comes–he also in that sense appealed to, as you said, the Bernie Sanders people when he talked about the trade deals. You know, he's been talking about NAFTA, TTIP, TTP, and these are areas that really is traditionally been the left of the left issues. And now there's this, that he's anti-these trade deals, and he's going to bring jobs home. What does that mean? ..."
"... I think that the most, the biggest contradiction, was you can look at how the convention began with Governor Christie. Accusing Hillary of being pro-Russian when she's actually threatening war, and criticizing her for not helping the Ukrainians when it was she who brought Victorian Nuland in to push the coup d'etat with the neo-nazis, and gave them $5 billion. And Trump reversed the whole thing and said no, no, no. I'm not anti-Russian, I'm pro-Russian. I'm not going to defend Ukrainians. Just the opposite. ..."
"... All of that–you've had the Koch brothers say we're not going to give money to Trump, the Republicans, now. We're backing Hillary. You've got the Chamber of Commerce saying because Trump isn't for the corporate takeover of foreign trade, we're now supporting the Democrats, not the Reepublicans. ..."
"... So this is really the class war. And it's the class war of Wall Street and the corporate sector of the Democratic side against Trump on the populist side. And who knows whether he really means what he says when he says he's for the workers and he wants to rebuild the cities, put labor back to work. And when he says he's for the blacks and Hispanics have to get jobs just like white people, maybe he's telling the truth, because that certainly is the way that the country can be rebuilt in a positive way. ..."
Trump's divergence from the conventional Republican platform is generating indignant punditry
from neocons and neoliberals alike
SHARMINI PERIES, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, TRNN: It's the Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries coming
to you from Baltimore.
On Friday, just after the Republican National Congress wrapped up with its presidential candidate,
Donald Trump, Paul Krugman of the New York Times penned an article titled "Donald Trump: The Siberian
Candidate." He said in it, if elected, would Donald Trump be Vladimir Putin's man in the White House?
Krugman himself is worried as ludicrous and outrageous as the question sounds, the Trump campaign's
recent behavior has quite a few foreign policy experts wondering, he says, just what kind of hold
Mr. Putin has over the Republican nominee, and whether that influence will continue if he wins.
Well, let's unravel that statement with Michael Hudson. He's joining us from New York. Michael
is a distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri Kansas City. His
latest book is Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroyed the Global Economy.
Thank you so much for joining us, Michael.
MICHAEL HUDSON:
It's good to be here, Sharmini. It's been an exciting week.
PERIES:
So let's take a look at this article by Paul Krugman. Where is he going with this analysis
about the Siberian candidate?
HUDSON:
Well,
Krugman has joined the ranks of the neocons, as well as the neoliberals, and
they're terrified that they're losing control of the Republican Party. For the last half-century
the Republican Party has been pro-Cold War, corporatist. And Trump has actually, is reversing that.
Reversing the whole traditional platform. And that really worries the neocons.
Until his speech, the whole Republican Convention, every speaker had avoided dealing with economic
policy issues. No one referred to the party platform, which isn't very good. And it was mostly an
attack on Hillary. Chants of "lock her up." And Trump children, aimed to try to humanize him and
make him look like a loving man.
But finally came Trump's speech, and this was for the first time, policy was there. And he's
making a left run around Hillary. He appealed twice to Bernie Sanders supporters, and the two major
policies that he outlined in the speech broke radically from the Republican traditional right-wing
stance. And that is called destroying the party by the right wing, and Trump said he's not destroying
the party, he's building it up and appealing to labor, and appealing to the rational interest that
otherwise had been backing Bernie Sanders.
So in terms of national security, he wanted to roll back NATO spending. And he made it clear,
roll back military spending.
We can spend it on infrastructure, we can spend it on employing
American labor. And in the speech, he said, look, we don't need foreign military bases and foreign
spending to defend our allies. We can defend them from the United States, because in today's world,
the only kind of war we're going to have is atomic war. Nobody's going to invade another country.
We're not going to send American troops to invade Russia, if it were to attack. So nobody's even
talking about that. So let's be realistic.
Well, being realistic has driven other people crazy. Not only did Krugman say that Trump would,
quote, actually follow a pro-Putin foreign policy at the expense of America's allies, and he's referring
to the Ukraine, basically, and it's at–he's become a lobbyist for the military-industrial complex.
But also, at the Washington Post you had Anne Applebaum call him explicitly the Manchurian candidate,
referring to the 1962 movie, and rejecting the neocon craziness. This has just driven them nutty
because they're worried of losing the Republican Party under Trump.
In economic policy, Trump also opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the TTIP trade and
corporate power grab [inaud.] with Europe to block public regulation. And this was also a major plank
of Bernie Sanders' campaign against Hillary, which Trump knows.
The corporatist wings of both
the Republican and the Democratic Parties fear that Trump's opposition to NAFTA and TPP will lead
the Republicans not to push through in the lame duck session after November. The whole plan has been
that once the election's over, Obama will then get all the Republicans together and will pass the
Republican platform that he's been pushing for the last eight years. The Trans-Pacific Partnership
trade agreement with Europe, and the other neoliberal policies.
And now that Trump is trying to rebuild the Republican Party, all of that is threatened. And so
on the Republican side of the New York Times page you had David Brooks writing "The death of the
Republican Party." So what Trump calls the rebirth of the Republican Party, it means the death of
the reactionary, conservative, corporatist, anti-labor Republican Party.
And when he wrote this, quote, Trump is decimating the things Republicans stood for: NATO, entitlement
reform, in other words winding back Social Security, and support of the corporatist Trans-Pacific
Partnership. So it's almost hilarious to see what happens. And Trump also has reversed the traditional
Republican fiscal responsibility austerity policy, that not a word about balanced budgets anymore.
And he said he was going to run at policy to employ American labor and put it back to work on infrastructure.
Again, he's made a left runaround Hillary. He says he wants to reinstate Glass-Steagall, whereas
the Clintons were the people that got rid of it.
And this may be for show, simply to brand Hillary as Wall Street's candidate. But it also seems
to actually be an attack on Wall Street. And Trump's genius was to turn around all the attacks on
him as being a shady businessman. He said, look, nobody knows the system better than me, which is
why I alone can fix it. Now, what that means, basically, as a businessman, he knows the fine print
by which they've been screwing the people. So only someone like him knows how to fight against Wall
Street. After all, he's been screwing the Wall Street banks for years [inaud.]. And he can now fight
for the population fighting against Wall Street, just as he's been able to stiff the banks.
So it's sort of hilarious. On the one hand, leading up to him you had Republicans saying throw
Hillary in jail. And Hillary saying throw Trump in the [inaud.]. And so you have the whole election
coming up with-.
PERIES:
Maybe we should take the lead and lock them all up. Michael, what is becoming very clear
is that there's a great deal of inconsistencies on the part of the Republican Party. Various people
are talking different things, like if you hear Mike Pence, the vice presidential candidate, speak,
and then you heard Donald Trump, and then you heard Ivanka Trump speak yesterday, they're all saying
different things. It's like different strokes for different folks. And I guess in marketing and marketeering,
which Trump is the master of, that makes perfect sense. Just tap on everybody's shoulder so they
feel like they're the ones being represented as spoken about, and they're going to have their issues
addressed in some way.
When it comes–he also in that sense appealed to, as you said, the Bernie Sanders people when he
talked about the trade deals. You know, he's been talking about NAFTA, TTIP, TTP, and these are areas
that really is traditionally been the left of the left issues. And now there's this, that he's anti-these
trade deals, and he's going to bring jobs home. What does that mean?
HUDSON:
Well, you're right when you say there's a policy confusion within the Republican Party.
And I guess if this were marketing, it's the idea that everybody hears what they want to hear. And
if they can hear right-wing gay bashing from the Indiana governor, and they can hear Trump talking
about hte LGBTQ, everybody will sort of be on the side.
But I listened to what Governor Pence said about defending Trump's views on NATO. And he's so
smooth. So slick, that he translated what Trump said in a way that no Republican conservative could
really disagree with it. I think he was a very good pick for vice president, because he can, obviously
he's agreed to follow what Trump's saying, and he's so smooth, being a lawyer, that he can make it
all appear much more reasonable than it would.
I think that the most, the biggest contradiction, was you can look at how the convention began
with Governor Christie. Accusing Hillary of being pro-Russian when she's actually threatening war,
and criticizing her for not helping the Ukrainians when it was she who brought Victorian Nuland in
to push the coup d'etat with the neo-nazis, and gave them $5 billion. And Trump reversed the whole
thing and said no, no, no. I'm not anti-Russian, I'm pro-Russian. I'm not going to defend Ukrainians.
Just the opposite.
And it's obvious that the Republicans have fallen into line behind them. And no wonder the Democrats
want them to lose.
All of that–you've had the Koch brothers say we're not going to give money to
Trump, the Republicans, now. We're backing Hillary. You've got the Chamber of Commerce saying because
Trump isn't for the corporate takeover of foreign trade, we're now supporting the Democrats, not
the Reepublicans.
So this is really the class war. And it's the class war of Wall Street and the corporate sector
of the Democratic side against Trump on the populist side. And who knows whether he really means
what he says when he says he's for the workers and he wants to rebuild the cities, put labor back
to work. And when he says he's for the blacks and Hispanics have to get jobs just like white people,
maybe he's telling the truth, because that certainly is the way that the country can be rebuilt in
a positive way.
And the interesting thing is that all he gets from the Democrats is denunciations. So I can't
wait to see how Bernie Sanders is going to handle all this at the Democratic Convention next week.
"... Trump has done much to trigger the scorn of neocon pundits. He denounced the Iraq War as a mistake based on Bush administration lies, just prior to scoring a sizable victory in the South Carolina GOP primary. In last week's contentious GOP presidential debate, he defended the concept of neutrality in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is utterly taboo on the neocon right. ..."
"... "It serves no purpose to say you have a good guy and a bad guy," he said , pledging to take a neutral position in negotiating peace. ..."
"... This set off his rival Marco Rubio, who replied, "The position you've taken is an anti-Israel position. … Because you cannot be an honest broker in a dispute between two sides in which one of the sides is constantly acting in bad faith." The Jerusalem Post suggested that Rubio's assault on Trump's views on the Middle East was designed to win Florida . If that's the case, it's apparently not working - in the Real Clear Politics ..."
"... In his quest to take up George W. Bush's mantle, Rubio has arrayed a fleet of neoconservative funders, ranging from pro-Israel billionaire Paul Singer to Norman Braman , a billionaire auto dealer who funds Israeli settlements in the West Bank. His list of advisers is like a rolodex of Iraq War backers, ranging from Bush administration alumni Elliot Abrams and Stephen Hadley, to Kagan and serial war propagandist Bill Kristol. ..."
"... Kristol also sits on the board of the Emergency Committee for Israel - a dark money group that assails candidates it perceives as insufficiently pro-Israel. The group started airing an ad this weekend against Trump portraying him as an ally to despots like Bashar Assad, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Qaddafi - mostly because he argued that military invasions of Libya and Iraq left those countries worse off. ..."
"... The guy who accelerated the process of reducing the middle east to chaos ran on a platform of a 'humbler' foreign policy, condemning nation-building. How'd that work out for us? ..."
"... The pain and anguish of the neo cons is highly entertaining, and so damn warranted, but let's not get taken in. ..."
"... isn't robert kagan the husband of state diplomat and cheney/h.clinton appointee victoria nuland? hillary is already as neocon as it gets. ..."
"... If Trump can survive the nomination process, in spite of what the MSN can muster-up against him, it will represent first time in the past 60 years that the Establishment did not choose and own the candidates of both parties. ..."
"... TRUMP's opponents offer nothing but their arrogant condescending attitudes towards the voting population. Their use of scare tactics on voters will no longer work. These cookie-cutter politicians and their obsolete powerful old-boy establishment handlers are wrong for today's challenges and tomorrows solutions. Stop wasting voter's time and energy trying to make this election about personalities, gender, race, minorities, religion, fear and hatred. TRUMP has faith and trust in the voters; TRUMP is the only candidate who doesn't insult, scare or lie to voters; TRUMP offers voters hope and a future ALL Americans can believe in and deserve. ..."
"... All of Trump's establishment opponents are begging for just one more chance. These opponent candidates squandered thousands of opportunities, for the past fifty years, at the expense of All Americans in America and abroad. Powerful corrupt insiders', of every party affiliation, who discredit TRUMP, or any candidate, are also discrediting American voters', the American voting process and the freedoms of democracies and republics everywhere. These discrediting efforts, to take down any candidate, will fail because this is America and in America the peoples' choice for their next president must and will always prevail. American voters' rights and choices must always be protected, respected and never ignored. Because America is not a dictatorship voters' choices' still count. We are lucky to live in a country where we can agree to disagree. This is the essence of freedom. Every American and every candidate should be upset when this kind of corruption goes on. Thank you, Donald Trump, and every candidate, for running for President and offering informed voters an opportunity out of this nightmare and a path to a better America for ALL Americans! ..."
"... The debates heading into Super Tuesday continues to show voters TRUMP's presidential qualities. Eminent Domain didn't stick to TRUMP, neither will groundless tax allegations nor outrageous innuendos. TRUMPS opponents are doing themselves a disservice attacking TRUMP. TRUMP offers voters hope and a future ALL Americans can believe in. TRUMP will own Super Tuesday. ..."
"... This explains the virulent dislike of Trump by the lamestream media. Hillary, an unindicted war criminal based on her central role in instituting the Khaddafi overthrow and her role in starting the Syrian war, is without a doubt the greater evil in comparison with Trump. Since Trump in the fall campaign won't hesitate to highlight the fact that the jihadis in Libya put in as largely as a result of Hillary's initiative liquidated tens or hundreds of thousands of black Africans who had settled in Khaddafi's Libya as hostile to Jihadi elements, this will likely dampen Afro-American ardour for Hillary's campaign. Hopefully this will be a torpedo which sinks her campaign. ..."
"... Truth is the enemy of the Zionist serial liars. ..."
"... I've been saying for awhile that Trump is probably the least bad of the Republican candidates. He's definitely not as bad as Rubio or Cruz would be. For one thing, he's opposed to the TPP and similar crap. Now this. ..."
"... Make no mistake, the only candidate left who wouldn't continue the same awfulness would be Sanders, who doesn't stand a chance (for those who don't understand how the 15% super delegates rigs the election for Clinton and other establishment candidates, do the math, not to even mention the money and power behind Clinton). ..."
"... Bernie and Donald are simply two-fisted middle fingers enthusiastically directed at the paid enforcers of the oligarchy's desired status quo, the Republican and Democrat political machines. ..."
"... And who did HRC appoint as SecState? Marc Grossman, Bush inner circle guy and Bush family relative; Victoria Nuland, former defense policy advisor to Dick Cheney, and her husband, Robert Kagan. This has to be a WTF moment for anyone with a brain? ..."
"... I believe the neoconservatives may have had some self-esteem issues and perhaps tended to overcompensate by splurging on vanity wars. Trump will return the Republican party to its conservative roots of fiscal responsibility and insist on getting good value for his wars. A Trump campaign will completely dispense with 'shock and awe'. Instead, he'll cut straight to the chase: "Where are the oilfields and how long will it take to pump them dry?" The neoconservatives could benefit from that sort of discipline. ..."
"... It be fitting for the neocons who were originally leftist followers of Trotsky to go back home to the Democratic party. Maybe then the old non-interventionist anti-war right can rise again in amongst the Republicans. ..."
"... Perhaps worth noting that the Neocons originally found influence with interventionist Democrats like Dan Moynihan, they went on to develop alliances with fiercely nationalistic Reaganites (like Cheney and Rumsfeld), but only truly came to the fore as policy-makers within the GW Bush presidency. ..."
"... The Neocons are like parasites that jump from host to host. When they've killed one host they move on to the next. I'm reminded of the old Sci-Fi movie, "The Hidden". ..."
"... … just in case y'all are not aware, the view from outside the walls of Empire U$A, when we see the audience holding up placards declaring "MAKE AMERICA'S MILITARY GREAT AGAIN" we're all thinking – 'you guys are truly the most manipulated, compromised and fucked up people on the planet'. ..."
"... "And what about Russia? Washington's talking like the west bank of the Dnieper is our east coast.", Surrounding and dismantling Russia has been the goal since the collapse of the USSR. And Killary and the neocons (including the large contingent she and Obama installed at State) are definitely crazy enough to push it. ..."
"... In the short tem it means replacing Putin by another Eltsin-like stooge. In the middle term, it meant dismantling the USSR. In the long term it means defending Capital against the threat of Socialism. ..."
"... The chaos Trump will bring to the neocon's imperialist project is probably the only good thing that might come out of a Trump presidency. ..."
"... You mean US "corporate" interest and Israel's interest don't you? For the past 30 years, both parties have pursued policies that are in direct conflict with the interest of the American people. ..."
"... Neoconservative historian Robert Kagan - one of the prime intellectual backers of the Iraq war and an advocate for Syrian intervention - announced in the Washington Post last week that if Trump secures the nomination "the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton.", Truly, this tells you all you need to know about Hillary Clinton… ..."
"... Fascinating that Trump has the warmongers nervous. Heading Hillary's way where they know their rearrangement of the middle east (PNAC, JINSA) no matter how many thousands are killed or refugees are displace is safe with Hillary. She has demonstrated her commitment to the death and destruction in the middle east. ..."
"... Good to see that all those neoconservative prayer breakfasts Sen. Hillary Clinton attended at the Geo. W. Bush White House aren't going to waste. Of course, the neocons embrace "Wall Street Hillary" as they always have, regardless of all the silly political theater to the contrary. ..."
"... It's good to see that Hillary is finally being openly welcomed into the fold of neo-conservatives. Also, pardon my lack of modesty for a certain pride in having been proven right about her. She is not a progressive, not liberal, but rather a fascist in the true sense of representing the corporatists. ..."
"... Good call on the timing of the NYT series, Jeff. And kudos on having recognized her early on for the fascist she has always been. ..."
"... Kagan was hand picked to be on Hillary Clinton's defense policy board while at the State Dept and for those who don't know who Kagan is, he's the husband of the assistant secretary of state for eurasian affairs, Victoria Nuland. ..."
Donald Trump's runaway success in the GOP primaries so far is setting off alarm bells among neoconservatives
who are worried he will not pursue the same bellicose foreign policy that has dominated Republican
thinking for decades.
Max Boot, an
unrepentant supporter of the Iraq War, wrote
in
the Weekly Standard that a "Trump presidency would represent the death knell of America
as a great power," citing, among other things, Trump's objection to a large American troop presence
in South Korea.
Trump has done much to trigger the scorn of neocon pundits. He
denounced the
Iraq War as a mistake based on Bush administration lies, just prior to scoring a
sizable victory in the South Carolina GOP primary. In last week's contentious GOP presidential
debate, he defended the concept of neutrality in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is utterly
taboo on the neocon right.
"It serves no purpose to say you have a good guy and a bad guy,"
he said, pledging to take a neutral position in negotiating peace.
This set off his rival Marco Rubio, who replied, "The position you've taken is an anti-Israel
position. … Because you cannot be an honest broker in a dispute between two sides in which one of
the sides is constantly acting in bad faith." The Jerusalem Post suggested that Rubio's assault
on Trump's views on the Middle East was
designed to win Florida. If that's the case, it's apparently not working - in the Real Clear
Politics averaging of GOP primary polls in the state, Trump is
polling higher than he ever has.
In his quest to take up George W. Bush's mantle, Rubio has arrayed a fleet of neoconservative
funders, ranging from
pro-Israel billionaire
Paul Singer to
Norman Braman, a billionaire auto dealer who funds Israeli settlements in the West Bank. His
list of advisers
is like a rolodex of Iraq War backers, ranging from Bush administration alumni Elliot Abrams and
Stephen Hadley, to Kagan and serial war propagandist Bill Kristol.
Kristol also sits on the board of the Emergency Committee for Israel - a dark money group
that assails candidates it perceives as insufficiently pro-Israel. The group started airing an ad
this weekend against Trump portraying him as an ally to despots like Bashar Assad, Saddam Hussein,
and Muammar Qaddafi - mostly because he argued that military invasions of Libya and Iraq left those
countries worse off.
John D, Mar. 3 2016, 6:31 a.m.
I love what Trump's saying from time to time and don't believe it for a second. How short are
our memories? The guy who accelerated the process of reducing the middle east to chaos ran
on a platform of a 'humbler' foreign policy, condemning nation-building. How'd that work out for
us? Trump is a demagogue, and this is what they do: say whatever gets them support, just
like other politicians, but on steroids. Huey Long is an example of this, and he also took some
positions that we would all have supported over that of the two major parties of the time.
The pain and anguish of the neo cons is highly entertaining, and so damn warranted, but
let's not get taken in. The man's a monster, and the only good that might come of his election
would be his impeachment. I know, that leaves us with horrible choices, and what else is new.
But don't be suckered by Trump. The degree really is worthless.
vidimi, Mar. 2 2016, 8:55 a.m.
isn't robert kagan the husband of state diplomat and cheney/h.clinton appointee victoria
nuland? hillary is already as neocon as it gets.
M Hobbs -> vidimi, Mar. 3 2016, 2:25 p.m.
Robert Kagan told the NYT last June that he "feels comfortable" with Hillary on foreign policy–and
that she's a neocon. "If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue," he added, "it's
something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call
it that; they are going to call it something else."
The people behind this ad don't get it- this video could easily have been issued and approved
by the Trump campaign. To a lot of people, what this video accuses Trump of saying is the absolute,
utter truth. The world would be a far, far better place, Iraq would be better off, Libya would
be better off, and the United States would have a lot more money, and a lot less dead soldiers,
if Saddam and Khadaffi were still alive.
They should have focus grouped this. Because it likely increases Trump's numbers.
Joe F -> Duglarri, Mar. 1 2016, 1:53 p.m.
If Khadaffi were still alive Ambassdor Stevens and several more Americans would still be alive
also. But then the press would have one less thing to whinge about and the MIC would have one
less hotzone to expliot.
Carroll Price, Mar. 1 2016, 11:10 a.m.
If Trump can survive the nomination process, in spite of what the MSN can muster-up against
him, it will represent first time in the past 60 years that the Establishment did not choose and
own the candidates of both parties.
Which leads me to believe that if history serves as a guide, and I think it does, the Establishment
will have him assassinated, while the resources are still available and in place to cover it up
and have it white-washed by an official inquiry similar to the fake 9/11 Commission & Warren Commission
Report.
Clark, Mar. 1 2016, 10:28 a.m.
Trump worries/offends the neo-cons in his perversity, but the neo-cons know they can rely on
Hillary Clinton.
M Hobbs -> Clark, Mar. 3 2016, 2:30 p.m.
So if HRC gets the nomination, all the neocon Rs will vote for her and lots of the lefty Ds
and independents will vote for Trump. This is getting confusing.
Gene Poole -> M Hobbs, Mar. 4 2016, 4:32 a.m.
Yep. And ain't it sweet!?
SeniorsForTrump, Mar. 1 2016, 9:57 a.m.
TRUMP's opponents offer nothing but their arrogant condescending attitudes towards the
voting population. Their use of scare tactics on voters will no longer work. These cookie-cutter
politicians and their obsolete powerful old-boy establishment handlers are wrong for today's challenges
and tomorrows solutions. Stop wasting voter's time and energy trying to make this election about
personalities, gender, race, minorities, religion, fear and hatred. TRUMP has faith and trust
in the voters; TRUMP is the only candidate who doesn't insult, scare or lie to voters; TRUMP offers
voters hope and a future ALL Americans can believe in and deserve.
All of Trump's establishment opponents are begging for just one more chance. These opponent
candidates squandered thousands of opportunities, for the past fifty years, at the expense of
All Americans in America and abroad. Powerful corrupt insiders', of every party affiliation, who
discredit TRUMP, or any candidate, are also discrediting American voters', the American voting
process and the freedoms of democracies and republics everywhere. These discrediting efforts,
to take down any candidate, will fail because this is America and in America the peoples' choice
for their next president must and will always prevail. American voters' rights and choices must
always be protected, respected and never ignored. Because America is not a dictatorship voters'
choices' still count. We are lucky to live in a country where we can agree to disagree. This is
the essence of freedom. Every American and every candidate should be upset when this kind of corruption
goes on. Thank you, Donald Trump, and every candidate, for running for President and offering
informed voters an opportunity out of this nightmare and a path to a better America for ALL Americans!
The debates heading into Super Tuesday continues to show voters TRUMP's presidential qualities.
Eminent Domain didn't stick to TRUMP, neither will groundless tax allegations nor outrageous innuendos.
TRUMPS opponents are doing themselves a disservice attacking TRUMP. TRUMP offers voters hope and
a future ALL Americans can believe in. TRUMP will own Super Tuesday.
Carroll Price -> SeniorsForTrump, Mar. 1 2016, 11:15 a.m.
Very well stated. I agree whole-heartedly.
john p. Teschke, Mar. 1 2016, 2:28 a.m.
This explains the virulent dislike of Trump by the lamestream media. Hillary, an unindicted
war criminal based on her central role in instituting the Khaddafi overthrow and her role in starting
the Syrian war, is without a doubt the greater evil in comparison with Trump. Since Trump in the
fall campaign won't hesitate to highlight the fact that the jihadis in Libya put in as largely
as a result of Hillary's initiative liquidated tens or hundreds of thousands of black Africans
who had settled in Khaddafi's Libya as hostile to Jihadi elements, this will likely dampen Afro-American
ardour for Hillary's campaign. Hopefully this will be a torpedo which sinks her campaign.
dahoit -> john p. Teschke, Mar. 1 2016, 8:22 a.m.
Truth is the enemy of the Zionist serial liars.
Jeff, Mar. 1 2016, 2:05 a.m.
I've been saying for awhile that Trump is probably the least bad of the Republican candidates.
He's definitely not as bad as Rubio or Cruz would be. For one thing, he's opposed to the TPP and
similar crap. Now this.
Make no mistake, the only candidate left who wouldn't continue the same awfulness would
be Sanders, who doesn't stand a chance (for those who don't understand how the 15% super delegates
rigs the election for Clinton and other establishment candidates, do the math, not to even mention
the money and power behind Clinton). I don't support Trump in any way, but I also find it
laughable how some so-called progressives are wetting their pants over him. Yes he's racist, but
so are the Republicans in general. At least Trump has a few good positions, making him about the
same as Clinton.
Winston, Feb 29, 2016, 7:48 p.m.
Bernie and Donald are simply two-fisted middle fingers enthusiastically directed at the paid
enforcers of the oligarchy's desired status quo, the Republican and Democrat political machines.
Donald, unlike poor Bernie, has the advantage of being able to avoid the oligarchy's mega-cash-fueled
vetting process intended to weed out true boat rockers by funding his own campaign.
When Reps threaten to vote for Dems and I see headlines like "Democratic National Committee
Vice Chair Tulsi Gabbard resigned from her post on Sunday to endorse Democratic presidential candidate
Bernie Sanders, following months of rising tensions within the group," I have hope that both party
machines will, deservedly, become increasingly irrelevant. The facade has come off and we finally
see the truth, which is there is no loyalty within the establishment of either political party
to anything but the continued power of the oligarchy they BOTH defend.
Election 2016 is turning out to be a rare popcorn worthy event because voters are now TOTALLY
fed up with THIS:, From the 2014 Princeton University study:, Testing Theories of American Politics:
Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, Excerpts:, A great deal of empirical research speaks
to the policy influence of one or another set of actors, but until recently it has not been possible
to test these contrasting theoretical predictions against each other within a single statistical
model. We report on an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes measures of the
key variables for 1,779 policy issues.
Multivariate analysis indicates that 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. The results provide substantial
support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not
for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.
In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule-at least not in the
causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with
economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong
status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans
favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
…the preferences of economic elites (as measured by our proxy, the preferences of "affluent"
citizens) have far more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average
citizens do. To be sure, this does not mean that ordinary citizens always lose out; they fairly
often get the policies they favor, but only because those policies happen also to be preferred
by the economically-elite citizens who wield the actual influence.
-–, From "Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-America Century" by Dmitry Orlov, someone who experienced
the collapse of the Soviet Union and the various effects of that collapse on life there:, People
in the United States have a broadly similar attitude toward politics with people of the Soviet
Union. In the U.S. this is often referred to as "voter apathy", but it might be more accurately
described as non-voter indifference. The Soviet Union had a single, entrenched, systemically corrupt
political party, which held a monopoly on power. The U.S. has two entrenched, systemically corrupt
political parties, whose positions are often indistinguishable, and which together hold a monopoly
on power. In either case, there is, or was, a single governing elite, but in the United States
it organized itself into opposing teams to make its stranglehold on power seem more sportsmanlike.
Although people often bemoan political apathy as if it were a grave social ill, it seems to
me that this is just as it should be. Why should essentially powerless people want to engage in
a humiliating farce designed to demonstrate the legitimacy of those who wield the power? In Soviet-era
Russia, intelligent people did their best to ignore the Communists: paying attention to them,
whether through criticism or praise, would only serve to give them comfort and encouragement,
making them feel as if they mattered. Why should Americans want to act any differently with regard
to the Republicans and the Democrats? For love of donkeys and elephants?, -–, "Now [the United
States is] just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the
nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and
U.S. senators and congress members. So now we've just seen a complete subversion of our political
system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves
after the election's over. … The incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited
money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody's who's already in Congress has a lot more to
sell to an avid contributor than somebody who's just a challenger. – - Jimmy Carter, former president,
in 2015.
sgt_doom, Feb 29, 2016, 6:58 p.m.
So one of the principal founding members of PNAC, or the Project for a New American Century (and
Victoria Nuland's husband), R. Kagan, says vote for Hillary?
And this just weeks after Hillary is bragging about receiving complements from Henry Kissinger,
mass murderer?
Are there still fools in America who believe HRC is some kind of liberal?
And who did HRC appoint as SecState? Marc Grossman, Bush inner circle guy and Bush family
relative; Victoria Nuland, former defense policy advisor to Dick Cheney, and her husband, Robert
Kagan. This has to be a WTF moment for anyone with a brain?
Benito Mussolini, Feb 29, 2016, 6:46 p.m.
I don't think the neoconservatives should purchase a one way ticket into the Hillary camp. Trump
could be quite amenable to the 'Ledeen Doctrine' that: "Every ten years or so, the United States
needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show
the world we mean business". My understanding is that Trump has no objections in principle, but
as a prudent businessman, questions whether it's worth shelling out 1 trillion dollars just to
show you mean business.
I believe the neoconservatives may have had some self-esteem issues and perhaps tended
to overcompensate by splurging on vanity wars. Trump will return the Republican party to its conservative
roots of fiscal responsibility and insist on getting good value for his wars. A Trump campaign
will completely dispense with 'shock and awe'. Instead, he'll cut straight to the chase: "Where
are the oilfields and how long will it take to pump them dry?" The neoconservatives could benefit
from that sort of discipline.
However, if the neoconservatives decide to return to the party they abandoned in the 1960s,
then I wish them well. They had a good run with the Republicans and certainly left their mark
on foreign policy. Sometimes a change of scenery is good; it may be all they need to rekindle
their enthusiasm for the third (or is the fourth?) Iraq war.
Lawrence, Feb 29, 2016, 6:05 p.m.
It be fitting for the neocons who were originally leftist followers of Trotsky to go back
home to the Democratic party. Maybe then the old non-interventionist anti-war right can rise again
in amongst the Republicans.
eddie-g, Feb 29, 2016, 5:21 p.m.
Perhaps worth noting that the Neocons originally found influence with interventionist Democrats
like Dan Moynihan, they went on to develop alliances with fiercely nationalistic Reaganites (like
Cheney and Rumsfeld), but only truly came to the fore as policy-makers within the GW Bush presidency.
So they've never exactly had a set ideological compass, they're happy to back anyone who'll
do their bidding on Israel and the Middle East. With Trump, I can't imagine they (or anyone else)
knows what they're getting; Hillary meanwhile is a known quantity, and hawkish enough for their
tastes.
craigsummers -> eddie-g, Feb 29, 2016, 6:47 p.m.
"……..Perhaps worth noting that the Neocons originally found influence with interventionist Democrats
like Dan Moynihan, they went on to develop alliances with fiercely nationalistic Reaganites (like
Cheney and Rumsfeld), but only truly came to the fore as policy-makers within the GW Bush presidency….."
True, but they lost favor in the Bush White House after the invasion of Iraq turned south.
dahoit -> craigsummers, Mar. 1 2016, 8:38 a.m.
Somewhat true, but how does that explain the demoncrats embracing them in Obombas administration?
Craigsummers -> dahoit, Mar. 1 2016, 7:21 p.m.
I don't believe that Obama has embraced the neocons.. Obama has alienated our allies in the ME
including Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. His large disagreements with Netanyahu flag Obama as
anything but a neocon.
Duglarri -> eddie-g, Mar. 1 2016, 11:37 a.m.
The Neocons are like parasites that jump from host to host. When they've killed one host they
move on to the next. I'm reminded of the old Sci-Fi movie, "The Hidden".
owen, Feb 29, 2016, 4:53 p.m.
… just in case y'all are not aware, the view from outside the walls of Empire U$A, when we
see the audience holding up placards declaring "MAKE AMERICA'S MILITARY GREAT AGAIN" we're all
thinking – 'you guys are truly the most manipulated, compromised and fucked up people on the planet'.
Dave Fisher, Feb 29, 2016, 4:38 p.m.
"Neoconservative historian Robert Kagan announced that if Trump secures the nomination "the only
choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton.", i hope Sanders runs with that, uses it in his ads,
cites that quote during the debates, makes the electorate aware of the fox (weasel?) in the chicken
coop…
Balthazar, Feb 29, 2016, 3:58 p.m.
The US has become the laughing stock of the world. Oh wait, we've been that for decades.
star, Feb 29, 2016, 3:52 p.m.
"worried he will not pursue the same bellicose foreign policy"
No, he will pursue a different
bellicose foreign policy relying on banning Muslims from the US, torture, filling up Guantanamo,
threatening Mexico and 'hitting' the families of 'terrorists'. The Intercept is actually starting
to scare me.
Robert -> star, Feb 29, 2016, 6:01 p.m.
So drone warfare killing thousand+ innocent people isn't "starting to scare" you? Overthrowing
governments in Iraq, Libya, and Syria isn't "starting to scare" you? ISIS forming out of those
overthrows isn't "starting to scare" you?
dahoit -> star, Mar. 1 2016, 8:42 a.m.
Wow, the only guy to critique the Iraq war, Libya, trade steals, getting along with Russia and
stop being the policeman of the world gets critiqued by alleged liberals as the bad choice in
a world of crazy Ziomonsters.
Hang it up children, you've lost your minds.
nfjtakfa -> Roy David, Feb 29, 2016, 5:49 p.m.
Um, I think Vivek Jain's assertion is the destruction of Iraq and destabalization of the region
was 100% intentional, i.e. "wasn't a mistake."
Roy David -> nfjtakfa, Mar. 1 2016, 5:25 p.m.
Thanks nfjtakfa. Sometimes the written word can be misinterpreted.
Christopher -> Vivek Jain, Feb 29, 2016, 5:47 p.m.
Remind me just where and when we found the nukes Iraq was supposed to have, then. Or the mobile
bioweapons labs. Or Hussein's al-Qaeda collaborators.
coram nobis -> Christopher, Feb 29, 2016, 6:13 p.m.
As you see, the Iraq war wasn't a mistake, but a deliberate fake.
reflections, Feb 29, 2016, 3:40 p.m.
They created Donald Trump and thanks to the Supreme Court any rich ass-- can run for office they
don't need to fund a particular political republican bigot.
Bob, Feb 29, 2016, 3:25 p.m.
Trump is a professional actor as are all the cons but he is better at it. Read his book, TAoTD
and you may change your mind a lot on him as POTUS. He certainly is no conbot and IMHO would make
a much better POTUS than any of the dwarf wall st. sucking varlets competing against him. I'm
still hoping Senator Bernie Sanders will take the gloves off and start attacking the war mongering,
wall st. courtier Clinton before it's too late but, if my choice was Clinton vs. Trump I would
hold my nose and vote Trump. Rubio is so hollow he is unqualified for his present job. Good luck
USA.
coram nobis, Feb 29, 2016, 2:31 p.m.
It's an interesting shift of perspective in this crazy year, although the question with the Donald
is (1) whether he has a coherent ideology from one speech to the next and (2) whether the GOP
would become more dovish (or less neocon) under a Trump administration, or whether the GOP would
simply abandon him.
As for Hillary, sir, your coda begs another article: " … and Clinton moving the Democrats towards
greater support for war.", With whom?, Okay, Iran is a definite possibility, given her pro-Israel
stance. But what about China? That situation in the South China Sea is ratcheting up. And what
about Russia? Washington's talking like the west bank of the Dnieper is our east coast.
Doug Salzmann -> coram nobis, Feb 29, 2016, 3:19 p.m.
"And what about Russia? Washington's talking like the west bank of the Dnieper is our east
coast.", Surrounding and dismantling Russia has been the goal since the collapse of the USSR.
And Killary and the neocons (including the large contingent she and Obama installed at State)
are definitely crazy enough to push it.
On the list of Big Dumb Mistakes, this would be very close to the top.
Dave Fisher -> Doug Salzmann, Feb 29, 2016, 4:26 p.m.
"dismantling Russia", what exactly does that mean?
Si1ver1ock -> Dave Fisher, Feb 29, 2016, 5:26 p.m.
Ask the Syrians or the the Libyans, or the Iraqis or the Sundanese, or the Yemenis or … or ….
Doug Salzmann -> Dave Fisher, Feb 29, 2016, 8:18 p.m.
"dismantling Russia", what exactly does that mean?, It means exactly what I said, Dave. Surrounding,
weakening and (ultimately, hopefully) dismantling and absorbing the pieces of the Russian Federation
has been at the core of American foreign policy aims since the collapse of the USSR.
See, for instance, the pre-revised version of the 2/18/1992 Wolfowitz (and Scooter Libby) Memo:
Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory
of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly
by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy
and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources
would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.
And then, refer to Zbigniew Brzezinski's Grand Chessboard:
Given the enormous size and diversity of the country, a decentralized political system, based
on the free market, would be more likely to unleash the creative potential of both the Russian
people and the country's vast natural resources. In turn, such a more decentralized Russia
would be less susceptible to imperial mobilization.
. . . and . . .
A loosely confederated Russia-composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far
Eastern Republic-would also find it easier to cultivate closer economic relations with Europe,
with the new states of Central Asia, and with the Orient, which would thereby accelerate Russia's
own development. Each of the three confederated entities would also be more able to tap local
creative potential, stifled for centuries by Moscow's heavy bureaucratic hand.
Hope this helps. ;^)
Gene Poole -> Dave Fisher, Mar. 4 2016, 5:13 a.m.
In the short tem it means replacing Putin by another Eltsin-like stooge. In the middle term,
it meant dismantling the USSR. In the long term it means defending Capital against the threat
of Socialism.
Patricia Baeten, Feb 29, 2016, 2:30 p.m.
Great article. I wrote something similar in my blog post last week titled, NATO, Turkey and Saudi
Arabia's Worst Nightmare President Donald Trump.
Excerpt:, The beneficiaries of Bush and Obama's Evil American Empire invading and destroying
nations throughout the world have been Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Along with their NATO allies,
America has spent trillions of dollars on the military industrial complex while our roads and
bridges fail and jobs have been shipped to third world countries.
The unparalleled destruction of Syria as well as all of the Middle East, Eurasia and Africa
will come to an end under President Donald Trump and the world is taking note.
My greatest fear is that a full hot war against Russia and China will commence before the election.
Love your writing, thanks.
Patricia
Bob -> Patricia Baeten, Feb 29, 2016, 3:29 p.m.
I hope you meant NOT commence. I really don't want to die and these things have a habit of escalating.
dahoit -> Bob, Mar. 1 2016, 9:00 a.m.
She is intimating the Zionists will start war with Russia before Trump takes office, a quite possible
scenario when dealing with the insane Zionists.
Jose -> Patricia Baeten, Feb 29, 2016, 3:32 p.m.
The chaos Trump will bring to the neocon's imperialist project is probably the only good thing
that might come out of a Trump presidency.
The Shame Chamber -> Patricia Baeten, Feb 29, 2016, 7:19 p.m.
Trump said he would declassify the 28 pages on foreign government ties to 9/11. Why hasn't that
happened yet?, http://28pages.org/
dahoit -> The Shame Chamber, Mar. 1 2016, 9:02 a.m.
Uh, he's not in government? sheesh.
dahoit -> Patricia Baeten, Mar. 1 2016, 8:58 a.m.
Good comment, don't mind the idiots stuck in their false narrative.
craigsummers, Feb 29, 2016, 2:22 p.m.
Mr. Jilani, "……Neoconservative historian Robert Kagan - one of the prime intellectual backers
of the Iraq war and an advocate for Syrian intervention - announced in the Washington Post last
week that if Trump secures the nomination "the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton."…..",
The Intercept is clearly confused on quite a few issues. First, the Republican Party generally
supports a strong leadership role for the US in foreign policy (as do the Democrats). Both parties
will ensure that the US pursues our geopolitical interests. Of course, this is not limited just
to the Neocons. Second, the entire Republican establishment opposes Trump for obvious reasons.
Again, this is not limited to the Neocons, and it is not too surprising that Republicans may cross
party lines to vote for Hillary who more closely mirrors some of their foreign policies. She is
a hawk. Third, the Republican and Democratic Parties are strong supporters of Israel – not just
the Neocons. In general, Republicans support Israel even to a greater degree than the Democrats
– and again, this is not limited to the Neoconservatives.
Finally, how important is the Israel-Palestinian conflict to the Intercept? Obviously very
important since the Intercept seems willing to forget that Trump has been called a xenophobe and
an anti-Muslim bigot by many on the left. Have you ever heard the saying: the enemy of my enemy
is my friend?
sgt_doom -> craigsummers, Feb 29, 2016, 4:20 p.m.
I fully agree with Jilani and this Summers is an obvious neocon sycophant of Wall Street.
craigsummers -> sgt_doom, Feb 29, 2016, 5:03 p.m.
sgt_doom, What is extraordinary to me is that Jilani seems to value the Israel-neutral stance
of Trump over Hillary (and her obvious support for Israel) despite Trump (initially) not even
being able to disavow support from the KKK. Maybe that is not so remarkable considering that Jilani
tweeted the term "Israel firsters".
Christopher -> craigsummers, Feb 29, 2016, 5:50 p.m.
"Both parties will ensure that the US pursues our geopolitical interests.", Jesus. Have you been
in a coma since 2003? Or I guess maybe since the 1980's, cough Iran-Contra cough cough.
craigsummers -> Christopher, Feb 29, 2016, 6:44 p.m.
I'm not saying there aren't differences, but generally speaking both the Democrats and the Republicans
have maintained strong policies which favor US interests. Obama had some confusing policies which
alienated long term allies like Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt.
Carroll Price -> craigsummers, Mar. 1 2016, 8:30 p.m.
You mean US "corporate" interest and Israel's interest don't you? For the past 30 years, both
parties have pursued policies that are in direct conflict with the interest of the American people.
Gene Poole -> Carroll Price, Mar. 4 2016, 5:31 a.m.
Bravo. I was going to reply to his first post, in which he said " Both parties will ensure that
the US pursues our geopolitical interests", and ask just who "we" are.
Boaz Bismuth: Mr. Trump, yesterday, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio tried to question your support
for Israel. How is his commitment to Israel stronger than yours?, Donald Trump: "My friendship
with Israel is stronger than any other candidate's. I want to make one thing clear: I want
to strike a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. It is what I aspire to
do. Peace is possible, even if it is the most difficult agreement to achieve. As far as
I understand, Israel is also interested in a peace deal. I'm not saying I'll succeed, or
even that an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is within reach, but I want to
try. But in order for an agreement to happen, the Palestinians need to show interest. It's
a little difficult to reach an agreement when the other side doesn't really want to talk
to you.
"Don't get confused there in Israel: I am currently your biggest friend. My daughter
is married to a Jew who is an enthusiastic Israel supporter, and I have taken part in many
Israel Day Parades. My friendship with Israel is very strong."
Yes, an especially bitter sop to those who harbor the manufactured illusion that trump is concerned
with the sovereign rights of the individual.
avelna2001, Feb 29, 2016, 1:45 p.m.
Neoconservative historian Robert Kagan - one of the prime intellectual backers of the Iraq
war and an advocate for Syrian intervention - announced in the Washington Post last week that
if Trump secures the nomination "the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton.", Truly,
this tells you all you need to know about Hillary Clinton…
Doug Salzmann -> avelna2001, Feb 29, 2016, 3:24 p.m.
"Truly, this tells you all you need to know about Hillary Clinton…", Well, that and the fact that
Killary and Obama named Kagan's wife, Victoria Jane "Cookie" Nuland to the post of Assistant Secretary
of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, where she led the sponsorship and underwriting of
a coup against the elected leadership of Ukraine.
avelna2001 -> Doug Salzmann, Feb 29, 2016, 3:51 p.m.
Well yeah, true enough.
Kathleen, Feb 29, 2016, 1:43 p.m.
Fascinating that Trump has the warmongers nervous. Heading Hillary's way where they know their
rearrangement of the middle east (PNAC, JINSA) no matter how many thousands are killed or refugees
are displace is safe with Hillary. She has demonstrated her commitment to the death and destruction
in the middle east.
This is no bs…know some multi millionaire Republicans here in Colorado who are going with
Hillary if Trump gets nomination. They know their capital gains are safe with her. Yes indeed...
sgt_doom, Feb 29, 2016, 1:33 p.m.
Good to see that all those neoconservative prayer breakfasts Sen. Hillary Clinton attended
at the Geo. W. Bush White House aren't going to waste. Of course, the neocons embrace "Wall Street
Hillary" as they always have, regardless of all the silly political theater to the contrary.
BTW, isn't Robert Kagan the hubby of Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European
and Eurasian Affairs appointed by then Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton?, I believe so
. . .
Of course, we haven't had a legitimate government in the USA since the Coup of 1963 (the JFK
assassination, reinforced by the murders of Rev. King and Bobby Kennedy), so evidently Trump represents
the first break in a long line of illegitimate administrations.
Trump really appears to be giving the nervous willies to the oligarchs – – – glad to see those
swine who gave us - and profited from - the global economic meltdown being shaken up for a change!,
With Hillary they have nothing to fear, she's the perfect Wall Street running dog lackey, but
with Trump they could end up in jail - or worse . . . .
24b4Jeff, Feb 29, 2016, 1:20 p.m.
It's good to see that Hillary is finally being openly welcomed into the fold of neo-conservatives.
Also, pardon my lack of modesty for a certain pride in having been proven right about her. She
is not a progressive, not liberal, but rather a fascist in the true sense of representing the
corporatists.
Does anyone else find it ironic that the New York Times has chosen now to start a series on
her role in the overthrow of Qaddafi and the subsequent conversion of Libya into a failed state?
Had the articles started appearing a couple of weeks ago, it might have helped Sanders in Iowa
and Nevada. No, it would not have helped Sanders in South Carolina, and he is foredoomed in the
rest of the deep south as well, not only because of his being a social democrat (on domestic issues)
but also because he is a Jew.
Doug Salzmann -> 24b4Jeff, Feb 29, 2016, 4:15 p.m.
Good call on the timing of the NYT series, Jeff. And kudos on having recognized her early
on for the fascist she has always been. I've not caught up with the Times series; does each
installment open with this video clip?
ghostyghost, Feb 29, 2016, 1:16 p.m.
"With Trump's ascendancy, it's possible that the parties will re-orient their views on war and
peace, with Trump moving the GOP to a more dovish direction and Clinton moving the Democrats towards
greater support for war."
Right because "bomb the shit out of them" is a well known rallying
cry of pacifists.
coram nobis -> ghostyghost, Feb 29, 2016, 2:37 p.m.
You've got a point; the Donald isn't exactly another Gandhi. The diff between him and Hillary
is that she would act according to longstanding neocon policy, concerted war. The Donald would
attack impulsively. Picture him as the Groucho Marx character in "Duck Soup" and there's a possible
simile, but not funny.
ghostyghost -> coram nobis, Feb 29, 2016, 2:49 p.m.
What scares me the most about President Trump is him taking a look at the nuclear arsenal and
thinking "we have these awesome weapons and they are just sitting here collecting dust. Well lets
show everyone that a real leader isn't afraid to use his best tools!" and then wiping Mosul and
and Raqqa off the map.
coram nobis -> ghostyghost, Feb 29, 2016, 4:36 p.m.
Glad Robert Kagan's neoconservative re-branding attempts have started to garner headlines.
Kagan was hand picked to be on Hillary Clinton's defense policy board while at the State
Dept and for those who don't know who Kagan is, he's the husband of the assistant secretary of
state for eurasian affairs, Victoria Nuland.
Or, Victoria "let's spend $5 billion to overthrow the democratically elected administration in
the Urkaine" Nuland.
Lin Ming, Feb 29, 2016, 1:13 p.m.
These people will do anything to further their cause – just as they always have – up to and including
eliminating an opponent in the most forceful permanent manner…
"... Leaping from this incident to the Iranian nuclear agreement that has essentially decreased the likelihood of Iran ever building nuclear weapons, Trump continued his litany of lies by portraying the agreement as virtual surrender to unnamed dark forces. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton's campaign promises more of the same corporatist politics in the service of the Goldman-Sachs of the nation. The primary difference may be found in her social stances, which are more liberal and tolerant than those expressed by Trump's ticket. ..."
"... In short, we are witnessing a serious split in the US ruling class. Both elements recognize capitalism is in crisis and has been for decades. The two main solutions to this crisis as represented by the campaigns will not solve this crisis, because it is essentially unsolvable. ..."
"... Militarily, there is also a split between the rulers. Neither Trump's combination of fear-ridden America First bluster nor the corporate world order represented by Clinton's campaign will prevent war or terrorism. Both will guarantee the continued waste of monies that the permanent war economy is. Both will also guarantee the continued domination of the US economy by the war industry. Donald Trump knows this and so does Hilary Clinton. ..."
More importantly, however, was his take on history, which went no further back
then 2008, at best. By pretending that history began when Barack Obama was
elected president, all the decades of jobs being sent overseas because
corporations want cheap labor became the fault of more recent free trade
agreements. While these agreements certainly expedited the desire/need of the
capitalist overlords to go for the cheap labor, this process was taking place
before such agreements were passed. Furthermore, Trump and his businesses
benefited from them and he did nothing to oppose them then. In short, it is how
monopoly capitalism works: capital goes to where it can accumulate greater
profits, utilizing the military and "free" trade to cajole and force its will
on nations and peoples around the world.
Continuing his litany of America
wronged, Trump referred to the Iran nuclear agreement. He related the FoxNews
version of some US sailors being held by Iranian military after their ship
sailed into Iranian waters. According to this version, the sailors were
humiliated hostages who were wrongly held. In actuality, the sailors were
treated well and were in the wrong. Their captain surely knew this when he
sailed where he sailed. Leaping from this incident to the Iranian nuclear
agreement that has essentially decreased the likelihood of Iran ever building
nuclear weapons, Trump continued his litany of lies by portraying the agreement
as virtual surrender to unnamed dark forces.
Of course, the presence of "dark" forces and the threat they represent to
Trump and his followers are essential to understanding his appeal. Indeed, the
local Gannett broadsheet here in Vermont, introduced Trump's acceptance speech
in the next day's paper with this quote from the speech "safety will be
restored." I first noted this emphasis on safety while listening to an argument
between a young anti-Trump protester and an even younger Trump supporter at the
end of a Vermont anti-Trump action. Besides the obvious fact that his proposed
policies based on fear, hate, and US triumphalism are no more likely to restore
safety than Clinton's policies of brinksmanship and subterfuge, this statement
begs the question about whose safety Mr. Trump is referring to.
... ... ...
While Trump pretends that his millennialist rhetoric will bring the US back to a time my
father grew up in-when father knew best and was whiter than Ivory Snow soap, Hillary
Clinton's campaign promises more of the same corporatist politics in the service of the
Goldman-Sachs of the nation. The primary difference may be found in her social stances, which are
more liberal and tolerant than those expressed by Trump's ticket.
In short, we are witnessing a serious split in the US ruling class. Both elements recognize
capitalism is in crisis and has been for decades. The two main solutions to this crisis as
represented by the campaigns will not solve this crisis, because it is essentially unsolvable.
Trump's approach hopes to move the capitalist economy back to a time before World War One,
when production of goods was almost as important as the financial manipulation of monies for
profit and national economies were the primary and dominant macro economy. Clinton's approach
would continue the trend of the last few decades that has seen capital move beyond national
boundaries to create what Lenin called "the formation of international monopolist capitalist
associations which share the world among themselves." This latter phenomenon is what the
so-called free trade agreements are about. Trump's belief that he can buck this trend runs
counter to history, although he seems to think that he is beyond history, except for that which
he makes.
Militarily, there is also a split between the rulers. Neither Trump's combination of
fear-ridden America First bluster nor the corporate world order represented by Clinton's campaign
will prevent war or terrorism. Both will guarantee the continued waste of monies that the
permanent war economy is. Both will also guarantee the continued domination of the US economy by
the war industry. Donald Trump knows this and so does Hilary Clinton.
"... I think this is about the dumbest thing a politician has done since her husband nominated Lloyd Bentson secretary of the Treasury (OK the stuff he did with Lewinsky wasn't too smart either but this Clinton wasn't as tempted this time). ..."
I was fairly certain that if Clinton were elected president and the Democrats were to
win a majority in the Senate, that they would lose that majority in 2018.
I think that Hillary Clinton may have proven me wrong and found
the only way to prevent that - by causing the Democrats to lose the majority in 2017.
I think this is about the dumbest thing a politician has done since her husband nominated
Lloyd Bentson secretary of the Treasury (OK the stuff he did with Lewinsky wasn't too smart either
but this Clinton wasn't as tempted this time).
"... While many neocons and fellow travelers may be anxious to demonstrate their power and influence, it would seem, based on Trump's
electoral performance, that the Republican Party electorate is not very interested in what they have to offer. ..."
"... The neocons best bet to have a seat at the table in 2017 is Hillary Clinton. ..."
2016It is now official: the neoconservatives are united against Donald Trump. A new open letter organized by Project for the New
American Century (PNAC) co-founder Eliot Cohen states the signatories
oppose
a Trump presidency and have committed to "working energetically" to see that he is not elected.
PNAC was, notoriously, the neoconservative
group that called for increased US imperialism in the Middle East, especially Iraq. Many of those who signed PNAC's statement of
principles and various letters went on to serve in the Bush Administration.
The letter comes after Trump's ferocious attacks on neocon policies and narratives, such as the Iraq War and the idea
that President George W. Bush kept the country safe despite being in office on 9/11. Those attacks were most pronounced just prior
to the South Carolina primary when former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and the Bush Administration was the focus of Trump's fire.
Trumps' foreign policy has long been in the neocon cross-hairs. It already appeared as though
many of the neocons were
against Trump; now it's impossible to deny.
Journalist Josh Rogin, after talking to Trump advisors,
lamented that "The practical
application of that doctrine plays out in several ways. Trump's narrow definition of 'national interest' does not include things
like democracy promotion, humanitarian intervention, the responsibility to protect people from atrocities or the advocacy of human
rights abroad. Trump believes that economic engagement will lead to political opening in the long run. He doesn't think the U.S.
government should spend blood or treasure on trying to change other countries' systems."
The other co-founder of PNAC, Robert Kagan,
went even further, comparing Trump to a monster and
claiming that, "For this former Republican, and perhaps for others, the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The
party cannot be saved, but the country still can be."
Military historian Max Boot, also a signatory to the letter, has denounced Trump,
saying, "A Trump presidency threatens
the post-World War II liberal international order that American presidents of both parties have so laboriously built up." He claimed
that "A Trump presidency would represent the death knell of America as a great power."
Many of those who signed the latest letter were also among those that signed PNAC communications including; Kagan, Boot, Cohen,
Robert Zoellick, Daniel Blumenthal, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Thomas Donnelly, Aaron Friedberg, Randy Scheunemann, Jeffrey Gedmin, Gary
Schmitt, and Dov Zakheim.
While many neocons and fellow travelers may be anxious to demonstrate their power and influence, it would seem, based on Trump's
electoral performance, that the Republican Party electorate is not very interested in what they have to offer.
The neocons best bet to have a seat at the table in 2017
is Hillary Clinton.
"... Other neoconservatives say Trump's foreign policy stances, such as his opposition to the Iraq war and the U.S. intervention in Libya, are inconsistent and represent "completely mindless" boasting. "It's not, 'Oh I really feel that the neoconservatism has come to a bad end and we need to hearken back to the realism of the Nixon administration,' " said Danielle Pletka, senior vice president for foreign and defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute. ..."
"... Despite the opposition he faces in some corners of the GOP, polls indicate that Trump's message is in line with the public mood. ..."
"... Experts say the isolationist sentiment is prevalent in the Democratic Party as well. ..."
"... "The [Bernie] Sanders supporters charge Hillary Clinton Hillary with never seeing a quagmire she did not wish to enter, and basically with not just complicity, but a leading role in contriving some of the worst disasters of American foreign policy in this century," said Amb. Chas Freeman, a senior fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, and a former Nixon and George H.W. Bush official. ..."
"... Some experts say neoconservatives are fighting hard because they have the most to lose. "They're losing influence inside the foreign policy establishment in general, and they have definitely lost influence inside the Republican party, which was their home base," Mearsheimer said. ..."
"... Some neoconservatives are even throwing in their lot with likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, most prominently Kagan and Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. ..."
"... Julian Hattem contributed to this story. ..."
The rise of
Donald Trump
is threatening the power of neoconservatives, who find themselves at risk of being marginalized
in the Republican Party. Neoconservatism was at its height during the presidency of George W. Bush, helping to shape
the rationale for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But now the ideology is under attack, with Trump systematically rejecting each of its core
principles. Whereas neoconservatism advocates spreading American ideals through the use of military force,
Trump has made the case for nationalism and a smaller U.S. military footprint. In what Trump calls an "America First" approach, he proposes rejecting alliances that don't
work, trade deals that don't deliver, and military interventionism that costs too much. He has said he would get along with Russian President Vladimir Putin and sit down with North
Korean dictator Kim Jong Un - a throwback to the "realist" foreign policy of President Nixon.
As if to underscore that point, the presumptive GOP nominee met with Nixon's Secretary of
State and National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, earlier this week, and delivered his first
major foreign policy speech at an event last month hosted by the Center for National Interest,
which Nixon founded.
Leading neoconservative figures like Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan have assailed Trump's
foreign policy views. Kagan even called Trump a "fascist" in a recent Washington Post
op-ed. "This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes (although there have
been salutes, and a whiff of violence) but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a
textbook egomaniac 'tapping into' popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire
national political party - out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or simply out of fear -
falling into line behind him," wrote Kagan, who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Other neoconservatives say Trump's foreign policy stances, such as his opposition to the Iraq
war and the U.S. intervention in Libya, are inconsistent and represent "completely mindless"
boasting. "It's not, 'Oh I really feel that the neoconservatism has come to a bad end and we need to
hearken back to the realism of the Nixon administration,' " said Danielle Pletka, senior vice
president for foreign and defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute.
... ... ...
"[Neoconservatives] are concerned for good reason," said O'Hanlon, a Democratic defense hawk
"These people don't think that Trump is prepared intellectually to be president." "It's not just that their stance of foreign policy would be losing .. .all foreign policy
schools would be losing influence under Trump with very unpredictable consequences," he added.
Despite the opposition he faces in some corners of the GOP, polls indicate that Trump's
message is in line with the public mood. A
recent Pew poll found that nearly six in 10 Americans said the U.S. should "deal with its own
problems and let other countries deal with their own problems as best they can," a more
isolationist approach at odds with neoconservative thought.
John Mearsheimer, a preeminent scholar in realist theory, says there's a parallel in history
to the way America turned inward after the Vietnam War. "There's no question that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger went a considerable ways to pursue
a less ambitious foreign policy, and they talked about allies doing more to help themselves, and
they began to pursue detente with the Soviet Union." "And this was all a reaction to Vietnam. Vietnam of course was a colossal failure. The body
politic here in the United States was deeply disenchanted with American foreign policy,
especially in its most ambitious forms and the end result is we ended up backing off for awhile,"
he said. "We have a similar situation here."
Experts say the isolationist sentiment is prevalent in the Democratic Party as well.
"The [Bernie] Sanders supporters charge
Hillary ClintonHillary with
never seeing a quagmire she did not wish to enter, and basically with not just complicity, but a
leading role in contriving some of the worst disasters of American foreign policy in this
century," said Amb. Chas Freeman, a senior fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for
International and Public Affairs, and a former Nixon and George H.W. Bush official.
"This is the principle reason that Hillary Clinton is having so much trouble putting
Bernie Sanders away," said Mearsheimer, who supports the Vermont senator. "Sanders is
capitalizing on all that disenchantment in the public, and Hillary Clinton represents the old
order."
But the ideological battle over foreign policy is playing out more forcefully in the GOP. While some members of the Republican foreign policy establishment are coming to terms with
Trump becoming their party's nominee, including lawmakers like Sens.
John McCain (R-Ariz.) and
Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), neoconservatives remain staunch holdouts.
Some experts say neoconservatives are fighting hard because they have the most to
lose. "They're losing influence inside the foreign policy establishment in general, and they have
definitely lost influence inside the Republican party, which was their home base," Mearsheimer
said.
Some neoconservatives are even throwing in their lot with likely Democratic nominee
Hillary Clinton, most
prominently Kagan and Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
With Republican foreign policy figures split, influential Republican donors such as
Charles and David Koch are trying to shape the GOP's new direction.
The Charles Koch Institute recently launched a daylong conference that featured Mearsheimer
and another prominent realist Stephen Walt that questioned U.S. foreign policy since the end of
the Cold War.
"This has meant the frequent use of force, a military budget the size of the next seven to
eight countries combined, and an active policy of spreading American power and values," said
William Ruger, vice president of research and policy at the Charles Koch Institute.
"After a quarter century of this approach, it's time to ask: Has our foreign policy been
working? Is it making America safe? Should we continue on this path? And if not, what do
alternative approaches look like?"
"... Theodore Roosevelt, whom Max and his neocon buddies love, issued a whopping 1,006 executive orders (when his immediate predecessors had issued a handful) and treated Congress contemptuously. He said that he, after all, was the unique representative of the American people, so it was his job to implement their will, regardless of what any other body had to say about it. ..."
"... We can only imagine their response if Trump had said such a thing. In fact, Trump says that executive orders are terrible and that the president should govern by consensus. ..."
"... Trump is boorish. Oh, sure. Too bad we can't have more refined candidates like John McCain, who sing, "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran." ..."
"... Trump betrays conservative values. This supposedly disqualifies him. To the contrary, hasn't it been the role of the GOP nominee to betray conservative values? In 1996, Bill Kristol - who's just so overcome with concern about the betrayal of conservative values, remember - enthusiastically endorsed Colin Powell for president. ..."
"... And by the way, just what are these "conservative values"? The leftist project of bringing democracy to faraway lands - the exact opposite of what Edmund Burke (who knew a little something about conservatism) would have recommended? Creating Medicare Part D? No Child Left Behind? Auto bailouts? Bank bailouts? Keynesian stimulus? ..."
"... Had George W. Bush been eligible for a third term, would the same people who demand Trump debase himself in sackcloth and ashes for his betrayals of conservatism have done anything remotely similar to Bush? ..."
"... The alleged reasons for disliking Trump do not match the neocons' actions. Therefore, they are not the real reasons. ..."
"... They don't trust him on foreign policy. He makes fun of their interventions and says the world would be much better off, and we'd be a lot richer if none of it had been done. ..."
"... They can't control him. He isn't owned by anyone. He can't be bought. The neocons, along with the GOP establishment they pretend to oppose, are control freaks. They can't deal with someone who may be independent of them. ..."
"... If you want to oppose Trump, knock yourself out. But at least, be honest about it. The neocons have repeatedly endorsed candidates whose deviations from orthodoxy are much more severe than Trump's. So they're lying. ..."
Now before I tell you how I figured that out - apart from the fact that their
lips are moving - I need to begin by parrying any manifestations of Trump
Derangement Syndrome.
I do not support or endorse Donald Trump, who is not a libertarian and who
appears to have no clear philosophy of any kind. He would no doubt do countless
things that I would deplore.
Just like all the other candidates, in other words.
My point is not to cheer for him. My point is that the neocons' stated reasons
for opposing him so hysterically don't add up.
(1) Max Boot worries that Trump will rule like a "strongman." Right - quite
unlike the restrained, humble executors of the law whom Max has endorsed over the
years. In fact, Max has spent his career calling for a strong executive. Now he's
worried about a "strongman." I'd say that horse has already left the stable, Max.
You might want to look in the mirror to figure out how that happened.
Theodore Roosevelt, whom Max and his neocon buddies love, issued a whopping
1,006 executive orders (when his immediate predecessors had issued a handful) and
treated Congress contemptuously. He said that he, after all, was the unique
representative of the American people, so it was his job to implement their will,
regardless of what any other body had to say about it.
We can only imagine their response if Trump had said such a thing. In fact,
Trump says that executive orders are terrible and that the president should govern
by consensus.
Now maybe he doesn't mean that, and maybe he'd use executive orders
anyway. But what if he'd said what their hero Teddy said?
Remember the last time Max, or any neocon, or anyone in the GOP establishment,
warned us that Teddy wasn't a good role model?
Me neither.
(2) Trump is boorish. Oh, sure. Too bad we can't have more refined
candidates like John McCain, who sing, "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran."
(3) Trump betrays conservative values. This supposedly disqualifies him. To
the contrary, hasn't it been the role of the GOP nominee to betray conservative
values? In 1996, Bill Kristol - who's just so overcome with concern about the
betrayal of conservative values, remember - enthusiastically endorsed Colin Powell
for president.
(4) And by the way, just what are these "conservative values"? The leftist
project of bringing democracy to faraway lands - the exact opposite of what Edmund
Burke (who knew a little something about conservatism) would have recommended?
Creating Medicare Part D? No Child Left Behind? Auto bailouts? Bank bailouts?
Keynesian stimulus?
Had George W. Bush been eligible for a third term, would the same people
who demand Trump debase himself in sackcloth and ashes for his betrayals of
conservatism have done anything remotely similar to Bush?
Sure, we'd get the wringing of hands and the occasional anguished newspaper
column, but then we'd get the stern lecture that if we don't vote for Bush,
civilization comes to an end.
See what I mean? Something is fishy here. The alleged reasons for disliking
Trump do not match the neocons' actions. Therefore, they are not the real reasons.
Know what I think the real reasons are?
(a) They don't trust him on foreign policy. He makes fun of their
interventions and says the world would be much better off, and we'd be a lot
richer if none of it had been done.
Now it's true, here as elsewhere, that Trump is not consistent. He's now
calling for ground troops against ISIS, for instance. But his primary message is:
we have too many problems at home to be traipsing around the world destroying
countries. This is not music to a neocon ear.
(b) They can't control him. He isn't owned by anyone. He can't be bought.
The neocons, along with the GOP establishment they pretend to oppose, are control
freaks. They can't deal with someone who may be independent of them.
If you want to oppose Trump, knock yourself out. But at least, be honest
about it. The neocons have repeatedly endorsed candidates whose deviations from
orthodoxy are much more severe than Trump's. So they're lying.
As usual.
Tom Woods, Jr. [send him mail; visit his website], hosts the Tom Woods Show, a libertarian
podcast, Monday through Friday, and co-hosts Contra Krugman every week. He is the New York Times
bestselling author of 12 books, a course creator for the Ron Paul homeschool curriculum, and
founder of Liberty Classroom, a libertarian education site for adult enrichment.
"... The fact however remains that Trump has challenged the ideological foundations upon which US foreign policy is built whilst offering an alternative that has elicited a powerful response from the US public. ..."
"... The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do notnecessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik. ..."
Donald Trump's recent speech on foreign policy
has been roundly condemned by the US foreign establishment.
It has also been ridiculed as confusing and contradictory.
This is a
misrepresentation. Whilst Trump did not provide a detailed programme - to have done so in the
middle of
an election would have been unwise - his underlying message is clear enough.
Instead of a foreign policy based on an ideology centered on US world hegemony, "exceptionalism"
and "democracy promotion" Trump promises a foreign policy straightforwardly based on the pursuit
of US national interests.
To understand what that would mean in practice consider the contrast between what the US public
wants and what the US has actually done under successive US administrations.
Whereas the US public since 9/11 has been overwhelmingly focused on jihadi terrorism as the greatest
threat to the US, the US foreign policy establishment is only minimally interested in that question.
Its priority is to secure US world hegemony by reshaping the world geopolitical map.
First and foremost that has meant confronting the two great powers -
Russia and China - the US sees as the primary obstacle to its hegemony. It has also meant
a series of geopolitical adventures in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, a protracted
confrontation with Iran, and head on collisions with Russia and China in Ukraine and the South China
Sea. The US public for its part has shown little or no enthusiasm for any of these projects. By contrast
the US foreign policy establishment has show little enthusiasm for confronting the Islamic State/Daesh.
The military campaign it is purporting to wage against the Islamic State is essentially a "going
through the motions" public relations exercise. The real fight against the Islamic State is being
fought by Iran and Russia. Elsewhere - in Chechnya, Libya and Syria - the US has willingly collaborated
with jihadi terrorists to achieve its geopolitical goals.
Trump threatens to turn all this on its head. In place of confrontation with Russia and China
he says he wants to cut deals with them calculating - rightly - that they are no threat to the US.
In place of collaboration with jihadi terrorism he promises a single-minded focus on its destruction.
Other pillars of current US foreign policy are also challenged.
Whereas the ideologues
currently in charge of US foreign policy treat US allies as ideological soulmates in a quest to spread
"Western values" (ie. US hegemony), Trump sees the US's relationship with its allies as transactional:
the US will help them if they help themselves, with no sense of this being part of some ideological
common cause.
Having dumped the ideology and the foreign policy that goes with it Trump,
promises to focus on sorting out the US's internal problems, which is where the US public's priorities
also lie. Trump expresses himself in often crude language eg. threatening to "carpet
bomb" the Islamic State. He is not coherent. He continues to talk of Iran as an enemy - ignoring the fact that it is as
much a potential partner of the US as Russia and China are. Some of the things Trump says - for example his talk of embracing torture
- are frankly disturbing. It remains to be seen whether a President
Trump if elected would be either willing or able - as he promises - to change the entire foreign
policy direction of the US.
The fact however remains that Trump has challenged the ideological foundations upon which US foreign
policy is built whilst offering an alternative that has elicited a powerful response from the US
public.
That is why the US political establishment is so alarmed by him.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do notnecessarily reflect
the official position of Sputnik.
Trump seems less willing than his opponent to engage in adventurous missions abroad under
neoconservative "world domination" banner
Notable quotes:
"... As Donald Trump is splitting off blue-collar Democrats on issues like America's broken borders and Bill Clinton's trade debacles like NAFTA, Hillary Clinton is trying to peel off independents and Republicans by painting Trump as "temperamentally unfit" to be commander in chief. ..."
"... In portraying Trump as an intolerable alternative, Clinton will find echoes in the GOP establishment and among the Kristol-Kagan neocons, many of whom have already signed an open letter rejecting Trump. ..."
"Clinton to Paint Trump as a Risk to World Order." Thus did page one of Thursday's New
York Times tee up Hillary Clinton's big San Diego speech on foreign policy.
Inside the Times, the headline was edited to underline the point: "Clinton to Portray Trump as
Risk to the World." The Times promoted the speech as "scorching," a "sweeping and fearsome
portrayal of Mr. Trump, one that the Clinton campaign will deliver like a drumbeat to voters in
the coming months."
What is happening here?
As Donald Trump is splitting off blue-collar Democrats on issues like America's broken
borders and Bill Clinton's trade debacles like NAFTA, Hillary Clinton is trying to peel off
independents and Republicans by painting Trump as "temperamentally unfit" to be commander in
chief.
Clinton contends that a Trump presidency would be a national embarrassment, that his ideas are
outside the bipartisan mainstream of U.S. foreign policy, and that he is as contemptuous of our
democratic allies as he is solicitous of our antidemocratic adversaries.
In portraying Trump as an intolerable alternative, Clinton will find echoes in the GOP
establishment and among the Kristol-Kagan neocons, many of whom have already signed an open
letter rejecting Trump.
William Kristol has recruited one David French to run on a National Review-Weekly Standard line
to siphon off just enough votes from the GOP nominee to tip a couple of swing states to Clinton.
Robert Kagan contributed an op-ed to a welcoming Washington Post saying the Trump campaign is
"how fascism comes to America."
Yet, if Clinton means to engage on foreign policy, this is not a battle Trump should avoid.
For the lady has an abysmal record on foreign policy and a report card replete with failures. As
senator, Clinton voted to authorize President Bush to attack and invade a nation, Iraq, that had
not attacked us and did not want war with us. Clinton calls it her biggest mistake, another
way of saying that the most important vote she ever cast proved disastrous for her country,
costing 4,500 U.S. dead and a trillion dollars.
That invasion was the worst blunder in U.S. history and a contributing factor to the deepening
disaster of the Middle East, from which, it appears, we will not soon be able to extricate
ourselves.
As secretary of state, Clinton supported the unprovoked U.S.-NATO attack on Libya and joked of
the lynching of Moammar Gadhafi, "We came. We saw. He died." Yet, even Barack Obama now agrees
the Libyan war was started without advance planning for what would happen when Gadhafi fell. And
that lack of planning, that failure in which Clinton was directly involved, Obama now calls the
worst mistake of his presidency.
Is Clinton's role in pushing for two wars, both of which resulted in disasters for her country
and the entire Middle East, something to commend her for the presidency of the United States? Is
the slogan to be, "Let Hillary clean up the mess she helped to make?"
Whether or not Clinton was complicit in the debacle in Benghazi, can anyone defend her
deceiving the families of the fallen by talking about finding the evildoer who supposedly made
the videotape that caused it all? Even then, she knew better. How many other secretaries of state
have been condemned by their own inspector general for violating the rules for handling state
secrets, for deceiving investigators, and for engaging, along with that cabal she brought into
her secretary's office, in a systematic stonewall to keep the department from learning the truth?
Where in all of this is there the slightest qualification, other than a honed instinct for
political survival, for Clinton to lead America out of the morass into which she, and the failed
foreign policy elite nesting around her, plunged the United States?
If Trump will stay true to his message, he can win the foreign policy debate, and the election,
because what he is arguing for is what Americans want.
They do not want any more Middle East wars. They do not want to fight Russians in the Baltic or
Ukraine, or the Chinese over some rocks in the South China Sea.
They understand that, as Truman had to deal with Stalin, and Ike with Khrushchev, and Nixon with
Brezhnev, and Reagan with Gorbachev, a U.S. president should sit down with a Vladimir Putin to
avoid a clash neither country wants, and from which neither country would benefit.
The coming Clinton-neocon nuptials have long been predicted in this space. They have so much in
common. They belong with each other.
But this country will not survive as the last superpower if we do not shed this self-anointed
role as the "indispensable nation" that makes and enforces the rules for the "rules-based world
order," and that acts as first responder in every major firefight on earth. What Trump has
hit upon, what the country wants, is a foreign policy designed to protect the vital interests of
the United States, and a president who will - ever and always - put America first.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book "The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon
Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority." To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read
features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at
www.creators.com.
This is one of the few articles when you can see anger at neocons from rank-and-file
republicans. Especially in comments.
Notable quotes:
"... Trump's steadfast support from paleoconservative icon and Kristol arch-nemesis Pat Buchanan clearly terrified the neoconservative wing of the party, which still remembers how Buchanan drummed up three million votes against George Bush in the 1992 Republican primary by blasting globalist trade policy. ..."
"... The people are speaking and Hillary will not win. Every single tactic employed to derail Trump has backfired and only made him more popular. ..."
"... The Neo-Cons like Kristol are addicted to power and donor skims. He is why we are now on the verge of rebellion. Vote Trump. ..."
"... CIA Operation Mockingbird....to infiltrate and control all news reporting, see.... "New Think Progress and the Ozzard of Wiz".... Multilevel Information Racketeering.... ..."
"... The establishment media is showing their RINO-ness. They are being exposed in the light. ..."
"... The National Review and Weekly Standard have become bird-cage liner as a result of Messrs. Kristol, Wills, etc. ..."
"... Bill Kristol ... GO AWAY ... Republicans have REJECTED you ... ..."
"... "Let me hasten to admit: I underestimated your skills as a demagogue and the credulity of some of the American public." Let me translate: "Hey, America, you're too stupid to vote. I'm an elite and know better than you!" ..."
"... Donald --- deny his access and take his room card. I imagine he'll be more pissed about that then selling out. Fat slob. He reminds me of the corrupt Monks under the Medici, stuffing gold under their tunics while the poor died in the streets. ..."
"... Latter Day Republicans.. LOL ..."
"... fine use of words... as in latter day saints, Glenn Beck, Romney etc. ..."
"... Neocons have always been Trotskyites and are conservative in name only. It is because of this that I believe that we the people should hold state conventions to enact several amendments to curtail the donor class, removing of political parties, enacting Vigilance Committees, and enforcing Article I Section XI Clause VIII of the Constitution of the United States. ..."
"... Campaign donations and raising money for PACs is unconstitutional and is treason as defined by the Constitution. An emolument is a fee or payment for services rendered. By removing the donor class and the lobbyists we can return the government back to the people. ..."
"... One can only conclude that the neocons want to splinter the vote, and they want the Democrats to win. No other conclusion seems possible. This is a betrayal that should be taken quite seriously. ..."
Kristol recently met with #NeverTrump champion
Mitt Romney to discuss a third-party campaign, but Kristol has hinted that Romney will not be
the independent "White Knight." Kristol
tweeted Saturday,
"If Mitt decides he can't, someone will step forward to run" then quoted William Gladstone to declare,
"The resources of civilization are not yet exhausted."
This is not the first time Trump and Kristol
have sparred on Twitter. When Trump asked last week why networks continue to employ Kristol's punditry
services, Kristol admitted that he had been wrong to have underestimated Trump's political appeal:
Kristol's neoconservative inner circle has reason to fear the threat posed by a populist outsider,
especially one who could gain anti-Establishment traction by attacking the legacy of the Kristol-supported
Iraq War. Kristol's "Weekly Standard" magazine and his son-in-law Matt Continetti's blog "Free Beacon"
hammered Trump throughout the Republican primaries to little avail. The "Beacon" blog's writers and
editors flogged the "small hands" insult that infamously made it into Marco Rubio's campaign stump
speech in Rubio's desperate final days.
Trump's
steadfast support from paleoconservative icon and Kristol arch-nemesis Pat Buchanan clearly terrified
the neoconservative wing of the party, which still remembers how Buchanan drummed up three million
votes against George Bush in the 1992 Republican primary by blasting globalist trade policy.
Tryle N Error
It's time for an intervention. Get him into rehab and off the Kristol Meth, or whatever
that deluded lunatic is injecting.
dtom2 > Tryle N Error
Kristol has become unhinged faced with the reality that he has lost what little influence
he had on the republic electorate. His all out promotion of Jeb Bush failed and this is
nothing more than sour grapes. So, instead of conceding defeat, he launches all out war on our
nominee. My question is this... if he wants Hillary instead of Trump, which will be the
eventual outcome if he follows through with his plan, why not just come out of the closet and
support her. La Raza and the Chamber of Commerce both get their wish, more hordes of criminal
illegals to undermine American workers, and an increased democrat parasitic voter
base...see...so much simpler than a third candidate launch...same outcome. America slides
closer to the third world cesspool of their dreams. Trump 2016!
Ann > dtom2
The people are speaking and Hillary will not win. Every single tactic employed to
derail Trump has backfired and only made him more popular.
bucketnutz > Tryle N Error
The Neo-Cons like Kristol are addicted to power and donor skims. He is why we are now
on the verge of rebellion. Vote Trump.
FauxScienceSlayer
CIA Operation Mockingbird....to infiltrate and control all news reporting, see.... "New
Think Progress and the Ozzard of Wiz".... Multilevel Information Racketeering....
Be Still
The establishment media is showing their RINO-ness. They are being exposed in the
light.
Bill the Cat > Robert Tulloch
The National Review and Weekly Standard have become bird-cage liner as a result of
Messrs. Kristol, Wills, etc. Their next stop is the HuffPo and motherjones.
Patriot
Kristol needs to be brought down from his perch. He thinks he is smarter than the voters.
If he pushes this nonsense and the GOP does not censor him, it will be the time for the
millions of sane Americans to join the GOP and then destroy it from within. It is time for
average Americans to control their destiny as opposed to the elites.
darwin
Kristol is an anti-American traitor. He's actively engaged in fighting the will of the
people to keep himself and the people he works for in power and wealth.
Archimedes
Bill Kristol is destroying the Republican party ... he is a globalist who believes in
spending trillions while deploying AMERICANs in the Middle East ... he believes in open
borders ... he believes in unfettered "free trade" ...
Bill Kristol ... GO AWAY ... Republicans have REJECTED you ...
#NeverHillary
ljm4
Billy, work on your Cruise ship offerings. As you are failing in journalism are you also
trying to take down the GOP party yourself?
