The quadrennial political game of least worst, or how to scare the public to vote for presidential candidates who serve
corporate power, comes this season with a new twist. Donald Trump, if he faces Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar or
Michael Bloomberg, will continue to be an amalgamation of Adolf Hitler, Al Capone and the Antichrist.
But should Bernie Sanders manage to evade the snares, traps and minefields laid for him by the Democratic Party elites,
should he miraculously become the party’s nominee, the game of least worst will radically change. All the terrifying demons
that inhabit Trump will be instantly exorcised. But unlike in the biblical story of Jesus driving the demons into a herd of
swine, they will be driven into the senator from Vermont.
Trump will become the establishment’s reluctant least worse option. Sanders will become a leper. The Democratic and Republican
party elites, joining forces as they did in the 1972 presidential election, will do to Sanders what they did to George McGovern,
who lost in 49 of the 50 states.
“If Dems go on to nominate Sanders, the Russians will have to reconsider who to work for to best screw up the US. Sanders
is just as polarizing as Trump AND he’ll ruin our economy and doesn’t care about our military,” former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd
Blankfein (net worth $1.1 billion) tweeted. “If I’m Russian, I go with Sanders this time around.”
Trump attacked Sanders with a torrent of tweets following his endorsement of former rival Hillary Clinton
Said Bernie 'abandoned' his supporters by endorsing 'pro-TPP' trade deal Clinton
...'Bernie Sanders endorsing Crooked Hillary Clinton is like Occupy Wall Street endorsing Goldman Sachs'
Sanders said he intends to do 'everything I can' to make Hillary the next president
Trump praised Bernie during his bitter primary with Hillary Clinton for 'telling the truth' and hailed him for drawing large crowds
See more US election news as Trump unloads on Sanders for 'selling out'
By Geoff Earle, Deputy U.s. Political Editor For Dailymail.com
First the neoliberal press tried to demolished his candidacy. With NYT and WaPo as two the most rabid pro-Hillary dogs. Despite neoliberal
presstitutes efforts to sink his candidacy, Sanders managed to stay competitive almost all the way to the California primary in June.
Then he folded and blatantly betrayed his voters, his principles and himself.
In December 2017 we leaned than it was FBI who actually pushed Bernie under the bus by swiping under the carpet changes against Hilary
connected with her abuse of private email server. See Strzok-gate.
This is like Praetorian Guard selection a new emperor.
But in retrospect this old fogey (he will be 80 in 2021) turned out to be a sellout. People who want to tame Wall street and
restore some parts of the New Deal Capitalism regulations destroyed by neoliberals have no leader to represent their interests. I can
now imagine a feelings of Bernie's supporters who will feel duped (M
of A , 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.
June 12, 2016 was a very sad day when Bernie finds himself endorsing someone who is the complete opposite to the politics he
claims to champion. What was his BS campaign and all that rhetoric for? A disgusting spectacle (
Democracy And The Future Of The United States - ICH):
Bernie is a fake. He was and I guess, still is a test case for the system. Lucifer wants to see how far he can go – and what is
it that the people want to hear. Accordingly, will be adjusted the discourse of the two candidates. Sanders has a (Senate) voting
record which does not portray what he pledges to stand for.
... ... ...
Sanders, early on has said that if he should not succeed, he would support Killary. Hello! what message does that convey? – That
he would support a warmonger par excellence? – Europeans like many Americans have been fooled by Bernie’s charm and rebellious appearance.
All fake!
But signs of this were visible during Berne Sanders campaign. One that alerted many people is he carefully avoided to emphasize
the weak spots in Hillary candidacy: her role in launching Libya war and serious of highly paid speeches (read bribes) from major Wall
Street firms.
Tuesday morning Bernie Sanders united the Democrat party by announcing his endorsement of Hillary Clinton, but not everyone is happy,
with some of his supporters calling him a sell-out.
Beginning his speech by giving thanks to the 13 million Americans who voted
for him during the primaries, Sanders announced that he would be endorsing Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nominee and intends
to do everything he can to ensure that she will become the “next president of the United States.”
“[T]his campaign is not really about Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders or any other candidate who sought the
presidency,” Sanders said in the rally. “This campaign is about the needs of the American people and addressing the very serious
crises that we face.”
Sanders began to compare Clinton with Republican nominee, Donald Trump, explaining the differences between the two and using these
differences as his reasons for endorsing her. Sanders admitted during the rally that he and Clinton do disagree on a number of issues
but he also claimed that on Sunday, July 10, during the Democratic Platform Committee the two campaigns were able to come together
significantly.
“Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president and I am proud to stand with her here today,” Sanders said at the end of the
rally.
This proclamation is a far cry from how his stance was a couple months ago, when he claimed that Clinton wasn’t qualified for
the presidency.
“I don’t believe that she is qualified,” Sanders said in a Philadelphia rally back in April, as reported by thinkprogress.org.
“[I]f she is, through her super PAC, taking tens of millions of dollars in special interest funds. I don’t think that you are qualified
if you get $15 million from Wall Street through your super PAC.”
Trump was one of the first to call Sanders a sell-out on Twitter, comparing his endorsement of “Crooked Hillary Clinton” to Occupy
Wall Street endorsing Goldman Sachs.
“I am somewhat surprised that Bernie Sanders was not true to himself and his supporters,” Trump tweeted. “They are not happy that
he is selling out!”
While some Democrats are happy that the party has seemed to have finally united, like the Communications Workers of America who
have now changed their endorsement from Sanders to Clinton, other supporters share Trumps sentiments, feeling outraged and disappointed
at Bernie’s sudden change of heart.
“A Sanders endorsement of Clinton would be the ultimate betrayal of his supporters, especially those of us that poured money
into his campaign.”
“Bernie, if you endorse Hillary Clinton, after is NOW A PROVEN FACT she lied to the American people, then you sir are a FRAUD.”
“Bernie, endorsing Clinton destroys every point you made and everything you stood for in the race. You are letting the people
who supported you down. You made a promise to fight in the end, but instead you are conceding. You are not the elected leader you
lead us to believe in. Shame on you.”
These are just some of the comments people have been leaving on Sander’s Facebook page, as reported on the Forward Progressives
website.
Other supporters have asked him to wait for the Democrats Party convention, to run in a third-party or to join Jill Stein in the
Green Party ticket.
Now that Sanders has endorsed Clinton, Clinton’s campaign will most likely focus on convincing his supporters to join them in
their fight for the presidency.
Nader: “Bernie Sanders wants to break up the New York banks, he wants to impose a Wall Street transaction tax, he wants
to regulate drug prices, he’s for full Medicare for all — everybody in, nobody out, free choice of doctor and hospital — he wants
to get rid of these corporate tax havens, he’s pushing for a $15 dollar an hour minimum wage, he wants to stronger labor unions.
What’s not to like?”
Hedges: “Because he [Bernie Sanders] did it within the Democratic establishment. . . .He’s lending credibility to a
party that is completely corporatized. He has agreed that he will endorse the candidate, which, unless there is some miracle, will
probably be Hillary Clinton. So what he does is he takes all of that energy, he raises all of these legitimate issues and he funnels
it back into a dead political system. . .
“That was the role of Van Jones in the last election,” Hedges said. “He was running around, using the language of Occupy — Occupy
the Vote — and that is what Bernie has done. I don’t understand. He fought the Democratic establishment in Vermont his entire career.
Now he has sold out to it.”
“Bernie has also not confronted the military industrial complex at all,” Hedges said. “On a personal level, having spent seven years
in the Middle East, I’m just not willing to forgive him for abandoning the Palestinians and giving carte blanche to Israel. He was
one of 100 Senators who stood up like AIPAC wind up dolls and approved Israel’s 51-day slaughter last summer of Palestinians
in Gaza — the Palestinians who have no army, no navy, artillery, mechanized units, command and control.”
Bernard "Bernie" Sanders (born September 8, 1941) is an American politician. He is the junior United States Senator from Vermont
and has announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination in the 2016 presidential election. As a presidential candidate he is the
candidate without a party, as Democratic Party established is controlled by financial oligarchy after Bill Clinton sold his party to
Wall street ("Third Way betrayal", similar to the trick
Tony Blair performed in the UK).
An independent politician since 1979, Sanders described himself as a democratic
socialist (and probably with his political views might fit
Social Democratic Party of Germany). He favors the creation
of employee-owned cooperative enterprises and has praised Scandinavian-style social
democracy. He caucuses with the Democratic Party and is counted as a Democrat for purposes of committee assignments. Since January
2015, Sanders has been the ranking Democratic member on the Senate Budget Committee. He is also associated with the Vermont Progressive
Party and was a member of the Liberty Union Party from 1971 to 1979.
After several unsuccessful runs for office, Sanders was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont's largest city, in 1981. He was reelected
to three more two-year mayoral terms before being elected to represent Vermont's at-large congressional district in the United States
House of Representatives in 1990. He served as a congressman for 16 years before being elected to succeed the retiring Republican-turned-independent
Jim Jeffords in the U.S. Senate in 2006. In 2012 he was reelected by a landslide. Sanders was the only independent member of the
House during most of his service and is the longest-serving independent in U.S. congressional history.
Since his election to the Senate, Sanders has emerged as a leading progressive voice on the issues of income inequality, climate
change, and campaign finance reform. He rose to national prominence on the heels of his 2010 filibuster of the proposed extension of
the Bush-era tax rates for the wealthy. In response to the speech, hundreds of people signed online petitions urging Sanders to run
in the 2012 presidential election and pollsters began measuring his support in key primary states. As a supporter of President Obama,
Sanders declined to run in 2012, but began expressing an interest in a 2016 presidential run in December of 2013.
Sanders announced his intentions to seek the Democratic Party's nomination for President on April 30, 2015, in an address on the
Capitol lawn. His campaign was officially launched on May 26 with an event in Burlington, Vermont.
It is well known that the key idea of polls is to influence electorate. Not to inform but influence. So int he USA they are a
very dirty game. Desirable result that conditions those who did not yet decided to vote "for the winner" can be achieved
in a very subtle way. For example if electorate of one candidate is younger, you can run poll using landline phones. How subgroup is
selected is also important:
3.14e-9
Yes, how they ask the questions is important, and it’s also important to note which subgroups were asked the questions. Some
questions were limited to respondents who had voted in a previous Democratic primary. That means the results don’t include Independents
and Republicans who might cross party lines. Also, those who voted in a past primary are far more likely to be familiar with HRC
than Sanders.
Lastly, confidence in Bernie rose for some questions. Interestingly enough, there was an increase in the number of people who
thought he could competently handle a foreign crisis. Sargent’s bias is pretty clear. Entire poll here:
Of course this election cycle much depends on how angry people really are with the establishment. I think many viscerally dislike
Clinton and Jeb! for that reason. I think not many understand that Dem and Repug are actually one neoliberal party representing
its soft and hard wings, correspondingly. And both intend to harm or even destroy the country with their neoliberal policies to serve
interests on top 0.01%. And that the case with Dems since Bill Clinton sold the part to Wall Street. The vast body of american
people wants change (and not Obama's fake "change we can believe in") but they don’t have a place at the table…
The most important thing to consider when thinking about the Sanders campaign is this. Everyone
else who’s running, on both sides, is an insider playing within — and supporting — the “insider game,” the one that keeps insiders
wealthy and outsiders struggling, the one where the wealthy and their retainers operate government for their benefit only. What sets
Sanders apart is his determination to dismantle that game, to take it apart and send its players home (back to the private sector)
or to jail.
Two examples should make this clear. One is Fast Track and the “trade” agreements being forced upon us. The pressure to pass these
agreements is coming equally from mainstream Democrats like Barack Obama, a “liberal,” and from mainstream Republicans, supposed
“conservatives.” They may differ on “rights” policy, like abortion rights, but not on money matters. Trade agreements are wealth-serving
policies promoted by people in both parties who serve wealth, which means most of them. People like Sanders, Warren and others, by
contrast, would neuter these agreement as job-killing profit protection schemes and turn them into something else.
A second example involves Wall Street banks, in particular, a policy of breaking them up, reinstating Glass-Steagall, and
prosecuting Wall Street fraud. Can you imagine any announced candidate doing any of these things, save Bernie Sanders?
In both of these cases, Sanders would aggressively challenge the insider profit-protection racket, not just give lip service to
challenging it. Which tells you why he is so popular. Many of us in the bleachers have noticed the insider game — after all, it’s
been happening in front of us for decades— and most of us are done with it. Ask any Tea Party Republican voter, for example, what
she thinks of the bank bailout of 2008-09. She’ll tell you she hated it, whether she explains it in our terms or not.
And that’s why Sanders, like Warren before him, draws such enthusiastic crowds. The pendulum has swung so far in the direction
of wealth that the nation may well change permanently, and people know it. People are ready, just as they were in 2008, prior to
eight years of betrayal. People have been discouraged about the chance for change lately, but they’re ready for the real thing if
they see it.
The Clinton Campaign Notices Sanders
There’s been an attempt to downplay the Sanders candidacy since the beginning, to sink his campaign beneath a
wave of silence. That ended a bit ago, and the press has begun to take notice, if
snippily. Now the Clinton campaign is noticing, if the New York Times is to be believed. I found the following fascinating,
for a number of reasons.
The
piece first along with some news, then a little exegesis (my emphasis):
Hillary Clinton’s Team Is Wary as Bernie Sanders Finds Footing in Iowa
The ample crowds and unexpectedly strong showing by Senator Bernie Sanders are setting off worry among advisers and allies
of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who believe the Vermont senator could overtake her in Iowa polls by the fall and even defeat her
in the nation’s first nominating contest there.
The enthusiasm that Mr. Sanders has generated — including a rally attended by 2,500 people in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on Friday
— has called into question Mrs. Clinton’s early strategy of focusing on a listening tour of small group gatherings and wooing
big donors in private settings. In May, Mrs. Clinton led with 60 percent support to Mr. Sanders’ 15 percent in a Quinnipiac
poll. Last week the same poll showed Mrs. Clinton at 52 percent to Mr. Sanders’s 33 percent.
“We are worried about him, sure. He will be a serious force for the campaign, and I don’t think that will diminish,” Jennifer
Palmieri, the Clinton campaign’s communications director, said Monday in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Some of Mrs. Clinton’s advisers acknowledged that they were surprised by Mr. Sanders’ momentum and said there were enough liberal
voters in Iowa, including many who supported Barack Obama or John Edwards in 2008, to create problems for her there.
“I think we underestimated that Sanders would quickly attract so many Democrats in Iowa who weren’t likely to support Hillary,”
said one Clinton adviser, who like several others spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly share views about the race.
“It’s too early to change strategy because no one knows if Sanders will be able to hold on to these voters in the months ahead.
We’re working hard to win them over, but yeah, it’s a real competition there.”
I don’t want to quote the whole thing (well, I do, but I can’t). So I encourage you to
read it. There’s much there worth noticing.
What to Look at When the Times Reports on Clinton
Now, some exegesis, meta-reading of the media, especially corporate media like the Times. My three main points are bulleted
below.
First, when you expose yourself to any of the “liberal” U.S. outlets (as opposed to, say, The Guardian) be aware that
because they are owned by establishment corporations they’re already pro-Clinton. Subtly, not blatantly, but certainly.
That sounds like prejudice, so let me explain. For one thing, neither the outlets nor their owning corporation can afford not
to prepare their seat at the Clinton White House table. It’s just a fact. Media want access and corporations want government to
smile on their profit schemes. At this point, currying favor with Sanders is on no one’s mind, and the Clintons are known to “have
long memories … they punish their enemies and help their friends” (quoted
here). The incentives are all aligned.
But also, mainstream insider corporations are completely aligned with the insider game for the obvious reason — they’re part
of it. No one inside the game wants to see it damaged. Hayes and Maddow, as people, may or may not prefer Sanders over Clinton,
but MSNBC has a clear favorite and if you listen carefully and consistently, it shows. Their owners, and all of the other big
media owners, can’t afford (literally afford, as in, there’s major money at stake) to play this one straight. You may find some
unskewed reporting, but not a lot of it.
In the present instance, for example, I read the story above (click through for
all of it) as being pro-Clinton, and in fact, most stories like these will be painted that way, with a light brush or a heavy
one, for some time to come. If you don’t spot this bias where present, you’re not reading the story as written.
In the same way that every New York Times story I read in the last two months, literally every one, used the inaccurate
and propagandistic phrase “pro-trade Democrats” to describe Ron Wyden, Earl Blumenauer and the small handful of other Dems who
defied their voters to support the White House and the wealthy — in that same way you’ll have a hard time finding mainstream Sanders
or Clinton coverage that doesn’t in some way sell Clinton. If that’s not a fact, I’ll be eager to be proven wrong.
Second, be aware that much so-called reporting is the result of “placement,” a term from advertising. Ad placement
is when you buy space in a publication or media program into which you can put your message. Campaigns, among other entities,
frequently do the same with reporters. The reporter offers space, a container, into which the campaign can put its message. (The
reward is usually “access.”)
It’s certainly true that many reporters and writers openly advocate; I’m often one of them
and I’m not alone. But no one suspects open advocates of trickery. It’s much more subtle, and dangerous for readers, when the
advocacy is hidden, as it is in supposed “straight news” articles.
In cases like these — certainly not all cases of reporting, but far too many — the reporter doesn’t “get” the news. The news
“gets” the reporter. A campaign’s messenger comes to the reporter, offers the message, and the reporter builds a genuine and frequently
interesting news story around it, including research from other sources, but always starting with the seed provided by the campaign
or public official.
In the present instance, the article above, you should therefore ask:
Is it really true that the Clinton campaign just now discovered Sanders’ popularity and that he may be a threat?
Or could the following be true? That the Clinton campaign always knew a Warren-like opponent could gain ground but were
publicly ignoring it; now, however, it’s time to appear to be noticing, so they approached a reporter with their take on the
Sanders surge.
In other words, is the bolded part of the first sentence of the article its seed? Who approached whom? That first sentence
again:
The ample crowds and unexpectedly strong showing by Senator Bernie Sanders are setting off worry among advisers and allies
of Hillary Rodham Clinton …
I don’t have an answer to the bulleted questions above. Either could be correct. I’m a little suspicious though. First, by
the obvious but subtle bias in the story — similar to the constant bias in all of the Times Fast Track reporting. Second,
by the plurals above: “among advisers and allies of Hillary Rodham Clinton.” This isn’t one person speaking, but
a coordinated effort by staffers and surrogates (“allies”) to say a coordinated single thing to the Times reporters.
Third, I’m made suspicious by this, a little further down:
“I think we underestimated that Sanders would quickly attract so many Democrats in Iowa who weren’t likely to support Hillary,”
said one Clinton adviser, who like several others spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly share views about the
race. “It’s too early to change strategy because no one knows if Sanders will be able to hold on to these voters in the
months ahead. We’re working hard to win them over, but yeah, it’s a real competition there.”
There’s obvious messaging, especially in the last part of the paragraph. But look at the bolded part. Of those in the campaign,
the only ones quoted in the article by name are Clinton herself and Jennifer Palmieri, who spoke, not to the reporters, but to
“Morning Joe.” Everyone else is off the record, speaking to these reporters “on the condition of anonymity to candidly
share views about the race.”
“Candidly” implies leaking, not messaging or spin, and here’s where the deception seems more clear. Have these reporters really
found a minor army of leakers? If these are truly leakers, expect them to be fired soon.
So, scenario one: Sanders is surging, the Clinton campaign is caught by surprise, and two Times reporters find
a bunch of anonymous campaign leakers who say (paraphrasing), “Sure, Sanders caught us by surprise. We’re aiming for one type
of Democrat and he’s getting the other type. It’s too early to change strategy — the man could trip and fall — but yes, there’s
now competition.”
(Did you notice that part about two kinds of Democrat? The actual quote says: “We underestimated that Sanders would quickly
attract so many Democrats in Iowa who weren’t likely to support Hillary.” I think the campaign knows exactly what kind of Democrat
they were ignoring, and if you think about it carefully, you will too.)
Or, scenario two: The Clinton campaign is ignoring the Warren wing, giving them nothing but platitudes and (as in the
case of Fast Track) avoidance. Now the “Sanders surge” is in the news and the campaign has to respond. They get their message
together — “Yes, we’re surprised, and we have to admit that out loud. But it’s early days, and if we keep getting reporters to
say ‘socialist’ and ‘anathema,’ we won’t have to counter his specifics with our specifics. So let’s round up some reporters and
get ‘Morning Joe’ on the phone.”
Did the reference to “socialist” and “anathema” surprise you? Read on.
Finally, because of the two points above, you’ll find that in many cases the story supports the campaign, while
justifying itself as “reporting.” Both bolded pieces are important.
Let’s look at each element above. First, “the story supports the campaign”:
Those who see Mrs. Clinton as being at risk in Iowa say she is still far better positioned to win the nomination than Mr.
Sanders, who lags by double digits in Iowa polling. He also has far less money than she does, and his socialist leanings
are anathema to many Americans.
In the first sentence the campaign is being subtly and indirectly quoted. But the bolded phrases above are pretty strong language
in a sentence that isn’t necessarily an indirect quote, and echoes open Clinton surrogates like Claire McCaskill. Even “leanings”
lends an unsavory color, since it echoes the phrase “communist leanings.”
(The alternative to the last sentence above, by the way, and much more honestly sourced, would be something like this: “The
anonymous campaign adviser also said, ‘Frankly, we think if we just keep saying ‘socialist’ whenever we can, we won’t have to
change our strategy of being vague on the economic issues. At least we’re sticking with that for now.'” I would buy that as excellent
honest reporting.)
Second, “justifying itself as reporting”: Once you present the core message as provided by the messengers, the reporter can
then call around for other, non-Clinton-sourced comment. Thus the quotes, much further down from Joe Trippi, Carter Eskew and
the Sanders campaign.
Add in a little of the reporters’ own analysis, much of it good:
“The enthusiasm that Mr. Sanders has generated — including a rally attended by 2,500 people in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on
Friday — has called into question Mrs. Clinton’s early strategy of focusing on a listening tour of small group gatherings
and wooing big donors in private settings.”
and you have the makings of a news story friendly to Clinton built around a news hook and potentially “placed” elements. The
hook, the “placed” elements (if they were placed), and some original analysis go at the top, and the rest of the story is built
to follow that.
Bottom Line
If you like this exercise in reading behind the media, please read
the article again with the above thoughts in mind. Is this original reporting (i.e., reporters starting a conversation), or did
the campaign make the first approach? Does the article carry Clinton water, subtly support the campaign? Are any opposing viewpoints
featured at the top, or are they buried below the point where most people stop reading?
This Times story may be a completely honest exercise in independent journalism. There certainly is a Sanders phenomenon,
and it’s detailed honestly and factually, so there’s value in reading it. But there’s an obvious bias toward Clinton messaging in
the reporters’ own prose, so I’m suspicious, and you should be as well.
I’ll also say that most stories about campaigns operate this way, as do many other news stories involving public figures. What
will make reporting the Sanders campaign different is what I wrote above — Sanders wants to take apart the insider game. What major
media outlet will help Sanders do that, will shut the door to corporate favors, media access and other prizes from a future Clinton
administration, in order to be even-handed?
In the post by By Les Leopold, the director of the Labor Institute in New York 10
Economic Facts that Power the Sanders Insurgency (naked
capitalism, Nov 13, 2015) and subsequent readers discussion contains so far the most interesting discussion of Sanders and his (pretty
lonely) current position in the presidential race. Being a an anti-establishment candidate is a difficult job as economic and
political power belong to the establishment by definition. BTW that's why you should not believe blindly the US polls -- they are designed
to sway electorate, not to inform it).
1. The Rich are Getting Richer, The Rest of Us are Not.
There always has been a significant gap between the top 1 percent and the rest of America. But that gap was kept under control
largely through governmental tax, banking and labor policies.
You could make a lot of money in this country, but after the New Deal, unions made sure you paid a decent wage to your workers,
and government made sure the wealthy provided ample tax revenues. This allowed working people also to enjoy a rising standard of
living.
But as the chart below shows the bond has been broken. After 1980, the incomes of the top 1% exploded while the wages of the
bottom 90% stagnated….and not by accident.
2. Wall Street/CEO Greed
Most of us haven’t had a real raise (after inflation) for more than a decade. Meanwhile we see our CEOs and their Wall
Street partners rake in astronomical sums. The data backs up what we see and sense. As this chart shows, the gap between the pay
of the top CEOs and the average worker has jumped from 45 to 1 in 1970 to an astounding 829 to one today.
The game is rigged and Sanders is calling them on it.
3. The Biggest Banks are Getting Bigger.
One of the most outrageous economics facts of life is the engorgement
of too-big-to-fail banks. We are told that they now are under control. But nothing could be further from the truth.
The top four banks have grown even larger since the Great Recession. No wonder crowds roar when Bernie says “If a bank is too
big to fail, I think it’s too big to exist.”
4. Students are Crippled with Debt.
Sanders wants to tax Wall Street speculation and use the money to fund free higher education. And for good reason. Debt
peonage is hitting college students as banks load them up with onerous loans. Sanders believes it’s time for us to catch up with
many other developed nations that already provide free higher education.
5. We lead the developed world in child poverty
Nothing more clearly reflects the values of a country than how it treats its children. And nothing is more painful and inexcusable
than children living in poverty.
The countries of northern Europe – Iceland, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and Sweden – have nearly eradicated childhood
poverty. These also are the countries that have the lowest levels of inequality. They have made a conscious choice: less inequality,
less childhood poverty.
But in a country like ours so engulfed by runaway inequality, child poverty becomes the responsibility of the poor. In other
words, if your kids are poor it’s your fault. Don’t expect society to feed them.
Bernie does indeed expect society to feed the poor. And so should we.
6. You can’t live on the minimum wage
America is the only country in the developed world in which you can work full time and still live in poverty. That’s because
our federal minimum wage is a disgrace. As the chart below shows, the real buying power of the minimum wage, after taking into account
of inflation, has been on the decline since its peak in the 1960s. That’s why one of Sanders’ biggest applause lines is
“A minimum wage of $7 an hour is a starvation wage. I applaud those cities—Seattle, Los Angeles and others—that have raised the
minimum wage to $15 an hour. And that is exactly what we will do
at the federal level.”
7. The tax system favors the rich
We all know that the rich are not paying their fair share of taxes. They hire
the best lawyers to help make their incomes vanish on IRS papers. They shift money abroad. They use their influence to create and
abuse loopholes. And they sell us the lie that decreasing taxes on the rich make all boats rise.
The chart below shows the result on the state and local levels. The sad truth is that the poorer you are, the more you pay
as a percent of your income.
8. The Rich Buy the Political System
As our economy fractures under the weight of runaway inequality, so does our entire democracy. Money is pouring into politics,
especially since the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling. As the chart below makes clear, corporations and financial
institutions are taking full advantage as they flood the political process through Super PACS.
Sanders wants Super PACS outlawed and Citizens United overturned.
9. “The American Dream” is Fading Away
Many Americans still believe in the American Dream — the idea of genuine upward mobility. We cherish the idea that our children
will do as well or better than we have done.
But we’re getting a wake up call.
The chart below shows that the odds of rising above your father’s economic position in the U.S. is about 50/50. In Denmark, you
have about a seven to one chance of doing better.
No wonder Bernie wants us to learn a thing or two from the Danes
10. The Largest Police State in the World
Freedom pays the price for runaway inequality. Because we refuse to use government to provide decent paying work for all those
who are willing and able to work, we leave vast tracks of our cities mired in poverty.
We allow institutional racist practices (especially in housing, education and criminal justice) to trap more people of color on
the lowest rungs of the economic ladder.
Instead of using government to create jobs, we use government to fund prisons.
Instead of a War on Poverty we have declared war on the poor.
As a result, we now have more prisoners both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of the population than any country in the
world. And if you compare the chart below with the first chart in this article, you’ll find that the incarceration surge started
with the onset of runway inequality.
Taking Them On
Perhaps Bernie’s biggest applause line is the one that sets us on our course. His campaign cannot succeed in one election. We
need to connect with our neighbors and colleagues and help organize and mobilize for change.
“This campaign is sending a message to the billionaire class: Yes, we have the guts to take you on.”
Let’s hope he’s right.
tim s
There is much more to a candidates platform than simply economics, which readers of NC know to be as much pseudo-science as
anything, and the Fed, which fails to live up to ideals for the common good, and actually preserves the status quo which is such
a problem these days.
RP is a mixed bag for certain, but you get a sense that he is at least honest, which is a radical change in itself, and there
is much for readers of this blog to latch onto. For instance:
-Paul broke with his party by voting against the PATRIOT Act in 2001
-Paul has spoken against the domestic surveillance program conducted by the National Security Agency on American citizens
-cut the Department of Defense budget by total 15%; eliminate all foreign war funding
-Paul contends that prohibition of drugs is ineffective and advocates ending the War on Drugs
To be sure, many of his positions are headscratchers, for sure, such as his belief in privatization and “free markets”. These
are very idealistic, and as you probably focus on, the readers of NC will call BS on very quickly.
Still, when having to choose between the internally conflicted and the pathological liar, it is no surprise that many will
choose the internally conflicted.
fresno dan, November 13, 2015 at 3:28 pm
I agree.
And one other point: Paul, and every one else elected, so far at least, is not a Napoleon or Caesar, so most platforms are 99.9%
baloney. (well, more accurately, most platforms are the same as it ever was – the candidates just say a lot of words to make
it appear they are going to do something different – yesterday’s LINKS about how Obama didn’t REALLY oppose Bush’s policies,
just that they didn’t go through a process to make them legal)
At least with Paul, there was some evidence that he would TRY to dial back all the war mongering….
Jim Haygood, November 13, 2015 at 9:57 am
‘Ron Paul knows nothing about the Fed and Economics for which he claims to be an expert.’
To be fair, plenty of people write books on topics of which they know nothing, or worse/less than nothing. All neo-liberal
economists, for example.
Nigelk, November 13, 2015 at 1:53 pm
Ron Paul? Seriously? Did I drive through a wormhole this morning and arrive in Fall 2007?
jrs, November 13, 2015 at 2:21 pm
That’s what they’ll be saying about Sanders in 4 years. I don’t mind Sanders as the best choice there is perhaps. But come
on folks, none of this stuff has any hope really. A revolution? Well I don’t hope for one either, but at least movement building
might work. Other than that it’s 5 minutes in the voting booth and get on with your life.
Jagger, November 13, 2015 at 2:04 pm
I would be curious how anybody who reads this blog could possibly be for Ron Paul, let alone have voted for him.
Ron Paul is anti-war. Who else is anti-war amongst the Repub/Dem tickets? Maybe Sanders. He did vote against the Iraqi
invasion but wouldn’t condemn Israel over the last air war on Gaza. Jury is still out on him.
We should remember that the image of the United Nations as a benevolent peacemaker is a myth, as evidenced by the sad history
of its military actions over the past 30 years. In virtually every instance its so-called “peacekeeping missions” have done
nothing but intensify regional conflicts. Kosovo and Somalia are poignant examples of UN policy gone bad, creating lasting
resentment and instability rather than peace.
Uh, that sounds like pretty classic Ron Paul. Are you saying that acting as the world’s police force bombing civilian infrastructure
in Serbia was a good idea and that things are hunky dory in Somalia today? Do you support the current effort to wage war on the
Assad government in Syria?
You didn’t answer Jagger’s question.
washunate, November 13, 2015 at 3:21 pm
Maybe we don’t need experts. Maybe the God of Authority is a False God. Maybe instead of trying to fight war better, we should
stop trying.
That’s the thing about the three biggest things Paul stood for (end the Fed, end the drug war, end the Iraq war): they were ends.
Not new programs that require advanced degrees and subject matter expertise, but rather, stopping horrible programs run by horrible
people for horrible purposes.
Now maybe you disagree that they’re horrible, and that’s fine. Personally, I vehemently oppose the drug war and the US empire,
but I’m not opposed to the Fed. To me, it just does what politicians tell it to do. But the point is, that’s a matter of personal
opinion, not expertise.
I wonder only half-jokingly if your comment is satire, too. I assume it was unintentional, but it sounds exactly like the whiny
Democratic pundit enforcers complaining about Alan Grayson and FDL working with evil Republicans like Grover Norquist on Audit
the Fed legislation. The era in which people can be intimidated via guilt by association is over. There are far more independents
than Democrats today.
If you don’t understand how a 2008 Ron Paul supporter could be interested in fearless commentary on finance, economics, politics,
and power, then all I can surmise is that you don’t want to understand. If you are genuinely curious, this link might be
a particularly useful refresher on the tone of the day to day politics of the time:
The rhetoric Occupy Wall Street was not usurped by the Democratic Party until it was crushed completed in an orchestrated
multi-city police state take-down by Democratic and Republican mayors. I see no candidates talking about the right of free
speech and assembly to petition government for the redress of grievances. I did not see that sort of repression happen with
the Tea Party, which was receiving massive financing from the start. The two movements are not equivalent in how they have
been received by the two parties.
wbgonne, November 13, 2015 at 10:21 am
Given that OWS and the Tea Party have been usurped by the respective national parties, and both movements are anti-status
quo, my opinion is they should join forces. Also, considering there is little difference at the end of the day, between the
republican and democrat parties, that they play both sides against the middle, if Trump and Sanders had an ounce of humility
between them, they would both quit their party and run on a split ticket.
A couple of quibbles. First, OWS was not usurped by the Democrats: it was opposed, undermined and ultimately crushed by the
Democratic Establishment, starting at the top with the Obama Administration all the way down to the mayors, many of whom were
Democrats too. The Tea Party began as a populist movement but was largely hijacked by the GOP corporatists. That said, there is
clearly a lot of populist energy on both the Right and the Left. Sanders carries the ball forward almost without misstep. Trump,
however, is a decidedly mixed bag: while he is anti-TPP — a huge plus — he also opposes wage increases and probably holds many
other anti-populist views that just haven’t surfaced yet.
But the biggest problem with the merger you propose, however, is the one that has bedeviled populism since the 70s: identity
politics issues. While I generally try not to over-emphasize such issues, they should not be discounted either. They should certainly
not be disparaged. Let me put it this way: no self-respecting progressive could collaborate with someone who wishes Operation
Wetback were our national immigration policy. Overt racism, sexism and homophobia cannot be accepted but political correctness
should be rejected too as the antagonizing and divisive factor it is. In order for the merger you posit to occur — which would
be a wonderful development — both the Left and the Right must downplay identity politics issues because those are the wedges that
keep the two ends of economic populism from joining.
Jagger, November 13, 2015 at 2:11 pm
Identity politics is in the DNA of the Democratic party. Abandoning identity politics is simply not going to happen for a few
generations at best.
WindyCity, November 13, 2015 at 3:17 pm
There is discontent on the left and the right. That’s what feeding the candidacies of Tea Party darlings like Trump and Carson
and the Democratic Socialist Sanders. Working- and middle-class folks across the political spectrum have been hit hard with unemployment,
bankruptcy, foreclosure, debt-slavery, and on and on. Those on the right blame immigration, Obama, and big government; those on
the left blame corporate tyranny and capitalist greed. It’s probably naive of me, but I do see an opening for a Sanders to draw
support from the right. His message ought to resonate with the disaffected, disenfranchised, and disillusioned in all quarters.
I’ve already heard reports of some Tea Baggers throwing in with him. It will be interesting to see if this becomes a significant
movement.
Eric Patton
But as the chart below shows the bond has been broken.
I don’t like the passive voice here. Who broke the bond? And why?
I recommend
Noam Chomsky. Pay attention to Chomsky’s comments about the dismantling of the Bretton Woods system in the early 70s. Also
pay attention when Chomsky talks about the “crisis of democracy” and the very conscious destruction of the US educational system.
cwaltz, November 13, 2015 at 7:03 am
I have to laugh at anyone who argues they don’t like redistribution because it’s the equivalent of saying I don’t like an economy.
The reality is in capitalism you have redistribution. Businesses don’t keep the money you give it for goods and services, they
redistribute it. The problem is they redistribute it poorly. They put an inordinately large emphasis on rewarding the guy on the
top of the totem pole regardless of his contributions(that’s why you have CEOs walking away with multimillion dollar parachutes)
while paying peanuts to what is often the face of their organization.
The Tea Party has a real critical thinking issue if it thinks any of this has anything to do with winners and losers. You can
be a hard worker spending 17 years busting your backside only to find a CEO like Trump has decided that the business isn’t profitable
enough. Guess what? When he files for bankruptcy he’ll get to keep his house, and be insulated from economic consequences that
led to the bankruptcy. Meanwhile the same couldn’t be said for that worker whose major “bad decision” was placing his lot in with
the wrong company at the wrong time under the wrong leadership.
Paul Tioxon, November 13, 2015 at 10:06 am
A Million Student March yesterday was the national day of protest across the nation by university students marching for the
cancellation of student debt and $15/hr wages for student jobs. Locally, in Philly, they tied up traffic marching from North to
South down Broad St and from West To East across Market St converging at City Hall for a rally against debt, for the $15/hr wage
and in solidarity with Mizzou and Yale against racism on campus. Helicopter coverage and on site reporters interviewed the students,
allowing them to get their message across in their own words. A Google news search shows similar coverage from Pittsburgh, Reno,
Oakland, Vanderbilt etc etc. The report linked below references Bernie Sanders remarks as an inspiration. One student in front
of City Hall demanding student debt cancellation presented the case that since a college degree is a necessity, why are they forced
into debt for something that society requires of them to live any kind of life worth living? Necessities of life should not require
you to borrow money and go into debt. That is similar to buying you supplies from the mining company so you can go down to the
mines and work. Candles and picks are required to mine, so why does your paycheck have to cover that cost? The students are beginning
to see the light at the end of the tunnel!
This is an excellent list of problems in the U.S. economy (some of them affect other parts of the world, too). Whether
or not a person currently supports Senator Bernie Sanders, one should ask which candidates for public office are most likely to
sincerely try to solve these problems. There are other non-economic issues, but the average person won’t have a say in solving
other problems unless most of the 10 problems in the list are, at the very least, partly solved.
3.14e-9, November 13, 2015 at 12:53 pm
This article won’t convince anyone with half a brain of anything. It’s a bunch of opinion, with weasel words such as “My strong
impression is.” That he cites Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank is all anyone needs to know. They’ve been hammering on the same
opinion over and over with pretty much the same set of “facts,” including inaccuracies such as Sanders’s alleged support for the
bombing of Gaza last summer. Sanders was one of a small minority of senators who actually didn’t sign on to that resolution (S.
Res. 498) and he didn’t vote for it, because there is no vote on resolutions. They are approved by an arcane Senate rule called
“unanimous consent,” which is not what it sounds like, but it makes a great story for Chris Hedges and others who are just pissed
off that Sanders chose to run as a Democrat.
Ultimately, this article is just more of the same ol’ — which is ironic, given that that’s what most of this crowd says about
Sanders.
WindyCity, November 13, 2015 at 3:42 pm
Chris Hedges takes the same view. I am fully sympathetic with the harsh criticisms leveled at Sanders regarding his support
for empire and his relative indifference to foreign policy. Also, he’s clearly not a socialist (nor could he be, considering his
support for US militaristic hegemony). He is a liberal social democratic in the FDR tradition, and what he advocates is the restitution
and strengthening of New Deal restraints on capitalism aimed at reducing inequality. He does support worker self-directed enterprises
(cooperative businesses owned and run by workers) and has introduced legislation to provide federal support for such endeavors.
This does suggest he’s mindful of what genuine socialism is about, though he hasn’t highlighted these ideas in the campaign.
My own view is that Sanders could provide an impetus for more movement-led change, provided that the energy and hope that he has
generated, especially among young people, be channeled into organizing efforts and civil disobedience after the election process
has concluded. I have little doubt that Clinton will win the nomination, but if, instead of succumbing to depression and disillusionment
after Sanders has been defeated, his enthusiastic supporters take their anger and commitment into movement-building, his campaign
will have made an important contribution.
A big problem is that Sanders has pledged to support the Democratic candidate if it’s not him. I don’t see how he could
really get behind the cynical, opportunistic neocon, neoliberal Clinton, but we’ll see. It does look like he’ll push the less
worse argument on his supporters, and that would be unfortunate.
Vatch, November 13, 2015 at 12:37 pm
The article misrepresents some things. For example, these statements are false, or at the very least, exaggerations:
1) support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including President Obama’s recent decision to maintain a troop presence;
2) blank-check support of Israel, including its savage bombing campaign in Gaza last year;
1 ) Sanders voted against the war in Iraq and against the Patriot Act. See this for links and this for the Iraq vote in
the House.
2 ) Sanders has been very critical of Israel’s behavior in Gaza. See
this for more information
and links.
Meant as a reply to Linda J.
Tom Stone, November 13, 2015 at 12:56 pm
Since reform is not going to happen we need to provide local police departments with more armored vehicles and finish doing
away with the 2nd amendment.
The 1st and 4th are gone, it’s time for sensible people to get with the program.
Wesley Clarke is calling for FEMA camps to be opened to hold “Extremists”.
And he’s considered a moderate…
The system is broken, get in line or get hurt.
Sanders is probably among very few US politicians who oppose both theory and practice of neoliberalism, which came to power in the
USA with the election of Ronald Reagan. Now neoliberalism is 35 years old and already experienced one crisis (2008) which severely undermined
its credibility. But it recovered and continue to exist in "zombie" (and really bloodthirsty) state: people understand that as a social
system it is discredited, but have no viable alternative. What Sanders tried to propose is such an alternative in a form of resurrection
of elements of New Deal. This is a tremendously difficult task. He does not enjoy support on financial oligarchy and thus face well
organized and well fed Hillary campaign or discrediting him as a viable candidate. One positive thing about this duel that in rate face
to face encounters Sanders might prevail over "not so bright" Hillary.
Neoliberalism is a new form of corporatism based on the ideology
of market fundamentalism, dominance of finance in the economy (and
restoration of the political power of financial oligarchy) and cult of the rich ("greed
is good") instead of ideology based on racial or national superiority typical for classic corporatism. Like many religious doctrines
it belongs to the class of
Theological Voluntarism
(with some pseudo mathematical voodoo attached as a justification; actually even this is not new. Iranian ayatollahs in the past needed
to demonstrate proficiency in mathematics) , but unlike most philosophies and relations it does not try to suppress greed. On the contrary
it pronounces it to be a virtue ("Greed is good"). All actions are covered under smokescreen
of propaganda which is unprecedented in its cynicism,hypocrisy and contempt to the ordinary people. Probably
exceeding cynicism of the USSR leadership which covered the same redistribution ( in case of the USSR mainly to military industrial
complex and nomenklatura ) policies with Big Brother style slogans like "The Party cares for the wellbeing
of the people". This is a tailor-made ideology for powerful interests, large international corporations who simply do want
to have their way. They created a political system that is the very opposite of what our leadership, the mass media, opinion leaders,
think tanks etc. proclaim as the world's foremost exemplary of democracy. The typical for corporatism union of corporate power and government
was transformed by the US elite into a flavor of corporatism which Sheldon Wolin
called "inverted totalitarianism" which is just another nickname
for neoliberalism. Unlike traditional corporatism of Nazi Germany, and Italy the American neoliberal system is designed
not to mobilize the populace, but to distract it, to encourage a sense of dependency (by cultivating fear, calling everything a "war",
for example "war on terror") as well as encouraging political disengagement (as in Reagan quote: "The nine most terrifying words
in the English language are "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." ) . Those dirty tricks allowed corporate elite to take
full political power and kill remnants of unions political power while citizenry shows little interest or concern. In other words
powerful corporate interests which were the key promoters of neoliberalism and the key beneficiaries of its spread. They ingeniously
used the Cold War as a pretext of dismantling of the New Deal ( Pt 1-8 Hedges
& Wolin Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist - YouTube):
HEDGES: And the Cold War. So the Cold War arises. And this becomes the kind of moment by which capital, and especially corporate
capital, can dismantle the New Deal and free itself from any kind of regulation and constraint to deform and destroy American democracy.