Doctor Evil
"Let me hasten to admit: I underestimated your skills as a demagogue and the credulity
of some of the American public." Let me translate: "Hey, America, you're too stupid to vote.
I'm an elite and know better than you!"
Lee Ashton > Doctor Evil
On the other hand...
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that. -
George Carlin US comedian and actor (1937 - 2008)
Douglas Rowland > Lee Ashton
Those would be the ones voting for Hillary.
WaylonII
Splitting the Republican vote would be a sure way to get Hillary elected. What is wrong with these people?
Avatar
timdb > WaylonII
Maybe Kristol expects President Hillary Clinton will appoint him as ambassador to Israel.
Lee Ashton > TheLastPlainsman
Neocon - deficit spending via the warfare state
Leftist - deficit spending via the welfare state.
The right and left wings of the same vulture.
MrnPol725
... Donald --- deny his access and take his room card. I imagine he'll be more pissed about that then selling out. Fat slob. He reminds me of the corrupt Monks under the Medici, stuffing gold under their tunics while the poor died in the streets.
SPQR_US
Another turd exposed...Kristol Meth...time to arrest and jail the neocons...
Pitbulls LiL Brother
Kristol has been wrong so many times for so many years how does he get a voice in the
process?
Amberteka > Pitbulls LiL Brother
MONEY. His relatives Own USA Media.
Roadchaser
Latter Day Republicans.. LOL
James > Roadchaser
fine use of words... as in latter day saints, Glenn Beck, Romney etc.
gladzkravtz
The founding publisher of the Weekly Standard is News Corp!! Just found it on wiki! I
didn't know that and now it makes sense that Kristol gets to mug on FNC so much. I have stock
in News Corp, bought it back long before there was a Megyn Kelly, but now it's time to go
ahead, sell and take the loss.
Those creeps.
PreacherPatriot1776
Neocons have always been Trotskyites and are conservative in name only. It is because
of this that I believe that we the people should hold state conventions to enact several
amendments to curtail the donor class, removing of political parties, enacting Vigilance
Committees, and enforcing Article I Section XI Clause VIII of the Constitution of the United
States.
That clause states, "No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person
holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress,
accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King,
Prince, or foreign State."
Campaign donations and raising money for PACs is unconstitutional and is treason as
defined by the Constitution. An emolument is a fee or payment for services rendered. By
removing the donor class and the lobbyists we can return the government back to the people.
Since the government is not self-policing itself like it should then it's time for the Fourth
Branch of the government to step up and exercise their power to hold these individuals
accountable. A Vigilance Committee would be comprised of citizens of a single state and
oversee everything their elected/appointed representatives adhere to their oaths of office.
Failure to adhere to the oath would be an automatic charge of treason and a trial of said
individual for violating their oath. Once enough of these traitors are executed the rest of
them will behave and follow their oaths plus the Constitution of the United States.
Another amendment could be the requirement that every child must learn the Declaration of
Independence, Constitution of the United States, Bill of Rights, and their state
constitutions. This way we as a people can stop dangerous ideologies that are antithetical to
liberty, like Marxism and communism, can never be used in the United States.
jackschil
Its about time the real conservative Republicans took a stand. They could start by ignoring
the Rockefeller wing of the Republican party and start paying attention to the
Goldwater/Reagan wing. The Chamber of Commerce, the Wall Street Journal, Bill Kristol, Carl
Rove, George Will, and Charles Krauthammer do not represent conservative values, but pretend
establishment values. They would be better served joining with the Democrats. Trump has these
establishment jackals, along with the K Street lobbyists, scared to death. For the first time
since 1984, the people aren't stuck voting for a Republicrat candidate.
SpeedMaster
The Globalists have been exposed for what they really are. Thank You Mr. Trump.
Ohiolad
One can only conclude that the neocons want to splinter the vote, and they want the
Democrats to win. No other conclusion seems possible. This is a betrayal that should be taken
quite seriously.
Gene Schwimmer
If Kristol does, indeed, produce an independent candidate and if "President Hillary" is a
real problem for Trumpists, we of #NeverTrump invite them to abandon Trump and join us in
supporting the independent candidate. If you choose not to, blame yourselves if Trump loses. #NeverTrump
warned you well before you voted for Trump that we would never vote for him and it's still not
too late to nominate someone else at the convention. Not our problem if you thought you could
win without us and nominated Trump, anyway.
PrinceLH > Gene Schwimmer
Are you for real? Why would we turn our backs on the candidate that has garnered the most
votes, in Republican Primary history? You people don't get it! It's not the Republicans vs the
Democrats. It's the people vs the Establishment. We don't want any more of your ruling class
garbage. We don't want any more of stagnant wages and job loses to other countries, so you can
expand your Globalist agenda. You people need to be stopped. Bill Kristol, George Will, Glenn
Beck, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, George Soros, the Bush family, the Koch Brothers and
the list goes on, are our enemies.
You will be soundly defeated, this fall, and you can hand in your membership to the Human
Race, on the way out the door to your European Liberal Utopia.
Zolt
No more THIRD-WORLD IMMIGRATION
No more GLOBAL TRADE
No more ENDLESS WARS FOR ISRAEL AND THE NWO
God bless ASSAD, protector of Syrian Christians!
Get on board with the #PALEOCONS!
billsv
You just don't get it. Middle class jobs have been given to foreigners through H2B
programs, globalist policies, etc. why is this conservatism? Why do illegal aliens get more
benefits than US citizens? Is this conservatism? We just don't like Bill Kristol's view of
conservatism that de stories the Middle Class, let' s those in the bottom percentiles languish
and caves to the wishes of the Chamber of Commerce.
Please back off and give what many if
Americans want. We have suffered enough.
"... Shell-shocked, his foes, unwilling to admit their politically correct system has tanked, failed to understand that political incorrectness is to Trump what spinach is to Popeye. ..."
"... "So many 'politically correct' fools in our country," Trump tweeted. "We have to all get back to work and stop wasting time and energy on nonsense!" ..."
"... Trump's candidacy is about so much more than personality. Once the media are forced to report Trump's positions, instead of his persona, even more Americans will see that Trump is the sole Republican who rejects a "free trade" that gives away the keys to the store and opposed the ill-fated Iraq war. He is the type of candidate Americans always wanted but the party establishments are too afraid to provide. ..."
"... The last time America saw a strong paleo-conservative was Pat Buchanan in 1996. An early win in Louisiana caused Buchanan to place second in Iowa and first in New Hampshire. Lacking money, Buchanan was steamrolled by the establishment in Arizona and, in terms of paleo-conservatism, many thought he was the Last of the Mohicans. Trump's campaign is Buchananesque with one difference: Trump has money, and loads of it. He can fend off any attack and self-finance his campaign. He is establishment kryptonite. ..."
"... This reality is what makes him the new face of paleo-conservativism. It might also make him president. ..."
Political incorrectness is to Trump what spinach is to Popeye: Columnist. When the term paleo-conservative
is floated in conversation, most folks imagine a creature out of Jurassic World. But paleo-conservatism
- a near extinct brand of conservatism that heralds limited government, nonintervention, economic
nationalism and Western traditions - is finding a comeback in an unlikely spokesperson.
The history-making campaign of
Donald Trump is turning the clock of U.S. politics back to a time when hubris was heroic and
the truth, no matter how blunt, was king. It is resurrecting a political thought that does not play
by the rules of modern politics.
And as the nation saw the top-tier
GOP candidates take the stage for the first time, they saw Trump, unapologetic and confident,
alongside eight candidates clueless on how to contain him and a tongue-lashed Rand Paul.
The debate itself highlighted the fear a Trump candidacy is creating throughout the political
establishment. The very first question asked the candidates to pledge unconditional support to the
eventual GOP nominee and refrain from a third-party run. Trump refused.
Those in the Beltway resumed drafting Trump's political obituary. But while they were busy scribbling,
post-debate polls showed Trump jumped in the polls. Republicans are ignoring their orders from headquarters
and deflecting to the Donald.
Shell-shocked, his foes, unwilling to admit their politically correct system has tanked, failed
to understand that political incorrectness is to Trump what spinach is to Popeye.
"So many 'politically correct' fools in our country," Trump tweeted. "We have to all get back
to work and stop wasting time and energy on nonsense!"
Is he not correct? Days before the nation started debating Kelly's metaphorical blood, an unauthorized
immigrant in New Jersey pleaded guilty to actually spilling the blood of 30-year-old Sviatlana Dranko
and setting her body on fire. In the media, Dranko's blood is second fiddle. This contrast is not
lost on the silent majority flocking to Trump.
Trump's candidacy is about so much more than personality. Once the media are forced to report
Trump's positions, instead of his persona, even more Americans will see that Trump is the sole Republican
who rejects a "free trade" that gives away the keys to the store and opposed the ill-fated Iraq war.
He is the type of candidate Americans always wanted but the party establishments are too afraid to
provide.
The last time America saw a strong paleo-conservative was
Pat Buchanan in 1996. An early win in Louisiana caused Buchanan to place second in Iowa and first
in New Hampshire. Lacking money, Buchanan was steamrolled by the establishment in Arizona and, in
terms of paleo-conservatism, many thought he was the Last of the Mohicans. Trump's campaign is Buchananesque
with one difference: Trump has money, and loads of it. He can fend off any attack and self-finance
his campaign. He is establishment kryptonite.
This reality is what makes him the new face of paleo-conservativism. It might also make him
president.
Joseph R. Murray II is a civil-rights attorney, a conservative commentator and a former official
with Pat Buchanan's 2000 campaign.
"... "[W]hat is most astonishing is the rising level of rage among Trump's political enemies from inside the Republican establishment," said Scarborough . "Many of my conservative friends are sounding as arrogant and unmoored as left-wing pundits let loose on MSNBC during the Bush years." ..."
"... Trump, who does hold some positions at odds with traditional conservatism, such as strengthening entitlement programs, has fought back against that criticism, calling commentators like Will "eggheads." ..."
MSNBC "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough is hitting back at some conservatives in the media who
he says are taking an elitist attitude toward Donald Trump and his supporters.
In a Sunday column for the Washington Post, Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, said
that some conservative commentators "are sounding as cocooned from their own political party as any
liberal writing social commentary for the New Yorker or providing political analysis for ABC News."
"[W]hat is most astonishing is the rising level of rage among Trump's political enemies from
inside the Republican establishment,"
said Scarborough. "Many of my conservative friends are sounding as arrogant and unmoored as left-wing
pundits let loose on MSNBC during the Bush years."
Scarborough took criticism earlier this year from some of the same commentators, and many others,
for what critics
call
his
fawning
treatment of Trump in interviews.
Stay abreast of the latest developments from nation's capital and beyond with curated News
Alerts from the Washington Examiner news desk and delivered to your inbox.
Some venerable
right-leaning publications and commentators, like National Review and George Will of the Washington
Post, have
denounced Trump for, they say, his insufficient conservatism and his apparent lack of knowledge
about conservative thinking and policy.
Trump, who does hold some positions at odds with traditional conservatism, such as strengthening
entitlement programs, has fought back against that criticism, calling commentators like Will
"eggheads."
"... Donald Trump has raised three issues of real concern to paleoconservatives and traditional conservatives like myself." ..."
"... These three stances that Trump hits on to Buchanan's contentment are border security, economic nationalism, and being "skeptical of these endless wars and interventions." ..."
"... "I think many folks who agree with me have welcomed Trump into the race," Buchanan said. He added while laughing, "the very fact that the neocons seem so disconsolate is the icing on the cake." ..."
"... "Neocons offer nothing more than more wars," he said, before adding that their support for free trade is "almost a religious belief." ..."
"... The person who will lead America to its end is Hillary Clinton. I don't know how to say it any clearer - Bill and Hillary are pure evil. All the stories about them while in Arkansas are true - murders, cocaine smuggling, money laundering and they continued their evil activities when Bill got into the White House. ..."
"... They continue today with their Foundation which is nothing but a front for money laundering. It is not right wing conspiracies which Hillary continues to imply and the people whose deaths are connected to the Clinton's will never have justice. ..."
Buchanan ran in 1992 for the Republican party nomination on a platform opposing globalization,
unfettered immigration, and the move away from social conservatism. He has been harping on these
views ever since.
"What we've gotten is proof that we were right," Buchanan told The Daily Caller Tuesday. While
he said, "I would not say that Donald Trump is a paleoconservative," and, "I don't think [Trump's]
a social conservative."
Buchanan told TheDC, "I was just astonished to see him raise the precise issues on which we ran
in the 1990s… Donald Trump has raised three issues of real concern to paleoconservatives and
traditional conservatives like myself."
These three stances that Trump hits on to Buchanan's contentment are border security, economic
nationalism, and being "skeptical of these endless wars and interventions."
"I think many folks who agree with me have welcomed Trump into the race," Buchanan said. He
added while laughing, "the very fact that the neocons seem so disconsolate is the icing on the cake."
Buchanan is not only opposed to immigration and trade, he is also a staunch social conservative.
Trump has had two divorces and has previously held pro-choice views, making it tough for some to
support him. Buchanan though said, "I think Trump respects the position of the social conservatives."
"I do think he would appoint the type of justices that would unite the Republican Party," he said.
The conservative commentator continued on to say, "I think the great emperor Constantine converted
to Christianity but he may have killed one of his sons as well."
Buchanan told TheDC, "we don't have any perfect candidates," but the other options besides Trump
are more frightening.
"Neocons offer nothing more than more wars," he said, before adding that their support for
free trade is "almost a religious belief."
Richard
The person who will lead America to its end is Hillary Clinton. I don't know how to say
it any clearer - Bill and Hillary are pure evil. All the stories about them while in Arkansas
are true - murders, cocaine smuggling, money laundering and they continued their evil activities
when Bill got into the White House.
They continue today with their Foundation which is nothing but a front for money laundering.
It is not right wing conspiracies which Hillary continues to imply and the people whose deaths
are connected to the Clinton's will never have justice.
Why is it that every time a Grand Jury was to be convened and people were subpoenaed to testify
against the Clinton's, it never happened and some of those people ended up in prison, dead or
disappeared. Anyone who has ever had files implicating the Clinton's of illegal activities either
commits suicide or was murdered, and the files have disappeared. People if your voting for or
have voted for Hillary - do your homework and learn about who you vote for?
"... Though he has been a hugely successful builder-businessman, far more successful than, say, Carly Fiorina, who has been received respectfully, our resident elites resolutely refuse to take Trump seriously. ..."
"... Trump's success comes from the issues he has seized upon - illegal immigration and trade deals that deindustrialized America - and brazen defiance of Republican elites and a media establishment. ..."
"... The reaction of Trump's Republican rivals has been even more instructive. Initially, it was muted. But when major media began to demand that GOP candidates either denounce Trump or come under suspicion or racism themselves, the panic and pile-on began. ..."
"... What Trump has done, and [Ted] Cruz sees it, is to have elevated the illegal immigration issue, taken a tough line, and is now attacking GOP rivals who have dithered or done nothing to deal with it. ..."
"... Trump intends to exploit the illegal immigration issue, and the trade issue, where majorities of middle-class Americans oppose the elites. And he is going to ride them as far as he can in the Republican primaries. ..."
Since Trump's presidential
announcement last month including controversial comments about illegal immigrants from Mexico,
Buchanan has written two editorials on his website lauding Trump's efforts.
Though he has been a hugely successful builder-businessman, far more successful than, say,
Carly Fiorina, who has been received respectfully, our resident elites resolutely refuse to take
Trump seriously.
They should. Not because he will be nominated, but because the Trump constituency will represent
a vote of no confidence in the Beltway ruling class of politicians and press.
Votes for Trump will be votes to repudiate that class, whole and entire, and dump it onto the
ash heap of history.
Votes for Trump will be votes to reject a regime run by Bushes and Clintons that plunged us
into unnecessary wars, cannot secure our borders, and negotiates trade deals that produced the
largest trade deficits known to man and gutted a manufacturing base that was once "the great arsenal
of democracy" and envy of mankind.
A vote for Trump is a vote to say that both parties have failed America and none of the current
crop of candidates offers real hope of a better future.
Trump's success comes from the issues he has seized upon - illegal immigration and trade
deals that deindustrialized America - and brazen defiance of Republican elites and a media establishment.
By now the whole world has heard Trump's declaration:
"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. … They're sending people that
have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems to us. They're bringing drugs. They're
bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."
Politically incorrect? You betcha.
Yet, is Trump not raising a valid issue? Is there not truth in what he said? Is not illegal
immigration, and criminals crossing our Southern border, an issue of national import, indeed,
of national security?
. . .
The reaction to Trump's comments has been instructive. NBC and Univision dropped his Miss USA
and Miss Universe contests.
Macy's has dropped the Trump clothing line. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is talking of terminating
city contracts with Trump.
The reaction of Trump's Republican rivals has been even more instructive. Initially, it
was muted. But when major media began to demand that GOP candidates either denounce Trump or come
under suspicion or racism themselves, the panic and pile-on began.
. . .
What Trump has done, and [Ted] Cruz sees it, is to have elevated the illegal immigration
issue, taken a tough line, and is now attacking GOP rivals who have dithered or done nothing to
deal with it.
Trump intends to exploit the illegal immigration issue, and the trade issue, where majorities
of middle-class Americans oppose the elites. And he is going to ride them as far as he can in
the Republican primaries.
In the coming debates, look for Trump to take the populist and popular side of them both. And
for Cruz to stand by him on illegal immigration.
Americans are fed up with words; they want action. Trump is moving in the polls because, whatever
else he may be, he is a man of action.
Trump later
retweeted
and thanked a follower who cited to Buchanan's labeling of Trump as "a man of action."
"... From a Paleo-Conservative perspective what is there to lose with Trump as POTUS? In the absence of a Trumpian paradigm shift in American politics, the status quo will indeed change, quite dramatically, but not in the direction favorable to the principles of 1776 and 1861. At least with a President Trump there is a chance, possible but not necessarily probable, for change in the right direction. As the presidential campaigning heats up, Middle America is bound to rise up. The collective wisdom of Middle America seems to understand that Trump is not the perfect candidate, but they also seem to realize (to paraphrase M. E. Bradford) "that all of us who will not take half a loaf will get a stone." ..."
There are several attributes of Donald Trump's bid for the U.S. Presidency that this Paleo-Conservative
finds to be interesting. To follow is an adumbration of the more salient.
His campaign style is refreshing. The absence of teleprompters, which results in spontaneity,
which in turn reveals the unvarnished candidate in contradistinction to the coached, stale, and
unconvincing political hacks, is refreshing. Trump's campaign speeches and debate performance
have actually juiced up political discourse, making politics interesting not simply for the political
class but also for Middle American.
The engagement of Middle American into this presidential election cycle have the political
class spooked. It is this same political class responsible for the removal of all things Confederate
from the public square, not Middle American. It is Middle America that has catapulted Trump into
the lead. In other words, Middle America may actually have some meaningful input into the election
of the next POTUS.
The spooking of the political class has exposed what it thinks of Middle America. Its
charge against Trump is that the bulk of his support rests upon the inherent racism, national
jingoism and stupidity of average Americans. Some have even claimed that Trump is a closet fascist
and that his supporters are inherently supportive of fascism. This is nonsense. Middle America's
detestation of ruling elites is not fascist, but it is an acknowledgment that it will take a strongman,
statesman if you prefer, to knock out the ruling elites.
Trump's detractors may be his best campaign weapon. Without knowing much about Trump's
policy positions, immigration notwithstanding, there is logic in supporting Trump based upon knowing
who his political enemies are. This may be the best voting cue Middle America has. The enemy (Trump)
of my enemy (the ruling class) is my friend. In other words, the more Trump agitates the ruling
class the more he endears himself to Middle America.
Trump appears to be more the pragmatist than ideologue, and that's a good thing. The
American federative republic's original blueprint is nomocratic (a Southern characteristic), but
has been replaced with a teleocratic (New England Puritanism) one. It is the latter that has resulted
in the unitary US of A, nation-building abroad and the welfare state domestically.
For any Southern patriot the status quo in American politics is totally unacceptable.
One thing is fairly certain; if Trump were to be the next POTUS, the status quo would be in for
quite a shock. At this point it matters little how the status quo might be changed. Middle America
wants change and it wants it now. Moreover, if Trump were to succeed in his bid to be the next
POTUS, he would be much more likely to expose the fraud and corruption inside the beltway than
any of his presidential campaign competitors. Unlike the latter, he would not be held captive
to the interests that funnel money and votes to sustain the status quo, but to the average American
voter, i.e., Middle America.
The disruptions, if not chaos, Trump might affect in Washington may result in preoccupying
the ruling class to the extent that the focus on things Southern, e.g., the Battle Flag, may dissipate.
This might just provide Southern patriots with the space to regroup and be better prepared for
the next assault on their culture.
Trump's campaign slogan is Make America Great Again. As an intelligent man he must know that to
achieve that goal he must remove the government shackles, e.g., taxation, regulations, and centralization,
holding Americans and America down, both domestically and internationally.
From a Paleo-Conservative perspective what is there to lose with Trump as POTUS? In the absence
of a Trumpian paradigm shift in American politics, the status quo will indeed change, quite dramatically,
but not in the direction favorable to the principles of 1776 and 1861. At least with a President
Trump there is a chance, possible but not necessarily probable, for change in the right direction.
As the presidential campaigning heats up, Middle America is bound to rise up. The collective wisdom
of Middle America seems to understand that Trump is not the perfect candidate, but they also seem
to realize (to paraphrase M. E. Bradford) "that all of us who will not take half a loaf will get
a stone."
Marshall DeRosa received his Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Houston and his B. A. from
West Virginia University, Magna Cum Laude. He has taught at Davis and Elkins College (1985-1988),
Louisiana State University (1988-1990), and Florida Atlantic University (1990-Present). He is a Salvatori
Fellow with the Heritage Foundation and full professor in the Department of Political Science. He
has published articles and reviews in professional journals, book chapters, and three books. He resides
in Wellington, FL, with his wife and four children. More from Marshall DeRosa
"... Build the wall to block the gangsters and their heroin shipments. "We have situations right now where we have the migration. And we're accepting people in. And we're accepting them in by the thousands ..."
"... Trump wants to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a private system with more options and no state-specific boundaries, lower deductibles, take on the drug companies and install competitive bidding for medicine, and save enough money to take care of the poor. ..."
"... He wants to strengthen the armed forces but cut waste out of the budget and re-focus it. "We're buying equipment and we're buying things that our generals don't even want. We're buying planes they don't want instead of other ones because that company has better lobbyists… ..."
"... This is the politics of putting America First. It echoes the politics of Ross Perot's Reform Party, which once almost became Trump's party and which once housed Trump friend and paleoconservative firebrand Pat Buchanan. ..."
Trump has turned the Republican primary into a reality show. It's an effective tactic, one that
resonates with a country weaned on the TV genre that he helped to create. The sweating, bumbling
politicians have all become boardroom wannabes or castaways on an island where their flaws are exposed,
picked apart, and analyzed. And they all come off dishonest compared to him. This is the politics
of Richard Pryor as Montgomery Brewster and Peter Sellers as Chance the Gardener. This was never
supposed to happen. But it did.
And scarier still for the suits trying so hard to shut it down: Trump has substance.
On the border:Build the wall to block the gangsters and their heroin
shipments. "We have situations right now where we have the migration. And we're accepting people
in. And we're accepting them in by the thousands…Look at New Hampshire, the problems you
have with the drugs. We are letting people into this country and we have absolutely no idea who
they are, where they come from, are they ISIS? Maybe, maybe not."
On health care:Trump wants to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a
private system with more options and no state-specific boundaries, lower deductibles, take on
the drug companies and install competitive bidding for medicine, and save enough money to take
care of the poor. And he brushed off those who say it's not the Republican Way. "There's
a small group of people on the bottom who are not going to be able to be taken care of [under
Obamacare]. And I say, as Republicans, is there anybody who doesn't want to take care of them?
We are not going to have people dying on the streets. We're going to get them into a hospital
to take care of them…Let me tell you, the Republican way is, People CAN take care of themselves.
We have to help them. We're not going to let them die."
On the military:He wants to strengthen the armed forces but cut waste
out of the budget and re-focus it. "We're buying equipment and we're buying things that our generals
don't even want. We're buying planes they don't want instead of other ones because that company
has better lobbyists…We're going to get them the equipment they want. We're going to save
a lot of money." He wants to build a military so strong we'll never have to use it. After we take
care of ISIS, that is. And no more nation-building experiments that de-stabilize the Middle East
and embolden Iran. "Nobody, I'm telling you, nobody, is going to want to play with us."
This is the politics of putting America First. It echoes the politics of Ross Perot's Reform
Party, which once almost became Trump's party and which once housed Trump friend and paleoconservative
firebrand Pat Buchanan.
When Trump explains his views, it all sounds self-evident. It sounds like common sense. It wouldn't
sound so controversial if we didn't live in a media climate controlled by globalist corporate interests.
It's the kind of politics - tough, protectionist, and nationally self-interested - that Trump has
been thinking about for a very long time.
And now, like the last American tycoon, he's the only one fighting for it.
"... "In many countries today, moral and ethical norms are being reconsidered." ..."
"... "They're now requiring not only the proper acknowledgment of freedom of conscience, political views and private life, but also the mandatory acknowledgment of the equality of good and evil." ..."
"... President Reagan once called the old Soviet Empire "the focus of evil in the modern world." President Putin is implying that Barack Obama's America may deserve the title in the 21st century. ..."
"... Nor is he without an argument when we reflect on America's embrace of abortion on demand, homosexual marriage, pornography, promiscuity, and the whole panoply of Hollywood values. ..."
"... Unelected justices declared abortion and homosexual acts to be constitutionally protected rights. Judges have been the driving force behind the imposition of same-sex marriage. Attorney General Eric Holder refused to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act. ..."
"... America was de-Christianized in the second half of the 20th century by court orders, over the vehement objections of a huge majority of a country that was overwhelmingly Christian. ..."
"... Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of " Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? " Copyright 2013 Creators.com . ..."
Is Vladimir Putin a paleoconservative? In the culture war for mankind's future, is he one of us?
While such a question may be blasphemous in Western circles, consider the content of the Russian
president's state of the nation address.
With America clearly in mind, Putin declared, "In
many countries today, moral and ethical norms are being reconsidered."
"They're now requiring not only the proper acknowledgment of freedom of conscience, political
views and private life, but also the mandatory acknowledgment of the equality of good and evil."
Translation: While privacy and freedom of thought, religion and speech are cherished rights, to
equate traditional marriage and same-sex marriage is to equate good with evil.
No moral confusion here, this is moral clarity, agree or disagree.
President Reagan once called the old Soviet Empire "the focus of evil in the modern world."
President Putin is implying that Barack Obama's America may deserve the title in the 21st century.
Nor is he without an argument when we reflect on America's embrace of abortion on demand,
homosexual marriage, pornography, promiscuity, and the whole panoply of Hollywood values.
Our grandparents would not recognize the America in which we live.
Moreover, Putin asserts, the new immorality has been imposed undemocratically.
The "destruction of traditional values" in these countries, he said, comes "from the top" and
is "inherently undemocratic because it is based on abstract ideas and runs counter to the will of
the majority of people."
Does he not have a point?
Unelected justices declared abortion and homosexual acts to be constitutionally protected
rights. Judges have been the driving force behind the imposition of same-sex marriage. Attorney General
Eric Holder refused to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act.
America was de-Christianized in the second half of the 20th century by court orders, over
the vehement objections of a huge majority of a country that was overwhelmingly Christian.
And same-sex marriage is indeed an "abstract" idea unrooted in the history or tradition of the
West. Where did it come from?
Peoples all over the world, claims Putin, are supporting Russia's "defense of traditional values"
against a "so-called tolerance" that is "genderless and infertile."
While his stance as a defender of traditional values has drawn the mockery of Western media and
cultural elites, Putin is not wrong in saying that he can speak for much of mankind.
Same-sex marriage is supported by America's young, but most states still resist it, with black
pastors visible in the vanguard of the counterrevolution. In France, a million people took to the
streets of Paris to denounce the Socialists' imposition of homosexual marriage.
Only 15 nations out of more than 190 have recognized it.
In India, the world's largest democracy, the Supreme Court has struck down a lower court ruling
that made same-sex marriage a right. And the parliament in this socially conservative nation of more
than a billion people is unlikely soon to reverse the high court.
In the four dozen nations that are predominantly Muslim, which make up a fourth of the U.N. General
Assembly and a fifth of mankind, same-sex marriage is not even on the table. And Pope Francis has
reaffirmed Catholic doctrine on the issue for over a billion Catholics.
While much of American and Western media dismiss him as an authoritarian and reactionary, a throwback,
Putin may be seeing the future with more clarity than Americans still caught up in a Cold War paradigm.
As the decisive struggle in the second half of the 20th century was vertical, East vs. West, the
21st century struggle may be horizontal, with conservatives and traditionalists in every country
arrayed against the militant secularism of a multicultural and transnational elite.
And though America's elite may be found at the epicenter of anti-conservatism and anti-traditionalism,
the American people have never been more alienated or more divided culturally, socially and morally.
We are two countries now.
Putin says his mother had him secretly baptized as a baby and professes to be a Christian. And
what he is talking about here is ambitious, even audacious.
He is seeking to redefine the "Us vs. Them" world conflict of the future as one in which conservatives,
traditionalists, and nationalists of all continents and countries stand up against the cultural and
ideological imperialism of what he sees as a decadent west.
"We do not infringe on anyone's interests," said Putin, "or try to teach anyone how to live."
The adversary he has identified is not the America we grew up in, but the America we live in, which
Putin sees as pagan and wildly progressive.
Without naming any country, Putin attacked "attempts to enforce more progressive development models"
on other nations, which have led to "decline, barbarity, and big blood," a straight shot at the U.S.
interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Egypt.
In his speech, Putin cited Russian philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev whom Solzhenitsyn had hailed
for his courage in defying his Bolshevik inquisitors. Though no household word, Berdyaev is favorably
known at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal.
Which raises this question: Who is writing Putin's stuff?
"... "The U.S., as paleos have claimed for decades, was only meant to be a constitutional republic, not an empire-as Buchanan's 1999 foreign policy tome A Republic, Not an Empire nostalgically states," Scotchie explains. "Republics mind their own business. Their governments have very limited powers, and their people are too busy practicing self-government to worry about problems in other countries. Empires not only bully smaller, defenseless nations, they also can't leave their own, hapless subjects alone…. Empires and the tenth amendment aren't friends…. Empires and small government aren't compatible, either." ..."
"... If anti-interventionism and a commitment to the Old Republic defined by strict-construction constitutionalism and highly localized and independent social and political institutions defined one major dimension of paleoconservatism, its antipathy to the mass immigration that began to flood the country in the 1980s defined another. Indeed, it was ostensibly and mainly Chronicles' declaration of opposition to immigration that incited the neoconservative attack on Rockford and its subsequent defunding. Scotchie devotes a special but short chapter to paleoconservative thought on immigration and makes clear that to paleos, America was an extension of Western civilization. It was intended by the Founding Fathers to be an Anglo-Saxon-Celtic nation also influenced by Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem. Large-scale immigration from non-Western nations would, as Fleming (and most other paleos) maintained, forever spoil a distinct American civilization. ..."
"... The implication of this passage is that paleoconservatives, unlike libertarians, most neoconservatives, and many contemporary mainstream conservatives, do not consider America to be an "idea," a "proposition," or a "creed." It is instead a concrete and particular culture, rooted in a particular historical experience, a set of particular institutions as well as particular beliefs and values, and a particular ethnic-racial identity, and, cut off from those roots, it cannot survive. Indeed, it is not surviving now, for all the glint and glitter of empire. ..."
Joseph Scotchie's Revolt from the Heartland is not, as some readers might guess from the title,
about the terrorism of right-wing militias in the Midwestern United States, although some readers
might also say that guess was close enough. In fact, Revolt from the Heartland deals with the emergence
of "paleoconservatism," a species of conservative thought that despite its name ("paleo" is a Greek
prefix meaning "old") is a fairly recent twist in the cunningly knotted mind of the American Right.
While paleos sometimes like to characterize their beliefs as merely the continuation of the conservative
thought of the 1950s and '60s, and while in fact many of them do have their personal and intellectual
roots in the conservatism of that era, the truth is that what is now called paleoconservatism is
at least as new as the neoconservatism at which many paleos like to sniff as a newcomer.
Paleoconservatism is largely the invention of a single magazine, the Rockford Institute's Chronicles,
as it has been edited since the mid-1980s by Thomas Fleming, and Scotchie's book is essentially an
account of what Fleming and his major colleagues at Chronicles mainly, historian Paul Gottfried,
book review editor Chilton Williamson Jr., professor Clyde Wilson, and I believe, and what the differences
are between our brand of conservatism and others.
Scotchie's first three chapters are a survey of the history of American conservatism up until
the advent of Chronicles, including an account of the "Old Right" of the pre-World-War-II, pre-Depression
eras (for once, an account not confined to the libertarian "isolationists" but encompassing also
the Southern Agrarians), as well as the emergence of the "Cold War conservatism" of National Review
and the neoconservatism of the Reagan era and after. Scotchie's overview of these different shades
of the Right is useful in itself and necessary to clarify the differences between these colorations
and the paleos who constitute his main subject, though he may underestimate the differentiation between
the current, paleo "Old Right" and earlier "Old Rights."
Although Scotchie does not put it quite this way, contemporary paleoconservatism developed as
a reaction against three trends in the American Right during the Reagan administration. First, it
reacted against the bid for dominance by the neoconservatives, former liberals who insisted not only
that their version of conservative ideology and rhetoric prevail over those of older conservatives,
but also that their team should get the rewards of office and patronage and that the other team of
the older Right receive virtually nothing.
... ... ...
Paleos and those who soon identified with them almost spontaneously rejected U.S. military intervention
against Iraq. It was a moment, falling only a year after the neoconservative onslaught on the Rockford
Institute, that solidified the paleoconservative identity.
"The U.S., as paleos have claimed for decades, was only meant to be a constitutional republic,
not an empire-as Buchanan's 1999 foreign policy tome A Republic, Not an Empire nostalgically states,"
Scotchie explains. "Republics mind their own business. Their governments have very limited powers,
and their people are too busy practicing self-government to worry about problems in other countries.
Empires not only bully smaller, defenseless nations, they also can't leave their own, hapless subjects
alone…. Empires and the tenth amendment aren't friends…. Empires and small government aren't compatible,
either."
If anti-interventionism and a commitment to the Old Republic defined by strict-construction
constitutionalism and highly localized and independent social and political institutions defined
one major dimension of paleoconservatism, its antipathy to the mass immigration that began to flood
the country in the 1980s defined another. Indeed, it was ostensibly and mainly Chronicles' declaration
of opposition to immigration that incited the neoconservative attack on Rockford and its subsequent
defunding. Scotchie devotes a special but short chapter to paleoconservative thought on immigration
and makes clear that to paleos, America was an extension of Western civilization. It was intended
by the Founding Fathers to be an Anglo-Saxon-Celtic nation also influenced by Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem.
Large-scale immigration from non-Western nations would, as Fleming (and most other paleos) maintained,
forever spoil a distinct American civilization.
The implication of this passage is that paleoconservatives, unlike libertarians, most neoconservatives,
and many contemporary mainstream conservatives, do not consider America to be an "idea," a "proposition,"
or a "creed." It is instead a concrete and particular culture, rooted in a particular historical
experience, a set of particular institutions as well as particular beliefs and values, and a particular
ethnic-racial identity, and, cut off from those roots, it cannot survive. Indeed, it is not surviving
now, for all the glint and glitter of empire.
"... the best explanation of Trump's surprising success is that the constituency he has mobilized has existed for decades but the right champion never came along. ..."
"... Trump's platform combines positions that are shared by many populists but are anathema to movement conservatives-a defense of Social Security, a guarantee of universal health care, economic nationalist trade policies. "We have expanded the Republican Party," Trump claimed the night of his Super Tuesday victories. ..."
"... Buchanan, in a recent interview , characterized Trump as his populist heir. "What Trump has today is conclusive evidence to prove that what some of us warned about in the 1990s has come to pass," he said. But the evidence is that Trump doesn't see it that way. Trump even competed briefly with Buchanan for the presidential nomination. T he year was 2000 , and Trump, encouraged by his friend Jesse Ventura, then governor of Minnesota, was considering a run for the presidential nomination of Perot's Reform Party, on the grounds that the Republican Party of George W. Bush and Karl Rove had "moved too far toward the extreme far right." Trump and Ventura hoped to rescue the Reform Party from the conservative allies of Buchanan, of whom Trump said: "He's a Hitler lover; I guess he's an anti-Semite. He doesn't like the blacks, he doesn't like the gays." Trump floated the idea of Oprah Winfrey as his running mate . In his 2000 manifesto The America We Deserve , Trump proposed a platform that included universal employer- based health insurance, gays in the military and a one-time 14.5 percent tax on the rich that would reduce the federal deficit and help eliminate the shortfall in Social Security. ..."
"... Compared to Trump, Buchanan was a flawed vehicle for the Jacksonian populism of the ex-Democratic white working class. So was another Pat, the Reverend Pat Robertson, television evangelist, founder of the Christian Coalition, and, like Buchanan, a failed candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. But while the mainstream conservative movement marginalized Buchanan, it embraced Robertson and other evangelical Protestant leaders like Jerry Falwell and James Dobson of Focus on the Family. ..."
"... On social issues like abortion and gay rights, Buchanan shared the agenda of the religious right. But his advocacy of tariffs to protect American industry and immigration restriction threatened the mainstream right's consensus in favor of free trade and increased legal immigration. And his neo-isolationism threatened the post-Cold War American right's support of high military spending and an assertive global foreign policy. ..."
"... Many of the rank-and-file members of the religious right shared the traditional populist suspicion of bankers and big business ..."
"... But even before the unexpected success of Trump in the Republican primary race beginning in 2015, there were signs that this generation-old bargain was coming undone. Hostility to both illegal immigration and high levels of legal immigration, a position which free-market conservatives had fought to marginalize, has moved very quickly from heresy to orthodoxy in the GOP. ..."
"... There were other signs of populist discontent with establishment conservative orthodoxy, for those who paid attention. No project is dearer to the hearts of mainstream movement conservatives than the goal of privatizing Social Security, a hated symbol of the dependency-inducing "statism" of the allegedly tyrannical Franklin D. Roosevelt. But George W. Bush's plan to partly privatize Social Security was so unpopular, even among Republican voters, that a Republican-controlled Congress did not even bother to vote on it in 2005. ..."
Trump, in fact, has more appeal to the center than the conservative populists of the last half century.
Before Trump's rise in this year's Republican primary elections, the best-known populist presidential
candidates were Alabama Governor Wallace and tycoon Ross Perot, along with Buchanan. Yet none of
these past figures had broad enough appeal to hope to win the White House. Despite his folksy demeanor,
Perot was more of a technocrat than a populist and did poorly in traditionally populist areas of
the South and Midwest, where Trump is doing well. Wallace was an outspoken white supremacist, while
Trump tends to speak in a kind of code, starting with his "birther" campaign against President Obama,
and his criticism of illegal immigrants and proposed ban on Muslims may appeal to fringe white nationalists
even if it has offended many if not most Latinos. Nor has Trump alienated large sections of the electorate
by casting his lot with Old Right isolationism, as Buchanan did, or by adopting the religious right
social agenda of Robertson.
Indeed, the best explanation of Trump's surprising success is that the constituency he has
mobilized has existed for decades but the right champion never came along. What conservative
apparatchiks hate about Trump-his insufficient conservatism-may be his greatest strength in the general
election. His populism cuts across party lines like few others before him. Like his fans, Trump is
indifferent to the issues of sexual orientation that animate the declining religious right, even
to the point of defending Planned Parenthood. Trump's platform combines positions that are shared
by many populists but are anathema to movement conservatives-a defense of Social Security, a guarantee
of universal health care, economic nationalist trade policies. "We have expanded the Republican Party,"
Trump claimed the night of his Super Tuesday victories.
He may well be right, though it's not clear what that Republican Party will look like in the end.
... ... ...
Buchanan, a former Nixon aide and conservative journalist, ran unsuccessfully for
the Republican presidential nomination in 1992 and was awarded with a prime-time speech at the Republican
National Convention that nominated George Herbert Walker Bush for a second term in the White House.
Buchanan's speech focused almost entirely on the "religious war" and "culture war" to save America
from feminism, legal abortion, gay rights, and "the raw sewage of pornography."
In his 1996 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, and in his 2000 campaign as the
Reform Party nominee, Buchanan emphasized populist themes of economic nationalism and immigration
restriction. But he was too much of a member of the Old Right that despised FDR and sought a return
to the isolationism of Robert Taft and Charles Lindbergh to have much appeal to former New Deal Democrats.
Buchanan's history of borderline anti-Semitic remarks led William F. Buckley Jr. to criticize him
in "In Search of Anti-Semitism," (1992) and some of his associates like Samuel Francis were overt
white racial nationalists.
For Reagan Democrats and their children and grandchildren, World War II showed America at its
best. But Buchanan concluded a long career of eccentric World War II revisionism in 2009 with "Churchill,
Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost its Empire and the West Lost the World," arguing
that Hitler should have been appeased by Britain and the U.S.
Buchanan,
in a recent interview, characterized Trump as his populist heir. "What Trump has today is conclusive
evidence to prove that what some of us warned about in the 1990s has come to pass," he said. But
the evidence is that Trump doesn't see it that way. Trump even competed briefly with Buchanan for
the presidential nomination. The
year was 2000, and Trump, encouraged by his friend Jesse Ventura, then governor of Minnesota,
was considering a run for the presidential nomination of Perot's Reform Party, on the grounds that
the Republican Party of George W. Bush and Karl Rove had "moved too far toward the extreme far right."
Trump and Ventura hoped to rescue the Reform Party from the conservative allies of Buchanan, of whom
Trump said: "He's a Hitler lover; I guess he's an anti-Semite. He doesn't like the blacks, he doesn't
like the gays." Trump floated the idea of Oprah Winfrey as his running mate . In his 2000 manifesto
The America We Deserve, Trump proposed a platform that included universal employer- based
health insurance, gays in the military and a one-time 14.5 percent
tax on the rich
that would reduce the federal deficit and help eliminate the shortfall in Social Security.
In his press release announcing
his withdrawal from the race for the presidential nomination of the Reform Party, Trump wrote: "Now
I understand that David Duke has decided to join the Reform Party to support the candidacy of Pat
Buchanan. So the Reform Party now includes a Klansman-Mr. Duke, a Neo-Nazi-Mr. Buchanan, and a Communist-Ms.
[Lenora] Fulani. This is not company I wish to keep."
Compared to Trump, Buchanan was a flawed vehicle for the Jacksonian populism of the ex-Democratic
white working class. So was another Pat, the Reverend Pat Robertson, television evangelist, founder
of the Christian Coalition, and, like Buchanan, a failed candidate for the Republican presidential
nomination. But while the mainstream conservative movement marginalized Buchanan, it embraced Robertson
and other evangelical Protestant leaders like Jerry Falwell and James Dobson of Focus on the Family.
On social issues like abortion and gay rights, Buchanan shared the agenda of the religious
right. But his advocacy of tariffs to protect American industry and immigration restriction threatened
the mainstream right's consensus in favor of free trade and increased legal immigration. And his
neo-isolationism threatened the post-Cold War American right's support of high military spending
and an assertive global foreign policy.
Unlike Buchanan, Robertson and other religious right leaders did not deviate from the Republican
Party line on trade, immigration, or tax cuts for the rich. Many of the rank-and-file members
of the religious right shared the traditional populist suspicion of bankers and big business.
But in the 1990s there was a tacit understanding that religious right activists would focus on issues
of sex and reproduction and school prayer, leaving economics to free-marketers. In foreign policy,
the Christian Zionism of many Protestant evangelicals made them reliable allies of neoconservatives
with close ties to Israel and supportive of the Iraq War and other U.S. interventions in the Middle
East.
From the 1980s until this decade, the religious right was the toothless, domesticated "designated
populist" wing of the Republican coalition, and mainstream conservative politicians took it for granted
that as long as they said they opposed abortion and gay marriage, evangelical voters would support
free-market conservative economics and interventionist neoconservative foreign policy.
But even before the unexpected success of Trump in the Republican primary race beginning in
2015, there were signs that this generation-old bargain was coming undone. Hostility to both illegal
immigration and high levels of legal immigration, a position which free-market conservatives had
fought to marginalize, has moved very quickly from heresy to orthodoxy in the GOP. The opposition
of populist conservatives killed comprehensive immigration reform under George W. Bush in 2007 and
also killed the Gang of Eight immigration reform effort led in part by Senator Marco Rubio in 2013.
The defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the 2014 Republican primary for the 7th District
of Virginia by an unknown conservative academic, David Brat, was attributed largely to Cantor's support
for the immigration reform effort.
There were other signs of populist discontent with establishment conservative orthodoxy, for
those who paid attention. No project is dearer to the hearts of mainstream movement conservatives
than the goal of privatizing Social Security, a hated symbol of the dependency-inducing "statism"
of the allegedly tyrannical Franklin D. Roosevelt. But George W. Bush's plan to partly privatize
Social Security was so unpopular, even among Republican voters, that a Republican-controlled Congress
did not even bother to vote on it in 2005. And a Republican-controlled Congress passed Medicare
Part D in 2003-the biggest expansion of a universal middle-class entitlement between the creation
of Medicare in 1965 and the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. Blue collar Republican voters
applauded, as libertarian think-tankers raged.
Conservative populists cannot be accused of inconsistency. Like New Deal Democrats before them,
they tend to favor universal benefits for which the middle class is eligible like Social Security,
Medicare and Medicare Part D, and to oppose welfare programs like Medicaid and the ACA which feature
means tests that make the working class and middle class ineligible. The true inconsistency is on
the part of the mainstream conservative movement, which has yoked together left-inspired crusades
for global democratic revolution abroad with minimal-state libertarianism at home.
It remains to be seen whether Trump can win the Republican nomination, much less the White House.
But whatever becomes of his candidacy, it seems likely that his campaign will prove to be just one
of many episodes in the gradual replacement of Buckley-Goldwater-Reagan conservatism by something
more like European national populist movements, such as the National Front in France and the United
Kingdom Independence Party in Britain. Unlike Goldwater, who spearheaded an already-existing alliance
consisting of National Review, Modern Age, and Young Americans for Freedom, Trump has followers but
no supportive structure of policy experts and journalists. But it seems likely that some Republican
experts and editors, seeking to appeal to his voters in the future, will promote a Trump-like national
populist synthesis of middle-class social insurance plus immigration restriction and foreign policy
realpolitik,through conventional policy papers and op-eds rather than blustering speeches and tweets.
That's looking ahead. Glancing backward, it is unclear that there has ever been any significant
number of voters who share the worldview of the policy elites in conservative think tanks and journals.
In hindsight, the various right-wing movements-the fusionist conservatism of Buckley, Goldwater and
Reagan, neoconservatism, libertarianism, the religious right-appear to have been so many barnacles
hitching free rides on the whale of the Jacksonian populist electorate. The whale is awakening beneath
them, and now the barnacles don't know what to do.
"... Trump advances core paleoconservative positions laid out in "The Next Conservatism" - rebuilding infrastructure, protective tariffs, securing borders and stopping immigration, neutralizing designated internal enemies and isolationism. ..."
"... I don't like what I see happening to America. The infrastructure of our country is a laughingstock all over the world. Our airports, our bridges, our roadways - it's falling apart. It's terrible thing to see. Our politicians are all talk, no action. Millions of people are flowing across our Southern border. We've got to build a real wall… Let's make America great again. ..."
"... He says Republicans (along with Democrats) have aided the deindustrialization of America and the dispossession of the middle class, wasted the national treasure on idiotic wars (such as in Iraq) and enabled the dramatic expansion of repressive federal power. ..."
"... As far as Trump's campaign platform goes, he appears to be capitalizing on the ideas of some of America's most astute right-wing thinkers, Weyrich and Lind, who have crafted a new breed of conservatism with far broader populist appeal than the increasingly discredited trickle-down economics, big government, interventionist, corporate capitalism-beholden style of conservatism that's become dominant in the years since Reagan. Think of the power of the platform. Prior to the election, it was taken for granted that funding from plutocratic billionaires - the Kochs, Adelson, and so on - would shape the GOP primary outcome. Now, Trump has unique talents that set him apart, sure - but without the paleocon program, Trump would be just another Republican in the pack. ..."
The corporate media haven't been able to make much sense of Donald Trump. One thing they've said
is that he's non-ideological, or at least at odds with "true conservatives." But you've pointed he
has strong affinities for paleoconservative ideas, particularly as laid out in the 2009 book, "The
Next Conservatism" by Paul Weyrich and William Lind - a copy of which Lind recently gave to
Trump. You wrote, "Trump could have derived most of his 2016 primary positions from a two-hour session
with Lind's and Weyrich's book." Could you elaborate?
Trump advances core paleoconservative
positions laid out in "The Next Conservatism" - rebuilding infrastructure, protective tariffs, securing
borders and stopping immigration, neutralizing designated internal enemies and isolationism.
For example, an eleven-minute pro-Trump infomercial from August 2015, "'On
Point' With Sarah Palin and Donald Trump" - which now has over 3,800,000 views - begins with
a mini-Trump speech that could have been ghostwritten by William Lind:
I don't like what I see happening to America. The infrastructure of our country is a laughingstock
all over the world. Our airports, our bridges, our roadways - it's falling apart. It's terrible
thing to see. Our politicians are all talk, no action. Millions of people are flowing across our
Southern border. We've got to build a real wall… Let's make America great again.
... ... ...
Lind says they're intellectually vacuous, and that the current conservatism is "rubbish" and filled
with "'I've got mine' smugness." He says Republicans (along with Democrats) have aided the deindustrialization
of America and the dispossession of the middle class, wasted the national treasure on idiotic wars
(such as in Iraq) and enabled the dramatic expansion of repressive federal power.
... ... ...
As far as Trump's campaign platform goes, he appears to be capitalizing on the ideas of some
of America's most astute right-wing thinkers, Weyrich and Lind, who have crafted a new breed of conservatism
with far broader populist appeal than the increasingly discredited trickle-down economics, big government,
interventionist, corporate capitalism-beholden style of conservatism that's become dominant in the
years since Reagan. Think of the power of the platform. Prior to the election, it was taken for granted
that funding from plutocratic billionaires - the Kochs, Adelson, and so on - would shape the GOP
primary outcome. Now, Trump has unique talents that set him apart, sure - but without the paleocon
program, Trump would be just another Republican in the pack.
Paul Rosenberg is a California-based writer/activist, senior editor for Random Lengths News,
and a columnist for Al Jazeera English. Follow him on Twitter at @PaulHRosenberg.
"... The term "paleoconservatism" is a retronym coined in the 1980s to characterize a brand of conservatism that was by then going extinct, a brand exemplified by Robert Taft, the Ohio senator and legendary isolationist who lost the 1952 Republican nomination to Dwight Eisenhower. In its day it was often referred to as the "Old Right." ..."
"... Republican isolationists prevented the US from participating in the League of Nations, led a largely non-interventionist foreign policy in the '20s, and were skeptical of the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine in the early years of the Cold War. ..."
"... The increasing interest of American business in trade abroad made the anti-internationalism of the Old Right increasingly unviable in the party of capital. ..."
"... The losses kept coming. In the 1980s, the rise of neoconservatism both threatened the anti-internationalist, America-first mentality of the paleocons and enraged them due to the prominence of Jewish writers in the neoconservative movement. ..."
"... They nearly universally opposed the war in Iraq and war on terror more broadly, and were deeply skeptical of Bill Clinton's humanitarian interventions in the Balkans. ..."
"... "We are getting out of the nation-building business, and instead focusing on creating stability in the world," he declares. "Our moments of greatest strength came when politics ended at the water's edge." That's pure paleocon. ..."
"... Whether the establishment likes it or not, and it evidently does not, there is a revolution going on in America. The old order in this capital city is on the way out, America is crossing a great divide, and there is no going back. Donald Trump's triumphant march to the nomination in Cleveland, virtually assured by his five-state sweep Tuesday, confirms it, as does his foreign policy address of Wednesday. ..."
"... Donald Trump has raised three issues of real concern to paleoconservatives and traditional conservatives like myself." ..."
"... Trump is an imperfect paleocon. He's unrefined, a recent convert, and not as socially conservative as they may like. But on the important stuff, the term fits him better than any other. ..."
One of the strangest allegations leveled against Donald Trump by his Republican critics is that
he's not a conservative - or even, in the most extreme version of this critique, that he's actually
a liberal.
"People can support Donald Trump, but they cannot support him on conservative grounds," former
George W. Bush aide
Peter Wehner writes at Commentary. "The case for constitutional limited government is the case
against Donald Trump," declares Federalist founder
Ben Domenech. "Instead of converting voters to conservatism, Trump is succeeding at converting
conservatives to statism on everything from health care and entitlements to trade," complained
National Review's Jonah Goldberg.
Insofar as these commentators are criticizing the recency of Trump's conservative convictions,
well, fair enough. In an earlier life he was indeed a big fan of
universal
health care,
wealth taxation,
and legal
abortion - and if his general election
pivoting on taxes and the minimum wage is any indication, conservative fears that he would return
to his more liberal roots in the general election may yet be vindicated.
But the ideological vision Trump put forward during the Republican primary campaign was deeply
conservative, and, more specifically, deeply paleoconservative.
The paleoconservatives were a major voice in the Republican Party for many years, with Pat Buchanan
as their most recent leader, and pushed a line that is very reminiscent of Trump_vs_deep_state.
They adhere to the normal conservative triad of nationalism, free markets, and moral traditionalism,
but they put greater weight on the nationalist leg of the stool - leading to a more strident form
of anti-immigrant politics that often veers into racism, an isolationist foreign policy rather than
a hawkish or dovish one, and a deep skepticism of economic globalization that puts them at odds with
an important element of the business agenda.
Trump is an odd standard-bearer for paleocons, many of whom are conservative Catholics and whose
passionate social conservatism doesn't jibe well with Trump's philandering. His foreign policy ideas
are also more interventionist than those of most paleocons. But the ideas that have made him such
a controversial candidate aren't ones he got from liberals. They have a serious conservative pedigree.
A brief history of paleoconservatism
The term "paleoconservatism" is a retronym coined in the 1980s to characterize a brand of
conservatism that was by then going extinct, a brand exemplified by Robert Taft, the Ohio senator
and legendary isolationist who lost the 1952 Republican nomination to Dwight Eisenhower. In its day
it was often referred to as the "Old Right."
There was a time when these positions were normal for the Republican party. Leaders like William
McKinley supported tariffs as a way of supporting domestic industries and raising revenue outside
of an income tax. Smoot and Hawley, of the infamous Great Depression tariff, were both Republicans.
Republican isolationists prevented the US from participating in the League of Nations, led a largely
non-interventionist foreign policy in the '20s, and were skeptical of the Marshall Plan and the Truman
Doctrine in the early years of the Cold War.
But starting in the first decade of the 1900s and continuing gradually through the '50s, this
balance began to be upset, especially on trade but also on issues of war and peace. Progressives
within the Republican Party began to challenge support for trade protection and argue for a more
hawkish approach to foreign affairs. The increasing interest of American business in trade abroad
made the anti-internationalism of the Old Right increasingly unviable in the party of capital.
The two defining moments that led to paleocon decline were Taft's defeat and the suppressing of
the John Birch Society by William F. Buckley and National Review in the early 1960s. The Birch Society
differed strongly from the most isolationist of paleocons on foreign affairs; it was named after
an American missionary killed by Chinese communists in 1945, whom the group claimed as the first
casualty of the Cold War.
The organization advocated an aggressive, paranoid approach to the Soviet Union. But on other
issues they were right in sync: extremely anti-immigration, hostile to foreign trade, supportive
of limited government (except where trade, immigration, and anti-communism are concerned).
Buckley, along with Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) and others, issued a series of attacks on the
society, which were successful in marginalizing it, and establishing Buckley and National Review's
brand of conservatism as the ideology's public face in America. "The attack established them as the
'responsible Right,'" according to
Buckley biographer John Judis, "and moved them out of the crackpot far Right and toward the great
center of American politics." It was a key victory for the New Right, and a key loss for the Old
Right.
The losses kept coming. In the 1980s, the rise of neoconservatism both threatened the anti-internationalist,
America-first mentality of the paleocons and enraged them due to the prominence of Jewish writers
in the neoconservative movement. While not everyone in the paleoconservative movement was an
anti-Semite, it certainly had an anti-Semitism problem, which its attacks on the neocons revealed
frequently.
From the Sobran purge to Pat Buchanan
The saga of Joseph Sobran is a case in point. A longtime columnist at National Review, he was
fired by William F. Buckley in 1993 following years of open clashes about his attitude toward Israel
and Jewish people in general. In 1991, Buckley had dedicated an entire issue of the magazine to a
40,000-word essay he wrote,
"In Search of Anti-Semitism," in which he condemned Buchanan (then challenging President George
H.W. Bush in the GOP primaries) and his employee Sobran for anti-Jewish prejudice.
Buckley had a point. Sobran really was a world-class anti-Semite, writing in one National Review
column, "If Christians were sometimes hostile to Jews, that worked two ways. Some rabbinical authorities
held that it was permissible to cheat and even kill Gentiles."
After leaving NR, Sobran's writing, in the words of fellow paleocon and
American Conservative editor Scott McConnell, "deteriorated into the indefensible." He started
speaking at conferences organized by famed Holocaust denier David Irving and the denial group
Institute for Historical Review,
asking at the latter, "Why on earth is it 'anti-Jewish' to conclude from the evidence that the standard
numbers of Jews murdered are inaccurate, or that the Hitler regime, bad as it was in many ways, was
not, in fact, intent on racial extermination?"
While Sobran was purged, Buchanan continued his rise. His ability to distinguish himself from
the non-paleoconservatives was enhanced by the end of the Cold War. Many paleocons made an exception
to their isolationism for the unique evil of the Soviet Union. With that boogeyman gone, they retreated
to a stricter non-interventionism. They nearly universally opposed the war in Iraq and war on
terror more broadly, and were deeply skeptical of Bill Clinton's humanitarian interventions in the
Balkans.
The '90s anti-immigrant panic, and the era's high-profile trade deals, made Buchanan and the paleocons'
views on those issues appealing to base Republicans tired of pro-trade, pro-migration GOPers.
... ... ...
Paleocons love Trump
Trump fits into this tradition quite well. He's less stridently anti–welfare state, and less socially
conservative than most paleoconservatives. But he is a great exemplar of the movement's core belief:
America should come first, and trade and migration from abroad are direct threats to its way of life.
"We are getting out of the nation-building business, and instead focusing on creating stability
in the world," he declares. "Our moments of greatest strength came when politics ended at the water's
edge." That's pure paleocon.
Whether the establishment likes it or not, and it evidently does not, there is a revolution
going on in America. The old order in this capital city is on the way out, America is crossing
a great divide, and there is no going back. Donald Trump's triumphant march to the nomination
in Cleveland, virtually assured by his five-state sweep Tuesday, confirms it, as does his foreign
policy address of Wednesday.
…Whether the issue is trade, immigration or foreign policy, says Trump, "we are putting the
American people first again." U.S. policy will be dictated by U.S. national interests.
"I would not say that Donald Trump is a paleoconservative. … I don't think [Trump's] a social
conservative,"
he elaborated in an interview with the Daily Caller. But he added, "I was just astonished to
see him raise the precise issues on which we ran in the 1990s. … Donald Trump has raised three
issues of real concern to paleoconservatives and traditional conservatives like myself."
It's not just Buchanan, either.
Derbyshire
has said that Trump is "doing the Lord's work shaking up the GOP side of the 2016 campaign," and
in another column
volunteered
his services as a speechwriter.
Virgil Goode, a former Congress member who was the paleocon Constitution Party's 2012 nominee,
has endorsed Trump as the only candidate serious about immigration. Taki has featured reams of pro-Trump
coverage, like
this piece praising his economic nationalism.
Trump is an imperfect paleocon. He's unrefined, a recent convert, and not as socially conservative
as they may like. But on the important stuff, the term fits him better than any other.
"... Trump is a paleoconservative who preaches the reduction of the U.S. presence and engagement throughout the world. His precursors were active in the America First movement, which wanted American neutrality during World War II. He can identify with Robert Taft, a Republican senator who was against NATO and the expedition to North Korea at the beginning of the Cold War. He also shares Pat Buchanan's nationalism, who was a candidate before him. ..."
"... Although Trump's political philosophy is not entirely insubstantial, his campaign stances do not have the same ideological coherence. He accuses President Bush of having lied to invade Iraq, but wants to confiscate Iranian oil to compensate the war's American victims. He has expressed his admiration for Vladimir Putin, but wants to build a wall at the Mexican border and close military bases in ally countries. He intends to ally with Russia to bomb the Islamic State group, but is contemplating a tariff war against China to protect jobs. He adheres to the Iran deal and dismisses a change of regime in Syria, but is suggesting killing North Korea's leader and the families of terrorist leaders. ..."
Published in Le Devoir (Canada) on 14 March 2016 by Charles Benjamin
[link to original]
After having shaken up the American establishment, Donald Trump's unexpected success is sowing
panic in the neoconservative camp. Known for the failed crusade they led against Iraq, the neoconservatives
are looking for a new icon to bring their ideals back to life. The announced defeat of their favorite,
Marco Rubio, has not convinced them to join forces with the lead candidate, whose populism goes against
their political convictions.
The controversial candidate's nomination could thus lead to a neoconservative exodus to the Hillary
Clinton clan, who is embodying their ideological stance more and more. This break-off would reveal
the cleavage that separates the presidential candidates. Besides the personalities, the primary elections
are the setting for a showdown between the deeply engrained political traditions of American history.
Marco Rubio: The Neoconservative Hope
Neoconservatives stem from former Democrats who were opposed to the nomination of George McGovern,
who advocated détente with the Soviet Union during the 1972 primary election. They were seduced by
the ideological zeal with which Ronald Reagan was fighting "the evil empire." The Sept. 11 attacks
sealed their grip on George W. Bush's presidency. Taken over by the missionary spirit bequeathed
by Woodrow Wilson, they wanted to free the Middle East at gunpoint and export democracy there as
a remedy to terrorism. They had a nearly blind faith in the moral superiority and military capabilities
of their country. Iraq was like a laboratory for them, where they played wizards-in-training without
accepting defeat.
In a hurry to undo Barack Obama's legacy, neoconservatives are advising Marco Rubio in regaining
the White House. They are thrilled with the belligerent speech by the candidate, who is reminiscent
of Reagan. Settled on re-affirming the dominance of the U.S., Rubio has committed to increasing the
defense budget, toughening the sanctions against Moscow, providing weapons to Ukraine, and expanding
NATO to the Russian border. He intends to increase troops to fight the Islamic State group, revive
the alliance with Israel, and end the nuclear disarmament deal with Iran. The son of Cuban immigrants,
he also promises to end all dialogue with the Castro regime and to tighten the embargo against the
island.
Donald Trump: The Paleoconservative
Donald Trump's detractors describe him as an impostor who has a serious lack of understanding
of international affairs. Yet, he has set himself apart by cultivating a noninterventionist tradition
that goes back to the interwar period. Trump is a paleoconservative who preaches the reduction
of the U.S. presence and engagement throughout the world. His precursors were active in the America
First movement, which wanted American neutrality during World War II. He can identify with Robert
Taft, a Republican senator who was against NATO and the expedition to North Korea at the beginning
of the Cold War. He also shares Pat Buchanan's nationalism, who was a candidate before him.
Although Trump's political philosophy is not entirely insubstantial, his campaign stances
do not have the same ideological coherence. He accuses President Bush of having lied to invade Iraq,
but wants to confiscate Iranian oil to compensate the war's American victims. He has expressed his
admiration for Vladimir Putin, but wants to build a wall at the Mexican border and close military
bases in ally countries. He intends to ally with Russia to bomb the Islamic State group, but is contemplating
a tariff war against China to protect jobs. He adheres to the Iran deal and dismisses a change of
regime in Syria, but is suggesting killing North Korea's leader and the families of terrorist leaders.
Hillary Clinton: The Democratic Hawk
Will Donald Trump's noninterventionist temptation and unpredictable character lead the neoconservatives
to make up with their former political group? Two figures of the movement have already repudiated
the Republican lead and announced their future support of Hillary Clinton.
The Democratic candidate boasts a much more robust and interventionist position than Obama. Annoyed
with her boss's caution while she was secretary of state, Clinton was pleading early on to send massive
reinforcements in Afghanistan. She believes in U.S. humanitarian imperialism and persuaded the president
to use force against Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. Her call to help Syrian rebels at the dawn of the
Arab Spring was ignored. Now, she is giving faint support to the agreement negotiated with Iran and
supports the creation of a military exclusion zone over Syria. Her platform offers a new base for
neoconservatives, who will have to decide if they will stay loyal to their ideals or to their party.
"... Trump has been a vocal opponent of bad trade deals, while Cruz is a supporter of "free trade," even vocally backing Trade Promotion Authority for months before opportunistically voting against it when it no longer mattered ..."
"... Trump is opposed to raising the retirement age for Social Security while Cruz supports it ..."
"... Trump has famously promised he'd get along with Vladimir Putin, praised Putin's actions in Syria and has received compliments from the Russian leader; Cruz sticks to the usual anti-Russian rhetoric of the conservative movement calling Putin a "KGB thug" and saying America should undertake more intervention in the Middle East to confront Russia ..."
"... Ted Cruz notoriously called a group of Middle Eastern Christians "consumed with hate" for being insufficiently pro-Israeli while Trump has defended Middle Eastern Christians as a group that is "under assault" from Islamic terrorism ..."
But Donald Trump has changed everything. He has created the potential for a different movement
altogether. Not only is immigration at the center of his campaign, it's part of a larger agenda
that is genuinely different from the "movement conservatism" of Ted Cruz:
Trade.Trump has been a vocal opponent of bad trade deals, while Cruz is a supporter
of "free trade," even vocally backing Trade Promotion Authority for months before opportunistically
voting against it when it no longer mattered [Cruz reverses support for TPA trade bill,
blasts GOP leaders, by Manu Raju, Politico, June 23, 2015]
Safety Net. Trump is opposed to raising the retirement age for Social Security
while Cruz supports it [Where the presidential candidates stand on Social Security, by
Steve Vernon, MoneyWatch, November 23, 2015] Trump is also placing the protection of Medicare
at the center of his campaign, defying conservative movement dogma [Debate over Medicare, Social
Security, other federal benefits divides GOP, by Robert Costa and Ed O'Keefe,Washington Post,
November 4, 2015]
Russia.Trump has famously promised he'd get along with Vladimir Putin, praised
Putin's actions in Syria and has received compliments from the Russian leader; Cruz sticks
to the usual anti-Russian rhetoric of the conservative movement calling Putin a "KGB thug"
and saying America should undertake more intervention in the Middle East to confront Russia
[Ted Cruz: Russia-US tensions increasing over weak foreign policy, by Sandy Fitzgerald,Newsmax,
October 7, 2015]
Christianity. Ted Cruz notoriously called a group of Middle Eastern Christians
"consumed with hate" for being insufficiently pro-Israeli while Trump has defended Middle Eastern
Christians as a group that is "under assault" from Islamic terrorism [Trump: Absolutely
An Assault on Christianity, by Joe Kovacs, WND, August 25, 2015]. At the same time, while Trump
has been quick to defend American Christians from cultural assaults, he is also probably the
Republican "most friendly" to gay rights, as homosexual columnist Mark Stern has mischievously
noted [Of course Donald Trump is the Most Pro-Gay Republican Presidential Candidate, Slate,
December 18, 2015]
http://www.unz.com/article/whither-the-american-right/
Military coup sounds awfully good to me right about now!
xxx
Christianity. Ted Cruz notoriously called a group of Middle Eastern Christians "consumed with
hate" for being insufficiently pro-Israeli while Trump has defended Middle Eastern Christians
as a group that is "under assault" from Islamic terrorism
Maybe, I'm misunderstanding something; maybe I'm just not sure what "insufficiently pro-Israeli"
means, but Ted Cruz didn't condemn the group of Middle Eastern Christians for being "pro-Israel".
He condemned them for being anti-Israel, and said he wouldn't stand with them if they didn't stand
with Israel.
"... On Monday night, aides for the former secretary of state held a private conference call with members of the Democratic National Committee's Rules Committee and laid out how the campaign would like those members to vote at an upcoming rules meeting in Philadelphia. The purpose of the conference call was to answer any questions and ensure that the Rules Committee members, picked by DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and by Clinton, remained in lockstep with the presumptive Democratic nominee. ..."
"... The stars will ultimately align and the convention will go smoothly and without a hitch. Bernie and Liddy Warren will continue their unabashed endorsement of Her, the party will be united, and the good of the American people will be top priority on the go forward. Curtain. Exit stage left. Thank you for attending another Clinton Theater production. ..."
Looks like there's a slightly different dynamic in the Clinton camp:
On Monday night, aides for the former secretary of state held a private conference call
with members of the Democratic National Committee's Rules Committee and laid out how the campaign
would like those members to vote at an upcoming rules meeting in Philadelphia. The purpose
of the conference call was to answer any questions and ensure that the Rules Committee members,
picked by DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and by Clinton, remained in lockstep with
the presumptive Democratic nominee.
The roughly 30-minute call was a glimpse into how Clinton officials have sought to shape
the party platform and party rules with minimal public drama. Campaign officials have corresponded
with members via text messages to direct them how to vote and counseled them to bring concerns
directly to the campaign, rather than follow a process laid out by the DNC for submitting amendments
and resolutions. …
The plea to keep any policy disputes in-house, and off-camera, underscores the campaign's
determination to present a united front at the convention, and stave off any conflict between
the Clinton-aligned committee members and Sanders members during the drafting process. A few
months ago, Sanders was vowing to take his policy sticking points all the way to the convention
floor.
This is nothing more than a ploy to get Sanders supporters to watch the convention coverage,
so we can become acquainted with the "new" Hillary Clinton, and thus vote for Her in November.
"Let's all tune in; maybe the Bernie delegates will turn the party upside down". Expect to
be disappointed.
The stars will ultimately align and the convention will go smoothly and without a hitch. Bernie
and Liddy Warren will continue their unabashed endorsement of Her, the party will be united, and
the good of the American people will be top priority on the go forward. Curtain. Exit stage left.
Thank you for attending another Clinton Theater production.
Oh, and none of the speeches will result in legislation that actually benefits the American
people, but at least they won't be plagiarized!
I doubt many public figures were happier than Bernie Sanders to see the seemingly endless presidential
election carnival overtaken by other news last week. Beneath the headlines on race and criminal justice,
the nominal socialist "revolution" advocate Sanders got to make his official endorsement of the right-wing
corporatist and war hawk Hillary Clinton with the public's eyes focused on different and more immediately
hideous matters.
Anyone on the left who was surprised or disappointed by Bernie's long-promised Cowardly Lion endorsement
of Mrs. Clinton one week ago hadn't paid serious attention to his campaign and career. Sanders' "democratic
socialism" has always been a leaky cloak for a mildly social-democratic liberalism that is fiscally
and morally negated by his commitment to the nation's giant Pentagon System.
More
If Trump is the price we have to pay to defeat Clintonian neoliberalism – so be it.
-- Mumia Abu-Jamal
With these words the revolutionary journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal offers a bold challenge to those
who circulate the fear of a Trump presidency to drum up a mandate for voting for Clinton.
Mumia's words were shared with me just a month ago in a prison visit with him. They are a timely
challenge to Bernie Sanders' endorsement this week of Hillary Clinton's drive for the presidency.
Sanders mantra is anchored in the fear of Trump: "I will do everything possible to help defeat Trump."
But it is not just a Trump presidency that needs defeating. It is just as important to defeat
the very "Clintonian neoliberalism" whose party Sanders now joins.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie blasted Hillary Clinton, conducting a mock trial and asking the
audience to "render [a] verdict" on her record as secretary of state. He was on target about Libya and Algeria, off the mark as for
Syria and Iran (that does not means that Hillary is not guilty of instigating civil war in the country).
He is completely lunatic on Russia.
Days after being passed over as Donald Trump's running mate, Chris Christie took the podium at
the GOP convention to make the case for the party's presidential nominee.
But his focus, as has been the case for many of the convention speakers, was focused more on
Hillary Clinton than Trump.
"This election is not just about Donald Trump. It is also about his Democratic opponent, Hillary
Rodham Clinton," he said at the beginning of his remarks.
"... Manafort mentioned the return of Glass-Steagall specifically as a counterpoint against Hillary Clinton, arguing it was Democrats that were the ones actually beholden to big banks. "We believe the Obama-Clinton years have passed legislation that has been favorable to the big banks, which is why you see all the Wall Street money going to her," he said. "We are supporting the small banks and Main Street." ..."
"... Good! Screw the Clintons and crony capitalism. ..."
"... Bob Rubin already cashed the checks....Mission Accomplished. ..."
"... Laugh Track Deafening) ..."
"... How different would it be now if everyone in that photo had died simultaneously BEFORE Clinton signed it? ..."
"... Panic attacks and violent pangs on Wall Street tomorrow? Or will they just pour billions more into the Clinton corruption campaign? ..."
"... Hang the Clintons, Bushes, and all the damned banksters with them. Then your reforms might mean something ..."
While we know better than to trust politician promises, we were surprised to read that today the
GOP joined the Democrats in calling for a repeal of Gramm-Leach-Bliley, the Financial Services Modernization
Act of 1999 pushed through by none other than Bill Clinton, and will seek a return to Glass-Steagall,
the banking law launched in 1933 in the aftermath of the Great Depression meant to prohibit commercial
banks from engaging in the investment business, and which according to many was one of the catalysts
that led to the Global Financial Crisis.
According to
The Hill, Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's campaign manager, told reporters gathered in Cleveland
Monday that the GOP platform would include language advocating for a return of that law, which was
repealed under President Bill Clinton, husband of, well you know...
"We also call for a reintroduction of Glass-Steagall, which created barriers between what big
banks can do," he said.
Including that language in the GOP platform comes shortly after Democrats agreed to similar language
in their own, calling for an "updated and modernized version" of the law.
However before anyone gets their hopes up, recall that a party platform is not binding but is thought
to reflect the values of the party.... until the values change as a result of Wall Street "incentives"
because if there is one thing US "commercial banks" can not afford it is a separation of their depository
and investment activities.
The GOP platform has not yet been officially released, although the convention is expected to
approve it later Monday. Nonetheless, the embrace of Glass-Steagall by both parties is a telling
indication of how unpopular Wall Street remains with the public, years after the financial crisis.
Manafort mentioned the return of Glass-Steagall specifically as a counterpoint against Hillary Clinton,
arguing it was Democrats that were the ones actually beholden to big banks. "We believe the Obama-Clinton
years have passed legislation that has been favorable to the big banks, which is why you see all
the Wall Street money going to her," he said. "We are supporting the small banks and Main Street."
I think we're a step further than that. The majority still accept it as a De- facto,
impossible to change reality which they are to lazy to try and change. The excuse of
''its all too late and impossible to change'' peddled to them by all the branches of
the system and in particular the corrupt establishment mainstream media. But that era
is coming to an end....next election will be far more momentous...this one may be the
last time BAU politicians prevail
Report
I think we're a step further than that. The majority
still accept it as a De- facto, impossible to change reality which they are to lazy to try
and change. The excuse of ''its all too late and impossible to change'' peddled to them by
all the branches of the system and in particular the corrupt establishment mainstream
media."
Strangely enough, this isn't so different from Russian politics. Two different sides of
the same, or similar, coin. Eery stuff.
We need to flush congress. All the attention is on president/presidential election,
and many don't vote for a congressman while there. Oust the incumbents.
Report
2-3 elections with all incumbents being voted out with the exception of always voting
against the candidate with the most dark money always being voted against and the
candidates will get the message to start listening to the voters instead of the
donors.
Report
I'd be in favor of electing congressmen for 4 years rather than 2. Most of them will get
reelected anyway and at least then they may have a year of two where they might actually
consider wise legislation rather than never getting off the money treadmill.
Between the hag and the buffoon, I'm sorry to say that we're all fcuked for another 8
years. Million more white collar jobs will have left the US at that time, middle class
wealth completely shredded and the top 1 or 2% richer than ever before (or probably
buying up Mars real estate).
The people we elect work for the economies of China and
India. Our tax dollars are creating jobs in Shanghai. Let's all sit down and cry. Or
take to FB and post selfies. Duck face.
Report
No reason to demonize China and India. They produce many quality products at low
prices Americans want.
US corps are outsourcing these jobs. And we are buying more than we need or use.
Complain to government, tax corps, close tax havens and stop buying foreign produced
goods by paying an extra 20 to 40%.
Report
Revoking Citizens United is Bernie's issue. Once in a while Hillary quietly mouths a platitude
about campaign reform, but her hand is in the till bigtime. Her Supreme Ct issue is abortion;
she won't touch Citizens United. After all, the status quo is her cause.
I see more of this articles very frequently nowadays as Hillary already clinched the
nomination. These things are not out of the blue issues, Sanders started his campaign
talking about these yet the Guardian dint a give shit then. Now all they care is their
readers. Pff,give me break.
Report
Thank you. It was so blatant that is was shocking. The Guardian turned its back on
the first Green President - and yet asks me to join their campaigns?!
Interesting the near obsession about Citizens United. Nothing about Bill Clinton driving
a Mack truck through campaign finance laws. Nothing about the legal graft of Goldman
Sachs passing $675,000 to Hillary for speeches nobody would pay a quid to hear, and
nothing about the last campaign reform effort, where McCain-Feingold inserted an
incumbent protection clause in what was supposed to keep dirty money out of politics.
Report
She will not release the transcripts because she knows they are damning. It's obvious. When
she says "I'll release them when everyone else does." Does that sound like a LEADER? no way. A
leader would own up to that shit. SHe is a tool, not a leader.
There is a bright side to all this. Obama, the Guardian, and many liberals are
propounding the benefits of a stronger and even more centralized government. Given the
gains that the Republicans made in the Congress and various states, it seems even Obama
never really sold the public on this. Should Clinton win, which seems probable though
it's a weird year, her primary focus will clearly be on propelling the family into the
ranks of billionaires. I think, or am at least hopeful, that four years from now much of
the public will be so sick of these people that they'll realize that we really don't get
all that much from them.
Report
Whence Hillary's obsession with lucre? When she was first lady of Arkansas she bitched to her
friends about her lack of money. She was the pipeline for Tyson's bribery concerning the phony
cattle futures. Before she took the oath of office as a Senator she posted a wish list for
people who wanted to buy favors. There's something weird about someone who never lacked for
creature comforts her entire life devoting her life to collecting funds, even if by crook.
From this side of the pond, from a 60's kid, America is dead. Maybe All those American
states would do better as independent countries. The America today is a disgrace to its'
peoples.
Report
You know, from this side of the pond (US) we are seriously thinking of asking Texas to
go back to Mexico. That would be a good start, after all Texas thinks it a good idea for
its citizens to walk around their city streets carrying "assault style weapons" and not
only that, now they want students in their Universities to carry concealed weapons also.
Would any of you on your side of the pond like to have Texas, we will be willing to let
them go real cheap. C'mon now, make us an offer we can't refuse.
Report
From this (US) side of the pond, it's clear that people reading the MSM think that the whole
of the US is like a wild west movie shootout. If I were to believe the MSM, I might be
forgiven that thinking that Godzilla is crashing through the Houses of Parliament as I write.
Try a bit of perspective will you? And put your tinfoil hat back on. It wasn't that long ago
that a crazed UK citizen shot and killed an MP was it?
Our system was founded on the presumption that an informed electorate will make the best
choice. Obviously we have missed that mark. Having the average voter be better informed is
always a good thing. Can we lay some blame at the feet of our incompetent public schools? How
many recent public school graduates can recite the declaration of Independence? Who is
responsible for our current state of ignorance? Is half the story a lie? Our founding fathers
intended a free press to inform the masses. The Guardian is one of several media outlets that
have gone from informative to outright advocacy. The opinion pieces here that are passed off
as fact are nonstop. The progressive revision of history and willful ignorance of facts is
disheartening. Sure big money can distort results, but putting a government agency in charge
of policing who gets to donate is a whole new mess.
We were blessed with an enduring document in our constitution. To ignore it is foolish. More
government is not always better government. The current rise of outsiders reflects our angst
here in flyover country. We have had enough of Washington insiders doing the bait and switch.
We are not under taxed, we are not under regulated, we need you media outlets to tell the
truth about the corruption and deceit rampant in Washington even on the left
"Our system was founded on the presumption that an informed electorate will make the best
choice."
Depends on who is doing the informing, and what information pablum they feed to the masses.
"The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental
principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them
over and over."
― Joseph Goebbels
Goebbels had a thorough understanding of how to manipulate the minds of the masses, and
current politicians have studied him well. All it takes is money to put the spin on. The media
love it, because that's where all that money goes to produce the spin. Why do you think they
left Sanders in such a void? Because his platform is to get all that money out of politics.
The only hope the US has is for 34 states on a local level,to call for a convention to
amend the constitution,with the repeal citizens united being the amendement proposed.