Can you talk about that process, what happened during that period?
WOLIN: Well, I think the first thing to be said about
it is the success with which the governing groups manage to create a Cold War that was really so total in its spread that it
was hard to mount a critical opposition or to take a more detached view of our relationship to the Soviet Union and just what kind
of problem it created.
And it also had the effect, of course, of skewing the way we looked at domestic discontents, domestic inequalities, and so on,
because it was always easy to tar them with the brush of communism, so that the communism was just more than a regime. It
was also a kind of total depiction of what was the threat to -- and complete opposite to our own form of society, our old form of
economy and government.
HEDGES: And in Politics and Vision, you talk about because of that ideological clash, therefore any restriction
of capitalism which was defined in opposition to communism as a kind of democratic good, if you want to use that word, was lifted
in the name of the battle against communism, that it became capitalism that was juxtaposed to communism rather than democracy, and
therefore this empowered capital, in a very pernicious way, to dismantle democratic institutions in the name of the war on communism.
WOLIN:Oh, I think there's no question about that, the notion that you first had to, so to speak, unleash the great potential
capitalism had for improving everybody's economical lot and the kind of constraints that had been developed not only by the New Deal,
but by progressive movements throughout the 19th century and early 20th century in the United States, where it had been increasingly
understood that while American economic institutions were a good thing, so to speak, and needed to be nurtured and developed, they
also posed a threat.
They posed a threat because they tended to result in concentrations of power, concentrations of economic power that quickly translated
themselves into political influence because of the inevitably porous nature of democratic representation and elections and rule,
so that the difficulty's been there for a long time, been recognized for a long time, but we go through these periods of sleepwalking
where we have to relearn lessons that have been known almost since the birth of the republic, or at least since the birth of Jeffersonian
democracy, that capitalism has its virtues, but it has to be carefully, carefully watched, observed, and often controlled.
Later Wendy Brown, professor in Berkley advanced Professor Wolin ideas to a new level in her book Undoing the Demos:
Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution (Zone Books, 2015). Notable quotes from her interview (What
Exactly Is Neoliberalism):
"... I treat neoliberalism as a governing rationality through which everything is "economized" and in a very specific
way: human beings become market actors and nothing but, every field of activity is seen as a market, and every entity (whether public
or private, whether person, business, or state) is governed as a firm. Importantly, this is not simply a matter of extending commodification
and monetization everywhere-that's the old Marxist depiction of capital's transformation of everyday life. 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. Above all, it casts people as human capital who must constantly tend to their own present
and future value. ..."
"... The most common criticisms of neoliberalism, regarded solely as economic policy rather than as the broader phenomenon
of a governing rationality, are that it generates and legitimates extreme inequalities of wealth and life conditions; that it leads
to increasingly precarious and disposable populations; that it produces an unprecedented intimacy between capital (especially finance
capital) and states, and thus permits domination of political life by capital; that it generates crass and even unethical commercialization
of things rightly protected from markets, for example, babies, human organs, or endangered species or wilderness; that it privatizes
public goods and thus eliminates shared and egalitarian access to them; and that it subjects states, societies, and individuals to
the volatility and havoc of unregulated financial markets. ..."
"... with the neoliberal revolution that homo politicus is finally vanquished as a fundamental feature of being human
and of democracy. Democracy requires that citizens be modestly oriented toward self-rule, not simply value enhancement, and that
we understand our freedom as resting in such self-rule, not simply in market conduct. When this dimension of being human is extinguished,
it takes with it the necessary energies, practices, and culture of democracy, as well as its very intelligibility. ..."
"... For most Marxists, neoliberalism emerges in the 1970s in response to capitalism's falling rate of profit; the shift
of global economic gravity to OPEC, Asia, and other sites outside the West; and the dilution of class power generated by unions,
redistributive welfare states, large and lazy corporations, and the expectations generated by educated democracies. From this perspective,
neoliberalism is simply capitalism on steroids: a state and IMF-backed consolidation of class power aimed at releasing capital from
regulatory and national constraints, and defanging all forms of popular solidarities, especially labor. ..."
"... The grains of truth in this analysis don't get at the fundamental transformation of social, cultural, and individual
life brought about by neoliberal reason. They don't get at the ways that public institutions and services have not merely been outsourced
but thoroughly recast as private goods for individual investment or consumption. And they don't get at the wholesale remaking of
workplaces, schools, social life, and individuals. For that story, one has to track the dissemination of neoliberal economization
through neoliberalism as a governing form of reason, not just a power grab by capital. There are many vehicles of this dissemination
-- law, culture, and above all, the novel political-administrative form we have come to call governance. It is through governance
practices that business models and metrics come to irrigate every crevice of society, circulating from investment banks to schools,
from corporations to universities, from public agencies to the individual. It is through the replacement of democratic terms of law,
participation, and justice with idioms of benchmarks, objectives, and buy-ins that governance dismantles democratic life while appearing
only to instill it with "best practices." ..."
"... Progressives generally disparage Citizens United for having flooded the American electoral process with corporate
money on the basis of tortured First Amendment reasoning that treats corporations as persons. However, a careful reading of the majority
decision also reveals precisely the thoroughgoing economization of the terms and practices of democracy we have been talking about.
In the majority opinion, electoral campaigns are cast as "political marketplaces," just as ideas are cast as freely circulating in
a market where the only potential interference arises from restrictions on producers and consumers of ideas-who may speak and who
may listen or judge. Thus, Justice Kennedy's insistence on the fundamental neoliberal principle that these marketplaces should be
unregulated paves the way for overturning a century of campaign finance law aimed at modestly restricting the power of money in politics.
Moreover, in the decision, political speech itself is rendered as a kind of capital right, functioning largely to advance the position
of its bearer, whether that bearer is human capital, corporate capital, or finance capital. This understanding of political speech
replaces the idea of democratic political speech as a vital (if potentially monopolizable and corruptible) medium for public deliberation
and persuasion. ..."
"... My point was that democracy is really reduced to a whisper in the Euro-Atlantic nations today. Even Alan Greenspan
says that elections don't much matter much because, "thanks to globalization . . . the world is governed by market forces," not elected
representatives. ..."
I guess he is correct in that. Good luck USAians, I trust you will stay healthy and find a
third or fourth party because at this rate the turnout will be so low that the duopoly might
have to rig the elections to make it seem credible.
It might have been easy for people to believe that there was surging leftwing movement
in American politics while Bernie Sanders' star was rising in 2016 and 2020. I had always
been skeptical about how deeply that left movement actually went, but even I -- cynical as
I am -- started believing in it a bit last winter. Shit. Bernie has a chance, I thought.
Maybe there is something real happening here. But then he got crushed, endorsed drooling
Joe Biden, licked the "we can move him left" boot, ducked out of the fight, and exposed a
totally barren political left landscape. Turns out that Bernie's "revolution" was really
nothing other than an electoral campaign, after all -- and that campaign and all the
organizational energy it harnessed dissolved immediately with his candidacy. What did it
leave behind? Not much, other than huge platforms for a few top influencers and political
operatives who leveraged the Bern into lucrative Patreon and Substack careers.
Who am I talking about? Well, people like David Sirota, who seems to have taken his
official Bernie campaign Substack newsletter and privatized its massive email list
post-election for personal profit. Or his comrade Briahna Joy Gray, who just launched a
podcast with a Chapo cohost that's already raking in more than $35,000 a month. Meanwhile,
the people whose interests these two Bernie operatives had represented -- the millions who
gave Bernie a few bucks -- are being immiserated more and more. David and Briahna are now
on different sides of the Force the Vote fight, arguing endlessly on platforms with
multi-tiered subscription offers. And what service do these leftwing influencers provide to
the people? As far as I can tell, not much other than distraction and
politics-as-entertainment. It's all very fucking grim.
Good luck to all for the year ahead and particularly good luck to Yemen, Iran and
Venezuela and all those nations being jackbooted by the USAi. PEACE please.
once biden wins he will just straight up ignore bernie, bernie is kidding himself if he thinks he will have 1 shred of
influence in a Biden adminsteration.
Bernie should have walked the moment the primary was stolen from him again. He says you support these three policies or
me and my supporters walk. THAT's leverage
"Tell the corporate elite they have had their day"... by electing a corporate elitist who is going to keep the working
class in the mud with ongoing shutdowns. Great plan!
I did not support #DemExit before tonight. But I just got off the phone with my 24 year old daughter. She's depressed as hell
by what we all see, because they are not bothering to hide it anymore. I could not promise her things will get better, because
they won't.
We do not have a democracy, we have an #oligarchy and when shit hits the fan (as it will sooner than later), our nation
will become another dictatorship or military junta.
So, I'm done with the party system, because we only have one party - the party
for and by the rich. I'm abandoning the Democratic party because it abandoned us for corporate cash decades ago. That's all I
have to say. End of story.
reporting that 82% is in. If so then Biden would need to get 67% of the remaining votes. He's currently at 27%. What are the
odds that such a huge number of Biden votes would now come in? Zero, of course. There's no chance of it and Bernie has won California.
But CNN, for one, is still refusing to call it for him. They had no problem calling Michigan, though, with something like 18%
in.
Perhaps Bernie will hold on and win Washington. We'll see. Tulsi has over 8,500 votes so far. If we were to emulate the Hillbots
we'd be screaming at her, saying she hurt Bernie!!! ! But we don't do that because we're more aware.
#2 Said results won't
be available until tomorrow. We still don't have full results from California...
@Shahryar@Shahryar
Meanwhile, Bernie shows at 14.8%, below the 15% threshold.
I did not have an instant of anger at Tulsi, only sadness.
Sadness
that the mockery of democracy that holds sway in this country would repeatedly set us up for those ridiculous attacks that someone
has been a "spoiler".
"... The duplicitousness of exploiting misery is especially vile if a candidate knows from the start millions of his enthusiastic supporters comprised of minorities, the young, and the marginalized will ultimately be hoodwinked into supporting, Biden, a demented warmongering crook who is medically propped up to execute a seven minute campaign speech. ..."
"... And there you have it – democracy in action. This is the kind of democracy the US is promoting throughout the planet. This is the reason behind every regime change war. To put it simply–the US intelligence agencies want to control the sovereign leaders of every government. They wish every leader was as brain dead as Biden–their job would be a lot easier. ..."
"... I am afraid you've hit upon the crux of the matter. One would think after Bernie playing the role of sheepdog in 2016 rather than challenging the DNC and Hillary at the convention over the leaked emails exposing the utter corruption of the process that people would be less than trusting of Bernie in 2020. Yet here we are again. ..."
"... Tulsi is the only one who dares speak the truth regarding the war machine, thus she has been excluded. ..."
"... we may now adapt this old Chernenko joke: "Today, due to bad health and without regaining consciousness, Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko took up the duties of Secretary General". ..."
"Bernie Sanders has done his best to cover up: the Democratic Party is a party of the
capitalist class. It can no more be converted to socialism than the CIA can become an
instrument of the struggle against American imperialism."
The duplicitousness of exploiting misery is especially vile if a candidate knows from
the start millions of his enthusiastic supporters comprised of minorities, the young, and the
marginalized will ultimately be hoodwinked into supporting, Biden, a demented warmongering
crook who is medically propped up to execute a seven minute campaign speech.
Large campaign rallies might not be a concern for much longer, inasmuch, as the security
state will probably end rallies saying they fear large crowds will spread the coronavirus.
Once rallies are no longer a consideration the intelligence agencies will only need to prop
up "drooling Joe" in front of a gold curtain flanked by numerous American flags. Drooling
Joe, will read a short speech rehearsed numerous times and then he'll be quickly ushered off
the stage before the public can detect Joe is mentally more dead than alive.
And there you have it – democracy in action. This is the kind of democracy the
US is promoting throughout the planet. This is the reason behind every regime change war. To
put it simply–the US intelligence agencies want to control the sovereign leaders of
every government. They wish every leader was as brain dead as Biden–their job would be
a lot easier.
Trillions of working-class tax dollars are absconded by the military/security/surveillance
corporate state to fight endless NEEDLESS wars to fatten the pockets of war profiteers and
every other ancillary grifter. Genocide is committed throughout the Middle East and Africa to
spread US democracy. A democracy where the will of the people is crushed.
Skip Scott , March 10, 2020 at 09:04
I am afraid you've hit upon the crux of the matter. One would think after Bernie
playing the role of sheepdog in 2016 rather than challenging the DNC and Hillary at the
convention over the leaked emails exposing the utter corruption of the process that people
would be less than trusting of Bernie in 2020. Yet here we are again.
Tulsi is the only one who dares speak the truth regarding the war machine, thus she
has been excluded. The only way I would ever vote for Bernie would be if he picked Tulsi
for his running mate. That would likely involve both of them leaving the democratic party and
running as Independents. In the end, only a revolution has any hope for bringing meaningful
change. The evil that controls both parties, the MIC, and the MSM will not be brought under
control willingly.
Hans Suter , March 9, 2020 at 09:52
we may now adapt this old Chernenko joke: "Today, due to bad health and without
regaining consciousness, Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko took up the duties of Secretary
General".
wage stagnation and the collapse of working-class life;
our dangerously crumbling infrastructure;
our pressing need to remake our economic system to avoid the onrushing threat to human civilization as we know it posed
by the climate crisis;
and the generalized collapse of faith in our system and its most powerful practitioners, particularly among young people.
... he has not matched Sanders's willingness to disentangle us from unwinnable foreign wars.
Biden is the candidate from credit card companies and like leopard can't change its spots. He is and always was a neocon and
staunch neoliberal.
A typical Washington swamp rat. Completely despicable person, if you ask me.
And a very sick in addition to that. To the extent that he risks his life and accelerates his mental decline by running in
such a stressful contest. That's the same problem that Hillary faced.
But now with "Anybody but Trump" movement growing stronger and stronger by the day, his health problems, past warmongering
and his despicable role in the decimation of the New Deal and the establishment of the rule of financial oligarchy in the USA
might hunt him less than he deserves.
A cat or a dog in place of Biden would probably do as well this time, if not better :-)
We are in recession now and that spells big troubles for Trump. Moreover, the real contest in November most probably will be
between Trump and his administration handling of the coronavirus epidemics, not so much between Trump and Biden ;-)
“Why did Senator Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg suddenly drop out? They were all on the ballot on Super Tuesday and they suddenly
dropped out. Well, they were contacted by the Democratic Party, the Democratic National Committee, by various people like Terry
McAuliffe, the Clintons and all of them basically saying — do it in order to save the party from Bernie Sanders, do it for Joe
Biden, our boy, you know.
These are a bunch of losers, they have lost so many elections, state, federal over the years against the worst Republican Party
in history. And the losers don’t want to give up their sinecures.
They don’t want to give up the entrenched role they play inside this decrepit Democratic Party that Bernie is trying to clean
up and reform. There are a lot of emails, calls going on after the South Carolina primary, in the three days to line up all kinds
of party apparatchiks, to get out the vote, to bad mouth Bernie”
Joe Biden was for all of these corporate managed trade agreements that emptied his beloved native Pennsylvania of jobs. He
supported all of the wars that Clinton and Obama supported. He is the toady of the big banks in Delaware. He supported the Wall
Street bailout after the crash in 2009.
He was the waterboy for the credit card industry and their rapacious interest rates and penalties. And he comes from Delaware,
which is the hospitality center for giant corporations to be chartered in so that they can have permissive corporate laws and
strip their own shareholders and mutual funds and pension funds of the rights of ownership, entrenching power at the top among
the corporate executive class. He voted for legislation in the Senate that led to mass incarceration. That’s all, just for starters.
“He’s responsible for Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. He took Thurgood Marshall’s seat and he’s been voting against
black and Latino interests ever since, making a difference in 5-4 decisions. And as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Biden
mistreated Anita Hill, who was a star witness. And he didn’t urge the Democrats not to bolt — and eleven of them bolted and
supported Clarence Thomas who won 52-48 in a Democratically controlled Senate. He’s responsible for a lot of those 5-4 votes
where Clarence Thomas makes the difference.”
Go go, Joe! We all love you here. We like what you’ve done….more of the same, pleeeeeeeeeeeze!
This is a great idea. Maybe Bernie can sell it to Biden for getting out of the primary after the next debate.
“As Joe Biden romped to victory on what cable news called “Super Tuesday II” in recognition of the American public’s relentless
thirst for branded sequels, CNN’s Jake Tapper surveyed the scene and offered a cheerful parallel: what if this is like John Kerry
in 2004, where the fading Bernie Sanders has reprised the role of Howard Dean? The comparison only goes so far, even if the lion’s
share of the Democratic electorate is once again motivated almost solely by defeating the Republican incumbent, and have put on
their pundit caps to rally around the guy they’ve convinced themselves is most Electable. For one thing, Donald Trump is particularly
unpopular, and it appears—based on the 2018 midterms and some data out of Michigan last night—that Republicans are hemorrhaging
support among white suburban voters, particularly women, as a result.
Still, there are ways in which Biden is weak. It does us no good to pretend that he is the same guy who tore apart Paul Ryan
in a vice-presidential debate in 2012. He is slower now, and there are times he doesn’t always make sense. Trump has his own problems
in that department, but the president’s primal instinct for viciousness and cruelty could still prove effective against Biden—not
that, based on 2016, debates particularly matter.
Biden’s more significant problems may arise with voters who believe the economy is not working for them, that they’ve been
left behind by a system rigged against them. Biden’s emerging coalition of the Democratic Party’s African-American base and Trump-hating
suburbanites will need to feature younger and white working-class voters to get him across the line in places like Michigan—the
kind of votes that Hillary Clinton failed to get running a campaign that was primarily a negation of Trump, not unlike the one
Biden’s running. He also needs to make inroads with Hispanic voters, who skew younger and working class and have gravitated to
the Sanders campaign.
You need to be running for something, not just against something, to get the votes you need beyond the Democratic primary electorate.
Joe Biden must have a signature policy that will speak to the fundamental issues of our time:
wage stagnation and the collapse of working-class life;
our dangerously crumbling infrastructure;
our pressing need to remake our economic system to avoid the onrushing threat to human civilization as we know it posed
by the climate crisis;
and the generalized collapse of faith in our system and its most powerful practitioners, particularly among young people.
The answer to all this may just be a Green New Deal, or at least a similar green infrastructure plan. If Biden is reluctant
to call it the Green New Deal for fear of tying himself to the left and/or alienating the suburbanites in his coalition, he can
call it the Rebuild America for the 21st Century Plan or whatever the hell he wants. But since it’s abundantly clear he’s not
going to pursue any major healthcare reform, he needs to present a simple and clear vision for America’s future, not just a promise
to return things to, like, 2015 or whatever, before the orange man made everything bad. Clearly everything was not good back then,
since an insane game-show host got enough traction with the electorate to crash into the White House. People outside the Democratic
primary electorate will need to believe their lives will change beyond the blessed prospect they won’t have to see the president
making a mess on TV every day.
Former US Vice President Joe Biden
Biden will need more than just an anti-Trump message in November.
First, an infrastructure bill is a political winner. Perhaps Trump’s biggest mistake was having Paul Ryan and Co. try to Repeal
and Replace the Affordable Care Act as the Republicans’ first major initiative on seizing control of every branch of government
in 2016. If Trump had pushed a massive infrastructure bill, the cowering Democrats in Congress would have gone right with him.
He could have gotten a bipartisan deal through immediately and done a victory lap as The Artful Dealmaker Who Cuts Through All
the Political Bullshit to Get Things Done. Instead, he oversaw a quixotic quest to try to erase the first black president’s signature
achievement, which The Base would have loved but which ultimately proved a massive dud politically. Biden could run on an infrastructure
bill and remind people over and over again that Trump failed to deliver on a similar promise and tried to strip them of their
healthcare instead.
Second, the bill would create good-paying jobs in both urban and rural communities across the country at a time when the American
economy’s fastest-growing segment is the “low-wage workforce”—the 53 million Americans, and 44 percent of American workers, who
do not make a living wage. This state of affairs is destroying people’s lives and fueling social and political dysfunction as
hope gives way to rage and despair. Put people to work on a living wage rebuilding the infrastructure in their communities so
it’s fit for the trials to come, including adaptation and mitigation of the climate crisis.
Which brings us to three: it’s the right thing to do. The people who study this stuff—at, say, the United Nations Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change—say we are running out of time to fundamentally transform our economy to stop putting carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere, which traps heat and in turn destabilizes our ecosystems and throws our only planet into a level of disarray that
threatens our very way of life. We have a moral and practical duty to rebuild our society in the image of the future, which means
clean energy and an infrastructure that’s equipped to deal with rising seas, more ferocious storms and wildfires, severe floods
and drought. Forget about what it costs—nobody actually cares about The National Debt, as Trump’s time in the sun has demonstrated.
If Trump attacks him on it, he can point to Trump’s ballooning of the deficit to give tax cuts to rich people and multinational
corporations. Plus, this investment could spur economic activity in the same way Republicans always say tax cuts will, except
it might actually happen.
Last, this is the most promising avenue for Biden to reach out to The Youth Vote which has so conspicuously evaded him in the
primaries. While some of that is down to Bernie Sanders’s incredible appeal to voters under 30—and, if last night is anything
to go on, his comparative strength with voters under 50(!)—a lot is due to the fact that Biden has so far failed to connect with
them on any level. He does not embrace Medicare For All, he does not devote a lot of time or concern to the metric ton of student
loan debt that is crushing an entire generation of Americans, he has not matched Sanders’s willingness to disentangle us from
unwinnable foreign wars.
He must hang his hat on this issue, showing younger voters that he knows their futures are at stake—and not just when it comes
to the climate crisis. These are some of the people who could fill the good-paying jobs that will be created. These are people
who will spend the next 40 years driving over broken-down bridges across this country. Biden will never summon the energy Sanders
does among young people, but he needs to get some of them out to vote. He should come out for the Green New Deal—or, again, whatever
the hell he wants to call it. It’s a promise to rebuild America. It’s something to come out and vote for. Unless, of course, Biden
really just wants to go backwards.”
President Trump has accused Joe Biden of being a puppet of the "radical left." But the US'
most prominent leftist, Bernie Sanders thinks Biden isn't leaning left enough. His concerns
seem to be falling on deaf ears, though.
Trump has said that Joe Biden, a centrist democrat with nearly five decades of experience in
Washington, is a "puppet of the radical left movement that seeks to destroy the American way
of life." Central to Trump's argument is Biden's refusal to strongly condemn the wave of
violence that's accompanied 'Black Lives Matter' protests, as well as his pledge to roll back
Trump's tax cuts should he win in November.
Cutting the defense budget by a modest 10 percent could provide billions to combat the pandemic, provide health
care and take care of neglected communities.
Capitol Souvenir Company, Inc. via Boston Public Library
Sen. Bernie Sanders is an independent from Vermont.
▶ Click here for the
conservative
case
for reducing defense spending.
Fifty-three years ago Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. challenged all of us to fight against three major evils: "the
evil of racism, the evil of poverty and the evil of war." If there was ever a moment in American history when we
needed to respond to Dr. King's clarion call for justice and demand a "radical revolution of values," now is that
time.
Whether it is fighting against systemic racism and police brutality, defeating the deadliest pandemic in more than
a hundred years, or putting an end to the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, now is the time to
fundamentally change our national priorities.
Sadly, instead of responding to any of these unprecedented crises, the Republican Senate is on a two-week
vacation. When it comes back, its first order of business will be to pass a military spending authorization that
would give the bloated Pentagon $740 billion -- an increase of more than $100 billion since Donald Trump became
president.
Let's be clear: As coronavirus
infections
,
hospitalizations
and
deaths
are
surging to record levels in states across America, and the lifeline of unemployment benefits keeping 30 million
people afloat expires at the end of the month, the Republican Senate has decided to provide more funding for the
Pentagon than the next 11 nations' military budgets combined.
Under this legislation, over half of our discretionary budget would go to the Department of Defense at a time when
tens of millions of Americans are food insecure and over a half-million Americans are sleeping out on the street.
After adjusting for inflation, this bill would spend more money on the Pentagon than we did during the height of
the Vietnam War even as up to 22 million Americans are in danger of being evicted from their homes and
health
workers
are still forced to reuse masks, gloves and gowns.
Moreover, this extraordinary level of military spending comes at a time when the Department of Defense is the only
agency of our federal government that has not been able to pass an independent audit, when defense contractors are
making enormous profits while paying their CEOs outrageous compensation packages, and when the so-called War on
Terror will cost some $6 trillion.
Let us never forget what Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a former four-star general, said in 1953:
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from
those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
What Eisenhower said was true 67 years ago, and it is true today.
If the horrific pandemic we are now experiencing has taught us anything it is that national security means a lot
more than building bombs, missiles, nuclear warheads and other weapons of mass destruction. National security also
means doing everything we can to improve the lives of tens of millions of people living in desperation who have
been abandoned by our government decade after decade.
That is why I have introduced an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act that the Senate will be voting on
during the week of July 20th, and the House will follow suit with a companion effort led by Representatives Mark
Pocan (D-Wis.) and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.). Our amendment would reduce the military budget by 10 percent and use
that $74 billion in savings to invest in communities that have been ravaged by extreme poverty, mass
incarceration, decades of neglect and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Under this amendment, distressed cities and towns in every state in the country would be able to use these funds
to create jobs by building affordable housing, schools, childcare facilities, community health centers, public
hospitals, libraries and clean drinking water facilities. These communities would also receive federal funding to
hire more public school teachers, provide nutritious meals to children and parents and offer free tuition at
public colleges, universities or trade schools.
This amendment gives my Senate colleagues a fundamental choice to make. They can vote to spend more money on
endless wars in the Middle East while failing to provide economic security to millions of people in the United
States. Or they can vote to spend less money on nuclear weapons and cost overruns, and more to rebuild struggling
communities in their home states.
In Dr. King's 1967 speech, he warned that "a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military
defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
He was right. At a time when half of our people are struggling paycheck to paycheck, when over 40 million
Americans are living in poverty, and when 87 million lack health insurance or are underinsured, we are approaching
spiritual death.
At a time when we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth, and when
millions of Americans are in danger of going hungry, we are approaching spiritual death.
At a time when we have no national testing program, no adequate production of protective gear and no commitment to
a free vaccine, while remaining the only major country where infections spiral out of control, we are approaching
spiritual death.
At a time when over 60,000 Americans die each year because they can't afford to get to a doctor on time, and one
out of five Americans can't afford the prescription drugs their doctors prescribe, we are approaching spiritual
death.
Now, at this unprecedented moment in American history, it is time to rethink what we value as a society and to
fundamentally transform our national priorities. Cutting the military budget by 10 percent and investing that
money in human needs is a modest way to begin that process. Let's get it done.
MOST READ
As Progressives we are looking for some sign of life, not much, just some sign, any sign.
Bernie picked up his political philosophy in NYC in the 1960s, very early. It's Socialism
Light, with some twists. His political strategy was to run as an independent, but always as
acceptable to the Democrat Party, not a simple trick. His speeches and phrasing are always the
same across time. Ever wonder about that? He was the master at parroting socialist ideas, but
never offending the Democrat Party. How did he pull this off?
We were shocked that he got so far in 2016 and now. The truth is that the Democrat Party would
close ranks to never let him win, and on top of that he was really incapable of creating the
political strategy and tactics required for a win, either at the party or national level.
However, what he did show us is that the American people will entertain a Socialist message, if
it's phased in a way that speaks to their grievances against political/corporate America. The
bad news is that he was doomed to failure, but not because of the message, but because of the
messenger. He could, in fact, never succeed. Even if he could enumerate a dynamic strategy and
message, his dependency on the Party would sink him. In the end he tripped himself up and
showed his true colors as a total sycophant. He was utterly screwed by Obama and then said: Sir
may I have some more. Obama: Yes, you have to elevate the useless, corrupt, brain addled Biden
to hero status. Him: Yes sir, right away, no problem. Really, would you want this person
sitting in the White House negotiating with corporations and world leaders?
Seriously. 500 years ago people were executed in England (for example) and their heads were
placed on pikes to be displayed on well traveled thoroughfares. We can only imagine what their
wars were like.
So I'm figuring 500 years from now we'll have moved on a bit. Can't say how much better
it'll be, maybe not much at all. So let me change that to "things will be better in 10,000
years".
...to keep own delegates in line for Biden – which was his role all along
Bernie Sanders has warned his delegates against speaking ill of Joe Biden, the embodiment of
the Democratic party's corporate core. Beneath the progressive exterior, herding the voters to
the establishment is his real function.
In the spring of 2015, when the
"independent" Bernie Sanders announced that he was running for United States
presidency as a Democrat, the late left Green Party activist Bruce Dixon aptly described
Sanders as a "sheepdog"
working in service to the corporate and imperial Democratic Party. The role of "democratic
socialist" Sanders, Dixon said, would be to shepherd left-leaning voters into the
fold, helping give the Wall Street Democrats a progressive, populist, and working-class veneer
in the 2016 election.
As described by Cedric Johnson in an article entitled, "The Panthers Can't Save Us Now," the
neoliberal power elite engage a compartmentalizing, pluralist, all strata accepting,
discrete identities constructing strategy. [4]
Capitalists are one of the strata that are
equally accepted into a given, siloed identitarian construct (they are accepted for example, in
the name of inclusion).
Indicative of this strategy was Hillary Clinton's response to Sanders'
critique of capitalism in their first head-to-head debate: as a claimed progressive, she said
that contrary to Sanders, the unity she appeals to is for all people, capitalists included; she
then portrayed capitalists as small and medium size business people populating the entire
country, insinuating that Sanders would harm these many people (supposedly cleaving the
singular unity of "the citizens"). [5]
By
Paul Street,
the author of numerous books, including They Rule: The 1% v.
Democracy (Routledge, 2014) and The Empire's New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power (Routledge,
2011).
Bernie Sanders has warned his delegates against speaking ill of Joe Biden, the embodiment of the
Democratic party's corporate core. Beneath the progressive exterior, herding the voters to the
establishment is his real function.
In the spring of 2015, when the
"independent"
Bernie Sanders announced that he was running for United States presidency as a
Democrat, the late left Green Party activist Bruce Dixon aptly described Sanders as a
"sheepdog"
working in service to the corporate and imperial Democratic Party. The role of
"democratic socialist"
Sanders, Dixon said, would be to shepherd left-leaning voters into the
fold, helping give the Wall Street Democrats a progressive, populist, and working-class veneer in the
2016 election. A related function was to help the Democrats seem to have selected a Big Business
candidate – Hillary Clinton, as everyone already knew even in early 2015 – not by corporate coronation
but through an open debate in which the progressive, social-democratic policies ostensibly advocated by
Sanders were fairly and democratically defeated.
Faithful despite the abuse
Sanders did his best to carry out his 'sheepdog' (or
"Judas Goat")
task in 2016, consistent
with his advance promise to support the eventual Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, in that general
election. So what if the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) worked
hand-in-glove with each other and the corporate media to demean and smear Sanders and his supporters and
to rig the primary race and nomination
process
against the not-so-independent Senator from Vermont? So what if Clinton ran a shockingly vapid campaign,
remarkably
devoid
of serious policy proposals, and based on little more than the awful character of Donald Trump? And so
what if the Clintons and their allies and surrogates treated Sanders with open
contempt
?
Bernie played his 'sheepdog' role like a good company/party man. Even after all the abuse he received
from the Clintons and the DNC during the primary race, he hit the general election campaign trail for
"the lying neoliberal
warmonger"
Hillary. Claiming to have won the
"most progressive Democratic Party [policy] platform in history,"
he beseeched his backers to join him in lining up behind the party's deeply flawed establishment
candidate.
Sanders' call for unity behind the hopelessly corporatist Clinton was denounced by hundreds of his own
delegates on the floor of the 2016 Democratic National Convention. These activists knew that American
major party platforms are for show. They knew also that Sanders had squandered any chance of making the
Democratic Party more genuinely progressive and social-democratic by promising to back the ultimate
Democratic nominee from the start.
Teeth bared this time
Sanders has been 'sheep-dogging' for the corporate Democrats again in 2020. As in 2015-16, he
promised in advance to support the eventual 2020 Democratic nominee. Again, as before, Sanders has used
the technically irrelevant Democratic Party platform to provide cover both for his surrender and for the
corporate Democratic Party.
But there are some differences this time. The capitulation to the corporate candidate – Joe Biden this
election cycle – came earlier this year. It has been accompanied by repeated expressions of heartfelt
fondness for the corporate party nominee and by regular communication and ongoing collaboration between
his staff and that of the presumptive nominee's staff – things far less evident in 2016. And this time,
the sheepdog is baring his teeth to keep his followers and representatives in line behind the neoliberal
nominee like never before.
Bernie Sanders' delegates to the 2020 Democratic National Convention (which may be virtual thanks to
Covid-19) have
been
warned
. They must refrain from making any disparaging or even mildly critical comments about Biden on
social media –Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. They must not speak to the media without permission.
They are not to write books, academic studies, and/or articles or create videos or other recordings about
the presidential campaign without official authorization.
Publicly expressed dissatisfaction with Biden is strictly prohibited. Failure to abide by these rules
could cause Sanders' convention delegates to be stripped of their delegate status and thus of their right
to vote on the Democratic Party's nominees and platform. So much for freedom of speech, enshrined in the
First Amendment of the US Constitution!
So what if the cognitively crippled and corrupt corporate-imperialist
Biden
represents the Wall Street and military-industrial wings of the
"Democratic"
Party with a
vengeance in a time when the top tenth of the upper US one percent possesses nearly as much
wealth
as the bottom 90 percent of the nation – this in a moment when the Covid-19 crisis is laying
bare
the grotesque inadequacies of America's savagely unequal corporate state? And so what if Biden
is a highly
unpopular
, deeply problematic candidate, far less
popular
than Sanders, who ran in accord with the nation's officially
marginalized
,
majority-progressive
opinion?
Who has set these repressive rules for Sanders delegates? At first blush, the obvious guess would be
the DNC, the central party committee that has long opposed progressive tendencies.
That reasonable guess would be wrong. The commands have come from the Sanders
"campaign"
itself.
It is Bernie himself, not his erstwhile enemies on the DNC, who is telling progressive
convention delegates to muzzle their anger at the corporate candidate.
An approving Washington Post
report
on this is titled
"Bernie Sanders, Seeking Peace With Joe Biden, Asks His Own Delegates to
Turn Down the Volume."
"Turn down the volume?"
It's more like
"muzzle yourself or else."
Why is Sanders baring his sheepdog teeth so sharply at his own backers this time around? It's likely
about six factors:
Fear of being blamed for a second Trump term (he has been absurdly blamed for the first one by
establishment Democrats).
Fear that any sign of intra-party dissent will be easily exploited by the Trump campaign.
Biden's remarkable unpopularity with Sanders' primary campaign supporters,
51 percent
of whom are considering voting for an independent or third party candidate.
The end of 78-year-old Sanders' nominal bid for the US presidency: it no longer matters for his
fading political career if he alienates many in his support base by being fully exposed as a full-on
Democratic Party company man.
Strong Biden campaign outreach to Sanders and his staff, coming with a warmer tone of
collaboration than the Clinton team's cold coordination with Sanders in 2016.
The widely reported affection that Sanders feels for his
"good friend"
and fellow US
Senator Biden. Sanders appears to genuinely like Biden despite
"Sleepy Joe's"
presence on the
right-wing of the Democratic Party.
"The senator – who associates say is closer with Biden than he ever was with [Hillary] Clinton –
is seeking to forge a unified front with the former vice president heading into the general election. The
two have formed policy working groups and frequently compliment each other. The agreements distributed by
the Sanders campaign represent some of the most aggressive attempts yet to achieve harmony,"
reports
the Post.
Years ago, the independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader rightly denounced progressives'
friendships with corporate politicos like Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama as dysfunctional and
"maudlin."
Nader was right. Who cares if
"Bernie likes Joe"
as Wall Street and
corporate America plunder the nation in the middle of a public health crisis that has thrown a fifth or
more of the workforce out of their jobs and many of them off of health insurance – desperately in need
of the Medicare for All that Sanders campaigned for and that Biden says he would veto if it came to his
desk as president? Personal affection, or the lack thereof, between presidential candidates, is a matter
of no importance compared to the fate of millions.
I sincerity doubt that Bernie supporter would vote for Neoliberal Dems (Clinton wing of Democratic Party) at all.
Most probably will vote for the third party, or not vote at all. Few will vote for Trump -- much less then in 2018 as it is
not clear what Trump represents and it has nothing to do with bernie program.
What? After appointing Summers as an economics advisor!? I don't get that as a progressive
move, especially after (Biden ally) Pelosi appoints Shalala to oversee CARE. In fact I see no
explicit concessions to progressives by the D's or Biden and would welcome the chance to be
wrong.
Meanwhile, in my neighborhood, one car with a "Bernie" sticker now has a (home-made) "F*ck
Biden" sticker. So there's at least one person Status Quo Joe hasn't convinced.
There's a lot of truth in many of the comments here -- good old hindsight. But where I
disagree with most of what I am seeing here is the idea that if Sanders had run a better
campaign, he would have won.
Two things are important here: (1) Sanders was done in by the media (first by being
ignored, and then incessantly attacked starting about a week before Iowa). In my 55 years of
watching the tv media I have never seen anything as overt and unfair and extensive. Most
significantly this was the so-called "left" of media, MSNBC in particular, who manufactured
the false narrative that Sanders represented catastrophe and would lose to Trump [in effect
solidifying their demographic for Biden
(2) If all the advice being given here had been followed, still, the stop Sanders movement
would likely have found some means or other to succeed in stopping him from securing the
nomination. If voters do not know the actual policies of the candidates, they can too easily
be manipulated. We need media reform/de-consolidation and a movement away from so-called
"debates" that are an insult to the candidates, the voters, and democracy.
Bernie was never accepted by the DNC establishment in 2016 and 2020. He was bought off by
Schumer through committee assignments and threats of irrelevancy in the Senate after 2016. In
short, Bernie became an insider because he thought HRC would be president.
In 2020 he doubled down bragging about his legislative accomplishments on the debate stage
which is the quintessential insider's game.
You can't worry about your political career, if you are a true outsider. Bernie wanted to
be a player more than a game changer and leader of a political movement.
The author consistently mentions The Green New Deal. What legislator in the House outlined
the Green New Deal? What legislator in the Senate? AOC in the House and Markey in the
Senate.
"... You can't worry about your political career, if you are a true outsider. Bernie wanted to be a player more than a game changer and leader of a political movement. ..."
Bernie was never accepted by the DNC establishment in 2016 and 2020. He was bought off by
Schumer through committee assignments and threats of irrelevancy in the Senate after 2016. In
short, Bernie became an insider because he thought HRC would be president.
In 2020 he doubled down bragging about his legislative accomplishments on the debate stage
which is the quintessential insider's game.
You can't worry about your political career, if you are a true outsider. Bernie wanted
to be a player more than a game changer and leader of a political movement.
The author consistently mentions The Green New Deal. What legislator in the House outlined
the Green New Deal? What legislator in the Senate? AOC in the House and Markey in the
Senate.
> You can't worry about your political career, if you are a true outsider. Bernie
wanted to be a player more than a game changer and leader of a political movement.
As sad as it is for me to say that, Bernie was a sheepdog from the very beginning.
Actually it was the second time he played this despicable role. The main clue was that he
acted as a preacher, not as a candidate. Another is that he claimed Biden to be his friend.
With such warmongering neoliberal friends as Biden, who needs enemies ;-). This is how
"controlled opposition" typically behaves.
For example, Faiz Shakir, the campaign manager for Bernie Sanders' 2020 presidential
campaign, previously worked as an aide to Congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid,
was an editor-in-chief of the ThinkProgress blog. Is not Nanci Pelosi a quintessential
neoliberal, a staunch supporter of Clinton wing of the Democratic Party ? And I do not want
even start discussing political positions of Harry Reid.
Sanders betrayed his supporters with such ease that it is clear that was not an accident
-- this was a preplanned "bait and switch" operation.
To all of this, I'd really suggest reading Raising Expectations and Raising Hell by Jane
McAlevey. Really good on the nuts and bolts of what it takes to organize to win. Also good is
"Secrets of Successful Organizer" from Labor Notes.
The memo in this post seems mistaken. Much of it worries about dealing with Warren. Warren
did not take Bernie down. She did a wonderful job of shooting herself in the foot multiple
times. I don't believe Biden and Obama have so much power to shift the beliefs of the US
public. I have trouble believing the Obama years need to be discredited -- they discredited
themselves. Item #4 not sure what to say about that. Bernie presented a strong ideological
contrast with Trump. Item #5 Castro, O'Rourke, Booker, and Yang, Gabbard, Williamson, and
Gillibrand are they really examples of idealistic energy? How do you "rope in" idealistic
energy? Is that like herding cats?
Most of the primaries that were held impressed me as part of a remarkably hamhanded but
effective effort by the Democratic Party organization to shut Bernie down. I am still
unconvinced by Biden's sudden revival and jump in the polls prior to Super Tuesday and I
don't understand what happened to suck all the air out of Bernie's campaign after Super
Tuesday. The Corona virus didn't help but I cannot accept that the Corona virus, or Warren,
or Biden or Obama took Bernie down -- it just doesn't smell right to me.
And I do not agree that the Bernie organization will carry on the fight. Where are the
younger leaders who might carry on fighting for the cause? Bernie's coat tails are very short
and Bernie is very old. I have read many pundits proclaiming that people put too much faith
in a leader -- that a movement needs more action on the ground. I disagree. A movement needs
a face, a 'brand' in Marketspeak, and actually I think a movement needs many faces and a
common brand to all. [AOC and the Green New Deal don't inspire my confidence and what is
left?]
I felt the Berne and now I feel Berne-t. Between dropping Medicare for All and voting for
the CARES Act as part of the Senate Kabuki the nicest thing I can say about Bernie right now
is that he is full of surprises. But after all is said and done I will be reluctant to send
my small checks to any campaign, and after Corona I may need to keep all my small checks to
buy things like food and pay rent. As Susan the other says at the beginning of her comment at
3:06 pm noting how: " absurd our politics are in light of our pending extinction" -- I am not
sure there will be time for many more Presidential elections before the absurdity of our
politics and economics collides with more pressing matters.
A lot of famous people have made podcasts about how Sanders was sabotaged by the people he
hired to run his campaign.
Why did Sanders hire people from The Center for American Progress (aka Clinton Inc) to
run his campaign?
Why did he hire known backstabbers (Ro Khanna) and why did he attack his own people
during the campaign at the behest of a dishonest media mob? Why did he run a campaign based
on identity politics instead of how he ran his campaign last time?
Why did he spend his time attacking Trump instead of his opponents who were attacking
him?
Why did he allow himself to be branded by the media as a communist?
Why did he help deplatform Tulsi -- his ONLY ally?
Was it sabotage from the neocon-adjacent people he hired?
Now Sanders definitely had problematic behavior in terms of being a member of Empire Inc.
(despite a few good takes) -- overall he was a clear part of the imperialist team. He didn't
show signs of any radical beliefs that would truly upset the ongoing death march of capitalism.
I believe he was a bit of an FDR in that he might have thrown enough bones to the working class
to have staved off unrest. The unmitigated greed necessary to not even allow that much change
will surely be looked upon as one of the pivotal moments in American history.
It of course begs the question -- what would have happened without FDR's New Deal? Misery
for sure (short-term) but would something radical have been propelled forward without it? What
would this time look like now if a more overt rebellion had ensued? I always thought it was a
given that these measures were good and kind, but now I know the whole system is pure trash and
always was -- it's seductive though, when you see people suffer through healthcare disparities
and debt, you want them to be helped because you're not a monster. Sanders was a siren song for
immediate relief, or at least the illusion of it. Certainly, it's a trap a lot of people with
empathy fall into.