The beautiful part the US founding fathers left for the people is the ability to change
the law if enough states want it. So when the judicial,executive,legislative as well as
the press fail the people,they can change the law themselves. Its the only hope the US
has at this point.
Report
Citizens United doesn't just let Walmart fund PACs to run ads against unions. It allows unions
to fund PACs to run ads against trade agreements. It allows the Sierra Club to fund PACs to
run ads about environmental policy. It allows NARAL to fund PACs to support abortion rights.
Do you really want create an environment where only individuals can engage in political speech
and where people can't organize groups to speak collectively? Limiting political speech is not
something we should take lightly. Citizens United didn't cause the partisanship problems we
have today and it's not the reason our representatives are content to do nothing. The way we
elect people is the real problem, not how we fund our elections, that's a side effect of the
former.
Donald Trump comments on the end of what he called the "FBI Primary," saying that Bernie
Sanders has so far refused to drop out of the race for the Democratic nomination in hopes that
Clinton might be indicted. He says that the FBI's recommendation not to indict proves Sanders was
right when he said the Democratic primary was "rigged."
Today is the best evidence ever that we have seen that our system is totally, absolutely
rigged," Trump said at a rally in North Carolina.
"It's rigged," Trump said. "And I used that term nationally when I was running in the Republican
primaries, and I was the first to use it, and then all of a sudden it became a hot term and
everyone was using the word rigged, rigged, rigged. But if you remember, I won Louisiana. And I
didn't get enough delegate, what happened? Places like Colorado, which was so good to me, but all
of a sudden we find out that they don't have the vote... I'll be honest, if I didn't win in
landslides, I wouldn't be standing here. You would be watching some politician who will lose to
Hillary.
"I learned about the rigged system really fast. All of a sudden, Bernie started using it and now
everyone talks about the system being rigged," he said.
"I'm going to keep using it because I was the one that brought it up."
"I asked a couple of political pros," he said. "Think of Bernie Sanders. I think the one with the
most to be angry about. The one with the most to lose is Bernie Sanders, because honestly, he was
waiting for the FBI primary, and guess what? He just lost today the FBI primary!"
"He lost the FBI primary! Bernie, my poor Bernie, oh, Bernie! I feel so badly for Bernie, but you
know what? A lot of Bernie Sanders supporters are going to be voting for Trump, because Bernie
Sanders was right! Bernie Sanders was right about a couple of things. He's right about the system
being rigged, but he's also right about trade. Our trade deals are a disaster. They're killing
our jobs. They're killing our families. They're killing our incomes."
Bernie Sanders is this election's Democratic sheepdog. The sheepdog is a card the Democratic
party plays every presidential primary season when there's no White House Democrat running for
re-election. The sheepdog is a presidential candidate running ostensibly to the left of the
establishment Democrat to whom the billionaires will award the nomination. Sheepdogs are herders,
and the sheepdog candidate is charged with herding activists and voters back into the Democratic
fold who might otherwise drift leftward and outside of the Democratic party, either staying home
or trying to build something outside the two party box.
"... Bernie supporters are crowing about his great success at influencing the Democratic Party platform. How exciting is that? Is there anything less useful than the platform of a political party? Screen doors in a submarine come to mind. A political party platform has all of the significance and impact of a good healthy a fart in the midst of a hurricane. ..."
"... bernie sanders, when it comes right down to it, is either a liar, or is willing to support hillary in spite of who and what she stands for.. trumps comments on this are indeed bang on. ..."
"... The Sanders move is straight out of the Democratic Party playbook of the last 100 years, as so many predicted. The Democrats have co-opted every grass-roots movement that has arisen in the US, co-opted and quashed it. ..."
"... The party primaries in the USA are not intended to be representative, democratic elections: they simply serve as a sort of consumer survey to see which of their candidates would be most popular in the general election. ..."
"... Bernie Sanders claims some concessions were achieved in the platform committee document. But one issue of greatest importance, on trade issues,--specifically the rejection of TPP, is a lost cause. Bernie threw in the towel. The phony sideshow of reconstituted New Deal hoopla is merely the same tired fantasy narrative that the Democrats predictably trot out for every presidential election. ..."
"... The dear old man who started this campaign with this gem of rhetoric: "What we need is a revolution in the streets", is ending his monkeyshines with a ringing endosement of one of the most politically corrupt figures in our history. ..."
"... Jill Stein, who ran for president on the Green Party platform, says that Bernie's endorsement of Hillary is the "last nail in the coffin" which turns Sanders' revolution over to a counter-revolutionary party. ..."
"... Trump would do well to attract Bernie Voters now, by exploiting areas of agreement. The TPP is one example. ..."
"... He led people to believe that he had principles - that he really was against Wall St. and SuperPACs and all that Hillary stands for. He also (late in the race) began talking about 'revolution' to play to the discontented and young idealists. ..."
"... Its all just bullshit when he ultimately supports Hillary. But those who support Hillary (like rufus does) try hard to finesse Sanders failing because they value the "service" that Sanders performed for the Obama-Hillary "Third Way" Democratic Party. ..."
"... What chance do we have with Hillary?--a back-stabbing, forked-tongue, daughter of Goldman Sachs, whose speeches to the industrialists and bankers are practically a state secret? Yes, Hillary!--who is coated from head to toe with a patina of blood, and smells of corpses? ..."
"... US corporations aren't stupid. They know bad, expensive education, decaying infrastructure and violence in the street are bad for business. They might even realize that corruption is bad for them. And that worker representation makes life easier all around. ..."
"... In fact, Sanders pulled several key punches in the race ..."
"... he failed to call Hillary out on her emails after the State Inspector General report was release and it was CLEAR that she had lied about her emails; ..."
"... he is close/friendly with all of the top Democrats: Obama campaigned for him to win his Senate seat; Schumer endorses him; he calls Hillary a 'friend' of 25 years. ..."
"... Except in style, Hillary is no different than Obama, Bush II, or her husband. Whereas earlier presidents felt the need to put on a show of decency -- well, okay, Bush II let it drop now and then -- H. Clinton will be a bitch Cheney, going out of her way to rub everyone's face in it and bragging there's nothing they can do about it. ..."
"... There's a bright side however. She's dumb and knows no bounds. Think Louis XVI. That, along with her arrogance, may finally bring a tipping point of sorts. With things coming apart everywhere, a smooth-talking fraud like Reagan or Obama might be able to somehow hold it together a little longer. Hillary's nastiness could actually bring real change. God in his infinite irony. ..."
"... To say there is a deep state controlling Clinton may be an over simplification. More likely their are lots of competing and conflicting forces working in the dark, none with any clear idea or plan (or inkling of what other powers are doing) each pushing for immediate gains without a thought for the future. ..."
"... In the struggle for power everyone. including H. Clinton, is a useful fool and a potential patsy. Those hidden powers have a history of eating their own. ..."
"... Sanders has been a great disappointment. In order to prevent Trump from getting the votes, he is embracing and selling his soul and his supporters to a demon! In fact Sanders has more in common with Trump that he has with Hillary. ..."
"... "Bernie Sanders endorsing Crooked Hillary Clinton is like Occupy Wall Street endorsing Goldman Sachs" ..."
"... His followers were fools. I think some of them know that now. ..."
"... I for one, hoped for more than "sheepdog" from Sanders, but, alas, those who said so, were totally correct ..."
"... in American politics, none of these people are for dismantling the biggest budgetary fraud & boondoggle in human history: the pentagon. anybody saying they are for "small gov't" who doesn't immediately propose to slash the military/para-military budget (not the VA, not now) by 50% every year for the next 500 years is lying. ..."
"... Hillary represents a continuation of the last 8 years, or even perhaps the last 16 or 24+ years. There is absolutely no doubt about that. ..."
"... People taken in by Sanders learned no lessons from gushing over Obama. They hurt themselves again and are sociopathically indifferent to the far greater harm they have done to those who were not gullible. ..."
"... Even if she had given any "significant concession", it would have been meaningless noise with not an iota of intention to implement such concessions. She is a POS who will say anything at all to get elected. The only thing we really know is she relishes confrontation on the foreign policy scene. Otherwise nobody can rely on her to act in their interests in the domestic realm, except big corporate entities. ..."
"... It is stupid for B to keep linking to Trumps quotes exclusively. Why does b not link to Jill Stein criticism. Sure Trumps criticism of evil Hillarys corruption will gather important support, but exclusively giving torture loving warmongering Trump ammunition, strangles other better candidates in their political birth in the alternative to status quo attention. In the same way that the Sanders, Chomsky, and other shortsighted cowards react by strangle politically strangling a desperate new movement. ..."
"... Congrats to those who labeled the 'Sheepdog' so early. Such an apt description. Good call. ..."
"... Sanders released only one year of tax returns (2015). His campaign manager claimed his taxes held no surprises. Well they didn't for 2015. But why didn't Sanders release earlier years? Any serious Presidential candidate would expect to release at least 3 years of tax returns. ..."
"... Given the 'service' that he performed, it might be especially interesting to have seen his taxes for 2014, the year before he entered the race. The lack of transparency and Sanders' 'sheepdogging' raises questions of whether he received any inducements to enter the race. ..."
"... The Plan was always from the start for Bernie to hold down the Left, so Hillary could capture Center-Right, and Donald could lead the Far Right into Smackdown. Then Bernie would deliver the Left to Hillary. And so it has come to pass. ..."
"... Strange bedfellows? Not at all. The Israelis and the GCC countries, the USG and EU, are all soul brothers : tiny 'elite' minorities attempting to rule their respective roosts by technological means encompassing everything from drones to the media to their ubiquitous taps. ..."
"... in loco parentis ..."
"... In 1963 there was a coup in America. Since then the military-industrial complex has run the country. It has been most apparent in its foreign policy, which has been the conquest of natural resources (especially oil and gas) worldwide. America's resentment with the USSR/Russia has to do with their living on top of resources. ..."
"... But in order to continue the illusion of democracy in the US, it was necessary to maintain some differences between the two parties so that Americans would think that they have a choice. Meanwhile, the party that is supposed to represent the working class has been sliding into the arms of the corporatists. Essentially, in order to give Americans a "choice" Trump has been pushed as the demonic clown versus H. Clinton. Unfortunately, for good reasons as well as because of endless propaganda from the right, most Americans distrust Clinton, as well they should. Her casual announcement about enforcing a "no-fly zone" over Syria is essentially a declaration of war against Russia. ..."
"... Going back to the coup in 1963, in order to maintain control of the population it was necessary for the ruling class to continue to generate candidates each election cycle to pretend to care about the working class. I have long suspected that early on in their careers both Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton were recruited by US intelligence. During his time in Britain Bill's classmates assumed that he was CIA ..."
"... I suspect it was the beginning of her career in US power politics. Shortly after she wrote a pro-Vietnam speech for Melvin Laird in 1968, she was involved with the various Black Panther trials around the US. ..."
"... It's hard to believe that the Hillary who stands before us now was ever a political ally of the Panthers. Rather, I suspect she was observing for an intelligence agency, the FBI or CIA She sat through a Panther trial in New Haven, Connecticut, and then spent a summer in Oakland working for the law firm that was representing the Panthers in the Bay Area. Essentially, she was in the right place at the right time to glean information for COINTELPRO, the massive spying program directed against anti-war and black movements. A few years later she worked on the Democrats' legal team for Watergate, another good place for a government informant to be. Bill, during his time at Oxford, would have functioned like the thousands of informants who sat in on peace group meetings across American campuses. ..."
"... Later, when the CIA was dumping cocaine at Mena, Arkansas, Bill Clinton was in position to make sure state police left the operation alone. It's not surprising that George W. Bush's first head of the DEA was Asa Hutchinson, who'd been the incurious federal prosecutor over that part of Arkansas when the drugs came in. ..."
"... The Clintons were prominent in the Democratic Leadership Council, which was an organization within the Democratic Party pushing it to the right. In 1992 Bill pushed trade agreements that would destroy the American middle class. Since then the party has been hopelessly corrupted by Wall Street money. ..."
"... I cannot think of another president in memory who is more wed to military adventurism than Hillary. ..."
"... But if she polls badly enough, Democratic establishment may see the light and go for Sanders. ..."
Jun 13, 2016 |
Bernie Sanders folded. This without gaining any significant concession from Hillary Clinton on
programmatic or personal grounds. (At least as far as we know.) He endorsed Clinton as presidential
candidate even as she gave no ground for his voters' opinions. This disenfranchises the people who
supported him.
... ... ...
I expect the "Not Hillary" protest vote to be very strong in the November election. There is still
more significant dirt to be dug up about her and her family foundation. Trumps current lows in the
polls will recover when the media return to the "close race" mantra that makes them money. He still
has a decent chance to win.
It is long, long past the time to see the world we really live in; the realities of our western
faux democracies. Until and unless we recognise the facts, as they are, nothing can be changed.
The problem/s must be identified for it/them to be solved.
It doesn't take a critical mass of
people; but it takes more than a few; far more than evidenced this election cycle...
Bernie supporters are crowing about his great success at influencing the Democratic Party
platform. How exciting is that? Is there anything less useful than the platform of a political
party? Screen doors in a submarine come to mind. A political party platform has all of the significance
and impact of a good healthy a fart in the midst of a hurricane.
thanks b, for highlighting these sad realities. bernie sanders, when it comes right down to
it, is either a liar, or is willing to support hillary in spite of who and what she stands for..
trumps comments on this are indeed bang on.
the labour. party is run by a gang of thugs.. i hope the people who want corbyn are able to
overcome the mostroisity the labour party has become.
i echo @1 v. arnolds comments..
@2 bill..bernie spporters better not show how stupid they are by also voting for hillary..
The Sanders move is straight out of the Democratic Party playbook of the last 100 years, as
so many predicted. The Democrats have co-opted every grass-roots movement that has arisen in the
US, co-opted and quashed it.
Even as deliberately unplugged as I've been from this race, it's been easy to see at a glance
that Sanders magnetized the next wave of concerned citizens - of course the young people rallied
to his banner - and will now leave them broken and in disarray, or delivered to the Democrats.
He was an independent. He so simply could have turned the Green Party into a ten-percent force
in the US, making it hugely important, and advancing in one leap the cause of multi-party governance.
The party primaries in the USA are not intended to be representative, democratic elections:
they simply serve as a sort of consumer survey to see which of their candidates would be most
popular in the general election.
Registering for a party does not mean that you are a member of a particular party or even support
it, you are simply choosing to vote in their primary elections (if you live in a state with closed
primaries). That is something a lot of Bernie supporters found out much too late. But that is
not a "rigged system", those rules were in place long before Sanders decided to run as a Democrat.
And rules differ from state to state: some places allot delegates proportionally, in others
it is winner-take-all. Some states hold a general election, other hold a caucus:you have to travel
to a certain place at a certain time to cast your vote, which means you have to have the time
and money in order to participate.
I have never seen a similar system in place anywhere else. Usually it is only card-carrying,
dues-paying party members who are allowed to select their candidates.
Seventh is the real possibility Bernie has inspired of a third party – if the Democratic Party
doesn't respond to the necessity of getting big money out of politics and reversing widening
inequality, if it doesn't begin to advocate for a single-payer healthcare system, or push hard
for higher taxes on the wealthy - including a wealth tax - to pay for better education and
better opportunities for everyone else, if it doesn't expand Social Security and lift the cap
on income subject to the Social Security payroll tax, if it doesn't bust up the biggest banks
and strengthen antitrust laws, and expand voting rights.
If it doesn't act on these critical issues. the Democratic Party will become irrelevant
to the future of America, and a third party will emerge to address them.
From the first I hoped that the revolutionary left would be able to capitalize on the issues
raised by Sanders' insurgency. You will win support by winning concrete gains for real people.
Not by shrill denunciations of the masses ignorance or gullibility.
Very good observations from b. Bernie Sanders claims some concessions were achieved in the
platform committee document. But one issue of greatest importance, on trade issues,--specifically
the rejection of TPP, is a lost cause. Bernie threw in the towel. The phony sideshow of reconstituted
New Deal hoopla is merely the same tired fantasy narrative that the Democrats predictably trot
out for every presidential election.
The dear old man who started this campaign with this gem of rhetoric: "What we need is
a revolution in the streets", is ending his monkeyshines with a ringing endosement of one of the
most politically corrupt figures in our history. And once again, every 1930s, New Deal trope
and hurrah, is to be trotted out, even though the former Clinton administration drove a stake
into the heart of most of FDR's work.
Get in line sheep. Mutton will be served.
Jill Stein, who ran for president on the Green Party platform, says that Bernie's endorsement
of Hillary is the "last nail in the coffin" which turns Sanders' revolution over to a counter-revolutionary
party.
Trump would do well to attract Bernie Voters now, by exploiting areas of agreement. The TPP
is one example.
Owned by Goldman Bilderberg and the CFR, the Den of Lying Thieves and Whores - aka the Democratic
Party - now has sneakily moved forward to tee up the TPP for passage by Crooked Hillary if not
Oilbomber.
Note: The Republican Party is also a Den of Lying Thieves and Whores.
rufus: Sanders did what he said he would from the start ...
He led people to believe that he had principles - that he really was against Wall St. and
SuperPACs and all that Hillary stands for. He also (late in the race) began talking about 'revolution'
to play to the discontented and young idealists.
Its all just bullshit when he ultimately supports Hillary. But those who support Hillary
(like rufus does) try hard to finesse Sanders failing because they value the "service" that Sanders
performed for the Obama-Hillary "Third Way" Democratic Party.
Those who said that Sanders was a sheepdog from the start were right: the Democratic
Party led by "Third Way" sellouts is hopeless. Long past time to move on.
Now now Jackrabbit, go easy on rufus. You have to remember that cognitive dissonance is infinitely
extensible across a mind that is captured by delusion.
Yes Virginia, they are all hucksters -- Surely the microscopic communist party, or its
pale American likeness, of which rufus is a mustache twirling member, is less of a political fantasy,
than the Green Party!
What chance do we have with Hillary?--a back-stabbing, forked-tongue, daughter of Goldman
Sachs, whose speeches to the industrialists and bankers are practically a state secret? Yes, Hillary!--who
is coated from head to toe with a patina of blood, and smells of corpses?
So it is basically the British Trade Unions making sure their members dominate in the leadership
election?
The US democratic party is a huge income generating corporation with some worker representation.
Sanders is correct to stay inside if he wants to change politics. If Sandernistas continue the
fight (they will, it is generational, same as the Clintons were generational) seat for seat they
will change the party. They will get changed themselves in the process for sure.
It seems the Libertarian party succeeds in splitting Republicans. For Sanders to split Democrats
would be voting for Trump. He would have to live with this fame outside of the Democratic Party
with no one to team up in the Senate.
US corporations aren't stupid. They know bad, expensive education, decaying infrastructure
and violence in the street are bad for business. They might even realize that corruption is bad
for them. And that worker representation makes life easier all around.
Jill goes easy on Sanders in her statement because she wants to attract his supporters.
In fact, Sanders pulled several key punches in the race:
> he was late in calling out Hillary-DNC collusion - campaign financing got the headlines but
what about the DNC's silence about: a) media bias toward Hillary and b) voter irregularities:
AP called the race for Hillary the day before California voted based on secret polling of
Super-delegates! ;
> he failed to attack Obama's record on black/minority affairs - despite Sanders having
conducted a fake filibuster over the Fiscal Cliff/Sequester - Hillary walked away with
the black vote;
> he failed to call Hillary out on her emails after the State Inspector General report was
release and it was CLEAR that she had lied about her emails;
And Sanders is not an "independent" as any ordinary person would interpret that term:
> he has caucused with the Democrats for a very long time (nearly 20 years?);
> he runs in the Vermont Democratic Primary when running for House/Senate with the understanding
that he will not run in general election as a Democrat (this effectively blocks opposition
from a Democratic candidate);
> he is close/friendly with all of the top Democrats: Obama campaigned for him to win
his Senate seat; Schumer endorses him; he calls Hillary a 'friend' of 25 years.
The strategy of lesser evilism has been an utter disaster for the 99%. Effectively unchallenged
by the left, the Democratic Party helped the Republican Party to push the agenda steadily to
the right over the past decades. As Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has aptly
put it, "the politics of fear has delivered everything we were afraid of."
... Bernie's endorsement will be used in an attempt to prop up that same rotten establishment
... [that makes] Sanders endorsement of Clinton is [sic] a fundamental failure of leadership.
...
We can't afford to follow Bernie's error. It is time for us to move on. ... That is why I'm
endorsing Green Party candidate Jill Stein. ... There can be no doubt that Jill's campaign
is the clear continuation of our political revolution, and deserves the broadest possible support
from Sandernistas.
Mark Stoval @ 16 -- We've had a fascist economic system (since the 30s)...
Even before. At least since 1913 with the establishment of the Federal Reserve, which transferred
the holdings of the U.S. treasury to international bankers.
b, me too. For the first time I think Clinton may actually be president. Sanders never had
a chance for the simple reason -- never stated -- that he is too old. When he took office he would
have been only a few years short of the age Reagan was when he left.
(For some reason age has never come up with this elderly bunch. Both Bill Clinton (as co-president)
and Trump will be older than Reagan was on election day, and Hillary will be only a few months
younger. You'd think we'd be seeing clips of Hillary chopping logs and Trump free climbing the
face of cliffs -- the sort of stuff they put poor old Ron through.)
A scary thought is that age has never come up because the powers that pick presidents don't
intend for them to be in office long.
Except in style, Hillary is no different than Obama, Bush II, or her husband. Whereas earlier
presidents felt the need to put on a show of decency -- well, okay, Bush II let it drop now and
then -- H. Clinton will be a bitch Cheney, going out of her way to rub everyone's face in it and
bragging there's nothing they can do about it.
Her style's different, but the same game will go on.
There's a bright side however. She's dumb and knows no bounds. Think Louis XVI. That, along
with her arrogance, may finally bring a tipping point of sorts. With things coming apart everywhere,
a smooth-talking fraud like Reagan or Obama might be able to somehow hold it together a little
longer. Hillary's nastiness could actually bring real change. God in his infinite irony.
To riff off a comment by Banger a few posts back. To say there is a deep state controlling
Clinton may be an over simplification. More likely their are lots of competing and conflicting
forces working in the dark, none with any clear idea or plan (or inkling of what other powers
are doing) each pushing for immediate gains without a thought for the future.
It's often said here that the plan is chaos. Maybe, or it could be that there is such confusion
and turmoil and chaos is so prevalent, that it looks like it must be a plan. Or taking a longer
view, it could be what we're seeing everywhere is the inevitable collapse of a vast culture that
has grown too complex.
In the struggle for power everyone. including H. Clinton, is a useful fool and a potential
patsy. Those hidden powers have a history of eating their own.
Sanders has been a great disappointment. In order to prevent Trump from getting the votes,
he is embracing and selling his soul and his supporters to a demon! In fact Sanders has more in
common with Trump that he has with Hillary.
One hopes that disenchanted Sanders supporters will either abstain or vote for Trump.
Having the choice only of two candidates is an absurdity.
"Bernie Sanders endorsing Crooked Hillary Clinton is like Occupy Wall Street endorsing Goldman
Sachs" is not a valid statement.
Sanders is a long time member of The Party and Congress. One cannot be a member of those clubs
for so long -- particularly during the years spanning the turn of the last century -- and not
be rotten to the core.
His followers were fools. I think some of them know that now.
Like million and millions of Americans you have been fooled not once but repeatedly and still
believe in democracy and Democratic party. Get real, Sanders probably a better lair than most
liars but not as good as Obomo and Hillary. Understands million and millions still believe these
two liars (dun believes me look at the most recent poll).
Do the smart things vote the opposite what the masses or MSM tells you. Better still vote Trump
and end the drip, drip and drips. Buy yourself a good cheap pitchfork, snows shovel or whatever
in yr local Craigslist or yard sales. Get ready for the final solution.
I for one, hoped for more than "sheepdog" from Sanders, but, alas, those who said so, were
totally correct. Trump and HRC are 2 sides of the same coin. It matters not who wins. With
either one, workers of the world are fucked. The corporate global takeover rolls on.
jules @ 46: in American politics, none of these people are for dismantling the biggest budgetary
fraud & boondoggle in human history: the pentagon. anybody saying they are for "small gov't" who
doesn't immediately propose to slash the military/para-military budget (not the VA, not now) by
50% every year for the next 500 years is lying.
PS-I guess, to distill the question, one might say.. Should corporations serve the people, or
should people serve the corporations? As of now, "the powers that are", believe in the latter.
People taken in by Sanders learned no lessons from gushing over Obama. They hurt themselves
again and are sociopathically indifferent to the far greater harm they have done to those who
were not gullible.
"Bernie Sanders folded. This without gaining any significant concession from Hillary Clinton on
programmatic or personal grounds. (At least as far as we know.) He endorsed Clinton as presidential
candidate even as she gave no ground for his voters' opinions. This disenfranchises the people
who supported him."
Even if she had given any "significant concession", it would have been meaningless noise
with not an iota of intention to implement such concessions.
She is a POS who will say anything at all to get elected. The only thing we really know is she
relishes confrontation on the foreign policy scene. Otherwise nobody can rely on her to act in
their interests in the domestic realm, except big corporate entities.
Syriza...oops, Sanders, was always more loyal to the Democratic party then his ideology. ALWAYS.
I don't know why his supporters are surprised. Did they actually think he was lying when he said
he would support Hillary Clinton.
And not only that, he out right lied saying that the Democrats have the most progressive platform
in Democrat history !!! A fucking ludicrous lie to protect evil Hillary. Disgraceful.
Most of The left are so pathetic it's embarrassing, it's a great invitation to be dominated
by the right wing.
I believe every threat that the despicable right wing will bring, I do not believe the ideology
commitment the vast majority of the left wing in power. Miserable lying cowards.
It is stupid for B to keep linking to Trumps quotes exclusively. Why does b not link to Jill
Stein criticism. Sure Trumps criticism of evil Hillarys corruption will gather important support,
but exclusively giving torture loving warmongering Trump ammunition, strangles other better candidates
in their political birth in the alternative to status quo attention. In the same way that the
Sanders, Chomsky, and other shortsighted cowards react by strangle politically strangling a desperate
new movement.
Congrats to those who labeled the 'Sheepdog' so early. Such an apt description. Good call.
Yesterday I had two emails from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, giddy with joy
over Sanders endorsement of Clinton. Today I had another, which made me giddy with joy:
After Bernie's call for unity yesterday, we just figured Democrats would...well...unify.
But instead, everything is falling apart.
FIRST: We heard barely a peep from grassroots Democrats.
THEN: A Quinnipiac poll showed Trump and Clinton tied in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania.
NOW: We're questioning whether the Democratic Party can unify at all.
Great to hear that they're falling on their faces. The DCCC recruits ex-Republicans, Republicans-Lite,
and conservative Democrats to run for Congress, and actively oppose liberal candidates. Long may
they fail. Support worthy individual candidates.
Don't know if anyone's mentioned this book: "The Clinton's war on Women." There's a good long
review posted here, http://thesaker.is/the-clintons-war-on-women/
Lots of potential mud for Trump to sling that will stick.
Sanders released only one year of tax returns (2015). His campaign manager claimed his taxes
held no surprises. Well they didn't for 2015. But why didn't Sanders release earlier years? Any
serious Presidential candidate would expect to release at least 3 years of tax returns.
Given the 'service' that he performed, it might be especially interesting to have seen
his taxes for 2014, the year before he entered the race. The lack of transparency and Sanders'
'sheepdogging' raises questions of whether he received any inducements to enter the race.
Donald Trump is even worse. He hasn't released any tax info. He claims that the IRS
is auditing him (and that they have for many years) . But why not release estimates and/or
earlier tax returns?
We have gone through the looking glass. This evening on Public Broadcasting Service television
news hour Dr. Assad was interviewed by Judy Woodruff, a talking head teleprompter reading hand
puppet. Dr. Assad was asked if Donald Trump was elected President would his lack of foreign relations
diplomacy chops hinder his administrations abilities to achieve their goals. The question was
of no import. Nor was the answer. THE FACT THAT DR. ASSAD WAS TREATED AS AN EQUAL and not "Assad
must go" is a very significant event. VERY SIGNIFICANT!
He's a democratic socialist, so such affiliations and tactics are not unusual. The Democratic
Socialists of America, for example, a Socialist International section, is wholly within the Democratic
Party.
The Plan was always from the start for Bernie to hold down the Left, so Hillary could capture
Center-Right, and Donald could lead the Far Right into Smackdown. Then Bernie would deliver the
Left to Hillary. And so it has come to pass.
I thought everyone knew Bernie, Hillary and Donald are all bought and sold by Goldman? Hillary
and Donald sold their progeny to The Tribe, and Bernie is a woo-woo already. The traitor Chosen
sold US into slavery with Gramm-Leich-Bliley, and fawning sycophant Al-Clintonim signed that bill
into 'law' (sic), in return for her US Senate seat from NY.
Badda-boom, badda-bing!
These are the Vampire Squid, the Takers, Mafia Elites 'who settled the Western Frontier' and
now are the 'Disruptors' of the Public Space into a privatized Fivrr-Uber hell. They own you.
You are owned by the Private Central Bankim. Even a small child will tell you that your only real
'free choice' is to write-in "HELL NO!" in November, then flee to the 3W.
Sanders didn't release his other tax returns even when it became an issue in the campaign
.
Hillary said that she wouldn't release the transcripts of her Goldman speeches until Sanders
had released more tax returns. Her reasoning: she had complied with what was expected of a Presidential
candidate while the other had not yet done so.
Why wouldn't he immediately release those returns - which his campaign had claimed contained
no surprises - so as to force Hillary to release the transcripts?
Not only are staffers subjected to this,
volunteers are as well. "The tight control of volunteers stands in stark contrast to not only
American political-campaign norms but also Trump's reputation for speaking his mind."
Combine that with his statement that he'd like to
change libel laws to make it easier for himself to sue news organizations that down fawn all
over him. Does he seem like the sort to encourage whistle-blowers like Manning or Snowden? Will
he be logging all his email traffic for future FOIA requests? Or maybe he'll kill that off, too.
News Flash: Israel wins U.S. election; Iran to be nuked during inauguration
Trump just picked Mike Pence as running mate. And from (((
Forward ))):
"...Pence has said his support of Israel is deeply rooted in his Christian faith, as well as
in his strong relationship with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Pence was introduced
to AIPAC members in 2009 by then-board member Marshall Cooper at an AIPAC policy conference.
"Let me say emphatically, like the overwhelming majority of my constituents, my Christian
faith compels me to cherish the state of Israel," then-Rep. Pence said.
Cooper described Pence to the audience as "Israel's good friend."..."
So whether Hillary or Trump gets the job (or Obama declares a national emergency an remains)
Israel will be the de-facto new commander-in-chief of the U.S., henceforth to be know as Palestine
West.
The new Falcon Eye surveillance system-sold to the UAE by an Israeli defense contractor-"links
thousands of cameras spread across the city, as well as thousands of other cameras installed
at facilities and buildings in the emirate," the Abu Dhabi Monitoring and Control Center said
in an official statement. The Falcon Eye will "help control roads by monitoring traffic violations
while also monitoring significant behaviors in (Abu Dhabi) such as public hygiene and human
assemblies in non-dedicated areas."
Strange bedfellows? Not at all. The Israelis and the GCC countries, the USG and EU, are all soul
brothers : tiny 'elite' minorities attempting to rule their respective roosts by technological
means encompassing everything from drones to the media to their ubiquitous taps.
Totalitarianism is alive and well in the Middle East ... and in North America, the UK, Europe
... the last thing to be tolerated, the first things to be crushed, are 'human assemblies in non-dedicated
areas' over which their corporate selves would rule.
The Powers That Are are thicker than thieves. Among mere thieves competition remains. The PTA
are acting in loco parentis ... taking 'care' of us all for their own good.
Mike Gravel used to describe our present political situation as 'adolescent': mature enough
to understand the fix we're in, too immature to do anything but complain to 'those in charge'.
We're in charge. We've just been asleep at the wheel. Time to wake up, finally? Before our
whole world become Nice?
I agree that if Sanders had gone on to the Green Party he could have gotten significant support,
enough to guarantee Clinton's loss. But that's not what he wanted to do, whatever his reasons
for running. Folks overseas who think that Trump is anything more than a loudmouth, racist who
would be controlled by the same forces as Clinton is controlled by are fooling themselves. If
Sanders ran as a "pied piper" it wasn't successful. If anything, he presented a contrast to what
the Democratic Party has become.
In 1963 there was a coup in America. Since then the military-industrial complex has run the
country. It has been most apparent in its foreign policy, which has been the conquest of natural
resources (especially oil and gas) worldwide. America's resentment with the USSR/Russia has to
do with their living on top of resources.
But in order to continue the illusion of democracy in the US, it was necessary to maintain
some differences between the two parties so that Americans would think that they have a choice.
Meanwhile, the party that is supposed to represent the working class has been sliding into the
arms of the corporatists. Essentially, in order to give Americans a "choice" Trump has been pushed
as the demonic clown versus H. Clinton. Unfortunately, for good reasons as well as because of
endless propaganda from the right, most Americans distrust Clinton, as well they should. Her casual
announcement about enforcing a "no-fly zone" over Syria is essentially a declaration of war against
Russia.
Going back to the coup in 1963, in order to maintain control of the population it was necessary
for the ruling class to continue to generate candidates each election cycle to pretend to care
about the working class. I have long suspected that early on in their careers both Bill Clinton
and Hillary Clinton were recruited by US intelligence. During his time in Britain Bill's classmates
assumed that he was CIA At about this time Hillary, who'd been raised a rabid Republican, went
to both the Republican and Democratic national conventions in 1968. Not only was it a rather expensive
thing to do for a college student, but most people who are interested in one party aren't interested
in the other. I suspect it was the beginning of her career in US power politics. Shortly after
she wrote a pro-Vietnam speech for Melvin Laird in 1968, she was involved with the various Black
Panther trials around the US.
It's hard to believe that the Hillary who stands before us now was ever a political
ally of the Panthers. Rather, I suspect she was observing for an intelligence agency, the FBI
or CIA She sat through a Panther trial in New Haven, Connecticut, and then spent a summer in
Oakland working for the law firm that was representing the Panthers in the Bay Area. Essentially,
she was in the right place at the right time to glean information for COINTELPRO, the massive
spying program directed against anti-war and black movements. A few years later she worked on
the Democrats' legal team for Watergate, another good place for a government informant to be.
Bill, during his time at Oxford, would have functioned like the thousands of informants who sat
in on peace group meetings across American campuses.
Later, when the CIA was dumping cocaine at Mena, Arkansas, Bill Clinton was in position
to make sure state police left the operation alone. It's not surprising that George W. Bush's
first head of the DEA was Asa Hutchinson, who'd been the incurious federal prosecutor over that
part of Arkansas when the drugs came in.
The Clintons were prominent in the Democratic Leadership Council, which was an organization
within the Democratic Party pushing it to the right. In 1992 Bill pushed trade agreements that
would destroy the American middle class. Since then the party has been hopelessly corrupted by
Wall Street money.
It's now Hillary's turn. If you've always wanted to take a vacation somewhere or wanted to
do something before you die, I suggest you make time for it this year. I cannot think of another
president in memory who is more wed to military adventurism than Hillary.
Proportional representation etc. is not a panaceum. I think that party solidarity, even if the
party is only partially satisfactory is a good tool. What is happening is that Sanders who represents
"turn left" for Democrats is now more electable than Clinton. This has a potential for a big change,
much bigger than ephemeral "relative success" of the Greens, who are fated to collect less votes
than Libertarians (they may have their best year in a long, long time).
Of course, the "right wing of the left" discards party solidarity with ease. They more or less
rejected McGovern and Carter. Hillary's health care reform had the same fate. But they have very
hard time copying with change. Hillary basically promised good old times, and this is not good
enough. I suspect that her game plan is to unload full blast of "Trump's corruption" ads closer
to elections and keep the "positive tone" for now, and that may even work.
But if she polls badly enough, Democratic establishment may see the light and go for Sanders.
"... The mainstream US news media have never liked the brash billionaire Trump. He makes good circulation figures for sure, but the large coverage the Republican contender has received from the outset is preponderantly negative. ..."
"... Trump's campaign has instead been buoyed by the popular vote, not by endorsement from the elite establishment, including the Republican Party leadership and the corporate media. Now that the race for the presidency is turning into a two-horse contest between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Trump, the media's antipathy towards Trump is moving to an all-out barrage of attacks. Attacks, it has to be said, that are bordering on hysteria and which only a corporate machine could convey. ..."
"... Trump vehemently rebuffed the claims. He said it was simply a star, like the ones that US Marshals use. When his campaign team reacted to the initial media furor by replacing the red star with a circle it only served to fuel accusations against Trump because he was seen to be acting defensively. However, he later defiantly rebuked his campaign team and said they should have stuck with the star image and let him defend that choice of image as simply an innocuous star shape. For what it's worth, Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is Jewish, subsequently rallied to the tycoon's defense and said he was not racist nor anti-Semitic and that the controversy was a media-contrived storm in a teacup. ..."
"... Trump makes a valid point that Clinton's abuse of state secrecy – whether intentional or negligent – has in fact posed a national security threat. Yet the media focus is decidedly not on his Democrat rival. It is rather centered on overblown concerns about the wealthy real estate developer. ..."
"... Trump is right. The political system in the US is rigged . Not just in terms of double standards of the justice system, but in the bigger context of how candidates are screened and vetted – in this case through undue vilification. ..."
"... Trump's reactionary views on immigration, race relations and international politics are certainly questionable. His credibility as the next president of the US may be dubious. But is his credibility any less than that of Hillary Clinton? Her melding of official capacity with private gain from Wall Street banks and foreign governments acting as donors to her family's fund-raising Clinton Foundation has the pungent whiff of selling federal policy for profit. Her penchant for criminal regime change operations in Honduras, Libya, Syria and Ukraine speak of a political mafia don. ..."
"... American politics has long been derided as a "dog and pony show" ..."
"... But what we are witnessing is a brazen display of how the powers-that-be (Wall Street, media, Pentagon, Washington, etc) are audaciously intervening in this electoral cycle to disenfranchise the voting population. ..."
Presidential hopeful Donald Trump is right: the 'system is 'rigged'. The media barrage against
the billionaire demonstrates irrefutably how the power establishment, not the people, decides who
sits in the White House.
Trump is increasingly assailed in the US media with alleged character flaws. The latest blast
paints Trump as a total loose cannon who would launch World War III. In short, a "nuke nut".
In the Pentagon-aligned Defense One journal, the property magnate is described as someone who
cannot be trusted with his finger on the nuclear button. Trump would order nuclear strikes equivalent
to 20,000 Hiroshima bombings as "easy as ordering a pizza", claimed the opinion piece.
If that's not an example of "project fear" then what is?
The mainstream US news media have never liked the brash billionaire Trump. He makes good circulation
figures for sure, but the large coverage the Republican contender has received from the outset is
preponderantly negative.
Trump's campaign has instead been buoyed by the popular vote, not by endorsement from the elite
establishment, including the Republican Party leadership and the corporate media. Now that the race
for the presidency is turning into a two-horse contest between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Trump,
the media's antipathy towards Trump is moving to an all-out barrage of attacks. Attacks, it has to
be said, that are bordering on hysteria and which only a corporate machine could convey.
Like a giant screening process, the Trump candidacy and his supporters are being systematically
disenfranchised. At this rate of attrition, by the time the election takes place in November the
result will already have been all but formally decided – by the powers-that-be, not the popular will.
The past week provides a snapshot of the intensifying media barrage facing Trump. Major US media
outlets have run prominent claims that Trump is a fan of the former brutal Iraqi dictator Saddam
Hussein. Those claims were based on a loose interpretation of what Trump said at a rally when he
referred to Saddam's strong-arm suppression of terrorism. He didn't say he liked Saddam. In fact,
called him a "bad guy". But Trump said that the Iraqi dictator efficiently eliminated terrorists.
A second media meme to emerge was "Trump the anti-Semite". This referred to an image his campaign
team tweeted of Hillary Clinton as "the most corrupt candidate ever". The words were emblazoned on
a red, six-pointed star. Again, the mainstream media gave copious coverage to claims that the image
was anti-Semitic because, allegedly, it was a Jewish 'Star of David'.
Trump vehemently rebuffed the claims. He said it was simply a star, like the ones that US Marshals
use. When his campaign team reacted to the initial media furor by replacing the red star with a circle
it only served to fuel accusations against Trump because he was seen to be acting defensively. However,
he later defiantly rebuked his campaign team and said they should have stuck with the star image
and let him defend that choice of image as simply an innocuous star shape.
For what it's worth, Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is Jewish, subsequently rallied to
the tycoon's defense and said he was not racist nor anti-Semitic and that the controversy was a media-contrived
storm in a teacup.
Not only that but the Trump-risks-Armageddon article also refers to him being in the same company
as Russian leader Vladimir Putin and North Korea's Kim Jung Un who, we are told, "also have their
finger on the nuclear button".
Under the headline, 'How to slow Donald Trump from pushing the nuclear button', a photograph shows
the presidential contender with a raised thump in a downward motion. The answer being begged is:
Don't vote for this guy – unless you want to incinerate the planet!
This is scare-tactics to the extreme thrown in for good measure along with slander and demonization.
And all pumped up to maximum volume by the US corporate media, all owned by just six conglomerates.
Trump is having to now spend more of his time explaining what he is alleged to have said or did
not say, instead of being allowed to level criticisms at his Democrat rival or to advance whatever
political program he intends to deliver as president.
The accusation that Trump is a threat to US national security is all the more ironic given that
this week Hillary Clinton was labelled as "extremely careless" by the head of the FBI over her dissemination
of state secrets through her insecure private email account.
Many legal experts and former US government officials maintain that Clinton's breach of classified
information is deserving of criminal prosecution – an outcome that would debar her from contesting
the presidential election.
Why the FBI should have determined that there is no case for prosecution even though more than
100 classified documents were circulated by Clinton when she was Secretary of State (2009-2013) has
raised public heckles of "double standards".
The controversy has been compounded by the US Attorney General Loretta Lynch also declaring that
no charges will be pressed and the case is closed – a week after she met with Hillary's husband,
Bill, on board her plane for a hush-hush chat.
Trump
makes a valid point that Clinton's abuse of state secrecy – whether intentional or negligent
– has in fact posed a national security threat. Yet the media focus is decidedly not on his Democrat
rival. It is rather centered on overblown concerns about the wealthy real estate developer.
Trump is right. The political system in the US is
rigged. Not just in terms of double standards of the justice system, but in the bigger context
of how candidates are screened and vetted – in this case through undue vilification.
Trump's reactionary views on immigration, race relations and international politics are certainly
questionable. His credibility as the next president of the US may be dubious. But is his credibility
any less than that of Hillary Clinton? Her melding of official capacity with private gain from Wall
Street banks and foreign governments acting as donors to her family's fund-raising Clinton Foundation
has the pungent whiff of selling federal policy for profit. Her penchant for criminal regime change
operations in Honduras, Libya, Syria and Ukraine speak of a political mafia don.
American politics has long been derided as a "dog and pony show", whereby powerful lobbies
buy the pageant outcome. Trump's own participation in the election is only possible because he is
a multi-billionaire who is able to fund a political campaign. That said, however, the New York businessman has garnered a sizable popular following from his
maverick attacks on the rotten Washington establishment.
But what we are witnessing is a brazen display of how the powers-that-be (Wall Street, media,
Pentagon, Washington, etc) are audaciously intervening in this electoral cycle to disenfranchise
the voting population.
Clinton has emerged as the candidate-of-choice for the establishment, and the race to the White
House is being nobbled – like never before.
It is difficult to imagine how the Trump rank and file and the party's corporate
"establishment" will paper over their irreconcilable differences, rooted in the party's failure
to preserve skin privilege and good jobs in a White Man's Country.
Just as brazenly, Trump, the rabble rousing billionaire, has violated the most sacred ruling
class taboos by rejecting the
national security rationale for the hyper-aggressive, ever-expanding, global U.S. military
presence. If Trump fails to convincingly recant such heresies, the rulers will deal with him with
extreme prejudice.
"... I think that dissent will continue as long as the United States continues. We don't know exactly what forms it will take, or what causes dissenters will take up. But we do have a pretty good idea from history that dissenters will always push for more freedom, more liberty, more economic equality, and that there will be counter-dissenters who will seek to deprive them of these goals. There always seems to be that for every two steps forward, there's one step back. ..."
What do you foresee as far as the future of dissent is concerned in the United States?
I think that dissent will continue as long as the United States continues. We don't know exactly
what forms it will take, or what causes dissenters will take up. But we do have a pretty good idea
from history that dissenters will always push for more freedom, more liberty, more economic equality,
and that there will be counter-dissenters who will seek to deprive them of these goals. There always
seems to be that for every two steps forward, there's one step back.
What is gained for leftist movements today by anchoring themselves a positive account of the
nation's founding (accounts that suggest that this nation has leftist impulses at its core)?
I think that leftist movements today have a deep, abiding faith in "democracy." And in that way,
they are the true heirs of the American Revolution. Even if most of the "founding fathers" like [George]
Washington and [Alexander] Hamilton and [Thomas] Jefferson were elites who distrusted the masses,
they did give lip service to liberty and equality, and they did formulate fundamental arguments promoting
the idea of a government of the people. Today, their ideas are more broadly conceived than they themselves
conceived them. Because leftists today believe in the value of democracy, what they are in essence
doing is holding America's feet to the fire. They are demanding that the United States live up to
those ideals ensconced in our founding documents. "Be true to what you said on paper," as Martin
Luther King Jr. expressed it in his last speech on April 3, 1968, in Memphis.
What is inevitably lost or papered over when one embraces a positive founding narrative about
a nation-state?
What is papered over is that the majority of the "founding fathers" were slave owners. And the
institution of slavery gave them the leisure time to devote to thinking and writing about such high-fallutin'
and precious concepts as democracy, liberty and republican forms of government. Historian Edmund
S. Morgan, in his book American Slavery, American Freedom, makes a compelling argument that the notions
we have of freedom, that the basis for American freedom is slavery. If it weren't for slavery, we
would never have developed as we have. So it is rather presumptuous of us, even for the left, to
feel that we've embraced freedom and believe in equality for all. Still, despite that, it doesn't
mean we should throw the baby out with the bath water. What it does mean is that we should aspire
to those ideals, even if the "founding fathers" didn't fully believe in them themselves, even if
they were disingenuous hypocrites who framed a constitution solely to benefit and protect the property
rights and aristocratic status of their class.
Today, we need to take those ideals seriously and work toward making the reality of American society
more closely resemble the ideals they espoused in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
"That empowerment must be both economic and political. Workers deserve
to be compensated fairly for their work, and have generous social support
programs to rely upon when economic changes that are out of their control
throw them out of work or force them to accept lower paying jobs.
We should not hesitate to ask those who have gained so much from
globalization and technological change to give something back to those
who have paid the costs of their success."
All this would have been especially great, say, forty or even thirty
years ago.
At least 50% of supporters of the Vermont senator insist they won't vote for neocon warmonger
Clinton, no matter what. Many view the former secretary of state with her deep ties to the Democratic
establishment as the polar opposite of Sanders and his rallying cry of political revolution
Notable quotes:
"... I am somewhat surprised that Bernie Sanders was not true to himself and his supporters. They are not happy that he is selling out! ..."
"... "Sanders is not just a 'lesser evil'. His proposals and policies are good In addition, Sanders seeks to change the current electoral process based on money coming from corporations, political action committees and wealthy individuals. Changing this system is the first step...." ..."
"... The November election will be a referendum on the neolibcon establishment in the U.S. as much as the Brexit vote was for the EU. The Brexit vote showed that people are so fed up that they aren't listening to establishment fear-mongering. ..."
"... No matter how Democratic Party loyalists try to spin it, the blame for a Trump win will fall on the corrupt Democratic Party establishment. It is no accident that the vast majority of Super-delegates have steadfastly stood by Hillary, warts and all. ..."
"... Bernie the sheepdog has failed his movement but the Greens and true progressives will continue. ..."
"... It says a great deal about both Warren and the Democratic Party, in which she is the most high-profile "left" politician, that she never endorsed Bernie and has now enthusiastically endorsed Hillary. It would not be a stretch to say that had Warren endorsed and campaigned for Sanders, it could well have been the difference needed to defeat Clinton in the primary. But she did not. ..."
"... Because of course the problem is much larger than just Warren, Clinton, or Debbie Wasserman Schultz. At the heart of the matter is a political party that is thoroughly undemocratic and corrupt to its very core – one that answers to Wall Street, not working people. It's the second most pro-capitalist party in the world, after the Republican Party. ..."
"... Yes it is the Washington Post, but the point stands: it is a strange place for a 'revolutionary' to deliver his message. Unless that message is one of capitulation (it is) . ..."
Seems you mean the Washington Post, not the WSJ.
Alternet seems to like it.
"What do we want? We want to end the rapid movement that we are currently experiencing toward
oligarchic control of our economic and political life," Sanders concluded. "As Lincoln put it
at Gettysburg, we want a government of the people, by the people and for the people. That is what
we want, and that is what we will continue fighting for."
rufus magister | Jun 24, 2016 8:02:34 AM |
86 rufus magister | Jun 25, 2016 9:11:21 AM |
94
This post at
Countepunch takes on the "dog" analogy, arguing that "Sanders is not just a 'lesser evil'.
His proposals and policies are good In addition, Sanders seeks to change the current electoral
process based on money coming from corporations, political action committees and wealthy individuals.
Changing this system is the first step...."
There are any number of arguments that Sanders has changed and will continue to change the
political dyanmics. More and in a different direction might be nice. But after decades of neo-liberal
assaults on the working class, let's not have the best be the enemy of the good.
Sanders' meteoric rise is evidence that unabashed progressive politics is an effective antidote
to the far-right xenophobia on the rise across the developed world. "Every time we have a spasm
of capitalism, whether this is the 1930s or now, the seeds of vulgar ultra-right-wingness sprout
into a very ugly tree," Varoufakis said....
"I am very impressed by his capacity to rise from almost complete marginality to the center
of the debate," Varoufakis continued. "And if you look at the discussion he has invigorated,
or reinvigorated, in the Democratic Party, that just goes to show that it is perfectly possible
to excite young people....
Yeah, he botched with Syriza in Greece. But he was principled enough to resign and move on
politically. I don't know with what sort of success his proposed organization met.
Alternet offers a handy list of things Sanders has already changed about American politics.
I particulary note points 5 and 6, on princples and issues, but the author notes he has brought
progressives together, shown popularly-funded campaigns to be viable, and made socialism respectable.
"Not too shabby."
Politics isn't for the meek, but it doesn't have to be all mud all the time like the GOP's
nominating contest, and Sanders has shown that in state after state....
The passion and public purpose of his campaign has struck deep and wide notes precisely
because of that. More than anything, Sanders has reminded vast swaths of the country that his
democratic socialist agenda is exactly what they want America to be-a fairer and more dignified,
tolerant, responsible and conscientious country.
I have previously noted, the consensus amongst the pundit class is that Sanders is a principled
politician. The conduct of his campaign reflects these principles. I do not agree with them, but
I respect that he has been consistent in their application throughout his political career.
Ah, but "what is to be done" with all of the passion aroused? Sanders clearly intends to keep
the pressure on within the Democratic Party. Though doubtless, it will not all remain there.
I keep hearing that "things" are different, post-Occupy, etc., and that some sort of Green/Libertarian/Trump
miracle is possible. It is also possible, and historically conditioned, that these pressures will
in fact push the Democrats to the left.
This would be good, in and for the short-term. Revolutionary change takes patient work,
especially in early stages. We're quite a "Long March" away, and these are useful baby-steps.
So this whole notion that but the hopes of the masses and left wing of the Democratic Party,
we'd have our Utopia by now, us a cheap alibi as to why the divided left
(as "b" very accurately describes) can't make any headway, even after the economy nearly repeated
the Great Depression.
The nerve of those damn proles, hoping for short-term improvement! What about the intersectionality?
You know, I don't think "Suck it up and butch it out 'til after The Revolution, you ignorant,
evil, unenlightened over-privileged sell-outs" is really that attractive as politics. Maybe that
overstates this argument, but probably not too much. "The Greens know that someone is in the
buff but the Sanders gang has yet to catch on that their emperor has no clothes" does strike a
rather condescending tone, sure to win friends and influence people.
Somewhat at odds with the next paragraph, though. But is topic is the "Green Machine."
Second, and more importantly, Marsh has left out a key point in his analysis. The Greens just
passed a major benchmark to gain federal funding.
Your dismissing of 'collusion' for lack of a smoking gun ignores much circumstantial evidence:
> Sanders has been a Democrat for many years in all but name;
- he has an arrangement with the Democratic Party whereby he runs in Vermont Democratic
Primaries but will not accept the Democratic nomination and the Democratic Party will not
fund candidates that oppose him;
- Obama campaigned for him, Schumer and Reid endorsed him, he calls Hillary "a friend",
etc.
> He pulled punches in his campaign - refusing to attack Hillary or Obama on issues that
could've made a big difference for his campaign, like:
- when Hillary defended taking money by pointing to Obama who has clearly been pro-Wall
Street;
- Obama's record on the economy and black issues (Obama's support has helped Hillary
to win over blacks) ;
- his slowness to criticize Hillary-DNC collusion;
- on Hillary's emails after the State Dept IG report;
- he all but endorsed Hillary from the start.
The November election will be a referendum on the neolibcon establishment in the U.S. as much
as the Brexit vote was for the EU. The Brexit vote showed that people are so fed up that they
aren't listening to establishment fear-mongering.
No matter how Democratic Party loyalists try to spin it, the blame for a Trump win will
fall on the corrupt Democratic Party establishment. It is no accident that the vast majority of
Super-delegates have steadfastly stood by Hillary, warts and all.
If Bernie refuses to break from the Democratic Party, our movement should back Jill Stein
as the strongest left alternative in the presidential election ... Stein deserves the strongest
possible support from Sandernistas .... With Bernie stepping out of the race, and likely
endorsing Clinton, it will be up to us to continue the political revolution and to stand up
against both Clintonism and Trump_vs_deep_state.
And drives home the point with:
It says a great deal about both Warren and the Democratic Party, in which she is the most
high-profile "left" politician, that she never endorsed Bernie and has now enthusiastically
endorsed Hillary. It would not be a stretch to say that had Warren endorsed and campaigned
for Sanders, it could well have been the difference needed to defeat Clinton in the primary.
But she did not.
It says a great deal about the whole of the Democratic Party leadership – which claims that
its key priority is to defeat Trump – that it has fiercely backed Clinton in spite of the fact
that the polls have shown Sanders to be the far stronger candidate in every matchup.
Because of course the problem is much larger than just Warren, Clinton, or Debbie Wasserman
Schultz. At the heart of the matter is a political party that is thoroughly undemocratic and
corrupt to its very core – one that answers to Wall Street, not working people. It's the second
most pro-capitalist party in the world, after the Republican Party.
<> <> <> <> <> <> <>
@86 Yes it is the Washington Post, but the point stands: it is a strange place for a 'revolutionary'
to deliver his message. Unless that message is one of capitulation (it is) .
John Quiggin (
previously ) delivers some of the most salient commentary on the Brexit
vote and how it fits in with Syriza, Podemos, Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders
(etc) as well as Trump, French neo-fascists, and other hypernationalist
movements.
The core of this analysis is that while neoliberalism(s) (Quiggin argues
that US and non-US neoliberalism are different things) has failed the majority
of the world, and while things were falling apart after the financial crisis,
the left failed to offer real alternatives. The "tribalist" movements --
Trump, Leave, Golden Dawn, etc -- are anti-neoliberal, but in the absence
of any analysis, have lashed out at immigrants (rather than bankers and
financial elites) as the responsible parties for their suffering.
The US political system gives us a choice between neoliberals who hate
brown people, women, and gay people; and neoliberals who don't. Trump offers
an anti-neoliberal choice (and so did the Leave campaign). Bernie also offered
an anti-neoliberal platform (one that didn't hate brown people, women, and
lgtbq people), but didn't carry the day -- meaning that the upcoming US
election is going to be a choice between neoliberalism (but tolerance) and
anti-neoliberalism (and bigotry). This is a dangerous situation, as the
UK has discovered.
The vote for Britain as a whole was quite close. But a closer look
reveals an even bigger win for tribalism than the aggregate results
suggest. The version of tribalism offered in the Leave campaign was
specifically English. Unsurprisingly, it did not appeal to Scottish
or Irish voters who rejected it out of hand. Looking at England alone,
however, Leave won comfortably with 53 per cent of the vote and was
supported almost everywhere outside London, a city more dependent than
any other in the world on the global financial system.
Given the framing of the campaign, the choice for the left was, even
more than usually, to pick the lesser of very different evils. Voting
for Remain involved acquiescence in austerity and an overgrown and bloated
financial system, both in the UK and Europe. The Leave campaign relied
more and more on coded, and then overt, appeals to racism and bigotry,
symbolised by the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox, stabbed to death by a
neo-Nazi with ties to extreme tribalist organizations in both the UK
and US. The result was a tepid endorsement of Remain, which secured
the support of around 70 per cent of Labour voters, but did little to
shift the sentiment of the broader public.
The big problem for the tribalists is that, although their program
has now been endorsed by the voters, it does not offer a solution to
the economic decline against which most of their supporters were protesting.
Indeed, while the catastrophic scenarios pushed by the Remain campaign
are probably overblown, the process of renegotiating economic relationships
with the rest of the world will almost certainly involve a substantial
period of economic stagnation.
The terms offered by the EU for the maintenance of anything like
existing market access will almost certainly include maintenance of
the status quo on immigration. In the absence of a humiliating capitulation
by the new pro-Brexit government, that will mean that Britain (or England)
will face a long and painful process of adjustment.
Britain has voted to leave the EU. The reason? A large section of the working class, concentrated in towns and cities that have
been quietly devastated by free-market economics, decided they'd had enough.
Enough bleakness, enough ruined high streets, enough minimum wage jobs, and enough lies and fearmongering from the political class.
The issue that catalysed the vote for Brexit was the massive, unplanned migration from Europe that began after the accession of
the A8 countries and then surged again after 2008 once the Eurozone stagnated while Britain enjoyed a limp recovery.
It is no surprise to anybody who's lived their life at the street end of politics and journalism that a minority of the white
working class are racists and xenophobes. But anyone who thinks half the British population fits that description is dead
wrong.
Tens of thousands of black and Asian people will have voted for Brexit, and similar numbers of politically educated, left-leaning
workers too. Birmingham, Nottingham, Sheffield and Coventry - multi-ethnic university cities - they too went for Leave.
Neither the political centre or the pro-remain left was able to explain how to offset the negative economic impact of low-skilled
migration in conditions of (a) guaranteed free movement (b) permanent stagnation in Europe and (c) austerity in Britain.
Told by the government they could never control migration while inside the EU, just over 50% of the population decided controlling
migration was more important than EU membership.
So the problem for Labour is not, yet, large numbers of its own voters "deserting the party". They may still do so if Labour plays
this wrong - but even as late as the May council elections Labour's core vote held up.
Instead Labour's heartland voters simply decided to change the party's policy on migration from below, and forever, by
leaving the EU.
The party's front bench tried, late and in a muddled way, to come up with micro-economic solutions - more funds for areas where
the NHS and schools come under strain; a new directive to prevent employers shipping entire workforces from East Europe on poor terms
and conditions. And a promise to renegotiate the free movement pillar of the Lisbon Treaty in the future.
Because it was made late, and half-heartedly, this offer was barely heard. And clearly to some it did not seem plausible - given
the insistence of the Labour centre and the liberal bourgeoisie that migration is unmitigatedly good and "there's nothing you can
do about it". And also given the insistence of Jean Claude Juncker that there could be no renegotiation at all.
Ultimately, as I've written before, there is
a
strong case for "Lexit" on grounds of democracy and economic justice. But this won't be Lexit. Unless Labour can win an early
election it will be a fast-track process of Thatcherisation and the breakup of the UK.
Unlike me, however, many people who believe in Lexit were prepared to vote alongside right wing Tories to get to first base.
The task for the left in Britain now is to adapt to the new reality, and fast. The Labour right is already trying to pin the blame
on Corbyn; UKIP will make a play for Labour's voters. Most likely there'll be a second independence referendum in Scotland.
Corbyn was right to try and fight on "remain and reform" but his proposed reforms were never radical enough. He was also right
to devote energy to other issues - making the point that in or out of the EU, social justice and public services are under threat.
But the right and centre of Labour then confused voters by parading along with the Tory centrists who Corbyn had promised never to
stand on a platform with.
The Blairite Progress group is deluded if it thinks it can use this moment to launch a coup against Corbyn. The neoliberal wing
of the Labour Party needs to realise - it may take them a few days - that their time is over.
Ultimately it looks like Labour still managed to get 2/3 of its voters to voter Remain [I'll check this but that's what YouGov
said earlier]. So the major failure is Cameron's. It looks like the Tory vote broke 60/40 to Brexit.
It's possible Cameron will resign quickly. But that's not the issue. The issue is the election and what to fight for.
Labour has to start, right now, a big political reorientation. Here is my 10 point suggestion for how we on the left of Labour
go forward.
1. Accept the result. Labour will lead Britain out of EU if it wins the election.
2. Demand an election within 6–9 months: Cameron has no mandate to negotiate Brexit. The parties must be allowed to put their
respective Brexit plans to the electorate and thereafter run the negotiations. In that Labour should:
3. Fight for Britain to stay in the EEA and apply an "emergency brake" to migration under the rules of the EEA. That should be
a Labour goverment's negotiating position.
4. Labour should fight to keep all the EU's progressive laws (employment, environment, consumer protection etc) but scrap restrictions
on state aid, trade union action and nationalisation. If the EU won't allow that, then the fallback is a complete break and a bilateral
trade deal.
5. Adopt a new, progressive long-term migration policy: design a points based system designed to respond annually to demand from
employers and predicted GDP growth; make parliament responsible for setting the immigration target annually on the basis of an independent
expert report; the needs of the economy - plus the absolute duty to accept refugees fleeing war and torture - is what should set
the target, not some arbitrary ceiling. And devote massively more resources than before to meeting the stresses migration places
on local services.
6. Continue to demand Britain honours its duty to refugees to the tune of tens of thousands. Reassure existing migrant communities
in Britain that they are safe, welcome and cannot be expelled as a result of Brexit. Offer all those who've come here from Europe
under free movement rules the inalienable right to stay.
7. Relentlessly prioritise and attack the combined problems of low wages, in-work poverty and dead-beat towns.
8. Offer Scotland a radical Home Rule package, and create a federalised Labour Party structure. If, in a second referendum, Scotland
votes to leave the UK, Labour should offer a no-penalty exit process that facilitates Scotland rejoining the EU if its people wish.
In the meantime Labour should seek a formal coalition with the SNP to block a right wing Tory/UKIP government emerging from the next
election.
9. Offer the Republic of Ireland an immediate enhanced bilateral deal to keep the border open for movement and trade.
10. The strategic problem for Labour remains as before. Across Britain there have crystallised two clear kinds of radicalism:
that of the urban salariat and that of the low-paid manual working class. In Scotland those groups are aligned around left cultural
nationalism. In England and Wales, Labour can only win an election if it can attract both groups: it cannot and should not retreat
to becoming a party of the public sector workforce, the graduate and the university town. The only way Labour can unite these culturally
different groups (and geographic areas) - so clearly dramatised by the local-level results - is economic radicalism. Redistribution,
well-funded public services, a revived private sector and vibrant local democracy is a common interest across both groups.
11. If Labour in England and Wales cannot quickly rekindle its ties to the low-paid manual working class - cultural and visceral,
not just political - the situation is ripe for that group to swing to the right. This can easily be prevented but it means a clean
break with Blairism and an end to the paralysis inside the shadow cabinet.
From my social media feed it's clear a lot of young radical left people and anti-racists are despondent. It seems they equated
the EU with internationalism; they knew about and sympathised with the totally disempowered poor communities but maybe assumed it
was someone else's job to connect with them.
I am glad I voted to Remain, even though I had to grit my teeth. But I underestimated the sheer frustration: I'd heard it clearly
in the Welsh valleys, but not spotted it clearly enough in places like Barking, Kettering, Newport.
I am not despondent though. The Brexit result makes a radical left government in Britain harder to get - because it's likely Scotland
will leave, and the UK will disingegrate, and the Blairites will go off and found some kind of tribute band to neoliberalism with
the Libdems.
But if you trace this event to its root cause, it is clear: neoliberalism is broken.
There's no consent for the stagnation and austerity it has inflicted on people; there's nothing but hostility to the political
class and its fearmongering - whether that be Juncker, Cameron or the Blairites. As with Scotland, given the chance to disrupt the
institutions of neoliberal rule, people will do so and ignore the warnings of experts and the political class.
I predicted in Postcapitalism that the crackup of neoliberalism would take geo-strategic form first, economic second. This is
the first big crack.
It is, geopolitically, a victory for Putin and will weaken the West. For the centre in Europe it poses the question point blank:
will you scrap Lisbon, scrap austerity and boost economic growth or let the whole project collapse amid stagnation? I predict they
will not, and that the entire project will then collapse.
All we can do, as the left, is go on fighting for the interests of the poor, the workforce, the youth, refugees and migrants.
We have to find better institutions and better language to do it with. As in 1932, Britain has become the first country to break
with the institutional form of the global order.
If we do have a rerun of the 1930s now in Europe, we need a better left. The generation that tolerated Blairism and revelled in
meaningless centrist technocracy needs to wake up. That era is over.
"... Class, nationalist, and ethnic elements are all involved in the Brexit vote in a complex integration of protest. ..."
"... Press and media emphasize the nationalist and ethnic (immigrant-anti-immigrant) themes but generally avoid discussing or analyzing
the event from a class perspective. But that perspective is fundamental. What Brexit represents is a proxy vote against the economic
effects of Free Trade, the customs union called the European Union. Free trade deals always benefit corporations and investors. ..."
"... Free trade is not just about goods and services flows between member countries; it is even more about money and capital flows
and what is called direct investment. UK corporations benefit from the opportunity to move capital and invest in cheap labor elsewhere
in Europe, mostly the newly added members to the EU since 2000, in eastern europe. Free trade also means the unrestricted flow of labor.
Once these east european countries were added to the EU treaty, massive inflows of labor to the UK resulted. Just from Poland, more
than a million migrated to the UK alone. ..."
Class, nationalist, and ethnic elements are all involved in the Brexit vote in a complex integration of protest.
Press and media emphasize the nationalist and ethnic (immigrant-anti-immigrant) themes but generally avoid discussing or analyzing
the event from a class perspective. But that perspective is fundamental. What Brexit represents is a proxy vote against the economic
effects of Free Trade, the customs union called the European Union. Free trade deals always benefit corporations and investors.
Free trade is not just about goods and services flows between member countries; it is even more about money and capital flows
and what is called direct investment. UK corporations benefit from the opportunity to move capital and invest in cheap labor elsewhere
in Europe, mostly the newly added members to the EU since 2000, in eastern europe. Free trade also means the unrestricted flow of
labor. Once these east european countries were added to the EU treaty, massive inflows of labor to the UK resulted. Just from Poland,
more than a million migrated to the UK alone.
In the pre-2008, when economic conditions were strong and economic growth and job creation the rule, the immigration's effect
on jobs and wages of native UK workers was not a major concern. But with the crash of 2008, and, more importantly, the UK austerity
measures that followed, cutting benefits and reducing jobs and wages, the immigration effect created the perception (and some reality)
that immigrants were responsible for the reduced jobs, stagnant wages, and declining social services. Immigrant labor, of course,
is supported by business since it means availability of lower wages. But working class UK see it as directly impacting wages, jobs,
and social service benefits. THis is partly true, and partly not.
So Brexit becomes a proxy vote for all the discontent with the UK austerity, benefit cuts, poor quality job creation and wage
stagnation. But that economic condition and discontent is not just a consequence of the austerity policies of the elites. It is also
a consequence of the Free Trade effects that permit the accelerated immigration that contributes to the economic effects, and the
Free Trade that shifts UK investment and better paying manufacturing jobs elsewhere in the EU.
So Free Trade is behind the immigration and job and wage deterioration which is behind the Brexit proxy vote. The anti-immigration
sentiment and the anti-Free Trade sentiment are two sides of the same coin. That is true in the USA with the Trump candidacy, as
well as in the UK with the Brexit vote. Trump is vehemently anti-immigrant and simultaneously says he's against the US free trade
deals. This is a powerful political message that Hillary ignores at her peril. She cannot tip-toe around this issue, but she will,
required by her big corporation campaign contributors.
Another 'lesson' of the UK Brexit vote is that the discontent seething within the populations of Europe, US and Japan today is
not accurately registered by traditional polls. This is true in the US today as it was in the UK yesterday.
The Brexit vote cannot be understood without understanding its origins in three elements: the combined effects of Free Trade (the
EU), the economic crash of 2008-09, which Europe has not really recovered from having fallen into a double dip recession 2011-13
and a nearly stagnant recovery after, and the austerity measures imposed by UK elites (and in Europe) since 2013.
These developments have combined to create the economic discontent for which Brexit is the proxy. Free Trade plus Austerity plus
economic recovery only for investors, bankers, and big corporations is the formula for Brexit.
Where the Brexit vote was strongest was clearly in the midlands and central England-Wales section of the country, its working
class and industrial base. Where the vote preferred staying in the EU, was the non-working class areas of London and south England,
as well as Scotland and Northern Ireland. Scotland is dependent on oil exports to the EU and thus tightly linked to the trade. Northern
Ireland's economy is tied largely to Scotland and to the other EU economy, Ireland. So their vote was not surprising. Also the immigration
effects were far less in these regions than in the English industrial heartland.
Some would argue that the UK has recovered better than most economies since 2013. But a closer look at the elements of that recovery
shows it has been centered largely in southern England and in the London metro area. It has been based on a construction-housing
boom and the inflow of money capital from abroad, including from China investment in UK infrastructure in London and elsewhere. The
UK also struck a major deal with China to have London as the financial center for trading the Yuan currency globally. Money capital
and investment concentrated on housing-construction produced a property asset boom, which was weakening before the Brexit. It will
now collapse, I predict, by at least 20% or more. The UK's tentative recovery is thus now over, and was slipping even before the
vote.
Also frequently reported is that wages had been rising in the UK. This is an 'average' indicator, which is true. But the average
has been pulled up by the rising salaries and wages of the middle class professionals and other elements of the work force in the
London-South who had benefited by the property-construction boom of recent years. Working class areas just east of London voted strongly
for Brexit.
Another theme worth a comment is the Labor Party's leadership vote for remaining in the EU. What this represents is the further
decline of traditional social democratic parties throughout Europe. These parties in recent decades have increasingly aligned themselves
with the Neoliberal corporate offensive. That's true whether the SPD in Germany, the Socialist parties in France, Spain, Italy, Portugal,
and Greece, or elsewhere. As these parties have abdicated their traditional support for working class interests, it has opened opportunities
for other parties–both right and left–to speak to those interests. Thus we find right wing parties growing in Austria, France (which
will likely win next year's national election in France), Italy, Netherlands, and Scandinavia. Hungary and Poland's right turn should
also be viewed from this perspective. So should Podemos in Spain, Five Star movement in Italy, and the pre-August 2015 Syriza in
Greece.
Farther left more marxist-oriented socialist parties are meanwhile in disarray. In general they fail to understand the working
class rebellion against free trade element at the core of the recent Brexit vote. They are led by the capitalist media to view the
vote as an anti-immigrant, xenophobic, nationalist, right wing dominated development. So they in a number of instances recommended
staying in the EU. The justification was to protect the better EU mandated social regulations. Or they argue, incredulously, that
remaining in the free trade regime of the EU would centralize the influence of capitalist elements but that would eventually mean
a stronger working class movement as a consequence as well. It amounts to an argument to support free trade and neoliberalism in
the short run because it theoretically might lead to a stronger working class challenge to neoliberalism in the longer run. That
is intellectual and illogical nonsense, of course. Wherever the resistance to free trade exists it should be supported, since Free
Trade is a core element of Neoliberalism and its policies that have been devastating working class interests for decades now. One
cannot be 'for' Free Trade (i.e. remain in the EU) and not be for Neoliberalism at the same time–which means against working class
interests.
The bottom line is that right wing forces in both the EU and the US have locked onto the connection between free trade discontent,
immigration, and the austerity and lack of economic recovery for all since 2009. They have developed an ideological formulation that
argues immigration is the cause of the economic conditions. Mainstream capitalist parties, like the Republicans and Democrats in
the US are unable to confront this formulation which has great appeal to working class elements. They cannot confront it without
abandoning their capitalist campaign contributors or a center-piece (free trade) of their neoliberal policies. Social-Democratic
parties, aligning with their erstwhile traditional capitalist party opponents, offer no alternative. And too many farther left traditional
Marxist parties support Free Trade by hiding behind the absurd notion that a stronger, more centralized capitalist system will eventually
lead to a stronger, more centralized working class opposition.
Whatever political party formations come out of the growing rebellion against free trade, endless austerity policies, and declining
economic conditions for working class elements, they will have to reformulate the connections between immigration, free trade, and
those conditions.
Free Trade benefits corporations, investors and bankers on both sides of the 'trade' exchange. The benefits of free trade accrue
to them. For working classes, free trade means a 'leveling' of wages, jobs and benefits. It thus means workers from lower paid regions
experience a rise in wages and benefits, but those in the formerly higher paid regions experience a decline. That's what's been happening
in the UK, as well as the US and north America.
Free Trade is the 'holy grail' of mainstream economics. It assumes that free trade raises all boats. Both countries benefit. But
what that economic ideology does not go on to explain is that how does that benefit get distributed within each of the countries
involved in the free trade? Who benefits in terms of class incomes and interests? As the history of the EU and UK since 1992 shows,
bankers and big corporate exporters benefit. Workers from the poor areas get to migrate to the wealthier (US and UK) and thus benefit.
But the indigent workers in the former wealthier areas suffer a decline, a leveling. These effects have been exacerbated by the elite
policies of austerity and the free money for bankers and investors central bank policies since 2009.
So workers see their wages stagnant or decline, their social benefits cut, their jobs or higher paid jobs leave, while they see
immigrants entering and increasing competition for jobs. They hear (and often believe) that the immigrants are responsible for the
reduction of benefits and social services that are in fact caused by the associated austerity policies. They see investors, bankers,
professionals and a few fortunate 10% of their work force doing well, with incomes accelerating, while their incomes decline. In
the UK, the focus and solution is seen as exiting the EU free trade zone. In the US, however, it's not possible for a given 'state'
to leave the USA, as it is for a 'state' like the UK to leave the EU. And there are no national referenda possible constitutionally
in the US.
The solution in the US is not to build a wall to keep immigrants out, but to tear down the Free Trade wall that has been erected
by US neoliberal policies in order to keep US jobs in. Trump_vs_deep_state has come up with a reactionary solution to the free trade-immigration-economic
nexus that has significant political appeal. He proposes stopping labor flows, but proposes nothing concrete about stopping the cross-country
flows of money, capital and investment that are at the heart of free trade.
One of the most best stories so far, both from the perspective of the granularity of the reporting and the caliber of the writing,
is the Guardian's
'If you've got money, you vote in … if you haven't got money, you vote out' (hat tip PlutoniumKun). It gives a vivid, painful
picture of the England that has been left behind with the march of Thatcherism and neoliberalism.
From the article :
And now here we are, with that terrifying decision to leave. Most things in the political foreground are finished, aren't
they? Cameron and Osborne. The Labour party as we know it, now revealed once again as a walking ghost, whose writ no longer
reaches its supposed heartlands. Scotland – which at the time of writing had voted to stay in the EU by 62% to 38% – is already
independent in most essential political and cultural terms, and will presumably soon be decisively on its way…
Because, of course, this is about so much more than the European Union. It is about class, and inequality, and a politics
now so professionalised that it has left most people staring at the rituals of Westminster with a mixture of anger and bafflement.
Tangled up in the moment are howling political failures that only compounded that problem: Iraq, the MPs' expenses scandal,
the way that Cameron's flip from big society niceness to hard-faced austerity compounded all the cliches about people you cannot
trust, answerable only to themselves (something that applied equally to the first victims of our new politics, the Liberal
Democrats).
Most of all, Brexit is the consequence of the economic bargain struck in the early 1980s, whereby we waved goodbye to the
security and certainties of the postwar settlement, and were given instead an economic model that has just about served the
most populous parts of the country, while leaving too much of the rest to anxiously decline. Look at the map of those results,
and that huge island of "in" voting in London and the south-east; or those jaw-dropping vote-shares for remain in the centre
of the capital: 69% in Tory Kensington and Chelsea; 75% in Camden; 78% in Hackney, contrasted with comparable shares for leave
in such places as Great Yarmouth (71%), Castle Point in Essex (73%), and Redcar and Cleveland (66%). Here is a country so imbalanced
it has effectively fallen over….
What defines these furies is often clear enough: a terrible shortage of homes, an impossibly precarious job market, a too-often
overlooked sense that men (and men are particularly relevant here) who would once have been certain in their identity as miners,
or steelworkers, now feel demeaned and ignored. The attempts of mainstream politics to still the anger have probably only made
it worse: oily tributes to "hardworking families", or the the fingers-down-a-blackboard trope of "social mobility", with its
suggestion that the only thing Westminster can offer working-class people is a specious chance of not being working class anymore.
This much-watch segment with Mark Blyth (hat tip
Gabriel U) also focuses on the class warfare as a driver of the Brexit vote and how that plays into the broader EU political and
economic context:
Our Richard Smith echoed these themes from his own observations:
In (for instance) North Lincolnshire, manufacturing is most likely to be the biggest EU export. That might get nuked a bit
if the terms of trade with EU countries get stiffer.
But the locals upcountry clearly feel they have been ignored, and now have nothing to lose. M and I bumbled through Wisbech
and Boston a few years ago, expecting cute East Anglian port towns, and found instead murderously tense run-down ghettoes.
You get this kind of story:
Unless, improbably, around 700,000 such stories turn up, which would imply they swung the vote, this is another portrayal
of the "Leave" voters as idiots.
Brexit's lesson for the US - and other democracies - is that fear mongering is not enough. Western elites must build a positive
case for reforming a system that is no longer perceived to be fair. The British may well repent at leisure for a vote they
took in haste. Others can learn from its blunder.
But even this is weak tea. Luce isn't advocating a Sanders-style economic regime change. Indeed, his call for action is making
a case for reform, implying that the more realistic members of the elites need to take on the reactionary forces. As we've said,
the Clintons are modern day Bourbons: they've learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Luce's warning to Hillary Clinton, firmly
ensconced in her bubble of self-regard, deeply loyal to powerful, monied interests and technocrats, is destined to fall on deaf
ears.
He fielded questions from the audience and also the moderator neocon Kori Schake, mostly about
Donald Trump.
At one point, he named a list of non-mainstream Republican candidates that had their moment in
the sun and then faded away.
This included Ron and Rand Paul. "We beat back Ron Paul and Rand Paul," he said. Implying that
they were nothing but a footnote in Republican history.
Kristol said the current election resembled one coming out of a third world country. He also
admitted that he underestimated "Trump's seeing what the people are upset about."
He said the current move by some delegates to open up the upcoming Republican national convention
by "voting conscience" to deny Trump the nomination has about a 15% chance of succeeding. He said
only last week he would have said it only had a 5% chance.
He said he could not rule out a Trump victory in November.
He said he sent out this tweet to "energize" Reince Priebus:<
The third-party nominee Gary Johnson believes former Republican candidates for president, Jeb
Bush and Lindsey Graham among them, will defect at the polls this November rather than vote for
Donald Trump. He expects they'll vote Libertarian instead.
"When it's all said and done, they'll pull the Johnson-Weld lever because it's a real choice,"
the former governor of New Mexico told the Guardian in a wide-ranging interview this week.
Johnson said he founded his prediction "on instinct", but that he was confident that he had
high-profile Republican votes – "whether they say so or not is another story".
Johnson may already have at least one Republican leader knocking on his door. Mitt Romney, the
party's 2012 nominee, told CNN on Friday that he was considering casting his lot with the
Libertarians.
"If Bill Weld were at the top of the ticket, it would be very easy for me to vote for Bill Weld
for president," he said. Weld is Johnson's running mate and preceded Romney as governor of
Massachusetts.
Johnson, who is at 12% in a recent national poll, hopes that by winning voters disaffected by
Trump and Hillary Clinton, he can establish his party as a political force to be reckoned with.
In particular, Johnson insisted that he is a fit for supporters of a Democrat – the Vermont
senator Bernie Sanders – who may be less than enthused about Clinton's nomination for the party.
He cited an online quiz in which he sided with the Vermont senator 73% of the time, adding:
"We're on the same page when it comes to people and their choices."
"Legalizing marijuana, military intervention and that crony capitalism is alive and well," he
said, rattling off issues of concern that he and the progressive Sanders share. "People with
money are able to pay for privilege, and they buy it."
Goldwater girl was virtually on a par with John Kasich among big Republican donors
Notable quotes:
"... The thing about the Clintons is that they are, as politicians, honest. When bought, they stay bought. Hence their popularity with businesses. Trump is far too much of a wheeler dealer to stay bought, this is what seems to worry the oligarchy. ..."