It's terrifying to consider complete collapse when you know so many will suffer -- you don't
know what will emerge on the other side. It could be far worse. By the same token, backing
Sanders and other milquetoast types could be like pulling off a band aid for decades and then
generations -- the pain is always there, but you're able to continue functioning as a proper
member of the state, there for them to feed off of. I don't pretend to know the right way to
proceed, but sometimes I'm weak and want the suffering to be mitigated. That could perhaps be
at the expense of a truly needed systemic overhaul that might bring real change. I just don't
know, but that is basically why I supported Sanders. I'm just tossing around ideas, not
solutions or decrees.
The sheer lunacy of participating in something so completely and fully rigged isn't
compatible with self-esteem though, and a lot of Bernie supporters, who overall are good and
genuine people, merely wanted a better life for everyone. These supporters are feeling
humiliated and played. Because they were. And they didn't deserve it. All they wanted was a
fair vote and media that was at least somewhat unbiased. They received neither.
I really hoped the DNC wouldn't take the path of dodgy apps in Iowa and causing by whatever
means, the mismatches in exit polling extreme enough to indicate fraud. I was not surprised
that they did this, but even I was taken aback by their use of voters as hostages. Encouraging
in-person voting during a pandemic is an evil that I didn't consider they would utilize. What
else is in their bag of tricks? Kindergarten poisonings? Jesus DNC -- you're some sick fucks.
Tom Perez, what the hell are you? I'm sure that factored into Sanders dropping out when he did.
Continued in-person voting would surely increase, umm . plague issues. The slight traction he
could have continued to have in advancing things like universal healthcare during a pandemic
wasn't even allowed to continue. This is a system that has nothing left to offer but wasted
time and money from people who can't afford either.
One thing perplexing about the current situation is this: Does the DNC really even want to
win? Continued, generalized venom abounds in their treatment towards the left and even Sanders
exudes petulant bitchiness towards his own previous staffers and surrogates. I'm thinking in
particular of his statement in regard to Briahna Joy Gray when asked about her refusal to
endorse Biden. He snarkily said "She is my former press secretary -- not on the payroll."
One shouldn't be surprised though, because he did the same treatment to surrogate Zephyr
Teachout. She had an op-ed piece awhile back saying that Biden had a corruption problem. Bernie
apologized .to Biden. Bernie is very good at letting down his supporters. He would be the dad
you come home to and complain that a bully beat you up. He would listen with attention and
care, but then march you over to the bully's house to apologize for sinking to the bully's
level.
More along the lines of do they really want to win??? The Biden campaign had an unbelievable
sticker to pull in the vote, I guess .one that showed "plutocrat" and "socialist" crossed out
and replaced with "proud democrat". The inevitable conclusion is that they don't want the
Bernie supporters who identify with socialism and are fueling up to come off as distasteful to
the Independent voters who decide general elections.
I'm sure the plutocrats aren't concerned. They win no matter what. The conclusion I come
to is that they are ready to lose, in fact are fine with it, as their class will be protected.
Despite the obvious embarrassing optics of a Trump presidency, the meat of it is that these
types do well under his policies. It's seeming to be a lot like theater and being continuously
dismissive to the left, to the point of overt hostility will keep voters away from
Biden.
Bernie didn't want a revolution. He wanted the establishment to accept his candidacy. If
they didn't accept it then he was not going to fight. He wasted 3+ years of my time and
energy. Not to mention betraying Waffle House waitresses across the country, who repeatedly
donated money they needed to Bernie's campaign.
The US dodged a bullet with Bernie dropping out "my friend Joe" "Joe can beat Trump" &
not supporting Tulsi from being smeared & erased! Bernie has no balls - the guy endorsed
Hillary & now Biden - slapping Tulsi in the face for quitting, destroying her career for
him!
v> Aaron has made a career over all the false trump hoax's and exposing them. To bad
he's blinded in other ways and is can't be objective about Bernie and the dem establishment.
Unfortunately he part of the problem because at the end of the day he looks the other way.
And excuses those in media who lie cuz they have kids to feed. Never gonna be change with
that attitude...very Bernie like.
Sanders was never a serious candidate. For the second time in his 40ys of public service
he became sort of relevant. He was the joke of the senate all these years. A complete
fraud.
ss="comment-renderer-text-content expanded"> "The answer is there is no point," as
cogently analyzed by our ever-faithful Jimmy Dore. "The Young Turks" are not progressive and
neither is Bernie. In 2016, Cenk Uygar surrendered to the Hillary-Killary inevitability
faster than Bernie could say, "Just let me know when it's time to quit." Here is the master
conspiracy theory that resolves all of this. Bernie is paid by the DNC, Russia, and The
Clinton Foundation to excite real Progressives that "the revolution will be televised." Then
he caves. How effective is that plan? It channels and harnesses a critical mass of energy and
momentum in order to throw it over the cliff. In two consecutive presidential elections,
Bernie Sanders led the lemmings to the Pied Piper's house. How dumb are we? The establishment
has framed a political strategy whereby the hopes of the people are continually and
unrelentingly crushed by the smoke-and-mirrors deceptions of their elusive "leader."
Eventually, the poor deluded people simply stop believing in any of it, and the establishment
wins. Can anyone prove me wrong?
"You vote for the whoever is least worst and then you push them in the direction you
can." But you give up all of your leverage to move them as soon as you vote for
them...
Bernie Sanders was a plant, just there to mislead the working class that they have someone
truly fighting for they cause. While robbing us of our money and time.
Bernie was too old in 2016. He's way too old now. He didn't want it. He didn't have the
fight or the drive. He was just going through the motions. Probably for another book
deal.
Sadly it seems Bernie turned out to be representative of "not so obvious establishment."
Bernie has done this to us twice now. He has funneled sincere supporters who want real change
towards establishment. Earlier towards Hillary and this time towards Biden.Bernie with his
endorsement has lost my respect.
The word socialism is meaningless. A government, by nature is socialistic. Again, following
up on my sociopathy comment, it's on a spectrum. Some governments-- Sweden, Finland, Cuba--
do more, others-- Guatemala, Honduras, now Bolivia-- do less.
"Public sector" would be a more accurate term to describe what the particular government
in question is using public funds. Tennessee, for example, will not put out your house fire
if you have not paid your "fire tax". Most southeastern states have smaller public sectors
than northern states.
Another issue: be honest. Military is public sector. Police, prisons... public sector. you a
cop? your public sector. your money comes from the people. That's socialism. It makes no
sense for right wingers to be against "socialism" and work for the public sector.
Bernie never defined "socialism" accurately which allowed DNC scum and republicans to tar
him with that dirty word since we Americans are so addicted to Fox, CNN and MSNBC.
Instead of fighting back against 'intelligence sources' fabricating smears of him as the
favored candidate of Russia, Sanders just went along with the larger Russiagate narrative and
the imperialist agenda of the govt. In this respect, he's as compliant as Biden, and even
worse since he was happy to sacrifice himself to preserve the false narratives to justify
aggression abroad.
"Looks like Ziofascist Trump regime is set to win again."
It doesn't have to be!
Sanders was great - he achieved far more than he intended or wanted - but he was always
compromised probably all the way back to 1980.
Sanders would have lost his political position long ago unless he had come to an
"understanding" with the Democratic Party. The deal was something along the lines of "you
support the Democratic Party and we won't primary you".
It is almost certain that Sanders was intended to be controlled opposition in 2016 but
something strange happened. People were looking for change and they heard it in Sanders and
they believed and Hillary lost the nomination (until' it was fixed) - this was not the plan.
It was not what Sanders intended but it meant something. 2020 has all been about destroying
Sanders message (which he didn't believe in anyway - at least not to the extent of actually
obtaining the nomination).
I have to confess that I am really shocked at the way he has treated his supporters in
2020 - in American terms, he really should refund every donor because he took their money
under false pretences. But...Sanders did achieve something - even though it was not what he
intended.
Forget about Sanders, he was always going to let you down - now is the time to look for an
alternative.
As far as Sanders is concerned, the next senate election for Vermont is in 2024 - I trust
Vermont voters will punish Sanders for his disingenuous behaviour.
Bernie Sanders - "He could have been a contender but he took a dive."
I had thought that I would not comment more on murkan politics - and with respect to those of
you who are trying to see silver linings in the capitulations of Sanders and Gabbard - but,
now I read that O'bomber has just endorsed the crook, aka Biden, to "restore the soul of the
nation." Wow. So I guess that means that the soul of the Dimmocrat Nation is bombing burning
looting... Syria Yemen Venezuela Nicaragua Ecuador North Korea Iran Iraq Afghanistan..
O'Bomber had his bloody hands in those places - Ukrainia - Democrat Country, right Yaz..?
Yes Noah Way - the empire in on suicide watch but the peeps seem to be too fat and too
delusional to do much. Me thinks the end will come not from any "popular uprising" but rather
from the eventual crash of the almightydollar.
"... Whatever steps Bernie may have made towards "revolution", he wiped them out with his normalizing of Democratic party election theft, by twice leading his followers into a political death trap, and worst of all, by endorsing and campaigning for pathological warmongers like Hillary Clinton and now the dementia-addled corporate tool Joe Biden. ..."
This is a filthy election cycle; and it is not the fault of Bernie Sanders. The petulant
children and aging children who are spitting up over this thread are the committed cynics, as
they point fingers and call Bernie a cynic. What a spectacle of immaturity and arrested
development! What a field day for lost souls and dilettantes. For the hasbara too; they
certainly had motive for driving a stake in the heart of the Sander's campaign.
Do these people have thoughts that go to any depth? They are more like a Lynch Mob who are
all tugging at the collar and waistband of the victim. They have turned around to stare
blankly into the camera so that their insipid faces can be memorialized, so that their fuming
contempt can be captured. They are asking something of posterity as they turn their backs on
the crime.
There would have been no campaign at all, no permission to participate in the primaries,
if Bernie had not agreed to support the ultimate nominee of the Party. The narrative about
betrayal supports the agendas of those who bear a great hatred against him.
None of those that went forward behind Bernie Sanders--especially those who were really a
part of the actual events--were lied to or betrayed, because his position of supporting the
Party's choice was made public at his rallies and campaign events.
Right after Bernie announced that he was suspending his campaign, words of admiration and
appreciation poured in from notable political scientists and journalists and other thoughtful
people: Noam Chomsky, Matt Taibbi, Naomi Klein, --all of them describing Bernie Sanders
contributions to this nation and his courage, and naming his achievements in this campaign.
Bernie a has struck a blow against the Neo-liberal order, has opened the national awareness
to a host of subjects never before openly discussed in a national campaign. And in a
dignified and genuinely passionate manner he has modeled what an admirable man can do in the
pursuit of justice.
= The problem people are having with Sanders is that they are mistaking a social democrat
for a socialist.
No. The problem is that Sander's was never a real candidate. A real candidate wouldn't be
so deferential to Hillary and the Democratic Party.
He misled us. His quixotic goal was to take over the Democratic Party. Independent
progressives warned that this was doomed to fail and pointed out his sheepdogging every step
of the way.
In response, the Democratic Party sent out dembot trolls to urge young people to trust in
Sanders.
= Sanders' campaign in the US has changed the game.
No. It has better revealed the game.
= Now is the time to make the distinction that socialism is a replacement for capitalism
...
Gruff points us to the next brick wall as he deflects blame from the Deep State-controlled
duopoly.
The first step is secure a real democracy.
= Socialized medicine was verboten, or worse, evil.
No. Obama promised to include a 'public option' in his healthcare reform. This was one of
the many promises that Obama broke as he betrayed his base. For this, he was practically
sainted by the Democratic Party. What a guy.
Even while President Obama was saying that he thought a public option was a good idea
and encouraging supporters to believe his healthcare plan would include one, he had
promised for-profit hospital lobbyists that there would be no public option in the final
bill.
Whatever steps Bernie may have made towards "revolution", he wiped them out with his
normalizing of Democratic party election theft, by twice leading his followers into a
political death trap, and worst of all, by endorsing and campaigning for pathological
warmongers like Hillary Clinton and now the dementia-addled corporate tool Joe Biden.
If you take his statement in 1989 about the need for an alternative third party to heart,
then he's been misleading progressives for 31 years into the Democratic party swamp.
The genuine Movements that we have today are Wikileaks/Assange and Gillets Jaunes.
Their steadfast determination for real change shows how much Sanders' falls short. And
reveals where Sanders' loyalty lies - with the pro-Empire, Zionist establishment.
Sanders supporting Biden just as his message had relevance suggests he was a "stalking horse"
from the very beginning. If the DNC replaces Biden with Governor Cuomo (New York) or Governor
Newsom (California) ... in spite of the primary elections ... it will prove beyond a doubt
that democracy in the USA is a sham. The evidence suggests that federal elections are decided
in back rooms and then posted on the Internet with storylines that fake elections.
No wonder neoliberals (a euphemism for globalists) hate Trump. He pulled a fast one on the
establishment. Hillary rolled up a few population centers ... but they forgot about the
Electoral College that abrogates "one man one vote" in Presidential elections by giving the
states in the Great Flyover more votes than the coasts. Trump "out scammed the scammers" ...
a cardinal sin in neoliberal politics. The neoliberals desperately want revenge to ensure
this never happens again.
Pindos | Apr 13 2020 18:51 utc | 5 "Sanders - a weak commie. His jew pals are embarrassed. 🤢"
You got it the wrong way round.
On the morning after Sanders withdrew from the race DMFI** president Mark
Mellman sent out an email to supporters expressing his pleasure over the result. He also took
some credit for the outcome "Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign for president. That's a
big victory -- one you helped bring about."
Mellman also reminded his associates that the victory was only a first step in making
sure that the Democratic Party platform continues to be pro-Israel, writing that "Extreme
groups aligned with Sanders, as well as some of his top surrogates -- including Congresswomen
Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar -- have publicly declared an effort to make the platform
anti-Israel. As a career political professional, I will tell you that if Democrats adopt an
anti-Israel platform this year, the vocabulary, views, and votes of politicians will shift
against us dramatically. We simply can't afford to lose this battle."
**Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) . The DMFI is a registered political action
committee (PAC) that lobbies on behalf of the Jewish state. It was organized in 2019 by
Democratic Party activists to counter what was perceived to be pro-Palestinian sentiment
within the party's progressive wing.
Basically they did a "Corbyn" on a candidate who was considered a "socialist" and too
pro-Palestinian.
The following quote has been attributed to Lyndon B. Johnson by Ronald Kessler, journalist
and historian.:
These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since
they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their
uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little
something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference.
I'll have those n**gers voting Democratic for 200 years.
Looks like Johnson was right! All it took was the Civil Rights Act to get blacks to vote
against their best interests for 56 years. So there's 144 years left before blacks realize
they sold their soul to a blue devil that's no different from the red devil and until
progressives will finally have a real democracy. Oh how I despise herd mentality.
Look, I'm not going to trash Bernie Sanders, because I know his heart, and I now see the
majority of blacks will never be with him no matter what he tried to gain their confidence,
so he was doomed whichever way you look at it.
That said, Biden is out of the question and I'll be damned if Democrats are going to win
after what they pulled on Bernie again.
Looks like Ziofascist Trump regime is set to win again.
How almost everyone dropped out after the South Carolina primary looks staged. But Sanders,
the sheepdog candidate is also a part of the play, whether he is fully aware of it.
What reason would there be for voting for a corrupt neoliberal proponent of all illegal US
wars of aggression who played a key role for mass incarceration and whose career was
bankrolled by the credit card industry and other special interests? Close to none, certainly
for people who are remotely progressive. There had been little reason for supporting a
far-right warmonger like Biden a few years ago, and with obvious signs of mental decline,
there are hardly more reasons.
But with Bernie Sanders, a center-left candidate who, in contrast to Biden, has some
semblance of personal integrity, campaigning for the corrupt warmonger, there may be the hope
that some people who do not share Biden's far right views will still vote for him. But I
think Sanders' behavior does more for undermining his own credibility than for creating the
illusion that Biden has any credibility.
So there I was wreching - Bernie endorses the babbling crook Biden... and then - well full on
barfing! Michelle O'Bomber!!??? What exactly is her skill set? other than the fact that she
is married to the manchurian O'Bomber - who bombed at least one somebody - often without even
knowing the victims name/s - Every Single Day of his Miserable Regime. Just call him Mr.
Dyncorp. Really, as William Griff observed in another thread, murkans are
completely irreparably delusional.
Sad to see that whatever political legacy Bernie Sanders leaves behind, it will be tainted by
his behaviour and decisions he made during his Presidential election campaigns in 2016 and
2020. Particularly inexplicable is how he failed to challenge the Super Tuesday results back
in March. Surely of all people, given his career background, Sanders could have disputed the
results.
Makes me wonder if Bernie was an "asset" the whole time. Certain elements make more sense
that way. I am both horrified and amused at the way progressives seem to be on board
with the sellout. Ah well, looks like I'll actually have to vote for Trump this time. Didn't
see that coming but I'll be damned if I silently consent to Biden being President.
I'll have to start building guillotines for the spike in demand come next year.
Former longtime Bernie-booster Jimmy Dore has been ripping Sanders relentlessly (and
hilariously) on his YT channel for weeks, ever since Bernie rolled over and went dead during
debate w/Biden.
Sandersites here can protest all they want that they did not expect "this", it doesn't change
the fact that Sanders was nothing but the sheepdog that gets out at every election season.
Now that all those Sanders-supporting boobies have definitively destroyed any chance of doing
anything significant in the way of third parties, it's useless to protest that they "won't
vote Biden". The useless Hopium-addicted gulls already did the wrecking job, even though they
had been warned. Both times. Good job... liberals.
re Josh | Apr 14 2020 0:44 utc | 54 who claimed "When he decided to run as a Democrat you
have to sign a contract that you will endorse the person nominated" As you conceeded it
isn't the convention yet so sanders did not have to endorse right now. That and the way it
was done - not a quiet press release, he took part in creepy joe's campaign release to make
his fawning pronouncement. Nowhere does that get stated in any 'contract'.
It is plain that if sanders isn't some sort of dungeon visiting masochist who enjoys the
humiliation, he has to be a run of the mill greedhead prepared to do say anything that will
get a cash payoff. That was probably his plan from the beginning as everything he did from
the 1st caucus to the end was all about scraping and bowing to his 'betters' no mind what
cheating and robbery was inflicted on his campaign.
A liar, a sellout who has created another generation of cynics - well done 'bernie'.
"... Something is seriously sick about the DNC and it's collusion with the media. The pretence of democracy is crashing and the oligarchy exposed. ..."
Whether social democrat or socialist - I agree Sanders did progress the cause for needed
societal, financial and political change.
But why did he fold so weakly and meekly in both 2016 and again now?
Especially in the face of obvious vote rigging by the Hillary campaign (as proven in a
Florida civil court ruling - albeit with the judge's decision accepting the DNC Defense
argument that the DNC has the right to appoint their candidate and override the primaries -
sudden untimely death of two of the lawyers for the Bernie Sanders supporters who brought the
case as well).
This time the totally unexpected victory on "Super Thursday" as Sleepy Joe called it in 9
state primaries stinks to high heaven. Maybe he did win given the media support and enough
ignoramuses voted for a man who is blatantly suffering dementia as well as having been a
corrupt nepotist of the highest order and an alleged rapist and video documented serial
creepy fondler of women and young children.
Something is seriously sick about the DNC and it's collusion with the media. The
pretence of democracy is crashing and the oligarchy exposed.
Trump will win - because many will hope he is a renegade oligarch who has some moral
compass even if a broken one.
A social democrat will refuse to demand that General Motors make concessions to the
workers unless General Motors is making solid profits. Extend the concept to the entire
economy. Capitalism is in crisis. For a social democrat that means heavy demands are off the
table until the crisis is resolved and capitalism returns to profitability. How could Sanders
deliver on his promises even if he won? Better to just throw in the towel, at least from a
social democrat perspective.
"Something is seriously sick about the DNC and it's collusion with the media."
Indeed, but there is more to it. The mass media isn't so much colluding with the Dems as
the media has been largely taken over by a criminal gang ( Operation Mockingbird ),
and the same gang has taken over the Democrat party. Instructions to both the mass media and
the Dems are coming from the same folks, so it looks like collusion, but actual direct
connections between the two will not be so conspicuous.
I am probably a case in point for this article. When Trump was elected, I got a "sharing
my grief" letter from Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR). This was my response to his letter, posted
November 18, 2016:
Thank you, Sen. Merkley, for the reassurance and encouragement.
Although I voted a straight Democratic ticket, I had no enthusiasm for Hillary
Clinton.
I was angry that the Democratic Party has allowed itself to fall into the neo-con,
neo-liberal, globalist approach/understanding of our most important issues and gave up the
nationalism and populism that was so important to the Progressive movement. This morphing
of the Party is something I've watched with considerable dismay for many years. The powers
and influences that have taken over the Party are bringing it to ruin, and are ultimately
responsible for this mind-boggling defeat.
We are all going to have to pay a lot more attention to politics in the coming years. We
no longer have the luxury of tending to our own families and affairs, trusting that our
government is in good hands, led by people who will do the right thing and not let anything
catastrophic happen. I did not have such confidence in Hillary Clinton, by the way. From
the outset I was in favor of a Biden/Warren ticket, and hoped that Elizabeth would be our
first female President, not Hillary. But then, I grew up in Oklahoma, and believe she's a
progressive, Oklahoma populist down deep.
The news coverage of the election by NPR was abysmal, in my view. This defeat was not a
revolt of the "losers," of the declining White middle class males, and the rise of
misogyny, racism and isolationism. (Those words were not used, of course, but that
understanding appeared to me to be embedded in the analysis.)
Isn't it possible that liberal, progressive, educated Americans might be unhappy with
the way American power, prestige, money and "soft" power has been squandered, and towards
what ends? Do you think educated
Americans are in favor of paring down the Constitution, beginning with the First and
Second Amendments? Do you believe that ordinary American citizens are to be feared, are the
enemy? Do you think they are all on board with spending trillions of dollars on Middle East
wars, creating destabilized states and the refugee crisis, and letting our own
infrastructure deteriorate and
Social Security go bankrupt? Will the SS funds borrowed to fund these and other wars,
and to balance budgets, ever be repaid? Do you think Americans are so dumbed down and
cynical that they would look to the Clintons as "wholesome" examples of what is best in
America and for uncorrupted leadership? Do you think no one either heard or remembered "We
came, we saw, he died! Ha, ha, ha"? Or have not heard Hillary's intent to establish a
no-fly zone in Syria, knowing full well that such an action could lead to war with Russia?
Do you think educated Americans really bought the "killing of Osama bin Laden" theater? Did
you? I admit that the tired "Osama" specter had to be laid to rest, but why not do it in an
upright and out front manner? Why all the deceit? It is this kind of deeply embedded
dishonesty and resulting corruption of justice, integrity and open political process that
has brought the Democratic Party into disrepute. Do you think people remain ignorant of the
Clinton Foundation's pay-for-play method of enriching themselves, or that the Foundation
transferred $1.8 billion to Doha? Where did all that loot come from? We are not talking
here of Bill Gates, or the CEO of Google. Where did the money come from?
I do not put you in the same camp. My first encounter with you was when you gave the
keynote speech at the first graduating class of the MET in Tigard. You have never tainted
yourself with lies and falseness. Maybe it is easier to retain your integrity being from
Oregon, since I have the same high regard for Rep. Earl Blumenauer and Peter DeFazio. You
are the exemplars of liberal, progressive values and grassroots democracy, not Hillary
Clinton.
As much as I have grown to dislike Hillary Clinton, listening to her concession speech,
I had a sense of tragedy. She seems such an intelligent, lovely woman.
It could and probably should have ended differently. Was it ambition that destroyed her,
or hubris and lack of humility? What happened to her respect for the intelligence and basic
decency of the American people? Where has simple honesty gone?
She appears to me to have taken the "left-hand path," and perhaps it is better that she
be personally ruined than allowed to take the country to ruin along with her, since that
path always ends in ruin.
I hope for the best. We will, I trust, survive a Donald Trump administration. There will
be damage, of course. Trump has to repay supporters who put their own political careers at
risk to back him. This is frightening all by itself–imagine a Sarah Palin in charge
of the Department of Energy! I fear the dismantling of all the federal regulatory agencies
that five generations of Americans have worked so hard to put in place–one of the
great achievements of the Progressive movement. Imagine BPA sold off to the highest bidder,
or our public lands bartered off to pay for the ruinous wars we have been visiting on the
Middle East!
By writing you in this frank way, I do not mean to be disrespectful. As I said, I hold
you, Rep. Blumenauer and Rep. DeFazio in high regard, and believe Oregon has the best
congressional delegation in the nation, bar none. More tThan ever, we all depend upon you
to be honest, vigilant and courageous, and prevent the worst possible outcomes from this
disaster from being realized.
Things have never looked worse for the Democratic Party, which just lost the last semblance
of mental competence as Bernie Sanders drops out of the race. With Joe Biden withering by the
day, will Gov. Andrew Cuomo get the call?
That is when I had enough Bernie, and realized he would just be more of the same. Thanks
for all the info on Crimea. I admittedly don't know very much about it. I did watch a
confusing documentary on netflix, but don't know if it was propaganda or not.
> Excellent video – please consider producing a weekly half hour lecture with a
listener(s) (friend) to ask questions. you can recruit a friend or strangerand just engage in
a conversation. You can experiment with interesting local locations – garden, coffee
shop patio, park Title something like regime change for dummies, Ukraine For Dummies, Crimea
for dummies, whatever subjects interest you and which you think the public is being
misinformed about . keep it casual – need better lighting :)
As people come to grips with the announcement today that Bernie Sanders has suspended, i.e.
dropped out of, his campaign, a myriad of collective feelings will have to run their inevitable
course.
My first reactions are that I feel profoundly let down. In the middle of Holy Week, for
God's sake! While the virus is peaking and people are losing things right and left, how does it
help that he does this now?
Bernie has always had terrible timing, a consequence of having bad advisors from the
beginning. He always seemed to be reluctant to agree to anything people were crying out for him
to say, especially to stop calling Biden a 'good and decent' man, his good friend, Joe Biden,
the party's only remaining nominee: an old man with a credible sexual assault allegation
recently come to light; a serial plagiarist, a promoter of the worst policies the centrists had
to offer.
Let me put this in clear terms: Joe Biden, the Democratic Party choice for President- a man
with diminished mental capacities, is going against one of the most ruthless contenders in
Presidential history, Donald J. Trump. On Bernie's watch, and with his participation by
concession, the Democratic Party will be utterly destroyed in November, and will have richly
deserved it.
Bernie would also not fight back against Warren and her outrageous sexism charge. He
wanted his kindly reputation to endure in a campaign that was not supposed to be about
him.
In the end, this campaign was all about Bernie. This may not sound very charitable. I could
not believe however, that there were no admissions of any missteps in his concession speech. No
mention that he could have done more to address the concerns of many people.
For instance, although he said he was inclusive, he did not pay any particular regard to
those not in the minority segments or youth age brackets that he was trying to romance. He
would not stray from the talking points hammered into our brains, trying to burn a legacy into
place, to make the case that he was the originator of these ideas, and, in my view, trying a
little too hard to rewrite history.
His last speech as a contender showed him once more taking credit for these ideas
becoming mainstream. Although he clearly was a defender, or at least a constant repeater of
these ideas, was he helping "build a movement" by stamping his brand all over them? The
progressive ideas that he embraced did not belong to him. Occupy was involved in income
inequality long before Bernie hitched his wagon to that star.
Bernie did not come up with a tax on speculation on Wall Street (an idea that I supported
in my run as an Independent from Maine for US Senate in 2008). It actually came from James
Tobin, an economist who won the Nobel Prize. Tobin originated the concept of the STT
(Securities Transaction Tax), which would be an optimal way to fight back against the tax
breaks and cuts that Congress has showered on the rich for several decades.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1981/press-release/]
The fight for minimum wage has been a progressive effort since I was young, hardly a new
idea. Not a Sanders idea, although to be fair, he has strongly endorsed the idea for a long
time. The same goes for single payer, or healthcare for all. Others, notably Physicians for a
National Health Plan (PNHP) have fought these fights on behalf of the progressive cause.
Bernie adopted those ideas into the progressive platform he ran on. The need was evident,
but the ideas are not new and are not his alone. Maybe he has fought for these things in the
Senate, and as an Independent from Vermont, which would be a reasonable thing to do to stay in
power, since they are among the most popular ideas for change in the country.
I am not impressed that Bernie could not summon the willpower to respond to the efforts of
those who wanted him to go to battle. I wrote many columns trying to appeal to him to suit up.
I attended ten of his campaign events in New Hampshire this time out and wrote and made videos
to support his efforts from the beginning of this second campaign. I have tried to reach the
campaign to no avail, to urge them to heighten their response and sharpen their attack on
substandard candidates' ideas.
Bernie was staggeringly passive; he let one opportunity after another go whizzing past with
weak responses, if any, in the face of a growing Democratic resurgence determined to destroy
him. His silences emboldened the corporate centrists, and confused supporters, who thought he
would take the huge advantage they gave him and surge forth, brandishing fury and
determination. Instead, he endlessly equivocated.
I have to own my part in this: I was stunned in 2016 when he said Hillary was right and
that nobody cares about her damn emails. From the beginning I saw him back down. Everything
since then has been consistent: he never went full tilt. He wanted to be loved more than being
right at all costs. He was able to be loved again, and forgiven again, and able to let us down
again. Yet I went along with it; I still worked on his behalf.
Despite his recent abdication (and, for some of us, his serial betrayal) Bernie Sanders will
be remembered fondly, and he will likely be forgiven by the majority of his followers. Jacobin
Magazine has written an article entitled "Thank You, Bernie," making the case that Sanders two
campaigns have made it possible to talk about socialism in America. It's now okay apparently
that he will be endorsing and campaigning for Joe Biden, who shamed Anita Hill and is now
shaming Tara Reade. I have lived to witness the day this has happened. It is not a joke.
After losing last time, Bernie did an amazing job of trying to convince his hardcore
supporters to stay in the Democratic Camp to support Clinton. Why would he not support Dr.
Stein in 2016, who endorsed his platform? If he wanted a Revolution, she and the Green Party
were the logical choice.
Why does he stay in the race now, collecting delegates which may still come his way this
time around? He hasn't succeeded in explaining this, which leads to the speculation that he is
doing this to keep all the possible votes and funding he can collect, to turn them over to the
Democrats for political gain, retain his Senatorial standing, and not be hated later like Ralph
Nader. That's why. He says it is to oppose Trump. We must keep following him on this,
apparently, even in his absence. I guess he will be out there making Joe's case for him, since
he cannot make a compelling case anymore.
This time, he has left the race early, in April, with half the States not having even voted
yet, with supporters that sent him money, who are now without a leader. Bernie can claim that
he did not stay and fight his 'good friends.'
In 2016 I was a Bernie candidate for State Rep., and a Bernie delegate and caucus captain
and helped to start and run a pop-up office in York County, Maine and taught area workers how
to fight in the caucus for him.
When he dropped out last time and supported Hillary, I protested at a rally and his rally
people had me arrested for waving a green scarf in support of Jill Stein. I was literally
dragged out by two policemen.
Bernie Sanders has caused me more effort and personal grief for the least amount of
satisfaction of anyone I have ever known. No one else has asked so much of me and done so
little, and not followed through on their promises.
He said he would stay in the fight. He wants people to support his platform and fight for
his delegates at the convention. He just will not do it himself.
He is a consummate politician. He has saved himself and bowed out while we are struggling
through a pandemic. Who told him this would be a good idea? He could have just said that he
would be there on the ballots so the Democratic Party had an alternative in the event that
Biden could not survive the allegations of rape and the demands of leading in a pandemic and
staying mentally capable. These are real liabilities.
Sanders dropped out at the last possible point for Joe to make some bizarre case that he
could credibly be the Democratic nominee; any longer and Joe would, and will, spectacularly
bomb out, leading to four more years of Trump.
... ... ... Join the debate on
Facebook More articles by: Laurie DobsonLAURIE DOBSON, a
new member of the ThisCantBeHappening! news collective, is a veteran political activist, and
current Democratic Convention 'Bernie' delegate for the Cranberry Isles, Maine, writes for
various blogs and is an EMT, USCG-certified captain, landscape design business owner, and
columnist. See her website: EndUSWars.org
.
I was there in the arena, watching him concede in 2016 – and shortly thereafter in the
media tent, where a bunch of Sanders delegates had walked out in protest. A colleague of mine
was outside the perimeter fence, covering the protest by tens of thousands of Democrats
outraged by the party establishment's conduct. When we interviewed them, a lot of these
people vowed never to vote Democrat again.
A few months earlier in Atlanta, I heard Sanders volunteers bluntly say they'd rather vote
for Trump than for Clinton. When WikiLeaks published those internal emails showing the party
was behind Hillary and actively sabotaging Bernie – which party chair Donna Brazile later
confirmed
as true – the DNC ran damage control by blaming Russia. But the voters remembered
– and Trump won.
Sanders tried again in 2020, but the script began repeating itself right from the start. In
Iowa, the party establishment and their media allies desperately propped up Pete Buttigieg
(anyone remember him?) and others. Biden, anointed as the front-runner for the purposes of
Ukrainegate, wasn't even on the map – until he won South Carolina, and everyone suddenly
fell into line behind him.
"... He's simply the "Filler" candidate. Gives you what you want and then folds. I watch the election go down and it was the last time I'd ever be a Democrat because of what they did to him and on the flip side you start to see how Bernie was part of that whole game and complicit. ..."
"... Finally, Jimmy understood what a fraud Bernie is. ..."
"... Bernie's capaign is the equivalent of a peaceful protest. All that ever happens is that the cops come arrest you, and nothing ever changes. ..."
He's simply the
"Filler" candidate. Gives you what you want and then folds. I watch the election go down and it was the last time I'd
ever be a Democrat because of what they did to him and on the flip side you start to see how Bernie was part of that
whole game and complicit.
As a non American one thing which pisses me off is this
praising of the Chinese system of government. This is the government which kept quite about this viral outbreak , the
government which forced doctors and scientists who warned about this to shut up and apologize . People in China don't
get to call their government names like Jimmy does regularly . That Jimmy Dore did not call this person out on that
point damaged his credibility. Does Jimmy Dore know how the workers in China are treated and what conditions they work
under ... to suggest that China has a better system of government than the USA is total bullshit ..
FU Bernie, I condemn the man most capable to have led the way to a dignified humanitarian
response, who instead chose to walk away in humanities hour of high promise, high need and
abysmal despair.
Bernie you put party before people in the time of their greatest need. Bernie you raised
their hope, you owed them your allegiance as they gave their allegiance to you.
Bernie as coward or as realist - bit of both I reckon. To repeat myself, today there is no
space in US politics for 'socialistic' (left of center as judged by European standards)
policies, stances, etc. Their mention is allowed, even welcomed in certain ways, in the
mainstream, as performance art to justify the myth of pluralistic opinions counting, a-hem,
in a "just and democratic society."
The Dems as I and many others have said since 2016 or even before prefer to loose to
Trump. Their 'staged' role as opponents to the Oligarchy (cruel corporate state with dodgy
pol. front-men, disaster capitalism, mafia rackets, 'war' economy, slave labor disguised,
etc.) which brings in bucks is hard to keep up, the pretense wears thin, diminishing by the
day, as they are part of that Oligarchy.
The Dem playing card, hold, grip, is identity politics, coupled with some class and tribal
divisions ("deplorables" vs "antifa", Dems vs. Reps, etc.), vague reformist proposals (ex.
Medicare for all)
The Dems still serve a purpose and won't be summarliy junked, sent to the dustbin of
history soon, as they fulfill an essential role.
Interesting is that all the parties seem to be carrying on 'as per usual' treating the COV
crisis as a temporary bump on the road. The two topics - Pres. elections - and handling COV
appear to be divorced, unrelated, though as usual superficial oppositions abound. (Everyone
is keeping cards up their sleeves.)
Bernie went on a $150 million joy ride with the donations of 5 million hardworkng Americans.
He never had a plan to win. He played his role as a safety valve for the far left to a tee.
As a revoluitonary, he couldn't lick Casto's boots.
I think both parties have been happy to use Bernie to draw out and crush any chances of
government by the people. After all, every remotely unbiased poll has shown a significant
majority of the US public, from both parties, support many of the "socialist" ideas that now
have been equated with Sanders a loser. The policies were strong, Sanders as a person has
shown himself repeatedly to be weak. The perfect embodiment to use to gin up support, get
people excited that finally something might be changing, and then crush them in the most
humiliating way possible. Think how many otherwise vibrant, radical activists had their guts
ripped out by Sanders' capitulation in '16, walking away from political activism in disgust.
And the extra tough nuts? Yeah, well Sanders the DNC (and RNC) just gutted them again, didn't
they? Yet another generation of potentially troublesome voters being taught their lesson:
pick a shade of crayon from the permitted crayon box, or just quit so long as you submit. Is
Sanders knowingly complicit? Does it matter? He's probably happy. He's the now almost
mythical "face of the little people" without having to ever be tarnished by trying to
implement any socialist ideas against the might of the machine.
Can he screw his supporters even more than he has? "Moved the debate" needs some unpacking: Bernie successfully covered
Obama's healthcare betrayal (Obama confessed: a public option would be "unAmerican") with an an even bigger electoral betrayal.
It is unclear why he run, other than again to betray his followers...
"Bernie Sanders is a gutless fraud and faux Socialist (he’s merely a Centre-Left Social Democrat yet he portrayed his movement
as some sort of “Revolution”, LOL), who sadly represents the best you would ever get in the White House, in the sense that at
least he wouldn’t have started any new wars, wouldn’t have given any tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy, and wouldn’t have
outsourced any more jobs in new free trade agreements (these are the reasons I would have held my nose and voted for him if he had
been nominated, despite my much more Leftist beliefs). "
"Bernie fulfilled his sheepdog role of keeping people who want change attached to the moribund, corrupt Democratic Party, so
he can now retire well loved by the political class. Anyone who thinks change can come from the Democrats is deluded. You'd have
better luck changing the Republicans as they seem more open to ideas... Building a real third party is more needed than ever."
"Well that's completely not unexpected. His job was to con the non-retarded democrats into thinking they have a choice. He
will laugh all they way to the bank, just like he did the last time."
Notable quotes:
"... Can't believe we're even still speculating or fretting over Bernie's dropping out. His supporters can be oh so sad that his ideas were the best, but the dastardly "establishment" just wouldn't go along! He lost me in 2016 with his sheepdogging; he lost me in 2019 for not attacking Biden's corruption and war-mongering, but the killer for me was Bernie embracing the moronic and dangerous Russiagate narrative. ..."
Bernie was the sheepdog of the DNC that kept people from organizing outside of the two party
hustle(system).
People were pointing this out to his supporters very early on in this cycle using last
cycle as evidence yet no one listened.
If there is a next cycle let's hope Bernie didn't ruin them for political action and they
finally figure out they need to go against the entire establishment machine instead of trying
to reform one half of the mafia from within.
>Those bashing Bernie should understand that there was no way in hell
> the establishment (party duopoly and corporate media complex) was
> going to let him win.
People here paying attention knew he wouldn't be allowed to win. So did Bernie also know
this, and went along with the charade, or did he not know, thus showing that he is a complete
fool and nincompoop?
Knowing he could not win, a real radical would've been building a movement, not an
electoral machine. He did earn lots of delegates but threw them all away instead of taking
them to the convention and cause a ruckus.
No one will be talking about Bernie's ideas by next month, but there will be plenty of US
peons desperate for food and shelter. Will Bernie's movement be there to organize them and
help them get the necessities of life?
The sad part is all the effort and resources wasted on Bernie the Bozo's campaign. That
campaign money could've bought a lot of groceries and tents.
Rob @ 48 said;"The coming general election will feature the two least qualified candidates in
U.S. history. Trump is a malignant narcissist and very stupid, while Biden is a corporatist
and a hawk in addition to being senile."
Agreed, and your comment is probably too kind to both..
Bernie is like much of the so-called left, they've forgotten how to fight, by surrounding
themselves with DNC hacks. Never the less, his ideas are credible, and shouldn't be
forgotten.
Don't see how DJT can lose in Nov., but stranger things have happened. Regardless, I'll
never vote Biden, and if DJT wins, the U$A gets what it deserves, whatever that is.
All Bernie can do is continue to collect delegates, and hope to move Biden leftward, to at
least support Medicare for all, which, given the state of healthcare in our present pandemic,
might gain some traction.
As I've said in this blog many times, my bet is the American working classes will choose
fascism. And I'll complement my thesis: the sandernistas will be the decisive factor.
Can't believe we're even still speculating or fretting over Bernie's dropping out. His
supporters can be oh so sad that his ideas were the best, but the dastardly "establishment"
just wouldn't go along! He lost me in 2016 with his sheepdogging; he lost me in 2019 for not
attacking Biden's corruption and war-mongering, but the killer for me was Bernie embracing
the moronic and dangerous Russiagate narrative. The sunlight is shining onto many areas,
as Caitlin Johnstone says, if we can wake up and see it and create a real movement for sane
actions and policies. Bernie's "movement" was designed to be a feel-good exercise in support
of empire.
Sanders was just a second rate preacher, not a leader. He is a coward.
Notable quotes:
"... As a non-American, I am not unsettled that Trump will serve a second term. Trump is doing more to dismantle the "American Century" - an idea more destructive to the rest of the world that anything I can presently think of - than any anti-war group ever could. Trump has exposed the US for what it is - a rogue state, self-involved, run by greed and corruption. ..."
"... Of course Trump is an idiot. A narcissist, a self-promoter, and a fella with a very tepid relationship with truth. He entirely lacks compassion or any sense of empathy whatsoever. However, he IS showing the world that the US cannot under any circumstances, be trusted - has it ever stuck to any of the treaties it entered into? ..."
"... a dementia-ridden Biden vying for the big chair. This is the best America has on offer?? At least Trump is honest in exposing America for what it is. A rogue, near-failed state. The sooner the population at large realize this, and start raising politicians who aren't chosen simply by how much money they have, the better. ..."
"... But I'm not holding my breath. Go Trump! ..."
"... Bernie was never a leader, but my sentiment is with Joe Rogan when he said "Biden is turning us all into morons" ..."
"... The oligarchy is happy with either outcome as it assures nothing changes. The only difference is things get worse more quickly or more slowly. Trump may be God's justice on Americans for permitting their government to become an empire which is murdering its way around the world. ..."
"... The reason Biden beat Bernie in the primaries is obvious: electronic vote flipping, just like Hillary's DNC did in 2016. The exit poll discrepancies prove this beyond doubt. And Bernie, coward or sheepdog that he is, refused to complain that millions of his supporters were cheated again. It seems that violent revolution is being made inevitable. ..."
Bernie Sanders is a coward. I'm embarrassed to have supported him for so long. If he constantly caves under pressure (like he
has this whole campaign), he doesn't deserve to be the nominee or the president.
As a non-American, I am not unsettled that Trump will serve a second term. Trump is doing more to dismantle the "American
Century" - an idea more destructive to the rest of the world that anything I can presently think of - than any anti-war group
ever could. Trump has exposed the US for what it is - a rogue state, self-involved, run by greed and corruption.
Of course Trump is an idiot. A narcissist, a self-promoter, and a fella with a very tepid relationship with truth. He entirely
lacks compassion or any sense of empathy whatsoever. However, he IS showing the world that the US cannot under any circumstances,
be trusted - has it ever stuck to any of the treaties it entered into?
All this is not a result of Trump alone. Every president since JFK has had but two priorities: to keep the powerful powerful,
and the rich rich. Capitalists doing what Capitalists do.
The Bushes, the Clintons, so-called Saint Obama, Trump, and a dementia-ridden Biden vying for the big chair. This is the
best America has on offer?? At least Trump is honest in exposing America for what it is. A rogue, near-failed state. The sooner
the population at large realize this, and start raising politicians who aren't chosen simply by how much money they have, the
better.