"... Later, I developed an alternate theory for why Obama and Clinton were pushed front. As President, either could be trusted to betray their base and lose badly, divide their base (and give them no motive to energize them) setting the stage for zombie resurrection of the Republicans in 2010 - and also, continue the Republican militaristic anti-civll-liberties, shadow-bank friendly, torture-friendly Bush policies. I have no idea if either theory was correct. ..."
"... 2016: A year ago, we had the media pushing Clinton hard, as this implacable juggernaut, with opponents portrayed as annoying gnats at her heels. Sanders came up and got coverage, perhaps because of his major fundraising, perhaps because he was another candidate they could trust. Other candidates got minimal coverage. ..."
"... So: are they being set up for the Fall again? Or is Clinton being engineered as our next President? ..."
"... Does anyone *really* believe that Clinton will break up the huge shadow banking system? Prosecute the fraudclosers, prosecute the banksters, prosecute the torturers, stop the "humanitarian bombing" and so forth? ..."
"... Does anyone *really* believe that Clinton will break up the huge shadow banking system? Prosecute the fraudclosers, prosecute the banksters, prosecute the torturers, stop the "humanitarian bombing" and so forth? ..."
"... The only people who believe that are the people who also believe that is what Obama will do. ..."
Politico reported in early May, when Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee,
that the Clinton campaign started calling major Republican donors almost immediately , pitching
her as the natural candidate for them. Many of the recipients were cool to the appear, reasoning
that Clinton would probably prevail regardless. But that was before the polls showed that Trump becoming
the virtually official Republican nominee meant he quickly moved in national polls to score a mere
few points behind Clinton, when the widespread assumption had been that he would top out at a much
lower level.
And it's not as if Clinton didn't already have real pull among big Republican givers.
This chart from Time Magazine shows as of late 2015 where 2012 Romney donors were sending their
Presidential bucks in this cycle. You can see that Clinton was virtually on a par with John Kasich
The Financial Times surveyed major US business groups and found
they greatly prefer Clinton . Mind you, "greatly prefer" translates as "loathes Trump, deems
her to be less obviously terrible." Clinton is a status quo candidate, and as much as she would probably
shake her finger at businessmen more than they'd like, she won't break any big rice bowls.
From the Financial Times :
In the most comprehensive survey to date of business views on the US election, half of the
trade groups who responded to the FT said they would break from the traditional party of business
to back Mrs Clinton - despite reservations about the Democratic front-runner's candidacy.
Only a quarter of respondents preferred Mr Trump, who has run a caustic campaign marked by
populist attacks on business. But support for Mrs Clinton was often lukewarm, sparked more by
alarm over the presumptive Republican nominee than enthusiasm for her..
The FT polled 53 Washington-based trade associations and received responses from 16 of them
that lobby for nearly 100,000 businesses with combined annual revenues of more than $3.5tn. A
quarter of respondents said they could not decide which candidate would be best for business because
it was too early to judge their policy platforms, or replied "none of the above".
Several trade groups expressed dismay that for the first time in living memory they faced a
presidential race without a clear pro-business candidate, dashing their hopes of a new dawn after
nearly eight years of what they see as over-regulation by the Obama administration.
Mr [Bill] Reinsch, speaking shortly before retiring from his trade group [companies ranging
from Cisco to General Electric to Procter & Gamble ] this month, added: "The other thing [companies]
want is predictability, which is the antithesis of Trump, who brags about being unpredictable."…
The business groups that said they would prefer Mrs Clinton tended to represent more internationally-minded
members in fast-moving or technology-dependent sectors. The smaller core of Trump support came
from more domestic-oriented sectors and those hurt by the Democratic causes of environmentalism
and trade unions.
The thing about the Clintons is that they are, as politicians, honest. When bought, they stay
bought. Hence their popularity with businesses. Trump is far too much of a wheeler dealer to stay
bought, this is what seems to worry the oligarchy.
I've been wondering… What will really happen in the Fall? All I know is that things will be
interesting, as in cursed. Past history, as I remember: In 2000, the media was quite nice to Candidate
Bush - someone they could sit down and have a beer with. He was the front-runner before a single
primary or caucus was held. Contrast with the serial lying about Candidate Gore, accompanied by
serious coverage of third-party Candidate Nader's campaign.
2008: on the Democratic side, Obama and Clinton were front-runners before a single primary
or caucus was held. My idea back then was that whoever would win would be set up for the Fall
(note the pun). Clinton was subject to the Clinton Rules. Obama had the worst post-9/11 name possible
for a Presidential candidate, not to mention being black.
Of course, economic reality intervened. Later, I developed an alternate theory for why
Obama and Clinton were pushed front. As President, either could be trusted to betray their base
and lose badly, divide their base (and give them no motive to energize them) setting the stage
for zombie resurrection of the Republicans in 2010 - and also, continue the Republican militaristic
anti-civll-liberties, shadow-bank friendly, torture-friendly Bush policies. I have no idea if
either theory was correct.
In 2012, we had minimal coverage of primarying Obama, or of third-party candidates.
2016: A year ago, we had the media pushing Clinton hard, as this implacable juggernaut,
with opponents portrayed as annoying gnats at her heels. Sanders came up and got coverage, perhaps
because of his major fundraising, perhaps because he was another candidate they could trust. Other
candidates got minimal coverage.
So: are they being set up for the Fall again? Or is Clinton being engineered as our next
President?
Does anyone *really* believe that Clinton will break up the huge shadow banking system?
Prosecute the fraudclosers, prosecute the banksters, prosecute the torturers, stop the "humanitarian
bombing" and so forth?
Does anyone *really* believe that Clinton will break up the huge shadow banking system?
Prosecute the fraudclosers, prosecute the banksters, prosecute the torturers, stop the "humanitarian
bombing" and so forth?
The only people who believe that are the people who also believe that is what Obama will do.
What is important that Hillary past provides so many powerful and easy
avenues of attack on her (and she in not a Democrat; she is a neocon, warmonger neoliberal, hell bent
on US world domination) that it is easy to be distracted by this excessive menu :-)
Notable quotes:
"... Then there's that Sanders factor. The Vermont senator has presented an unexpected challenge to Mrs Clinton. His attacks on her past support for trade deals and her ties to the current political establishment have drawn blood. ..."
"... It seems the Republican was already testing lines of attack in his victory speech on Tuesday night. He brought up Mrs Clinton's support for coal regulations that have caused unemployment in places like Pennsylvania and Ohio. He mentioned that Bill Clinton backed the North America Trade Agreement, which he called "the single worst trade deal". ..."
"... If Mr Trump can put the Midwest in play, that previously mentioned electoral tilt may not be so imposing after all. ..."
"... Facing off against Mr Trump is going to take a nimble, creative campaign and candidate. That hasn't always been a strength for the instinctively controlled and cautious Mrs Clinton. ..."
Mr Trump is going to present an unpredictable adversary for the former secretary of state. As
the Republican primary has shown, no topic is off the table for him and no possible line of attack
out of bounds.
"Her past is really the thing, rather than what she plans to do in the future," Mr Trump told the
Washington Post on Tuesday. "Her past has a lot of problems, to put it bluntly."
The day before making those comments, Mr Trump had lunch with Edward Klein, a journalist who has
made a career of writing inflammatory books about the Clintons and their sometimes chequered history.
Chances are, Mr Trump was taking notes.
That Bernie Sanders factor
Then there's that Sanders factor. The Vermont senator has presented an unexpected challenge to
Mrs Clinton. His attacks on her past support for trade deals and her ties to the current political
establishment have drawn blood.
Could some of his true loyalists stay home or vote for a third party? Could some of his working-class
supporters in the industrial mid-west cross over to Mr Trump?
It seems the Republican was already testing lines of attack in his victory speech on Tuesday
night. He brought up Mrs Clinton's support for coal regulations that have caused unemployment in
places like Pennsylvania and Ohio. He mentioned that Bill Clinton backed the North America Trade
Agreement, which he called "the single worst trade deal".
If Mr Trump can put the Midwest in play, that previously mentioned electoral tilt may not be
so imposing after all.
There's no playbook for how a Democrat can run against a Republican like Mr Trump. In some places,
such as immigration, he will be well to her right. In other areas, like foreign policy and trade,
he could come at her from the left.
Can abortion or the social safety net be wedge issues? Probably not against a man who defended Planned
Parenthood and Social Security on a Republican debate stage.
Facing off against Mr Trump is going to take a nimble, creative campaign and candidate. That
hasn't always been a strength for the instinctively controlled and cautious Mrs Clinton.
You know you've come to the end of a fireworks show when the shells start bursting all at once.
I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference
to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive
view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party
generally.
This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest
passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less
stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest
rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural
to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities,
is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.
The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and
repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing
faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes
of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.
Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely
out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make
it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It
agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of
one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign
influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the
channels of party passions.
Priority A in this letter is cyber and jihad strategy? Puh-lease. WTAF, another clueless ideologue.
Here's my list:
1. End American Empire. We have 800 bases in 140 countries. Close them and send the personnel
back to the US, give them shovels and backhoes and make them start rebuilding our Third World
infrastructure.
2. Prosecute financial crime. No more "fines", we need perp walks by senior executives. That's
the only thing that will work.
3. Close the DHS. We already have the FBI and CIA Roll back the Patriot Act spying provisions.
4. Audit the Fed. Full transparency of what they own, what their market activities are, who
owns them. Fed chair to be appointed by the Executive branch, not just selected from a list of
"approved" candidates submitted by the Fed.
5. Remove capital gains taxation on physical gold and silver bullion. Americans need to build
more wealth, not more paper.
6. Remove corporate tax exemption for issuing dividends.
7. Tax all unearned income at the same rate as earned income.
8. Fire the entire staff of the FASB and start over. Plain vanilla GAAP accounting including
mark-to-market.
9. End pre-crime drone assasination policy effective immediately.
10. New Marshall Plan for the MidEast. Take 1/2 of the budget we spend blowing the place up
and put it in a fund for development of ME countries. Announce the end of the drone/invasion/occupation
policy and the new investment fund with huge fanfare. We get peace and prosperity and great new
markets full of people who like us again.
11. Putin, Xi and US pres to hold tri-lateral peace talks. End Cold War II. Invite the Eurozone
lapdogs if you must (but no Frenchmen
The pitiful part of that is, we created the jihad is, we support them, arm them, feed them.
They're our mercenaries. So we create a BOOGIEMAN, tell the country that we must do everything
possible to defend against them, send them into other nations to do our dirty work for us, thereby
increasing the fear and terror back home, as they follow orders and chop off heads on television?
Talk about "wagging the dog"? Then they say in order to protect the "HOMELANDS" from these monsters,
we'll, you'll have to sacrifice some rights? You'll have to sacrifice some security? You'll have
to accept some invasion of your privacy. You'll have to allow the government to spend hundreds
of billions of dollars on spying, making war, building killing machines, and you the American
public will have to accept austerity, so we can get through this together? BULLSHIT!
" The very nature of government - monopoly power - makes it the number 1 destination of the
psychosociopaths. "
Only in 'Murika, the government doesn't hold the monopoly power, private corporations do. They
have even bought your governement lock, stock and barrel. Obama is no more than a mouthpiece for
private companies. See how he is travelling salesman for the TTIP, NAFTA and such treaties that
are bad for the USA's population and all other countries' populations too.
Which means you don't have a government at all . You are ruled by a transnational private sector
through political puppets, banana republic style.
"...4. Our problems are huge right now, but one of the most obvious is that we've not passed
along the meaning of America to the next generation..."
Yes you did, Senator Sasse. America, American government and American politics means systemic
psychopathy. Sick, power-seeking and power-hoarding individuals. What you failed to pass on was
your fantasy of what you would like America to be. The next generation can't ignore the reality
of what they see and believe in your fantasy - if anything, they're realists. The meaning of America
to them is a tax-farming organization run for the benefit of the MIC, big ag,
big pharma, big oil, etc. They recognize that they are cattle, not snowflakes.
"...If we don't get them to re-engage..."
Holy crap... seriously? You sound like the MSM trying to figure out some marketing trick to
sell themselves to 'the next generation' - a generation that has already thrown the MSM on the
scrap-heap of history as a useless tool of the rich and powerful. The next generation has ABANDONED
dreams of your fantasy America. They just want to minimize the oppression and pain America causes
them. They want to be left the fuck alone and don't want to fix YOUR mess - it's unfixable to
them. They're not buying the bullshit of 'fixability' any more - that was your generation's weakness.
"...-- thinking about how we defend a free society in the face of global jihadis,.."
Jihadis the CIA created for their latest Middle East clownfuckery? The jihadi 'threat' as manufactured
by the FBI or MSM? Hey, guess what Senator: that's your fucking problem, not theirs. They're afraid
of cops and gangs of immigrants, not fake jihadis .
"...or how we balance our budgets after baby boomers have dishonestly over-promised for decades,..."
Why would they give a fuck? They know they are already 100% screwed - things will never be
as good for them as it was for their parents. They are going to suffer the consequences of shitty
fiscal policy for the next fifty years, and you expect them to somehow be interested in making
the government behave NOW? Fuck that... are you stupid or something? They didn't break it - YOU
did.
"...or how we protect First Amendment values in the face of the safe-space movement..."
Er... their First Amendment rights have already been whored out by your employer, Senator:
the U.S. Congress. And typical of your employer, you 'see' a problem were none exists: a few hundred,
maybe thousand whiney college students DOES NOT equate to a Constitutional problem for the other
five million or so members of that generation. If you want to debate safe spaces while Rome burns,
go ahead. They're not interested.
"...– then all will indeed have been lost..."
Yes, I agree. Congress and the rest of the U.S. government have been throwing away the American
dream for thirty-plus years. Yes, it's lost. That's what happens when you throw something away.
Don't expect them to go on a scavenger hunt for its decayed corpse now. It's worth saving to YOU,
not THEM. You fucked it up so bad that they have no illusions about 'finding' anything useable
again. They're not looking and not interested in being convinced to look, Senator. It's not there
for them any more.
"...One of the bright spots with the rising generation, though, is that they really would like
to rethink the often knee-jerk partisanship of their parents and grandparents. We should encourage
this rethinking..."
No, they are simply rejecting the failed mechanism of a usurped voting process and a failed
constitutional republic. That doesn't mean they're looking for replacement parts to fix that one
thing, because the rest of the republic is completely fucked up . They're not interested in band-aids
on a stinking, rotting corpse. They don't want to have anything to do with it.
A member of Congress trying to 'market' America to the next generation is exactly like the
MSM trying to market themselves to the next generation: it's pathetic and futile. 'America' is
just the name of their current prison and owner. They simply tolerate it. When it becomes intolerable,
they'll leave (if they're allowed to).
I know that's the meme being pushed, but I don't see it in reality. The two parties, supposedly
so polarized, offer minute differences in actual policy. The differences over which they'd claim
to take us to Civil War really boil down to which constituent and contributor group gets greased.
In dictionary definitions, every politician in America is a liberal. In terms of their dedication
to unifying corporate and State power, they're all Fascists. Some are smilier Fascists than others,
but they're all Fascists.
Wrong. America is not a Liberal nation. In a Liberal nation working class would have a say.
As inequality grows, their taxes would go up. Education and healthcare would be free. Labor wouldn't
be taxed.
Corporativism is to the right and not left. Its labor is to the left.
The excerpt below should help clarify the confusion between Democrats and Republicans:
….(Bakunin) predicted that there would be two forms of modern intellectuals, what he called
the 'Red Bureaucracy', who would use popular struggles to try to take control of state power and
institute the most vicious and ruthless dictatorships in history, and the other group, who would
see that there isn't going to be an access to power that way and would therefore become the servants
of private power and the state capitalist democracy, where they would, as Bakunin put it, 'beat
the people with the people's stick,' talk about democracy but beat the people with it. That's
actually one of the few predictions in the social sciences that's come true, to my knowledge,
and a pretty perceptive one." Chomsky On Democracy and Education, page 248.
One of the most entertaining bit players in the 2016 campaign has been Craig Mazin, Ted Cruz's college
roommate. Mazin, a screenwriter who co-wrote two of the Hangover films, openly despises Cruz
on both a political and personal level, and talks trash about him at just about every opportunity.
And Mazin is very good at trash talk. These
17 hilarious Craig Mazin tweets about Ted Cruz go a long way to explaining why the Texas senator
is almost not the most beloved guy in Washington.
Scriptnotes. Here's how Mazin put it, and I'm going to quote it in full because it is one
of my favorite things that anybody has ever said about anyone else:
And, you know, I want to be clear, because Ted Cruz is a nightmare of a human being. I have plenty
of problems with his politics, but truthfully, his personality is so awful that 99 percent of
why I hate him is just his personality. If he agreed with me on every issue, I would hate him
only 1 percent less.
That's more than a sufficient diss, but Mazin didn't stop there. He writes a lot about Cruz on
Twitter, and pulls absolutely no punches while doing so. He fired the opening shot in 2013, when
Cruz was about to win election to the Senate.
"... The following is a preview of a chapter by Claudia von Werlhof in "The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century." (2009) ..."
"... To read more, order the book online. Help us spread the word: "like" the book on Facebook and share with your friends -- ..."
No one asks these questions because they seem absurd. Yet, no one can escape
them either. Until the onslaught of the global economic crisis, the motto of
so-called "neoliberalism" was TINA: "There Is No Alternative!"
No alternative to "neoliberal globalization"?
No alternative to the unfettered "free market" economy?
What Is "Neoliberal Globalization"?
Let us first clarify what globalization and neoliberalism are, where they
come from, who they are directed by, what they claim, what they do, why their
effects are so fatal, why they will fail and why people nonetheless cling to
them. Then, let us look at the responses of those who are not – or will not
– be able to live with the consequences they cause.
This is where the difficulties begin. For a good twenty years now we have
been told that there is no alternative to neoliberal globalization, and that,
in fact, no such alternative is needed either. Over and over again, we have
been confronted with the TINA-concept: "There Is No Alternative!" The "iron
lady", Margaret Thatcher, was one of those who reiterated this belief without
end.
The TINA-concept prohibits all thought. It follows the rationale that there
is no point in analyzing and discussing neoliberalism and so-called globalization
because they are inevitable. Whether we condone what is happening or not does
not matter, it is happening anyway. There is no point in trying to understand.
Hence: Go with it! Kill or be killed!
Some go as far as suggesting that globalization – meaning, an economic system
which developed under specific social and historical conditions – is nothing
less but a law of nature. In turn, "human nature" is supposedly reflected by
the character of the system's economic subjects: egotistical, ruthless, greedy
and cold. This, we are told, works towards everyone's benefit.
The question remains: why has Adam Smith's "invisible hand" become a "visible
fist"? While a tiny minority reaps enormous benefits from today's neoliberalism
(none of which will remain, of course), the vast majority of the earth's population
suffers hardship to the extent that their very survival is at stake. The damage
done seems irreversible.
All over the world media outlets – especially television stations – avoid
addressing the problem. A common excuse is that it cannot be explained.[1] The
true reason is, of course, the media's corporate control.
What Is Neoliberalism?
Neoliberalism as an economic policy agenda which began in Chile in 1973.
Its inauguration consisted of a U.S.-organized coup against a democratically
elected socialist president and the installment of a bloody military dictatorship
notorious for systematic torture. This was the only way to turn the neoliberal
model of the so-called "Chicago Boys" under the leadership of Milton Friedman
– a student of Friedrich von Hayek – into reality.
The predecessor of the neoliberal model is the economic liberalism of the
18th and 19th centuries and its notion of "free trade". Goethe's assessment
at the time was: "Free trade, piracy, war – an inseparable three!"[2]
At the center of both old and new economic liberalism lies:
Self-interest and individualism; segregation of ethical principles and economic
affairs, in other words: a process of 'de-bedding' economy from society; economic
rationality as a mere cost-benefit calculation and profit maximization; competition
as the essential driving force for growth and progress; specialization and the
replacement of a subsistence economy with profit-oriented foreign trade ('comparative
cost advantage'); and the proscription of public (state) interference with market
forces.[3]
Where the new economic liberalism outdoes the old is in its global claim.
Today's economic liberalism functions as a model for each and everyone: all
parts of the economy, all sectors of society, of life/nature itself. As a consequence,
the once "de-bedded" economy now claims to "im-bed" everything, including political
power. Furthermore, a new twisted "economic ethics" (and with it a certain idea
of "human nature") emerges that mocks everything from so-called do-gooders to
altruism to selfless help to care for others to a notion of responsibility.[4]
This goes as far as claiming that the common good depends entirely on the
uncontrolled egoism of the individual and, especially, on the prosperity of
transnational corporations. The allegedly necessary "freedom" of the economy
– which, paradoxically, only means the freedom of corporations – hence consists
of a freedom from responsibility and commitment to society.
The maximization of profit itself must occur within the shortest possible
time; this means, preferably, through speculation and "shareholder value". It
must meet as few obstacles as possible. Today, global economic interests outweigh
not only extra-economic concerns but also national economic considerations since
corporations today see themselves beyond both community and nation.[5] A "level
playing field" is created that offers the global players the best possible conditions.
This playing field knows of no legal, social, ecological, cultural or national
"barriers".[6] As a result, economic competition plays out on a market that
is free of all non-market, extra-economic or protectionist influences – unless
they serve the interests of the big players (the corporations), of course. The
corporations' interests – their maximal growth and progress – take on complete
priority. This is rationalized by alleging that their well-being means the well-being
of small enterprises and workshops as well.
The difference between the new and the old economic liberalism can first
be articulated in quantitative terms: after capitalism went through a series
of ruptures and challenges – caused by the "competing economic system", the
crisis of capitalism, post-war "Keynesianism" with its social and welfare state
tendencies, internal mass consumer demand (so-called Fordism), and the objective
of full employment in the North. The liberal economic goals of the past are
now not only euphorically resurrected but they are also "globalized". The main
reason is indeed that the competition between alternative economic systems is
gone. However, to conclude that this confirms the victory of capitalism and
the "golden West" over "dark socialism" is only one possible interpretation.
Another – opposing – interpretation is to see the "modern world system" (which
contains both capitalism and socialism) as having hit a general crisis which
causes total and merciless competition over global resources while leveling
the way for investment opportunities, i.e. the valorization of capital.[7]
The ongoing globalization of neoliberalism demonstrates which interpretation
is right. Not least, because the differences between the old and the new economic
liberalism can not only be articulated in quantitative terms but in qualitative
ones too. What we are witnessing are completely new phenomena: instead of a
democratic "complete competition" between many small enterprises enjoying the
freedom of the market, only the big corporations win. In turn, they create new
market oligopolies and monopolies of previously unknown dimensions. The market
hence only remains free for them, while it is rendered unfree for all others
who are condemned to an existence of dependency (as enforced producers, workers
and consumers) or excluded from the market altogether (if they have neither
anything to sell or buy). About fifty percent of the world's population fall
into this group today, and the percentage is rising.[8]
Anti-trust laws have lost all power since the transnational corporations
set the norms. It is the corporations – not "the market" as an anonymous mechanism
or "invisible hand" – that determine today's rules of trade, for example prices
and legal regulations. This happens outside any political control. Speculation
with an average twenty percent profit margin edges out honest producers who
become "unprofitable".[9] Money becomes too precious for comparatively non-profitable,
long-term projects,
or projects that only – how audacious! – serve a good life. Money instead
"travels upwards" and disappears. Financial capital determines more and more
what the markets are and do.[10] By delinking the dollar from the price of gold,
money creation no longer bears a direct relationship to production".[11] Moreover,
these days most of us are – exactly like all governments – in debt. It is financial
capital that has all the money – we have none.[12]
Small, medium, even some bigger enterprises are pushed out of the market,
forced to fold or swallowed by transnational corporations because their performances
are below average in comparison to speculation – rather: spookulation – wins.
The public sector, which has historically been defined as a sector of not-for-profit
economy and administration, is "slimmed" and its "profitable" parts ("gems")
handed to corporations (privatized). As a consequence, social services that
are necessary for our existence disappear. Small and medium private businesses
– which, until recently, employed eighty percent of the workforce and provided
normal working conditions – are affected by these developments as well. The
alleged correlation between economic growth and secure employment is false.
When economic growth is accompanied by the mergers of businesses, jobs are lost.[13]
If there are any new jobs, most are precarious, meaning that they are only
available temporarily and badly paid. One job is usually not enough to make
a living.[14] This means that the working conditions in the North become akin
to those in the South, and the working conditions of men akin to those of women
– a trend diametrically opposed to what we have always been told. Corporations
now leave for the South (or East) to use cheap – and particularly female – labor
without union affiliation. This has already been happening since the 1970s in
the "Export Processing Zones" (EPZs, "world market factories" or "maquiladoras"),
where most of the world's computer chips, sneakers, clothes and electronic goods
are produced.[15] The EPZs lie in areas where century-old colonial-capitalist
and authoritarian-patriarchal conditions guarantee the availability of cheap
labor.[16] The recent shift of business opportunities from consumer goods to
armaments is a particularly troubling development.[17]
It is not only commodity production that is "outsourced" and located in the
EPZs, but service industries as well. This is a result of the so-called Third
Industrial Revolution, meaning the development of new information and communication
technologies. Many jobs have disappeared entirely due to computerization, also
in administrative fields.[18] The combination of the principles of "high tech"
and "low wage"/"no wage" (always denied by "progress" enthusiasts) guarantees
a "comparative cost advantage" in foreign trade. This will eventually lead to
"Chinese wages" in the West. A potential loss of Western consumers is not seen
as a threat. A corporate economy does not care whether consumers are European,
Chinese or Indian.
The means of production become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, especially
since finance capital – rendered precarious itself – controls asset values ever
more aggressively. New forms of private property are created, not least through
the "clearance" of public property and the transformation of formerly public
and small-scale private services and industries to a corporate business sector.
This concerns primarily fields that have long been (at least partly) excluded
from the logic of profit – e.g. education, health, energy or water supply/disposal.
New forms of so-called enclosures emerge from today's total commercialization
of formerly small-scale private or public industries and services, of the "commons",
and of natural resources like oceans, rain forests, regions of genetic diversity
or geopolitical interest (e.g. potential pipeline routes), etc.[19] As far as
the new virtual spaces and communication networks go, we are witnessing frantic
efforts to bring these under private control as well.[20]
All these new forms of private property are essentially created by (more
or less) predatory forms of appropriation. In this sense, they are a continuation
of the history of so-called original accumulation which has expanded globally,
in accordance with to the motto: "Growth through expropriation!"[21]
Most people have less and less access to the means of production, and so
the dependence on scarce and underpaid work increases. The destruction of the
welfare state also destroys the notion that individuals can rely on the community
to provide for them in times of need. Our existence relies exclusively on private,
i.e. expensive, services that are often of much worse quality and much less
reliable than public services. (It is a myth that the private always outdoes
the public.) What we are experiencing is undersupply formerly only known by
the colonial South. The old claim that the South will eventually develop into
the North is proven wrong. It is the North that increasingly develops into the
South. We are witnessing the latest form of "development", namely, a world system
of underdevelopment.[22] Development and underdevelopment go hand in hand.[23]
This might even dawn on "development aid" workers soon.
It is usually women who are called upon to counterbalance underdevelopment
through increased work ("service provisions") in the household. As a result,
the workload and underpay of women takes on horrendous dimensions: they do unpaid
work inside their homes and poorly paid "housewifized" work outside.[24] Yet,
commercialization does not stop in front of the home's doors either. Even housework
becomes commercially co-opted ("new maid question"), with hardly any financial
benefits for the women who do the work.[25]
Not least because of this, women are increasingly coerced into prostitution,
one of today's biggest global industries.[26] This illustrates two things: a)
how little the "emancipation" of women actually leads to "equal terms" with
men; and b) that "capitalist development" does not imply increased "freedom"
in wage labor relations, as the Left has claimed for a long time.[27] If the
latter were the case, then neoliberalism would mean the voluntary end of capitalism
once it reaches its furthest extension. This, however, does not appear likely.
Today, hundreds of millions of quasi-slaves, more than ever before, exist
in the "world system."[28] The authoritarian model of the "Export Processing
Zones" is conquering the East and threatening the North. The redistribution
of wealth runs ever more – and with ever accelerated speed – from the bottom
to the top. The gap between the rich and the poor has never been wider. The
middle classes disappear. This is the situation we are facing.
It becomes obvious that neoliberalism marks not the end of colonialism but,
to the contrary, the colonization of the North. This new "colonization of the
world"[29] points back to the beginnings of the "modern world system" in the
"long 16th century", when the conquering of the Americas, their exploitation
and colonial transformation allowed for the rise and "development" of Europe.[30]
The so-called "children's diseases" of modernity keep on haunting it, even in
old age. They are, in fact, the main feature of modernity's latest stage. They
are expanding instead of disappearing.
Where there is no South, there is no North; where there is no periphery,
there is no center; where there is no colony, there is no – in any case no "Western"
– civilization.[31]
Austria is part of the world system too. It is increasingly becoming a corporate
colony (particularly of German corporations). This, however, does not keep it
from being an active colonizer itself, especially in the East.[32]
Social, cultural, traditional and ecological considerations are abandoned
and give way to a mentality of plundering. All global resources that we still
have – natural resources, forests, water, genetic pools – have turned into objects
of utilization. Rapid ecological destruction through depletion is the consequence.
If one makes more profit by cutting down trees than by planting them, then there
is no reason not to cut them.[33] Neither the public nor the state interferes,
despite global warming and the obvious fact that the clearing of the few remaining
rain forests will irreversibly destroy the earth's climate – not to mention
the many other negative effects of such actions.[34] Climate, animal, plants,
human and general ecological rights are worth nothing compared to the interests
of the corporations – no matter that the rain forest is not a renewable resource
and that the entire earth's ecosystem depends on it. If greed, and the rationalism
with which it is economically enforced, really was an inherent anthropological
trait, we would have never even reached this day.
The commander of the Space Shuttle that circled the earth in 2005 remarked
that "the center of Africa was burning". She meant the Congo, in which the last
great rain forest of the continent is located. Without it there will be no more
rain clouds above the sources of the Nile. However, it needs to disappear in
order for corporations to gain free access to the Congo's natural resources
that are the reason for the wars that plague the region today. After all, one
needs diamonds and coltan for mobile phones.
Today, everything on earth is turned into commodities, i.e. everything becomes
an object of "trade" and commercialization (which truly means liquidation, the
transformation of all into liquid money). In its neoliberal stage it is not
enough for capitalism to globally pursue less cost-intensive and preferably
"wageless" commodity production. The objective is to transform everyone and
everything into commodities, including life itself.[35] We are racing blindly
towards the violent and absolute conclusion of this "mode of production", namely
total capitalization/liquidation by "monetarization".[36]
We are not only witnessing perpetual praise of the market – we are witnessing
what can be described as "market fundamentalism". People believe in the market
as if it was a god. There seems to be a sense that nothing could ever happen
without it. Total global maximized accumulation of money/capital as abstract
wealth becomes the sole purpose of economic activity. A "free" world market
for everything has to be established – a world market that functions according
to the interests of the corporations and capitalist money. The installment of
such a market proceeds with dazzling speed. It creates new profit possibilities
where they have not existed before, e.g. in Iraq, Eastern Europe or China.
One thing remains generally overlooked: the abstract wealth created for accumulation
implies the destruction of nature as concrete wealth. The result is a "hole
in the ground" and next to it a garbage dump with used commodities, outdated
machinery and money without value.[37] However, once all concrete wealth (which
today consists mainly of the last natural resources) will be gone, abstract
wealth will disappear as well. It will, in Marx's words, "evaporate". The fact
that abstract wealth is not real wealth will become obvious, and so will the
answer to the question of which wealth modern economic activity has really created.
In the end it is nothing but monetary wealth (and even this mainly exists virtually
or on accounts) that constitutes a monoculture controlled by a tiny minority.
Diversity is suffocated and millions of people are left wondering how to survive.
And really: how do you survive with neither resources nor means of production
nor money?
The nihilism of our economic system is evident. The whole world will be transformed
into money – and then it will disappear. After all, money cannot be eaten. What
no one seems to consider is the fact that it is impossible to re-transform commodities,
money, capital and machinery into nature or concrete wealth. It seems that underlying
all "economic development" is the assumption that "resources", the "sources
of wealth",[38] are renewable and everlasting – just like the "growth" they
create.[39]
The notion that capitalism and democracy are one is proven a myth by neoliberalism
and its "monetary totalitarianism".[40]
The primacy of politics over economy has been lost. Politicians of all parties
have abandoned it. It is the corporations that dictate politics. Where corporate
interests are concerned, there is no place for democratic convention or community
control. Public space disappears. The res publica turns into a res privata,
or – as we could say today – a res privata transnationale (in its original Latin
meaning, privare means "to deprive"). Only those in power still have rights.
They give themselves the licenses they need, from the "license to plunder" to
the "license to kill".[41] Those who get in their way or challenge their "rights"
are vilified, criminalized and to an increasing degree defined as "terrorists"
or, in the case of defiant governments, as "rogue states" – a label that usually
implies threatened or actual military attack, as we can see in the cases of
Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq, and maybe Syria and Iran in the near future.
U.S. President Bush had even spoken of the possibility of "preemptive" nuclear
strikes should the U.S. feel endangered by weapons of mass destruction.[42]
The European Union did not object.[43]
Neoliberalism and war are two sides of the same coin.[44] Free trade, piracy
and war are still "an inseparable three" – today maybe more so than ever. War
is not only "good for the economy" but is indeed its driving force and can be
understood as the "continuation of economy with other means".[45] War and economy
have become almost indistinguishable.[46] Wars about resources – especially
oil and water – have already begun.[47] The Gulf Wars are the most obvious examples.
Militarism once again appears as the "executor of capital accumulation" – potentially
everywhere and enduringly.[48]
Human rights and rights of sovereignty have been transferred from people,
communities and governments to corporations.[49] The notion of the people as
a sovereign body has practically been abolished. We have witnessed a coup of
sorts. The political systems of the West and the nation state as guarantees
for and expression of the international division of labor in the modern world
system are increasingly dissolving.[50] Nation states are developing into "periphery
states" according to the inferior role they play in the proto-despotic "New
World Order".[51] Democracy appears outdated. After all, it "hinders business".[52]
The "New World Order" implies a new division of labor that does no longer
distinguish between North and South, East and West – today, everywhere is South.
An according International Law is established which effectively functions from
top to bottom ("top-down") and eliminates all local and regional communal rights.
And not only that: many such rights are rendered invalid both retroactively
and for the future.[53]
The logic of neoliberalism as a sort of totalitarian neo-mercantilism is
that all resources, all markets, all money, all profits, all means of production,
all "investment opportunities", all rights and all power belong to the corporations
only. To paraphrase Richard Sennett: "Everything to the Corporations!"[54] One
might add: "Now!"
The corporations are free to do whatever they please with what they get.
Nobody is allowed to interfere. Ironically, we are expected to rely on them
to find a way out of the crisis we are in. This puts the entire globe at risk
since responsibility is something the corporations do not have or know. The
times of social contracts are gone.[55] In fact, pointing out the crisis alone
has become a crime and all critique will soon be defined as "terror" and persecuted
as such.[56]
IMF Economic Medicine
Since the 1980s, it is mainly the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) of
the World Bank and the IMF that act as the enforcers of neoliberalism. These
programs are levied against the countries of the South which can be extorted
due to their debts. Meanwhile, numerous military interventions and wars help
to take possession of the assets that still remain, secure resources, install
neoliberalism as the global economic politics, crush resistance movements (which
are cynically labeled as "IMF uprisings"), and facilitate the lucrative business
of reconstruction.[57]
In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher introduced neoliberalism
in Anglo-America. In 1989, the so-called "Washington Consensus" was formulated.
It claimed to lead to global freedom, prosperity and economic growth through
"deregulation, liberalization and privatization". This has become the credo
and promise of all neoliberals. Today we know that the promise has come true
for the corporations only – not for anybody else.
In the Middle East, the Western support for Saddam Hussein in the war between
Iraq and Iran in the 1980s, and the Gulf War of the early 1990s, announced the
permanent U.S. presence in the world's most contested oil region.
In continental Europe, neoliberalism began with the crisis in Yugoslavia
caused by the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) of the World Bank and the
IMF. The country was heavily exploited, fell apart and finally beset by a civil
war over its last remaining resources.[58] Since the NATO war in 1999, the Balkans
are fragmented, occupied and geopolitically under neoliberal control.[59] The
region is of main strategic interest for future oil and gas transport from the
Caucasus to the West (for example the "Nabucco" gas pipeline that is supposed
to start operating from the Caspian Sea through Turkey and the Balkans by 2011.[60]
The reconstruction of the Balkans is exclusively in the hands of Western corporations.
All governments, whether left, right, liberal or green, accept this. There
is no analysis of the connection between the politics of neoliberalism, its
history, its background and its effects on Europe and other parts of the world.
Likewise, there is no analysis of its connection to the new militarism.
NOTES
[1] Maria Mies and Claudia von Werlhof (Hg), Lizenz zum Plündern. Das Multilaterale
Abkommen über Investitionen MAI. Globalisierung der Konzernherrschaft – und
was wir dagegen tun können, Hamburg, EVA, 2003 (1998), p. 23, 36.
[2] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Part Two, New York, Oxford University
Press, 1999.
[3] Maria Mies, Krieg ohne Grenzen. Die neue Kolonisierung der Welt, Köln,
PapyRossa, 2005, p. 34.
[4] Arno Gruen, Der Verlust des Mitgefühls. Über die Politik der Gleichgültigkeit,
München, 1997, dtv.
[5] Sassen Saskia, "Wohin führt die Globalisierung?," Machtbeben, 2000, Stuttgart-München,
DVA.
[6] Maria Mies and Claudia von Werlhof (Hg), Lizenz zum Plündern. Das Multilaterale
Abkommen über Investitionen MAI. Globalisierung der Konzernherrschaft – und
was wir dagegen tun können, Hamburg, EVA, 2003 (1998), p. 24.
[7] Immanuel Wallerstein, Aufstieg und künftiger Niedergang des kapitalistischen
Weltsystems, in Senghaas, Dieter: Kapitalistische Weltökonomie. Kontroversen
über ihren Ursprung und ihre Entwicklungsdynamik, Frankfurt, 1979, Suhrkamp;
Immanuel Wallerstein (Hg), The Modern World-System in the Longue Durée, Boulder/
London; Paradigm Publishers, 2004.
[8] Susan George, im Vortrag, Treffen von Gegnern und Befürwortern der Globalisierung
im Rahmen der Tagung des WEF (World Economic Forum), Salzburg, 2001.
[9] Elmar Altvater, Das Ende des Kapitalismus, wie wir ihn kennen, Münster,
Westfälisches Dampfboot, 2005.
[10] Elmar Altvater and Birgit Mahnkopf, Grenzen der Globalisierung. Ökonomie,
Ökologie und Politik in der Weltgesellschaft, Münster, Westfälisches Dampfboot,
1996.
[11] Bernard Lietaer, Jenseits von Gier und Knappheit, Interview mit Sarah
van Gelder, 2006,
www.transaction.net/press/interviews/Lietaer 0497.html; Margrit Kennedy,
Geld ohne Zinsen und Inflation, Steyerberg, Permakultur, 1990.
[12] Helmut Creutz, Das Geldsyndrom. Wege zur krisenfreien Marktwirtschaft,
Frankfurt, Ullstein, 1995.
[13] Maria Mies and Claudia von Werlhof (Hg), Lizenz zum Plündern. Das Multilaterale
Abkommen über Investitionen MAI. Globalisierung der Konzernherrschaft – und
was wir dagegen tun können, Hamburg, EVA, 2003 (1998), p. 7.
[14] Barbara Ehrenreich, Arbeit poor. Unterwegs in der Dienstleistungsgesellschaft,
München, Kunstmann, 2001.
[15] Folker Fröbel, Jürgen Heinrichs, and Otto Kreye, Die neue internationale
Arbeitsteilung. Strukturelle Arbeitslosigkeit in den Industrieländern und die
Industrialisierung der Entwicklungsländer, Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1977.
[16] Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, Maria Mies, and Claudia von Werlhof, Women,
The Last Colony, London/ New Delhi, Zed Books, 1988.
[17] Michel Chossudovsky, War and Globalization. The Truth Behind September
11th, Oro, Ontario, Global Outlook, 2003.
[18] Folker Fröbel, Jürgen Heinrichs, and Otto Kreye, Die neue internationale
Arbeitsteilung. Strukturelle Arbeitslosigkeit in den Industrieländern und die
Industrialisierung der Entwicklungsländer, Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1977.
[19] Ana Isla, The Tragedy of the Enclosures: An Eco-Feminist Perspective
on Selling Oxygen and Prostitution in Costa Rica, Man., Brock Univ., Sociology
Dpt., St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada, 2005.
[20] John Hepburn, Die Rückeroberung von Allmenden – von alten und von neuen,
übers. Vortrag bei, Other Worlds Conference; Univ. of Pennsylvania; 28./29.4,
2005.
[21] Claudia von Werlhof, Was haben die Hühner mit dem Dollar zu tun? Frauen
und Ökonomie, München, Frauenoffensive, 1991; Claudia von Werlhof, MAInopoly:
Aus Spiel wird Ernst, in Mies/Werlhof, 2003, p. 148-192.
[22] Andre Gunder Frank, Die Entwicklung der Unterentwicklung, in ders. u.a.,
Kritik des bürgerlichen Antiimperialismus, Berlin, Wagenbach, 1969.
[23] Maria Mies, Krieg ohne Grenzen, Die neue Kolonisierung der Welt, Köln,
PapyRossa, 2005.
[24] Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, Maria Mies, and Claudia von Werlhof, Women,
the Last Colony, London/New Delhi, Zed Books, 1988.
[25] Claudia von Werlhof, Frauen und Ökonomie. Reden, Vorträge 2002-2004,
Themen GATS, Globalisierung, Mechernich, Gerda-Weiler-Stiftung, 2004.
[26] Ana Isla, "Women and Biodiversity as Capital Accumulation: An Eco-Feminist
View," Socialist Bulletin, Vol. 69, Winter, 2003, p. 21-34; Ana Isla, The Tragedy
of the Enclosures: An Eco-Feminist Perspective on Selling Oxygen and Prostitution
in Costa Rica, Man., Brock Univ., Sociology Department, St. Catherines, Ontario,
Canada, 2005.
[27] Immanuel Wallerstein, Aufstieg und künftiger Niedergang des kapitalistischen
Weltsystems, in Senghaas, Dieter: Kapitalistische Weltökonomie. Kontroversen
über ihren Ursprung und ihre Entwicklungsdynamik, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1979.
[28] Kevin Bales, Die neue Sklaverei, München, Kunstmann, 2001.
[29] Maria Mies, Krieg ohne Grenzen, Die neue Kolonisierung der Welt, Köln,
PapyRossa, 2005.
[30] Immanuel Wallerstein, Aufstieg und künftiger Niedergang des kapitalistischen
Weltsystems, in Senghaas, Dieter: Kapitalistische Weltökonomie. Kontroversen
über ihren Ursprung und ihre Entwicklungsdynamik, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1979;
Andre Gunder Frank, Orientierung im Weltsystem, Von der Neuen Welt zum Reich
der Mitte, Wien, Promedia, 2005; Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on
a World Scale, Women in the International Division of Labour, London, Zed Books,
1986.
[31] Claudia von Werlhof, "Questions to Ramona," in Corinne Kumar (Ed.),
Asking, We Walk. The South as New Political Imaginary, Vol. 2, Bangalore, Streelekha,
2007, p. 214-268
[32] Hannes Hofbauer, Osterweiterung. Vom Drang nach Osten zur peripheren
EU-Integration, Wien, Promedia, 2003; Andrea Salzburger, Zurück in die Zukunft
des Kapitalismus, Kommerz und Verelendung in Polen, Frankfurt – New York, Peter
Lang Verlag, 2006.
[34] August Raggam, Klimawandel, Biomasse als Chance gegen Klimakollaps und
globale Erwärmung, Graz, Gerhard Erker, 2004.
[35] Immanuel Wallerstein, Aufstieg und künftiger Niedergang des kapitalistischen
Weltsystems, in Senghaas, Dieter: Kapitalistische Weltökonomie. Kontroversen
über ihren Ursprung und ihre Entwicklungsdynamik, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1979.
[36] Renate Genth, Die Bedrohung der Demokratie durch die Ökonomisierung
der Politik, feature für den Saarländischen Rundfunk am 4.3., 2006.
[37] Johan Galtung, Eurotopia, Die Zukunft eines Kontinents, Wien, Promedia,
1993.
[38] Karl Marx, Capital, New York, Vintage, 1976.
[39] Claudia von Werlhof, Loosing Faith in Progress: Capitalist Patriarchy
as an "Alchemical System," in Bennholdt-Thomsen et.al.(Eds.), There is an Alternative,
2001, p. 15-40.
[40] Renate Genth, Die Bedrohung der Demokratie durch die Ökonomisierung
der Politik, feature für den Saarländischen Rundfunk am 4.3., 2006.
[41] Maria Mies and Claudia von Werlhof (Hg), Lizenz zum Plündern. Das Multilaterale
Abkommen über Investitionen MAI. Globalisierung der Konzernherrschaft – und
was wir dagegen tun können, Hamburg, EVA, 2003 (1998), p. 7; Maria Mies, Krieg
ohne Grenzen, Die neue Kolonisierung der Welt, Köln, PapyRossa, 2005.
[42] Michel Chossudovsky, America's "War on Terrorism," Montreal, Global
Research, 2005.
[43] Michel Chossudovsky, "Nuclear War Against Iran," Global Research, Center
for Research on Globalization, Ottawa 13.1, 2006.
[44] Altvater, Chossudovsky, Roy, Serfati, Globalisierung und Krieg, Sand
im Getriebe 17, Internationaler deutschsprachiger Rundbrief der ATTAC – Bewegung,
Sonderausgabe zu den Anti-Kriegs-Demonstrationen am 15.2., 2003; Maria Mies,
Krieg ohne Grenzen, Die neue Kolonisierung der Welt, Köln, PapyRossa, 2005.
[45] Hazel Hendersen, Building a Win-Win World. Life Beyond Global Economic
Warfare, San Francisco, 1996.
[46] Claudia von Werlhof, Vom Wirtschaftskrieg zur Kriegswirtschaft. Die
Waffen der, Neuen-Welt-Ordnung, in Mies 2005, p. 40-48.
[47] Michael T. Klare, Resource Wars. The New Landscape of Global Conflict,
New York, Henry Holt and Company, 2001.
[48] Rosa Luxemburg, Die Akkumulation des Kapitals, Frankfurt, 1970.
[49] Tony Clarke, Der Angriff auf demokratische Rechte und Freiheiten, in
Mies/Werlhof, 2003, p. 80-94.
[50] Sassen Saskia, Machtbeben. Wohin führt die Globalisierung?, Stuttgart-München,
DVA, 2000.
[51] Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, Cambridge, Harvard Univ. Press,
2001; Noam Chomsky, Hybris. Die endgültige Sicherstellung der globalen –Vormachtstellung
der USA, Hamburg-Wien, Europaverlag, 2003.
[52] Claudia von Werlhof, Speed Kills!, in Dimmel/Schmee, 2005, p. 284-292
[53] See the "roll back" and "stand still" clauses in the WTO agreements
in Maria Mies and Claudia von Werlhof (Hg), Lizenz zum Plündern. Das Multilaterale
Abkommen über Investitionen MAI. Globalisierung der Konzernherrschaft – und
was wir dagegen tun können, Hamburg, EVA, 2003.
[54] Richard Sennett, zit. "In Einladung zu den Wiener Vorlesungen," 21.11.2005:
Alternativen zur neoliberalen Globalisierung, 2005.
[55] Claudia von Werlhof, MAInopoly: Aus Spiel wird Ernst, in Mies/Werlhof,
2003, p. 148-192.
[56] Michel Chossudovsky, America's "War on Terrorism," Montreal, Global
Research, 2005.
[57] Michel Chossudovsky, Global Brutal. Der entfesselte Welthandel, die
Armut, der Krieg, Frankfurt, Zweitausendeins, 2002; Maria Mies, Krieg ohne Grenzen.
Die neue Kolonisierung der Welt, Köln, PapyRossa, 2005; Bennholdt-Thomsen/Faraclas/Werlhof
2001.
[58] Michel Chossudovsky, Global Brutal. Der entfesselte Welthandel, die
Armut, der Krieg, Frankfurt, Zweitausendeins, 2002.
[59] Wolfgang Richter, Elmar Schmähling, and Eckart Spoo (Hg), Die Wahrheit
über den NATO-Krieg gegen Jugoslawien, Schkeuditz, Schkeuditzer Buchverlag,
2000; Wolfgang Richter, Elmar Schmähling, and Eckart Spoo (Hg), Die deutsche
Verantwortung für den NATO-Krieg gegen Jugoslawien, Schkeuditz, Schkeuditzer
Buchverlag, 2000.
"... If we are talking about foreign policy, she is definitely unqualified. Her tenure at State
Department was a disaster. No diplomatic skills, whatsoever. She was trying to imitate Madeleine Albright
not noticing that times changed. ..."
"... In case she is elected, she will be a real threat to world peace. It is just unclear what country
she will decide to invade next. But she will definitely invade. ..."
"... Hillary is running around imposing a neocon purity test on the US foreign policy agenda. ..."
"... A vote for Hillary is a vote for mediocrity; especially in the mid-terms. ..."
"... Its a long campaign. They are not suppose to be friends. Stuff gets said, gets misreported
..."
"... Hillary went negative and dragged the primary into the gutter. She said Sanders should apologize
for Sandy Hook. I don't really blame Sanders for getting angry. ..."
Bernie's remark that Hillary is unqualified to be president is immature and sexist.
If we are talking about foreign policy, she is definitely unqualified. Her tenure at State
Department was a disaster. No diplomatic skills, whatsoever. She was trying to imitate Madeleine
Albright not noticing that times changed.
Her appointment of Dick Cheney close associate Victoria Nuland first as State Department Spokesperson
and then Assistant Secretary of State was an act of betrayal of everything Democratic Party should
stand for. It was actually return to Bush II/Cheney (or should it be Cheney/Bush II) foreign policy.
In case she is elected, she will be a real threat to world peace. It is just unclear what
country she will decide to invade next. But she will definitely invade.
likbez said in reply to MIB...
they're not running around imposing some socialist purity test
Hillary is running around imposing a neocon purity test on the US foreign policy agenda.
Rune Lagman said in reply to MIB...
Without Bernie's revolution the mid-terms is just going to be even more dismal. The Democratic
establishment fail in the mid-terms because they don't run on a national program. They believe
it's about the competency of the individual candidate.
Elections should be about issues that voters care about; the Democratic establishment still
don't get that concept.
A vote for Hillary is a vote for mediocrity; especially in the mid-terms.
dd said in reply to MIB...
Hillary is no FDR although a comparison to JFK's father's wall street shenanigans is probably
apt. I particularly admire the tax-free donations to a tax-free entity with of course wall street
as a major donor. I'm sure under her leadership we will begin to explore even more innovative
tax avoidance to help the needy.
sherparick said in reply to jh...
Its a long campaign. They are not suppose to be friends. Stuff gets said, gets misreported
(in this case a WaPo headline that said something that Clinton did not say. The WaPo by the way
has been far more vicious about Bernie then Clinton and her surrogates on her worse day.)
Sanders is a remarkable politician and always has been. I am not in the end voting for him,
I still admire his campaign as one of the great achievements of the American Left in my lifetime.
Actually, Bernie and Jeff Weaver did Clinton a favor by taking the troll bait. She is at her
best counter-punching and fighting from the underdog position. You can say a lot of things about
Hillary, (I worry about her judgement and group think tendencies), but she is tough and courageous
and seems to actually enjoy a good knock down drag out political fight.
Peter said in reply to sherparick...
Hillary went negative and dragged the primary into the gutter. She said Sanders should
apologize for Sandy Hook. I don't really blame Sanders for getting angry.
Obama was much better at staying focused and on message. But then he made some policy mistakes
as President which I don't believe Sanders would have done.
Donald Trump toured Washington yesterday for backroom meetings with Republican party bigwigs,
for pandering to the Israel lobby and for an examination by the neoconned Washington Post editors.
The Republican party has given up its resistance to Trump. See for example the Republican functionary
John Feehery who
opined on February 29 that Trump is an authoritarian, and:
We beat the Nazis and the Japanese in the World War II and protected freedom and democracy by
beating the Soviet Union in the Cold War. It would be a damn shame if we lost it all by
giving in to the authoritarian impulse in this election .
Republican voters can support the nominee picked by a majority of the voters, they can sit this
election out, or they can start a third party. The last two choices give the White House to the
Clinton machine.
I am not happy that Donald Trump could be our nominee, but I am learning to live with
that distinct possibility .
That, in short, is the revised position of the Republican party. It has given up on fighting Trump
and will now propel him into the White House. What will happen thereafter? Who knows?
Trump is pure marketing. A salesperson throughout.
This video
explains how his linguistics works - words with only very few syllables, strong buzzword at the
end of the sentences. It is fourth grade reading level language. Exactly the level needed to sell
his product to the U.S. public and the Republican party. He is an expert in doing this.
But what product does Trump sell? Does he know it? Does he know how that product functions? Is
he serious in what he claims that product to be. I have my doubts.
So has Par Lang. He
remarks on yesterday's Trump appearance at the U.S. Zionists beauty contests:
Trump's pander was so extreme that one ponders the possibility that he was mocking the audience.
Trump probably does not even care what political product he sells. For now he is selling the salesman
himself. Buy Trump and all problems will be solved. He does this convincingly. Most of what he said
so far is just nonsense and solely for marketing purpose. There are only few consistent political
lines that did not (yet) change over time. These are the lines that
rile the Washington Post editors:
Donald Trump endorsed an unabashedly noninterventionist approach to world affairs Monday during
a day-long tour of Washington, casting doubt on the need for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
and expressing skepticism about a muscular U.S. military presence in Asia.
...
"At what point do you say, 'Hey, we have to take care of ourselves?' " Trump said in the editorial
board meeting. "I know the outer world exists, and I'll be very cognizant of that. But at the
same time, our country is disintegrating, large sections of it, especially the inner cities."
Trump said U.S. involvement in NATO may need to be significantly diminished in the coming years,
breaking with nearly seven decades of consensus in Washington. "We certainly can't afford to do
this anymore," he said, adding later, "NATO is costing us a fortune, and yes, we're protecting
Europe with NATO, but we're spending a lot of money."
Unfortunately, the visit provided no reassurance regarding Mr. Trump's fitness for the presidency.
"I'm not a radical person," he told us as he was leaving. But his answers left little doubt how
radical a risk the nation would be taking in entrusting the White House to him.
But who are the real radicals, the real radical risk? The salesperson Trump or the neoconned Washington
Post publisher and editors? You may judged that from this excerpt at the end of the talk's
transcript :
[FREDERICK RYAN JR., WASHINGTON POST PUBLISHER]: You [MUFFLED] mentioned a few minutes earlier
here that you would knock ISIS. You've mentioned it many times. You've also mentioned the risk
of putting American troop in a danger area. If you could substantially reduce the risk of harm
to ground troops, would you use a battlefield nuclear weapon to take out ISIS
?
TRUMP: I don't want to use, I don't want to start the process of nuclear. Remember the one
thing that everybody has said, I'm a counterpuncher. Rubio hit me. Bush hit me. When I said low
energy, he's a low-energy individual, he hit me first. I spent, by the way he spent 18 million
dollars' worth of negative ads on me. That's putting [MUFFLED]…
RYAN: This is about ISIS. You would not use a tactical nuclear weapon against ISIS?
[CROSSTALK] ...
The salesperson stopped there. Instead of answering that question Trump asked for personal introduction
to the people taking part in the event. To nuke some lunatics in Toyota technicals is not Trumps
idea of his product. He would not sell that. Not even for gaining the support of the WaPo neocons.
Buying Trump is buying a pig in a poke. One does not know what one might get. But I find it unlikely
that he would pursue an interventionist policy. Then again - George W. Bush also pretended to be
a non-interventionist - until that changed.
But Trumps current non-interventionist position is a big contrast to Hillary Clinton. She unashamedly
offers her well known toxic brew of neo-liberal and neo-conservative orthodoxy. She will wage war,
Trump may. As a foreigner that is the decisive difference to me.
But if I were a voter in the U.S. my position would be based on economic policies. There Bernie
Sanders is surely preferable to Trump and very much preferable to Clinton.
So, I guess what all this means is that the Repubs have accepted Trump as less evil than Hillary?
But, what if the nominee of the Democ side isn't Hillary? What if it is the Bern? Not that it
makes a dimes worth of difference. Did anyone read Dimitri Orlovs post for today? I have to say
that his take is pretty close to where we are headed ... if not soon, eventually.
I have no idea who really originated the bit about interesting times ... but I suspect it may
be what we are living through. That is, if this is living ...
"Trump is pure marketing. A salesperson throughout. This video explains how his linguistics works
- words with only very few syllables, strong buzzword at the end of the sentences. It is fourth
grade reading level language. Exactly the level needed to sell his product to the U.S. public
and the Republican party. He is an expert in doing this."
Gee, did you miss the whole Obama campaign? Does CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN/HOPE? ring a bell?
Trump, an quintessential oligarchs himself, famous for marrying supermodels and losing half of
his Dad's fortune. The MSM long before elections virtually created Trump as Flaccid Clown TV persona.
This Flaccid Clown made himself a mirror of a fascist American society that through him can
bask in its ugliness, ignorance and narcissism of exceptional mediocrity of Trump_vs_deep_state.
Trump salesman has qualities of a self-invented cult leader, characterized by extreme bullying,
intimidation, threats and/or violence and disregard to humanity reaching fair beyond any acceptable
human conduct. He is a phony opportunist, a sewage excretion of his personal puny psychopathic
insecurities for profit and fame with no other program, idea or thought behind it.
He did not appear on the political stage accidentally, he has his role to play and he is playing
it well so far, whatever establishment wants him to play. These are political puppets, stooges,
chicken hawks, and front-men of the establishment who are scared, afraid that their services will
no longer be needed by true ruling elite who run this abhorrent regime for about 240 years..
This Flaccid Clown is an artificial phenomenon. He is a media phenomenon "hired by a establishment
", to tell establishment "You are fired" in a group psychotic episode of surrealistic transference
of a cartoon character of reality show into empty desperate lives of those rejected by ruling
elite, unable to effectively serve it or submit to power and hence forcefully alienated from delusions
of American Serf Dream. He is uploaded by his oligarchic handlers, with misconceived populist
utterances passes for ideas that he has no interest in, no understanding of or any intention or
intellectual capability to follow. This is all about the show, and he is the entertainer of the
moment.
The establishment has all the bullets, criminal, political, economic, tax evasion, socio-sexual,
financial to kill Trump candidacy in a week, even to indict him. Few front pages with this Flaccid
Clown portrayed as a pariah, Russian spy, a commie, baby killer, thief, Antichrist, terrorist
supporter, with no facts but innuendos would unravel his shallow support among desperate, scared,
confused, blind, revenge seeking mob who now supports and idolizes him regardless what nonsense
he is uttering. All bullets are ready to fire unless he submits and betrays his following and
that's what he did just recently with bending over to AIPAC and refusing to run as independent
if not nominated, another betrayal of his mindless, raging hormones followers. After all he does
what he is hired to do.
What he is actually used for by the Oligarchic establishment that supports him so far (Christie
[and others, establishment bullies], is first one to admit it) is to galvanize desperate public,
who finds his ignorance appealing and refreshing on such a calcified political stage of puppetry
as well as moves those who see in him a danger of fascist narcissistic megalomaniac taking power.
All the political commotion is aimed to insidiously entice Americans all to rush to voting
booths thinking that they could make any slightest difference in their own lives and life of the
nation by supporting or denouncing a puppet of the ruling elite.
Unfortunately, this time as well, millions of irrational, desperate and helpless in their daily
lives electoral zombies, under a spell of exciting political masquerade, are aligning themselves
with an anointed winner of a popularity/beauty contest, in a delusional feat of transference of
a fraction of elite's power to themselves just for a second of a thrill of power. And they will
continue to authorize their own suicide mission, since even baseless, continually disproved hope
of any chance of influencing of the political realm via means of begging is the last thing that
dies.
What's really shocking but beyond the political sensitivity level of Americans is a fact he
is yet to formulate any coherent policy he would like to implement and that's the plan, so he,
if anointed by the establishment will be able to backpedal, deny or ignore his utterances, leaving
gullible crowd betrayed yet again.And people he "listens" to are all hopeless neocons or wall
street hacks, symbols of status quo.
Most of Americans, not unlike a cargo cult, are impatient, nervous, excited and scared sitting
and waiting before an impregnable curtain of political manipulation of the ruling elite, turning
to magic, superstition, appeasement or begging for mercy or praying for a caprice of good will
to save them, while blatantly abandoning their unalienable rights to self-determination and democratic
system of people's rule, based on equality in the law, and one voter one vote principle.
May be the elites will conclude that if mob wants this Flaccid Clown, they will get a them
this Flaccid Clown as a puppet figure sitting in oval office replica in Hollywood following and
watching himself.
It is old principle of rulers: "Vox Populi Vox Dei" that was originally applied in the totalitarian
Roman Imperial regime during imperial games at Circus Maximum and Coliseum as a pressure valve
release for unruly, enraged of cronyism, and fixed, unfair rules of aristocracy, roman proletariat
i.e. people with no power, to pacify them cheaply and prevent costly riots and killing expenses.
What we have here is:
Vox Animali, Vox Inferi.
Trump loves two things, himself and $. He'll follow the $ if elected, by doing what his owners tell
him to do. The sensible utterances by Trump are an act, designed to siphon support from other candidates.
After Change We Can Bereave In and Mr. 9/11 GW Bush, I don't know what to believe. Trump's populist
rhetoric sounds good to the ears of working proles and it amuses me that Chosenites on both the Left
and Right side of the aisle as well as the media seem to be worried about him.
This was supposed to be the end of the white male rule not only in Amerikkka, but also in formerly
homogeneous Western Europe, ushered in by economic migrants, refugees often escaping from non-war
zones, large explosions and heavily armed Wahabbs killing people in the train stations, bus stops,
highways and by ways of these countries!
What went wrong??
What's the problem with the haters here. trump wants to keep NATO out of Russia's hair. WHY slam
him for that. even if he doesn't mean it, he can't suffer an electoral defeat now without making
it radio active for another candidate to see her talk that way. what part of that do you not
understand? It doesn't matter if he's just a puppet if the elites see yet another anti
interventionist electoral phenomenon.
"But if I were a voter in the U.S. my position would be based on economic policies. There Bernie
Sanders is surely preferable to Trump and very much preferable to Clinton."
Becoming another apologist Mr. b? Your previous "Strategist" votes bring about another Neoliberal
warmonger in Canada?
This is where we stand apart and will remain respectful to you and readers.
Between Killary, Bernie and whoever, I will vote Trump for now , he's no different for
any politicians - liars and warmonger . Trump may likely destroy the two party systems and
brought change we need so badly.
What if he (Trump) starts another endless war? Do you really believe Killary and Bernie any different?
The answers, better the devil who will start another war than the one who lies? My opinion, Bernie
is far more dangerous than Obomo another Trojan horse.
I maybe a minority here, but in the real world the numbers are growing - as I came across anyone
I met regardless parties affiliation.
Economic..?. blah! You believe in Fiat money, Wall Street or Banksters?
Trump is nasty, mean, corrupt, a bully and a nut, but he is the only candidate who offers a chance
(however slim) of breaking the stinking rotten corrupt status quo in any way.
I am sorry that he coddled the rotten, murderous Israel. But we are too far down the rabbit hole
- these days all of Congress must express their devotion to Israel. This is craziness, but it is
a sickening fact. They're all Xtians, too. This is also nuts and disgusting pandering.
It's going to take a nasty Republican like Trump to break (or to make a valiant effort to crack)
the nasty machine.
Obama has shown himself and the corrupt D Party to have been a comprehensive, dismal failure for
the common people. The D Party offers no hope and no change.
Perhaps it won't be necessary for Trump to malign and attack the BDS movement as the slavering
Hillary is doing. It's running off her fangs and down the front of her blood- soaked shirt.
Trumps non-interventionist line ( not his policy, because making it up as you go along is not policy.
) is BS. That freak would be a gleeful war criminal by bombing a dozen countries if it got him more
popularity, or he needed a boost from the polls, or he invested in the arms industry. All the non-interventionist
BS, is just a PR counter to his establishment rivals. He doesn't mean any of of it.
The Sanders campaign is a sick joke. Sacrificing genocide against people across the world so Americans
can have a bit better health care is disgusting.
Sanders has been so weak in taking on the evil US Empire and the US capitalist establishment,
then how can he do anything as president where there will be much more pressure as president then
there is now. Sanders would be the lamest sheep political history, and not because of the resistance
by the elite, but because Sanders has no resistance. That way lies childish delusions.
Sanders exists to give motivational speeches in some areas of social politics and that's all he is
good for.
" The Sanders campaign is a sick joke. Sacrificing genocide against people across the world
so Americans can have a bit better health care is disgusting.
Behind Bernie is MoveON, Soros "invested" over a billion to keep Israel the endless slaughter
of Palestinians civilians.
If anyone represents the ruling Establishment, it is the Washington Post. They did force Richard
Nixon out for no better reason than his withdrawal of the troops from Vietnam. Hardly the
criminal acts that are ignored today. The editors' words are clear; endless war including the use
of nuclear weapons. Damn the consequences.
in a world where packaging/appearance is everything and content means nothing - trump is the
ticket.. the usa and the world by extension get what the marketers/propagandists have to offer...
forget about anything to do with content..
Trump's vaunted "independence" would prove a problem to him as president because the ruling elite
could attack his sources of income (the trump biz) and destroy his independence. If elected, he
will be subjected to every nasty attack to sway him to do the bidding of the foreign policy
establishment. He might want to call Putin for tips on how to deal with the nastiness.
b, thank you. I agree entirely. Bernie would be better than a pig in a poke, and a b* in a poke would
be worse.
However, the point is moot because votecounting in the primaries has the overwhelming probability
of having been fraudulent. And I would be shocked if the actual election votes were honestly counted.
Here's what I heard in the Trump voice on the radio first thing, "My first priority is to get
rid of that Iran agreement. That's a bad deal. For our safety. For Israel's safety. That deal needs
to come down. That was a bad deal, and we gave them $--.--!" (He was talking about the part of their
own money which we returned to them years after we "froze" their money.
If I vote this election, it will be for Jill Stein. Foreign policy is #1 to me, and no other
candidate comes close. I don't play the LOTE game or any variation. Besides, the majority of the
voting population are so dependent on what their TV, radio or whatever tells them, there's no
room for sanity.
Trump is simply stripping the "politically correct" packaging off of decades-long fascist rhetoric:
"welfare queens" against the poor, "criminal environments" against the black, clash of civilization
against the Muslims, "axis of evil" against any opponent of Us suprematism, etc
so now he comes along and draws conclusions ... except for the "infinite war" meme, which is a
purely imperialistic effort that seemingly doesn't resonate anymore with the people's frustration
and anger
I think Trump's fans after a few more months of the same speech where money is prominent will be
fed up.
The trouble is that it would be too late and Trump would have offered the presidency to Hillary on
a silver plate.
We'll have to get used to the idea of seeing that witch often on the TV when she will be
president.
perhaps all this will be rendered moot, we'll have an 'event,' Obama will initiate the
Continuity of Operations
(COOP) executive directive...
whatever, it matters little...
in the words of the late, great American composer and statesman, Mr. Frank Zappa:
The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion.
At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery,
they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will
see the brick wall at the back of the theater
It seems to me that Trump appeals to a large group of people who have been screwed. He is a true
populist that says things that shake up the establishment like calling politicians "puppets".
He's vague about where he stands on many issues to allow for moving toward the center after the
nomination. Along those lines, he sometimes pays lip service to the establishment so as to reduce
friction.
Sander's position are much much more detailed and people-friendly. But Sanders doesn't seem to
be willing to do what it takes to win. What does it take? Attacking Hillary's character. Demanding
media time.
And Sanders hasn't created a Movement. He is too wedded to the Democratic Party to do that. A
real progressive movement might switch allegiance to the Greens if Sanders isn't the Democratic nominee.
Sanders wants to deliver his voters to the Democratic nominee (likely to be Hillary).
Each of us has to decide for themselves: can we trust a demagogue (Trump)? Can we trust a career
politician someone that doesn't fight to win (Sanders)? Can we trust ANYONE that comes through the
duopoly?
#2-not anti-latino but illegals latino smart head !!!!
The point I had been mulling over is whether Trump is aware of the forces that rule the world and
whether he would take them on. Would he open up the can of worms behind 9/11, lies to go into Iraq,
Benghazi etc. Well my answer to that is he will if he has to (strike that) if the puppeteers decide
that they want to.
I think that he will be the next president, the Hegelian Dialectic that is being set up is that
the "Government" has been taken over by bad elements and Trump will lead the charge against them
as a "non-bought" free American and maybe the Clinton's take the fall. This of course directs anger
away from the real perps. I base this on F William Engdahl in a wide ranging interview promoting
his latest book on the Genesis
of ISIS opening up a glimpse of the lifestyles of the wealthy at a place called "studio 54".
I think that the next US president will be the one who "collapses" the dollar (the puppetmasters
decide when this will happen, their puppet will be the one that deals with the resulting upheaval,
and the pieces to deal with this are being put on the chessboard right now (Expect ISIS activity
in the US).
BTW, Engdahl makes a prediction in the video that "something big" will draw American boots on
the ground into Syria.
There is Hiltery Clinton: "What difference does it make." Out damn spot from my
hands. Her victims are many, but who is counting.
... when we left the WH, we were broke. Hmmm. In 2008, a $35 million campaign debt was magically
paid by anon donor. Her history is documentable, too many links. In the Whitewater saga, Hillary
could not recall what work she did at the Rose Law firm for client Madison Guarantee Savings and
Loan bank and, when subpoenaed by Prosecutors said she could not find the billing records.
A circus? If only the consequences were not so serious.
You think the USA society will remain intact at the end of 2016?
On Voting: HRC is right. What difference does it make? All bought and paid for. You cannot become
President unless selected by the guys and gals managing the Deep State.
Forget the elephants and donkeys. A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step -
write-in elections
. I'm all ears as regards a better plan. We need to stop complaining/chasing our tails and instead
to plan, organize, and to seize power to effect real change.
If we'd begun in 2004 we'd be very nearly home by now. So let's begin in 2016. Just as 2016 has
succeeded 2004, whether we choose to continue to suck our thumbs or to act, the leaves will fall
off our calendars and the year 2028 will arrive, one way or another ... I'd prefer another.
A lot of Americans have developed such a low opinion of politicians and politics as usual that
they believe that an outsider with no experience as an elected official can come in and improve
the situation.
Yes, well said. We don't really know what Trump will do - but we DO know what Hillary Clinton, Kasich,
Rubio etc. will do and it's terrifying. We can at least HOPE that Trump will be somewhat less horrible
than Hillary Vlad-the-Impaler Clinton.
They say that 'hope is not a plan.' Actually hope is a plan - just not a very good one. But still
better than cutting your own throat.
I do disagree with you about Sanders. Yes, I mostly like him on foreign policy too, but economics?
Sorry, his open-borders immigration policy WILL crush the average American into third-world poverty
no matter what else he does. Because nobody but nobody beats the law of supply and demand. "People
are the ultimate resource" is the slogan of India where over a half a billion people are chronically
malnourished and the standard of living is inferior to late Medieval England...
Funny that not that long ago Sanders admitted that open-borders immigration was something dreamed
up by the Koch brothers to ensure a supply of cheap labor, but now he's gone full Wall Street on
the issue and he's lost me.
P @ 22: Thanks for the link. And the veil is lifted a bit further.
Trump's cloying tribute to AIPAC made him look like a penitent buffoon in search of redemption as
he desperately scanned the crowd anxiously anticipating and appearing relieved at the sound of applause
after each sentence he uttered.
When it comes to Hillary, however, she has the record of past actions (and even more machinations)
to prove her swooning fealty to The Lobby. Had her groveling not earned her enough kudos with AIPAC,
Hillary could have read to the convention the contents of her recently disclosed email in which she
explained how putting Syria neck under the butcher's knife was salutary for Israel.
Trump has been clear about his economic policies. He has criticized the TPP, H1B visas, lopsided
trade deals, offshoring US jobs and stated repeatedly he wants to place a tariff on companies that
move to low wage countries.
On the other hand, Sanders is completely inconsistent by calling for open borders while claiming
to be for higher wages. How is flooding the market with cheap labor going to raise wages?
On foreign policy Trump has questioned the logic of eliminating secular dictators who kill terrorists.
If is was a mistake to remove Saddam & Gaddafi, then how can we do the same to Assad? Also Trump
has said countries receiving US Military protection will start paying for it's cost and that money
will be used to rebuild US infrastructure.
Regarding ISIS Trump has called for neighboring countries to send their troops backed by US airpower.
He also thinks Gulf countries should pay for refugees' safe zones.
On the other hand, Sanders says the US should be "tough but not stupid" in destroying ISIS. Now
that sounds like a "pig in a poke" foreign policy if I ever heard one.
Thank you Ben @ 18. Stealing the election is really the most important issue, I agree. https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/
is the site of a statistician who studies election/primary fraud for us.
Elsewhere on the site he indicates that the public chose Bernie, not Hillary in MA, MO, MI & IL.
Also the exact method by which Richard knows this. Did you know that once the results are in they
ADJUST the exit polls to agree?
It's fantastic the amt of info he has; he even knows how many votes on which type of machines where
two types are available.
So it's really a tragedy. If Bernie had been allowed to do better at the beginning he might have
created a bandwagon effect. In those 4 states people didn't vote for that horrible woman.
Everything I'm reading at conservative/activist news blogs is Trump is being sold as an 'insurgency'
candidate. Conservatives have been working to kick the RINO/neocons out of the leadership of the
national R Party for years. They see Trump as the guy who can crack the ceiling so to speak and they
are pulling out all of the stops to get him to the General. Period.
Their coalition that is growing enormously, daily, which includes moderate Evangelicals (if there
is such a thing), conservatives, some Tea Party types and more conservatives.
Many here may dismiss Trump, but I'd suggest that would not be wise. Like it or not, he is a keen
strategist, he's extremely well connected which means his peers are intensely intimidated, he's a
deal maker and breaker, he's been working the conservative side of the aisle for at least a decade
now, he uses people to his advantage yet their is a shady loyalty that goes with it...shady as in
shadows.
As for Hillary, her base just isn't fired up. BUT, and this is a big BUT, when she gets cornered
she comes out fighting, and when chooses to 'turn it on' she acts/behaves like a fighter and she
becomes unstoppable.
Bernie, well, he's Bernie...his policy proposals are worth looking at. He's not offensive. He's
not a Neanderthal. And he's decent. The likelihood of Hillary being indicted is nil, IMHO, thus,
his challenge lies with how he out 'fight's' her and I'm not convinced he has the MOJO to succeed.
As for Jill Stein. When she ran the last time, I tried to do a basic background check on her.
I'm an A2 girl, that is I wanted to learn if she met the three qualifications laid out in the Constitution,
which is Article II, Section 5. I ran a very novice check on her, I admit, but I found it difficult
to learn anything about her upbringing, local schools she's attended, her mom and dad, grandma and
grandpa, brothers and sisters. Dead ends everywhere.
All of the above search info is readily found on just about any of us, which makes me suspect,
that is, she doesn't meet the U.S. Contitution's Presidential qualifications. She may. But I couldn't
confirm it. Which in my mind, should be relatively easy. There is something 'amiss' about her. Just
instinct. Can't place my finger on it.
And Cruz? Ha. Ppppffffttttt....very dishonest IMO. And doesn't have a credible shot at the General.
Donald's meeting with Sheldon was a fait ac·com·pli. He's there man as evidenced by his AIPAC
debut...
Engdahl says no hop in Trump. Trump is a Mafia Don with a pompadour. Direct Mafia Ties via casinos,
attorneys, dad's construction biz. Likes Hillary even less.
Engdahl talks a good game and backs it up, but no mention of Israel's role in the balkanization
of MENA states and the remapping of MENA in accordance w/ Yinon/PNAC Plans.
AN @ 42: Do you REALLY believe the "Donald" will be able to live up to his progressive rhetoric?
If so, I applaud your faith. I, on the other hand, do not. We could well find out in the future.
...
I maybe a minority here, but in the real world the numbers are growing - as I came across anyone
I met regardless parties affiliation.
Economic..?. blah! You believe in Fiat money, Wall Street or Banksters?
Posted by: Jack Smith | Mar 22, 2016 3:33:59 PM | 11
I suspect that you've zeroed in on the Trump 'difference'.
All he needs to get into the White House is to keep dangling the insinuation that he'll be the least
worst of the last dozen or so POTUSes. And he can do that with everything except his tongue tied
behind his back. I'm also inclined to agree that if he turns out not to be anti-establishment then
the next POTUS probably will be.
#2 Trump is anti-latino? That is news to me. I believe he talked about MEXICO. Mexico is not Latin America,
please do not use the race card. Trump makes lots of sense, NO MORE illegal immigration, out, out out
I say. The real unemployment rate in the country is stratospheric. There is a black boy in Chicago who
needs that job, there is a young white boy in Appalachia who needs that job, there is a young native
american boy on a res who also needs that job. Everytime I hear, "these immigrants are doing jobs americans
don't want to do" I get sick to my stomach. Enough is enough.
Posted by: Fernando Arauxo | Mar 22, 2016 11:01:22 PM |
49
b, sorry for the OT, but CISA is even worse than CISPA & they are s'posed to vote for it this week.
I guess it would affect you too. Just what we don't need-- business controlling what we say on the
internet.
"....In 2009, President Obama stood before an adoring crowd in the centre of Prague, in the heart
of Europe. He pledged himself to make "the world free from nuclear weapons". People cheered and some
cried. A torrent of platitudes flowed from the media. Obama was subsequently awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize.
It was all fake. He was lying.........In the last eighteen months, the greatest build-up of military
forces since World War Two – led by the United States – is taking place along Russia's western frontier.
Not since Hitler invaded the Soviet Union have foreign troops presented such a demonstrable threat
to Russia. What makes the prospect of nuclear war even more dangerous is a parallel campaign against
China..........The propaganda laying the ground for a war against Russia and/or China is no different
in principle. To my knowledge, no journalist in the Western "mainstream" – a Dan Rather equivalent,
say – asks why China is building airstrips in the South China Sea...............
................In the circus known as the American presidential campaign, Donald Trump
is being presented as a lunatic, a fascist. He is certainly odious ; but he is also a media
hate figure. That alone should arouse our scepticism ...........
Trump's views on migration are grotesque, but no more grotesque than those of David Cameron.
It is not Trump who is the Great Deporter from the United States, but the Nobel Peace Prize winner,
Barack Obama............
.........Most of America's wars (almost all of them against defenceless countries) have been launched
not by Republican presidents but by liberal Democrats: Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton,
Obama .................."
Further to John Pliger on China.... 2016 presidential election is crucial whether our elected
liar will go to war with China. Watch YouTube (South Front Channel) US massive buildup in South
China sea with known lapdogs especially The Jap and Australia. Missing is Singapore's US naval
base, one of the over a thousands bases around the world encircle Russia and China.
Mr. Trump just made a bold appeal for prompt and severe application of torture. The combo of "some
sensible non-interventionism" and torture somehow lacks appeal, and perhaps it is just me.
In the meantime, as I surfed for a direct quote, I got distracted. American politics is something
indeed. A group styling itself "Make America Awesome" distributed in Utah the picture of Mrs. Cruz
from her maiden days looking, well, awesome. Cruz cleared the caucuses in Utah (and so did Sanders
without similarly appealing pics of his wife).
Khalek read racist and homophobic statements to the interviewees, claiming they were made by Trump.
Little did they know that the quotes actually came from the mouth of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu or other Israeli leaders.
Donald Trump has done more to awaken the American people than anyone in recent memory. His
repeated mentioning of our massive $19 Trillion dollar deficit, job killing trade deals (no one
has mentioned NAFTA since Patrick Buchanan), getting us out of NATO, our taxpayers paying for
everyone's defense, how lobbyists and special interest groups control our politicians like
puppets, and that immigration and especially Muslim immigration is very bad for America, is
priceless. His bringing up Saudi Arabia's responsibility for 9/11 from the depths of the
Orwellian memory hole is also worth mentioning. For a while there I was hoping he was going to
mention Vice President Joe Biden's, 4 Star General Clark, and US General Martin Dempsey's
revealing that ISIS is a fake terrorist organization funded, controlled, and armed by Saudi
Arabia, Qatar, UAE, & Turkey, and indirectly funded by the US, France, UK, & Co with their huge
arms sales to those same nations who than give them to their terrorist puppets. Viva the real
revolution of truth!
ISIS mortars slammed into the base, dubbed Firebase Bell, killing Staff Sergeant Louis Cardin
and wounding several more Marines. Some of the wounded had to be evacuated out of the country
in order to receive proper treatment.