Election 2020-Dotard [Dem.] v. Retard [Rep.] The oligarchy is happy with either outcome as it assures nothing changes. The
only difference is things get worse more quickly or more slowly. Trump may be God's justice on Americans for permitting their
government to become an empire which is murdering its way around the world.
The reason Biden beat Bernie in the primaries is obvious: electronic vote flipping, just like Hillary's DNC did in 2016. The
exit poll discrepancies prove this beyond doubt. And Bernie, coward or sheepdog that he is, refused to complain that millions
of his supporters were cheated again. It seems that violent revolution is being made inevitable.
Update (1155ET) : It did not take President Trump long to chime in via Twitter .
"Bernie Sanders is OUT! Thank you to Elizabeth Warren. If not for her, Bernie would have
won almost every state on Super Tuesday! "
Then Trump went further:
"This ended just like the Democrats & the DNC wanted, same as the Crooked Hillary
fiasco."
Which led him to suggest:
"The Bernie people should come to the Republican Party, TRADE!"
Will they?
Bernie's departure from the race makes Biden the presumptive nominee, and will save a lot of
people the trouble of voting in the remaining primaries, potentially saving lives from
COVID-19.
... ... ...
All told, Bernie Sanders will still be remembered as an anti-establishment legend who almost
single-handedly revived the passion for socialism among white guilt-ridden middle class college
students and recent grads across the country. He went from long-shot outsider whose quiet
campaign announcement in the summer of 2015 garnered little attention at the time, before a
groundswell of public support helped make him a serious threat to Clinton.
Sanders unwillingness to confront the establishment is rather convenient for the
establishment, isn't it? How can anyone talk of Sanders at this point and not mention
"sheepdog"?
Not only elections are rigged, the top politicians are involved in the rigging.
Sanders gave up against Clinton in 2016 and he gave up against Biden (?!?!) in 2020. The
pandemic gave Sanders a third opportunity; opportunities are rare and you rarely get one,
let alone three, but Sanders is throwing it all away (again). Sanders forgets that he is
not where he is because of the Democratic Party, he is there because American people want
real change. What is Sanders trying to do? Destroy his message, his reputation and the hope
people placed in Sanders? Spend the rest of his life as a derided figure?
Jackrabbit #72
Jimmy Dore is kicking Sanders arse around the stage over the last few days for caving in
on everything.
The King of Vermont has no clothes left.
Neither does the Queen of Hawaii for that matter. Silent on the Joe groper issue from what I
see.
Half Of Young American Democrats Believe Billionaires Do More Harm Than Good by
Tyler Durden Sun,
03/15/2020 - 21:25 With income inequality the political hot potato du-jour and wealth
concentration at its most extreme since the roaring twenties, is it any wonder that even
Americans' view of what used to be called 'success' is now tainted with the ugly taste of
partisan 'not-fair'-ism.
Income inequality is roaring...
Wealth concentration is extreme to say the least...
But still,
according to Pew Research's latest survey , when asked about the impact of billionaires on
the country, nearly four-in-ten adults under age 30 (39%) say the fact that some have fortunes
of a billion dollars or more is a bad thing...
...with 50% of young Democrats.
"The recent reigning conventional wisdom over the last several decades of what I call the
'Age of Capital' is that [billionaires] are 'up there' because they are smarter than us," said
Anand Giridharadas, author of "Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World."
But the Pew data, he says, suggest that young Americans are concluding that billionaires
have amassed their wealth "through their rigging of the tax code, through legal political
bribery, through their tax avoidance in shelters like the Cayman Islands, and through
lobbying for public policy that benefits them privately. "
"Bernie Sanders taught a lot of people [about wealth inequality], including people who did
not vote for him," Giridharadas said.
"The billionaire class is 'up there' because they are standing on our backs pinning us
down."
The good news - for the rest of America's "capitalists" - is that a majority (58%) say the
impact of billionaires on America is neither bad nor good.
Finally, one quick question - where were all these under-30s when Bernie needed them the
most in the Primaries? Was it all just virtue-signaling pro-socialist bullshit after all?
As an european and for the first time interested in the primaries,I wonder why there's only
Bernie,and nobody else is ever mentionned as being his faithful second,or faithful lieutenant
capable and willing to continue Bernies movement for social justice and more equality in
society and of course universal health care.
Is he the kind of guy that can't stand someone challenging him? Has he deliberately
created a vacuum around himself to avoid that to happen?
In France we have someone like him, Melenchon, who creates diversion in the left when it
is needed to the oligarchie and faking to reunite the left, but shrieking back from victory.
But coming with a bag full of words and leftist phrases that I generally can approve of. But
never attacking any french government on the maintaining of thousands of troops abroad.
I think those are just actors, playing the part that was written for them in the beginning
of their career. Do you know that Daniel Cohn-Bendit from the '68 Paris movement is regarded
by many,as being a CIA stooge from the beginning,in the same way as Guaido,Wong,Navalny,that
would make May'68 a couloured revolution avant la lettre.
Yes,I think A User gives a good description of the phenomenon.So how come there's only
Bernie,and nobody to take the torch from him?
It's very new and interesting to me what you said here:
"Do you know that Daniel Cohn-Bendit from the '68 Paris movement is regarded by many, as
being a CIA stooge from the beginning, in the same way as Guaido, Wong, Navalny, that would
make May'68 a couloured revolution avant la lettre."
I did not know that! Thank you:)
Bernie had Tulsi Gabbard inspired by him, supporting him, and only needing him to
recognize her in any way. But he's about as trustworthy as a CIA agent. He just ignored her,
didn't support her, then let the State media and his party erase her. It's a grotesque
election.
There have been so many times I've heard and read people say, "If the American people found
out about 9/11 they'd go crazy", or, "If the American people found out about the amount of
fraud/rigging in our elections, they wouldn't stand for it", etc., etc. Bullshit. The
American people will do whatever the hell the TV tells them to do.
Bernie Sanders is not a political candidate. He is an evangelical Socialist ideologue.
He has no personality to battle opponents. He makes proclamations of his ideology.
He has never "fought back".
He has no instinct for debating. He believes, therefore, in his mind, he is correct. He
expects others to follow his lead.
He has never been a real candidate. He was a distraction, a Pied Piper, for dopey students
and young people who latched onto his notions.
When you offer free rewards and your turnout goes down, you are over as a "candidate".
Biden is brain damaged. He is a very dangerous stalking horse for the return of the Magic
Negro, Obama, and the sociopathic Hillary Clinton.
If Biden wins in November, expect more war and a very long recession. Social chaos will
look racial, but it will be a battle for the Second Amendment, Free Speech, and Traditional
Values versus the Soulless Liberalism intended to establish Feudalism 'round the globe.
Everything in the Dem Primary and Convention is rigged. Bernie never had a chance. He
could care less. He never expected to be President. He just wanted big crowds to listen to
his Polemics.
The guy is 78, what makes you think he cares about Vermont ... trying for the first
100-year-old Senator? He's never been able to do anything in Congress anyway. His big shot
was spoiled by the Wicked Witch of the East. He would be President now, if not for her.
Bernie has fought long and hard. Look at his record, he has fought and succeeded in
accomplishing more for the people than any other politician.
What everyone is assuming is that if Bern becomes an ugly asshole just like all the others
before him TPTB would allow him to be the candidate or god forbid the POTUS. NEVER gunna
happen!
There is only one way We The People can get the representation we need and want it to come
out and state in the clearest possible way that Dems and Repubs are serving the same masters
with the same basic agenda and represent one party. We must then form a new party and put
everything we have behind it. It has to be a radical revolution and Bernie has made it clear
that he will fight for all of us. Which by the way is exactly what all the top Dems are
saying we don't need. Him getting elected under existing conditions would change NOTHING and
he knows it. Forcing him to go
People who put all of the responsibility for achieving this on Bernies shoulders are
ignorant chicken shits that don't deserve anything better than Biden, Cliton, Trump.
#6 Bernie has a long standing deal with the Democrats to play nice or they will do
all they can to ruin him. What else explains his reluctance to go after Biden like he should
have earlier in the campaign? Either way, we will see what happens, maybe he will go after
him, maybe not. I think he won't. I hope he does.
If Bernie is real; ie. not sheep-dogging for Hillary again, he can prove it by dropping out
immediately and throwing his delegates to Tulsi. This is the only shot to thwart the
convention designs of the Dame Named Clinton.
Hey Bernie! Throw a Hail Tulsi Pass now!
Bernie absolutely will not fight. For the record, at Democrat Party platform meetings
in July 2016 he wouldn't put up the slightest fight against TPP . His position against
TPP had gained him many followers. Union heads who had been anti-TPP until then showed up and
were stongly pro-TPP as were Hillary and Obama:
"Bernie Sanders failed to get strong language opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership
inserted in the draft Democratic platform at a party meeting here Saturday....It was clear as
a string of trade union presidents lined up at the microphone to oppose the Sanders
amendments that his forces were outmatched.... (parag. 11)
The Obama administration supports it [TPP], and the desire to avoid embarrassing the
president carried the day, with the labor unions acting as a political shield for the White
House. Delegates twice Saturday morning voted down stronger opposition language as Sanders
supporters booed and chanted "sellout." Some eventually walked out of the meeting
entirely."...
The only topic on the 2020 election agenda should be that the US must be broken into
parts. The weapons dictatorship that runs the US won't be stopped any other way.
Bernie allowed Biden to co-opt his "message" on every point.
Even on his signature healthcare initiative, sheepdog Bernie rolled over. Bernie
should've/could've asked why we should trust that Biden would get a 'public option' when
Obama failed to do so (an Obama-Biden campaign promise).
Bernie also showed that he's got no interest in winning by failing to attack Biden on
character issues ( just as he wouldn't attack Hillary on character issues in 2016).
Any real candidate would've brought up Hunter Biden's dealings in Ukraine and China.
Bernie also pulled many punches, like:
No mention of the $50+ trillion dollars of off-shore money;
Biden's loyalty to Obama: a President who failed to deliver "Change You Can Believe
In";
Biden's connections to the MIC "swamp" - supporting a militaristic and belligerence
foreign policy that makes us less safe;
Democratic Party's failure to protect workers and the middle-class (Bernie often
talks about "the billionaires" but never talks about how they got to be so powerful in
America)
Democratic Party's failure to be representative: no people of color in the last few
debates!
Bernie's quixotic insurgency isn't anti-establishment. He's leading people into a dead end.
And hoping you won't notice.
!!
/div>
Bernie is not there to be president, never was. his tribal mission is to dog herd the
progressives into voting for the lesser evil Judeo-Zionist DNC´s pick. the day is not far
when the name Sanders will have an entry in the common dictionary of the American language
defined as "mass deception".
Posted by: nietzsche1510 , Mar 16 2020 8:45 utc |
76
Bernie is not there to be president, never was. his tribal mission is to dog herd the
progressives into voting for the lesser evil Judeo-Zionist DNC´s pick. the day is not
far when the name Sanders will have an entry in the common dictionary of the American
language defined as "mass deception".
Posted by: nietzsche1510 | Mar 16 2020 8:45 utc |
76
Willie @48 / 84
There's no need for Sanders to designate a Dauphin: at every election the Owners of the
Country trot out a shepherd dog, to bark the disgruntled people back to the fold, keeping
them from burning down the Democrat abomination down. And yes, the sheeple are just as stupid
as we think they are. Wallace, Mc Govern, Jackson, Kucinich, Sanders... the Owners always
have a sheepdog ready. No matter if heshehe is a well-meaning, sincere populist like Kucinich
or a warmongering imperialist buzztard like Sanders, or even worse, the sheepdog is the wolf
in person, like Obama, the stupid sheep keep obeying the dog and voting for more of the
same.
Because, see, their Hopium addiction has addled their brains. You just don't go to war
relying on heroin addicts; it's just as bad with those who need their daily dose of Hope
(when there is none.) They can't follow logic.
/div>
#13 You are right, absolutely Tulsi would make mincemeat of Biden and the establishment
and Trump. They know it. But Bernie has surrounded himself with people who see reality through
an establishment lens, which means they look forward to a career in the establishment political
job market. They have convinced Bernie to ignore Tulsi because of a variety of reasons 1. Some
are neocons 2. Some are Hinduphobes 3. Some are both 4. The rest know
the establishment is dead set against Tulsi because she is a revolutionary. So even though
she would win easily if Bernie gave his support to Tulsi, I can't see him doing that. Let us
pray he does because at this point
we need a miracle to save us from either Trump, Biden, or some other establishment
lackey.
#13 You are right, absolutely Tulsi would make mincemeat of Biden and the establishment
and Trump. They know it. But Bernie has surrounded himself with people who see reality
through an establishment lens, which means they look forward to a career in the establishment
political job market. They have convinced Bernie to ignore Tulsi because of a variety of
reasons 1. Some are neocons 2. Some are Hinduphobes 3. Some are both 4. The rest know
the establishment is dead set against Tulsi because she is a revolutionary. So even
though she would win easily if Bernie gave his support to Tulsi, I can't see him doing that.
Let us pray he does because at this point
we need a miracle to save us from either Trump, Biden, or some other establishment
lackey.
Well that's it Bernie is done and he made sure to s*** on his own movement as he stumbled off
the stage back to his 3 mansions. He had already lost with super Tuesday, but he had a chance
to save his legacy with a strong debate performance if he managed to squeeze some public
commitments out of Biden for his followers. Instead he meekly assented to Biden's coronation,
what was the point of the debate for Bernie's movement? they got nothing out of Biden, heck,
Biden even made a point of trashing Medical Care for all and demanding that all of Bernie's
people embrace him as their rightful king. Bernie's people got NOTHING from Biden and the
DNC, the will continue to get NOTHING from them until they show the DNC that they will
boycott the next election and make the DNC lose elections they would otherwise win. sure the
Democrats will blame them for Trump 2020, but the Democrats lost the moderates in 2000 but
they still came back to pander to them, time to make them pander to Bernie's people!
>Bernie Sanders has only ever been a clever tool to mobilize
> the young voters. Never designed to actually have a chance. Just whip up dreams
> Posted by: Jezabeel | Mar 16 2020 9:03 utc | 79
... and then crush the dreams so the dreamers drift away in disgust.
1. No one is talking about last night's debate because of the Coronavirus. It doesn't show
up on my 'Bing' homepage and there isn't even mention of it on the few liberal websites that
I visit except for Counterpunch and there was only one there.
"... I actually watched the debate. Bernie is done. He's just too nice to be president. He had numerous chances to call joe out on his lies and passed on almost all of them. ..."
"... The disappointment isn't as big a shock. I don't like him losing. But I am absolutely disgusted that he won't call out the cheating, lying, and election fraud. ..."
And boy did he.
I actually watched the debate. Bernie is done. He's just too nice to be president.
He had numerous chances to call joe out on his lies and passed on almost all of them.
I'm very happy I didn't donate to his campaign this year. He is a sheepdog who will make
every attempt to coerce his followers to vote blech no matter who.
of Bernie over the past week. The disappointment isn't as big a shock. I don't like him
losing. But I am absolutely disgusted that he won't call out the cheating, lying, and
election fraud.
And there is nothing that could get me to vote for Biden.
@janis
b@janis
b
I think it's the worst discussions of a couple's divorce arguments in front of their
attorneys in court.
Joe Biden is talking way too much. Sanders is amazingly restrained in his verbal
responses.
1. Shut this president down now.
2. Joe Biden talk less and lie less. For me you are unacceptable.
3. Bernie is not toast and just needs to fight on.
4. The media will not help us, despite the best efforts. I am glad though that I can watch
the live stream of the debate.
Do not worry about how much it costs. If you can't stand listening anymore, stop
listening.
... ... ...
I was shocked when I seen women literally FIGHTING over a 12 pk of Toilet Tissue. 1
instance of WHY the public is not told things as they truly are...you are freaking out over
TISSUE..
Bernie has the strength and wits to hang out with Anderson Cooper and talk policy after
the debate. Biden is probably in the hospital hooked up to an I V .
Don't ever talk about how much it costs when it comes to medicare for all when it comes to
the lives and wellbeing of Americans. But the federal government can find $1.5T laying around
to donate to wall street. Give me a break Biden!!! That is a republican talking point. Biden
is and have always been a closet republican.
I've paid very close attention to CNN and I've noticed that there is barely ANYTHING that
highlights the lies and contradictions of Biden. Corporate media is part of why the DNC will
lose if they push Biden vs Trump. Trump will absolutely DESTROY JOE HIS RECORD IS THE SAME AS
HILLARY AND THAT COST YOU LAST TIME
I am a Sanders supporter and I am aware he will likely not get the nomination. I was
hoping Biden would try and win me over, but he barely tried. He only solidified that Bernie
is the real deal and Biden is just a bum.
"> I hope they postpone the primaries, CDC has recommended against gatherings of over
50 people. All voting stations are going to have over 50 people. Move the primaries back,
let's focus on the crisis at hand first. In the meantime let's have more of these long
debates where we can handle the issues.. 1 on 1 let America decide who they want after. I
have a feeling the longer they talk, the more people will understand Bernie has the record
and the plan that will transform this great nation as well as the Energy and Enthusiasm to
beat Trump. P.S for the people saying I'm just trying to buy Bernie time, you are right,
however you also have to remember older people are way more secepptible to the Corona Virus..
and old people vote for Biden. Do all these senior citizens want to stand in line for hours
with the virus going around? Imagine old the old people waiting to vote for Biden in Florida,
the retirement capital of America. Bernie's young people are going to come out anyway.. this
race still might have 1 more twist
Thank You, Anderson. It is heroic of you to give BERNIE quality air time! WE THE PEOPLE
have an important choice to make: we must vote for the most honest, creatively intelligent,
compassionate and prepared candidate to see us through what is ahead.
"... Tomasky points out that Sanders, even if he were elected, would be unable to implement many of the programs that are part of his platform, that the best he'd get in terms of healthcare, for example, would be "a Bidenesque public option," meaning, I presume, and option such as Biden is advocating for now ..."
"... New York Review of Books ..."
"... The Daily Beast, ..."
"... The American Prospect, ..."
"... New York Review of Books ..."
"... New York Review of Books ..."
"... Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism ..."
"... The Corporate Coup d'Etat ..."
"... M.G. Piety teaches philosophy at Drexel University. She is the editor and translator of Soren Kierkegaard's Repetition and Philosophical Crumbs . Her latest book is: Ways of Knowing: Kierkegaard's Pluralist Epistemology . She can be reached at: [email protected] ..."
Just when I am starting to think that the New York Review of Books is not
irredeemably idiotic on political issues, they publish an article that is so conspicuously
incoherent and outrageously out of touch with the political climate in the U.S. that it is
destined to be anthologized in perpetuity in collections with "Clueless" in the title. The
article, " The Party Cannot
Hold ," by Michael Tomasky is about the current state of the Democratic party.
The current divide in the Democratic party, writes Tomasky, "is about capitalism -- whether
it can be reformed and remade to create the kind of broad prosperity the country once knew, but
without the sexism and racism of the postwar period, as liberals hope; or whether corporate
power is now so great that we are simply beyond that, as the younger socialists would argue,
and more radical surgery is called for."
Hmm, he's right, of course, that there is a faction of the Democratic party that wants to
reform capitalism, to remake it to create the kind of broad prosperity the country once knew.
The thing is, that faction is the "younger" one. The older, "liberal," Democrats have
concentrated almost all their efforts on getting rid of sexism and racism, laudable goals to be
sure, but oddly disconnected in the "liberal" imagination from economic issues.
Tomasky is also correct, of course, that a growing number of people in this country think
Capitalism in any form is simply morally bankrupt and that we need a new socioeconomic system
entirely. Few of these people, however, are registered Democrats. Most of them aren't even
Social Democrats since the overthrow of capitalism hasn't been a part of the Social Democratic
platform since the middle of the last century, at least according to Encyclopedia Britannica .
Indeed, Wikipedia defines " Social democracy " as "a political, social
and economic philosophy that supports economic and social interventions to promote social
justice within the framework of a liberal democratic polity and a capitalist- oriented
economy" (emphasis added). That Social Democrats are planning the overthrow of capitalism would
be disturbing news to the many capitalists countries in Europe where they are an important
political force.
Tomasky points out that Sanders, even if he were elected, would be unable to implement
many of the programs that are part of his platform, that the best he'd get in terms of
healthcare, for example, would be "a Bidenesque public option," meaning, I presume, and option
such as Biden is advocating for now , because as Americans know too well, politicians
almost never deliver on campaign promises. The electorate is nearly always forced to accept
some watered-down version of what they've been promised, if indeed, they get any version of it
at all. That's clearly part of the reason so many people support Sanders.
Few of Sanders supporters are so politically naïve that they think once he was in
office we'd have universal healthcare. They assume they'd get something less than that. They
also assume, however, and history suggests, correctly, that if Biden were elected, they'd get
something less than he is promising, which means they'd get -- nothing at all! It's either
disingenuous or idiotic of Tomasky to suggest that there's essentially no difference between
Sanders' and Biden's healthcare plans, since even a child will tell you that something is
clearly better than nothing.
Tomasky assumes that only if someone other than Sanders gets the nomination would the left
"try to increase its leverage by, for example, running left-wing candidates against a large
number of mainstream Democratic House incumbents." I kid you not, he actually said that. See,
that's what happens when you don't pay sufficient attention to what is going on around you. Or
perhaps Tomasky is simply being disingenuous again and hoping that the average reader of the
New York Review of Books hasn't been following the Sanders campaign and the calls of
both Sanders and his supporters for bringing about sweeping political change by running
left-wing candidates against a large number of mainstream Democratic House incumbents.
"If Sanders wins the nomination," writes Tomasky, "it becomes absolutely incumbent upon
Democratic establishment figures to get behind him, because a second Trump term is unthinkable.
But the reality is," he continues, "that a number of them won't."
Hmm. Why is it that a number of "Democratic establishment figures" would rather have a
second term of Trump than even one term of Sanders? That's not my charge, I feel compelled to
remind readers here. It's Tomasky who came right out and admitted that! Yes, the Democratic
establishment, despite it protestations to the contrary, would rather have a second term of
Trump than even one term of Sanders according to Michael Tomasky, editor-in-chief of
Democracy, a special correspondent for Newsweek and The Daily Beast,
and a contributing editor for The American Prospect, as well as a contributor to the
New York Review of Books .