Cardin, 27, from Temecula, California, was on his fifth deployment in a war zone. He had served
three tours of duty in Afghanistan and one previous tour in Iraq before he was airlifted into
Makhmour last month as part of the deployment of the US Marines 26th Expeditionary Unit from the
USS Kearsarge, a troop carrier stationed in the Persian Gulf.
On Monday, a small ISIS unit attacked the base, home to 200 Marines, with small arms fire.
They were driven off without casualties. At that point, Pentagon spokesmen acknowledged the existence
of Firebase Bell, the first US-only facility to be set up in Iraq since the formal end of the
US military occupation of the country in December 2011.
Five tours. How long is a tour? A year? Time between tours? Louis Cardin was a Marine stationed abroad,
fighting the US wars of aggression for how many years? Five? Seven? More? Did he start at 18? Poor
bastard. Poor bastards he undoubtedly killed, too.
How can it be that there is not even one outlier campaigning on 'give peace a chance' or its equivalent?
Or is there? I haven't heard of one.
Trump went to AIPAC to make nice so they would stop the propaganda re his campaign.
From the looks of it today,he failed,as from the Graun to The NY lying times to Wapoo,the venom for
him remains.
Sanders is terrible foreign policy wise,he is totally invested in the thought Israel is unique and
worthy of support,he calls Hezbollah the terrorists,and backed Cast Lead and PE as rational response
to bottle rockets by mice trapped in a cage of Zionist steel.I do believe him pretty good domestically,and
he has called for border control as a logical extension of nationhood,although yes,he needs Latino
and black voters,hence his call of Obomba being good.Its bad enough blacks won't vote for the NY
Jew wo estranging them even more.
HRC tough?A fighter?How about a bubble headed bobblehead of nada,a MSM call girl for Zion.(nobody
else would want her)
That leaves Trump as our only American hope to lead US from the rocks of neoliberalism from Zion.
DS @ 63 said: "Donald Trump has done more to awaken the American people than anyone in recent memory.
"
Where the issues you mentioned, that's partly true. Gotta' give Trump credit for being relevant
on certain subjects, that's where he gets much of his support. But Sanders mentions those subjects,
and more in every speech.
I have to assume you've never heard Sanders speak. Even HRC mentions populist issues sometimes.
The challenge, as always, is...Can their actions match their rhetoric? I, for one, doubt it.
Proposition: BERNIE, A PROP FOR KILLARY (Team "D" establishment)
Given Bernie's milquetoast criticism of Killary and Obombo, I've started contemplating he's a
decoy to create the illusion of a progressive choice within Team "D", to keep progressives engaged
with Team "D", and, in the end, convince them to vote for Killary.
Considerations IMO supporting this proposition:
1. Killary has not pivoted to the left at all. Bernie's been ineffective at changing the Team
"D" platform, which suggests more of a stage prop than actual political threat.
2. As a corollary, Bernie would've had more influence on Team "D" had he run an independent campaign.
3. Had Bernie -- or someone else with at least a little "progressive street cred" -- not entered
the Team "D" primary, progressives would've gasped over a "Hillary only" primary. In turn, they would've
started an independent campaign that would, even in failure in the general election, cost Killary
too many votes for her to win. "A prop for Killary" was a prerequisite for her success.
4. As stated at the outset, Bernie's milquetoast criticism suggests he's trying to avoid wounding
her so badly that she can't win the general election.
Trump and the Clintons are friends and good friends. They are not simply casually acquainted because
they are all rich New Yorkers. Any casual web search will reveal that the two families are close
and thick. Would anyone believe Bill Clinton and Donald Trump could spend hours and hours together
on the golf course and not talk politics?
I don't have any positive evidence that Hillary and the Donald conspired to rig the current election
season. It does beggar belief they have not coordinated in an way.
How can it be that there is not even one outlier campaigning on 'give peace a chance' or its
equivalent
the neocon mindset prevails across the political spectrum and, in fact, it seems to me that most
Americans are pretty much jake with it as well. what's precipitating the currently rising citizenly
angst is the currently falling citizenly purchasing power.
(but in keeping with the adage that 'no crisis should go to waste' it seems a good opportunity
to flesh out the root causes and give them a good public airing)
Trump is what America is, which is cleverly masked by marketing in Hillary, Bernie, Ted, and all
the rest. It won't matter who get elected. Neocons = Neoliberals. More millions will die and more
destruction by the Empire.
If, a big IF, it is the case that the Repubs. now accept Trump, it is because they are afraid
of splitting the Republican Party (it is split, but that's not public) thus destroying it.
They want to conserve the advantages they have with a 'face unity for the public' - Senate, House,
power brokers, funding, corruption, Big Corps, Banks, Energy, etc. etc. - capitalising on the past.
Far prefer that to winning the Presidency. (See Obama-Romney.)
H. Clinton is guaranteed to continue the 'old system', like Obama, but even more collaborative?
(Aka 'Unity Governement' coupled with fake oppositions…)
Possibly, also because they can't stand the runner-up, Cruz, a minor figure, an objectionable
nut-job. A party that proposes two 'final' candidates whom the Cadres despise or even passionately
hate. Heh. History will make hay…
The Republicans are half-burned toast, the whole system is exposed as a decrepit sham, yet they
will try to hang on.
Imho, Trump cannot win against Sanders, and likely not against H. Clinton either. Once again,
the Repubs. will bank on a loss, accept it, to survive, and in their minds perhaps find Glory Another
Day. So accepting Trump as the nominee (if they do) is just part the same-old.
In any case, while the US prez. has tremendous powers, the US is run by other actors behind the
curtain. The Circus trumpets on.
Donald Trump carries with him several flaws: Under informed; self Absorbed; lacks real grace; too
combative in ways that eliminate potential supporters etc etc. One trait I believe the Donald does
not sport: He's not a liar. A Salesman, yes. But not a liar.
He is the collective middle finger of millions of Americans who feel they've been ridden hard
and put up wet by the elites in general and more specifically, by the Republican Party leadership
and those Republican losers in Congress like Boehner, Ryan, McConnell, Graham, McCain and others.
He is/was smart enough to sense the frustrations of the forgotten and repeatedly parrot THEIR
talking points. He's preaching to the choir and the choir is growing geometrically larger, day by
day. One of the posters above clammers for a street revolution, decrying any actions short of that
as ineffective. Trump for all of his character defects has ignited a prairie fire of contempt for
the system as we know it. The horse is out of the barn, for good.
Despite his pandering, I still believe he's the best America has and what America deserves. The only
way to the other side of this is through it. There is no way around it. Hold your nose but don't
close your eyes, otherwise you'll miss all the fun. Weeeee!!!!!!
karlof1 @79 Thanks for the link. Lots of good thoughts in the article.
Unfortunately, what it doesn't talk about directly is our worship as Western humans of the Gawd
of Mammon which is represented by private finance. Humans have not evolved to the point where we
have made finance a public tool. It is still a private tool of the global plutocrats and not just
America has to unify over the effort to throw off the jackboot of private finance. Worldwide the
curtain hiding the effects of private finance needs to be ripped off to show the core of our form
of social organization.
Humanity has made great strides in the past to define a more humanistic and egalitarian world.
The execution of efforts to instantiate those goals have been corrupted by the remaining "non sharing/public"
aspects of our social organization, the major of which is private finance. There used to be an argument
that the global plutocratic families represented the best and the brightest. That was a myth to begin
with and is now resulting in our species being channeled into extinction.
All banking worldwide needs to be "nationalized" and inheritance needs to be neutered to stop
producing families that accumulate enough to effect ongoing social policy.
There used to be an argument that the global plutocratic families represented the best and the
brightest. That was a myth to begin with...
The global plutocrats cannot be described this way any longer. Doesn't sell.
The new propaganda is two-pronged:
First, commoners en masse are told that they are extremely bright and gifted (mockingly, but they
relish the compliments!) highly intelligent, can-do spirited, tenacious, rugged individualists, willing
to sacrifice, help their neighbor, bootstraps and etc. (exceptional Americans!).
Second: obscene wealth and usury is excused (and applauded!) because these rich folks possess
this same can-do spirit and the other traits which they have simply applied in an effective manner.
Reinforcement of same is done by pretending that every American begins on a level playing field
and he was born with the same potential and opportunities as Mitt Romney or Donald Trump or any of
the Bush Klan.
The persistent propagandizing manifests itself thus: If I win the lottery, I want to keep all
the money, so like the rich people, I am in favor of low taxes or a flat tax (even better!).
Do you agree with the argument for a Steady-State Economy with one global currency backed by specie
and processed through a globalized public bank, or would you keep everything at the State-level,
eliminating private, fractional banking?
Any collection of oligarchs - the few - will craft a world that suits themselves and their own
perceived interests. To hell with everyone and everything else. In 'a nice way', of course.
Democracy is essential because it enables the oligarch's victims to countermand their suicidal
ways. Their victims (ourselves) are the onliest ones who can even perceive the oligarchs' errors.
Oligarchy, as masturbation is said to do, makes its practitioners deaf, dumb, and blind. Democracy
is not a luxury, something 'nice' to have, it is essential - if we humans and life on earth as we've
known it during our so brief,
banal sojourn
is to continue.
I must admit that I do not understand American public. I made a mistake reading hastily this morning.
Now correction: "Make America Awesome" distributed in Utah pics of Mrs. Trump (not Cruz!) from her maiden
years looking totally awesome, and yet, take that! it was Mr. Cruz who cleared Utah caucuses. I must
admit that web search "Heidi Cruz images" does return some appealing pics like
this beaty , but apparently, Ted did not replace his wife in, like, ages.
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Mar 23, 2016 7:13:40 PM |
87
It is possible to watch the circus without picking sides Trump has never done anything worthwhile
or meaningful in his life and there is zero evidence to suggest that has changed, As for the rest
of em. they're all just the usual hacks running against Trump the unusual hack.
Which got me thinking I wonder if trump travels with a food taster. Not that it will do him any good
the poisons currently in use seem to be slow acting.
Take the case of
Rob Ford who had become an exceeding embrassment to the conservative wing of the neoliberal movement
just as trump has. The progression of that fellow's illness syncs pretty neatly with his rise fall
and rise again.
No matter how much the media tipped buckets of shit on him it just seemed to make him more popular
which is somewhat similar to the trump. Ford's illness appears to be similar to what Yasser Arafat
went through.
Of course saying this stuff out loud generates calls for the tin foil bonnet but I do hafta say that
a helluva a lot of pols I'm aware of have fallen off the twig early - particularly those who don't
conform to the 'rules'.
And that is the thing with trump - if he doesn't suddenly get sick you do have to wonder exactly
how beyond the pale the amerikan political establishment considers him to be.
b: "...Donald Trump toured Washington yesterday for backroom meetings with Republican party bigwigs..."
1st Republican Bigwig (standing in corner): Ok Mr Trump, well done at AIPAC, glorious stuff. You've
unlocked the Back Room.
Trump: It's true, I was Huge.
2nd Republican Bigwig: Would you like to come upstairs now Mr Trump...? Or should I say, Don...?
Trump: Ah, sure, let's go upstairs then. And you can call me Don.
2nd Republican Bigwig (stands up, leans on table): Now, Mr Trump... Repeat after me "what is building
7? I've never heard of building 7"
@psychoH 82
Inheritance does indeed work against the evolution of humankind. Who knows how far along we'd be
now if it were not for idiots, clowns and tyrants assuming wealth upon conception. One should only
leave enough dosh for cremation or burial. Each person with varying amounts of desire, more or less,
to contribute what they can inside humankinds' most precious commodity - our time.
Your solution is exactly right. But we won't get there unless the global corporate-owned mass
propaganda system is largely replaced by a democratic mass media.
Most people aren't smart/wise enough and/or just don't have the free time and educational resources
to figure out on their own who the enemy is and how to fight it. And such resources and the free
time to use them declines for the bottom 80% in the evermore inegalitarian world the financiers are
creating.
karlof1 @whatever asked
"
Do you agree with the argument for a Steady-State Economy with one global currency backed by specie
and processed through a globalized public bank, or would you keep everything at the State-level,
eliminating private, fractional banking?
"
Ending private finance must happen globally and I believe we need to learn how to get along globally
to survive. Isolating a public utility like finance to nation states, IMO, is a fools game. After
a while we would just end up where we are now.
We need to "grow up" as a species and throw off the vestiges of the middle ages with Kings and
such. There are 8+ billion of us and its sadly laughable how little advancement we have made in some
ways. The circus we live led by the global plutocrats is a sick legacy to the children who have to
live with the mess we have allowed to continue.
If you would have told me after the Trotskyite Liberal Neocons sabotaged and destroyed Patrick Buchanan's
1996 (prophetic) Anti-NAFTA/WTO, Immigration Moratorium, New Hadrian's Wall, stopping the US's endless
wars, and Cultural War campaign, and that Donald Trump would be the one to become its standard bearer,
I would have said that is absurd.
On another note, I read a book called "Conspiracy Against The Dollar" and in that book which was
written in the 70's, Ross Perot popped up at a billionaire Globalist insider meeting with the Bush
crime family & associates. Remember Ross Perot was created to split the Anti-NAFTA/WTO vote so that
the Globalist CFR golden boy Clinto could get elected, and relected. He than tried very hard to keep
Buchanan off the Reform party ticket in 2000. Notice how after the anti-NAFTA/WTO was passed and
the movement destroyed, he disappeared
The Trotskyite Neocons ran "Songbird" McCuckoo & the choke artist Romney so that Obama would win,
and in 96 the pathetic Beltway insider Bob Dole.
Daniel Shays @ 64
Those things you say are true. Trump threw a lot of light on subject matter many can never even think
of approaching. He deserves credit for that, no doubt. It's trump, and so you have to ask, does he
use it all to become the human headline that he is...? Of course, most likely. Will he double on
those efforts as Prez...? Unlikely.
Trump had a good limber up for the AIPAC event at the Jewish Republican Coalition presidential
show in December. Told the crowd " you're not gonna like me, don't want you're money" about 5 times...
Highlight reel stuff. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PQYOvDmWqjo
"Trump is what America is, which is cleverly masked by marketing in Hillary, Bernie, Ted,
and all the rest. It won't matter who get elected. Neocons = Neoliberals. More millions will die
and more destruction by the Empire."
"If you see voters as rational you'll be a terrible politician," Adams writes on his blog. "People
are not wired to be rational. Our brains simply evolved to keep us alive. Brains did not evolve
to give us truth. Brains merely give us movies in our minds that keeps us sane and motivated.
But none of it is rational or true, except maybe sometimes by coincidence."
If one is a firm believer in Enlightenment rationalism (like your humble poster), this while disturbing
must be acknowledged. A contradiction -- one apparently needs to appeal to the emotions to get people
to make rational choices.
Adams notes that the greatest emotional appeal that The Donald has made is to acknowledge the
suffering of the working class, which neither party has really addressed. If there were an effective
labor party here, we proles would be addressing this ourselves.
…a steady state economy, one global currency backed by specie, and processed through a globalized
public bank… ?? - several posts.
Well the 'steady state' part is moot, and globalized not, as Switz. is just a tin-pot postage-stamp
place, but ideas of this type are very much afoot.
In June we will vote the Vollgeld (full money - sovereign money) initiative, which would return
money-creation to one organism, the Central Bank. (link, eng. - campaign site and rather simplistic.)
Commercial banks would effectively be totally neutered. The Swiss love their Central Bank (in contrast
to attitudes to the FED in the US) as its profits are returned to the ppl, half or 2/3.
We will also vote on a guaranteed minimal income (link eng wiki.)
Neither of these initiatives are from the 'left.' They are based on certain monetary theories
and strands of 'libertarian' thought.
As everyone is still reeling from the Feb. 2016 vote serious discussions haven't even started.
This promises to be highly interesting.
Have you seen
Creating
New Money ? I think it's all about finance as a utility and how to get there. Coupled with a
suitable inheritance tax structure it would effect your program, wouldn't it?
To me the salient facit of privately created money is that it's lent into existence. Yes it enriches
its creators, but just as (more?) importantly it puts in place the cornerstone of 'the miracle of
compound interest', the foundation of the unsustainability of 'capitalism'. Rich or poor we're all
headed over the falls in a barrel as long as that's in place.
If you look at the key staff and advisers Bernie looks the best, I think.
Rufus@98
Adams' view of mental processes has demonstrated workability.
Mind and brain have long been considered separate mechanisms, altho they may well intersect.
The psychologist Alice Miller showed how the first 3 years of human life allowed the recording
of potentially] all senses [sights, sounds, etc.] without any inspection or evaluation by a child.
Such could lay dormant or become active at later time as, for example, fixed ideas and unknowingly
interfere with present-time senses and considerations and evaluations.
As for the mind and brain, a crude demo might be:
1. Create a mental picture of a horse being ridden by a whale.
2. Look at your mental picture.
3. Consider that you used the brain compose the picture.
4. Consider that the result [picture} is stored in your mind. Also, you can probably move the
picture around in space.
5. Consider the brain is clearly a physical object and its location is known.
6. Consider the mind is not clearly physical and its location is not clearly known.
And I know that Alice Miller's "First 3 years" studies were preceded by more comprehensive work
of others [much earlier]. Nevertheless, her work explained much to many.
As for "spirit", that subject is a religious hot-potato and I'm feeling too cowardly at the moment
to continue this post.
I thought that I had suggested that I agreed in very large part with Adams view. And just because
we have difficult being rational doesn't mean why shouldn't try. Religion does tend to be a hot one.
in re 99 --
Isn't it funny how the elite always attacks anyone who seeks to challenge their power. The folks
raping us keep telling us, there is no alternative. That's why we reds are always hated.
And I would note, the rising generations have a more positive view of socialism than my Cold War
cohort.
79;You gotta be sh*tting me;Eve Ensler?Common Dreams?Nirvana is just around the corner!
I bet she'll call the hell bitch the words promise.
Cruz posts nude photos of Trumps wife,but won't concede that his wife is now fodder.What a little
pos.The zionists love him.
95;They had a opinion piece in the lying times today,where McCain calls the Gary Cooper character in
For whom the Bell Tolls a personal hero,despite being a commie.What a hoot.
BTW Hemingway might be the most overrated author in American history.Only The Old Man and the Sea holds
anything for me,the rest irrelevant between war turgidity.
He probably realized it too,so he snuffed himself.
Posted by: dahoit | Mar 25, 2016 10:12:12 AM |
111
100;Yeah,real funny dat;Humble.sheesh.And the bit about the enlightenment.And he'll vote for the hell
bitch?double sheesh.
The Zionist have put the enlightenment on permanent hiatus.
Posted by: dahoit | Mar 25, 2016 10:16:13 AM |
112
[I]n order to have access to credit, in order to get money ... you have to pay the banks. ...
It's not production, it's not consumption. The wealth of the One Percent is obtained essentially
by lending money to the 99 Percent and then charging interest on it, and recycling this interest
at an exponentially growing rate. ... The head of Goldman Sachs came out and said that Goldman
Sachs workers are the most productive in the world. That's why they're paid what they are. ...
That's why I used the word parasitism in my book's title. People think of a parasite as simply
taking money, taking blood out of a host or taking money out of the economy. But in nature it's
much more complicated. The parasite can't simply come in and take something. First of all, it
needs to numb the host. It has an enzyme so that the host doesn't realize the parasite's there.
And then the parasites have another enzyme that takes over the host's brain. It makes the host
imagine that the parasite is part of its own body, actually part of itself and hence to be protected.
And 'the banks' have created the money they lend at interest from nothing. Why not ourselves through
our government, right? Just as the fed is doing now, but make the money available to real people
with real needs rather than just to the keep the grand larceny machine's bubbles inflated. 'Growing'.
Until they burst. A few strategic changes to the plumbing could put things right in no time.
Over the last six months, GOP leaders have watched helpless as the Republican presidential
race has transformed from the usual loveable farce into a terrifying prequel to Mad Max: Fury
Road as tangerine reality show host
Donald Trump gained, attained and retained frontrunner status. With only a few months left
before the Republican National Convention, party luminaries, bigwigs and eminences grises have
come up with a secret blueprint for how to stop the New York business mogul from becoming their
candidate. Exclusive to the Guardian, here is their 10-point plan:
Change the Republican party rules so that all presidential candidates must disclose the
length of their fingers prior to receiving the nomination. Trump will drop out of the race by
the end of the day.
Leave a trail of spray tan canisters and ground beef leading from the door of his
penthouse to a barge about to set off for the Far East.
Lure him into a space shuttle by telling him there's a photograph of his daughter Ivanka
in a bikini onboard and then blast him into orbit.
Attach a $5 bill to a greased pig's back and set it loose backstage before his next
campaign stop. He'll chase that thing until he's out of breath, and miss the speech, which,
due to his inhumanly hectic campaign schedule will have the cumulative knock-on effect of
making him miss the next day's speech, then the next morning's chummy appearance by telephone
with his pals on Morning Joe, then the next four primaries, and before you know it he's missed
the convention and is safely back to being an appalling but harmless reality TV star.
Force Trump to spend as much as five minutes with one of his own supporters.
Remind him that the White House executive residence is a paltry 55,000 square feet and
that presidents are constitutionally prohibited from painting it gold.
Invite Trump to a pool party and before he arrives glue a bunch of nickels to the bottom
of the deep end.
Invent time travel, go back to 2008, and stop ourselves from attacking the Obama
administration with the exact same vitriolic, divisive rhetoric that Trump picked up on and
has now ridden to his present position.
Stop sheepishly acquiescing to Trump's bluster and acting like he isn't a despicable
racist monster in hopes that it's not too late to prevent the complete collapse of society.
Change election procedure so that the remaining delegates must pledge their support to
whichever nominee scores highest on a seventh grade vocabulary test. Unfortunately this will
probably give the edge to college debate champ Ted Cruz, an opportunistic, bigoted liar whose
vision for America is a theocracy engaged in an apocalyptic war against Islam run by a man who
looks like Dracula's fat cousin smugly eating a sour candy he received as a prize for
tattling. But you can't have everything.
the Donald Trump campaign released a new ad yesterday touting his slogan, "Make America Great
Again." It also hilariously puts down his Democrat opposition candidate Hillary Clinton, who is
depicted as a joke in terms of her ability to get tough with America's enemies.
The 15-second ad begins with "When it comes to facing our toughest opponents," followed by images
of Russia's Putin performing martial arts and an ISIS fighter waving a gun at the viewer, "the
Democrats have the perfect answer..." The video then cuts to Hillary's bizarre barking from a
recent rally, which earned her a good deal of ridicule.
The video then cuts to laughter from an amused Putin. "We don't need to be a punchline!" the ad
concludes.
Watch above and enjoy.
The Freedom Center is a 501c3 non-profit organization. Therefore we do not endorse political
candidates either in primary or general elections. However, as defenders of America's social
contract, we insist that the rules laid down by both parties at the outset of campaigns be
respected, and that the results be decided by free elections. We will oppose any attempt to rig
the system and deny voters of either party their constitutional right to elect candidates of
their choice.
golightly • 2 days ago
i have to say that dear ol' Trump has some talented folks working for him.
Arlo • 2 days ago
Golly, could at least one Republican have the guts to use the Democrats' Alinsky tactics
against them? Isolate, Ridicule. Defeat? Could it work? I don't know. But, I do know that
playing gentleman/nice guy against the Demoncrats doesn't work.
Crusader Ron :E • 2 days ago
I pray Cruz will just join forces with Trump! Cruz is YOUNG... he has a future! He can
learn soooo much from Trump and refine Trump's bulldog conservatism into True Conservatism...
Christianity... Cruz... HUMBLE THYSELF... and work with Trump!!!
CoolTolerance -> Crusader Ron :E • a day ago
Won't happen. Cruz is hiding many things, of which his wife Heidi's involvement with
globalists, as well as banks giving him too much of a friendly helping hand.
Should he win the nomination, he will lose against Hillary. Why? That Texas twang and his
preacher mannerisms.
And lastly, the Democrats did say last November they will contest his eligibility should he be
the nominee. A sword hanging above his head.
I used to like him. No more. Too devious.
TheCarMan • 2 days ago
When Putin watches this, don't be surprised if he keeps hitting that RESET button over and
over that she sent him.
Kpar -> TheCarMan • 2 days ago
Did he get a replacement? The first one said "overcharge" in Russian.
nacho mamma • 2 days ago
This is just the opening salvo from Trump toward Hillary. Despite her bluster, saying she
looks forward to running against Trump...Hillary knows Trump will get down in the gutter with
her to throw punches.
The Clintons are dirty politicians who've never had a problem with taking the low road, and
Trump will not play nice when the race heats up. This could get real interesting...
tom tuttle • 2 days ago
Mocking old granny is as challenging as poking fun at a useless drunkard
"... Were it not for the DNC's Machiavellian planning of this primary and, had the states been ordered differently, we wouldn't be at roughly the halfway point with such skewed results. Were it not for the horrendous media bias shown Sanders, across mainstream corporate media, voters probably wouldn't be quite so disgusted and angry with the DNC's decision making. ..."
"... This is fundamentally the problem in our system. Each person enters the voting booth in November with two principal choices: Stinks and Stinks-Even-More. ..."
"... Instead, Bernie's chances are slim (#StillSanders), especially thanks to the major establishment outlets. Even if Clinton wins the nomination a lot of us aren't voting for her. She's hardly distinguishable from a Kissinger fangirl. ..."
"... To paraphrase Franklin, we choose not to have our vote manipulated by the fear of the lesser of two evils. We choose not to give up our "essential Liberty" to purchase a little safety because those that give that up deserve neither safety nor Liberty. ..."
"... We can hope that Sanders can come back and win the nomination because if we have Hillary for the Dem nominee Donald Trump will be a very unkind opponent. Sanders could handle the Donald in a debate. At this very moment the Trump campaign is doing their research on the Clintons. ..."
"... The Clintons define "corrupt." Bill Clinton: "It depends on what the definition of 'is' is." Hillary Clinton, who never traded commodities, made hundreds of thousands of dollars trading commodities with only several trades. Yet she claims she wasn't tipped. They leased the Lincoln Bedroom like it was their AirBNB. If someone can tell me where Clinton money ends and Clinton Foundation money begins, please let me know. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton refuses to release transcripts of her expensive speeches to Wall Street executives. I, a lifelong Democrat from a family of lifelong FDR Democrats, won't vote for Clinton until I know what she said in her speeches. The Clintons and I have come to the end of the road. ..."
"... I am a 76 year old life-long Democrat, and I would never vote for anyone who voted for the invasion of Iraq, or who supported NAFTA. These two issues have been the undoing of America - - along with Citizens United. ..."
I'm going for the longshot. In fact, I just donated to Bernie again yesterday. Even if he doesn't
win, we need him to have as many delegates as possible going into the convention so that we have
a strong voice against interventionist policies and pay to play government as the party platform
is crafted. We need to send a loud message to the Democratic establishment: Enough is enough!
#feelthebern
America needs him. A guy who stands up for everyone. A guy with no baggage. A honest politician
who wants to swim against the established norms and bring change. People are still living in recession.
Big corporation are still making big money. Why can't young people afford to go to college?, why
can't old people retired in peace?, why can't people not afford healthcare?, Why we need to bomb
n kill innocent people abroad? Change is hard to bring. Bernie has a vision, I hope everyone can
see it. Peace!
Rima Regas. is a trusted commenter Mission Viejo, CA
12 hours ago
Well, well...
That's exactly what the Sanders people have been saying will be the case.
Were it not for the DNC's Machiavellian planning of this primary and, had the states been
ordered differently, we wouldn't be at roughly the halfway point with such skewed results. Were
it not for the horrendous media bias shown Sanders, across mainstream corporate media, voters
probably wouldn't be quite so disgusted and angry with the DNC's decision making.
But here we are... Yes, we do have the other half of the primary to get through and it gets
Bernie-friendly from here on out.
Meanwhile, Democratic voter turn out is very low. When is the mainstream media going to stop
promoting Donald Trump and turn its attention to that? For all the talk about how scary a President
Trump would be, nothing much is being said to voters about the low turn out. Reading most papers,
one might be led to think everything is hunky dory in that respect. It isn't.
This is fundamentally the problem in our system. Each person enters the voting booth in
November with two principal choices: Stinks and Stinks-Even-More. By voting for Stinks, we
compromise our own passion only to send the wrong message that we somehow support the policies
and approach of the lesser-evil. This then just continues our decline, and encourages the press
to continue to ignore folks like Bernie who stand for truly profound, positive change. We can
collectively talk ourselves blue about income inequality, but failing to give Bernie his due time
and press coverage is a travesty.
Shameful. What good does it do for Kristof, Blow, Friedman and the Editorial Board to opine
about gross income inequality, only to turn around and deny Bernie his share of the press coverage.
The press has truly let America down. This includes the 24-hour news cycle, low-quality CNN types
and the presumably more deliberate and thoughtful NY Times. All of them have (for reasons that
the average citizen could probably guess) have decided Bernie wasn't worth the air time and print
space.
"Why? These states aren't as bad for him as those in the South, but they force him to confront
his two weaknesses: diversity and affluence."
These weaknesses could have been mitigated over time had the Times and the mainstream press
actually told its more diverse readers how Sanders' policies would in fact help them, and its
affluent readers that, by the way, their neighbors are starving.
Instead, Bernie's chances are slim (#StillSanders), especially thanks to the major establishment
outlets. Even if Clinton wins the nomination a lot of us aren't voting for her. She's hardly distinguishable
from a Kissinger fangirl. (Kissinger, as a reminder, had no trouble authorizing the murder
and systematic starvation of hundreds of thousands of East Timorese going into the 80s, which,
surprise, the Times didn't mention *at all* for at least a few years.) She disgusts me, and I
will never support her. I suspect it's the same for other Berniebros (as you would mockingly call
us). You've created a fascist beast, American press. Do your job.
Our family loves Bernie. We have waited so long for someone who we truly knew was leveling
with us. God help us if it comes to the disastrous consequences of 2000 when Bush won as some
people abandoned the Dems for an alternate choice but we must vote with our conscience and will
write his name in if that is what it comes to. We just hope the 'great beast' we see within the
hearts of so many Americans will not awaken yet again as it did in 2003 leading us into the obsenity
known as Iraq or worse .
To paraphrase Franklin, we choose not to have our vote manipulated by the fear of the lesser
of two evils. We choose not to give up our "essential Liberty" to purchase a little safety because
those that give that up deserve neither safety nor Liberty.
We stand or fall with Bernie and if the latter be true, it is with the hope that the next generation
finds its way into the light. It appears, from what I am seeing, that they may be better suited
to run this country than my generation has. My apologies to the Greatest Generation for failing
to deliver on their gift born of such great sacrifice.
We can hope that Sanders can come back and win the nomination because if we have Hillary
for the Dem nominee Donald Trump will be a very unkind opponent. Sanders could handle the Donald
in a debate. At this very moment the Trump campaign is doing their research on the Clintons.
If it ends up being a contest between Trump and Clinton the vulnerabilities of the Clintons will
be on full display. And Trump is not known for his kindness or restraint. It would not be pretty.
If Hillary is the candidate then Trump's path to the White House will be much easier. She's got
too many flaws.
The Clintons define "corrupt." Bill Clinton: "It depends on what the definition of
'is' is." Hillary Clinton, who never traded commodities, made hundreds of thousands of dollars
trading commodities with only several trades. Yet she claims she wasn't tipped. They leased the
Lincoln Bedroom like it was their AirBNB. If someone can tell me where Clinton money ends and
Clinton Foundation money begins, please let me know.
Hillary Clinton's brothers were influence peddlers. Hugh Clinton accepted a large amount of
money to influence Pres. Clinton to offer a pardon. Tony Clinton sells his connections to the
highest bidders.
Hillary Clinton refuses to release transcripts of her expensive speeches to Wall Street
executives. I, a lifelong Democrat from a family of lifelong FDR Democrats, won't vote for Clinton
until I know what she said in her speeches. The Clintons and I have come to the end of the road.
I will never understand why black voters would choose Hillary over Bernie when Bernie is the
one who actual has a tracjk record of fighting for civil rights.
The Democratic Party and its corporate affiliates' support for HRC has blinded them to a large
problem, viz. that HRC is very likely to be beaten in the general election. Whether earned or
not, there exists a very high level of antipathy for HRC, among Independents, and yes, Democrats.
Senator Sanders is widely regarded as honest and straightforward. If he is not nominated, the
legions of young Democrats and the large numbers of Independents that support the Senator, will
stay home on election day and/or the extremely disaffected will vote for Trump if he is nominated...very,
very few will vote for HRC (this is my anecdotal observation from many conversations with the
Senator's supporters). It is also well-known, but often suppressed information that Senator Sanders
does better against Trump than HRC in most national polls. The reality is that Senator Sanders
is by far the best choice for Democrats to beat Trump or any other Republican crazy.
I am a 76 year old life-long Democrat, and I would never vote for anyone who voted for
the invasion of Iraq, or who supported NAFTA. These two issues have been the undoing of America
- - along with Citizens United.
Yes, Sanders is down. Yes, his task is a daunting one, but less daunting than Kasich's path
to the Republican nomination, which is getting more media coverage than the 2.8 million votes
that Sanders drew on Tuesday. Sanders "revolution" is revolutionary only to those who accept the
current Republican view of government as our collective nightmare - an us vs. them fight to the
death over guns, immigration, abortion, deteriorating air and water, income inequality, student
debt, access to health care - funded by sacred and unlimited corporate and PAC dollars.
Sanders
proposes nothing that has not been done before, here or abroad, by representative governments
promoting the health, education, and welfare of all their people. I like to imagine Roosevelt,
Truman, and Eisenhower looking down on Sanders' proposals of what America should be able to do
for its people. Maybe the Ides of March got Sanders. Maybe not?
I keep reading in "The New York Times" that it's over. As I recall, a legendary figure, associated
with two legendary New York baseball teams, used to say that "It aren't over 'til it's over. .
. ."
Why "The New York Times" is so anxious to call the Election of 2016 seems to be a question
fit for an investigation. Where is "Woodstein" when we need them!?
Months before Sanders made any noise about running, I only hoped that we would have someone
besides a Bush or a Clinton as a candidate. In a country this big, don't we have any other qualified
candidates, I wondered. Politics aside, I just didn't think the idea of sending another Bush or
Clinton to the White House was good for (the appearance of) democracy.
Fast forward to today: Bush is out and Sanders is struggling to stay in. Look what happened
to the other democrats (and we won't even talk about third party candidates). They didn't have
a chance. It's an absolute miracle that Sanders has come this far given the toxic role of money
in American politics and the corporate control and neutralizing of American media.
Trump pushed Bush out of the race, but this was hardly a victory over the "establishment".
Trump's money and fame gave him instant access -- and he was quickly able to compete with establishment
candidates.
For me, Sanders is a glimmer of hope. I have no illusions about his chances of securing the
democratic nomination. But I find solace in the idea that, despite everything and everyone working
to get him out, he's still there and his campaign in resonating with young people. He has started
a movement, and that is what can lead to real change.
Rima Regas, is a trusted commenter Mission Viejo, CA
12 hours ago
I have to disagree with Cohn on his assessment of the Black vote. While it is true enough that
Clinton had a lock on the South, her narrow win in Illinois and a close look at the Black vote
there gives us a glimpse of what's to come and there are good ideological and factual reasons
for it as I explain in my essay. Mrs. Clinton, in her campaign, has shown a disdain for the new
civil rights movement. While it may not have swayed older voters, younger ones are not pleased.
Their power, as voters will be felt more in the coming primaries and caucuses:
A few more ways Bernie can win- 1)
the FBI or leaks show Hillary used classified server for emails that she didn't want seen by voters
or the press because they are damning to her election. 2) a larger stronger Yuan devaluation sets
off Wall Street volatility, exposing weaknesses in her economic policcies 3) transcripts of her
Wall Street talks are leaked exposing high level corruption 4) a book is written on how the global
leaders did not take her seriously as Secretary of State 5) polls show that independents don't
like or trust her and will not toe the DNC party line ) etc
Bernie Sanders has a better chance of beating Trump, as several polls show. Trump supporters
want an "outsider" who is not "owned" by either party. He has the advantage over Clinton and Trump
in that he is not corrupt. The Times has been biased through the campaign. They endorsed Clinton
a long time ago, and give her the benefit of coverage. But the REAL story is how Sanders has raised
money from small donors. Why aren't they interviewing those donors on a daily basis? Who are they?
Democrats? Republicans? Independents? The Times is not doing their job, such as conducting investigative
reporting on the Clinton Foundation, and asking will the Clintons close down the Clinton Foundation
if Hillary is elected? Will Bill Clinton continue to give $million dollar speeches when married
to the President? Will he be a co-president, back in the oval office that he disgraced? The Times
should be pushing for Hillary to not only publish the transcripts of her speeches to Wall Street,
but also her and Bill's speeches to Chinese billionaires, and others listed on Clinton Foundation
web site). The Times might also ask how the Clintons turned a nonprofit foundation into an engine
of personal wealth after leaving the White House claiming poverty. Do your job, NYT!!
It is tragic that what is oft referred to as 'the black vote' may well usher in a Donald J.
Trump Presidency. And It is ironic that votes for H. Clinton, as polling suggests, serves to do
a few things a.) it decreases Sen. Sanders chances to be POTUS, which is obvious, but it also
b.) will galvanize Republican voter turnout and may even c.) shift Independents and even some
Democrats to the Right during the generals. I hold accountable the media and its collusion with
DNC establishment and, honestly, the low-information voter.
H. Clinton offers very little, in stated policy goals, for the poor and middle-class, which is
in stark contrast to Sen. Sander's historical record and future policy goals. Sen. Sanders, even
if I were not a fan, is offering positions (e.g. education w/ out debt, single-payer health care,
combating crony capitalism, defeating citizens united, breaking up the largest banks) that have
clearly promoted equality in many other developed nations. There is a direct correlation between
these policy positions and bettering the lives of others. Piketty, Galbraith, Saez, Stiglitz,
and countless other elite economic minds all agree these measures level the playing field.
It is disheartening to witness, yet again, so many people voting against their own best interests
by responding to dog whistle appeals to the color of one's skin and not the truest needs of the
poor and middle-class. I am resigned to 8 more years of "hope and change" that does nothing for
equality.
Bernie Sanders gives the impression that he will achieve major changes soon. He'll bring about
single-payer health care (with everyone saving money). He'll end super PACs and huge corporate/billionaire
contributions in political campaigns. He'll redo our foreign trade agreements to protect American
jobs and bring manufacturing jobs back. He'll do away with income inequality and make labor unions
strong again. If he expressed these goals as dreams in the manner of Martin Luther King's "I have
a dream" speech, I'd say fine and good. Let's work towards these ends. But leading his followers
astray by claiming that a revolution is taking place now and that these things can be achieved
soon is just outright disgraceful. I'm not sure why African American don't support Senator Sanders,
but they definitely know better than anyone the difference between dreams and reality. They know,
as Dr. King did, that change takes hard work and a lot of time. The political pendulum may be
starting to swing leftwards again (I hope so). But a revolution? No way.
I have worked on too many campaigns to count, before I quit my addiction to pain and got a
real job. His was an odd campaign.
He expected the media to be a partner in helping him get elected. No candidate ever expects
help from the media. Sander got the third best media coverage of all who ran--and arguable the
most favorable given most of Clinton's coverage was the email scandal. At best you can get from
the media is benign neglect. But the minute you are winning expect a scrubbing that would make
a Brillo pad look gentle.
He assumed he would have inroads to groups without courting them believing success with one
group meant everyone would like him.
He never seem to understand Clinton's strengths. He then seemed surprised by them. You always
understand your oppotrengths at the very least to mitigate the damage.
He fought with the establishment despite running in the establishment. Not only are they voters
--they have business intelligence on local operatives and state level politics. He hit a brick
wall in Nevada and got his clocked cleaned in South Carolina despite outspending Clinton because
the apparatus that existed preferred Clinton.
And lastly, where everyone in this business pours over data--their relationship with data seems
foreign. There are several instances where you get the sense they made something up on the fly--and
honestly surprised at the result.
Oh dear. Another white person telling all those ungrateful and ignorant people of color, the African
Americans, the Hispanics, that they're doing this voting thing all wrong. Makes right thinking Bernsters
wonder why we even bother to let them vote, if they're just going to mis-use it so.
Sanders was involved, 60 years ago, in some civil rights activities. Since then, he's been the
elected official of some of the whitest sections of the country and has not depended on the black
or Hispanic vote to ge re-elected. If you want to tar Clinton with the '95 crime bill, even though
she wasn't a senator then, it ricochets to hit Sanders, who voted for it.
Clinton worked to develop connections and a reputation in the African American and Hispanic sectors.
Bernie Sanders, though a good man, did not. Nor did he work with the existing Democratic party to
support down-ticket elections or democratic events. He always ran as an outsider. Now, he wants to
be in the party and benefit from what the DNC has to offer. Funny that his supporters cry foul when
he, a non-Democrat, doesn't get the full breadth of support from the party he shunned.
So to all those Bernsters out there - please calm down. Everyone deals with favorite politicians
getting rejected, it's life. and the millennial vote is no more or less important than any other
group.
Now that the press and the political actuaries have crowned Clinton the presumptive nominee,
some of the passion that has sustained Sanders will ebb, and we'll see him do less well. Progressives
will slowly accept Clinton and either sit out the primary or curb their enthusiasm for the Bern.
Clinton has, from the beginning, garnered votes by presenting herself as inevitable, not inspirational.
Not so much "Yes We Can" but "Yes I Will."
It's a shame, because a transformational FDR-style Democrat is desperately needed at this point
in our history.
Here's the thing - general elections are part of the democratic process, but the nomination
process is controlled by the parties, who make the rules and call the shots. For 40 years or so,
Ms. Clinton has been involved in fund raising and campaigning for senators, congressmen, and governors.
She has been involved in the DNC and has been supported in return.
Sanders runs as a pure outsider. He shunned the party until he decided to join in order to
run. He has few supporters in the Senate, and little good will among down-ticket Democrats.
Clinton isn't winning on superdelegates, but on pledged delegates from the states. She has
earned a plurality of votes. Claiming otherwise demeans the millions who have already cast their
votes in her favor, and assumes that they are ignorant, stupid, or insane. Their decisions were
other than what you would want. That's democracy. Get over it.
The DNC has stacked the deck in Clinton's favor with its Superdelegate apparatchiks clogging
the arteries of a fair nominating process with 465 clots of greasy fat. Where is the Democracy
in the Democratic party when viable contenders are forced to run the race in hobbles? Not even
the Republicans have come up with Tammany Hall tactic - yet.
So yes, Hillary will most likely be the nominee of the Democratic Party. As an independent
I will not be voting for her or any members of the Republican Insane Clown Posse. More than likely
I will be writing in for the /bernie_sanders.Warren ticket as a protest to rigged elections.
While otherwise quite good, this article contains a factual error that continues to play into
the false Clinton narrative about racialized voting and the Sanders campaign.
According to exit polling, Oklahoma's Democratic Primary was only 74% white. Sanders won the
vote in that state by 10.5% points. This means that the following statement is false: "Mr. Sanders's
best showing in a state where less than 75 percent of voters were white was his two-point win
in Michigan."
And, while we do not have exit polling data from Colorado, the electorate there was almost
certainly less than 75% white. Sanders won by 18.5%. Take for instance Denver County. Denver County
is just 53% white only per United States Census's Quick Facts. 31% of Denver is Latina or Latino,
10% is African American, 2% is Native American, and 4% is Asian. Sanders won Denver County by
9.4%.
To pretend, as this article does, that Arizona (31% Latino) or even Washington State (70% white
only per US Census data) are "whiter" states than Tennessee (75%) and Arkansas (73%) is to betray
exactly the kind of anti-Sanders bias that Margaret Sullivan had to call out in another context
this morning.
At the very least, the Times owes it to its readers to correct the factual error here in a
prominent way.
It's actually shameful that black voters in SC refused to listen or engage with the second
candidate in two candidate race, even when he came to their church:
And can we please stop referring to a state where 60% of the primary voters were black as "diverse."
In a country with a 13% black population, it's more accurately described as "extremely unrepresentative"
"Diverse" does not mean "minorities overrepresented by a factor of 4." New Hampshire is far
closer to the racial mix in America than the electorate in any Democratic Primary in the south.
Bernie never said this would be easy. He has lost a few battles, but he will win the war. We
have to stay the course & get his message out to the people.
Democrats must realize that we can not win the presidency with only the support of southern blacks
& senior citizens. The way this election has been run by the DNC & media has totally alienated
Bernie supporters to the point that a great majority will go green or vote Rep. rather than back
Clinton & the DNC. This is becoming a reality more & more every day. I hope that the super delegates
figure this out by the time we reach the convention or all is lost.
The establishment media favoring the establishment candidate paints a rosy picture for HRC.
We get it. The Bernie Blackout marches along in lock-step with the Trump Trumpet. This scenario
is far more than mere perception. Empirical data will be mined for years to come to show the glaring
disparity. Future journalism majors will compose graduate theses using this fodder. Should we
end up, as currently appears likely, with President Trump, the "golly-how-did-that-happen?" crowd
will have it all explained later by some kid who is now in junior high school because today's
print news editors and broadcast news producers suffered from the "if-it-bleeds-it-leads" school.
Even the vaunted NY Times betrays its "all the news that's fit to print" motto and remains mesmerized
by the Trump con act. Hey fellas, how about a new motto? "Covering Carnival Barkers Since 2016"?
I have to be honest here; I don't see much hope for Bernie to get the nomination. I do hope
he wins my state, and yes, I'll be caucusing for him next weekend, but the numbers don't look
good and I'm feeling depressed.
I intend to vote in November for all races on the ballot. If my state is not in play--if we're
safely blue, like we usually are--I'm writing in Bernie. If there's a chance we might go red,
I'll hold my nose and vote for Hillary.
I didn't like her in 2008 and I don't like her in 2016. She's a neoliberal hawk and I don't
want her getting the US entangled in more wars we'll never get out of. I don't want her starting
negotiations with the Republicans already close to the center so we'll end up all the way to the
right. I don't think she's trustworthy and I think her only guiding principle is ambition.
Needless to say, I'm depressed, and frankly tuning out of the race at this point. The Republicans
are making the US a laughingstock around the world and the Dems appear to be saddled with a candidate
we don't particularly want. Any way you slice it this is going to be an ugly election, and while
I've been a political junkie all my life, I just don't have the enthusiasm to care about it. I
don't see a winning solution in this any way I look at it.
*This* is Hillary's big problem. People like me, who will grudgingly vote for her if we have
to, but who have absolutely no enthusiasm for it. How many of us will just stay home instead of
voting for the lesser evil?
If electability is your main criteria, you should be voting for Sanders.
Sanders does better against every Republican opponent, in every poll in the last month, because
he gets 3-1 support from independents (40% of the electorate), even if he doesn't get a majority
of democrats (30% of the electorate).
Sanders got 71% of the independent voters in Illinois, 72% of the independent voters in New
Hampshire, and 73% of the independent voters in Michigan (exit poll data)
Clinton has high favorability within the Democratic Party, but among all Americans, she has
a 55% NEGATIVE rating (versus only 42% positive), rivaling Trump. Nothing is red meat to Republicans
like Clinton, and she has no appeal to Independents (see above)
It's why in every poll for the last month among REGISTERED VOTERS, Sanders does better against
every Republican opponent than Clinton.
Bernie's most likely winning opportunity is the self-destruction of his opponent, whose high
unfavorability ratings could prove decisive if her email controversy or any number of other vulnerabilities
gains public attention.
There is much talk of a disqualifying event that will knock Hillary out of the race and allow
Bernie to receive the nomination. Talk of indictments, the content of the Wall Street speeches,
e-mail servers, Benghazi, and so on. The talk on both sides often seems to miss the mark. I agree
with those, generally Clinton supporters, who doubt she said or did anything appalling in any
of these regards. However, I agree with the Sanders supporters that she is not giving adequate
answers on these questions. There is really an element of "I'm not going to address such a ridiculous
question". The problem that I see is that Bernie Sanders, who for the most part is on the same
side as Hillary Clinton and her supporters, has been not forcing the issue- nor would it be appropriate
for him to do so. The Republican nominee will certainly do so, to great affect with the many people
who are not currently strong supporters of Clinton. I don't refer to the people who intensely
dislike her, or would never vote for Democrat/woman/centrist/non-conserative anyway. I mean the
people who when Trump/Cruz raises the question about her speeches or lack of e-mail security will
wonder whether there might be something to it. It is clear that there are many voters looking
for a fresh start away from the usual politics. The Clinton campaign needs to address these questions
with coherent and substantive answers now.
Bernie is the future of Democratic policy; Hillary the past.
Among voters younger than 45 Bernie wins big; by 40 points among millenials.
In 2008 Obama offered a new future of justice but most of his program was broken on the shoals
of mindless GOP hostility. Bernie is more of a fighter.
And now the Dem establishment wants to choke off the voices of the young, those paying the biggest
price for plutocracy and Wall Street government.
Bernie is offering a very limited version of the social democracy that has worked so well in minimizing
poverty and maximizing personal opportunity across Europe, Canada, Australia.
Mass grotesque life-killing poverty is destroying the American 100 million underclass as a parasitic
plutocracy is more and more engorged.
There is an alternative. Continue the Clinton-Sanders debates to the floor of the convention.
Should Hillary win, Bernie is committed to uniting the party behind her for he has actually made
her a better, more progressive candidate, shedding off the muck of triangulation.
Bernie is the hope and change candidate. And he also consistently does better than Hillary matched
up against Cruz/Trump in polling.
As one of those 69 year old millennials, I think I know how the system works. The political
parties put up candidates who take money from huge special interests, they get elected, nothing
is accomplished other than more Corporate control of our country: AKA the buying and selling of
elections and a commitment to becoming a total oligarchy. I recently read that some of the DNC's
super delegates are actually lobbyists. The Democrats and Republicans are running our country
into the ground: polluting the planet, killing our kids in wars for profit; jailing minorities
and thereby disenfranchising them from voting, dumbing down the education system, forcing families
into bankruptcy over medical bills, more rights taken away from citizens (out of fear that people
(like me)are going to take to the streets with their pitchforks). If I may quote Laurel and Hardy
(who this campaign often resembles) This is a fine mess you got me into. I'd like to remind the
Clintons and the DNC of how foolish G W Bush looked after standing under that MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
banner at the beginning of the Iraq War. When more than half the country has not yet voted I am
enraged by the arrogance.
The elephant in the room is the potential for an email indictment. Against Trump, Hillary would
be damaged beyond repair if the FBI investigation goes against her. The Clinton campaign is way
too sanguine about this and nobody in the commentariat is talking about it ... but the whole campaign
could turn on it. The FBI is said to be out for blood because Petraeus got off lightly ... and
lesser players getting immunity can't be a good sign.
Bernie needs to keep going if for no other reason than we need another option.
To the Clinton supporters who drone on about HRC's "experience" and track record of getting
things done, please provide citations/links to support your assertions.
The facts show that the bulk of her experience lies in her amazing talents of fabrication and
obfuscation of facts. As First Lady--her longest "political" role, she successfully covered up
and lied for her serially philandering husband, destroying the reputations of his victims in the
process.
During her stint as Senator of her adopted state, backed by Wall Street, big pharma and other
corporate interests, she succeeded in endorsing the disastrous and ongoing war in Iraq and the
repeal of Glass-Steagall, among other dubious votes.
Her time as Secretary of State can be characterized as inconsequential at best and disastrous
at worst, resulting in an FBI investigation and possible indictment.
Her private life, as an obscenely compensated speaker to the Wall Street firms directly responsible
for the financial meltdown, comprise the bulk of her actual accomplishments.
And her refusal to release transcripts of those speeches and the convenient wiping of her unauthorized
email server suggest major character, trust and honesty issues.
Again, citations of what practical experience at running the country she possesses would be
illuminating.
I am ready for a change. I am ready to elect Senator Sanders to be the next President. Let
us leave the establishment behind and make the necessary change for the better. Unlike those who
have been characterized as his mainstay supporters (the young), I am 68 and have waited my entire
grown up adult life for a leader of our country who was not a bought and paid for apparatchik
of the moneyed elite. Never before have I contributed to any political cause or candidate before
Bernie. Now I find someone worth nominating and electing!
The strength of Sanders candidacy has been less in "revelations" about Clinton, and more about
the recognition by voters that there is an alternative to Clinton. This is especially true for
younger voters who don't tend to see the 1990s through rose-colored glasses.
As more people have gotten to know Sanders, his numbers have gone up. The problem for Sanders
has been a question of time and the sequencing of the primary calendar.
Clinton has done exceptionally well with older party regulars, especially in the south. She
lost the 45 and under vote to Sanders 70-30 in Illinois; she is not growing the party.
If Clinton wins in November, she can thank Trump and/or Cruz for doing the work for her. She
can also thank Sanders for getting younger voters engaged in the process and for providing her
with her platform. Al Gore and John Kerry also dominated the primary process. That didn't mean
they were strong general election candidates.
I am a female, late baby boomer. I've voted a straight Democratic ticket my entire life. It
will be a real battle with my conscience to vote for Ms. Clinton. So, if there's any hope for
Bernie Sanders, I will be sending him more funds.
I think college should be provided for everyone who can't afford it. I think medical care should
be provided for everyone who can't afford it. In total, I think everyone should have a substantial
safety net, a floor beneath which no one should fall.
We think of food and shelter in the same way -- as liberals we believe in providing ample food
stamps and decent shelters for those who can't afford it. In our service economy, a formal education
is no longer a luxury but a necessity. As circumstances change, so should our thinking. That's
what true liberalism is all about.
Taxes should be raised on extreme wealth because inequality has already gotten way out of hand.
Joseph in Misoula
"I'm a liberal democrat. But I don't think college should be free for everyone. I do not want
my taxes to go up even more. I do not think Wall Street is an evil entity that should be dismantled.
In fact, I don't think we should try and force a far-left version of America on the large portion
of the population that clearly does not want it."
So who has a right to education? Who should reign in the excesses of the Wall Street casino,
which nearly destroyed the entire world economy? Who should pay more taxes - the broken middle
class, working class, the decimated unions, and the poor, who already all subsidize the exploitation
that fills the coffers of corporations and billionaires? The Democrats once vigorously and almost
universally supported these groups and the ideas that helped them succeed.
You're right. You should absolutely not support Bernie. Because you're not a liberal democrat,
and you're certainly not a progressive. But you are a great representative of Hillary Clinton's
voice, and the Republican lite that now calls itself the Democratic Party. And she's counting
on you.
It's disappointing that no enterprising investigative journalist has found somebody ready to
spill the beans and provide a pirated copy of the now almost legendary Wall Street speeches. But
it may well be that there is such a source, one insisting on substantial compensation, and most
journalists are forbidden from paying for information
It would not be surprising if Trump already has a source picked out, one who, if not subject
to the threat of exposure of some hidden misdeed or under direct obligation to The Donald, is
susceptible to outright bribery, and that Trump is holding that ammunition, waiting to fire after
Clinton has achieved the nomination and is his opponent in the general election.
If that should be the case: Look forward to a President Trump.
Matt Von Ahmad Silverstein Chong, Mill Valley, CA
9 hours ago
Sanders vs Kasich. Only sane choices on both sides.
Otherwise:
Clinton: liar, opportunistic, risk of indictment after nomination risking defeat
Cruz: liar, extremist, not accomplished anything other than shutting the government
Trump: liar, polarizing, risk of defeat as unable to unify party
Not that Sanders and Kasich don't have their own thorns, but in my opinion they are the most
fit to be elected.
Ms. Regas, you write: "Were it not for the DNC's Machiavellian planning of this primary and,
had the states been ordered differently, we wouldn't be at roughly the halfway point with such
skewed results."
The DNC approved and announced the 2016 primary schedule back in August 2014:
Senator Sanders announced his candidacy eight months later on April 30, 2015.
So the Senator and his inner circle of advisors went into this race with eyes wide open knowing
full well what the primary schedule would be and what they would face.
Perhaps you might consider dropping this complaint from your litany.
John S., is a trusted commenter Washington
4 hours ago
I ran the delegate numbers through 15 March excluding Missouri, which is basically a tie like
Illinois was and there will probably be one delegate difference between the winner and loser,
and if the win-to-lose ration stayed the same, then Mrs. Hillary Clinton would still be short
over 200 pledged delegates after all the voting is done.
But the win-to-lose ratio will not remain constant. It will move in favor of Senator Bernard
"Bernie" Sanders and against Mrs. Clinton. Consequently, her shortfall in pledged delegates could
rise to 300-500 pledged delegates.
Keep on running Bernie! I will continue to support your campaign right through Democratic Party
convention.
If Bernie Sanders wins, he would become president. If Hillary Clinton wins , in the White House
will enter Trump.For the success of cause of the change, which wants many Americans, and Bernie
Sanders, must become president ... Trump.
Only one single-minded Republican could exacerbate problems to burst the boil.
There are no simple answers to the very real issues this country faces on every level. Unfortunately,
the individual developed psychologies of voters combined with the natural desire to embrace the
easiest idea that promises to bring a comfortable conclusion to the problems has blinded voters
to the very flawed candidates they have to choose from. I am a Sanders supporter but not because
he can achieve any of his ideas. I support him because he is a brake on the current business as
usual. His qualms about why the two parties cannot get anything done is truth and before we can
fix anything we have to acknowledge what is broken and remove it from any solution we might strive
for. I don't care if the Sanders car breaks down the moment we get off the road. First thing is
first we need to get off the road.
The DNC and RNC are corrupt and liabilities. The Media is covering up their most important
flaws for the sake of business as usual. Too many people have much to lose if this 2 party gravy
train is derailed and that isn't just the billionaires and multi-national corps. An entire system
has compromised the Republic and it need to be cleansed over a period of a decade to just get
rid of the nepotism, corruption, and pay to play shenanigans.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are the poster children for this system. I do not favor Ted
Cruz but he is right when he says the former sells influence and the latter buys it. If those
are options, next time won't be so polite.
Every one should vote according to their convictions ignoring what the media has to say or
does not say. It is also important not to pay attention who is going to win in the general election.
I believe the economy is rigged. The political establishment and corporate America as well as
Banks and Wall Street are all in the same bed. They will have a long happy honeymoon until ordinary
folks cannot support their honeymoon expenses. That gives rise to people like Sanders and Trump,
who will disturb the political order. My vote is for Sanders. Here why? I believe free college
is an economic necessity that we cannot afford not have. I believe the economy is rigged and Main
street should regulate the Wall Street and not the other way around. I believe health care to
all is necessary pre-condition to define a human society. I believe we can afford and we must.
Vote what you believe in and the nation will in the right direction.
Sanders hasn't been allowed to debate, and has gotten little to no media coverage. Our society
picks it's leaders based on 2 things. 1) the candidate with the most royal blood connection to
King John (this is a real theory, may not be true, but 98% of U.S. Presidents are the great-great-great-great-great-great
grand children of Charlemagne and King John,) and 2) which candidate they see in the media the
most. If Bernie loses this nomination, Donald Trump will become our next (and possibly final)
commander in chief.
Your tone is absurdly condescending, as if many Sanders supporters aren't graduate school educated
professionals (doctors, lawyers, accountants, social workers, educators, etc…) In fact, educated
people in pro-social occupations make up one of his stronger demographics.
The differences between the leftists who left their hippie-dropout lifestyles disillusioned
and moved on to professional careers later, and the more youthful Sanders supporters a couple
generations younger are myriad. Foremost, very few of them are cultural dropouts; they didn't
take the "burn out or sell out" brat route of the Boomers. Most are educated, and many are saddled
with student debt loads difficult for older people to understand (the mechanisms that force students
into debt are especially difficult for affluent Boomers to grasp). They compete for jobs with
all those disillusioned brats who settled down to professional practices - and are still working!
Not to mention the fact that your bitter ones - those who never learned the folly of egalitarianism
- are presumably the same ones who never got graduate degrees and cushy jobs; they're still waiting
for representation, for a pro-labor, pro-working-class candidate who never comes.
Nobody has pulled the wool over anyone's eyes, except perhaps the Clinton, the DNC, and the
media outlets that prop them up by appealing to low information voters while engaging only with
policy that benefits affluent ex-leftists in high aging professional positions.
In past elections, I have admittedly voted for the "lesser of two evils." Now, I realize that
just perpetuated a system which is corrupt. If people got truly educated about the issues and
the candidates, there would be only one choice, Senator Bernie Sanders. Alas, as Senator Adlai
Stevenson once said, getting the vote of every right thinking American was not enough. He needed
a majority. Sadly, this is only more true today.
> "These weaknesses could have been mitigated over time had the Times and the mainstream press
actually told its more diverse readers how Sanders' policies would in fact help them"
ANYBODY who wanted to be consumers of Mr. Sanders' talking points had more than enough sources
for that.
Sadly, your complaint is exactly the same one that conservatives have be putting on the NYT since
the mid-70s
What an intelligent person 'might' complain about in relation to your concerns is that the
MSM spends far too little effort accurately 'telling the voters' how delusional Mr. Sanders' proposals
are, and how there is less than a 1% chance they could EVER be implemented under any imaginable
configuration of the Congress
Related to this, I remember sadly, who NYT, WaPo, and others pointed out the lunacy of GWB's
campaign proposals were in 2000
IMPACT: almost zero
The naked agenda of GWB was to take a roaring economy, running in surplus, and open it up for
the private gain of the highest bidder
The GWB/Cheney agenda was very similar to Mitt Romney's LBO scheme to - take control of organizations
- strip them of as many of their valuable assets as they could efficiently do in as short a time
frame as possible
- load them up with debt, that went back into their own pockets so that they had none of their
own assets at risk
- dump the operation as quick as possible so that they wouldn't be holding-the-bag when the feces-hit-the-fan
- look for the next target
I disagree. There has been a very disproportionate coverage of candidates by the media. In
fact, I would argue that the biggest story of this election cycle is the media's own influence
of the election. I find it quite disturbing. This in not my opinion. It's a conclusion based on
studies I've read in the past several days, one of which was published by the NYTimes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/upshot/measuring-donald-trumps-mammoth...
The mainstream media and its corporate owners are deeply troubled over the issue of Campaign
Finance Reform, which has been the most obvious point of Bernie Sanders' campaign--he has financed
his campaign through small donations from individual citizens, instead of SuperPacs like Hillary
has done, and this has been no small feat.
Corrupt campaign finance is a powerful tool the corporate elite uses to manipulate American voters
into voting against their own interests.
This is why the MSM has treated Sanders so shabbily. A glaring example of this problem was the
first Democratic debate put on by CNN. As it turns out, CNN is a subsidiary of Time-Warner, which
is a big donor to Hillary's campaign. Let that sink in.
So, sure enough, Anderson Cooper asked the candidates Zero questions about campaign finance reform,
Bernie Sanders' main issue, and Bernie had to stick the issue into an answer of his to a question
on a different topic near the end of the program. If not for that, the issue would not have been
raised at all.
The same syndrome has been evident, albeit in milder form, in most of the media, including the
NYT, the WaPo, MSNBC, and so on.
Corporate forces, including the corporate media, are loathe to have someone like Bernie Sanders
come along and take their corrupt financing of American politicians away from them.
Of course this latest interesting development must be giving Hillary palpitations; Can a felon
become President of the United States ??
See Business Insider and Link:
"The FBI is widening its investigation of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's
use of a private email account while she was U.S. secretary of state to determine whether any
public corruption laws were violated, Fox News reported on Monday.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been looking into whether classified material was mishandled
during Clinton's tenure at the State Department from 2009-2013.
It will expand its probe by examining possible overlap of the Clinton Foundation charity with
State Department business, Fox reported, citing three unidentified intelligence officials.
"The [FBI] agents are investigating the possible intersection of Clinton Foundation donations,
the dispensation of State Department contracts and whether regular processes were followed," Fox
quoted one of its unidentified sources as saying."
In my mind, the fact that the Clintons have in the past taken money from Donald Trump disqualifies
Hillary from the presidency. I'm on the Bernie train, and if he's railroaded away from the nomination
by anyone, including President Obama, I'm not going to vote in November. I can't vote for either
Trump or Hillary, as they are in cahoots to fleece the average American and criminalize for life,
those whom they don't like, and that is mostly those in economic distress or poor substance abusers
in our country.
Obama's backing of Hillary is a disappointment. The self claimed most transparent administration
in history we were to get, never materialized, rather just the opposite happened, the least transparent
administration in history. His is an administration that went after whistleblowers exposing crimes
against the public, embraced perpetual warfare and mass incarceration, supports the surveillance
state, and his Justice Department and FBI stood by while unarmed American men and children had
their human rights and lives taken away from them by municipalities in Ohio, Illinois, California,
Florida, Texas, etc. etc. ad nauseam, this includes Tamir Rice and the kids drinking leaded water
in Flint. The list of human and civil rights violations under his watch is a long one that goes
on and on and no better than Dubya's. By supporting Hillary over Bernie, the President has proven
that he too, got into politics for the money. How cynical are leaders are today excluding Sanders.
Note that Donald Trump has won 48% of the GOP delegates so far. He would have to win about
54% of the remain delegates to get a majority, and the pundits consider that to be pretty likely.
Bernie has won 42% of the Democratic delegates so far (not counting superdelegates) and would
need to win about 58% of the remaining delegates to win. The pundits seem to consider it to be
pretty unlikely.
Maybe, but I think the pundits might be wrong on this one.
This nonsense about Ralph Nader has been repeated so often that almost seems plausible (…not
unlike many another myth). The historical truth is as follows.
The 2000 election came down to Florida. Running as "independents" were Nader (progressive)
and Pat Buchanan (conservative). Each of them received almost exactly the same number of votes
-- i.e. they cancelled each other out, Buchanan taking as many votes from Bush as Nader did from
Gore.
The one who who gave Bush the election was his brother Jeb. Through his Florida Secretary of
State, he ordered the recount ended -- the excuse proffered was the fear of violence: precinct
stations where poll workers were counting the votes had been attacked by squads of goons (paid
for, as was later revealed) by Karl Rove. The issue of the recount was then thrown to the Supreme
Court, which issued one of the most partisan rulings in its history.
Gore's loss had absolutely nothing to do with Ralph Nader. And those who claim it did are either
woefully uninformed, or are deliberately (and cynically!) distorting history to push some different
agenda of their own.
As I see things, Sanders is a better bet for the fall and the future . Mrs. Clinton was a "Goldwater
Girl" back in her younger days and was/is actually proud of that. I have to wonder if the African
American population realizes what that meant and now means. It hard to believe that she is not
owned by big business. Her possible indictment and the Republican reaction to no indictment. I
do not trust her for so many reasons. Since the polls seem to show that Sanders could defeat the
Republicans it might just be a safer move. Our nation does not want (or should not want) another
mess with another 'Clinton'. Nor should our country have to endure the problems that may well
accompany Mrs. Clinton into office. And hey, does anyone know why Mrs. Clinton discontinued the
use of her maiden name altogether? Has she any identity on her own that is of real value in her
thinking or does she just have to try to ride on a wave created by her hubby----not a very sharp
move for a true feminist. Shame on Mr. Obama for his comments in her favor. I am with Sanders
and probably not bothering to vote for her in the fall if she get the Democratic nomination---just
too hard to justify. The voters
who send her into the fall election just deserve 4 four years of the likes of Mr. Trump. This
might not be the year for Sanders and his approach, but the future lies ahead as an college Professor
always said.
Nate you are delusional if you don't think Bernie will win big in the Bay Area, the days of
smoke filled back rooms with Willie Brown and Diane Feinstein carving up the spoils are thankfully
over. The Bay Area has a very diverse, intelligent populace who can spot a phony when they see
it, Hillary doesn't stand a chance.
Say what you will, Bernie Sanders has breathed life into the Democrat campaign with sound ideas.
He has resurrected some of the old labor friendly ways of a party drifted too far to the right.
His call for a "revolution" of participation in government and civic lifr will resonate past the
election.
I'm glad he's staying in the race. I'd like my chance to vote for him, even if it proves only
symbolicc.
ScottW, is a trusted commenter Chapel Hill, NC
8 hours ago
Still waiting for the release of Hillary's transcripts of speeches she gave to special interest
who lathered her with millions. If you support Hillary and you don't care about seeing what she
told special interests you either work for one, or have your head in the sand.
Hillary's favorability ratings are below 50% in every poll taken. She is considered trustworthy
by a much lower percentage than Bernie.
But she is the best candidate for the Dems because she supports big money in politics. No way
to avoid the FACT the Dem party loves big donors and has absolutely no interest in having it any
other way. They are competing with Repubs for big donors.
A vote for Hillary is a vote for continuing pay to play, which has ruined this country for
the past 3 decades. Another bought and paid for candidate.
If it's Clinton v. Trump (of whoever v. Trump), and we the citizenry choose Trump, I must say
that humankind has really not come very far. In our country, the wealthiest in the world, where
by all reasonable measures, we live in significantly better conditions than most (but not all)
of the world population, we will have proven ourselves not so different from the typical ups-and-downs
that third-world countries and banana republics experience. For all our riches and our advancements,
we, as humans, must be somehow consigned, as a collective, to make the same stupid mistakes. I
hope we prove ourselves better than that.
There are quite a few more ways Bernie can win: leaks expose Hilary's Wall Street speeches,
; FBI charges; a strong yuan devaluation causes significant stock market volatility; etc
It's sad that educated "affluent" voters will support Clinton ostensibly to try to hold onto
as much of their wealth as possible even when it's worse for the nation at large. It's the exact
confluence of money and politics that Clinton stands for and Sanders rejects. This race is about
one candidate who is well-liked, genuine, and looking to honestly help people versus another who
pretends to be working for the people, but who's track record is a virtual Frank Underwood guide
book of self-serving political maneuvers for wealth and power.
Sanders ideas to give power back to the people instead of back to the wealthy isn't as radical
as the media portrays him. It's the basic tenets of democracy most of us learned back in grade
school. Hopefully whatever magic spell Clinton has over the black vote will be broken and voters
will wake up to realize there is only one candidate fighting on their behalf.
Actually, public colleges USED to be free for every in-state student. In the flower of my mature
years, I can still remember that.
I also remember making a livable living as a woman with only a HS diploma, serving as an executive
secretary for the high-powered and well-connected.
Many of them were identical to the snarling Democratic women who serve as Hillary*s henchpeople.
Even as they worked for the *better good* in the non-profit and socially advanced universe, they
were more than happy to trample on people like me.
And *me* are, like, legion...
I will never vote for Hillary. I will write in Sanders* name if I have to, and sleep soundly
on Election Night, regardless of what happens, because I will have acted according to my own principles
and ethics. If we all do so Sanders can win. If others do the usual craven Democratic fold--you*ll
get what you deserve.
It is time for the NYTimes and the rest of the corporate media to recognize the very real and
terrifying possibility that Donald Trump will be our next president. It is time to drop their
mindless support of Hillary and to face the facts. Bernie defeats Trump in every poll by wider
margins than Hillary. Bernie has no baggage. He has never faced indictment. He is not owned by
Wall St. and super pacs. He has not been a cheerleader for endless war in the Middle East.
Hillary is vulnerable in a general election; Bernie is not. I don't think the Times bothered to
report it, but Bernie actually earned more votes in North Carolina than Trump did. Many Bernie
supporters will not vote for Hillary. Bernie, however, has higher positive ratings than any other
candidate this year. He won his home state by 87% because he is beloved by Republicans and Independents
as well as Democrats. It is time to explain to African-Americans, Latinos, etc. WHY he is so beloved.
There is no reason on earth for African-Americans not to support him except for the fact that
they know nothing about him. That is your fault, corporate media, and nobody else's.
The truth is that Sanders performs way better against Trump in general election and state-by-state
match-ups than Clinton. He has great appeal for Independents, and even garners 25% of the Republican
vote in his home state of Vermont. One can say that Sanders hasn't yet been "tested" against the
Republican spin machine in a general election, but honestly, the worst they can throw at him is
"socialist," a term that is actually very friendly to those who come to understand the meaning
of "Democratic socialism." Clinton has so many lies (think, for just one, of "landing under sniper
fire in Bosnia), flip-flops and evolutions in her history that the Republicans will have a field
day with her. Independents don't like her, millennials are apathetic to her, and her only real
appeal is with strong Democrats, most of whom she doesn't inspire. What I fear the most is a Trump
presidency, and that Clinton will end up being another John Kerry, Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale.
Cannot fathom why anyone would vote for Hillary
unless you want the "Same Old - Same Old":
The Rich get Richer and Poor get Poorer.
Do you really think someone who took $ 675,000 for making
3 speeches to Goldman Sachs is going to tame the Wall Street Wolves ?
I believe Sen Sanders is committing a terrible error that will cost him the nomination and
the Democrats the presidency.
While sparing HRC all the hovering questions by running a clean campaign
first, he is not only not using the possibility to highlight his superiority on political luggage
and history which could help him with minority groups, veterans and others ,
but also he is not preparing the public for the spectacle waiting the public when the duel with
Trump(or Cruz) starts.
When the issues such as her voting history on wars, Secretary of State
tragic mistakes such as Libya, endangering nation security with the use of a
private server , Bill grotesque history with women and her shaming of the women who went trough,
her past positions on LGBT,
profoundly racist comments as the Superpredators, weird insinuations as the gunfire in Kosovo
start being spit on her by towering, screaming bully of Trump it will be a
a BLOODBATH.
There is so many of them and even now she keep on making them
and when you hear them all spit one by one with a venom and conviction by the "other" candidate,
even diehard Dems will be appalled.
She will be destroyed and no whatsoever credibility will be accorded any
explanation she could give as the offences are BIGGER then anything we have ever witnessed in
president candidate.
Reps are stocking them like silver bullets and they will hit when the time comes.
So shoot now Sanders, otherwise other will use them to kill.
I am a psychiatrist, and I am terrified by the idea that someone with such a narcissistic,
and anti-social personality, would put the future and safety of our country at great risk, in
order to aquire another "property" that he desperately wants, as another trophy to add to his
list of buying everything he wants, no matter the cost or risk.
Unlike a real estate acquisition, you cannot (or should not) bankrupt this country, write it
off as a loss on your taxes, and move on to purchasing another "prize" you want, and feel you
are entitled to "collect/own". For a man who continually demonstrates the temper of a 5 y/o when
he is challenged, and has no political experience mixed with his "ballistic" temper, would you
really choose him to make decisions that involve the safety and welfare of our country, and to
make rationally based decisions in our current state of complex and fragile international affairs?
"... Trump is winning because he is NOT the establishment. Sanders, coming out of nowhere, with only PEOPLE rather than the establishment behind him, is running a fantastic race against a well oiled machine going on twenty years in the building of it. ..."
"... US will just follow the rest of the world's trend towards more extremist politicians and options. It is just a sign that these are not good times at least in peoples' minds. The extreme right is doing great in Northern and Central Europe, while the extreme left is doing the same in Southern Europe creating a rift in almost every issue, but specially the immigration policy. many countries are becoming difficult to govern at a time when separatism, both national (Scotland, Catalonia) and supranational (Brexit) is on the increase. ..."
"... "US will just follow the rest of the world's trend towards more extremist politicians and options. It is just a sign that these are not good times at least in peoples' minds." ..."
"... The odds are, you are right, about HRC being the nominee, but it is still a race, and it ain't over till it's over. I hope like hell you are right about TRUMP LOSING, regardless of who wins, but I have been following politics since the fifties, and HRC has had a hint of dead fish smell following her from day one. They used to talk about RR being the teflon prez, but compared to HRC, he was Velcro. ..."
"... She stinks in terms of the public's opinion of her, and elections are generally decided in the middle in this country. ..."
"... The Republican party is too far to the right for most Europeans, including me. And as of late it seems to even be going farther to the right (Tea party, Trump, etc). ..."
The MSM are doing their usual thing this morning, managing, like the referee at a pro wrestling
match, to miss the real action. It is true that a win is a win in a winner take all state when
it comes to delegates, but when the results are as close as three points, one or two voters out
of a hundred changing sides changes the results.
The people are obviously sick and tired of our old establishment politicians.
Trump is winning because he is NOT the establishment. Sanders, coming out of nowhere, with
only PEOPLE rather than the establishment behind him, is running a fantastic race against a well
oiled machine going on twenty years in the building of it.
When the actual election rolls around, the people who are pissed at the establishment, meaning
damned near everybody except the handful at the top of the economic and political heap, are going
to wish they could vote for an outsider.
The right wing outsiders will get their wish from the looks of things. They will be voting
AGAINST INSIDERS rather than FOR Trump. Their fires will be burning hot and bright, unless he
goes totally nuts campaigning.
This looks BAD for the country imo. The D's are in great danger of running a CLASSIC insider.
It's time for a change, and the younger people of this country feel it in their bones.
And about this old climate change issue, ahem. We can basically go to bed at night, not worrying
about it very much, in terms of people's beliefs, because all that is really left is a mopping
up operation as far as public opinion is concerned.
My generation will soon be either dead or in nursing homes, and the younger generation will
vote the scientific consensus, after a while.
I remember LOTS of people who were DEAD set, pun intended, in their belief that smoking is
a harmless pleasure. It has been a decade at least since I heard even an illiterate moron claim
that smoking is safe, although I do still hear an occasional smoker in denial say that when your
time comes, your time has come, and it does not matter about the WHY of it coming.
This is not to say we can abandon the fight, but that victory is assured, so long as we keep
it up.
After all, the actual EVIDENCE is accumulating that the world is warming up pretty fast.
I have no doubt at all than unless the last ten days of this month are very close to RECORD
COLD, we will be setting a regional record for the warmest March ever. My personal estimate is
that the odds of a frost kill of the tree fruit crop locally are among the highest ever. All it
takes is ONE good frosty night once the buds are too far advanced.
The Koch brothers and their buddies will continue to fight a dirty and ferocious rear guard
action of course, but in another decade, the issue will no longer be in doubt, as far as the general
public is concerned.
Trump is winning because he is NOT the establishment
Nobody is more establishment than Trump. He's a perfect example of a crony-capitalist. Again, this is the classic strategy of exploiting people's problems, and diverting their anger
towards scapegoats, like immigrants and foreign countries. Trump has proposed a massive tax cut for the 1%, and making life harder for immigrants only
helps business exploit them better, and undercuts wages even more for working people.
There is more than one way do define the word "establishment".
In one sense Trump IS the establishment, but in the sense I used it , he is the ANTI establishment,
no doubt, but he is also a new face on the political scene, running against the D party as WELL
as his own NOMINAL party.
No real republican thinks of Trump as a republican, if we define republican as somebody who
agrees with most or all of the positions and values of the republican party for the last couple
of decades.
What I am saying is that the foot soldiers of the R party have been ready to mutiny for a long
time now, and Trump has provided them the leadership necessary to do so.
The working class conservative voters are THOROUGHLY pissed at the R party establishment, feeling
betrayed at every turn.
People who used to work for a living in the industries sent overseas by the D and R parties
working in collusion have felt trapped until today, betrayed by the D party on the social consensus
they held dear, right or wrong, and fucked over by the R party they have been voting for as the
lesser of two evils.
Not many such people still believe in the American Dream, because they are simply not able
to get ahead anymore, no matter how hard they work.
And while they are mistaken to believe in Trump, at least Trump has not be been lying to them
continuously for the last few decades, AS THEY SEE IT.
( That he is lying to them now , in substantial ways, is irrevelant. He is a NEW face. )
Trump IS Wall Street, and HRC is in the vest pocket of Wall Street, except on cultural issues.
Now these comments may not make much sense to hard core liberals, because hard core liberals
have an incredibly hard time believing anybody who disagrees with them has a brain, or morals,
or a culture that suits THEM.
In actuality, at least half of the country disagrees with the D party social agenda, for reasons
that TO THEM are valid and more than adequate.
I agree: Trump has sold himself as an advocate for the working class.
It's the same strategy Republicans have been using for 40 odd years: using people's fears and
hopes to get them to vote for people who proceed to betray them.
Not that Democrats are enormously better, but, with our current political system they can't
be. If they get too progressive, the other party can move to the middle and cut them out.
It's nice to see you posting again. Your spot on. The Republican establishment has been exploiting
their base for the last 50 years with a whisper campaign of racism and bigotry for their own 1%
economic gain. The Donald has only removed the whisper from the campaign and increased the amount
of lies.
"Trump is the same ol', same ol', only worse"
"That's what puzzles me – this idea that fossil fuels are still valuable."
Nick, you over estimate the educated gray matter of your fellow humans. Most don't have your
vision and will not see it until EV's are the norm(10+ years from now). The fossil fuel Republican
parties base will be the last in the world to see the light. If they aren't already.
US will just follow the rest of the world's trend towards more extremist politicians and options.
It is just a sign that these are not good times at least in peoples' minds.
The extreme right is doing great in Northern and Central Europe, while the extreme left is
doing the same in Southern Europe creating a rift in almost every issue, but specially the immigration
policy. many countries are becoming difficult to govern at a time when separatism, both national
(Scotland, Catalonia) and supranational (Brexit) is on the increase.
If we move to the rest of the world we see the very negative result of the Arab Spring. Essentially
no single country that underwent those social revolutions has come better afterwards. Even Tunisia,
a moderate country, has seen its tourism badly damaged and it is now the biggest contributor to
Sirian foreign fighters. Saudi Arabia has a more extremist government that it is making a policy
out of foreign intervention, minority repression and confrontation against Iran, while its population
is cheering the change.
So don't be so surprised by developments in US politics that follow what is happening elsewhere.
It is a product of the times we live.
the world's trend towards more extremist politicians
There's nothing new about demagoguery, in the US or elsewhere, or revolutionary sentiment (I
guess I shouldn't have said Trump was "worse" – he's just a little less subtle about it than has
been the norm lately in the US).
Have you seen any actual data suggesting that there is a real change in "extremism", separatism,
social discontent or other similar things?
"Have you seen any actual data suggesting that there is a real change in "extremism", separatism,
social discontent or other similar things?"
Yes:
French National Front best results ever in 2014-2015 elections. They were the first party in
the last EU parliamentary elections in France with almost 5 million votes.
Alternative for Germany. New party in 2013. Best results ever in 2016 state elections, receiving
second and third place in the three states that held elections.
Freedom Party of Austria second best result ever in 2013 elections with 20,5% of the vote and
30% in Vienna.
Coalition of Radical Left (Syriza) best result ever in 2015 elections with 36.3% of the votes.
Podemos (Radical left in Spain). New party in 2014. Best result ever in 2015 elections with
21% of the votes.
Populism and demagoguery are taking the developed world by storm. New radical (right or left)
parties go from zero to taking second or third places in mere months.
"US will just follow the rest of the world's trend towards more extremist politicians and options.
It is just a sign that these are not good times at least in peoples' minds."
I don't have more than the foggiest idea about Javier's personal political beliefs, other than
that he occasionally makes a remark indicating he leans more to the left than to the right. I
don't think you do either.
Folks who are so TRIBALLY oriented that they cannot distinguish a skeptic from a partisan will
always of course assume that anybody who questions anything associated with their IN group is
a member of their OUT GROUP, and a fraud or a phony or an enemy of some sort.
I disagree with Javier's assessment of the potential risk of forced climate change, but he
on the other hand he never has anything to say, other than about the extent of forced climate
change, that sets off my personal alarm bells when it comes to environmental issues. On every
other environmetal question, unless I have overlooked something, he is very much in one hundred
percent agreement with the overall "big picture " environmental camp consensus.
It is GOOD politics to remember what RR had to say about a man who agrees with you just about
all the time. Such a man is a FRIEND, in political terms, and an ally, rather than an enemy.
Now about that fear card- both parties play it on a regular basis.
In case you haven't noticed, I support the larger part of the D party platform, except I go
FARTHER, in some cases, as in supporting single payer for the heath care industry. I have made
it clear that I am NOT a republican, and stated many times that I am basically a single issue
voter, that issue being the environment.
Now HERE is why I am supporting Bernie Sanders, nicely summarized, although I do not take every
line of this article seriously.
Any democrat who is not afraid to remove his or her rose colored glasses, and take a CRITICAL
look at HRC as a candidate, will come away with a hell of a lot to think about if he or she reads
this link.
I personally know a lot of people who have voted D most of their lives who would rather vote
for ANY other D than HRC. It is extremely hard for a lot of people to accept it, but she STINKS,
ethically, in the opinion of a HUGE swath of independents, and a substantial number of committed
democrats . A good many of them may stay home rather than vote for her, but they will vote for
Sanders, out of party loyalty and fear of Trump.
Sanders polls better,virtually across the board, in terms of the actual election, and he does
not have the negative baggage. I WANT a Democrat in the WH next time around.
Read this , and think, if you are not so immersed in party and personal politics that you can't
deal with it.
Millions and millions of D voters have digested it already, for themselves, over the last decade
or two, which is why Sanders is getting half the vote, excluding minorities in the south, even
though he is coming out of nowhere, without the support of the party establishment, without big
money backing him, against HRC who has been organizing and campaigning just about forever.
I am not saying this guy is right in every respect, but he has his finger on the pulse of many
tens of millions of D voters, or potential D voters.
If it comes down to Trump versus HRC, I am not at ALL sure HRC will win, but if Sanders gets
the nomination, I think he WILL, because even though he has been around forever, he is the NEW
face of the D party, and the PEOPLE of this country are SICK and TIRED of the old faces, D and
R both.
Trump and Sanders have in ONE important thing in common . Both of them are new faces, promising
to bring new life to their parties.
I like a lot about what Sanders is bringing to the table. But sorry Mac, I think its going to
be Clinton.
I'm non-aligned (anti-partisan), but I'd vote for Clinton a thousand times over Trump. And I think
a strong majority of the country will as well.
The odds are, you are right, about HRC being the nominee, but it is still a race, and it ain't
over till it's over. I hope like hell you are right about TRUMP LOSING, regardless of who wins, but I have been
following politics since the fifties, and HRC has had a hint of dead fish smell following her
from day one. They used to talk about RR being the teflon prez, but compared to HRC, he was Velcro.
Almost every regular in this forum seems to be mathematically literate. I challenge anybody
here to explain Cattle Gate as any thing except fraud, pure and simple, in realistic terms.
Hey, this ain't YET North Korea, where we actually believe our leader made a hole in one the
first time he ever tried golf, on a day so foggy nobody could see the green.
I absolutely will never vote for EITHER HRC or TRUMP.
If the D's run HRC, the best hope for the country is that the R's broker their convention,
and Trump gives up crashing the R party and his own personal hard core stays home. That would
make the election safe for HRC, assuming the FBI decides in her favor. Not many prez candidates
have ever had a hundred agents on their case.
Six months ago I was almost sure Trump was a flash in the pan, and would be forgotten by now.
I now fear that there is a very real possibility he may win.
The political waters are so muddy it is impossible to say what will happen a year from now.
Trump is the sort of fellow who successfully "aw shucks" away most of his nasty rhetoric once
he has the nomination, and then he will turn his guns on HRC. He won't have far to go to look
for ammo, and he will make damned sure everything smelly is on the front pages from day one, all
the way back to Arkansas.
Sanders is a far more desirable candidate in the actual election.
She stinks in terms of the public's opinion of her, and elections are generally decided in
the middle in this country.
If she can take her ten years plus campaigning advantage into a big industrial state, Obama's
political home, with the party establishment behind her, and win by only TWO POINTS points, what
does this tell you?She should have won by thirty points or more, if the people were really behind
her, rather than beholden to the party machine.
The deep south will vote for Trump in preference to HRC, with a couple of exceptions, maybe
three or four. So her big delegate lead from there doesn't prove a THING in terms of the actual
election. She is taking all the delegates elsewhere in winner take all states by only very narrow
margins. The BURN in D voter's hearts is mostly for Sanders.
Trump would likely be in worse shape in terms of public opinion, except he is a new face, politically,
and it takes a long time to build up such negatives, it doesn't happen overnight.
My personal opinion of HIS ethics is that he makes HRC look like an altar girl.
I am not too interested in politics, and even less in US politics. The Republican party is
too far to the right for most Europeans, including me. And as of late it seems to even be going
farther to the right (Tea party, Trump, etc).
I do not find myself much of a political space because I do not agree much with both left and
right parties in Europe. I am more of a traditional European liberal, which doesn't translate
well into a US political leaning, and even in Europe is very minoritarian. Let's just say that
I believe that individual rights are above collective rights and I believe in small government.
I also think that the economy should be strictly regulated to avoid dominant positions that always
go against the individual, and that medical care and education should be affordable to anybody.
But I am afraid all these belong to a pre-Oil Peak world and we are going to see very different
politics being played out as our economy starts to suffer from lack of affordable oil. Right now
oil is not affordable because producers cannot afford it, but if it goes up significantly in price
consumers will not be able to afford it.
"... The comment that Clinton had seemed to have locked up the Democratic race last Tuesday is laughable now, but it was also way out of line last week. The idea that superdelegates will stay with Clinton if she falls measurably behind in the popular vote is very questionable. ..."
"... Adding them now to her delegate total makes sense if you're trying to create a perception of inevitability for the candidate you've endorsed. Wake up, Times analysts. She's not inevitable any more than she was in 2008. ..."
"... The recent polling average at Real Clear Politics placed Clinton ahead of Sanders in Michigan by 21.4%. Zero polls put Sanders ahead of Clinton. Polling organizations projected a Clinton victory chance at 99%. And Sanders just won the state. The victory is stunning. I strongly urge the pundits to revise their inevitability narrative and let the voters decide. ..."
"... HRC is part of establishment that led to this demise. Thank you to the people of Michigan for choosing Sanders and Trump. You have a beautiful state! ..."
"... When polls this morning showed Hillary 13% ahead of Bernie, NYTimes called Michigan a state whose diversity was almost perfectly representative of the nation. Now the goal post has shifted and Michigan is suddenly super-white. ..."
"... Sanders has won in almost all of the states that Obama carried in 2008 and 2012; Clinton has won mainly in the Southern states which the GOP has won in every election since 1968. The DNC should wake up: Sanders is the better candidate. ..."
"... It's going to be interesting how the super-delegates throw their support to. Right now Hillary is leading the delegate count and that lead is increased with a majority of the super-delegates. However, if this upset is followed by more in the future, those super-delegates may have a change of heart and we could have a very interesting summer in this election. ..."
"... The rustbelt does not trust Hillary Clinton - and for a very good reason - NAFTA. ..."
"... The Sanders Clinton divide is almost right on the Mason-Dixon Line thus far. These maps are quite remarkable. They also point to Sanders relative strength in contrast to the queen in a general election. He will carry Hillary's supporters much more so than her ability to expect the support of the Bernie people. ..."
"... Dearborn, Michigan is about 30% Arab Americans. Early returns show a majority voted overwhelmingly for our first Jewish American presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders. What a wonderful thing that says about Democratic Party values and the people of Dearborn. ..."
"... Breaking Bad - Michigan is the point the system went tilt. Bernie has the overwhelming white vote and now blacks are beginning going as well to Bernie. The Clinton Machine is running out of propaganda. People sees Bernie's Integrity ..."
"... It seems that the newspaper of record will have to take a more careful look at its slanted election reporting. The degree of poor and irresponsible journalism from the New York Times regarding the Democratic primaries is astounding! I'm surprised that the Times was able to print the breaking news of a "significant upset over Hillary Clinton." All power to the 99%! ..."
"... Bottom line: Take away the African American vote in the old South and Hillary is a non-candidate. ..."
"... Hillary was going to shift to Trump and the General Election. NOT. SO. QUICK. Ms Clinton. You have just about run out of Old Confederacy States and the shine is off of your inevitability argument. Bernie warned the press not to underestimate him. He just won an industrial state with a significant minority population. ..."
Don't you think it worth mentioning that most of the states Clinton has won are almost certain
to stay red in November? And that Sanders is winning the states Dems need to win in November,
and outpolling her dramatically among independents everywhere? Still think she's most "electable"?
The comment that Clinton had seemed to have locked up the Democratic race last Tuesday is laughable
now, but it was also way out of line last week. The idea that superdelegates will stay with Clinton
if she falls measurably behind in the popular vote is very questionable.
Adding them now to her
delegate total makes sense if you're trying to create a perception of inevitability for the candidate
you've endorsed. Wake up, Times analysts. She's not inevitable any more than she was in 2008.
Eric, Chicago 10 minutes ago
The recent polling average at Real Clear Politics placed Clinton ahead of Sanders in Michigan
by 21.4%. Zero polls put Sanders ahead of Clinton. Polling organizations projected a Clinton victory
chance at 99%. And Sanders just won the state. The victory is stunning. I strongly urge the pundits
to revise their inevitability narrative and let the voters decide.
Just Me, Planet Earth 10 minutes ago
Michigan serves as an example of the US as a whole- considering the fact that they are part of
the rust belt. The manufacturing sector of the US that has been DECIMATED by NAFTA, NATO, TPP
and other trade agreements that have ROBBED the middle class of hard working labor with DECENT
pay, now we are forced to compete with cheap labor. HRC is part of establishment that led to this
demise. Thank you to the people of Michigan for choosing Sanders and Trump. You have a beautiful
state!
Al, CA 10 minutes ago
When polls this morning showed Hillary 13% ahead of Bernie, NYTimes called Michigan a state whose
diversity was almost perfectly representative of the nation. Now the goal post has shifted and
Michigan is suddenly super-white.
In June we'll be hearing about how minority-majority California is grossly unrepresentative.
Why not just admit that some people would rather vote for the man who went to jail
Kevin Cahill, Albuquerque 10 minutes ago
Sanders has won in almost all of the states that Obama carried in 2008 and 2012; Clinton has won
mainly in the Southern states which the GOP has won in every election since 1968. The DNC should
wake up: Sanders is the better candidate.
Cassowary, Earthling 13 minutes ago
Behold the revolution! The people of Michigan have spoken. They are not buying what Clinton, her
corporate donors and media backers are selling.
Listen up, Democrats. Don't try to fight the will of the voters and usurp Sanders if he wins
nationally. Why destroy the party by undemocratically supporting Clinton through superdelegates
and risk the meltdown the GOP is going through? Clinton is now the unelectable candidate. Adjust.
Accept. Get ready for President Sanders, a true Democrat.
Martha Shelley, Portland, OR 13 minutes ago
Just yesterday the NY Times was telling us that Clinton would win a landslide victory in Michigan,
and Sanders was history. Um, is this on the same level as the 1948 headline in the Chicago Tribune,
"Dewey Defeats Truman?"
Andrew L, Toronto 13 minutes ago
"Mr Sanders, who won white voters in Michigan and is targeting them in coming Rust Belt
primaries...."
Wow. Just wow. And Sanders supporters say they are progressive. Has your country come to a
point where candidates and their campaigns barely conceal their implicitly racist aims? This is
utterly astounding and shameful.
Bernie won Michigan and, I believe, will win Ohio. It's not an "upset," NYT: it's momentum.
Were it not for the African-American vote, the Clinton campaign would be in the tank. Maybe it's
time to reconsider the received wisdom that "Bernie can't win"?
It's going to be interesting how the super-delegates throw their support to. Right now
Hillary is leading the delegate count and that lead is increased with a majority of the super-delegates.
However, if this upset is followed by more in the future, those super-delegates may have a change
of heart and we could have a very interesting summer in this election.
This is purely opinion, but I feel confident saying that the next president of this country is
going to come from the winner of this close Democratic Nomination. The Republican Party is very
divided with Trump leading the way, and I cannot see the typical support from losing candidates
thrown Trump's way should he win the nomination.
Bernie received almost 40% in Wayne County --Detroit, so let's end the fiction that Bernie
can't win the African American vote. His message is spreading in urban America, which is where
Democrats win elections.
The Times unfairly uses the term "prolong" to describe this race. Let's see hoee Bernie does
in Philly and Cleveland. Hillary is in big trouble.
Very poor coverage of the big story of the night - Bernie Sanders beating Hillary Clinton in
the rustbelt state Michigan. The rustbelt does not trust Hillary Clinton - and for a very
good reason - NAFTA. The dynamics of the Democratic race have just been transformed. Michigan
is a gamechanger.
Billy , up in the woods down by the river
2 hours ago
The Sanders Clinton divide is almost right on the Mason-Dixon Line thus far. These maps
are quite remarkable. They also point to Sanders relative strength in contrast to the queen in
a general election. He will carry Hillary's supporters much more so than her ability to expect
the support of the Bernie people.
This Michigan upset by Sanders over Clinton may prove to be historic.
Dearborn, Michigan is about 30% Arab Americans. Early returns show a majority voted overwhelmingly
for our first Jewish American presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders. What a wonderful thing that
says about Democratic Party values and the people of Dearborn.
This is a beautiful night for Bernie Sanders and those of us who believe in him. I think he'll
win but even if he doesn't, he proved his candidacyy is very much alive.
Get ready to feel the Bern, Ohio!
Janice Badger Nelson , is a trusted commenter Park City, Utah, from Boston
43 minutes ago
If Hillary and Bernie were switched, you would have called it for her already in Michigan.
CNN is doing the same. Sorry, the big story, even if Hillary squeaks out a narrow win, the BIG
story is how well Bernie Sanders is doing. Of course by reading the NYTimes, you would never know.
Sad state of honest journalism.
Breaking Bad - Michigan is the point the system went tilt. Bernie has the overwhelming
white vote and now blacks are beginning going as well to Bernie. The Clinton Machine is running
out of propaganda. People sees Bernie's Integrity
What an amazing upset by Mr. Sanders. Huge upset and will probably define this race when it's
all said and done. This is exactly what Bernie Sanders needed. The polls have been going against
him in pretty much every state, but this one was over 10% for Hillary today as per the latest
poll. We can't trust the media and the pundits. On to Ohio!!
Howie Lisnoff , is a trusted commenter Massachusetts
32 minutes ago
It seems that the newspaper of record will have to take a more careful look at its slanted
election reporting. The degree of poor and irresponsible journalism from the New York Times regarding
the Democratic primaries is astounding! I'm surprised that the Times was able to print the breaking
news of a "significant upset over Hillary Clinton." All power to the 99%!
Winning the Democratic primary in MS, LA or other deep south states is a far cry from carrying
those states in the general election. Hillary is in trouble.
Bottom line: Take away the African American vote in the old South and Hillary is a non-candidate.
She is strong in states the Democrats will not carry come November. This despite having a huge
advantage in name recognition, endorsements - including the NYT and WaPo, money and all the rest.
If the goal is to win in November, Democrats had better wake up. As of this writing, NBC just
called Michigan for Bernie where Hillary was supposedly up by 10+ Points.
(10:35 PM CST)
#FeelTheBern #NotReadyForHIllary
The clown car on the Republican side is of no consequence. Bernie will wipe the floor with Trump.
Hillary was going to shift to Trump and the General Election. NOT. SO. QUICK. Ms Clinton.
You have just about run out of Old Confederacy States and the shine is off of your inevitability
argument. Bernie warned the press not to underestimate him. He just won an industrial state with
a significant minority population.
"All you had to do was watch Sunday night's debate in Flint, Michigan, to
realize Sanders isn't nearly ready to quit" [
Politico
].
And you know that if Clinton had won, that's what would have been splashed
over Politico's home page, and all the other Acela riders, too.
"Testy debate suggests Clinton and Sanders battle will continue" [
McClatchy
].
Well, that and what Sanders has said, and continuing support from his
coalition, as measured by contributions, which means he can tell the DNC to
take a hike.
Clinton said again she would release the transcripts only if all other
candidates who have given paid speeches did. She also said that she stood
up to Wall Street. "I have a record," she said. "And you know what, if
you were going to be in some way distrusted or dismissed about whether
you can take on Wall Street if you ever took money, President Obama took
more money from Wall Street in the 2008 campaign than anybody ever had."
Sanders quipped: "Secretary Clinton wants everybody else to release
it, well, I'm your Democratic opponent, I release it, here it is. There
ain't nothing. I don't give speeches to Wall Street for hundreds of
thousands of dollars, you got it."
I don't have to tell NC readers how weak that "quip" is. (And Clinton's
effrontery really is boundless, isn't it? Then again, Russell Simmons agrees
with her.)
"The Hillary Clinton-Bernie Sanders clash over the auto bailout,
explained" [
WaPo
].
This is classic:
"I voted to save the auto industry," [Clinton] said. "He voted against
the money that ended up saving the auto industry. I think that is a
pretty big difference."
What Clinton said is technically true, but it glosses over a lot of
important nuance, including the fact that Sanders is actually on the
record as supporting the auto bailout. He even voted for it.
So "techically true" means false, thenk? It's a topsy-turvey world!
(Even leaving aside the idea that a died-on-the-wool Socialist would do
such a thing.)
The Trail
"Clinton insiders are eager to begin recruiting to their cause
Republicans turned off by the prospect of Donald Trump - and the threat
of Sanders sticking it out until June makes the general election pivot
more difficult" [
Politico
].
I have long held that Clinton does not want Sanders voters, and now I am
confirmed in my view. Clinton wants moderate Republicans instead, for
reasons temparamental (Goldwater Girl), financial (ka-ching), and
institutional. Socialism and liberalism do not mix (even Sanders' mild
version of it). In addition, the Democratic establishment refuses to
recognize that Sanders has broken their squillionaire-dependent funding
model, and in consequence has gleefully stomped on youth voters (who
needs 'em, anyhow?). It really is time for Sanders to start thinking
about converting his campaign into a standalone entity that will continue
beyond the election. What's wrong with SFA (Socialists for America?)
"Clinton must make Elizabeth Warren her vice president" [Dana Milbank,
WaPo
]. Ugh.
"Over the next two weeks, Sanders campaign surrogates - and, in some
cases, the candidate - will meet with local activists. The campaign has
employed this strategy before, but surrogates and aides said now it will
be more publicized. Sanders, according to two sources briefed on the
campaign's plans, will also be more specific about economic inequality
and its effect on black communities in his stump speech" [
Buzzfeed
].
"Right now, when you look at the political revolution - it needs to
be more
intersectional
, and his economic proposals need to
be more more explicit on the ground and publicly," the activist [who
wasn't authorized to speak for their organization] said. "The Clintons
will exploit that. When he's talking about it, he'll give specific
examples on the stump in ways he hasn't before, is my understanding."
"The Seattle Times editorial board recommends John Kasich, Bernie
Sanders" [
Seattle
Times
].
"Andrea Mitchell Pulls the Mask Off Harry Reid" [
Down
with Tyranny
]. How the "neutral" Reid delivered Nevada to Clinton.
"Hillary Calls for Michigan Gov's Resignation an Hour After Her Spox
Slammed Bernie for Same" [
Mediaite
].
Send in the bots! There have to be bots!
This could be the last time [
Avedon's
Sidehow
]. An excellent wrap-up of commentary on Super Tuesday.
"Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million donation to Newark public schools
failed miserably - here's where it went wrong" [
Business
Insider
]. Maybe somebody should ask Cory Booker,
before
his
VP aspirations become embarassingly open?
New York: "On the Democratic side, Clinton had a 21-percentage point
lead over Bernie Sanders, 55% to 34%, the same as it was a month ago, the
[Siena] poll found" [
USA
Today
]. Sanders position on fracking will help him, but only upstate.
Was Sanders "pragmatic" enough to offer Sharpton a suitcase full of cash?
Flint is where I was born and raised. The Governor gave away billions of Detroit's assets for
pennies on the dollar with no one challah ginger that theft. Now he is stealing lives in Flint.
He needs to step down. I would provide a link for more info but I am not permitted.
Yep, as was likely. Sanders campaign is all about momentum and whether he can bring people on
side or whether they just think he has no chance. In that respect the early ballots were always
going to be tough, apart from NH and Vermont.
March 15 is probably the real decider. Big states, lots of delegates. Sanders really must win
a lot of them to keep going, assuming that the superdelegates stay strongly behind Hillary. He
has done well though this week, winning some smaller states and building some momentum towards
the larger ones. It's not over if he doesn't crush Hillary on the 15th in those big states, but
if he loses several of them it will probably be the end of the momentum he needs.
Sanders is still very much the underdog, but then that's kind of the way he likes it.
"... This BRILLIANT presentation should be heard (and I hope RNN runs it in print so that it can be copied, old-style, and distributed on 'paper')..absorbed as a concise, integrated history of globalization-the neo-imperialist policy that continues from the 19th-20thc. imperialism... and revealed as a continuation process of global capitalism & its "1%" class. ..."
"... One of the most important takeaways, though not a necessarily new one but one worth reiterating, is that national boundaries in terms of the US and the 1% are of no importance since a world domination economic empire is the goal. ..."
"... The bloated US imperial military budget reflects how the 99% at home fund this empire, of course they never voting for it. The military is not a US military--it is the military of the 1% and global capitalism. This actually should be the meme that those trying to raise consciousness put forth, since those on the left and the right from the middle and lower classes can begin to see the whole electoral mirage for what it is. ..."
"... Clearly the methods concerned human beings are using to address the madness of the elites and their corporate/military state have had absolutely no impact: Poverty is more rampant now than ever before, the gap between rich and poor very much wider and the number of wars keeps increasing, especially the race war against the Arab people. ..."
"... Big Brother's web of deception is weakening. The ranks of unbelievers grows daily. But does the cynicism beget People Power or Donald Trump? ..."
"... Dear DreamJoe. I think you're right that BB's web of deception is weakening, but I doubt that it's weakened enough. I'm sure you understand the 'deep state' concept. It does not matter which flunkeys the "people" elect; the deep state continues to run the show. What's going on now is all bread and circuses; it means nothing. ..."
"... Bernie and Donald are manifestations of a deeper systemic failures that have changed everything for millions of people. B & D will come and go, but that crisis will remain, and will become more acute. ..."
"... why do American politicians become incontinent when they mention Saudi Arabia ..."
"... recycling mechanism for capitalism ..."
"... there is a suicidal death pact between the West and Saudi Arabia ..."
"... Protecting oligarchs investments and rate of return on shareholders gains is worlds burden we are told a needed evil in order to advance GROWTH endlessly. Growth code word for consolidation of power and wealth by ownership consolidation globally by one percent. ..."
"... For many years I would have been agreeing with you...after 50 years I have recognized that in the scheme of things, no 'change' (from tribal to private property, from feudalism to capitalism) has 'just happened'...magically born clean & clear. The process is messy, no clear beginning or even END is really possible to see. History is filled with ironies and this time its the Dem Arm of the Duopoly letting Bernie in- as an artificial straw-man candidate to make Hillary's campaign appear to be a contest between the 'idealist' and 'the realist' and not the global coronation it is --- let in by mistake (just as every power elite has miscalculated & underestimated the powerful yearning for more justice & liberty& instinctive anger at the few that enslave the majority (thru history 'The 99%'...). ..."
"... So long as he rises to militarily protect "National Interests" abroad - read: imperial billionaire class interests - he's really one of them. ..."
"... He could be doing exactly what Trump is doing except from the populist left perspective: taking down the duopoly's both corporate mafia houses with uncompromising fervor. ..."
"... Excellent discussion and lecture. A very important part of the 'due diligence' of democratic participation and research by the people. ..."
Be nice to have a book called "The Foreign Policy of the 1%".
Maybe include references to GATT, TPP, oil wars as mentioned in the presentation.
Other questions:
1) How does Foreign Policy of 1%: tie to Economic Hitman, John Perkins?
2) How does Foreign Policy of 1%: tie to conservative founders like Jeane Kirkpatrick?
3) How does Foreign Policy of 1%: tie to rise to Regan Revolution? Trump?
This BRILLIANT presentation should be heard (and I hope RNN runs it in print so that it can be
copied, old-style, and distributed on 'paper')..absorbed as a concise, integrated history of globalization-the
neo-imperialist policy that continues from the 19th-20thc. imperialism... and revealed as a continuation
process of global capitalism & its "1%" class.
Deepest thanks to Vijay Prashad...and to others
like professor Bennis (present in the audience)... whose in-depth analysis of the system can, if
studied, contribute to putting the nascent 'political revolution' Bernie calls for...into a real
democratic movement in this country. We are so woefully ignorant as 'members of the 99%'- it seems
worst of all in America-- intentionally kept isolated from knowing anything about this country/corporation's
'foreign policy' (aka as Capitalist system policy or 'the 1% policy) that Bernie cannot even broach
what Vijay has given here. But he at least opens up some of our can of worms, the interrconnectdedness
of class-interests and the devastation this country's (and the global cabal of ) capitalist voracious
economic interests rains upon the planet.
The Mid-East is a product of Capitalism that will, if
we don't recognize the process & change course & priorties, will soon overtake all of Africa and
all 'undeveloped' (pre-Capitalist) countries around the globe--The destruction and never-ending
blur of war and annihilation of peoples, cultures and even the possibility of 'political evolution'
is a product of the profit-at-any-and-all-costs that is the hidden underbelly of a system of economics
that counts humanity as nothing. It is a sick system. It is a system whose sickness brings death
to all it touches... and we are seeing now it is bringing ITS OWN DEATH as well.
The '99% policy'
(again a phrase Prashad should be congratulated for bringing into the language) is indeed one
that understands that our needs --the people's needs, not 'national interests' AKA capitalist
corporate/financial interests --- are global, that peace projects are essentially anti-capitalist
projects.... and our needs-to build a new society here in the U.S. must begin to be linked to
seeing Capitalism as the root cause of so much suffering that must be replaced by true democratic
awakening a- r/evolutionary process that combines economic and civic/political -- that we must
support in every way possible. Step One: support the movement for changed priorities & values
by voting class-consciously.
The 1% or the oligarchy have completely won the world, our only way to fight against such power
is to abandon buying their products, take great care on who you vote for in any election, only
people who have a long record of social thinking should be considers. They can be diminished but
not beaten.
One of the most important takeaways, though not a necessarily new one but one worth reiterating,
is that national boundaries in terms of the US and the 1% are of no importance since a world domination
economic empire is the goal.
The bloated US imperial military budget reflects how the 99% at home fund this empire, of course
they never voting for it. The military is not a US military--it is the military of the 1% and
global capitalism. This actually should be the meme that those trying to raise consciousness put
forth, since those on the left and the right from the middle and lower classes can begin to see
the whole electoral mirage for what it is.
All of what's been said about the elites, the one percent, has already been said many years ago.
The conversation about the wealthy elites destroying our world has changed only in the area of
how much of our world has and is being destroyed. Absolutely nothing else has changed, nothing
else.
Clearly the methods concerned human beings are using to address the madness of the elites and
their corporate/military state have had absolutely no impact: Poverty is more rampant now than
ever before, the gap between rich and poor very much wider and the number of wars keeps increasing,
especially the race war against the Arab people. Meanwhile, as we continue to speak the ocean
is licking at our doorstep, the average mean temperature has ticked up a few notches and we are
all completely distracted by which power hungry corporate zealot is going to occupy the office
which is responsible for making our human condition even more dire. The circus that is this election
is merely a ploy by the elites to make us believe that we actually do have a choice. Uh-huh; yet
if I were to suggest what REALLY needs to be done to save the human race I would be in a court
which functions only to impoverish those of us who try to speak the truth of our situation objectively.
The 'Justice' system's only function is to render us powerless. Whether one is guilty or innocent
is completely irrelevant anymore. All they have to do is file charges and they have your wealth.
Good luck to all of us as we all talk ourselves to death.
Dear denden11: You get gold stars in heaven as far as I'm concerned for telling the exact truth
in the plainest possible terms. Bravissimo. "Talk/ing/ ourselves to death" is, I'm sorry to say,
what we are doing. I've been working on these issues for forty years, looking for an exit from
this completely interlocked system. I'm sorry to say I haven't seen the exit. I do understand
how we have painted ourselves into this corner over the past 250 years (since the so-called Enlightenment),
but without repentance on our part and grace on God's part, we're doomed because we all believe
the Big Lies pumped into us moment by moment by Big Brother. And it's the Big Lies that keep us
terminally confused and fragmented.
Don't Believe the Hype was an NWA rap anthem over twenty year ago.
I always liked the shouted line, "And I don't take Ritalin!"
Big Brother's web of deception is weakening. The ranks of unbelievers grows daily. But does
the cynicism beget People Power or Donald Trump?
In defeat, will Sander's campaign supporters radicalize or demoralize into apathy or tepid
support for Hillary - on the grounds that she's less of an evil than Trumpty Dumbty?
If not defeated, will Sanders and his campaign mobilize the People to fight the powers that
be? Otherwise, he has no real power base, short of selling out on his domestic spending promises
and becoming another social democratic lapdog for Capital- like Tony Blair.
Dear DreamJoe. I think you're right that BB's web of deception is
weakening, but I doubt that it's weakened enough. I'm sure you understand the 'deep state' concept.
It does not matter which flunkeys the "people" elect; the deep state continues to run the show.
What's going on now is all bread and circuses; it means nothing.
As material conditions change drastically for tens of millions of USAns, the old propaganda loses
effect.
New propaganda is required to channel the new class tensions. Still an opening may be created.
People can't heat their homes with propaganda, the kids are living in the basement and grandpa
can't afford a nursing home and he's drinking himself to death. That's the new normal, or variations
on it for a lot of people who don't believe the hype anymore.
Bernie and Donald are manifestations of a deeper systemic failures that have changed everything
for millions of people. B & D will come and go, but that crisis will remain, and will become more
acute.
Great work Vijay...got my "filters" back on. Cut and pasted original comment below despite TRNN
labeling of "time of posting" which is irrelevant at this point.
Wow...now that I got my rational filters back on this was a great piece by Vijay and succinctly
states what many of us who "attempt" to not only follow ME events but to understand not only the
modern history by the motives of the major players in the region. Thanks for this piece and others...looking
forward to the others.
Posted earlier while my mind was on 2016 election cycle watching MSM in "panic mode"
Thought this was going to be a rational discussion on US foreign policy until the part on ?
"Trumps Red Book". I had hoped to rather hear, "The Red Book of the American Templars" ...taking
from the Knights Templar in Europe prior the collapse of the feudal system. I will say that Vijay's
comment on Cruz was quite appropriate though it would also have been better to not only put it
into context but also illustrate that Cruz's father Rafael Cruz believes in a system contrary
to the founding ideals of the US Constitution: He states in an interview with mainstream media
during his son's primary campaign that [to paraphrase] "secularism is evil and corrupt". Here
is an excerpt of his bio from Wiki:
"During an interview conducted by the Christian Post in 2014, Rafael Cruz stated, "I think
we cannot separate politics and religion; they are interrelated. They've always been interrelated."[29]
Salon described Cruz as a "Dominionist, devoted to a movement that finds in Genesis a mandate
that 'men of faith' seize control of public institutions and govern by biblical principle."[30]
However, The Public Eye states that Dominionists believe that the U.S. Constitution should be
the vehicle for remaking America as a Christian nation.[31]"
Fareed Zakaria interviewed a columnist from the Wall Street Journal today on Fareed's GPS program
and flatly asked him [paraphrased], "Is not the Wall Street Journal responsible for creating the
racist paradigm that Trump took advantage of "? Let us begin with rational dialogue and not demagogy.
Quite frankly with regard to both Cruz and Trump [in context of the 2016 elections cycle] a more
insightful comment would have been...Change cannot come from within the current electoral processes
here in the US with Citizen's United as its "masthead" and "Corporations are people as its rallying
cry"!
Not the West....just the F.I.R.E industries...driving the housing bubble; shopping malls; office
buildings; buying municipal bonds [as they the municipalities bought and built prisons; jails;
SWAT vehicles and security equipment (developed by the Israelis); and keeping the insurance companies
afloat while AllState had time after Katrina to pitch their subsidiaries allowing these subsidiaries
to file for bankruptcy]...now all the maintenance expense is coming due and cities and counties
are going broke... along with the Saudi investments here in US.
Protecting oligarchs investments and rate of return on shareholders gains is worlds burden we
are told a needed evil in order to advance GROWTH endlessly. Growth code word for consolidation
of power and wealth by ownership consolidation globally by one percent. What about the 99 percent?
While populations simply need and want also income and investment security globally.
What about
populations in massive consumer debt for education, housing, etc. to fund one percent Growth.
Laborers across globe are all in same boat simply labor for food without anything else to pass
along to progeny but what is most important ethics. A world government established by corporatism
advantage by authority of law and advantage all directed toward endless returns to oligarchy family
cartels is not an acceptable world organization of division of resources because it is tranny,
exclusive, extraction and fraudulent. Such madness does NOT float all boats.
All this while oligarchs
control Taxation of government authority and hidden excessive investment and fraud return taxation.
While Governments in west don't even jail corporate criminals while west claims law is just while
skewed in favor of protecting one percent, their returns on investment and investments. Billionaires
we find in some parts of so called Unjust regions of world not yet on board with cartel game are
calling out fraud that harms individuals and society aggressively.
TEHRAN, Iran - An Iranian court has sentenced a well-known tycoon to death for corruption linked
to oil sales during the rule of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the judiciary spokesman
said Sunday.
Babak Zanjani and two of his associates were sentenced to death for "money laundering," among
other charges, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehi said in brief remarks broadcast on state TV. He did
not identify the two associates. Previous state media reports have said the three were charged
with forgery and fraud.
"The court has recognized the three defendants as 'corruptors on earth' and sentenced them
to death," said Ejehi. "Corruptors on earth" is an Islamic term referring to crimes that are punishable
by death because they have a major impact on society. The verdict, which came after a nearly five-month
trial, can be appealed.
So when Bernie winds up on the regime change band wagon (of mostly leftist governments) and stays
silent in the face of US aided and approved of coups (Honduras/Zelaya being the next most recent
before Ukraine) while railing against the billionaire class on Wall Street and the neoliberal
trade agreements, he's not only missing the elephant in the room; he's part of this elephant.
For many years I would have been agreeing with you...after 50 years I have recognized that in
the scheme of things, no 'change' (from tribal to private property, from feudalism to capitalism)
has 'just happened'...magically born clean & clear. The process is messy, no clear beginning or
even END is really possible to see. History is filled with ironies and this time its the Dem Arm
of the Duopoly letting Bernie in- as an artificial straw-man candidate to make Hillary's campaign
appear to be a contest between the 'idealist' and 'the realist' and not the global coronation
it is --- let in by mistake (just as every power elite has miscalculated & underestimated the powerful
yearning for more justice & liberty& instinctive anger at the few that enslave the majority (thru
history 'The 99%'...).
And as all past power-elites have done, our '1%' has misread the age-old
evolution of culture when an old system NO LONGER WORKS that makes freedom, imagination & rebellion
more acceptable more attractive, more exciting and NECESSARY. Then, once energized BY NEED, DESIRE,
and yes HOPE....change begins and can't be stopped like a slow-moving rain that keeps moving.
As with past eras & past changes, in our own day this 'millennial plus 60's' powerful generational
tide is JUST BEGINNING to feel our strength & ability. Turning what was supposed to be a globalist-coronation
into what right now certainly seems like a step towards real change, towards building a recognition
of the power, we 'the 99%' can --IF WE ACT WISELY & WITH COMMITTMENT begin the work of creating
a new world.
Criticising Bernie is criticizing the real way progress works...We need to get out
of an ego-centric adolescent approach to human problem-solving, understand we need to keep our
movement growing even if it doesn't look the WAY WE EXPECTED IT TO LOOK...keep clear on GOALS
that Bernie's campaign is just a part of. The 'left' needs to recognize its our historic moment:
to either move ahead or SELF-destruct.. Impatience needs to be replaced by a serious look down
the road for our children's future. If we don't, the power elite of the System wins again (vote
Hillary?? don't vote??). We need to take a breath & rethink how change really happens because
this lost opportunity Is a loss we can no longer afford. The movement must be 'bigger than Bernie'.
I just hope he does not get forced to resign which the L-MSM is now beginning to parrot so Hillary
can win given the huge turnouts the Repugs are getting in the primaries. I want to see four candidates
at the National Convention...in addition to Third parties.
No one can be elected Commander and Chief by stating they will not defend oligarchs interests
as well as populations interests. We agree populations interests are negated and subverted all
over earth . That cannot be changed by armed rebellion but it can be changed by electing electable
voices of reason such as Sanders. Sanders will fight to protect populations and resist oligarchy
war mongering while holding oligarchs accountable. Sanders will address corrupted law and injustice.
Vote Sanders.
You are probably correct in your thinking, but the real power will never allow any potential effective
changes to the system that is. People who try usually end up dead.
This is why we must as citizens become active players in government far greater then we are today,
we must do far more then voting. We must have time from drudgery of earning a substandard wage
that forces most to have little time for advancing democracy. Without such time oligarchs and
one percent end-up controlling everything.
We can BEGIN the march toward mountain top toward socializations
which will promote aware individualizations. We don't expect we will advance anything without
oppositions in fact we expect increased attacks. Those increased attacks can become our energy
that unites masses as we all observe the insanity they promote as our direction. We merely must
highlight insanity and path forward toward sanity. Nothing can make lasting change this generation
the march will take generations. The speed advance only will depend on how foolish oligarchs are
at attempts to subvert public awareness seeking change. As they become more desperate our movements
become stronger. We must refrain from violence for that is only thing that can subvert our movement.
He could be doing exactly what Trump is doing except from the populist left perspective: taking
down the duopoly's both corporate mafia houses with uncompromising fervor.
Instead he does the LOTE thing for the neoliberal-neocon party "D". That's just dishonest bullshit
opportunism.
Do not receives daily email for a long time without clue why? so haven't in contact with TRN's
daily report until subject video appears on youtube website. and impressed by the panelists's
congregated pivotal works done thru all these years.
"... Dewey and Ford emerged from a brokered convention to lose the general election. So why? Because the party elites and elders want to protect us and stop of from falling into the abyss?… Most of us working two or three jobs think we're already in the abyss. The Obama abyss… ..."
In a stunningly honest and frank rant, FOX News' Judge Jeanine unleashes anchor hell upon
Mitt Romney and the GOP establishment hordes.
She begins:
"There's an insurrection coming. Mitt Romney just confirmed it. We've watched
governors, the National Review, conservative leaders, establishment and party operatives trash
Donald Trump. But Mitt Romney will always be remembered as the one who put us over
the edge and awoke a sleeping giant, the Silent Majority, the American people.
Fact. The establishment is panicked. Mitt essentially called for a brokered
convention where the Republican nominee will be decided by party activists and delegates irrespective
of their state's choice… You want a brokered convention? A primer Mitt. Whenever we have
a brokered convention we lose.
Dewey and Ford emerged from a brokered convention to lose the general election. So why?
Because the party elites and elders want to protect us and stop of from falling into the
abyss?… Most of us working two or three jobs think we're already in the abyss. The Obama abyss…
We are sick and tired of legislators of modest means who leave Congress
multimillionaires, whose spouses and families get all the contracts from selling the post offices
to accessing insider information so they can buy property and flip it. You're so entrenched
that you're willing to give Hillary Clinton a win. It doesn't matter to you which party, crony
capitalism and its paradigm will not change for the elite."
And that is just the introduction... Grab a coffee (or something stronger) and watch...
"... This was a classic case of professional bad manners and rank-pulling. What we had here were four former chairs of the president's Council of Economic Advisors, and two from President Obama, two from President Clinton, who decided to use their big names and their titles in order to launch an attack on a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts who had written a paper evaluating the Sanders economic program. ..."
"... The four former council chairs announced that on the basis of their deep commitment to rigor and objectivity, they had discovered that this forecast was unrealistic ..."
"... I've written a whole book called The End of Normal in which I lay out reasons for my chronic pessimism about the capacity of the world economy to absorb a great deal more rapid economic growth. ..."
PERIES: James, the Council of Economic Advisors, they put out economic forecasts each year. And
there has been some wildly optimistic ones. For example, if you look at the 2010 predictions for
2012 and 2013 they have not quite been attained. And one would say it was done in the interest of
trying to make the administration that they were serving more impressive. But what accounts for this
particular attack on Friedman's projection and other fellow economists?
GALBRAITH: This was a classic case of professional bad manners and rank-pulling. What we had here
were four former chairs of the president's Council of Economic Advisors, and two from President Obama,
two from President Clinton, who decided to use their big names and their titles in order to launch
an attack on a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts who had written a paper
evaluating the Sanders economic program.
It's likely that the four bigwigs thought that Professor Friedman was a Bernie Sanders supporter.
In fact, as of that time he was a Hillary Clinton supporter and a modest donor to her campaign. What
he had done was simply to write his evaluation of the economic effects of the ambitious Sanders reform
program. The four former council chairs announced that on the basis of their deep commitment to rigor
and objectivity, they had discovered that this forecast was unrealistic. And what I pointed out was
that that claim was based on no evidence and no analysis whatsoever. And when you pressed down on
it you found that it was simply based on the obvious fact that we haven't seen the kinds of growth
rates that Professor Friedman's analysis suggested the Sanders program would produce. And for a very
simple reason: the Sanders program is bigger. It's more ambitious than anything we've seen in recent
years, so it's not surprising that when you put it through a model it generates a higher growth rate.
So that was the basic underlying facts, and these guys, two men and two women, announced that
they, that it was a disreputable study, but failed to present any analysis that suggested they'd
actually even read the paper before they denounced it. And that's what I pointed out in my counter
letter, in a number of articles that have appeared since.
PERIES: James, so in your letter, how do you counter them? What methods did you use to come to
your conclusions?
GALBRAITH: Well, I, no need to say anything beyond the fact that I had looked in their letter
for the rigor that they were so proud of, for the objectivity and the analysis that they were so
proud of, and I'd found that they had not done any. They had not made any such claim, not done any
such work.
So that began to provoke a discussion. It's fair to say ultimately, without apologizing for effectively
launching an ad hominem attack on an independent academic researcher, one of the former chairs, Christina
Romer of President Obama's council, and her husband David Romer, a fellow economist, did produce
a paper in which they spelled out their differences with the, with the Friedman paper. But that,
again, raised another set of interesting issues which we've continued to discuss at various, various
outlets of the press.
PERIES: Now, James Friedman's claim that the growth rate from Sanders' plan to be around 5.3 percent.
And some economists, including Dean Baker at the Center for Economic Policy and Research, have claimed
that this is unrealistic. What do you make of that?
GALBRAITH: Well, the question is whether it is an effect, let's say, a reasonable projection,
of putting the Sanders program into an economic model. And the answer to that question, yes, Professor
Friedman did a reasonable job. He spelled out what the underlying assumptions that he was using were.
He spelled out the basic rules of thumb that macroeconomists had used for decades to assess the effects
of an economic program. In this case, an expansionary economic program. And he ran them through his
model and reported the results, a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
Now, one can be skeptical. And I am, and Dean Baker is, lots of people are skeptical that the
world would work out quite that way, because lots of things, in fact, happen which are not accounted
for in a model. And we've talked, we've basically put together a list of things that you think might
be problematic. But the exercise here was not to put everything into paper that might happen in the
world. The exercise was to take the kind of bare bones that economists use to assess and to compare
the consequences of alternative programs, and to ask what kind of results do you get out? And that's
what, again, what Jerry Friedman did. It was a reasonable exercise, he came up with a reasonable
answer, and he reported it.
PERIES: Now, Friedman seems to think that the rate of full employment in 1999 is attainable. However,
many labor economists seem to think that the larger share of the elderly currently in society compared
to 1999 explains some of the lack of labor participation, which creates a lower full employment ceiling
that's contradicting Friedman's report. Your thoughts on that?
GALBRAITH: Well, I think it is a fact that the population is getting older. But as, I think, any
economist would tell you, that when you offer jobs in the labor market, the first thing that happens
is the people who are looking for work take those jobs. The second thing that happens is that people
who might look for work when jobs were available start coming back into the labor market. And if
that is not enough to fill the vacancies that you have, it's perfectly open to employers to raise
their wages so as to bring more people in, or to increase the pace at which they innovate and substitute
technology for labor so that they don't need the work.
So there's no real crisis involved in the situation if it turns out five years from now we're
at 3.5 percent unemployment, and they were beginning to run short of labor. That's not a reason to,
at this stage, say no, we're not going to engage in the exercise and run a more expansionary, vigorous
reform program, a vigorous infrastructure project, a major reform of healthcare, a tuition-free public
education program. All of those things, which were part of what Friedman put into his paper, should
be done anyway. The fact that the labor market forecast might prove to have some different, the labor
market might have different characteristics in five years' time is from our present point of view
just a, it's an academic or a theoretical proposition, purely.
PERIES: And Friedman's paper, he looks at a ten-year forecast. Did you feel that when you looked
at the specifics of that, including college, universal healthcare, infrastructure spending and of
course, expanding Social Security and so on, that those categories and his predictions or projections,
rather, made sense to you?
GALBRAITH: Well, again, what he was doing was running a program of a certain scale, of a large
scale, through a set of standard macroeconomic assumptions. And that, again, is a reasonable exercise.
If you ask me what my personal view is, I've written a whole book called The End of Normal in which
I lay out reasons for my chronic pessimism about the capacity of the world economy to absorb a great
deal more rapid economic growth.
But that's not in the standard models, and it would not be appropriate to layer that on to a forecast
of this kind. What Friedman was criticized for was not for putting his thumb on the scale, but for
failing to put his thumb on the scale. In fact, that was the reasonable thing to do.
On the contrary, and on the other side, when Christina and David Romer did put out their forecast,
their own criticism of the Friedman paper, they concluded by asserting that if this program were
tried, inflation would soar. So they there were making an allegation for which, again, they had no
evidence and no plausible model, that in the world in which we presently live would produce that
result.
So what we had here was a, what was essentially an academic exercise that produced a result that
was highly favorable to the Sanders position, and showed that if you did an ambitious program you
would get a strong growth response. It's reasonable, certainly, for the first three or four years
that that would transpire in practice. And what happened was that people who didn't like that result
politically jumped on it in a way which was, frankly speaking, professionally irresponsible, in my
view. It was designed to convey the impression, which it succeeded in doing for a brief while through
the broad media, that this was not a reputable exercise, and that there were responsible people on
one side of the debate, and irresponsible people on the other.
And that was, again, something that–an impression that could be conveyed through the mass media,
but would not withstand scrutiny, and didn't withstand scrutiny, once a few of us stood up and started
saying, okay, where's your evidence, on what are you basing this argument? And revealed the point,
which the Romers implicitly conceded, and I give them credit for that, that in order to criticize
a fellow economist you need to do some work.
B. Mull
Irvine, CA 32 minutes ago
Cruz is a clever guy who going to run into the brick wall of his wife being Goldman Sachs. He
would be wise to sign on as Trump's running mate and hope for a more favorable electoral climate
in 4-8 years. Meanwhile Clinton is likely to win her rigged nomination and go on to hope that
come November fewer people dislike her than dislike Trump/Cruz, which incredibly is not a slam
dunk.
RM
is a trusted commenter Vermont 43 minutes ago
We are completing the election cycle where Cruz should be the strongest. Reminds me of the Ali -
Foreman fight. Ali took all of George's best punches early in the fight, letting George punch
himself out. George was then helpless.
As the race moves to the rust belt, the northeast, and more populous northern states, Cruz will
be out of his heart land. Rubio should drop before Florida, or he will permanently damage his
political career.
On the Dem side, much the same, but to a lesser extent. The north should be friendlier to Bernie.
But all those establishment Super Delegates will be impossible to overcome. Frankly, the Dem
system is less democratic than the GOP system with the Super Delegates keeping the establishment
in power.
PS
Massachusetts 56 minutes ago
Cruz is climbing, which is bad news, worse, frankly, than Trump climbing. Cruz is at the bottom of
my picks - if a person was forced to pick - for the Republican line up. Kansas going for him is no
surprise, as they did remove evolution from the public school curriculum (they put it back but also
included "intelligent design"). Ted's kind of place. But Maine? What on earth was that all about?
The state with the motto "the way life should be"? Does that now mean "the way pro-life should be"?
Completely disappointed, Maniacs. Expected more from a favorite state.
JWP
Goleta, CA 1 hour ago
Hillary Clinton has not done well outside the Old Confederacy. She squeezed past Sanders in
Massachusetts, and her two caucus victories in Iowa and Nevada were not particularly overwhelming.
All her other victories have been in the Confederate South--in states that are going to vote
Republican in November.
Meanwhile Sanders has won convincingly in New Hampshire, Vermont, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska,
Colorado, and Minnesota.
The race is still wide open.
Robert
Maine 2 hours ago
One very big thing I notice Mr. Martin didn't bother mentioning as he glossed briefly over Bernie's
wins, is this:
Turnout in the Democratic Causus in Kansas, was HIGHER than in 2008. That's a first this election
season. Up 'til now, Democratic turnout has been dismally low - lower than in 2008.
Twitter caucus goers in Nebraska also report huge turnout. Although this isn't official, it may also
be that turnout in NE is also greater than 2008.
The message being, the Democratic candidate who can excite voters and inspire large turnout is
Bernie Sanders, not Hillary Clinton. As can be seen from pics of the caucuses today, many
much-maligned Millenials turned out to vote for Bernie.
So, the "Hillary's already won" thing isn't working. Bernie's only going to get stronger once we're
out of the South.
If Krugman is so concerned with con men, why he is supporting Hillary? Just
because she is a con women? Or he wants to become one by securing a
position in her administration?
Notable quotes:
"... First, there's the con Republicans usually manage to pull off in national elections ... where they pose as a serious, grown-up party honestly trying to grapple with America's problems. The truth is that that party died a long time ago, that these days it's voodoo economics and neocon fantasies all the way down. But the establishment wants to preserve the facade, which will be hard if the nominee is someone who refuses to play his part. ... ..."
"... Equally important, the Trump phenomenon threatens the con the G.O.P. establishment has been playing on its own base..., the bait and switch in which white voters are induced to hate big government by dog whistles about Those People, but actual policies are all about rewarding the donor class. ..."
"... What Donald Trump has done is tell the base that it doesn't have to accept the whole package. He promises to make America white again - surely everyone knows that's the real slogan, right? - while simultaneously promising to protect Social Security and Medicare, and hinting at (though not actually proposing) higher taxes on the rich. Outraged establishment Republicans splutter that he's not a real conservative, but neither, it turns out, are many of their own voters. ..."
"... As I see it, then, we should actually welcome Mr. Trump's ascent. Yes, he's a con man, but he is also effectively acting as a whistle-blower on other people's cons. That is, believe it or not, a step forward in these weird, troubled times. ..."
"Why, exactly, the Republican establishment is really so horrified by Mr. Trump?":
Clash of Republican Con Artists, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times
: So Republicans are going to nominate a candidate who talks complete
nonsense on domestic policy; who believes that foreign policy can be conducted
via bullying and belligerence; who cynically exploits racial and ethnic
hatred for political gain.
But that was always going to happen, however the primary season turned out.
The only news is that the candidate in question is probably going to be
Donald Trump.
Establishment Republicans denounce Mr. Trump as a fraud... In fact, you
have to wonder why, exactly, the Republican establishment is really so horrified
by Mr. Trump. Yes, he's a con man, but they all are. ...
The answer, I'd suggest, is that the establishment's problem with Mr. Trump
isn't the con he brings; it's the cons he disrupts.
First, there's the con Republicans usually manage to pull off in national
elections ... where they pose as a serious, grown-up party honestly trying
to grapple with America's problems. The truth is that that party died a
long time ago, that these days it's voodoo economics and neocon fantasies
all the way down. But the establishment wants to preserve the facade, which
will be hard if the nominee is someone who refuses to play his part. ...
Equally important, the Trump phenomenon threatens the con the G.O.P. establishment
has been playing on its own base..., the bait and switch in which white
voters are induced to hate big government by dog whistles about Those People,
but actual policies are all about rewarding the donor class.
What Donald Trump has done is tell the base that it doesn't have to accept
the whole package. He promises to make America white again - surely everyone
knows that's the real slogan, right? - while simultaneously promising to
protect Social Security and Medicare, and hinting at (though not actually
proposing) higher taxes on the rich. Outraged establishment Republicans
splutter that he's not a real conservative, but neither, it turns out, are
many of their own voters.
Just to be clear, I find the prospect of a Trump administration terrifying...
But you should also be terrified by the prospect of a President Rubio, sitting
in the White House with his circle of warmongers, or a President Cruz, whom
one suspects would love to bring back the Spanish Inquisition.
As I see it, then, we should actually welcome Mr. Trump's ascent. Yes, he's
a con man, but he is also effectively acting as a whistle-blower on other
people's cons. That is, believe it or not, a step forward in these weird,
troubled times.
"... Hillary is proud that Bill Clinton, in being pragmatic in finding common ground with Republicans and getting things done, destroyed Glass-Steagell. ..."
"... She is absolutely NOT influenced by getting $1.8 million from 8 speeches to bankers. ..."
"... Yes, Hillary has such a Big Megabuck Heart for the hardworking poor, ... when she is pandering for votes. ..."
When it comes to Wall Street and the mortgage fiasco of 2007-08, Bernie Sanders is the only legible
candidate, whereas Clinton states her intent of, "limiting Wall Street influence," however, her
Under Secretary of State was Bob Hormat, who interesting enough was Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs.
Bernie Versus Hillary: A Vote for Bernie is a Vote to Restore the American Democracy while a Vote
for Hillary, and the Republican Candidates is a Vote for America's 1% Billionaire Oligarchy Ruling
Class..!
Bernie is coalescing and uniting the American Slave Classes. His supporters are a cross section
from every socio-economic, race, age backgrounds whose core values of Honor, Integrity, Justice
and Altruism which mirrors Bernie's which is a direct contrast to the 1% Billionaire Ruling Classes
of Insatiable Greed, Power and Control which they use to keep the Slave Classes "Divided and Conquered".
The American Government as Stated by the Constitution Belongs to the People and Should Govern
to the Will of all the People, and not just to the Greedy and Narcissistic American 1% Percent
Oligarchy Ruling Class who Rule through their Puppet Quid-Pro-Quo (A.K.A. THE QUID-PRO-QUO MILLIONAIRE
Politician like the CLINTONS') Oligarchy Government Falsely Posing as a Democracy....!
Unlike the Clintons' "Mr. Bill the "Sexual Abuser" of Women & Mrs. Quid-Pro-Quo" who did the Bidding
of America's 1% Percent Billionaire Ruling Class who then rewarded them by allowing them to amass
a fortune with an estimated Net Worth of $200 Million which excludes their Personal Slush Fund
the Clinton Foundation.
Since Hillary Clinton left her post as secretary of State in 2013 and subsequently declared her
royal candidacy last year, she has given 92 speeches for fees totaling $21.7 million, primarily
to the Wall Street Banks that created the Sub-Prime Mortgage Pyramid Scheme lead by Goldman Sachs
and other Financial institutions around the world some of which was have also donated Millions
to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Family Slush Fund -- Clinton Foundation."
Similarly Bill Clinton opened the "Quid-Pro-Quo Flood Gates" to the American Corporate Outsourcing
of Full-Time/With Benefits Middle Class Jobs to India and China which has permanently decimated
and reduced America's once Thriving Middle Class with his Trade Agreements that only enriched
the American 1% Percent Billionaire Ruling Class..! Late in Clinton's tenure, the White House
put forth a document celebrating "Historic Economic Growth" during the administration and pointing
to the policy accomplishments it deemed responsible for this growth. Among the achievements on
Clinton's list were "Modernizing for the New Economy through Technology and Consensus Deregulation."By
contrast, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, the 1999 law Clinton signed repealing the Depression-era Glass-Steagall
Act, benefited the economy by creating more choice and competition. There is now a chorus of voices
across America who blame the demise of Glass-Steagall, which had strictly separated traditional
commercial banking from investment banking, for contributing to the credit blowup from which America's
Slave Classes have yet to recover.
Whereas Bernie has focus and he is driven out of Altruism to end the suffering of the vast majority
of Americans who are struggling economically while the Billionaire 1% Ruling Class continues to
suck all of America's Wealth up to themselves.
Bernie is deeply saddened and disturbed by the "Economic Injustice that Exists in America today;
* Slave class children are being deprived of a strong foundational education due to the lack of
a "Comprehensive National Voucher System" for "Primary and Secondary Schools" and that America's
slave class children are being burdened by "College Student Loan Debt",
* 65 Million Americans go Hungry each night in the Richest Country in the World whose 1% Percent
Billionaire Ruling Class holds 70% of America's Wealth.
* The Majority of Senior Citizens are living at or below the "Poverty-Line".
* The creation of Obama Care which was created to shift the Wealth from America's Physicians to
the 1% Billionaire Oligarchy Ruling Class (as their largest share-holders) "Owned Corporate Insurance
Companies" which is why Bernie want to expand Medicare into a Single Payer health care system
similar to what is commonplace in Europe.
To level America's "Playing Field", Bernie wants to Repatriate the Trillions of Dollars $ of the
current Un-Taxed 1% Billionaire Personal and Corporate Wealth that they are currently hiding using
the IRS Loop-Holes (generated for them by their Millionaire Congressional Quid-Pro-Quo Puppets)
which is being held in their Personal and Corporate Over-seas Tax Haven Accounts.
Finally while the elitist Hillary has continually tried to reinvent herself for and her false
campaign for America's Slave Classes --- Bernie Sanders is the "Real-Deal--What you See and What
you Hear -- Is What You Will Get Candidate".
Bernie is driven by the same core values of "Honor, Integrity, Altruism and Justice" which mirrors
the core values of America's Salve Classes which is why he is leading Hillary across the country
in "Trustworthiness" by 91%-5%.
Restore Democracy and Morality to America – Support and Vote for Bernie Sanders for President…!
I go to las vegas once a year for a conference. I had to pop out to get a shirt at brooks brothers
and the nice-looking girl who worked there asked where i was staying. Aria. "Oh I work there two
days a week, beautiful hotel." Another girl at Kiehls said the same thing. Is it normal for people
to work two days here, two days there? I guess you can get used to anything but it seems to me
stringing together a series of part-time jobs would be stressful. Over the course of five days
you never saw the same people on the front or bell desk, a never-ending rotation of young faces.
Las Vegas is in many ways a brutal place.
Hillary saddened by loss of homes to bank foreclosures?
Hillary has terrible foresight and making first call judgments.
Hillary is proud that Bill Clinton, in being pragmatic in finding common ground with Republicans
and getting things done, destroyed Glass-Steagell.
Hillary fights against replacing Glass-Steagells which would limit wild risk taking by Big
Banks. RESULT Big Banks get Bigger.
She is absolutely NOT influenced by getting $1.8 million from 8 speeches to bankers.
Yes, big megabucks same Wall Street investors and bankers that play a huuge role in discriminatory
redlining against minorities, fraudulent predatory lending, and foreclosures; the same big banks
that stole the American dream from poor hard working white, black, latino, and native American,
and other homeowners.
Yes, Hillary has such a Big Megabuck Heart for the hardworking poor, ... when she is pandering
for votes.
"Clinton Made $2.9 Million From 12 Speeches To Big Banks"--The Intercept
If you have ever passed by a dead skunk left splayed in the middle of the road, you know that
that unpleasant stench often travels with you for some distance. Politicians who access skunky
money disturb the peace in much the same way. Better to avoid them if you can.
I like the fact that Bernie took the time to speak to 25 laid off solar workers and their families.
Hillary received the same invitation but declined to attend.
How Bernie's climate change policy differs from Hillary's:
While Clinton's plan doesn't address the giant fossil fuel lobby fighting actions against
climate change, Sanders heavily focused on this issue. "The fossil fuel industry spends billions
and billions of dollars lobbying and buying candidates to block virtually all progress on climate
change," it reads. He wants to stop the industry from stationing lobbyists in the White House,
to end subsidies for fossil fuel companies, to create a national climate justice plan, and
to fight to overturn the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which allowed corporations
to spend unlimited amounts on political activities.
Sanders' goal for the nation's clean energy use is ambitious. He wants to create a 100 percent
clean energy system for electricity, heating, and transportation. Not only will this minimize
America's dependence on foreign oil, his plan says, but it will also create 10 million "good-paying
jobs." Clinton's goal is for the U.S. to generate enough clean renewable energy to power every
home in America within 10 years of her taking office - which would be a vast improvement, but
doesn't account for transportation along with housing.
Clinton's current plan doesn't mention any goals for increasing America's leadership in
the global fight against climate change. Sanders', on the other hand, says that he'll establish
a climate summit with engineers, climate scientists, policy experts, activists, and indigenous
communities within his first 100 days in office. His plan says: "The United Nations Paris climate
talks in December are an important milestone toward solving climate change, but even optimistic
outcomes of these talks will not put the world on the path needed to avoid the most catastrophic
results of climate change. We must think beyond Paris."
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the transportation sector accounts for
27 percent of America's total greenhouse gas emissions. Since just calling for 100 percent
clean energy for transportation wouldn't offer any real solutions, Sanders' plan advocates
for building electric vehicle charging stations, as well as high-speed passenger and cargo
trains, around the country. Clinton's plan would create a Clean Energy Challenge to develop
partnerships between the federal government and states, cities, and communities wanting to
increase their renewable energy, which she says would help "modernize our transportation system."
However, the details about this Clean Energy Challenge remain vague.
Bernie's always been on the side of the people. Here's a 1960s photo of him being arrested by
the Chicago police for demonstrating on behalf of people of color:
"I know how hard-hit Nevada was – I think the highest rate of foreclosures. You still have
a lot of houses under water," Clinton said this week. "I take that very seriously ... I want
us to move any way we can in the federal government to help relieve the burden of already existing
homeowners."
This is what--almost 10 years after this devastation! When banks whined about their so-called
injuries, they were helped in 10 seconds! In fact, they were invited to the White House to draw
up their own rescue plan.
Banks get taxpayer-funded, no-interest loans in 10 seconds; citizens are left to dangle in
the wind for 10 years. Takes a lot of gall.
Bernie wants protections and enforcement. I'm unsure exactly what Clinton has proposed but this
is indicative.
Clinton has spoken in more general terms, seemingly avoiding the root causes of the crash
because subprime mortgages flag up her ties to Wall Street.
"I know how hard-hit Nevada was – I think the highest rate of foreclosures. You still have
a lot of houses under water," she said this week. "I take that very seriously ... I want us
to move any way we can in the federal government to help relieve the burden of already existing
homeowners."
Instead of insuring against a recurrence, like many in the establishment, they prefer to throw
some platitudes and tax dollars at the consequence instead of addressing the cause.
Bernie's not bought that's why he's willing to do what needs to be done. Ignoring the cycles that
occur under deregulated capitalism is a peril I prefer to completely avoid.
"That guy's a fucking idiot. To be honest with you, I'd be an idiot too if I had his kind
of money. I don't want him to be president of my country. If he becomes president, I'm going
back to where I came from," Rodriguez said. "I'm not voting," he added. "If I did, I'd vote
for Sanders. I've got faith in Sanders. He's telling it like it is. But they'll never let Sanders
win. The result is already fixed."
Victor Rodriguez
Dear Victor - Your assessment of Trump is pretty accurate, however, I too am a naturalized
American citizen, and I feel strongly that it is my duty to participate in the process of electing
a President, after all, this is the most important decision that affects all the citizens of this
country. So, instead of saying that you will go back to where you come from, and that the results
are fixed, get off your ass, go to the polling station and vote for Bernie Sanders immediately.
Otherwise, you may well get Trump as your President, and none of us want that!!
Donors Don't Get Why Hillary Is Losing Ground To Sanders
Hillary Clinton's donors held a meeting to figure out why there isn't more grass-roots support
for her. They held that meeting in the office of a Wall Street investor.
She either agreed with Goldwater, or she is a chameleon willing to take on any facade if it gives
her entry to power.
Yes, I think even in 1964 she was scheming.
I used to think only men thought like this, now it is clear that women are really not so much
different from men in this regard.
Maybe Clinton could donate some of the millions she made off of Wall Street speeches to some of
the victims who lost their homes to Wall Street greed. Ya think?
Actually, American manufacturing output is very high. The US is the second largest manufacturing
nation in the world in terms of output. But it has become ever more automated requiring fewer
and fewer workers. Even if manufacturing were to increase considerably, likely it wouldn't employ
as many workers as people fantasize as the new plants would be highly automated.
Depends how cheap people will work, if there are 0 jobs people will work for next to nothing and
that can be cheaper than robots for smaller size business.
Since China is now dumping their US treasuries, and has ceded control over their currency to
"market forces" (international banking cartel interference), they are now positioned to become
the new World currency, or "petro dollar". (replacing the US).
At that point market forces determine China's economy and they can no longer manipulate their
currency via US treasury purchase.
The USA is becoming the next Greece.
Last week, I watched an excellent film "99 Homes," about the cold-blooded foreclosure crisis which
showed the heartless schemes of bankers and their minions seizing homes left and right, often
fraudulently, to bundle up for resale, making billions in the process. It really was sickening
to see people whose jobs had disappeared dragged out of their houses by local police empowered
to work for these banks--"get out or we'll arrest you." Those who went to court found judges opposed
to them based on "documents" banks forged for the process.
Luckily, I didn't lose my house, but with wages frozen and prices soaring, I did get behind
on payments for a few months and had to withdraw funds from a much devalued pension account to
stay afloat. Unemployment soared, as did foreclosures and bankruptcies. It was just awful.
Too bad Clinton's tongue lashing Wall St had no effect at all on their behavior. The only voices
I heard speak out against these banks were Elizabeth Warren's and Bernie Sander's.
Please know that none of this was a surprise to either political party, they were paid MASSIVE
sums of "protection money" by financial industry participants in this coordinated fraud designed
to exploit the working people fooled into believing their houses were apt to appreciate at the
rate of growth stocks by the entirely false demand created by Wall St. Obama traded on our desperate
need of recompense while working explicitly for Wall St and was an even greater fraud for it-Only
Warren and Bernie stand between us and an Aristocracy.
Yes, Clinton is part of the Wall Street gang, and hubby Billy the C, enabled them with doing away
with GS Act and the other GS pays Hillary mega bucks for speeches.
Pay special attention to the names Weil, Greenspan, Summers and the rest of that ilk (for they
are the ones that orchestrated the theft of your childrens future), and you get a clear picture
of what has been going on in this country.
Cyclic recessions and financial crashes, all done purposely.
Sow and harvest.
On Oct. 22, Weill and John Reed issue a statement congratulating Congress and President
Clinton, including 19 administration officials and lawmakers by name. The House and Senate
approve a final version of the bill on Nov. 4, and Clinton signs it into law later that month.
Just days after the administration (including the Treasury Department) agrees to support
the repeal, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, the former co-chairman of a major Wall Street
investment bank, Goldman Sachs, raises eyebrows by accepting a top job at Citigroup as Weill's
chief lieutenant. The previous year, Weill had called Secretary Rubin to give him advance
notice of the upcoming merger announcement. When Weill told Rubin he had some important
news, the secretary reportedly quipped, "You're buying the government?"
"Obama is a disastrous example of a one-term, hyper partisan senator...."
No, you egregious moron.
Obama entered politics by running against a former-Black Panther. He got slaughtered in the
election, but what he didn't accomplish electorally he accomplished by establishing himself as
an up-and-coming "pragmatist" black pol willing to oppose radicals and support business-as-usual--in
other words, just the type of urban political aspirant the capitalist elite like to attach themselves
to, and, let us say, "cultivate."
Obama came into the presidency having surrounded himself--or having had others surround himself
with--banking executives, foreign policy "realists" (ie supporters of the imperial project), and
supporters of the surveillance state. As president, he has carried water for Wall Street, the
Pentagon, and the national security/police-state apparatus since day one. And all the while, bozos
like you have accused him of being a hyper-partisan socialist/communist set upon taking down capitalism.
If Hillary is so determined to "fight for us," why won't she commit to restoring Glass Steagall,
the repeal of which (under Clinton) was a major cause of the financial crisis?
So why are all the "yes-butters" still stuck on questions of how Bernie will pay for this
or that?
Under the Reagan administration, deficits soared. But deficits didn't cause the S&L crisis;
deregulation did. And who ended up paying for the greed of bankers and speculators like Neil Bush?
The taxpayers, to the tune of $130 billion. And what did they get in return for that bailout?
The creation of moral hazard which emboldened speculators in the ensuing, far more devastating,
2007 subprime mortage crisis.
I guess the "Yes-butters" conceive of the presidency as a technocratic position to be headed
by an accountant. In that case, FDR should never have been elected.
The majority of Americans feel differently. They want a transformative leader whose choices
at every step of his long and productive life of public service attest to his desire to put the
interests of the disadvantaged 99% first and to spearhead SYSTEMIC changes where they are needed
most.
One of my all-time favorite memories was when that guy from Goldman Sachs pocketed Five Billion
of the U.S. taxpayer dollars, and then that other famous Goldman Sach alum nit, the Secty of our
Treasury made a windfall after he purchased Lehman Bros. shares for 7 cents on the dollar, and
then "miracle of miracles" redeemed his investment when the U.S. Bankruptcy Court awarded him
100 cents on the dollar.
Private property based on the labor of the small proprietor, free competition, democracy–
all the catchwords with which the Capitalists and their press deceive the workers and the peasants–
are things of the distant past.
Lenin wrote these words 100 years ago in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism ,
but they seem quite applicable to the people interviewed for this Guardian article.
Perhaps the workers and peasants of Las Vegas aren't being properly deceived anymore. Some
say they are still going to vote for the Democratic Party of Racism and War or the Republican
Party of Racism and War, so they are not yet fully awake, but they definitely appear to be making
progress.
Tanna said the root of the US's problems was not Wall Street but the loss of industry.
What people don't seem to understand is that "Wall Street" and "the loss of industry" flow
from the same root cause: Big Money shanghaeing our politics and economy. Big Money runs Wall
Street, AND Big Money shipped our jobs overseas (so they can pay foreign workers peanuts versus
paying American workers a decent wage).
Only Bernie Sanders is courageous enough to say this out loud. All other candidates are bought
and paid for by the same Big Money selling America down the river.
Sanders has a great track record on affordable housing that is immune to boom and bust and allows
for rent or own options - as the initiator of the community land trust model in Burlington, Vermont.
He will be able to easily formulate policies to refine and reproduce the CLT model. A Sanders
presidency would be a unique opportunity to see a transformation of the housing market throughout
the US in favour of affordable options, whether to rent or buy, for the majority of people living
there - and not by throwing people into dependency on public housing run by local authorities
but rather imaginative and constructive partnerships between communities, responsible finance,
house builders and other business interests.
The heart of the problem is free trade. There are no good jobs in America because we don't make
anything anymore. The economists told us that imported things would be so much cheaper that it
would more than offset our loss of income. However, that didn't happen; prices keep going up.
Salaries stagnate, and the corporations move to China and make big profits, and their rich stockholders
just get richer.
Tomorrow's Democratic caucus in Nevada will be very interesting. If Sanders wins, in what was
supposed to be a shoo-in for Clinton, that will be a big boost for him.
By the way, Guardian, did Mr Johnson, the hotel worker, really say "punters"?
The the US housing collapse came about in part because the American government caved in to the
Wall Street lobbyists when they said we (the financial industry) are best placed to police ourselves
and allowed for the self-regulation of investment banks and other financial institutions.
The Gramm Leach Bliley Act of 1999 was a major contributing factor to the 2007 subprime mortgage
financial crisis, when it repealed part of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933, removing safeguards
in the sector among banking, securities and insurance companies. The legislation was signed into
law by President Bill Clinton.
If it wasn't so serious it would be laughable, the Glass Steagall Act was designed to regulate
and protect the financial sector, President Bill Clinton publicly declared "the Glass–Steagall
law is no longer appropriate, the financial institutions got their way and et viola just eight
years later we had a financial Tsunami of biblical proportions caused by Wall Street greed.
Both the democratic party and the Republican party are equally to blame for the lack of regulations,
and to think allowing these guys (the financial institutions) to police themselves is a sane idea
is ludicrous. Its akin to politely asking foxes not to eat the chickens and taking their word
that they wont. Look at it another way, if this were the election of a chief of police with one
of the main tasks being the fight against organised crime, I think you would be seriously concerned
if you discovered that one of the main applicants for the role regularly got paid millions of
dollars for speaking to the bad guys. You might even want to the transcripts of what that person
said to the bad guys.
This is why we need a person who hasn't been paid off by Wall Street and is no friend of Wall
street.
The housing boom was a con and everyone fell in on the act, either through fear of being left
behind or they were blinded by greed thinking housing prices would just keep rising and rising.
At best people were stupid.
The banks caused the housing bubble by lending people money they couldn't afford to borrow,
they turned a blind eye to background checks by using a self certified mortgages, as more of these
insane policies were awarded more people purchased and house prices sky rocketed, then as always
the bubble burst.
Its not the job of your average Joe to enact policy to regulate financial lending, it is the
job of governments to regulate and police lending. People will always be gullible, 'it is the
governments role to ensure economic stability" and as such governments should be responsible for
policing rather than financial institutions. Failure to do so is not admitting that greed exists
or could be motivating factor.
Financial institutions are not as stupid as one would think, they knew the bubble would burst
and so they sold on the toxic assets around the world thus causing a global economic and financial
meltdown. In short your average Joe needs to be protected and Wall street needs to be regulated
by the government.
The way it stands now this could easily happen again hence the need for regulation and in my
own personal opinion the entire banking industry needs to be reformed.
Its not the job of your average Joe to enact policy to regulate financial lending
,
No, but it is the job of the average Joe to know how much he can borrow and repay.
it is the job of governments to regulate
Agree 100%
and police lending.
Disagree. No President can know the intricacies of the financial instruments in that detail,
nor should s/he. If it were the job of the President to understand it, then you should be asking
some very tough questions of your own preferred candidate - Saunders, so you can be sure he actually
has such a grasp of the detail that he personally would be capable of policing it. OK - you see
where I'm going with this?
Obviously the government of the day has to delegate policing to people who know,
or ought to know precisely how these instruments work, what the risk factors are, and how the
risk ought to be managed, in order that the regulator can compel the financial institutions to
manage their own risk responsibly.
But who can know how to do this regulation? You require a "poacher-turned-gamekeeper". That
means someone who has worked in that industry - for a long time.
'it is the governments role to ensure economic stability"
And that is a nirvana that no government has ever managed to achieve. You must ask yourself
why. I think that the answer is that no-one knows how to achieve stability.
Financial institutions are not as stupid as one would think,
I think they are both very clever, and entirely lacking in wisdom. I don't know what the situation
was in the USA, but in the UK there has a been a trend for the boards of big banks to comprise
non-bankers. People who have been successful in other fields - but no professional bankers. Therefore
the boards had no proper understanding of the risks their banks were taking.
they knew the bubble would burst
I think they most certainly did NOT know. I think once you are inside the bubble, as in any
community, most people follow the groupthink. Most people follow the herd. And that is why so
many fianancial institutions either went to the wall or nearly did. Because they did NOT believe
the bubble would burst. THey did not know or understand the extent of their own exposure.
and so they sold on the toxic assets around the world thus causing a global economic and
financial meltdown.
And bought them back too.
In short your average Joe needs to be protected and Wall street needs to be regulated by
the government.
Yes, and yes, and yes it is, but the problem is that the regulators do not always know what
they are regulating. No politician ever can know, that's for sure.
The way it stands now this could easily happen again hence the need for regulation and in
my own personal opinion the entire banking industry needs to be reformed.
Easier said than done.
Thats why I want Bernie to win.
And Bernie, who has never worked in finance- he knows how to regulate?
No it does not work like that I am afraid. Do not look at it from a microscopic perspective of
"Don't borrow if you cannot pay back". Most people borrow and CAN pay back so long as they keep
their jobs and their salaries remain more or less unchanged. BUT a recession has the effect that
a lot of people lose their jobs due to a fall in demand (the foundational rule of supply and demand
in modern economics) or have a decrease in their salaries so that the company where they are working
at remains open or retains its profit margin. The fact that people lose their jobs makes them
unable to repay their previously fully affordable loans. This has a domino effect as in turn it
further reduces demand etc. In a stable and slightly improving economy this scenario of course
does not occur (that's why we are able to function), so it is the instigator that is to blame
and that was the financial system in the US. The housing bauble was created and burst by banks
(and I am not making a distinction between investment and commercial banks since there was none
after the repeal of certain regulatory legislation) through creating and trading in bad faith
products they knew were toxic (derivatives), betting on their failure (creating a negative psychological
effect) and issuing even more loans for ridiculous terms on bad creditors to make money (individual
gains since they work on percentages on the volume of incoming and FUTURE business ;) ) . Add
to that the vulnerability of US and International banks due to over-leveraging (that is, hold
stocks on assets worth billions and trillions while only holding 5% of the actually money that
you would need to own the so called stocks, money that were their deposits that were also supposed
to satisfy banking needs such as a customer coming over to withdraw money), a panic and a banking
run and this creates the perfect storm. Over-leveraging is another effect of removing regulations
that control how much a corporation can be leveraged. To sum it up, greed ... Greed can take you
a long way until you crush and burn but you DO crush and burn ... and when on your plane rest
the lives and livelihoods of 7 billion people (since that is indeed a world economy) the world
crushes and burns with you.
I am in favour of changing the economy completely at some point since this classical economics
paradigm is wildly obsolete (no longer do we have a LACK of resources which needs a system to
appropriately ration them to the best entities. Everyone can have food, clothing and the basic
commodities of life nowadays). Perhaps an energy-based economy is what is preferable but lacking
that, proper regulation to avoid lives being destroyed is a certainly welcome addition in my mind
:) .
You betcha. He's been a lawmaker since 1990. In 1998 he voted against every effort to roll
back Glass-Steagall. If there had been more honest and informed lawmakers like him, the 2008 crisis
could have been averted.
We had banking regulation and it worked great. Ask any expert and they will tell you that the
repeal of Glass-Steagall was a major cause of the 2008 financial crisis. So why is Bernie Sanders
the only candidate in this race willing to commit to re-enacting it into law?
Tell us how low to go, Your Majesty;
Make some more decrees, Your Majesty,
Don't let us up off out knees, Your Majesty.
Give us a kick, if you please Your Majesty
Give us a kick, if you would, Your Majesty
Oh, That was good, Your Majesty!
"Ask any expert and they will tell you that the repeal of Glass-Steagall was a major cause of
the 2008 financial crisis."
=
I'll ask you
why do you believe repealing Glass Steagall in 1999 was cause of 2007 and 2008 crises
would it have prevented cheap credit MBS securities housing boom commission trading leading to
2008 crises
shouldn't the 2007 housing market issues have warned any bright spark that there was a housing
bubble
==
Please note the correct answer to above financial analysis is not mindless Bernie or Bill answer
Actually Sanders performed above my expectations in the most recent debate exposing this criminal
Kissinger for what he is. So despite my pessimism there might be slight hope. Although the level
of degradation of both parties (which is reality are two wings of a single party -- the party of top
1% -- with Dems a little bit more sophisticated in avoiding open scorn of lower 99%) looks
irreversible. This is really bizarre "back in the USSR" situation, if you wish. If Eisenhower
has been alive to see the monster the Republican Party turned into, he would die the second time
on the spot. This is simply disgusting. Same for the Dems -- in the current form this is clearly
yet another party of financial oligarchy and Hillary candidacy reflect the depth of degradation of the
Dem party establishment like nobody else.
Notable quotes:
"... I dont think this has a precedent in American history, the leading candidates of both parties running essentially class-based campaigns against a financial elite. Something to contemplate. ..."
Trump basically says he is independent of the donors because he's rich, while Sanders says
he is independent of them because he raised tens of millions of dollars in small donations. But both
campaigns are criticizing the same thing, in divergent but essentially parallel ways.
I don't think this has a precedent in American history, the leading candidates of both parties
running essentially class-based campaigns against a financial elite. Something to
contemplate.
Scott McConnell: "The wealth of the one tenth of one percent is now concentrated in the financial
industry. The money of the middle class has been redistributed upwards to Wall Street. No one
calls it the 'productive sector,' even ironically. Wall Street pays for the political campaigns,
and pays for the politicians."
In other words, the one tenth of one percent pays for the political campaigns, and pays for
the politicians.
Except for Trump and Sanders.
Scott: "Trump basically says he is independent of the donors because he's rich, while Sanders
says he is independent of them because he raised tens of millions of dollars in small donations."
Scott: "I don't think this has a precedent in American history, the leading candidates of both
parties running essentially class-based campaigns against a financial elite."
Free trade gets the blame for almost everything, but deserves none of the blame. The usual suspects
like to confuse free trade with crony capitalism. Its not out of ignorance. Its nefarious.
One of the best developments of this campaign so far has been the number of conservative, right-wing
people who have awaken to the grim reality of crony/globalist capitalism. You know something is
happening when NRO blasts them as "economically and socially frustrated white men who wish to
be economically supported by the federal government without enduring the stigma of welfare dependency"
It is also worth noting that Trump is a businessman in an old-fashioned way people can relate
to. He is a real estate mogul who employs actual workers to develop actual buildings, instead
of just being a bankster shuffling fictional money around.
"... In it, Hitchens argued that the former national security adviser and secretary of state for Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford should be prosecuted "for war crimes, for crimes against humanity, and for offenses against common or customary or international law, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap, and torture." ..."
"... It was well reviewed, with the San Francisco Chronicle hailing Hitchens for presenting "damning documentary evidence against Kissinger in case after case," and London's Sunday Times describing the book as "a disturbing glimpse into the dark side of American power, whose consequences in remote corners of the globe are all too often ignored. Its countless victims have found an impassioned and skillful advocate in Christopher Hitchens." ..."
"... "I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend," continued Sanders. "I will not take advice from Henry Kissinger. And in fact, Kissinger's actions in Cambodia, when the United States bombed that country, overthrew Prince Sihanouk, created the instability for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to come in, who then butchered some 3 million innocent people, one of the worst genocides in the history of the world. So count me in as somebody who will not be listening to Henry Kissinger." ..."
The late Christopher Hitchens penned an exceptionally important book in 2001 titled The Trial
of Henry Kissinger.
In it, Hitchens argued that the former national security adviser and secretary of state
for Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford should be prosecuted "for war crimes, for crimes
against humanity, and for offenses against common or customary or international law, including
conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap, and torture."
Hitchens was a brilliant polemicist who loved to stir controversy (and who fell out with The
Nation during post-9/11 debates about George W. Bush's "war on terror" and defending civil
liberties). But The Trials of Henry Kissinger was more than an argument; it was a detailed
indictment ("using only what would hold up in international courts of law") of an official who
Hitchens accused of authorizing atrocities against Bangladesh, Chile, Cyprus, East Timor,
Indochina, and the Kurds of Iraq. It was well reviewed, with the San Francisco Chronicle
hailing Hitchens for presenting "damning documentary evidence against Kissinger in case after
case," and London's Sunday Times describing the book as "a disturbing glimpse into the dark side
of American power, whose consequences in remote corners of the globe are all too often ignored.
Its countless victims have found an impassioned and skillful advocate in Christopher Hitchens."
Despite the attention it received, the book did not lead to the prosecution of Kissinger. Nor did
it spark all of the formal and official debates that Hitchens invited.
"I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend." - Bernie Sanders
On Thursday night, however, Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie
Sanders did debate Kissinger's legacy in one of the most remarkable exchanges of modern
presidential politics. It was an exchange Hitchens would have relished.
In the foreign-policy section of the debate, after the candidates had clashed over a number of
issues, Sanders asked if he might add a brief final word of to explain "where the secretary and I
have a very profound difference."
"[In] the last debate and I believe in her book-very good book, by the way…she talked about
getting the approval or the support or the mentoring of Henry Kissinger. Now, I find it rather
amazing, because I happen to believe that Henry Kissinger was one of the most destructive
secretaries of state in the modern history of this country," said the senator, to loud applause.
"I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend," continued Sanders. "I will not
take advice from Henry Kissinger. And in fact, Kissinger's actions in Cambodia, when the United
States bombed that country, overthrew Prince Sihanouk, created the instability for Pol Pot and
the Khmer Rouge to come in, who then butchered some 3 million innocent people, one of the worst
genocides in the history of the world. So count me in as somebody who will not be listening to
Henry Kissinger."
Clinton countered with a dig at Sanders. "Well," she said, "I know journalists have asked who
you do listen to on foreign policy, and we have yet to know who that is."
"Well, it ain't Henry Kissinger. That's for sure," replied Sanders.
"That's fine. That's fine," said Clinton. "You know, I listen to a wide variety of voices that
have expertise in various areas. I think it is fair to say, whatever the complaints that you want
to make about him are, that with respect to China, one of the most challenging relationships we
have, his opening up China and his ongoing relationships with the leaders of China is an
incredibly useful relationship for the United States of America. So if we want to pick and
choose-and I certainly do-people I listen to, people I don't listen to, people I listen to for
certain areas, then I think we have to be fair and look at the entire world, because it's a big,
complicated world out there."
"It is," injected Sanders.
Clinton was now scrambling to put Kissinger in perspective. "And, yes," she said, "people we
may disagree with on a number of things may have some insight, may have some relationships that
are important for the president to understand in order to best protect the United States."
Sanders rips trade agreements that result in American workers losing their jobs as
corporations moved to China. Sanders was having none of that explanation, suggesting that his
historical perspective was "very different."
"Kissinger was one of those people during the Vietnam era who talked about the domino theory.
Not everybody remembers that. You do. I do. The domino theory, you know, if Vietnam goes, China,
da, da, da, da, da, da, da. That's what he talked about, the great threat of China," said
Sanders. "And then, after the war, this is the guy who, in fact, yes, you're right, he opened up
relations with China, and now pushed various type of trade agreements, resulting in American
workers losing their jobs as corporations moved to China. The terrible, authoritarian, Communist
dictatorship he warned us about, now he's urging companies to shut down and move to China. Not my
kind of guy."
And rightly so, for reasons that Christopher Hitchens well documented
"... The conclusion: the winds of change are blowing away from establishment politicians and the wealthy donors who support them, and as far as Im concerned any change that helps the working class feel more secure and confident about the future – change that is based upon reality rather than the myths that have been sold to the public in support of wealthy interests – cant come fast enough. ..."
"... We should not embrace the defeatists crowd of Hillary supporters thats willing to settle for half a chicken in every pot. ..."
"... Water is wet. The sun rises in the east. The middle/working class has been screwed for the status quo for the last 35 years. ..."
"... Wall Street got what it wanted (tax cuts), the Necons got what they wanted (wars), and the last two got -- promises. Unsurprisinly they have lost patience with the GOP establishment. The Bible Belt wants its 19th century (okay 15th century) back, and white working class populats wants to be sure that, even if they are sleeping under a bridge, no black or brown person is sleeping under a *better* bridge. ..."
"... On the Democratic side, with the exception of the late 1990s, the Establishment has failed to deliver better times. Obamacare *is* a boon, but it has taken seemingly forever to roll out seemingly since the Dinosaurs roamed the earth, and it has only directly benefitted about 10% of the population. Meanwhile nominal wages grow 2% a year, worker protections are non-existnet, and even actions which could be taken by the Executive alon - like raising the pay at which employers no longer have to pay overtime - are not taken (the rumor that Obamas signature hand suffered from paralyisi fell apart the other day when he signed the TPP).. ..."
"... We are in the midst of a politial realignment. My guess is that outside of Dixie, the white working class returns to the Democrats, who move towards Sanders ideology, while the corporatist Dems move over to the GOP. And the Bible Belt continues to get the 15th Century delivered to them. ..."
"... Also the centrist dems have been playing defense for 30 years, simply trying to prevent the rollback of past programs, and apparently willing to compromise even on core New Deal and Great Society accomplishments (SS and Medicare). ..."
"... Actually, Trump immediately gained the support of less-educated blue collar white males who had IDd as Dem, and I havent seen a poll yet on whether Bernie is winning them back ..."
"... You raise an interesting question. If corporate donor fueled Democrats lose national party control decisively. Not just for one convention ala McGovern. Where will they go ? ..."
"... Soooo. The donors will have to retake or hold one party. My guess theyll hold on to Democrat party easily if Hillary wins. Maybe the soul of the Democrat party is at stake here. As during the Bryan era ..."
"... Trump says that, but his proposed policies are not compatible with what he says, and he part of the party which absolutely wants to gut those programs. Working class people who know whats good for them are for Sanders, the ones for Trump are politico-economic illiterates (either that or they are just sucked in by his racism.) ..."
"... Its quite possible that Sanders would win against Trump. Personality reasons. Its a stage debate I would love to see. ..."
"... The Donald is doing what the GOP has done for 40 years, use racist rhetoric (without the dogwhistles this time) to convince the rubes to vote against their own interests. ..."
"... Trump may surprise us. With a tax cut for the little guy okee dokee package ..."
"... Right wing populists are not about little government, prudent government. They cut taxes and increase spending on the armada ..."
"... The WSJ is angry that a Republican told the truth: Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security, they want to do it on Medicare, they want to do it on Medicaid. And we cant do that. And its not fair to the people that have been paying in for years and now all of the sudden they want to be cut. ..."
"... Thats nice Donald. But you want a larger military and big tax cuts for the rich. Arithmetic please?! ..."
"... Some partners in hedge funds, private-equity firms and other businesses organized as so-called passthroughs would pay a 3.8 percent income tax under President Barack Obamas 2017 budget request. The move is intended to address what the administrations budget documents call a gap in legal definitions of investment income and self-employment earnings. As a result, certain members of partnerships, limited liability companies and S corporations may have been able to avoid the tax, according to budget documents. ..."
"... The proposal would extend a net investment tax for Medicare thats been in place since 2013 to taxpayers who have been able to avoid it, according to Obama administration officials. The measure, which is projected to raise $271.7 billion over the next decade, would apply to limited partners who materially participate in the ventures. ..."
"... Not to worry hedgies - Karl Rove has your back.... ..."
"... This seems like a good thing. Though Id much prefer to simply see all types of income unified under the tax code. Half of the complexity of accounting and more than half of the avoidance behavior comes from confusion and games related to income classification. ..."
"... The strange thing is, even populist candidates like Bernie seem to advocate for higher taxes on regular earned income (upwards of 60% net including payroll taxes but excluding state taxes), while cap gains stays at a much lower rate, while cap gains is how the 0.1% get their money. ..."
"... Yes the establishment faces a possible quandary: both conventions might nominate an outsider. Hence the fantasy Bloomberg third way down the old dead center where the donor class sleeps ..."
"... All the rhetoric on all sides is about restoring a golden age that never was. (1) the past is not going to be restored. (2) that wasnt even the past. ..."
"... Yes. The past that never was is not he future that can ever be ..."
"... Would prefer that you didnt lump Sanders supporters with Trump supporters because, as you point out, they ...see different causes and different solutions... (to say the least). Not that I think it was your intent but it can have the result of disparaging Sanders supporters. ..."
"... As the democratic party has shown with its ham-handed support of HRC, the establishment politicians have a significant advantage and will do everything in their power to divert or quash change. ..."
"... I love it. Exactly -- They hate us for our freedom. The final affluent liberal reaction ..."
"... I agree with Mark Thoma about this. There is actually similarity between these two candidates. The labels progressive and conservative really dont apply. ..."
"... Americans are just tired of being controlled by a tiny minority of powerful rich people. Electing either Trump or Sanders probably wont change that, but at least it sends a message. We are, whether liberal or conservative or neither, sick of how things have been going. ..."
"... It is not about restoring a golden age so easily dismissed by cheap cynicism. It is about preserving freedom and restoring justice. That these causes are never done, and the struggle to preserve them is never ending, does not make them a dead issue except to the worst of the cynics. ..."
"... Indeed, such resolution to reform and the pursuit of justice is the core of the very spirit of that phenomenon that is America. And while its history is replete with its abuses therein, its history also shows a remarkable resilience amongst the people to resist all forms of tyranny, including the tyranny of the privileged, in all their complacency for the status quo. ..."
"... This is what Sanders and Trump get that the jades of the comfortable class do not. ..."
"... You may enjoy this piece in the Voice yesterday, insightful, hilarious, spreading like wildfire: http://www.villagevoice.com/news/feeling-the-yern-why-one-millennial-woman-would-rather-go-to-hell-than-vote-for-hillary-8253224 ..."
"... Realpc: Socialism does not work. Social Security does not work? Public education does not work? ..."
"... Actually, North Korea is not socialist by any sane definition, any more than Saudi Arabia does. They are both feudal monarchies. ..."
"... Totalitarianism is a failed social category that never existed anywhere outside of Orwell ..."
"... A large chunk of Trump supporters come from uneducated white males - people who have been hit hard by our trade agreements and deindustrialization. Throw in a little bigotry against Mexicans and immigrants, and you have Trump supporters. ..."
"... Bernie supporters tend to be younger. These are people who have only lived in a world of unequal growth, growth built off of bubbles, declining union membership and worker bargaining power, less job security, an eroding minimum wage, stagnant wages, debt, unending war, exploding education costs, etc. ..."
"Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security, they want to do it on Medicare,
they want to do it on Medicaid. And we can't do that. And it's not fair to the people that have
been paying in for years and now all of the sudden they want to be cut."
An
opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal reflects the negative reaction to Trump's remarks
from many Republicans:
"Mr. Trump is a political harbinger here of a new strand of populist Republicanism, largely
empowered by Obamacare, in which the 'conservative' position is to defend the existing entitlement
programs from a perceived threat posed by a new-style Obama coalition of handout seekers that
includes the chronically unemployed, students, immigrants, minorities and women … who typically
vote Democrat."
But is it true that our economic system redistributes substantial sums away from the middle
class to "handout seekers"? ...
JohnH :
The conclusion: "the winds of change are blowing away from establishment politicians and the
wealthy donors who support them, and as far as I'm concerned any change that helps the working
class feel more secure and confident about the future – change that is based upon reality rather
than the myths that have been sold to the public in support of wealthy interests – can't come
fast enough."
Yes, we must try, "which is why you shouldn't listen to the "we-must-not-try" brigade. They've
lost faith in the rest of us." http://robertreich.org/post/138894376115
We should not embrace the defeatists crowd of Hillary supporters that's willing to settle
for half a chicken in every pot.
New Deal democrat :
Water is wet. The sun rises in the east. The middle/working class has been screwed for the
status quo for the last 35 years.
And the news is ?????
The GOP electoral coalition since 1968 and especially 1980 has been Wall Street, Neocons, the
Bible Belt, and white working class populitsts.
Wall Street got what it wanted (tax cuts), the Necons got what they wanted (wars), and
the last two got -- promises. Unsurprisinly they have lost patience with the GOP establishment.
The Bible Belt wants its 19th century (okay 15th century) back, and white working class populats
wants to be sure that, even if they are sleeping under a bridge, no black or brown person is sleeping
under a *better* bridge.
On the Democratic side, with the exception of the late 1990s, the Establishment has failed
to deliver better times. Obamacare *is* a boon, but it has taken seemingly forever to roll out
seemingly since the Dinosaurs roamed the earth, and it has only directly benefitted about 10%
of the population. Meanwhile nominal wages grow 2% a year, worker protections are non-existnet,
and even actions which could be taken by the Executive alon - like raising the pay at which employers
no longer have to pay overtime - are not taken (the rumor that Obama's signature hand suffered
from paralyisi fell apart the other day when he signed the TPP)..
We are in the midst of a politial realignment. My guess is that outside of Dixie, the white
working class returns to the Democrats, who move towards Sanders' ideology, while the corporatist
Dems move over to the GOP. And the Bible Belt continues to get the 15th Century delivered to them.
New Deal democrat -> New Deal democrat...
Oops .Sorry for the typos. On my iPad I can only preview the first paragraph, so I've stopped
bothering. That last line should read "continues to fail to get the 15th Century...."
Also the centrist dems have been playing defense for 30 years, simply trying to prevent
the rollback of past programs, and apparently willing to compromise even on core New Deal and
Great Society accomplishments (SS and Medicare).
RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> New Deal democrat...
Yep. I had figured you more for the establishment "liberal" type but here you show me a healthy
if cynical (how can you not be by now) progressive attitude. THANKS!
Actually, Trump immediately gained the support of less-educated blue collar white males who
had ID'd as Dem, and I haven't seen a poll yet on whether Bernie is winning them back
PPaine -> New Deal democrat...
You raise an interesting question. If corporate donor fueled Democrats lose national party
control decisively. Not just for one convention ala McGovern. Where will they go ?
Well what if the GOP is in yahoo hands ?
Bloomberg party is. Fantasy
Soooo. The donors will have to retake or hold one party. My guess they'll hold on to Democrat
party easily if Hillary wins. Maybe the soul of the Democrat party is at stake here. As during
the Bryan era
tom :
Trump says that, but his proposed policies are not compatible with what he says, and he part
of the party which absolutely wants to gut those programs. Working class people who know what's
good for them are for Sanders, the ones for Trump are politico-economic illiterates (either that
or they are just sucked in by his racism.)
It's quite possible that Sanders would win against Trump. Personality reasons. It's a stage
debate I would love to see.
It's also possible (now) that Clinton would lose to Trump. He can paint her up and down as
being part of the corrupt Establishment. I don't understand her rhetorical strategy here. She
should have agreed with Bernie every step of the way, subsumed his message into a bigger picture.
It may be too late. Bernie is ticking upwards in South Carolina:
Lee this is indeed a fascinating development. I had thought Hillary would simply throw her arms
around Bernie
And attack her donors
Look her donors don't want trump or Cruz. And "they " alas can trust her to " to the right
thing" in the clutches
DrDick -> tom...
The Donald is doing what the GOP has done for 40 years, use racist rhetoric (without the dogwhistles
this time) to convince the rubes to vote against their own interests.
PPaine -> DrDick...
Look
Trump may surprise us. With a tax cut for the little guy okee dokee package
PPaine -> PPaine ...
Trump will not worry about the deficits he will promise to close as part of his grand plan while
pulling a Reagan: Ignore the deficits and go for the goal line
Right wing populists are not about little government, prudent government. They cut taxes
and increase spending on the armada
PPaine: "Trump may surprise us with a tax cut for the little guy okee dokee package"
He won't surprise me. I think that's his game plan. He wants to get elected. I wouldn't be
surprised if he promised everybody a free buffet ticket in Atlantic City too.
pgl :
The WSJ is angry that a Republican told the truth: "Every Republican wants to do a big number
on Social Security, they want to do it on Medicare, they want to do it on Medicaid. And we can't
do that. And it's not fair to the people that have been paying in for years and now all of the
sudden they want to be cut."
That's nice Donald. But you want a larger military and big tax cuts for the rich. Arithmetic
please?!
pgl :
The Hedge Fund people are going to really hate Obama for this one: "Obama's Budget Seeks to Ensure
Hedge Fund Managers Pay 3.8% Tax
Posted February 09, 2016, 11:22 A.M. ET
By Lynnley Browning
Some partners in hedge funds, private-equity firms and other businesses organized as
so-called passthroughs would pay a 3.8 percent income tax under President Barack Obama's 2017
budget request. The move is intended to address what the administration's budget documents
call "a gap" in legal definitions of investment income and self-employment earnings. As a result,
certain members of partnerships, limited liability companies and S corporations may have been
able to avoid the tax, according to budget documents.
The proposal would extend a "net investment tax" for Medicare that's been in place since
2013 to taxpayers who have been able to avoid it, according to Obama administration officials.
The measure, which is projected to raise $271.7 billion over the next decade, would apply to
limited partners who "materially participate" in the ventures.
The change is part of a package of revenue proposals that collectively would raise $2.6
trillion from 2017 through 2026, according to the president's budget request. The revenue it
seeks is 67 percent higher than Obama's 2016 proposal, driven by international tax-reform proposals,
changes in the way high-income individuals are taxed and a previously announced fee on oil
of $10.25 per barrel.
Not to worry hedgies - Karl Rove has your back....
sanjait -> pgl...
This seems like a good thing. Though I'd much prefer to simply see all types of income unified
under the tax code. Half of the complexity of accounting and more than half of the avoidance behavior
comes from confusion and games related to income classification.
Why should it really matter? Let all income just be income. Cap gains, unearned, earned, whatevs.
The strange thing is, even populist candidates like Bernie seem to advocate for higher
taxes on regular earned income (upwards of 60% net including payroll taxes but excluding state
taxes), while cap gains stays at a much lower rate, while cap gains is how the 0.1% get their
money.
Jess :
Well done and insightful. Perhaps we should send a copy of this to the media, of both the conservative
and liberal 'establishments.'
Chris Matthews and Paul Krugman come to mind on the liberal Democrat side. Just about every
pundit and then some on the Right needs a clue, although I doubt they would see it as their livelihoods
depend on their not.
PPaine -> Jess...
Yes the establishment faces a possible quandary: both conventions might nominate an outsider.
Hence the fantasy Bloomberg third way down the old dead center where the donor class sleeps
All the rhetoric on all sides is about restoring a golden age that never was. (1) the past
is not going to be restored. (2) that wasn't even the past.
Meanwhile, back in New Hampshire, in an effort to revive his floundering campaign, Marco the
Rubot has named his prospective running mate -- Chatty Cathy!: "Pull the string and she says eleven
different things."
Yes. The past that never was is not he future that can ever be
cawley :
Thank you, Mark. Good piece.
It's nice to see an essay that makes a serious attempt to identify the root concern. (I sometimes
half expect some of the Clinton supporters to start accusing Sanders supporters of hating them
for their freedom.) But you are correct:
"They want an economy that works for them and a political system that responds to their needs."
Would prefer that you didn't lump Sanders supporters with Trump supporters because, as
you point out, they "...see different causes and different solutions..." (to say the least). Not
that I think it was your intent but it can have the result of disparaging Sanders supporters.
Of course some Sanders supporters would be disappointed. That is always be the case for supporters
of any candidate. But most of us recognize that, "change will be slow and incremental if there
is change at all."
The point is that, if you don't advocate - and vote - and work - for the change you want, it
definitely won't happen at all. The difference is that, while you appear to take comfort in the
belief that "the winds of change are blowing away from establishment politicians and the wealthy
donors who support them." We are not so sure.
As the democratic party has shown with its ham-handed support of HRC, the establishment
politicians have a significant advantage and will do everything in their power to divert or quash
change.
PPaine -> cawley...
I love it. Exactly -- They hate us for our freedom. The final affluent liberal reaction
realpc :
I agree with Mark Thoma about this. There is actually similarity between these two candidates.
The labels "progressive" and "conservative" really don't apply.
Americans are just tired of being controlled by a tiny minority of powerful rich people.
Electing either Trump or Sanders probably won't change that, but at least it sends a message.
We are, whether liberal or conservative or neither, sick of how things have been going.
pgl :
"Electing either Trump or Sanders probably won't change that, but at least it sends a message."
The message would be a positive one if Sanders is elected. Trump - not so much as the real
message of his campaign is that only white people have rights here.
Jess :
It is not about restoring 'a golden age' so easily dismissed by cheap cynicism. It is about
preserving freedom and restoring justice. That these causes are never done, and the struggle to
preserve them is never ending, does not make them a dead issue except to the worst of the cynics.
Indeed, such resolution to reform and the pursuit of justice is the core of the very spirit
of that phenomenon that is America. And while its history is replete with its abuses therein,
its history also shows a remarkable resilience amongst the people to resist all forms of tyranny,
including the tyranny of the privileged, in all their complacency for the status quo.
This is what Sanders and Trump 'get' that the jades of the comfortable class do not.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit
of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of
these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,
laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall
seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments
long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience
hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right
themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
"It is not about restoring 'a golden age' so easily dismissed by cheap cynicism." I'll have you
know that my cynicism has been bought at a very respectable price.
My cynicism lives by day at a job site
But by night --
When the full blog shines .....
I become the mao ist of old
No one every expects
The cultural revolution --
PPaine -> PPaine ...
Tripped on my last jazz box eh?
No one ever expects
The
CULTURAL REVOLUTION
realpc :
We don't need progressive ideology or conservative ideology. We need common sense and a genuine
desire to help the middle class.
Ideologies don't work and they are unrelated to common sense. Socialism does not work. However,
I would vote for Sanders over any establishment politician, just because he doesn't seem to be
one of them.
Public education is mostly under local control. Social Security is ok, but there are better ways
to provide for your retirement. A good definition of "socialism" is needed before trying to have
a conversation about it.
The Marxist definition involves a whole lot more than public education and social programs.
1. Social Security is not a "way to provide for your retirement". It is the safety-net.
Everybody pays in from the beginning of work life, and everybody gets a payout, rich or poor,
when they retire. No free riding, no moral hazard. No need for bureaucratic means-testing; extremely
low overhead. It is slightly regressive on the pay-in, and slightly progressive on the pay-out;
everybody accepts this going in, because you really don't know how your life will play out. The
tax cap (which should be raised back to the original 90% of all income) prevents the wealthiest
from objecting to it; it is chump change to them: thus, no real political problem. Social Security
covers a myriad of deprivations and evils which we no longer have to think about because they
don't occur with the same frequency or intensity.
In fact it would be very difficult to make a better design. Genius, really.
2. The fact that public education is under local control is immaterial to the general case,
because public education benefits from local control. Other public goods, e.g retirement security,
universal healthcare, national defense, don't need local differentiation and benefit from having
the largest pay-in, the largest risk pool.
3. Bernie Sanders is not talking about the marxist definition, and he has been quite clear
on that. This is "democratic socialism" on the scale of some European countries, which retain
plenty of market elements, have the same GDP growth rates as the US., and have happier populations.
Those countries are and have long been capitalist. They are relatively wealthy, and very small.
The US is very different. We could do the same things as Sweden, etc., are doing, at the state
level. That would make much more sense, and should make conservatives and progressives happy.
But no one suggests it.
They call themselves social democracies, and their size is immaterial to the argument.
However, the relative sizes of the European countries and the US suggests that the US should
have much, much HIGHER rates of growth than they do, according to Adam Smith, Chap. 3: "The division
of labor is limited by the extent of the market." This could well be due to the US's lack of better
social democracy, hobbling its citizens in debt and despair.
DrDick -> pgl...
Actually, North Korea is not socialist by any sane definition, any more than Saudi Arabia
does. They are both feudal monarchies.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> realpc...
Admittedly, we are confusing democratic socialism with social democracy a lot in our discussions
here. You are confusing totalitarian dictatorship with socialism. There has never actually been
a socialist government so there is no way to know whether it could work or not. An actual socialist
government would need to be done within the confines of democracy in order for social will to
be enacted by social power. Most of the world's governments are social democracies exercised within
the constraints of capitalism under control of electoral republican states. The necessity for
economic power to elevate candidates to the political elite ensures that ultimate power lies in
the hands of the capitalist so long as they do not inspire insurrection among their subjects.
The reason that there has never been a socialist government is because there has never been
a democracy. Electoral republics allow elites to maintain power and control of property and the
economic system while providing just enough democratic façade to keep the pitchforks down on the
farm instead of storming the gates of power.
RC AKA Darryl, Ron -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
All oligarchies are created equal regardless of whether the majority of property and wealth is
held in the private hands of a small elite or whether the majority of property and wealth is held
by the state that is controlled by a small elite. It is the transitive property of oligarchy equality.
realpc -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
"The reason that there has never been a socialist government is because there has never been a
democracy."
That is what you prefer to THINK is the reason. You have no evidence for that belief.
realpc -> realpc...
Socialism means no one can own a business. So the essential premise of socialism is not just impractical,
it is impossible.
And that is why it has never existed. All the communist revolutionaries were striving for the
socialist ideal. It didn't happen because it can't happen, it is just a fantasy dreamed up by
philosophers.
DrDick -> realpc...
You are a very confused individual throwing around words you do not understand. The seventh largest
corporation in Spain, a multibillion dollar multinational enterprise, is a socialist collective.
Democratic socialism As opposed to one party state socialism
Aka the way of Stalin and me
PPaine -> PPaine ...
Totalitarianism is a failed social category that never existed anywhere outside of Orwell
Salade Déjeuner :
" 91 cents of every dollar spent on entitlement programs goes to " the elderly (people 65 and
over), the seriously disabled, and members of working
"
~~MT~
Would you guess that large chunks of $$$$ to elderly goes straight to the grandchildren? Straight
back into the economy to raise aggregate demand? Hell! Grandparents love their hapless offspring
more than they love themselves, but :
But that which elderly save for themselves goes straight into the estate, the estate that goes
to grandchildren. Such is a true Keynesian redistribution to the higher propensity jokers. If
it still works, don't fix it!
The defect that needs fixing is where $$$$ is removed from the economy to fund the transfer.
$$$$ should be removed as taxation on signalling but never on taxation of production. Sure! We
do need certain Pigouvian taxes, otherwise our planet will burn up. Will the changes to the tax
code be "politically acceptable"?
No! As global warming closes in on us it will suddenly become acceptable, a year late
eudaimonia :
A large chunk of Trump supporters come from uneducated white males - people who have been
hit hard by our trade agreements and deindustrialization. Throw in a little bigotry against Mexicans
and immigrants, and you have Trump supporters.
Bernie supporters tend to be younger. These are people who have only lived in a world of
unequal growth, growth built off of bubbles, declining union membership and worker bargaining
power, less job security, an eroding minimum wage, stagnant wages, debt, unending war, exploding
education costs, etc.
They are not particularly happy with the status quo and feel that we need to change paths rather
than continue on this trajectory.
Both supporters are not happy with the economic and political system, and seek change. They
feel that the economic and political class are not on their side, and there is some truth that
that.
"... In my view, Clinton wants to be President only because it is there and it is a powerful role. For her, I think it affirms her egotistical belief that she is the best person for the job. She is a by the numbers politician; lacking passion and a cause and is beholden to Wall St. ..."
"... Clinton is a warmonger. Most of the candidates are. I wouldnt vote for anyone who was, no matter what their politics. So, the field is greatly reduced for me. ..."
"... The media likes a simplistic narrative, and the media wants Clinton win, no matter what the Democratic base wants. Its annoying, but not surprising, that they are trying to cast the Democratic primary as they have. ..."
This disgraceful episode shows the dark side of the sexism arguments. Equality is about every
women having the same opportunities as men. But what gets lost in the debate, or conveniently
ignored, is that an incompetent woman has no place taking or claiming precedence over a competent
man. Margaret Thatcher wrought a trail of destruction in the UK - her Reagan-esque and neo-liberal
policies led to many more Britons living in poverty and being left with no prospect of any dignity;
instead being trapped in a life-long welfare-cycle. How is it plausible that she should not be
judged on her performance, rather on some esoteric and exaggerated feminist ideal. She was a female
PM, sure, but she was an awful PM. Her political salvation was the Argentine conflict over the
Falklands. Without that, she would have deservedly been confined to the political scrap-heap much
sooner.
In my view, Clinton wants to be President only because it is there and it is a powerful role.
For her, I think it affirms her egotistical belief that she is the best person for the job. She
is a "by the numbers" politician; lacking passion and a cause and is beholden to Wall St. That
surely makes her sound more like a conservative rather than a liberal (the equivalent of Tony
Blair). Sanders might be a silly old fool, but he has a passion for the American ideal - that
all men (and women) were indeed created equal and his policies support that ideal. Clinton has
no policies - she is essentially asking the American people to trust her, when in reality, they
don't - not because she is a woman, but because she has a history of duplicity.
Clinton is a warmonger. Most of the candidates are. I wouldn't vote for anyone who was, no
matter what their politics. So, the field is greatly reduced for me.
"I am increasingly dismayed that 'older, wiser, more mature' voters are portrayed as solidly in
Hillary's corner"
The media likes a simplistic narrative, and the media wants Clinton win, no matter what the
Democratic base wants. It's annoying, but not surprising, that they are trying to cast the Democratic
primary as they have.
"... A somewhat campy (okay, VERY campy) take on the French Revolution, it quite effectively depicts the way hopelessness and inequality corrode away the moral fabric of human relations. ..."
"... it was Mike Nichols who said, Funny is very rare. And I would add, very valuable, and slightly deadly. ..."
[BILL CLINTON:] "I understand why we've got a race on our hands, because a lot of people
are disillusioned with the system and a lot of young people want to take it down. … I understand
what it's like for people who haven't had a raise in eight years. There are a lot of reasons
[to be angry]. But this is not a cartoon. This is real life."
Don't rag on cartoons, Bill. Many are more worth paying attention to than you are. I recommend
the following:
Galaxy Express 999
A wonderfully grim satire of neoliberalism, globalization, and Kurzweil-ian narcissistic
techno-utopianism.
The Roses of Versailles
A somewhat campy (okay, VERY campy) take on the French Revolution, it quite effectively
depicts the way hopelessness and inequality corrode away the moral fabric of human relations.
Both can easily be streamed online with English subtitles.
They used to say that Hitchcock was, "damned with faint praise," by being called a master
of horror. I think the same thing tends to happen to those who are funny. I think it was
Mike Nichols who said, "Funny is very rare." And I would add, very valuable, and slightly deadly.
"... Political consultants by and large, and especially in the establishment tier, operate and strategize on the sole core premise that voters are a) stupid (in the Pavlovian sense), and b) unreliable. The idea that small donors would be reliable over the course of a campaign is inconceivable (the larger donors certainly aren't that reliable). And if you're willing to flip messages in a heartbeat, it is probably not a safe bet; Sanders is pulling it off in part (so far?) through his own massive (so far…) consistency (and legacy). Also, he's positioned so far from anybody else (except maybe Trump?!?) that it's difficult to slipstream him and steal his donor base. ..."
"... I think that some basic economic/market concepts (commitment bias, sunk costs) can be considered as well. But the establishment consultants (who generally do quite well, thank you) don't see a $20 donation as a significant commitment with an expectation attached; it's a restaurant tip. BTW, Sanders' three million donations come from over one million donors, that's a rough average of two follow-up donations. Some of these folks are living hand-to-mouth; they're almost literally all in, unlike any millionaire or billionaire who maxes out and gives the rest to PACs. ..."
"... And Clinton's not dumb; not dumb? mmm, Ok, is she smart? Personally, I don't think so. Conniving and persistent? absolutely. ..."
And Clinton's not dumb; she could have tried just the same strategy. Why didn't she?
Because of her consultants.
Think of it as a jobs program. Fundraising consultants are important assets throughout the
life of a campaign (including the period after the election).
The fundraisers get a cut of funds they raise (10%-20% is common, I've seen higher… even ActBlue
asks for a tip, but they ask and don't require it, and it doesn't come out of your donation, it's
on top). This is an industry, which also has vendors (NGP / VAN and other political data platforms
have fundraising modules, before merging with VAN, NGP was a stand-alone campaign accounting,
compliance, and fundraising tool).
And in case there is any lingering confusion or doubt in anyone's mind; the campaign fundraising
context is a major conduit for "constituent" input on policy. When candidates say "I've heard
from/spoken with my constituents", unless they just did a townhall meeting, they are talking about
conversations at fundraising events. The candidates feel that they are actually connecting with
their constituents… and they are, just not with all of them. Naturally, business owners and affluent
blowhards are well-represented.
Which means that backing out of the existing fundraising mechanisms would be wrenching for
campaign and candidate alike, on several levels. It would also be considered an overt act of disloyalty;
and loyalty is the coin of the realm.
Political consultants by and large, and especially in the establishment tier, operate and
strategize on the sole core premise that voters are a) stupid (in the Pavlovian sense), and b)
unreliable. The idea that small donors would be reliable over the course of a campaign is inconceivable
(the larger donors certainly aren't that reliable). And if you're willing to flip messages in
a heartbeat, it is probably not a safe bet; Sanders is pulling it off in part (so far?) through
his own massive (so far…) consistency (and legacy). Also, he's positioned so far from anybody
else (except maybe Trump?!?) that it's difficult to slipstream him and steal his donor base.
I think that some basic economic/market concepts (commitment bias, sunk costs) can
be considered as well. But the establishment consultants (who generally do quite well, thank you)
don't see a $20 donation as a significant commitment with an expectation attached; it's a restaurant
tip. BTW, Sanders' three million donations come from over one million donors, that's a rough average
of two follow-up donations. Some of these folks are living hand-to-mouth; they're almost literally
all in, unlike any millionaire or billionaire who maxes out and gives the rest to PACs.
optimader
And Clinton's not dumb; not dumb? mmm, Ok, is she smart? Personally, I don't think so.
Conniving and persistent? absolutely.
The vote count is currently 62% for Bernie and 32% for Hilary, yet she has scored 6 delegates
vs. zero for him. What am I missing (besides a functioning brain)?
Yeah but Super Delegates only exist in case commoner voters come up with the wrong answer.
Hahaha. Pathetic. I will write in Bernie regardless of how the Dems 'fix' the selection.
Super Delegates: part of the modern Dem machine. Carter was the first nominee and pres under
the super delegate system. (Started 1972 after the McGovern nomination, i.e 'wrong' answer.) Carter
was also the start of Dem presidents who de-regulate business. Super Delegates act as supporters
of the status quo, making the party less responsive to voters.
Notice the Republicans don't have super delegates. Which party is really more democratic? It's
a ratchet, there's a check on how far populist left movements go in this country, but maybe not
populist right ones.
So far the partially reported totals are from the hinterlands, which is the only possible explanation
I can offer for whoever the hell Greenstein is with 7% of the vote.
Also wrt phone banking/push polling in NH: those of us who live here know this is why caller
ID was invented, and act accordingly.
adding:
The Dems came up with the idea of super delegates after the McGovern nomination in 1972. The idea
was to keep the party bosses in control of the nominating process. Studebaker talks about Carter.
Carter was the first Dem nominee under the super delegate system.
The GOP does not have super delegates to their convention.
But just because Trump is an imperfect candidate doesn't mean his candidacy can't be instructive.
Trump could teach Republicans in Washington a lot if only they stopped posturing long enough to watch
carefully. Here's some of what they might learn:
He Exists Because You Failed
American presidential elections usually amount to a series of overcorrections: Clinton begat Bush,
who produced Obama, whose lax border policies fueled the rise of Trump. In the case of Trump, though,
the GOP shares the blame, and not just because his fellow Republicans misdirected their ad buys or
waited so long to criticize him. Trump is in part a reaction to the intellectual corruption of the
Republican Party. That ought to be obvious to his critics, yet somehow it isn't.
Consider the conservative nonprofit establishment, which seems to employ most right-of-center
adults in Washington. Over the past 40 years, how much donated money have all those think tanks and
foundations consumed? Billions, certainly. (Someone better at math and less prone to melancholy should
probably figure out the precise number.) Has America become more conservative over that same period?
Come on. Most of that cash went to self-perpetuation: Salaries, bonuses, retirement funds, medical,
dental, lunches, car services, leases on high-end office space, retreats in Mexico, more fundraising.
Unless you were the direct beneficiary of any of that, you'd have to consider it wasted.
Pretty embarrassing. And yet they're not embarrassed. Many of those same overpaid, underperforming
tax-exempt sinecure-holders are now demanding that Trump be stopped. Why? Because, as his critics
have noted
in a rising chorus of hysteria, Trump represents "an existential threat to conservatism."
Let that sink in. Conservative voters are being scolded for supporting a candidate they consider
conservative because it would be bad for conservatism? And by the way, the people doing the scolding?
They're the ones who've been advocating for open borders, and nation-building in countries whose
populations hate us, and trade deals that eliminated jobs while enriching their donors, all while
implicitly mocking the base for its worries about abortion and gay marriage and the pace of demographic
change. Now they're telling their voters to shut up and obey, and if they don't, they're liberal.
It turns out the GOP wasn't simply out of touch with its voters; the party had no idea who its
voters were or what they believed. For decades, party leaders and intellectuals imagined that most
Republicans were broadly libertarian on economics and basically neoconservative on foreign policy.
That may sound absurd now, after Trump has attacked nearly the entire Republican catechism (he savaged
the Iraq War and hedge fund managers in the same debate) and been greatly rewarded for it, but that
was the assumption the GOP brain trust operated under. They had no way of knowing otherwise. The
only Republicans they talked to read the Wall Street Journal too.
On immigration policy, party elders were caught completely by surprise. Even canny operators like
Ted Cruz didn't appreciate the depth of voter anger on the subject. And why would they? If you live
in an affluent ZIP code, it's hard to see a downside to mass low-wage immigration. Your kids don't
go to public school. You don't take the bus or use the emergency room for health care. No immigrant
is competing for your job. (The day Hondurans start getting hired as green energy lobbyists is the
day my neighbors become nativists.) Plus, you get cheap servants, and get to feel welcoming and virtuous
while paying them less per hour than your kids make at a summer job on Nantucket. It's all good.
Apart from his line about Mexican rapists early in the campaign, Trump hasn't said anything especially
shocking about immigration. Control the border, deport lawbreakers, try not to admit violent criminals
- these are the ravings of a Nazi? This is the "ghost of George Wallace" that a
Politico piece described last August? A lot of Republican leaders think so. No wonder
their voters are rebelling.
Truth Is Not Only A Defense, It's Thrilling
When was the last time you stopped yourself from saying something you believed to be true for
fear of being punished or criticized for saying it? If you live in America, it probably hasn't been
long. That's not just a talking point about political correctness. It's the central problem with
our national conversation, the main reason our debates are so stilted and useless. You can't fix
a problem if you don't have the words to describe it. You can't even think about it clearly.
This depressing fact made Trump's political career. In a country where almost everyone in public
life lies reflexively, it's thrilling to hear someone say what he really thinks, even if you believe
he's wrong. It's especially exciting when you suspect he's right.
A temporary ban on Muslim immigration? That sounds a little extreme (meaning nobody else has said
it recently in public). But is it? Millions of Muslims have moved to Western Europe over the past
50 years, and a sizable number of them still haven't assimilated. Instead, they remain hostile and
sometimes dangerous to the cultures that welcomed them. By any measure, that experiment has failed.
What's our strategy for not repeating it here, especially after San Bernardino-attacks that seemed
to come out of nowhere? Invoke American exceptionalism and hope for the best? Before Trump, that
was the plan.
Republican primary voters should be forgiven for wondering who exactly is on the reckless side
of this debate. At the very least, Trump seems like he wants to protect the country.
Evangelicals understand this better than most. You read surveys that indicate the majority of
Christian conservatives support Trump, and then you see the video: Trump on stage with pastors, looking
pained as they pray over him, misidentifying key books in the New Testament, and in general doing
a ludicrous imitation of a faithful Christian, the least holy roller ever. You wonder as you watch
this: How could they be that dumb? He's so obviously faking it.
They know that already. I doubt there are many Christian voters who think Trump could recite the
Nicene Creed, or even identify it. Evangelicals have given up trying to elect one of their own. What
they're looking for is a bodyguard, someone to shield them from mounting (and real) threats to their
freedom of speech and worship. Trump fits that role nicely, better in fact than many church-going
Republicans. For eight years, there was a born-again in the White House. How'd that work out for
Christians, here and in Iraq?
"... think there's a very real chance Trump will be elected President within the next ten years. His chances ride on the fact that the current system is terminally corrupt, as well as socially and economically bankrupt. It will crash and burn, whether in slow motion like the past eight years, or very rapidly over the next several. Someone will likely step in to fill this void, and Trump has the personality type and understanding of human nature to possibly propel himself into the position when the timing is right. ..."
"... I genuinely believe that as President he would do what he thinks is best for America. In that sense, hes not the typical detached, corrupt, greedy, globalist U.S. President weve become so accustomed to. This is precisely what his supporters are picking up on and why they love him. ..."
"... As such, the establishment really is scared because Trump actually is an uncontrollable wildcard . This is certainly bad for them, but it isnt necessarily good for we the people. ..."
"... Trump supporters see this and think this is how hes going to deal with foreign leaders and that this is a good thing. They think that hell simply outsmart them. Maybe he will and maybe he wont, who knows. Personally, Im far more concerned about how he would deal with domestic dissent. ..."
"... Which brings me to the final point. Many of Trumps personality traits are more admirable, or at least appear less nefarious than I previously thought. ..."
"... Tough is being mentally capable of winning battles against an opponent and doing it with a smile. Tough is winning systematically. ..."
In 1990, Donald Trump conducted a lengthy
interview with Playboy Magazine
. It provides an absolutely fascinating window into the man's
mind, which I suggest everyone read in full. Unexpectedly, I came away with a more informed
and nuanced perspective on the man. While it didn't change my opinion of him as President,
I do have a much greater appreciation for Donald Trump as a person, specifically how his mind works
and what drives him.
I originally came across this interview after seeing a tweet referencing a 25 year old interview
during which Trump expressed admiration for how strongly Chinese authorities cracked down on dissent
in Tiananmen Square in 1989. I immediately thought to myself that this would be the perfect fodder
to further elucidate the kind of cold, brutal, authoritarian leader Trump undoubtedly would be as
President.
While that particular quote didn't disappoint, I decided to read further and came away with many
additional observations. I think these observations are worth sharing since I think there's a very real chance Trump will be elected President within the next ten years.
His chances ride on the fact that the current system is terminally corrupt, as well as socially
and economically bankrupt. It will crash and burn, whether in slow motion like the past eight
years, or very rapidly over the next several. Someone will likely step in to fill this void, and
Trump has the personality type and understanding of human nature to possibly propel himself into
the position when the timing is right.Is the time right in 2016? Probably not, but a President Trump is far more likely to occur
in our lifetimes than many of us want to admit.
So with that out of the way, let me share some of the things I learned from the interview. First,
I think Trump is far less materialistic than people presume , which sounds like
a contradiction considering he is unquestionably one of the biggest showoffs on planet earth. While
this is true, the motivation behind his ostentatious public persona is primarily to further his brand.
As he says repeatedly in the interview, it's all a show . In other words, he claims
it's pure marketing and I believe him.
What motivates Trump isn't the collection of material things, rather, it's a constant
need to stroke his enormous ego and stoke his narcissism. Life is merely a giant game for
Trump. A game in which the winners collect lots of fame and money, and the losers don't. He doesn't
simply want to win this game, coming out on top is his entire life's purpose. The idea of not winning
isn't even an option.
So with this in mind, is the Presidency just the ultimate prize for Trump? Does
he want it simply because it is one of the few "wins" he has yet to collect? I think so. Deep down,
I think Trump can't truly envision himself as life's ultimate winner without the Presidency. This
is not to say I think Trump isn't genuine when he says America is going down the toilet. Indeed,
he was hitting on many of the exact same themes back in 1990. In fact, it gives you the impression
that Trump has thought America was lacking his entire life, precisely because Trump had yet to be
named the country's CEO.
Trump believes in winning, and he thinks he and America are one in the same. In that sense,
I
genuinely believe that as President he would do what he thinks is best for America.
In that sense, he's not the typical detached, corrupt, greedy, globalist U.S. President we've
become so accustomed to. This is precisely what his supporters are picking up on and why they love
him.
From this angle alone, he might actually have the chops to be a very good President.
This is because for a man with his disposition, being President might still not be enough
of an accomplishment. His ego will require that history remember him not just as a billionaire and
President, but as the man who "Made America Great Again," the ultimate motivator for a man who never
rests until he gets what he wants. So it's true that he really wouldn't be unduly influenced by billionaires
and large corporations if he felt they were getting in the way of his making America great (and himself
greater). Those are the positives.
As such, the establishment really is scared because Trump actually is an uncontrollable
wildcard . This is certainly bad for them, but it isn't necessarily good for "we the people."
The problem arises when it comes to Trump's definition of greatness. From my chair, he doesn't seem
to think liberty, freedom and the Constitution play much of a role. Indeed, you can get a pretty
good sense of his definition of "great" by looking at his buildings and the sorts of accomplishments
he prides himself on. He loves the shock factor and big expensive toys. He likes them because they
impress others and help his brand. There's more swagger than substance to the things he prioritizes,
at least publicly. Indeed, it's not surprising that the casino business would have a particular appeal
to him. It's a world in which customers indulge themselves in a fantasy until they run out of money
or get bored, and by the time they leave, Trump's bank account is far bigger than it was before.
He wins again.
Trump supporters see this and think this is how he's going to deal with foreign leaders and that
this is a good thing. They think that he'll simply outsmart them. Maybe he will and maybe he won't,
who knows. Personally, I'm far more concerned about how he would deal with domestic dissent.
To that end, I think one thing is clear. I think he'd take George W. Bush's "you are either with
us, or you are with the terrorists" and change it to something like "you are either with me, or you
hate America." In a collapsed economy, this sort of slogan could appeal to a lot of people, and with
an outraged public behind him, President Trump has the capacity to be incredibly cruel and vicious
to American citizens he think stand in the way of his "Making America Great."
Without any obvious respect for the Constitution or Bill of Rights, a President Trump could very
quickly transform himself into a very dangerous strongman, all the while believing that he is merely
doing what is necessary to make America great. This attitude has become painfully clear to me during
the campaign as I've watched him intentionally stir up anger and hate by demonizing minorities such
as Muslims and Mexicans. Do I think it's possible he doesn't really stand behind his own hateful
statements and is merely telling groups of frustrated people what they want to hear to get elected?
Perhaps, but such a willingness tells you a lot about the lengths he would go to win, and shines
a light on the things he's capable of doing in order to solidify and expand his power once he's won.
Which brings me to the final point. Many of Trump's personality traits are more admirable,
or at least appear less nefarious than I previously thought. Nevertheless, it is extremely crucial
to understand that the traits that make someone an incredible showman and billionaire are not the
same traits needed in a President to restore a Constitutional Republic. Not that I think
that's high on Trump's list of priorities in any event.
Now here are some of the more interesting excerpts of the interview. Read the entire thing
here
.
Then what does all this-the yacht, the bronze tower, the casinos-really mean to you?
Props for the show.
And what is the show? The show is "
Trump
" and it has sold out performances everywhere. I've had fun doing it and will continue to
have fun, and I think most people enjoy it.
You don't sound guilty at all. I do have a feeling of guilt. I'm living well and like it, I know that many other people don't
live particularly well. I do have a social consciousness. I'm setting up a foundation; I give
a lot of money away and I think people respect that. The fact that I built this large company
by myself working people respect that; but the people who are at high levels don't like it. They'd
like it for themselves.
What do you do to stay in touch with your employees? I inspect the Trump Tower atrium every morning. Walk into it … it's perfect; everything shines.
I go down and raise hell in a nice way all the time because I want everything to be absolutely
immaculate. I'm, totally hands-on. I get along great with porters and maids at the Plaza and the
Grand Hyatt. I've had bright people ask me why I talk to porters and maids. I can't even believe
that question. Those are the people who make it all work …. If they like me, they will work harder
… and I pay well.
How far are you willing to push adversaries? I will demand anything I can get. When you're doing business, you take people to the brink of
breaking them without having them break, to the maximum point their heads can handle-without breaking
them. That's the sign of a good businessman: Somebody else would take them fifteen steps beyond
their breaking point.
Why? I am very skeptical about people; that's self-preservation at work. I believe that, unfortunately,
people are out for themselves. At this point, it's to many people's advantage to like me. Would
the phone stop ringing, would these people kissing ass disappear if things were not going well?
I enjoy testing friendship …. Everything in life to me is a psychological game, a series of challenges
you either meet or don't. I am always testing people who work for me.
How? I will send people around to my buyers to test their honesty by offering them trips and other
things. I've been surprised that some people least likely to accept a trip from a contractor did
and some of the most likely did not. You can never tell until you test; the human species is interesting
in that way. So to me, friendship can be really tested only in bad times. I instinctively mistrust
many people. It is not a negative in my life but a positive. Playboy wouldn't be talking to me
today if I weren't a cynic. So I learned that from Fred, and I owe him a lot. . . . He could have
ultimately been a happy guy, but things just went the unhappy way.
And the Pope? Absolutely. Nothing wrong with ego. People need ego, whole nations need ego. I think our country
needs more ego, because it is being ripped off so badly by our so-called allies; i.e., Japan,
West Germany, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, etc. They have literally outegotized this country, because
they rule the greatest money machine ever assembled and it's sitting on our backs. Their products
are better because they have so much subsidy. We Americans are laughed at around the world for
losing a hundred and fifty billion dollars year after year, for defending wealthy nations for
nothing, nations that would be wiped off the face of the earth in about fifteen minutes if it
weren't for us. Our "allies" are making billions screwing us.
You're opposed to Japanese buying real estate in the U.S.? I have great respect for the Japanese people and list many of them as great friends. But, hey,
if you want to open up a business in Japan, good luck. It's virtually impossible. But the Japanese
can buy our buildings, our Wall Street firms, and there's virtually no.thing to stop them. In
fact, bidding on a building in New York is an act of futility, because the Japanese will pay more
than it's worth just to screw us. They want to own Manhattan. Of course, I shouldn't even be complaining
about it, because I'm one of the big beneficiaries of it. If I ever wanted to sell any of my properties,
I'd have a field day. But it's an embarrassment! I give great credit to the Japanese and their
leaders, because they have made our leaders look totally second rate.
You have taken out full-page ads in several major newspapers that not only concern
U.S. foreign trade but call for the death penalty, too. Why? Because I hate seeing this country go to hell. We're laughed at by the rest of the world. In order
to bring law and order back into our cities, we need the death penalty and authority given back
to the police. I got fifteen thousand positive letters on the death-penalty ad. I got ten negative
or slightly negative ones.
You believe in an eye for an eye? When a man or woman cold-bloodedly murders, he or she should pay. It sets an example. Nobody can
make the argument that the death penalty isn't a deterrent. Either it will be brought back swiftly
or our society will rot away. It is rotting away.
For a man so concerned about our crumbling cities, some would say you've done little
for crumbling Atlantic City besides pull fifty million dollars a week out of tourists' pockets.
Elected officials have that responsibility. I would hate to think that people blame me for the
problems of the world. Yet people come to me and say, "Why do you allow homelessness in the cities?"
as if I control the situation. I am not somebody seeking office.
Wait. Doesn't it seem that with all your influence in Atlantic City you could do more
to combat crime and corruption and put something back into the community? Well, crime and prostitution go up, and Atlantic City administrations are into very deep trouble
with the law, and there are lots of problems there, no question about it. But there is a tremendous
amount of money going to housing from the profits of the casinos. As somebody who runs hotels,
all I can do, when you get right down to it, is run the best places, bring in as much money as
possible, which in turn goes out for taxes. I contribute millions a year to various charities.
Finally, by law, I'm not allowed to have Governmental influence; but if they passed legislation
that allowed me to get more involved, I'd be very happy to do it. In the meantime, I have the
most incredible hotels in the world in Atlantic City. The Taj Mahal will be beyond belief. And
if I can awaken the government of Atlantic City, I have performed a great service.
What were your other impressions of the Soviet Union? I was very unimpressed….Russia is out of control and the leadership knows it. That's my problem
with Gorbachev. Not a firm enough hand.
You mean firm hand as in China? When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they
were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power
of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak … as being spit on by the rest of the
world-
Besides The real-estate deal, you've met with top-level Soviet officials to negotiate
potential business deals with them; how did they strike you? Generally, these guys are much tougher and smarter than our representatives. We have people in
this country just as smart, but unfortunately, they're not elected officials. We're still suffering
from a loss of respect that goes back to the Carter Administration, when helicopters were crashing
into one another in Iran. That was Carter's emblem. There he was, being carried off from a race,
needing oxygen. I don't want my President to be carried off a race course. I don't want my President
landing on Austrian soil and falling down the stairs of his airplane. Some of our Presidents have
been incredible jerk-offs. We need to be tough.
A favorite word of yours, tough. How do you define it? Tough is being mentally capable of winning battles against an opponent and doing it with a smile.
Tough is winning systematically.
Sometimes you sound like a Presidential candidate stirring up the voters. I don't want the Presidency. I'm going to help a lot of people with my foundation-and for me,
the grass isn't always greener.
But if the grass ever did look greener, which political party do you think you'd be
more comfortable with? Well, if I ever ran for office, I'd do better as a Democrat than as a Republican-and that's not
because I'd be more Republican
-and
that's not because I'd be more liberal, because I'm conservative. But the working guy would elect
me. He likes me. When I walk down the street, those cabbies start yelling out their windows.
Another game: What's the first thing President Trump would do upon entering the Oval
Office? Many things. A toughness of attitude would prevail. I'd throw a tax on every Mercedes-Benz rolling
into this country and on all Japanese products, and we'd have wonderful allies again.
And how would President Trump handle it? He would believe very strongly in extreme military strength. He wouldn't trust anyone. He wouldn't
trust the Russians; he wouldn't trust our allies; he'd have a huge military arsenal, perfect it,
understand it. Part of the problem is that we're defending some of the wealthiest countries in
the world for nothing. . . . We're being laughed at around the world, defending Japan–
You categorically don't want to be President? I don't want to be President. I'm one hundred percent sure. I'd change my mind only if I saw this
country continue to go down the tubes.
More locally, one of your least favorite political figures was Mayor Ed Koch of New
York. You two had a great time going after each other: He called you "piggy, piggy, piggy" and
you called him "a moron." Why do you suppose he lost the election? He lost his touch for the people. He became arrogant. He not only discarded his friends but was
a fool for brutally criticizing them. The corruption was merely a symptom of what had happened
to him: He had become extremely nasty, mean spirited and very vicious, an extremely disloyal human
being. When his friends like Bess Myerson and others were in trouble, he seemed to automatically
abandon them, almost before finding out what they'd done wrong. He could think only about his
own ass-not the city's. That was dumb: The only one who didn't know his administration was crumbling
around him was him. Power corrupts.
You probably have more power than Koch did as mayor. And you're getting more of it
all the time. How about power's corrupting you? I think power sometimes corrupts-"sometimes" has to be added.
You're involved in so many activities, deals, promotions-in the deep of the night,
after the reporters all leave your conferences, are you ever satisfied with what you've accomplished?
I'm too superstitious to be satisfied. I don't dwell on the past. People who do that go right
down the tubes. I'm never self-satisfied. Life is what you do while you're waiting to die. You
know, it is all a rather sad situation.
Life? Or death? Both. We're here and we live our sixty, seventy or eighty years and we're gone. You win, you win,
and in the end, it doesn't mean a hell of a lot. But it is something to do-to keep you interested.
So building that second huge yacht isn't an act of gaudy excess but another act in
the show? Well, it draws people. It will be the eighth wonder of the world and will create an aura that
seems to work. It will cost me two hundred million dollars. But I don't need it! I could be very
happy living in a one-bedroom apartment. I used to live that life. In the early Seventies, I lived
in a studio apartment overlooking a water tank.
If you were starting over again, in what business would you choose to make your fortune?
Good question …. There's something about mother earth that's awfully good, and mother earth is
still real estate. With the right financing, you've essentially invested no money. Publishing,
movies, broadcasting are tougher, and there aren't too many Rupert Murdochs, Si Newhouses, Robert
Maxwells and Punch Sulzbergers. I'll stick to real estate.
You seem very pleasant and charming during interviews, yet you talk constantly about
toughness. Do you put on an act for us? I think everybody has to have some kind of filtering system. I'm very fair and I have had the
same people working for me for years. Rarely does anybody leave me. But when somebody tries to
sucker-punch me, when they're after my ass, I push back a hell of a lot harder than I was pushed
in the first place. If somebody tries to push me around, he's going to pay a price. Those people
don't come back for seconds. I don't like being pushed around or taken advantage of. And that's
one of the problems with our country today. This country is being pushed around by everyone.
About your own toughness… Well, as I said, I study people and in every negotiation, I weigh how tough I should appear. I
can be a killer and a nice guy. You have to be everything. You have to be strong. You have to
be sweet. You have to be ruthless. And I don't think any of it can be learned. Either you have
it or you don't. And that is why most kids can get straight As in school but fail in life.
As you continue to make more deals, as you accumulate more and more, there's a central
question that arises about Donald Trump: How much is enough? As long as I enjoy what I'm doing without getting bored or tired … the sky's the limit.
The big concern as relates to Trump as President would be his strongman type of personality coupled
with a cult of personality worship amongst his followers. This worship is something that Trump himself
is well aware of, and it makes him all the more dangerous. For example, he recently
said the following
in Iowa:
Donald Trump boasted Saturday that support for his presidential campaign would not
decline even if he shot someone in the middle of a crowded street.
"I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters,"
Trump said at a campaign rally here.
big ego? check!
desire to get to the "top"? check!
thinks prez is necessary for this? check!
willing to do or say anything to get there? check!
no real convictions, just a "show"? check!
no compassion? check!
....so far, i haven't heard anything that isn't true of ANYBODY who is a serious contender for
the top office.....
"Do not let that fact escape you,people. He will protect his investments and his wealth...at your
expense when necessary."
so far his wealth and investments coincide with making all of Americas more wealthy and have higher
living standards to spend in his hotels..
Tom when you can point out where his interests are in conflict with the people let me know.
PS he says he will stop illegals who are a great source of cheap labor for hotels - kinda like
he sees the impact on ave joe america - and goes against his own ability to hire cheap..think about
that mr tom.
There's a reason I only play politics for entertainment purposes. Trying to pick the right person
is like trying to figure out who the "good guys" are in the Middle East. There aren't any.
I'll hold my observation to the following... A guy like Trump couldn't have gained traction unless
two things happened:
1. A guy like Obama giving everything from the Constitution to traditional American values the
middle finger.
2. The opposition party failing to oppose him no matter how many seats they were given in Congress.
So, congratulations Washington elites, you've now pissed everyone off and Americans (on both sides
of the aisle) are, for the first time in my life, truly ready to vote "none of the above". Hence
Trump on the right. Hence Sanders on the left.
Reap the whirwind, Washington. You have nobody to blame but yourself.
Once things for certain the next 10 months will be interesting. It would be nice to have a nationalist
back in the presidency. They really have done a great job pissing off everyone. EPA regulations that
handcuff the States developing natural resources. Bill of rights going into the shredder. Family
unit under attack. Department of Education wrecking public education. War on masculinity. War on
labor via illegal immigration. War on drugs brings pills and heroin to kids at the cheapest prices
ever. 1 in 3 women on some type of ssri drug . Yeah we have gone the tubes.
If I was to boil down the arguments for and against Trump I could go down the ledger double-entry-accounting-style
and balance off every plus with a minus. But there would be just one line on the ledger left over
with no counter-balancing liability.
George Soros hates Trump.
Find me the liability that offsets that asset. If you're looking for a simple "Occams Razor" decision
criteria maybe that's as good as any.
He's not a career parasite. That goes a long way in my book after the last several Messiahs. The
second major plus is he is in favor of a strong middle class as opposed to Soweto who sought to destroy
America's class and its values with almost every move.
I'll tell you what, watch the interview CNBC did with him strictly about real estate. Guy's a
wing nut but knows his shit. Great interview. I think it was Ron "Fantasy Portfolio" Insana.
Hollyweird always pre-conditions the USA for its money changers.
2016 is a pivotal moment. Choose, and be damned if you vote.
Chaos suits sociopaths, and the District of Criminals/Wail Street in particular. It is not about
the money. It is about sending a message: new feudalism, bowing down to bankster thieves...or not.
Our current president is one hell of a narcissist. How could it be any worse? Obama destroyed
what he said he would destroy, and a whole lot more. Maybe Trump at a minimum can stop the decline.
So Trump shared a flight with Jeffrey Epstein-- what the hell does that prove? We know about Clinton
-serial rapist, sexual predator extraordinare. Trump assocated with tons of scummy slime -people
like Hillary. The evidence on Trump and the sleazy Epstein shit proves absolutely nothing. trump
has been honest and open with his assocaitions with scumbag criminals like Clinton. Billionaires
from New York have to assocaite with pleanty of scumbag degenerate criminals -start with slime like
Bloomberg and Gulianni - both are Luciferian trashbags.
" Trump believes in winning, and he thinks he and America are one in the same. In that sense,
I genuinely believe that as President he would do what he thinks is best for America."
I agree. I've always gotten a sense that Trump genuinely loves USA. He has a vested interest business
wise to see things turn around. Contrast that with Barry Soetero who despises USA and pledged to
"fundamentally change" it. To the best of my knowledge Barry never so much as ran a lemonade stand
and can not fathom what it would take to do so successfully. Any successful Black businessman such
as Tavis Smiley would have been light years ahead of Barry running the show....
Duc888 So
restructuring is a bad thing now? He used the laws to his advantage. I'd hazard to guess he makes
more money than you or I and speaking for myself... his net worth is slightly (joking) higher than
mine. What exactly makes him "not a great manager"? Just curious.
----
Do you include the Banks, the Fed and those executives? I suppose they are great managers too.
They are just using the laws/rules to their advantage. sarc/
There's a difference between using existing law to one's advantage, and completely ignoring said
laws... not to mention buying off the legislature to change those rules....
The problem with grenades is that they could kill you too.
The USA is very much like Germany in the inter war years: an indebted nation, wanting a strong
man of rhetoric who will do more harm than good. Look at his business and personal track record.
It is bad.
Keep the Constitution. Keep the guns. Never believe a nazionist like Tramp.
His 'empire' was built on debt and backroom deals. He is indebted, another paper pusher.
So perhaps he does suit the modern USA. Pity, pity you modern serfs, wanting a narcissist, and
your betrayal of what was the light of the world, the Constitution, and Bill of Rights.
If this country can survive Barrack Obama, surely it can survive Donald Trump. I must say I thoroughly
enjoy watching the mainstream and even some of the so-called "alternatives" become utterly unhinged
as Trump runs over them all and leaves a trail of bodies a mile long. It's fantastic.
There is a very great difference in personality and background between Hitler and Trump. Hitler
did not see his job as one of winning in negotiations but of making hmself the master of Europe through
the triumph of his own Will to Power. He had an outsized goal and paid the ultimate price. Trump
is much older than Hitler was when he became chancellor of Germany at age 44. Hitler was relentlessly
aggressive and gambling for the highest stakes. Trump is far more careful. Look at how long he has
been thinking about the possibility of becoming President and how he now is acting in just the situation
in which he predicted he would run for president -- to prevent the country going down the tubes.
That's excellent timing, one must admit! Consider also his big issues: making better trade deals,
forcing countries we defend to pay for their own defense, stopping the ludicrously excessive and
indiscriminate immigration that the left is encouraging, getting along with Putin, Xi Jinping, etc.
by making intelligent deals with them, restoring American military power, replacing Obamacare, and
his general goal of "making America great again", not the master of the entire world. Of course,
if it falls in his lap ...
All I want to say is FUCK Michael Bloomberg, Hillary and Bernie. The republicans aren't any better
and are all fucking politicians that will tell you anything to get elected. I like Trump. I think
he'll actually build a fucking wall and stop the illegal immigration. If he does that ONE thing then
I'm a happy camper. You don't have a sovereign nation without borders.
Obama has done nothing he promised, as I expected. He fucked up anything he tried. All politicians
suck.
I've lived around the world. It made the NATIONAL news when they caught and deported a simple
tourist for overstaying a visa. NATIONAL news- they showed the 30 year old man being led onto an
airplane and being politely never to return. All for overstaying a visa by 60 days. He was unable
to find work other than bumming around. They fine employers severely in the rest of the world. It's
financially impossible to hire an non-citizen without a work permit. My work permit cost $5000 a
year (paid by my employer). I saw this on more than one occasion while overseas. National news. It's
a big deal in every other country.
There are more problems in America than money or the lack of jobs.
I want someone to explain to me how Trump, or any other person, under the restrictions of a Democratic
Republic and the Constitution will:
A) Reverse the 50 years of cultural decay
B) Uproot the increasing corruption in both DC and the greater nation
C) Completely remove the influence of banks, corporations and foreigners (ZIONISTS)
D) Reverse the negative birth rate for White Americans
E) Rebuild the family unit and keep it strong
F) Remove or severely limit propaganda in the media and schools that threatens the integrity of the
nation, its blood, its culture and its long term ideas (HOLLYWOOD)
and all in 4-8 years. I legitimately want an explanation.
If trump empowers Americans to finally get off the belief that they have to accept the two establishment
candidates that they choose for us -then anything is possible. We need to prove we can beat the Orwellian
Machine - that we can arise from the comfort of the Matrix and think for ourselves -that we can think
independently and make our own choice. Trump can open the door to our awakening from our slumber--
then perhaps -anything is possible.
If that occurs, it will open the door for future candidates to address your concerns -
Trump may do so, not sure that this is his passion or concern. It's somewhat irrelevant. The key
is to open the door to awaken the sleeping sheeple -so that we can make our own free choices-by electing
those who truly represent our interests.
One thing is for sure high level managers in the Federal Government who rarely do any work or
even show up to the office are shaking in their boots at the thought of a Trump Presidency. Federal
workers used to be the lowest of the low and now they're running the show. It's still the biggest
Good Ol' Boys Network around where the phrase "You're Fired" is never spoken or heard.
1. Admire the Chinese leaders who used tanks to crush unarmed stuydent protesters. Would he order
the US Army to crush US students protesting in Washington DC?
2. Believe in the ability of a macho Strongman to fix the countries problems. How often has that
worked out?
3. Believe he is that man. ???
4. Think that complex problems can be solved with simplistic answers. Would he really rip up GATT
which the US worked hard to create and reaps untold benefits from?
5, Have the support of the taxi driving fraternity. Whose opinions world-wide are somewhere to
the right of Ghengis Khan!
So very true...Mark Twain once said, "if voting made a differance, they would not let us do it".
That statemnt was true then, and more true now. This is all a game. And it astounds me how many play
right along. Its like the anti-Muslsim stuff, like I am going to get my understanding from religion
from US TV, the most controlled manipulative TV in the world, by far.
Its all about giving the people/sheep, the idea of choice/freedom, when in reality, they have
none.
Something this essay didn't pick up on that bodes well for a Trump Presidency is his belief that
one of the key reasons the country is failing is because the middle class is failing. For Trump,
success won't be success unless the middle class are winning. He stakes his reputation on it which
is everything to him.
Also, I disagree about the "strongman" threat, not that he may have some preidposition for it,
but that there's too many checks in the system for him to go too far, just like there's too many
checks for Obama to go too far as an authoritarian, although Obama has tried. I see a much greater
threat and predisposition in Obama for being an authoritarian than I see in Trump. For Trump, as
the essay describes, he truly does want to see the country do great in a way most Americans have
always seen the country; for Obama, he truly does want to see the country change in ways most Americans
wouldn't recognize, and he's crafty with slight of hand policy. This is what makes Obama's authoritarian
tendencies much more dangerous.
Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice-presidential nominee who became a Tea
Party sensation and a favorite of grass-roots conservatives, endorsed Donald J. Trump in Iowa on
Tuesday, providing him with a potentially significant boost just 13 days before the state's
caucuses.
"Are you ready for the leader to make America great again?" Mrs. Palin said with Mr. Trump by her
side at a rally at Iowa State University. "Are you ready to stump for Trump? I'm here to support
the next president of the United States - Donald Trump."
Her support is the highest-profile backing for a Republican so far. It came the same day that
Iowa's Republican governor, Terry Branstad, said he hoped that Senator Ted Cruz would be defeated
in Iowa. The Feb. 1 caucuses are a must-win for the Texas senator, who is running neck-and-neck
with Mr. Trump in state polls.
"... Nearly 20 percent of likely Democratic voters say theyd cross sides and vote for Trump, while
a small number, or 14 percent, of Republicans claim theyd vote for Clinton. When those groups were further
broken down, a far higher percentage of the crossover Democrats contend they are 100 percent sure of
switching than the Republicans. ..."
"... The idea that Trump can't beat Hillary in a fair election is coming from the camp of 2% JEB!.
Nobody actually believes it. It's just the latest in a flurry of 'stop Trump' gambits. Trump would cream
Hillary, Bernie and any of the 12 Republicans left and the American people know it. ..."
"... In America these days, it is unorthodox to tell the truth if you run for President. At least
Trump says what he thinks, even if he is uninformed, opinionated, and ignorant. Better any day than
the incorrigible liars we get who will slit your throat for the chance to be a stooge for the deep state.
..."
"... The problem with Hillary and the rest of her ilk is that they are used to trading blows with
dance of words, where the Donald just comes in with a fucking hammer and whacks every motherfucking
mole that comes pops up in his way. ..."
"... while we may be at our lowest point so far as a nation, at least Trump actually provides some
potential promise of a change in the status quo. Him and a VP like Rand Paul could actually do SOMETHING
positive for the United States, unlike every single other candidate who would just run it right into
the ground every single time they open their mouth or sign a bill (or veto it), kind of like our dear
Magik Negrow. ..."
"... Is Trump the end all be all? No. But he is probably the best shot we have had in a long time
for actually making some kind of change. While Ron Paul or Ross Perot had better policy, they never
stood a chance because the MSM shuts them out. ..."
"... I was not intending to hate on Trump (though I can't stand Hitlery) but rather was commenting
on the state of affiars these days. It's all theater anyway.....it's just the cost of our tickets is
astronomical. ..."
"... Christ on a crutch, people, she ordered a staffer to strip off the headers and send it to me
in reference to classified material being sent to an illegal server in somebody's basement? ..."
At this point, it's become abundantly clear that Donald Trump's brazen rhetoric and unorthodox
campaign strategy (which primarily involves simply saying whatever pops into his head with no filter
whatsoever) isn't a liability.
In fact, the bellicose billionaire's style and penchant for controversy has catapulted the real
estate mogul to the top of the polls leaving but one serious challenger (Ted Cruz) for the GOP nomination.
Recently, Trump has taken aim at Hillary Clinton, calling her "disgusting," a "liar", and insisting
that she's "married to an abuser." His first television ad opens with a black and white image Obama
and Clinton who are referred to only as "the politicians" (a nod to Trump's contention that he's
trustworthy precisely because he comes from outside the Beltway, so to speak).
... ... ...
According to a survey conducted by Washington-based Mercury Analytics, 20% of likely Democratic
voters say they'd cross sides and vote for Trump. Here's more
from US News & World Report :
So if Donald Trump proved the political universe wrong and won the Republican presidential
nomination, he would be creamed by Hillary Clinton, correct?
A new survey of likely voters might at least raise momentary dyspepsia for Democrats
since it suggests why it wouldn't be a cakewalk.
The survey by Washington-based Mercury Analytics is a combination online questionnaire and
"dial-test" of Trump's first big campaign ad among 916 self-proclaimed "likely voters" (
this video shows the ad and the
dial test results). It took place primarily Wednesday and Thursday and has a margin of error of
plus or minus 3.5 percent.
Nearly 20 percent of likely Democratic voters say they'd cross sides and vote for Trump,
while a small number, or 14 percent, of Republicans claim they'd vote for Clinton. When those
groups were further broken down, a far higher percentage of the crossover Democrats contend they
are "100 percent sure" of switching than the Republicans.
When the firmed showed respondents the Trump ad, and assessed their responses to each moment
of it, it found "the primary messages of Trump's ad resonated more than Democratic elites
would hope."
About 25 percent of Democrats "agree completely" that it raises some good point, with an
additional 19 percent agreeing at least "somewhat."
Mercury CEO Ron Howard, a Democrat whose firm works for candidates in both parties and corporate
clients, concedes, "We expected Trump's first campaign spot to strongly appeal to Republican Trump
supporters, with little impact – or in fact negative impact – on Democratic or independent voters."
He continues, "The challenge to Hillary, if Trump is the nominee and pivots to the
center in the general election as a problem-solving, independent-minded, successful 'get it done'
businessman is that Democrats will no longer be able to count on his personality and outrageous
sound bites to disqualify him in the voters' minds."
MalteseFalcon
The idea that Trump can't beat Hillary in a fair election is coming from the camp of 2%
JEB!. Nobody actually believes it. It's just the latest in a flurry of 'stop Trump' gambits. Trump
would cream Hillary, Bernie and any of the 12 Republicans left and the American people know it.
Of course Trump will not be the Republican nominee, because as the softer options fail, more
stringent measures will be applied.
Perimetr
In America these days, it is "unorthodox" to tell the truth if you run for President. At
least Trump says what he thinks, even if he is uninformed, opinionated, and ignorant. Better any
day than the incorrigible liars we get who will slit your throat for the chance to be a stooge
for the deep state.
Escrava Isaura
Perimetr: In America these days, it is "unorthodox" to tell the truth
Agree. It starts by the title of this article. There's only TWO polls that shows Trump ahead:
What I would give to watch the Donald 3=====>SCHLONG<=====3 Clinton in a public debate. I'm
pretty sure her head would explode from the overload of no-fucks-given, lack of PC your a fucking
criminal diatribe that would come out of his mouth.
The problem with Hillary and the rest of her ilk is that they are used to trading blows
with dance of words, where the Donald just comes in with a fucking hammer and whacks every motherfucking
mole that comes pops up in his way.
And to your point - while we may be at our lowest point so far as a nation, at least Trump
actually provides some potential promise of a change in the status quo. Him and a VP like Rand
Paul could actually do SOMETHING positive for the United States, unlike every single other candidate
who would just run it right into the ground every single time they open their mouth or sign a
bill (or veto it), kind of like our dear Magik Negrow.
Is Trump the end all be all? No. But he is probably the best shot we have had in a long
time for actually making some kind of change. While Ron Paul or Ross Perot had better policy,
they never stood a chance because the MSM shuts them out. You cannot just shut out Trump
though. He shuts you out!
Look at it the positive way. If Trump ends up turning his back on us like the rest, at least
our Titanic will sink with a fucking circus playing for entertainment until the very end!
Occams_Chainsaw -> Welfare Tycoon
I was not intending to hate on Trump (though I can't stand Hitlery) but rather was commenting
on the state of affiars these days. It's all theater anyway.....it's just the cost of our tickets
is astronomical.
Creepy Lurker
Welfare and Occam,
I can't even comprehend why Hillary is still walking free at this point, and everyone is debating
policy? Really?
Where is the public outrage? WTF? Even more, WHY isn't this plastered all over? WHY isn't this
on the lips and keyboards of everyone, everywhere? THAT'S a bigger scandal than the shit she actually
did! Christ on a crutch, people, she ordered a staffer to "strip off the headers and send
it to me" in reference to classified material being sent to an illegal server in somebody's basement?
Have we really fallen so far into banana republic world that no one is outraged? And this person
is running for President? Fucking really????
Should Hillary cut the chase and just hire Karl Rove ? She a a neocon like him, so it will be a
good match.
Notable quotes:
"... Mr. Sanders fundraising has surpassed expectations. Lacking the donor network the Clinton
family built over a quarter century on the national stage, Mr. Sanders has nearly matched her fundraising
haul. ..."
"... Oh, Hillary! Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns were large investment banks. They werent the
largest, but they definitely were banks. And giant investment bank Goldman Sachs was connected at the
hip to AIG. I cant help noticing that she failed to mention Washington Mutual or Countrywide Finance,
two large banks / savings and loan associations, which were also neck deep in the collapse. ..."
"... Sociopaths always have a slick rationalization at hand, to recast their venal predation as
self-sacrificing philanthropy. ..."
Clinton, in Iowa: ""You know, I think Bernie's giving a speech today in New York about what
he wants to do to shut down the big banks. Everybody who's looked at my proposals says my proposals
are tougher, more effective, more comprehensive. Because, yeah, I take on the banks, but remember,
part of what caused the mess we had in '07-'08 were not the big banks. It was Lehman Brothers.
It was Bear Stearns. It was AIG, the giant insurance company. I want to go after everybody who
poses a risk to our financial system," Clinton said to applause from the more than 500 people
crowded into the lobby of Sioux City's historic Orpheum Theater" [
Des Moines Register ]. Chutzpah! And very Rovian: Assault your enemy's strength.
Clinton: "There needs to be a rival organization to the NRA of responsible gun owners" [
Raw Story ].
The Voters
"POLITICO has learned that his campaign several months ago assembled an experienced data team
to build sophisticated models to transform fervor into votes" [
Politico ]. "The team is led by two low-profile former Republican National Committee data
strategists, Matt Braynard and Witold Chrabaszcz, and includes assistance from the political data
outfit L2."
Money
"Mr. Sanders's fundraising has surpassed expectations. Lacking the donor network the Clinton
family built over a quarter century on the national stage, Mr. Sanders has nearly matched her
fundraising haul. In the final quarter of 2015, he raised more than $33 million, compared
to her $37 million. In the third quarter, the Sanders campaign collected $26 million; the Clinton
campaign, $28 million" [
Wall Street Journal ]. Without PAC and SuperPAC money, or the
"ginormous and ever-evolving hairball of tangled and conflicted personal and institutional relationships"
that you get with the corrupt Clinton dynasty, either.
Selected Skeptical Comments
Vatch , January 6, 2016 at 2:23 pm
Clinton, in Iowa: "… but remember, part of what caused the mess we had in '07-'08 were
not the big banks. It was Lehman Brothers. It was Bear Stearns. It was AIG, the giant insurance
company."
Oh, Hillary! Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns were large investment banks. They weren't
the largest, but they definitely were banks. And giant investment bank Goldman Sachs was connected
at the hip to AIG. I can't help noticing that she failed to mention Washington Mutual or Countrywide
Finance, two large banks / savings and loan associations, which were also neck deep in the collapse.
Jim Haygood , January 6, 2016 at 2:41 pm
Hillary focuses on the investment banks because her consort, "Bill," signed the repeal of the
Glass-Steagall Act in 1999.
Letting commercial banks into investment banking helped fuel the housing securitization bubble
that culminated in the 2008 crisis, as well as the perceived need to extend TARP loans to every
TBTF bank (since their investment banking activities made them riskier and increased their capital
needs during financial stress).
Sociopaths always have a slick rationalization at hand, to recast their venal predation
as self-sacrificing philanthropy.
Synoia , January 6, 2016 at 4:16 pm
Clinton: "There needs to be a rival organization to the NRA of responsible gun owners"
"... So self-identifying as a Republican now means associating yourself with a party that has moved sharply to the right since 1995. If you like, being a Republican used to mean supporting a party that nominated George H.W. Bush, but now it means supporting a party where a majority of primary voters **** support Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. Being a Democrat used to mean supporting a party that nominated Bill Clinton; it now means supporting a party likely to nominate, um, Hillary Clinton. And views of conservatism/liberalism have probably moved with that change in the parties. ..."
"... Yes the differences between candidates may not be nearly as great as you want it to be - but the idea that it makes no difference whether the GOP or Democratic candidate gets to be president is idiotic. Anybody who can be bothered looking through executive actions during Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama years will recognize a huge difference. ..."
"... The world of the NY Times, Wapo, the Atlantic, the New Republic, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, National Review - its all one intellectually gated community where the affluent talk among themselves at the club house about their slightly different approaches to maintaining order are protecting elite privileges and power. ..."
"... I didnt say they were either stupid or corrupt. They are intelligent people whose political orientation reflects the general predilections and interests of their class. Thats really not much different than most people in America. But the class divides are intensifying, which is why the discourse of that establishment group is of increasingly diminished relevance to what the other 80% of the country is talking about. ..."
"... The difference between Sanders and Clinton when it comes to income inequality, TBTF, and financial regulation is stark. These economic issues are studiously avoided by DeLong and Krugman because they are, and always have been, loyal insiders to the establishment. ..."
"... I took it that what Julio was mainly referring to was that the establishment discourse has moved so far to the right that someone like Krugman now represents the far left of what that establishment will tolerate. ..."
"... I think Krugman the columnist started as someone above the fray , engaged in an academic exercise; and has since learned he must support his allies, even if he has intellectual disagreements with them. ..."
"... However there is one key difference: Sanders has been able to energize the Democratic base in a way that Clinton the policy wonk simply cant. ..."
"... The studied failure of the fierce critic of the Washington Post and New York Times from the economics department of the University of California at Berkeley to so much as regret the firing of the only writer on labor affairs at either paper tells of just how little regard there is for the affairs of ordinary workers. ..."
"... Even Brookings is getting worried about whats going on with the growing cultural isolation of the relatively affluent: ..."
"... I had a very similar experience with the people I met at my Ivy League university. A depressing percentage of the student body consisted of spoiled trust fund babies, many of whom were apparently ignored or otherwise mistreated by their parents and exhibited a shocking array of psychological and substance abuse problems. ..."
"... But these people were of a distinctly different class than the many nominally upper-middle class people I encounter in daily life. Even now, high as my household income is, I would immediately be detected as a mere prole by them, a lower class person. ..."
"... Fitzgerald was absolutely right -- the truly well off are indeed different from you and me. Even if you dont realize it, rest assured that they do. ..."
"... The concept of class is also just a model, and not rigidly tied to economic markers. People in comparable occupational settings or type of economic participation can have very different incomes and ability to afford certain lifestyles. ..."
"... E.g. regardless of your pay level, if your occupational situation is such that you have to essentially show up for work every day and follow somebody elses directives (to make a relatively low-risk income), then it would be a stretch to consider you upper middle class. ..."
"... From what Ive observed, following the 2008 crash a lot of upper-middle class people suddenly realized that the differences between themselves and those living in poverty are actually much smaller than the differences between themselves and the truly wealthy. ..."
You might think that this is obvious. But on the left, in particular, there are some people
who, disappointed by the limits of what President Obama has accomplished, minimize the differences
between the parties. Whoever the next president is, they assert - or at least ... if it's not
Bernie Sanders - things will remain pretty much the same, with the wealthy continuing to dominate
the scene. ...
But the truth is that Mr. Obama's election ... had some real, quantifiable consequences. ...
If Mitt Romney had won, we can be sure that Republicans would have found a way to prevent these
tax hikes. ...
Mr. Obama has effectively rolled back not just the Bush tax cuts but Ronald Reagan's as well...,
about $70 billion a year in revenue. This happens to be in the same ballpark as both
food stamps
and ... this year's net
outlays
on Obamacare. So we're not talking about something trivial.
Speaking of Obamacare, that's another thing Republicans would surely have killed if 2012 had
gone the other way. ... And the effect on health care has been huge...
Now, to be fair, some
widely predicted
consequences of Mr. Obama's re-election - predicted by his opponents - didn't
happen. Gasoline prices didn't soar. Stocks didn't plunge. The economy didn't collapse..., and
the unemployment rate is a full point lower than the rate Mr. Romney promised to achieve by the
end of 2016.
In other words, the 2012 election didn't just allow progressives to achieve some important
goals. It also gave them an opportunity to show that achieving these goals is feasible. No, asking
the rich to pay somewhat more in taxes while helping the less fortunate won't destroy the economy.
So now we're heading for another presidential election. And once again the stakes are high.
Whoever the Republicans nominate will be committed to destroying Obamacare and slashing taxes
on the wealthy - in fact, the current G.O.P. tax-cut plans make the Bush cuts look puny. Whoever
the Democrats nominate will, first and foremost, be committed to defending the achievements of
the past seven years.
The bottom line is that presidential elections matter, a lot, even if the people on the ballot
aren't as fiery as you might like. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Via Noah Smith, * an interesting back-and-forth about the political leanings of professors.
Conservatives are outraged ** at what they see as a sharp leftward movement in the academy:
[Graph]
But what's really happening here? Did professors move left, or did the meaning of conservatism
in America change in a way that drove scholars away? You can guess what I think. But here's some
evidence. First, using the DW-nominate measure *** - which uses roll-call votes over time to identify
a left-right spectrum, and doesn't impose any constraint of symmetry between the parties - what
we've seen over the past generation is a sharp rightward (up in the figure) move by Republicans,
with no comparable move by Democrats, especially in the North:
[Graph]
So self-identifying as a Republican now means associating yourself with a party that has
moved sharply to the right since 1995. If you like, being a Republican used to mean supporting
a party that nominated George H.W. Bush, but now it means supporting a party where a majority
of primary voters **** support Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. Being a Democrat used to mean supporting
a party that nominated Bill Clinton; it now means supporting a party likely to nominate, um, Hillary
Clinton. And views of conservatism/liberalism have probably moved with that change in the parties.
Furthermore, if your image is one of colleges being taken over by Marxist literary theorists,
you should know that the political leanings of hard scientists are if anything more pronounced
than those of academics in general. From Pew: *****
[Chart]
Why is this? Well, climate denial and hostility to the theory of evolution are pretty good
starting points.
Overall, the evidence looks a lot more consistent with a story that has academics rejecting
a conservative party that has moved sharply right than it does with a story in which academics
have moved left.
Now, you might argue that academics should reflect the political spectrum in the nation - that
we need affirmative action for conservative professors, even in science. But do you really want
to go there?
Wild conservatives have been attacking supposed liberals at universities since the time of Joseph
McCarthy. The attacks have changed in nuance now and again but been persistent since the close
of the 1940s. Whether the attacks extend back before the late 1940s is a matter I have to look
into.
DeDude :
Yes the differences between candidates may not be nearly as great as you want it to be - but
the idea that it "makes no difference" whether the GOP or Democratic candidate gets to be president
is idiotic. Anybody who can be bothered looking through executive actions during Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama
years will recognize a huge difference.
Dan Kervick :
Elections matter. Nominations matter too. But the only nomination battle Paul Krugman is apparently
interested in is the Republican one, which he trolls constantly to amuse himself. This despite
the fact that there are very major policy difference, both foreign and domestic, present on the
Democratic side - along with major differences in political alliances, monetary support bases
and key constituencies.
Paul Krugman is a middle of the road, mainstream fellow who manages to line up on the "left"
according to the austerely conservative economic standards of the establishment media. If Krugman
were chief economic adviser - or even president - nothing very important in America would change
economically. So when he tries to tell "progressives" about what would advance "their goals",
his words are a good candidate for in one ear, out the other treatment.
Harold Meyerson, the Democratic Socialist op-ed columnist for Wapo, was just canned by Fred
Hiatt. Apart from removing another left wing economic voice from the establishment public sphere,
this helps clear the decks for a 2017 Middle East war after Clinton gets control of the war room
from Obama. Not a word on that firing from sometime scourge of the Washington Post, Brad DeLong
- who I guess is pretty cool with it.
The world of the NY Times, Wapo, the Atlantic, the New Republic, LA Times, Chicago Tribune,
Wall Street Journal, National Review - it's all one intellectually gated community where the affluent
talk among themselves at the club house about their slightly different approaches to maintaining
order are protecting elite privileges and power.
Dan Kervick -> EMichael...
I didn't say they were either stupid or corrupt. They are intelligent people whose political
orientation reflects the general predilections and interests of their class. That's really not
much different than most people in America. But the class divides are intensifying, which is why
the discourse of that establishment group is of increasingly diminished relevance to what the
other 80% of the country is talking about.
Dan Kervick -> EMichael...
That's what the elite is always going to do. People who are interested in significant social change
should never count on elitists coming down out of the clouds to save them.
anne -> Dan Kervick...
Harold Meyerson, the Democratic Socialist op-ed columnist for Wapo, was just canned by Fred Hiatt....
Not a word on that firing from sometime scourge of the Washington Post, Brad DeLong - who I guess
is pretty cool with it....
[ Telling and saddening, but this should not be a surprising silence by an academic who periodically
wildly smashes liberals. ]
"Paul Krugman is a middle of the road, mainstream fellow..."
I am old enough to remember a time when he would have been one. But not now.
"So when he tries to tell "progressives" about what would advance "their goals", his words
are a good candidate for in one ear, out the other treatment."
No: they are a candidate for a place to start a conversation with liberals, to expand their
views of what's possible.
Krugman is not interested in such discussions. As has been pointed out several times, he and DeLong
have studiously avoided any engagement with the issues that are being hotly contested in the Democratic
Party's primary campaign. They are bright and well-informed fellows, so this is no ignorant oversight
and is certainly a deliberate, tactical political choice.
EMichael -> Dan Kervick...
Why in the world do you care why two economists who you disrespect on many levels have not discussed
the Dem candidates?
yuan -> EMichael...
Funny how you skipped over the word "issues" and moved the goal post to "dem candidates".
The difference between Sanders and Clinton when it comes to income inequality, TBTF, and
financial regulation is stark. These economic issues are studiously avoided by DeLong and Krugman
because they are, and always have been, loyal insiders to the establishment.
"The difference between Sanders and Clinton when it comes to income inequality, TBTF, and
financial regulation is stark."
Sanders shouts about income inequality but like Hillary has no real plan to impact it except
at the margins.
On financial regulation also, Sanders makes the louder noises and trots out Glass Steagall
often, but Hillary, not Bernie, is the one who actually has a coherent and plausible plan for
limiting systemic financial risk. Bernie fans seem fundamentally incapable of unwilling to process
this fact, to the detriment of everyone.
Syaloch -> Dan Kervick...
I take exception to your (mis)use of Krugman to support your narrative. As Julio notes above (I
think), Krugman's early writings were notably more middle of the road; he started off as a committed
centrist, taking on left and right equally whenever he felt one side or the other was peddling
nonsense. Over time I've seen his writing become more political and more consistently liberal,
even as his paycheck has presumably increased.
As an example, back in the '90s Krugman was slamming Robert Reich as a nonsense-peddling "policy
entrepreneur", but by 2015 he was writing a glowing review of Reich's book, "Saving Capitalism".
Dan Kervick -> Syaloch...
I took it that what Julio was mainly referring to was that the establishment discourse has
moved so far to the right that someone like Krugman now represents the far left of what that establishment
will tolerate.
I would not call his review "glowing", but I agree with your example.
I think Krugman the
columnist started as someone "above the fray", engaged in an academic exercise; and has since
learned he must support his allies, even if he has intellectual disagreements with them.
So? If I am correct in stating that he represents a lot of the liberal spectrum, then those
are the people we need to move "left" or, as I prefer to put it, enlarge their view of what's
possible.
Sanders IMO is doing a good job of this. He is being loudly ignored by Krugman, which makes
your point; and also by a lot of liberals who think he cannot win because, um, he's unelectable
-- which makes mine.
It doesn't seem like we disagree much on the background facts. But if someone is engaging in a
deliberate strategy of ignoring the left, there doesn't seem to be much point in pretending they
are having a discussion with the left.
One way to try to move more people to the left is to encourage them to stop lending so much
credence to establishment opinions. Krugman's ego is big enough that if he detects his relevance
and popularity slipping away, he will move along with the zeitgeist to go where the people are.
Bernie Sanders Hints At What A Sanders Administration Cabinet Could Look Like
Democratic presidential candidate and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) offered a first glimpse
on Sunday of some of the people he might consider for his cabinet in a potential Sanders administration,
and a few that he certainly won't.
"My cabinet would not be dominated by representatives of Wall Street," Sanders said on CNN's
"State of the Union." "I think Wall Street's played a horrendous role in recent years, in negatively
impacting our economy and in making the rich richer. There are a lot of great public servants
out there, great economists who for years have been standing up for the middle class and the working
families of this country."
Prompted by host Jake Tapper, Sanders went on to praise Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist
and Nobel Prize-winning economist. Krugman is a vocal opponent of tax cuts for the rich, and he
has warned readers for years about the dangers of income inequality. "Krugman does a great job,"
Sanders said.
Also doing a great job, Sanders said, is Columbia University economics professor and Nobel
laureate Joseph Stiglitz, whose recent work has focused on the perils of radical free markets,
such as those espoused by some in the libertarian wing of the GOP.
Sanders also singled out Robert Reich, the former labor secretary under President Bill Clinton,
now a professor at the University of California at Berkeley: "I think [he] is doing a fantastic
job." Reich has long been an influential backer of labor unions, which have come under attack
from Republican governors in recent years.
Still, Sanders said, "it's a little bit too early, I must say, to be appointing a cabinet.
Let me get elected first."
In recent weeks, Sanders' long shot campaign for the Democratic nomination has captured a swell
of momentum on the left, drawing larger crowds in Iowa than Hillary Clinton, the presumed Democratic
front-runner.
"All over this country, younger people, working people, elderly people, are moving in our direction,
because they want a candidate to take on the establishment," Sanders said.
I don't think Krugman disagrees with Sanders, but he seems to ignore him. Like everyone else in
the media, he's devoted much more time to the Republicans.
But that's because it's always been his style to write that way. Krugman has always spent most
of his effort attacking those who he perceives as peddling nonsense, or providing additional evidence
to back up a position he has taken against a nonsense peddler. He rarely spends time talking about
those he agrees with. Even in cases where he has written approvingly about Obama or the ACA, he's
done so primarily as a counterweight to all those he sees taking the opposite (and incorrect)
view.
While he hasn't said much about Sanders aside from praising his example of Denmark as a role
model for change, he hasn't said a whole lot about Clinton either. Probably his most explicit
comment on either was in his column comparing their proposed Wall Street reforms, where he concluded:
"If a Democrat does win, does it matter much which one it is? Probably not. Any Democrat is
likely to retain the financial reforms of 2010, and seek to stiffen them where possible. But major
new reforms will be blocked until and unless Democrats regain control of both houses of Congress,
which isn't likely to happen for a long time.
"In other words, while there are some differences in financial policy between Mrs. Clinton
and Mr. Sanders, as a practical matter they're trivial compared with the yawning gulf with Republicans."
Yes, but there are clearly more differences between Clinton and Sanders than just differences
over financial policy - the most obvious and large one being their differences over health care.
Syaloch -> Dan Kervick...
In terms of what they're likely to be able to deliver in the current political climate there really
doesn't seem to be that much difference between them.
However there is one key difference: Sanders has been able to energize the Democratic base
in a way that Clinton the policy wonk simply can't.
But we digress.
pgl -> Dan Kervick...
Bernie is endorsing single payer. That was HillaryCare ala 1993. That was her position in 2008...
Dan Kervick -> pgl...
What the heck are you talking about? The Clinton health Care Plan of 1993 was not a single payer
plan. The 2008 plan was also by no means a single payer plan. And single payer is certainly not
her position now, since she has come out strongly against it on the oh-so-progressive grounds
that it will ... (gasp) ... raise taxes! Good grief.
Dan Kervick -> Syaloch...
Do you really think that the differences between Sanders and Clinton on how college education
is to be paid for, to take one example, is trivial?
Painting the large differences between Clinton and Sanders as trivial seems like a case of
dumbing down the debate so that people don't pay attention to it.
Krugman frequently devotes a great deal of time to people who are not peddling nonsense. He
just participated in an involved debate with DeLong and Summers, two people he agrees with on
most issues. And he has done the same in many past columns debating the views of various esteemed
economics colleagues at length.
pgl -> Syaloch...
"Sanders went on to praise Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning
economist. Krugman is a vocal opponent of tax cuts for the rich, and he has warned readers
for years about the dangers of income inequality."
Even more places where Bernie Sanders has basically called JohnH a liar.
If I am correct in stating that he represents a lot of the liberal spectrum, then those are the
people we need to move "left" or, as I prefer to put it, enlarge their view of what's possible.
Sanders IMO is doing a good job of this. He is being loudly ignored by Krugman...
[ Nicely expressed. ]
pgl -> Dan Kervick...
So go write these comments over at Paul's place. Oh wait - you are a coward. Never mind.
You know, of all the insults you freely toss about, this "cowardice" one is the dumbest. We're
all here to discuss Thoma's selections, but we're cowards if we criticize them here?
Dan Kervick -> pgl...
I have written several comments at "Paul's" blog that were directly critical of his arguments.
I have also posted many critical comments on Twitter directly @ Krugman. I have no problem going
right at people. But I don't like the NY Times format as much because it is harder to have a live
debate there.
anne -> Dan Kervick...
The word "troll" is used to intimidate and silence, and used to depict the writer in question
is wildly false and mean-spirited.
Dan Kervick -> anne...
Lol... yeah, I know the feeling.
Sanjait -> pgl...
Delong isnt a socialist, democratic or otherwise.
And this bent of creating purity tests for commentators and politicians to define who is sufficiently
progressive or more progressive or whatever, it reeks of Republicans and their conservative tribalism.
It's asinine and anti intellectual, and I condemn it unequivocally.
Dan Kervick -> Sanjait...
It's not a purity test of any kind. I don't know what "purity" means in this context. There is
no sense in which democratic socialists are "purer" than liberals. They just have different values
and goals. For socialists, a society based on sharing, solidarity, equality and cooperation is
the highest ideal, where for liberals the highest idea is the expression of personal liberty,
potential and individuality. There are certainly ways in which these outlooks can find specific
expressions at a given point in time that involve significant overlap, but their chief governing
ideals are different.
I agree with you completely that DeLong simply has a different ideology or social philosophy than
someone like Sanders or Meyerson, and I object to the dumbing down of the debate between these
two camps by such trite slogans as "Oh, you know after all, we are all on the same team". That's
silly. It confuses the highly contingent, shifting and adventitious alliances that are part of
the American party system with the coherence of a philosophical stance. These differences and
disputes should be debated, instead of attempting to muddy and flatten them all under the foolish
fantasy that it doesn't make a dime's worth of difference whether a society moves toward an ideal
of progress fashioned from democratic socialist principles or one fashioned from liberal principles.
I brought DeLong in this context because he is a noted scourge of the Washington Post and its
op-ed writers, so if he had any sympathy for Meyerson's views, this would be more low-hanging
fruit for him. But nothing so far. And my guess is that the main reason is that Meyerson is just
not DeLong's cup of tea. But who knows. the year is young.
Sanjait -> Dan Kervick...
Tl;dr
What I do notice is a lot of navel gazing talk about how "left" this or that commentator is,
which as I said is asinine, anti-intellectual, and ironically very similar to the way conservatives
operate.
Dan Kervick -> Sanjait...
Great. You think it's navel gazing. Easy for you to say from your desk writing insurance policies
or whatever the hell it is you do. But it does make a real difference to millions and millions
of people who don't have the lives you and I have, and whose lives aren't going to get *notably*
better once Krugman, DeLong and Summers decide which particular version of capitalist oppression
their best models point toward. Those people are dying of American capitalism, and their kids
are going to die of it too, and whether the ruling class decides on one set of interest rates
or a slightly higher set of interest rates only marginally affects the precise speed at which
the barons who own their lives are able to kill them.
If people have the honestly to tell me, "Look, I'm a believer in good ol' American capitalism,
and that lefty stuff just won't fly with me," that's one thing. But when they try to convince
me that the kind of world they are after is really the same kind of world I want, just so I'll
vote for their politicians - then I get ornery. Maybe I'd have an easier time with the conservatives
because at least the look me in the face and say, "I hate your pinko guts".
The debate has gotten half crazy. Someone like Brad DeLong has called himself a "card-carrying
neoliberal". And yet I get pilloried for calling DeLong a neoliberal - as though I libeled him
- or for calling attention to the apparently uncomfortable fact that since neoliberals are obviously
not leftists, then DeLong is no kind of leftist whatsoever. Or for noting that since DeLong is
a loyal student of his mentor and adviser Larry Summers - who is about as mainstream a player
as they come in the global capitalist system - that makes Delong a thoroughly establishment economist.
(This isn't about "purity". DeLong is not an "impure" half-assed lefty. He's just a mainline capitalist.)
Or for having the audacity to want to *debate* from the left the ideas that come up here instead
of joining in with the yea-and-amen corner where everybody just agrees with one another. Oh no,
we're all on the same team! Stop being such an annoying troll and criticizing the team! Larry
Summers - that great man on the make who was the highest paid professor in the history of Harvard,
and sold himself and his thoroughly mainstream "advice" to some Wall Street firm for $5 million/yr
in between other gigs - he's also on the team bro!
I've made many good faith efforts in the past to calmly debate the ideas of people whose moral
outlooks I disdain and whose best proposals amount to no more than marginal differences in a system
I detest. In return, I get insulted routinely and asked to leave. But hey, we're all on the same
team!
It seems to me that the liberals are having a crisis of faith and confidence because their
late 20th century paradigm is crumbling apart from the inside, they don't know what to replace
it with, and they don't know what side they are going to end up standing on when it falls. Look
at poor pgl. He can't even remember what "single payer" means any more. I haven't encountered
a single liberal Clinton supporter who is positively enthusiastic about Hillary Clinton. Frankly,
they all seem defensive at best about her, and somewhat scared. But they fell in early with the
TINA argument and the strategy of smothering debate under the Clinton machine, and now having
let the Inevitability Express get so far down the tracks they don't know what else to do. And
when that crazed, neocon-tilting fanatic launches her global military crusades in 2017, you guys
will all be investing some sob story about how Bush is to blame, or Reagan is to blame, or Calvin
Coolidge or William McKinley is to blame. A fat lot of good that will do the body parts she scatters
all over the West Bank, Syria, Iran or whatever other places we're into by then.
Krugman had a meltdown last week - as he and the other chronic countercyclical stabilizers
apparently do whenever anybody uses that dangerous and threatening word "structural", pointing
at the possibility of changing the system and not just stabilizing it - because even a middle
of the road guy like Tim Taylor had the audacity to "change the subject" and talk about something
he actually wants talk about ... as though Paul Krugman gets to decide what the "subject" is,
and everyone who doesn't talk about what Krugman demands they talk about is written up for changing
that subject. Screw Krugman. He wouldn't know what "the subject" is if he tripped over it lying
in the street on his way to some Manhattan train station. In fact, he probably has tripped over
it.
I'm so tired of dealing with liberals with their chronic cases of double-think, unresolved
intellectual conflicts, self-deluding irony and fuzzy, snarky ambivalence about everything. Pick
a damn side. You are either with the plutocratic owners who dominate and run everyone else's lives
- or you are on the side of taking them down and leveling the field.
No Happy New Year at the Washington Post: Harold Meyerson Gets the Boot
The Washington Post opinion pages is not a place most people go for original thought, even
if they do provide much material for Beat the Press. One major exception to the uniformity and
unoriginality that have marked the section for decades was Harold Meyerson's column. Meyerson
has been writing a weekly column for the Post for the last thirteen years. He was told by opinion
page editor Fred Hiatt that his contract would not be renewed for 2016. *
According to Meyerson, Hiatt gave as his reasons that his columns had bad social media metrics
and that he focused too much on issues like worker power. The first part of this story is difficult
to believe. Do other Post columnists, like Beat the Press regulars Robert Samuelson and Charles
Lane, really have such great social media metrics?
As far as the second part, yes Meyerson was a different voice. His columns showed a concern
for the ordinary workers who make up the overwhelming majority of the country's population. Apparently
this is a liability at the Post.
The studied failure of the fierce critic of the Washington Post and New York Times from the
economics department of the University of California at Berkeley to so much as regret the firing
of the only writer on labor affairs at either paper tells of just how little regard there is for
the affairs of ordinary workers.
Not surprising, but disappointing nonetheless.
Sanjait -> anne...
Oh please.
Delong has been writing loudly about the need for pro labor fiscal and monetary policy for
the last 6 years. He's a leading voice on this topic, despite being "shrill."
To anyone that has been paying attention even a little, he has more than firmly established
his concern for workers.
You're just weirdly upset because he called the Yale protesters stupid. Others here are upset
because, like conservative tribalists, they think the best way to promote progressive causes is
to ignore fact based debates and instead talk about who is or isn't an apostate. It's really very
ugly.
ken melvin -> Dan Kervick...
Two states, maybe?
am -> Dan Kervick...
Harold Meyerson, the Democratic Socialist op-ed columnist for Wapo, was just canned by Fred Hiatt.
Apart from removing another left wing economic voice from the establishment public sphere, this
helps clear the decks for a 2017 Middle East war after Clinton gets control of the war room from
Obama. Not a word on that firing from sometime scourge of the Washington Post, Brad DeLong - who
I guess is pretty cool with it.
This is from your comment. You go from the sacking of a journalist to clearing the ground for
a middle east war and then connect it all to Brad De Long. I hope you see the defects in your
thinking.
Dan Kervick -> am...
OK, let's wait and see what DeLong says.
However, I stand by the idea that one of Hiatt's beefs with Meyerson is that Meyerson is a
critic of the generally neoconservative foreign policies that Hiatt staunchly promotes. I think
Hiatt is likely rubbing his hands in glee over the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency, since
her foreign policy will be much more aggressive and neocon-friendly than Obama's - and also much
more so than a president Trump, for that matter, whom the neocons despise and fear.
djb -> Dan Kervick...
sorry to bother you dan but I couldn't help notice your comment to Egmont about consumption being
greater than income
"As you can see, consumption runs consistently and significantly higher than wages and salaries."
why do you think that is?
Dan Kervick -> djb...
djb, to be accurate, I pointed out that consumption was higher than wage and salary income. And
clearly one reason for that is that is that wage and salary income is only one portion of national
income. Besides other returns to labor like bonuses, a lot of income consists in profits and other
returns to capital.
Dan Kervick :
Even Brookings is getting worried about what's going on with the growing cultural isolation
of the relatively affluent:
This Brookings piece doesn't contribute much of anything to the conversation either. Mostly it
just provides a working definition of upper middle class. The "getting worried" part is pretty
much limited to the conclusion, and even then mostly outsourced to a conservative writer over
at Slate:
And if we go and read the Slate piece we find out that it's mostly BS -- even the Brookings
article warns us in advance that it's "hyperbole, of course."
All of that said I do think there is an important point to be made, one that I was making the
other day -- if you let a small number of people accumulate extreme levels of wealth, these people
will tend to focus their philanthropic efforts on the sorts of problems that get discussed in
their rather limited social circle, which may not be what the broader population views as the
most pressing issues. However, I was talking about billionaires (and tech billionaires in particular,
who tend to view things through an even narrower lens. In contrast, here we're talking about a
much larger and more diverse group -- 15-20% of the working-age population according to the article
-- many of whom came from middle class or lower-middle class backgrounds and who strongly identify
with these groups and their concerns.
EMichael -> Syaloch...
Of course it doesn't contribute to the discussion, not unless you read between the kervick lines
and understand that the separation is sinister, aided and abetted by pols and economists on both
sides as they are all elites.
"When everyone is out to get you, paranoia is just being careful." Dan K, err, I mean Woody Allen.
Dan Kervick -> Syaloch...
The Brookings title for the article describes the separation as "dangerous". Isn't that an instance
of worrying?
The point isn't that the upper middle class is engaged in some sort of sneaky, diabolical plot
to "ruin" America, but rather that the emergence of growing cultural, educational and economic
gaps between different classes of Americans is bad for the country, and that the greater the degree
of class separations, the greater likelihood that the discourse of people who belong to a particular
class will tend to reflect the preoccupations and values of that class alone.
At all times and in all societies the preoccupation of those who have most greatly benefited
from a given social order will tend to be focused on how to defuse, appease or discipline dissenting
elements without disrupting the social order.
Syaloch -> Dan Kervick...
The Brookings title appears to be mere clickbait, with little in the article to back the claim
up. The main thrust of the piece is that those who've managed to make it to the upper end of the
middle class have been more successful than those with less income. Big surprise there.
I have no objection to the claim that growing economic gaps are bad for the country. However,
I do think your attempt to cast this as an internal conflict within the middle class is nonsense.
I mean, Bernie Sanders' net worth is reportedly $700,000, which is roughly three times the
median for someone his age ($232,100 as of 2013). Isn't he part of this elite class you describe,
doing what elites always do? Does his political orientation reflect the general predilections
and interests of his class?
Dan Kervick -> Syaloch...
It seems to me the article documents trends in several areas, all meant to back up the summary
story told in the opening paragraph:
"The American upper middle class is separating, slowly but surely, from the rest of society.
This separation is most obvious in terms of income-where the top fifth have been prospering while
the majority lags behind. But the separation is not just economic. Gaps are growing on a whole
range of dimensions, including family structure, education, lifestyle, and geography. Indeed,
these dimensions of advantage appear to be clustering more tightly together, each thereby amplifying
the effect of the other."
cm -> Syaloch...
Considering current real estate evaluations (I suppose Mr. Sanders owns a house), I don't think
700K is a net worth that confers any kind of elite status (where in this discussion "elite" must
be understood as being able to set or influence policy, without necessarily holding public office).
Syaloch -> cm...
The current median sales price for homes in Burlington VT is around $270,000, so Sanders must
be living in an "elite" home appropriate to his class.
More seriously, I don't think $700K necessarily confers elite status either, I'm just poking
holes in the arguments of those who want to drive wedges between different segments of the middle
class.
Dan Kervick -> Syaloch...
I don't think it's so much a matter of driving wedges, but recognizing the wedges that are already
there.
Of course, some individual people who have lots of money are capable of adopting political
stances that range outside their class interests. The similarity between political outlook and
class interest is a strong general tendency, not an iron rule.
Syaloch -> Dan Kervick...
Your understanding of class relationships is flawed.
Perhaps one has to actually be part of the upper middle class to see how these things actually
work?
The county where I live is one of the richest in the country, and it consistently votes Democrat.
But then again the cost of living is very high here, so a lot of people who appear to have high
incomes by national standards actually live quite modest lifestyles. And many people who live
here came from other lower-income areas to find work, and probably relate most strongly with the
places and backgrounds from which they came (even after 25 years of living in the DC suburbs my
wife and I still tend to answer the question, "where are you from?" with the states we were born
in).
The relationship between income and "class interest" is apparently quite complicated.
cm -> Syaloch...
**my wife and I still tend to answer the question, "where are you from?" with the states we were
born in**
Isn't that what the questioner is actually asking? I always understood this question as "what
is your cultural (often more specifically ethnic) background". The question often comes in the
form "where's your *accent* from".
Syaloch -> cm...
Sometimes it's unclear, but generally the context is ah, so you're a visitor here, where is your
home located?
We still have a hard time saying we're "from" Virginia, as the part of Virginia that borders
DC bears little relationship culturally, politically, or economically with the rest of the state.
Culturally we're still very much Northerners.
cm -> Syaloch...
Perhaps, though I often respond jokingly stating the city where I live, and then there is *always*
the clarification "no where are you originally from". The larger area here has a lot of immigration
from other places (inside and outside the US), and a lot of people with immigrant family background.
It seems to be a common (and reliable) conversation opener.
cm -> Syaloch...
"The relationship between income and "class interest" is apparently quite complicated."
A large part of the complication is adjustment to local cost structures. Another is that "class"
is a fairly abstract concept, which I define more by socioeconomic autonomy and participation
in the societal decision making process (at higher or lower levels) than by income. Of course
the former strongly correlates with income. E.g. when obtaining one's income absolutely requires
personal daily commitment to some activity (e.g. employment), one cannot be consider "upper" of
anything.
I would even question whether middle to upper corporate management falls in the upper middle
class - let's say Director to VP levels. They are paid quite well and can generally afford living
in "good neighborhoods" with higher end houses and cars, and perhaps even domestic "help", but
can they influence policy outside their company?
And one more before the day's round of media stuff begins.
Another weirdly persistent myth is that rich people vote Democratic, while working stiffs vote
Republican. Here's Tucker Carlson: *
"OK, but here's the fact that nobody ever, ever mentions - Democrats win rich people. Over
100,000 in income, you are likely more than not to vote for Democrats. People never point that
out. Rich people vote liberal. I don't know what that's all about."
Actually, people mention this alleged fact all the time - but the truth is just the opposite.
From the 2006 exit polls:
Vote by Income (Total) Democrat Republican
Less than $100,000 (78%) 55% 43%
$100,000 or more (22%) 47% 52%
And the fact that people with higher incomes are more likely to vote Republican has been consistently
true since 1972. **
The interesting question is why so many pundits know for a fact something that simply ain't
so.
As I pointed out in an earlier post, * there's a weird myth among the commentariat that rich
people vote Democratic. There's another strange thing about that myth: the notion that income
class doesn't matter for voting, or that it's perverse, has spread even as the actual relationship
between income and voting has become much stronger.
Larry Bartels ** offers us these data, which I also provide in "Conscience of a Liberal," on
white voting patterns in presidential elections by income:
Democratic Share of Vote
1952-1972
Bottom third ( 46)
Middle third ( 47)
Top third ( 42)
Democratic Share of Vote
1976-2004
Bottom third ( 51)
Middle third ( 44)
Top third ( 37)
As you can see, a 4-point difference between top and bottom became a 14-point difference.
Andrew Gelman et al *** offer us an election-by-election graph; the dots represent an estimate
of the effect of income on the tendency to vote Republican, the whiskers the range of statistical
uncertainty. Again, a weak link in the earlier period, except when Barry Goldwater was the candidate,
and a much stronger link since then.
So the conventional pundit wisdom about the relationship between class and voting is, literally,
the opposite of the truth.
If you are trying to suggest that a mere prole couldn't possibly understand how the well-off people
actually think, you may be comforted to know that my wife and I are comfortably part of that upper
20%.
The people I am criticizing are the kinds of people I have known all my life. I went to college
and graduate school with them, and have known them socially and professionally. Quite the contrary
to your suggestion, I think if people from humbler walks of life had a clearer idea of how knowledge
class yuppies actually think and talk when they are not behaving themselves in public forums and
trying to act like compassionate and concerned citizens, the resentment and determination to act
on the part of the former would be even more intense than it is now.
I dearly recall the day one of my college friends told me that it was so unfair that smart
college kids might be subject to the same kinds of military service requirements that less educated
people faced, because the college kids "had so much more to lose." Their heads, after all, were
stuffed with big, valuable, meaningful brains; while the existences of the plebs were so much
less meaningful. Of course, she's probably running some health care outfit these days.
Syaloch -> Dan Kervick...
I had a very similar experience with the people I met at my Ivy League university. A depressing
percentage of the student body consisted of spoiled trust fund babies, many of whom were apparently
ignored or otherwise mistreated by their parents and exhibited a shocking array of psychological
and substance abuse problems.
The most shocking incident I encountered was when a decent-seeming girl I met at the beginning
of sophomore year calmly explained during a discussion with myself and a high school friend the
"difference between black people and [n-word]s" as if this were a totally natural and uncontroversial
position. And she wasn't from the Deep South, either -- she was from Columbia MD.
But these people were of a distinctly different class than the many nominally upper-middle
class people I encounter in daily life. Even now, high as my household income is, I would immediately
be detected as a "mere prole" by them, a "lower class" person.
Fitzgerald was absolutely right -- the truly well off are indeed different from you and
me. Even if you don't realize it, rest assured that they do.
cm -> Dan Kervick...
Did your friend actually say these things about the brain value or are you extrapolating?
I had to go to military service *before* going to college, before the question of occupational
deferments could even come up, and incidentally so that the conscripts could be coerced with the
threat of having their college admission canceled. It was a good opportunity to purge our heads
of some of the highschool knowledge and attitudes, and fill it with more practical things like
avoiding or shirking work assignments, creative ways of procuring and hiding alcohol, and learning
a bit about sizing up people and power dynamics as well as losing some illusions about the universality
of human qualities. The latter part was actually useful.
cm -> Dan Kervick...
The concept of class is also just a model, and not rigidly tied to economic markers. People
in comparable occupational settings or type of economic participation can have very different
incomes and ability to afford certain lifestyles.
This is not only related to geographic differences, but jobs with similar skill profiles and
job content can have significantly different pay/perk structures across public/private sector,
different industries, and even within the same company. And by significantly I mean easily 2X.
E.g. regardless of your pay level, if your occupational situation is such that you have
to essentially show up for work every day and follow somebody else's directives (to make a relatively
low-risk income), then it would be a stretch to consider you upper middle class.
cm -> cm...
This is in response to your "wedges" comment, which may not be obvious in the web page layout.
Dan Kervick -> cm...
I definitely agree with those observations, although I have to say that following the crash in
2008 I was startled to realize just how much truth there is in the old Marxian idea that in an
economic pinch, people will rapidly form coalitions with other people on the basis of economic
affinities to protect their mutual interests.
cm -> Dan Kervick...
It is probably less about *mutual* interests and more about *common* interests. OTOH (but perhaps
fundamentally the same phenomenon) I and others have observed how people switch (declared?) allegiances
and ideological leanings and patterns of acting, as well the people they associate with, when
changing occupational roles, e.g. from individual contributor to manager or lower to middle management.
That usually comes with an income bump, but I don't think it is much related to income level.
Syaloch -> cm...
From what I've observed, following the 2008 crash a lot of upper-middle class people suddenly
realized that the differences between themselves and those living in poverty are actually much
smaller than the differences between themselves and the truly wealthy.
This is the first realistic analysis of why Trump is so attractive as politician and as Presidential
candidate. Great job Atlantic! Still some nuances are missing. Complete domination of Democratic Party
by neoliberal "fat cats" and Hillary as one of the most jingoistic candidates, a real neocon even in comparison
with Jeb Bush -- in a country that is fed up with neocon foreign policy never mentioned. From one comment
from the article " And those looking in from the outside have no clue as to the enormity of voter
establishment rejection from all parties. MSM still refuses to put forth the truth about Independents."
Notable quotes:
"... White Middle Americans express heavy mistrust of every institution in American society: not
only government, but corporations, unions, even the political party they typically vote for-the Republican
Party of Romney, Ryan, and McConnell, which they despise as a sad crew of weaklings and sellouts. They
are pissed off. And when Donald Trump came along, they were the people who told the pollsters, "That's
my guy." ..."
"... Across Europe, populist parties are delivering a message that combines defense of the welfare
state with skepticism about immigration; that denounces the corruption of parliamentary democracy and
also the risks of global capitalism. ..."
"... These populists seek to defend what the French call "acquired rights"-health care, pensions,
and other programs that benefit older people-against bankers and technocrats who endlessly demand austerity;
against migrants who make new claims and challenge accustomed ways; against a globalized market that
depresses wages and benefits. In the United States, they lean Republican ..."
"... A majority of Republicans worry that corporations and the wealthy exert too much power. Their
party leaders work to ensure that these same groups can exert even more. Mainstream Republicans were
quite at ease with tax increases on households earning more than $250,000 in the aftermath of the Great
Recession and the subsequent stimulus. Their congressional representatives had the opposite priorities.
In 2008, many Republican primary voters had agreed with former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who
wanted "their next president to remind them of the guy they work with, not the guy who laid them off."
..."
"... Their rebellion against the power of organized money has upended American politics in ways
that may reverberate for a long time. To understand what may come next, we must first review the recent
past. ..."
"... Until this decade, however, both parties-and especially the historically more cohesive Republicans-managed
to keep sufficient class peace to preserve party unity. Not anymore, at least not for the Republicans.
..."
"... Trump Republicans were not ideologically militant. Just 13 percent said they were very conservative;
19 percent described themselves as moderate. Nor were they highly religious by Republican standards.
..."
"... What set them apart from other Republicans was their economic insecurity and the intensity
of their economic nationalism ..."
"... He promised to protect their children from being drawn into another war in the Middle East,
this time in Syria. "If we're going to have World War III," he told The Washington Post in October,
"it's not going to be over Syria." As for the politicians threatening to shoot down the Russian jets
flying missions in Syria, "I won't even call them hawks. I call them the fools." ..."
"... Its a good analysis, but lacks one important point. If Republicans do go into a defensive crouch,
time is not on their side. ..."
"... And those looking in from the outside have no clue as to the enormity of voter establishment
rejection from all parties. MSM still refuses to put forth the truth about Independents. ..."
"... Nixons southern strategy changed this. All the conservatives (of the south) exited the Democratic
party for the GOP. This radicalized the GOP. Eventually Rockefeller Republicans no longer existed -
killed off by Reagans revolution. ..."
"... However elites still controlled both parties. Dems nominated Clinton and Obama who were conservative
Dems but only in the sense of giving in to the economic elites wishes: free trade, deregulation etc...
The GOPs base became increasingly radicalized. The elite pandered to the base to win elections but abandoned
their interest in favor of tax cuts and immigration after elections. ..."
"... What you had was a political void at the base of the GOP that was hermetically sealed off at
the sides by the 2 party system and from above by the elites. ..."
"... In steps Trump - who is more than willing to descend down from the elite status in favor of
the rabble. This is not unlike FDR doing the same - but from the left, which was much kinder. ..."
"... The only thing going for the elites is that there are populist insurgencies in both parties
- so that might split up popular interest enough to sustain at least one elite candidate in one of the
major parties. ..."
"... Fact: in real terms the average wage peaked more than 40 years ago http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...
Very few single wage families can make it, especially when well-educated high tech workers replaced
by H1 and H2 B imports at lower wages ..."
"... There was a fundamental shift in corporate policy after the Great Recession. Employees are
considered a financial liability instead of an asset. Unfortunately, bean counters run everything now.
..."
"... I went back to school and got certified in computer technology. Guess what I found when I went
looking for a job? Contract work only at the low end of the wage spectrum. MikeyArmstrong (below) couldnt
be more right. Bill gates is the biggest perpetrator of this fallacy when he made that statement about
the USA not having enough skilled workers. Why pay an American a living wage when you can pay a skilled
off-shore worker just a fraction of that cost. ..."
"... One of the problems with oligarchies anywhere in the world is that theyd rather import a middle
management class that had no ties to the local lower classes than to improve education and promote the
best and brightest of the lower classes, who might have more divided loyalties. The New Deal and the
WW II era GI Bill were exceptions to this ..."
"... Absolute nonsense. H1 and H2B workers are a necessity to corporations because they do not require
a living wage, the way Americans with the same or better education do. It is entirely about sending
all the profits to the topmost execs and shareholders by stripping it from the people who do the work.
..."
"... The governments H1B Visa programs are to blame for the influx of foreign workers, and undermining
the market dynamics that support Americans. ..."
"... Education is not the principal reason for the poor economic circumstances of the white middle
class. It is the reluctance of the wealthy to invest in the fast-fading industrial sector. Finance and
its attendant scams yields far greater returns than the manufacture and sale of useful objects. ..."
"... When I was young my parents warned me to get a high school diploma or there would nothing but
a scarcity of low-paying jobs for me when I go it alone. Then it was a bachelors degree and now its
a masters. If this trend continues, we will be a nation of educated derelicts. Like the PhDs standing
in long lines to apply for a job at the first McDonalds franchise in the former Soviet Union. ..."
"... The difference being in the case of 2016 America blaming immigrants for our poor economic circumstances
would be correct and its not just uneducated white folks. In fact the black population has been the
hardest hit by the importation of cheap third world labor. Even our educated middle class is taking
a massive hit through H1-B workers being brought in by the elites. Just ask the laid off workers at
Disney. ..."
White Middle Americans express heavy mistrust of every institution in American society: not
only government, but corporations, unions, even the political party they typically vote for-the Republican
Party of Romney, Ryan, and McConnell, which they despise as a sad crew of weaklings and sellouts.
They are pissed off. And when Donald Trump came along, they were the people who told the pollsters,
"That's my guy."
They aren't necessarily superconservative. They often don't think in ideological terms at all.
But they do strongly feel that life in this country used to be better for people like them-and they
want that older country back.
You hear from people like them in many other democratic countries too. Across Europe, populist
parties are delivering a message that combines defense of the welfare state with skepticism about
immigration; that denounces the corruption of parliamentary democracy and also the risks of global
capitalism. Some of these parties have a leftish flavor, like Italy's Five Star Movement. Some
are rooted to the right of center, like the U.K. Independence Party. Some descend from neofascists,
like France's National Front. Others trace their DNA to Communist parties, like Slovakia's governing
Direction–Social Democracy.
These populists seek to defend what the French call "acquired rights"-health care, pensions,
and other programs that benefit older people-against bankers and technocrats who endlessly demand
austerity; against migrants who make new claims and challenge accustomed ways; against a globalized
market that depresses wages and benefits. In the United States, they lean Republican because
they fear the Democrats want to take from them and redistribute to Americans who are newer, poorer,
and in their view less deserving-to "spread the wealth around," in candidate Barack Obama's words
to "Joe the Plumber" back in 2008. Yet they have come to fear more and more strongly that their party
does not have their best interests at heart.
A majority of Republicans worry that corporations and the wealthy exert too much power. Their
party leaders work to ensure that these same groups can exert even more. Mainstream Republicans were
quite at ease with tax increases on households earning more than $250,000 in the aftermath of the
Great Recession and the subsequent stimulus. Their congressional representatives had the opposite
priorities. In 2008, many Republican primary voters had agreed with former Arkansas Governor Mike
Huckabee, who wanted "their next president to remind them of the guy they work with, not the guy
who laid them off." But those Republicans did not count for much once the primaries ended, and
normal politics resumed between the multicultural Democrats and a plutocratic GOP.
This year, they are counting for more. Their rebellion against the power of organized money
has upended American politics in ways that may reverberate for a long time. To understand what may
come next, we must first review the recent past.
Meanwhile, the dividing line that used to be the most crucial of them all-class-has increasingly
become a division within the parties, not between them. Since 1984, nearly every Democratic presidential-primary
race has ended as a contest between a "wine track" candidate who appealed to professionals (Gary
Hart, Michael Dukakis, Paul Tsongas, Bill Bradley, and Barack Obama) and a "beer track" candidate
who mobilized the remains of the old industrial working class (Walter Mondale, Dick Gephardt, Bill
Clinton, Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton). The Republicans have their equivalent in the battles between
"Wall Street" and "Main Street" candidates. Until this decade, however, both parties-and especially
the historically more cohesive Republicans-managed to keep sufficient class peace to preserve party
unity. Not anymore, at least not for the Republicans.
,,, ,,, ,,,
When Trump first erupted into the Republican race in June, he did so with a message of grim pessimism.
"We got $18 trillion in debt. We got nothing but problems … We're dying. We're dying. We need money
… We have losers. We have people that don't have it. We have people that are morally corrupt. We
have people that are selling this country down the drain … The American dream is dead."
That message did not resonate with those who'd ridden the S&P 500 from less than 900 in 2009 to
more than 2,000 in 2015. But it found an audience all the same. Half of Trump's supporters within
the GOP had stopped their education at or before high-school graduation, according to the polling
firm YouGov. Only 19 percent had a college or postcollege degree. Thirty-eight percent earned less
than $50,000. Only 11 percent earned more than $100,000.
Trump Republicans were not ideologically militant. Just 13 percent said they were very conservative;
19 percent described themselves as moderate. Nor were they highly religious by Republican standards.
What set them apart from other Republicans was their economic insecurity and the intensity
of their economic nationalism . Sixty-three percent of Trump supporters wished to end birthright
citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants born on U.S. soil-a dozen points higher than the
norm for all Republicans. More than other Republicans, Trump supporters distrusted Barack Obama as
alien and dangerous: Only 21 percent acknowledged that the president was born in the United States,
according to an August survey by the Democratic-oriented polling firm PPP. Sixty-six percent believed
the president was a Muslim.
Trump promised to protect these voters' pensions from their own party's austerity. "We've got
Social Security that's going to be destroyed if somebody like me doesn't bring money into the country.
All these other people want to cut the hell out of it. I'm not going to cut it at all; I'm going
to bring money in, and we're going to save it."
He promised to protect their children from being drawn into another war in the Middle East,
this time in Syria. "If we're going to have World War III," he told The Washington Post in October,
"it's not going to be over Syria." As for the politicians threatening to shoot down the Russian jets
flying missions in Syria, "I won't even call them hawks. I call them the fools."
He promised a campaign independent of the influences of money that had swayed so many Republican
races of the past.
"I will tell you that our system is broken. I gave to many people. Before this, before two
months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what?
When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there
for me. And that's a broken system."
He promised above all to protect their wages from being undercut by Republican immigration policy.
... ... ...
David Frum is a senior editor at The Atlantic and the chairman of Policy Exchange. In 2001-2002,
he was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush.
deanfromoregon
Its a good analysis, but lacks one important point. If Republicans do go into a defensive
crouch, time is not on their side. The youth, and every demographic gaining numbers is not
Republican. So their ability to block change will erode with time. They have to figure out how
to come to grops witht he future. They can neither go back, not prevent the future from happening.
Courageousmisterj > deanfromoregon
Been hearin that one for 30 years. Ain't happened yet.
OrangePolicy > Courageousmisterj
I'm mixed. I don't think the GOP will be a presidential party anytime soon but they're not
dead or irrelevant by any measure.
Damascusdean > OrangePolicy
They are still alive and have some advantages. Their older, whiter constituency turns out in
off years. And they have advantages in low population states, each having the same senators as
California. But time will erode these advantages.
DavidBN > Damascusdean
And they have advantages in low population states, each having the same senators as California.
Their majority in the House is much bigger than their majority in the senate.
Mr. Fusion > DavidBN
Gerrymandering has its advantages.
DavidBN > Mr. Fusion
It does. Demographic changes are slow and are predictable. The Republican party has effectively
neutralized the effects of any demographic shift for the next thirty years or so. This internal
upheaval that they didn't foresee is a bigger problem.
Larry Rappaport > Jimmy Kurian
And those looking in from the outside have no clue as to the enormity of voter establishment
rejection from all parties. MSM still refuses to put forth the truth about Independents.
Morning internal report, Trump 38% - Clinton 8% - Rubio 6% - Cruz 24%. I've never seen anything
like this. One thing is for sure, the GOP Establishment is looking for the paddles, Clear! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz
POW! Call the time please.
In 1918 the Allies insisted on a liberal German government sans Kaiser in order to arrive at
a armistice. That's how we got the Wiemar constitution. The German Elite worried that in a democracy
the working class, which had all the numbers, would vote their interest - socialist &/or communist.
So, as an attempt to mitigate against this, before soldiers were decommissioned from the German
army they had to sit through some right-wing propaganda indoctrination. Hitler was one of those
propaganders.
Hitler's German Workers party was an attempt by the right to set up a party on the right that
would appeal to the workers and lower middle class, the rabble. They did that through nationalism,
unilateralism/anti-internationalism.
Because the Nazi's delivered the numbers, the center of power slid away from the elites down
to him, the rabble. The rest as they say is history.
In the U.S. there were two reasons why this was thought couldn't happen - the two party system.
A) Each party had is share of liberals and conservatives B) Each party was controlled by elites
so that power could never completely flow down to the radicals.
Nixon's southern strategy changed this. All the conservatives (of the south) exited the
Democratic party for the GOP. This radicalized the GOP. Eventually Rockefeller Republicans no
longer existed - killed off by Reagan's revolution.
However elites still controlled both parties. Dems nominated Clinton and Obama who were
conservative Dems but only in the sense of giving in to the economic elites wishes: free trade,
deregulation etc... The GOP's base became increasingly radicalized. The elite pandered to the
base to win elections but abandoned their interest in favor of tax cuts and immigration after
elections.
What you had was a political void at the base of the GOP that was hermetically sealed off
at the sides by the 2 party system and from above by the elites.
In steps Trump - who is more than willing to descend down from the elite status in favor
of the rabble. This is not unlike FDR doing the same - but from the left, which was much kinder.
The only thing going for the elites is that there are populist insurgencies in both parties
- so that might split up popular interest enough to sustain at least one elite candidate in one
of the major parties. On the other hand, you could have a 3rd and 4th party candidate in
the general. Not seen anything like this, I think, since 1860 election.
Your comments are quite astute, in 1928 Hitler's National socialist party received 2.6% of the
vote, but after economic collapse and hyperinflation he received 44% of the vote in 1933. However,
America of 2016 is very different than Germany of 1933. The economy is improving, but obviously
some have been left behind, uneducated white folks who are looking for somebody to scapegoat or
blame for their poor economic circumstances. In 1933 Germany, it was the Jews who were to blame,
in 2016 America it is immigrants. Fortunately they are the minority although they represent a
significant percent of the republican party.
"some have been left behind, uneducated white folks"
Shibboleth
Fact: in real terms the average wage peaked more than 40 years ago
http://www.pewresearch.org/fac... Very few single wage families can make it, especially when
well-educated high tech workers replaced by H1 and H2 B imports at lower wages
The H1 and H2B workers have been a necessity because our education system hasn't been producing
enough highly trained, self disciplined candidates in engineering and other STEAM fields.
There was a fundamental shift in corporate policy after the Great Recession. Employees are
considered a financial liability instead of an asset. Unfortunately, bean counters run everything
now. That's why when some companies buck the trend and give ALL their employees huge benefits,
bonuses, etc. it is news-worthy.
"What they are worth" is what employers have to pay to attract them as employees. Unfortunately
the government-imposed H1 and H2B foreign worker program has interfered in the normal market dynamics,
at the expense of the American worker. Similarly, illegal immigration has interfered in the market
dynamics of low-wage workers, and created a welfare class. If there were no illegal immigrants,
the "jobs Americans won't do" would pay a wage that would make it worth taking those jobs. And
our social costs (including taxes) could be lower. It's been the downside of "Hope and Change."
I went back to school and got certified in computer technology. Guess what I found when I
went looking for a job? Contract work only at the low end of the wage spectrum. MikeyArmstrong
(below) couldn't be more right. Bill gates is the biggest perpetrator of this fallacy when he
made that statement about the USA not having enough skilled workers. Why pay an American a living
wage when you can pay a skilled off-shore worker just a fraction of that cost.
One of the problems with oligarchies anywhere in the world is that they'd rather import a
middle management class that had no ties to the local lower classes than to improve education
and promote the best and brightest of the lower classes, who might have more divided loyalties.
The New Deal and the WW II era GI Bill were exceptions to this (and how a number of farm
kids got educations. Asian elites would import Chinese; European elites imported Jews; the US
South brought down Northern managers. And the southern elites could tell museum directors not
to do anything to make the mill hands dissatisfied with their lot in life as late as the 1980s.
The US stereotypes bright engineering and computer science people far more than Nicaragua does.
See any media depictions of the office computer guy (The Americans is fairly classic). The cool
kids major in pre-law (and Robert E. Lee failed to get Washington and Lee redirected to technology
-- it's still a pre-law/liberal arts school for the most part). This is most unfortunate, but
saves lots of money that would be needed to actually improve US education (the other classic Southern
statement was, "We don't need to improve education here. All these people are going to do is become
mill hands."
Absolute nonsense. H1 and H2B workers are a "necessity" to corporations because they do not
require a living wage, the way Americans with the same or better education do. It is entirely
about sending all the profits to the topmost execs and shareholders by stripping it from the people
who do the work.
That doesn't make any sense. All companies would move these jobs offshore if they could - these
jobs are the ones that need to remain here. The government's H1B Visa programs are to blame
for the influx of foreign workers, and undermining the market dynamics that support Americans.
Our wages will never "balance" with the rest of the world unless our standard of living drops.
And that need not happen - Americans are the perfect blend of innovation, flexibility, and hard
work, and have been for 100+ years. This will keep us at the forefront, and the world will continue
to benefit from us. Unless our government continues to screw things up.
Why have we been innovative, flexible, and hard working? I'd argue it is due in no small par to
the immigrants we constantly allow to come in. The provide new perspectives to spur the innovation
you mention and force flexibility and hard work from all in order to compete in a labor market
that is more competitive due to it being open instead of artificially restricted. Walling ourselves
off to gain selfish and ultimately short term personal advantages in the labor market is a surefire
way to squander the advantages you mention that keep our economy strong. That lowering tide will
lower all boats and bite our children if not ourselves in the long term.
Education is not the principal reason for the poor economic circumstances of the white middle
class. It is the reluctance of the wealthy to invest in the fast-fading industrial sector. Finance
and its attendant scams yields far greater returns than the manufacture and sale of useful objects.
The jobs of the future, says the BLS, will not require the level of education that has created
a debt swamp for the young, although degrees will be used as sorting devices in a glutted labor
market.
When I was young my parents warned me to get a high school diploma or there would nothing
but a scarcity of low-paying jobs for me when I go it alone. Then it was a bachelor's degree and
now it's a master's. If this trend continues, we will be a nation of educated derelicts. Like
the PhDs standing in long lines to apply for a job at the first McDonald's franchise in the former
Soviet Union.
The difference being in the case of 2016 America blaming immigrants for our poor economic
circumstances would be correct and it's not just "uneducated white folks." In fact the black population
has been the hardest hit by the importation of cheap third world labor. Even our educated middle
class is taking a massive hit through H1-B workers being brought in by the elites. Just ask the
laid off workers at Disney.
Sanders would not want to split the Democrat vote, and the truth of the matter is that Donald
Trump does NOT actually want to BE President. This was one of his fun things to do as a Billionaire.
Get up in front of people on a National stage, voice your opinion loudly, maybe come in second
or make some kind of decent show for the ego and then go Trump up another reality show to sell
to the networks. But win? Are you kidding me? That's too much work and if I believe Donald Trump
knows one thing, it is how many people and how much work it would take for him to be President.
Endless meetings with morons both foreign and domestic that you have to attend? Long hours, little
appreciation, and missing time with your gorgeous young wife? And for that salary? Again, are
you kidding me?
He has already said that when he donates, all he needs to do is go to the guys who won the
elections and they do what he asks, Why does he need to be one of those guys?
Answer: He doesn't and he doesn't want to be. Being #1 was great. Staying #1 began to become
a nightmare when he realized that he really could actually win the Republican nomination and so
he started saying more insulting and traditionally outrageous (and vote losing) statements. I
can see him asking himself in the mirror now, "What does it take to get these people to think
I'm too brash, hard lined, and insulting to everyone to be voted in as President? Who haven't
I insulted yet?"
100% spot on. Trumps problem now is that the GOP base is even dumber than he thought, the more
crazy stuff he says to lose support, the more the sheep clamor for him.
Jeb Bush alone has gotten more from Wall Street than the Democrats & Chris Christie is close.
"Republicans beating Clinton, Dems in Wall Street donations"
Also worth noting how much more Wall Street gave to Romney than Obama in the 2012 cycle
"Yet by the end of the 2012 campaign, Wall Street donors had given $64.3 million to Mitt Romney
and $19.3 million to the same man they had poured money into just four years before and who was
running as the sitting president."
http://thehill.com/homenews/ca...
Statetheobvious > ruralblake
And yet Hillary and Obama are loyal Wall Street lapdogs almost as much as the GOP. Whoever
wins the nomination (unless it's Sanders) is getting the big money. The entire system needs reform.
Starting with stacking SCOTUS to overturn Citizens United. The fact that no Democratic lobby group
has a case making its way through the courts to challenge CU shows how incredibly pathetic Democrats
are.
"... Of Trumps opponents for the Republican nomination, the only one I can grudge up any interest for is Rand Paul, who is a truly disruptive figure without being a maniac. ..."
"... But he appears to have a near-zero chance of winning the partys nomination. ..."
"... Hillary is the opposite of a disrupter; she is the racketeer Godmother. ..."
"... Hillary would inspire no trust among a fractious population out for revenge against the very enablers of Hillarys election, namely the Wall Street bankers. ..."
"... The question at hand for 2016 is: Can Hillary be stopped. At this point, I dont see how, given all the weight of the party machinery calibrated in her favor by the equally odious National Party Chairperson, Congressperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz. ..."
"... Bernie Sanders mounted a noble opposition campaign, and perhaps it is too early to write him off here before the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary... ..."
"... And thats all you get on the Democratic side for the moment: a powerful sense that the fix is in. Yet there is the very real problem of Hillarys loathsomeness and how that would go down at the polls. Theres even a pretty good chance that many women would vote against her... ..."
Of Trump's opponents for the Republican nomination, the only one I can grudge up any interest
for is Rand Paul, who is a truly disruptive figure without being a maniac.
In fact, I think
he would make a good president, sober, thoughtful, unencumbered by obligation to the forces of racketeering.
But he appears to have a near-zero chance of winning the party's nomination.
Hillary is the opposite of a disrupter; she is the racketeer Godmother.
As things proceed,
however, she would merely preside over Great Depression 2.0.
Unlike FDR in GD 1.0,
Hillary would inspire no trust among a fractious population out for
revenge against the very enablers of Hillary's election, namely the Wall Street bankers.
The
nation would fall into factional fighting and possibly even regional breakup under Miz It's-My-Turn.
But I get ahead of myself….
The question at hand for 2016 is: Can Hillary be stopped. At this
point, I don't see how, given all the weight of the party machinery calibrated in her favor by the
equally odious National Party Chairperson, Congressperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Bernie Sanders mounted a noble opposition campaign, and perhaps it is too early to write him
off here before the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary...
.... ... ...
And that's all you get on the Democratic side for the moment: a powerful sense that the fix
is in. Yet there is the very real problem of Hillary's loathsomeness and how that would go down at
the polls. There's even a pretty good chance that many women would vote against her...
"... That's not to say that Hillary Clinton herself will necessarily inject any of those elements
into the race. (Beyond the extent to which she already has, that is, via her inexplicable decision to
use a private email account while serving as secretary of state.) ..."
"... If a New Hampshire state legislator is willing to stand up in a public forum and imply that
Clinton's husband is a rapist, it seems inevitable that others will take the opportunity of public events
to make similar charges. ..."
But whomever the Republicans eventually nominate, this year is going to be ugly, because there
is a Clinton running for president. Because when Clintons run for office, conspiracy, scandal and
prurience inevitably follow.
That's not to say that Hillary Clinton herself will necessarily inject any of those elements
into the race. (Beyond the extent to which she already has, that is, via her inexplicable decision
to use a private email account while serving as secretary of state.) It is simply meant to point
out that where the Clintons are concerned, there is a large and vocal element of the Republican Party
that simply cannot resist the temptation to dive headfirst into the rabbit hole of Bill and Hillary
Clinton's past and then come to the surface screaming bloody murder (sometimes literally) about what
they think they found there.
In a New Hampshire town meeting on Sunday, a state legislator named Katherine Prudhomme O'Brien
demonstrated what we can likely expect to see a lot of in the coming year.
When Clinton paused to take questions from the crowd, O'Brien began haranguing the candidate with
questions about former president Bill Clinton's decades-old infidelities. Her point was to paint
Clinton as a hypocrite for claiming to support women's rights and for launching an anti-sexual assault
campaign while, according to O'Brien, her husband still faces unsettled questions about alleged sexual
assaults.
O'Brien, who was very close to Clinton when she began shouting questions at her, was herself shouted
down by Clinton supporters. After the event, she told reporters "I asked her how in the world she
can say that Juanita Broderick and Kathleen Wiley are lying when she has no idea who Juanita Broderick
is," O'Brien said, according to CNN, referring to women who have accused the former president of
sexual assault and to another attempt she had made to question the candidate.
"She told me this summer she doesn't know who she is and doesn't want to know who she is," O'Brien
said. "How can she access that they are lying, which she told someone last month?"
For her part, Clinton responded sharply, breaking from most candidates' strategy of ignoring hecklers
to tell O'Brien that she was "very rude" and that Clinton would "never" take questions from her.
... ... ....
Clinton criticism has long since become a field that welcomes all comers, regardless of the strength
of their tether to reality. Among Clinton detractors there is a veritable alternative history of
the United States, beginning with their rise to power in Arkansas in the 1980s, which includes accusations
of murder, drug-dealing and a vast menu of sexual improprieties all committed or endorsed by the
Clintons.
... ... ...
If a New Hampshire state legislator is willing to stand up in a public forum and imply that
Clinton's husband is a rapist, it seems inevitable that others will take the opportunity of public
events to make similar charges.
"... Sorry Hillary, you can pretend to be a progressive, nobody believes you. You want to be President because you want to be President, you dont give a rats rear end about the country. ..."
"... I think you might be falling for the subtle propaganda out there. The corporate media, as well as the DNC, has been marginalizing him from day one of his campaign because they have a vested interest in Clinton or any Republican winning the primary. Were Sanders to be successful, the corporate media would stand to lose 10s of million$ in campaign attack ads and corporations stand to lose their cheap, working poor, workforce. ..."
"... This is why corporate media (including MSNBC) continues to either ignore him, or continually say that he cannot win. It is a battle and its completely up to the electorate to form a movement that becomes a political revolution. ..."
"... I resent the continuing attempts to link her campaign to Senator Elizabeth Warrens positions on financial issues when the overwhelming support for her establishment candidacy is supported by entities inimical to virtually everything for which Ms. Warren fights. It is not only disrespectful to the Senator, but is, to me, proof positive that honesty and transparency remain far outside the Clinton Campaign business model, and that the Advisers - rather than her personal character and knowledge - control the Candidate AND will continue to do so - should they be able to elect her as President. ..."
"... I believe increasingly that Trump must win, and I say that without being an admirer. He comes with some terrible baggage, but at least on a couple issues, hes the only one saying anything worth saying. Maybe thats what America needs to make a little progress, to elect someone who overall is pretty unpleasant but who brings real progress on a couple of issues. It is particularly in foreign affairs says a couple of pretty penetrating truths. ..."
"... Hillary has absolutely nothing to say worth hearing. Shes not progressive. Shes not liberal. And shes just so twisted in her dishonesty, you cant make any sense of her from one day til the next. She is a genuinely phony exploiter of the old idea of the Democratic Party, as a party that does something for ordinary people, but that is simply not what that party has been for about half a century. In office, she would have most of Trumps ugly qualities and none of his few strong merits. Basically, she just wants the distinction of being the first woman president. ..."
"... Again, she stands for absolutely nothing any thoughtful person would call progress. ..."
"... Surprise, surprise, one more article to add to the many already written by the Guardian on $hillary. Has the Guardian been purchased by the $hillary for President Campaign??? Perhaps $hillary and Bill used the millions they have made on speaking tours, and the Clinton Foundation to buy the Guardian or are they paying to plant articles ..."
"... The Democratic Party is a terrible institution. It hasnt had a good idea in forty years. Americas entire political system is bent, bent towards the interests of the 1%. Hillary serves the interests of the 1% in virtually everything she does. Then she goes out and makes some vaccuous speeches to others, trying to assure them shes in their corner. The woman is a dreadful fraud and liar. ..."
"... turn back the clock on progress? What meaningless babble. There is no meangful progress in America on any aspect of domestic life. Not in politics. Not in public education. Not in ethics. However Hillary has played a significant role in Americas one true example of progress, its progress towards becoming an international bully. ..."
"... Clinton is a neo-conservative war-monger supporting neo-liberal economic policies. But the only Republican who isnt worse on both counts is Rand Paul, who isnt as fully into the neo-conservative carpet bombing agenda. Paul, however, more than makes up for this by being a complete looney on economic/individual rights issues. Unfortunately the only real alternative, Bernie Sanders, has been deemed as unelectable by the smart people and many of the electorate, afraid to throw away their votes may be swayed by that intelligence . ..."
"... dishonesty happens to be Mr. Hillarys middle name. ..."
"... Hilary Clinton is complicit in the ongoing US foreign policy of destroying working countries in North Africa and the Middle East and leaving them in ruins, as his her boss Obama. ..."
"... Polls are now officially worthless. Polling agencies call landlines which are anything but random representation of the ACTUAL American electorate. There are also various media outlets taking worthless internet polls which have absolutely no verification. Harris quit political polling until they can develop new reliable sampling methods. Relying on this information is completely misleading in the 21st century. ..."
"... Hillary has never seen a patch of desert she didnt want to send our kids to die in. ..."
"... We need Single Payer. We need Glass-Steagall. We need Peace. We need Bernie. ..."
ISIS is a proxy of KSA and Turkey. Turkey and KSA are both allies of USA. Therefore, USA doesn't
put in the effort.
HobbesianWorld -> rafinho
4 Jan 2016 10:11
Apparently you favor Hillary? You like corporate control of government? You like corporate
money in elections? You like the fact that the too-big-to-fail Wall Street financial institutions
will remain too-big-to-fail, and we, the taxpayer, will remain on the hook to bail them out? You
do know that we ARE still on the hook? You do know that the banks have gone back to speculating
with our deposits--the major cause of the Republican Great Recession of 2008?
Or, would you rather see Sanders win, but you are a defeatist who listens to the opinions of
those with vested interest in seeing him lose?
Marcedward
4 Jan 2016 10:03
Sorry Hillary, you can pretend to be a progressive, nobody believes you. You want to be
President because you want to be President, you don't give a rat's rear end about the country.
HobbesianWorld -> rafinho
4 Jan 2016 10:01
I think you might be falling for the subtle propaganda out there. The corporate media,
as well as the DNC, has been marginalizing him from day one of his campaign because they have
a vested interest in Clinton or any Republican winning the primary. Were Sanders to be successful,
the corporate media would stand to lose 10s of million$ in campaign attack ads and corporations
stand to lose their cheap, working poor, workforce.
This is why corporate media (including MSNBC) continues to either ignore him, or continually
say that "he cannot win." It is a battle and its completely up to the electorate to form a movement
that becomes a political revolution.
Just because they keep saying that he can't win, and then fail to mention him in most news
or opinion segments while extolling Hillary, I don't just shrug my shoulders and wimp away, assuming
defeat. I will keep on promoting him as the champion of working America and exposing Hillary as
the corporatist she is.
Bruce Gruber -> pol098
4 Jan 2016 09:59
Vote for Bernie Sanders and make your DETERMINATION clear.
Revolutions against status quo moderates eager to achieve dysfunctional compromises are NOT
solutions. Ms. Clinton panders to FEAR ... It is fear of Republicans winning . She does not say,
Bernie, Martin and I stand against ISIL, BUT with strategies that don't alienate Muslims and denigrate
a religion." INSTEAD she votes, hints, suggests etc. that 'WE need to FIND solutions ... strengthen
our (presently discordant and previously ineffective) policies, and 'fight against' ...(war, war,
war!). After years of holding important roles and positions, has she not YET "FOUND" ideas with
which to lead? Where ARE the regulations or restrictions? What ARE they? ... are they in support
of the OATH to reinstall, preserve and protect the 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th Amendments to the Constitution?
Identifying WITH a constituency may be reassuring to 'listeners' as to similarity of concern,
but it does NOT convey ideas or leadership to address those issues. Traditionally, politicians
are wont to defend against complaints that, "That isn't exactly what I said, and it's not what
I meant! You have taken my words out of context."
So, I find this article to be puff piece. It extols her historic involvement, but avoids her
ideas. It ignores the neo-con aspects of her 'experience' and implies much more than it offers.
Of course, my opinion is biased.
I resent the continuing attempts to link her campaign
to Senator Elizabeth Warren's positions on financial issues when the overwhelming support for
her 'establishment' candidacy is supported by entities inimical to virtually everything for which
Ms. Warren fights. It is not only disrespectful to the Senator, but is, to me, proof positive
that honesty and transparency remain far outside the Clinton Campaign business model, and that
the "Advisers" - rather than her personal character and knowledge - control the Candidate AND
will continue to do so - should they be able to elect her as President.
Additionally, the clown car of Republican dissolution is not an issue in the election. Democrats
WILL turn out, so Republicans cannot win. Trump has consolidated THEIR "anti-establishment" base,
and their puppet-master cash class are playing poker against one another as though the 'pot' was
a new toy.
Murphy1983 -> Mike Hambuchen
4 Jan 2016 09:58
Mike: Educate yourself about Sanders. Take a look at this article from The New York Times.
As usual, it's very pro HRC and anti-Sanders. Read through the "Readers' Pick" section under Comments.
I think you'll be better informed about why Sanders is such an amazing candidate.
Here's one my favorite comments written by Mark Hugh Miller of San Francisco:
If you make a list of America's problems, needs, and desires, and then list what each candidate
proposes to do about them - to date, mostly nothing - there's only one candidate willing to tell
Americans painful truths and things they don't want to hear, and offer practical solutions. That's
Bernie Sanders. Who would have imagined it two years ago?
His detractors won't dare challenge the rightness of what he proposes, but instead use the
old GOP canards: "We can't afford it? Where's he going to find the money to pay for it?"
We can pay for everything, it seems - war, defense, a bloated military arsenal, Wall Street
bailouts, more prisons, tax breaks for the wealthy and for corporations, subsidies to oil companies
and corporate farming ventures - but "never" anything that benefits the majority of Americans
who have helped hold the world together for decades, and every year see their security and futures
diminished, threatened.
Sanders is the only candidate willing to risk defeat by addressing the issues that matter to
us, and the world.
I believe increasingly that Trump must win, and I say that without being an admirer. He
comes with some terrible baggage, but at least on a couple issues, he's the only one saying anything
worth saying. Maybe that's what America needs to make a little progress, to elect someone who
overall is pretty unpleasant but who brings real progress on a couple of issues. It is particularly
in foreign affairs says a couple of pretty penetrating truths.
Hillary has absolutely nothing to say worth hearing. She's not progressive. She's not liberal.
And she's just so twisted in her dishonesty, you can't make any sense of her from one day til
the next. She is a genuinely phony exploiter of the old idea of the Democratic Party, as a party
that does something for ordinary people, but that is simply not what that party has been for about
half a century. In office, she would have most of Trump's ugly qualities and none of his few strong
merits. Basically, she just wants the distinction of being the first woman president.
Now that would be fine, had she something to offer people, but she does not.
Again, she stands for absolutely nothing any thoughtful person would call progress.
MonotonousLanguor
4 Jan 2016 09:53
Surprise, surprise, one more article to add to the many already written by the Guardian
on $hillary. Has the Guardian been purchased by the $hillary for President Campaign??? Perhaps
$hillary and Bill used the millions they have made on speaking tours, and the Clinton Foundation
to buy the Guardian or are they paying to plant articles
.
Chuckman -> Allan Burns
4 Jan 2016 09:42
I don't think that's true.
The Democratic Party is a terrible institution. It hasn't had
a good idea in forty years. America's entire political system is bent, bent towards the interests
of the 1%. Hillary serves the interests of the 1% in virtually everything she does. Then she goes
out and makes some vaccuous speeches to others, trying to assure them she's in their corner. The
woman is a dreadful fraud and liar.
ID5360392 -> Lazio99
4 Jan 2016 09:35
I think you are omitting one very important person. Former President George W. Bush took the
US to an unjustified war in Iraq and destabilized the entire region. Didn't W at one point claim
credit for the "green revolution" and the wave of revolts in the Middle East by saying it was
because he brought "democracy" to Iraq?
Chuckman
4 Jan 2016 09:35
'turn back the clock' on progress? What meaningless babble. There is no meangful progress
in America on any aspect of domestic life. Not in politics. Not in public education. Not in ethics.
However Hillary has played a significant role in America's one true example of progress, its progress
towards becoming an international bully.
panpipes -> Ryscavage
4 Jan 2016 09:33
Hyperbole never helps convince people of the rationality of your argument...
Clinton is a neo-conservative war-monger supporting neo-liberal economic policies. But
the only Republican who isn't worse on both counts is Rand Paul, who isn't as fully into the neo-conservative
carpet bombing agenda. Paul, however, more than makes up for this by being a complete looney on
economic/individual rights issues. Unfortunately the only real alternative, Bernie Sanders, has
been deemed as unelectable by the "smart people" and many of the electorate, afraid to "throw
away their votes" may be swayed by that "intelligence".
Zepp -> rafinho
4 Jan 2016 09:29
His claim is accurate. Assuming Sanders is the nominee, he would trounce Trump, on average
by 16 points. According to several such polls.
Yes, he trails Hillary, who is well known and well funded. But he leads in New Hampshire, and
is in striking distance in Iowa. And let's face it: most Democrats really aren't very enthusiastic
about Clinton.
AmbassadorIII
4 Jan 2016 09:11
Dishonesty insults and demeans the people of America and
dishonesty happens to be Mr. Hillary's
middle name.
Truth is, indeed, bitter after three consecutive, pathological liar presidents.
Thank God, Trump has the courage to speak it.
Lazio99
4 Jan 2016 08:59
Hilary Clinton is complicit in the ongoing US foreign policy of destroying working countries
in North Africa and the Middle East and leaving them in ruins, as his her boss Obama.
How
these two come to be the pin ups of the European liberal chattering classes beats me. How can
anyone vote for a pair like these?
Charles Taylor -> rafinho
4 Jan 2016 09:25
Polls are now officially worthless. Polling agencies call landlines which are anything
but random representation of the ACTUAL American electorate. There are also various media outlets
taking worthless internet "polls" which have absolutely no verification. Harris quit political
polling until they can develop new reliable sampling methods. Relying on this information is completely
misleading in the 21st century.
brianBT
4 Jan 2016 08:14
Hilary is running almost the same campaign she did last time.. the lips are moving but nothing
is coming out.. and the words that do issue tend to be strategically and politically non-committal..
in short a political gas bag.. she has no chance of winning
Mike5000
4 Jan 2016 08:07
RomneyObamaCare is making Hillary's insurance mafia buddies rich while bankrupting ordinary
Americans.
Taxpayer-subsidized gambling is making Hillary's bankster buddies rich while fraudulently taking
millions of American homes.
And
Hillary has never seen a patch of desert she didn't want to send our kids to die in.
We need Single Payer. We need Glass-Steagall. We need Peace. We need Bernie.
What is interesting is that Trump is 100% right... I think he has a marketing talent. One
thing for certain, he created a problem for Repugs establishment and all those yellow US MSM and their
owners...
"... "She should be in jail, by the way, for what she did," Trump said. "Everybody knows she should
be in jail. What she did with the emails is a disgrace," he added. ..."
He then blamed US President Barack Obama and his former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, for
the Islamic State's rise.
"They have a bunch of dishonest people," he continued. "They've created ISIS. Hillary Clinton
created ISIS with Obama - created with Obama. But I love predicting because you know, ultimately,
you need somebody with vision."
Trump and Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, have fiercely sparred in recent weeks. Trump
took particular exception to Clinton saying that his provocative campaign-trail statements had
become propaganda for the Islamic State, especially his proposal to bar Muslims from entering the
US.
The Republican billionaire demanded that Clinton apologize, but her campaign
replied at the time: "Hell no. Hillary Clinton will not be apologizing to Donald Trump for correctly
pointing out how his hateful rhetoric only helps ISIS recruit more terrorists."
After Clinton said Trump had generally displayed a
"penchant for sexism," Trump went after her husband, former US President Bill Clinton. Trump
recently proclaimed that the former president has
"a terrible record of women abuse," referring to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, among other things.
At his Saturday rally, Trump also blasted Hillary Clinton for
a report on her husband's paid speeches while she was secretary of state. As he has done frequently
before, Trump further asserted that Clinton "shouldn't be allowed to run" because of the private
email system she used for her State Department work.
"She should be in jail, by the way, for what she did," Trump said. "Everybody knows she should
be in jail. What she did with the emails is a disgrace," he added.
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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