Why is that? Well, because as Tomasky observes himself earlier in the article, "Democrats
have, since the 1990s, gotten themselves far too indebted to certain donor groups, notably Wall
Street and the tech industry." Yes, this is the same Tomasky who began the article in question
by characterizing these very same Democrats, now in the pocket of Wall Street and the tech
industry, as wanting to reform capitalism, to remake it to create the kind of broad prosperity
the country once knew.
Biden is apparently not the only prominent Democrat who appears to be suffering from some
kind of dementia.
That's not the only dotty thing Tomasky says in the article. "In a parliamentary system," he
says, "Biden would be in the main center-left party." Okay, yeah, maybe, if we suddenly had a
parliamentary system in the U.S. In any other country that presently has a parliamentary system
Biden would be in the center-right party, if not actually the far-right party.
The view that Sanders supporters are mostly young socialists is delusional. The very same
issue of the New York Review of Books includes an excellent article about our current
health-care crisis entitled " Left
Behind " by Helen Epstein. Epstein explains that substantial numbers of the working poor
support Sanders and that "117,000 Pennsylvanians who voted for Sanders in the [2016] primary
cast their general election ballots for Trump." Hmm, it seems unlikely that those 117,000
Pennsylvanians were all young socialists.
Tomasky's world doesn't even cohere with the world as represented by other contributors to
the publication in which his article appears, let alone to the real, concrete world. It exists
only in his fevered imagination and the similarly fevered imaginations of other Democrats who
delude themselves that they are "centrists" rather than right-wing neoliberals. There are bits
and pieces of the truth in Tomasky's vision of the disunity in the Democratic party but he puts
those bits together like a child forcing pieces of a puzzle where they don't belong.
What Tomasky fails to appreciate is just how mad, in the sense of angry, the average
American voter is. Epstein writes that "[i]f you include those who have left the workforce
altogether, the U.S. employment rate is almost as high as it was in 1931." She cites Anne Case
and Angus Deaton as observing in Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism that "[t]he amount American spend
unnecessarily on health care weighs more heavily on our economy than the Versailles Treaty
reparations did on Germans in the 1920s."
Oh yeah, people are angry. Few people are blaming capitalism as such, but nearly everyone
who's suffering economically appears to be blaming the political establishment, and blaming the
Democrats just as much as the Republicans. This is clear from the people interviewed in the
2019 documentary The Corporate Coup
d'Etat. These are people who voted for Sanders in the 2016 primary, but who
then voted for Trump in the general election. They're not socialists. They're just angry.
Really angry, and they're angry at both sides of the political establishment.
Tomasky is worried about the Democratic party, with its two fictional factions, breaking
apart because he concludes "our [political] system militates against a schism." No third party,
he thinks, could be a significant political force.
Trump does not have a party with the program that at least pretends to pursue "socialism for a given ethnic group". He is
more far right nationalist then national socialist. But to the extent neoliberalism can be viewed as neofascism Trump is
neo-fascist, he definitly can be called a "national neoliberal."
Notable quotes:
"... I am nothing if not a realist. The idea that Sanders might have become the Democratic candidate was always a fantasy, not unlike my youthful dreams of one day becoming an NFL quarterback. Even after Sanders' triumph in the Nevada caucuses, I never thought the party establishment would ever allow a socialist -- even a mild social democratic one, such as Sanders -- to head its ticket. ..."
"... Of the two campaigns, Trump's will be decidedly more toxic. The "Make America Great Again" slogan that propelled Trump to victory in 2016 and the "Keep America Great" slogan he will try to sell this time around are neo-fascist in nature, designed to invoke an imaginary and false state of mythical past national glory ..."
"... The fascist designation is not a label I apply to Trump cavalierly. I use it, as I have before in this column , because Trump meets many of the standard and widely respected definitions of the term. ..."
"... Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion. ..."
"... An appeal to a frustrated middle class that is suffering from an economic crisis of humiliation and fear of the pressure exerted by lower social groups. ..."
"... Joe Biden is not a fascist. He is, instead, a standard-bearer of neoliberalism. As with fascism, there are different definitions of neoliberalism, prompting some exceptionally smug mainstream commentators like New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait to claim that the concept is little more than a left-wing insult. In truth, however, the concept describes an all-too-real set of governing principles. ..."
"... Neoliberalism , by contrast, deemphasizes federal economic intervention in favor of initiatives calling for deregulation, corporate tax cuts, private-public partnerships, and international trade agreements that augment the free flow of capital while undermining the power and influence of trade unions. ..."
"... Until the arrival of Trump and his brand of neo-fascism, both major parties since Reagan had embraced this ideology. And while neoliberals remain more benign on issues of race and gender than Trump and Trumpism ever will be, neoliberalism offers little to challenge hierarchies based on social class. Indeed, income inequality accelerated during the Obama years and today rivals that of the Gilded Age . ..."
Now that the Michigan Democratic primary is over and Joe Biden has been
declared the
winner , it's time to read the handwriting on the political wall: Biden will be the
Democratic nominee for president, and Bernie Sanders will be the runner-up once again come the
party's convention in July. Sanders might influence the party's platform, but platforms are
never binding for the nominee. Sanders has lost, and so have his many progressive supporters,
myself included.
I am nothing if not a realist. The idea that Sanders might have become the Democratic
candidate was always a fantasy, not unlike my youthful dreams of one day becoming an NFL
quarterback. Even after Sanders' triumph in the Nevada caucuses, I never thought the party
establishment would ever allow a socialist -- even a mild social democratic one, such as
Sanders -- to head its ticket.
Funded by wealthy donors, run by Beltway insiders and aided and abetted by a corporate media
dedicated to promoting the notion that Sanders was "
unelectable ," the Democratic Party never welcomed Sanders as a legitimate contender. Not
in 2016 and not in 2020. In several instances, it even resorted to some good old-fashioned
red-baiting
to frighten voters; the party is, after all, a capitalist institution. Working and middle-class
families support the Democrats largely because they have no other place to go on Election Day
besides the completely corrupt and craven GOP.
Now we are left with Donald Trump and Biden to duke it out in the fall. Yes, it has come to
that.
In terms of campaign rhetoric and party policies, the general election campaign will be a
battle for America's past far more than it will be a contest for its future. The battle will be
fueled on both sides by narratives and visions that are illusory, regressive and, in important
respects, downright dangerous.
Of the two campaigns, Trump's will be decidedly more toxic. The "Make America Great Again"
slogan that propelled Trump to victory in 2016 and the "Keep America Great" slogan he will try
to sell this time around are neo-fascist in nature, designed to invoke an imaginary and false
state of mythical past national glory that ignores our deeply entrenched history of patriarchal
white supremacy and brutal class domination.
The fascist designation is not a label I apply to Trump cavalierly. I use it, as I have
before in this
column , because Trump meets many of the standard and widely respected definitions of the
term.
As the celebrated Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote in 1935 , fascism
"is a historic phase of capitalism the nakedest, most shameless, most oppressive and most
treacherous form of capitalism." Trumpism, along with its international analogs in Brazil,
India and Western Europe, neatly accords with Brecht's theory.
Trumpism similarly meets the definition of fascism offered by Robert Paxton in his classic
2004 study, "
The Anatomy of Fascism ":
Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation
with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy,
and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy
but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues
with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing
and external expansion.
Trump and Trumpism similarly embody the 14 common factors of fascism identified by the great
writer Umberto Eco in his 1995 essay, Ur Fascism :
A cult of traditionalism.
The rejection of modernism.
A cult of action for its own sake and a distrust of intellectualism.
The view that disagreement or opposition is treasonous.
A fear of difference. Fascism is racist by definition.
An appeal to a frustrated middle class that is suffering from an economic crisis of
humiliation and fear of the pressure exerted by lower social groups.
An obsession with the plots and machinations of the movement's identified enemies.
A requirement that the movement's enemies be simultaneously seen as omnipotent and weak,
conniving and cowardly.
A rejection of pacifism.
Contempt for weakness.
A cult of heroism.
Hypermasculinity and homophobia.
A selective populism, relying on chauvinist definitions of "the people" that the movement
claims to represent.
Heavy usage of "newspeak" and an impoverished discourse of elementary syntax and
resistance to complex and critical reasoning.
Joe Biden is not a fascist. He is, instead, a standard-bearer of neoliberalism. As with
fascism, there are different definitions of neoliberalism, prompting some exceptionally smug
mainstream commentators like New York Magazine's
Jonathan Chait to claim that the concept is little more than a left-wing insult. In truth,
however, the concept describes an all-too-real set of governing principles.
To grasp what neoliberalism means, it's necessary to understand that it does not refer to a
revival of the liberalism of the New Deal and New Society programs of the 1930s and 1960s. That
brand of liberalism advocated the active intervention of the federal government in the economy
to mitigate the harshest effects of private enterprise through such programs as Social
Security, the National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, Medicare, and the
Civil Rights Act of 1964. That brand of liberalism imposed high taxes on the wealthy and
significantly mitigated income inequality in America.
Neoliberalism
, by contrast, deemphasizes federal economic intervention in favor of initiatives calling for
deregulation, corporate tax cuts, private-public partnerships, and international trade
agreements that augment the free flow of capital while undermining the power and influence of
trade unions.
Until the arrival of Trump and his brand of neo-fascism, both major parties since Reagan had
embraced this ideology. And while neoliberals remain more benign on issues of race and gender
than Trump and Trumpism ever will be, neoliberalism offers little to challenge hierarchies
based on social class. Indeed, income inequality accelerated during the
Obama years and today rivals that of the Gilded Age .
As transformational a politician as Barack Obama was in terms of race, he too pursued a
predominantly neoliberal agenda. The Affordable Care Act, Obama's singular domestic legislative
achievement, is a perfect example of neoliberal private-public collaboration that left intact a
health industry dominated by for-profit drug manufacturers and rapacious insurance companies,
rather than setting the stage for Medicare for All, as championed by Sanders.
Biden never tires of reminding any audience willing to put up with his gaffes, verbal ticks
and miscues that he served as Obama's vice president. Those ties are likely to remain the
centerpiece of his campaign, as he promises a return to the civility of the Obama era and a
restoration of America's standing in the world.
History, however, only moves forward. As charming and comforting as Biden's imagery of the
past may be, it is, like Trump's darker outlook, a mirage. If Trump has taught us anything
worthwhile, it is that the past cannot be replicated, no matter how much we might wish
otherwise.
For those who opposed the USA foreign wars, the loss of Sanders is not that a great loss. Only Tulsi was a real anti-war
candidates.
Notable quotes:
"... although he seemed reluctant to endorse Clinton’s earlier 1995 decision to bomb Serb positions in Bosnia, he did nothing to oppose that step either. ..."
"... When the administration led a full-scale NATO air war against Serbia to force Belgrade to withdraw from its restless, predominantly Albanian province of Kosovo, Sanders was on board. He voted for a Senate Concurrent Resolution (sponsored by Senator Joe Biden) that authorized the president to conduct air operations and missile strikes against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro). Sanders’ vote on that measure was especially telling. There was substantial opposition to the resolution in both houses of Congress. Indeed, the authorization failed on a tie vote in the House—with Sanders voting for war. It was apparent that there were numerous legislators who were more dovish than Bernie Sanders regarding the Kosovo intervention. ..."
"... He also signed on to the so-called war on terror during George W. Bush’s administration, voting for the dangerously vague authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) in 2001 ..."
"... His opposition to military interventions certainly became more tepid again once Barack Obama entered the Oval Office. Contrary to Hillary Clinton’s jibe during a 2016 presidential primary debate that Sanders had endorsed the U.S.-led military campaign against Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, he only sponsored and voted for a resolution condemning Qaddafi and calling on the UN to pressure him to leave office. ..."
"... Sanders did not speak out against the war once it began, even though Obama ostentatiously declined even to seek congressional approval. ..."
"... A similar murkiness characterized his stance on the civil war in Syria. He supported Obama’s decision to send 250 U.S. troops to that country, ostensibly to train and assist “moderate” Syrian rebels trying to overthrow Bashar al-Assad’s regime. When Obama asked for congressional approval in 2013 for air strikes in response to Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons, though, Sanders had adopted a noncommittal stance, stating that he would keep an open mind but had several concerns and reservations. ..."
"... Once Donald Trump took office, Sanders became more consistently vocal in his opposition to U.S. military involvement in Syria. He condemned the Trump administration’s missile strikes on Syria for another alleged chemical weapons incident as “illegal and unauthorized”—a much stronger stance than he took when Obama proposed such retaliation in 2013. ..."
Although he
resists announcing the end of his candidacy, Bernie Sanders has almost no
chance of becoming the Democratic Party nominee for president following his weak
performances on both Super Tuesday and the six primaries the subsequent week. The
impending demise of his presidential bid may come as a disappointment to some Americans
who held out hope that a Sanders presidency would usher-in a more peaceful U.S. foreign
policy. Sanders himself fosters the image that he is a staunch advocate of peace,
asserting at one point
that "I apologize to no one" for opposing the Iraq war and other conflicts.
Despite his claims, there were several unsettling aspects to his foreign policy track record. He has been more anti-war
in his public statements and writings than in his actual voting record. His opposition to dubious U.S. military
interventions has been noticeably more persistent and intense when Republican presidents initiated such missions than when
Democratic presidents did so. Sanders has been disturbingly susceptible to arguments that so-called humanitarian wars are
justified to protect suffering civilian populations from the abuses of brutal dictators. He is vocal that presidents need
to seek explicit approval from Congress before launching armed interventions, but even on that issue his record is
inconsistent. Sanders failed to condemn Bill Clinton or Barack Obama for brazenly bypassing Congress and waging major
presidential wars in Kosovo and Libya, respectively, much less moving to generate congressional action to stop their
usurpation of the war power. Apparently, White House invocations of the humanitarian war justification encouraged him to
maintain silence in those cases.
Indeed, although he seemed reluctant to endorse Clinton’s earlier 1995 decision to bomb Serb positions in Bosnia, he did
nothing to oppose that step either. Indeed, Sanders became noticeably more hawkish regarding the Balkan conflicts as the
decade wore on. When the administration led a full-scale NATO air war against Serbia to force Belgrade to withdraw from
its restless, predominantly Albanian province of Kosovo, Sanders was on board. He
voted for a Senate
Concurrent Resolution (sponsored by Senator Joe Biden) that
authorized the president to conduct air operations and missile strikes against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
(Serbia and Montenegro). Sanders’ vote on that measure was especially telling. There was substantial opposition to the
resolution in both houses of Congress. Indeed, the authorization failed on a tie vote in the House—with Sanders voting for
war. It was apparent that there were numerous legislators who were more dovish than Bernie Sanders regarding the Kosovo
intervention.
He also signed on to the so-called war on terror during George W. Bush’s administration, voting for the dangerously
vague authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) in 2001, as did virtually every other member of Congress. Sanders
was warier, though, of Bush’s propaganda offensive for a war to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Congressional Democrats
were badly split on that issue. In contrast to party heavyweights such as Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and John Kerry,
Sanders remained firmly in the faction that resisted military action and favored continued inspections and diplomacy with
respect to Saddam’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. He voted against the October 2002
joint resolution authorizing Bush to use force, if necessary. Sanders would
later boast “I not only voted against that war; I helped lead the effort against that war.” How much his stance
reflected sincere, prescient aversion to a regime-change war with uncertain and potentially destabilizing ramifications,
and how much reflected partisan hostility to the actions of a Republican president, though, is nearly impossible to
determine.
His opposition to military interventions certainly became more tepid again once Barack Obama entered the Oval
Office. Contrary to Hillary Clinton’s jibe during a 2016 presidential primary debate that Sanders had endorsed the U.S.-led
military campaign against Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, he only sponsored and voted for a resolution condemning Qaddafi and
calling on the UN to pressure him to leave office. However, even though he attacked Clinton for pushing the Libya
intervention as Obama’s secretary of state, (making the
snarky comment “I’m not quite the fan of regime change that she is),” Sanders did not speak out against the war once it
began, even though Obama ostentatiously declined even to seek congressional approval.
A similar murkiness characterized his stance on the civil war in Syria. He
supported Obama’s decision to send 250 U.S. troops to that country, ostensibly to train and assist “moderate” Syrian
rebels trying to overthrow Bashar al-Assad’s regime. When Obama asked for congressional approval in 2013 for air strikes in
response to Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons, though, Sanders had adopted a noncommittal stance,
stating that he would keep an open mind but had several concerns and reservations.
Once Donald Trump took office, Sanders became more consistently vocal in his opposition to U.S. military involvement in
Syria. He
condemned the Trump administration’s missile strikes on Syria for another alleged chemical weapons incident as “illegal
and unauthorized”—a much stronger stance than he took when Obama proposed such retaliation in 2013.
A similar hardening pattern occurred with his attitude toward Washington’s support of the Saudi-Arabian-United Arab
Emirates war in Yemen. Sanders said little about that offensive when it began in 2015 and continued in 2016. When Trump
continued Washington’s support, though, Sanders became steadily more negative. He voted for a December 2018
Senate resolution to end the U.S. assistance to the Saudi war effort. The following month, he co-sponsored a bipartisan
joint resolution mandating the removal of all U.S. forces from Yemen not authorized by Congress. Both the Senate and House
passed that measure, but supporters were unable to override President Trump’s subsequent veto.
The overall recent trend of his views does suggest a more serious commitment to opposing dubious military ventures and
insisting on the restoration of the congressional war power. Some observers saw a dramatic change bordering on a
revolutionary one in his foreign policy perspective. That may be true with respect to policy in the Muslim world. In
March 2019, he signed
a pledge along with Senator Elizabeth Warren and other progressives, calling on the United States to end its wars in
Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Yet, when Trump announced a partial withdrawal of U.S. troops from northern Syria in late
2019, Sanders joined in the Democratic-led hawkish chorus
condemning the move as a betrayal of Washington’s Kurdish allies in Syria.
It is even less certain whether Sanders’ alleged advocacy of restraint applies to U.S. policy in other regions. He has
loyally supported the Democratic Party’s promotion of a confrontational policy toward Russia, including backing U.S.
military aid to Ukraine. Sanders also at times has embraced the rhetorical neo-McCarthyism epitomized by the Left’s
repeated innuendos about Trump allegedly doing Vladimir’s bidding—even though the president’s Russia policy actually has
been more hardline
than the policy Obama pursued.
Responding to media revelations in February 2020 that he had received a briefing from U.S. intelligence agencies that
the Kremlin was trying to assist his presidential bid, Sanders lashed out and
stressed his opposition to Moscow’s supposed policies. “Unlike Donald Trump, I do not consider Vladimir Putin a good
friend. He is an autocratic thug who is attempting to destroy democracy and crush dissent in Russia," Sanders said. "Let’s
be clear, the Russians want to undermine American democracy by dividing us up and, unlike the current president, I stand
firmly against their efforts.”
Sanders exhibits few dovish sentiments when it comes to policy toward Russia, and that stance is troubling. Russia is
the one power in the world that has the strategic weaponry to end American civilization in an armed conflict. Caution and
restraint is more essential regarding Washington’s relations with that country than any other.
A widespread impression exists that Bernie Sanders is the ideological successor to such antiwar Democratic Party
stalwarts as Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. But Sanders’ performance regarding issues of war and peace is more murky
and complex. At best, he has been an inconsistent, ambivalent, advocate of a more peaceful U.S. foreign policy. Granted,
his policy views seem less hawkish and meddlesome than those of Joe Biden. And arguably they are better than those of
Donald Trump, who has talked the talk but rarely walked the walk when it comes to curtailing Washington’s foolish overseas
interventions. Nevertheless, a Sanders presidency would likely have been a major disappointment to Americans who want a
more restrained and sensible foreign policy.
Ted Galen Carpenter,
a senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at the National Interest, is
the author of 12 books and more than 850 articles on international affairs. His most recent books are Gullible
Superpower: U.S. Support for Bogus Foreign Democratic Movements (2019) and NATO: The Dangerous Dinosaur
(2019).
Looks like DNC run a pretty sophisticated smear campaign against Sanders ...
Notable quotes:
"... It really isn't about who the candidates are – hurtful as that may sound to some in our identity-saturated times. It is about what the candidate might try to do once in office. In truth, the very fact that nowadays we are allowed to focus on identity to our heart's content should be warning enough that the establishment is only too keen for us to exhaust our energies in promoting divisions based on those identities ..."
"... The Republican and Democratic leaderships are there to ensure that, before a candidate gets selected to compete in the parties' name, he or she has proven they are power-friendly. Two candidates, each vetted for obedience to power. ..."
The Democratic presidential nomination race is a fascinating case study in how power works
– not least, because the Democratic party leaders are visibly contriving to impose one
candidate, Joe Biden, as the party's nominee, even as it becomes clear that he is no longer
mentally equipped to run a local table tennis club let alone the world's most powerful
nation.
Biden's campaign is a reminder that power is indivisible. Donald Trump or Joe Biden for
president – it doesn't matter to the power-establishment. An egomaniacal man-child
(Trump), representing the billionaires, or an elder suffering rapid neurological degeneration
(Biden), representing the billionaires, are equally useful to power. A woman will do too, or a
person of colour. The establishment is no longer worried about who stands on stage
– so long as that person is not a Bernie Sanders in the US, or a Jeremy Corbyn in the
UK.
It really isn't about who the candidates are – hurtful as that may sound to some in
our identity-saturated times. It is about what the candidate might try to do once in office. In
truth, the very fact that nowadays we are allowed to focus on identity to our heart's content
should be warning enough that the establishment is only too keen for us to exhaust our energies
in promoting divisions based on those identities. What concerns it far more is that we might
overcome those divisions and unify against it, withdrawing our consent from an establishment
committed to endless asset-stripping of our societies and the planet.
Neither Biden nor Trump will obstruct the establishment, because they are at its very heart.
The Republican and Democratic leaderships are there to ensure that, before a candidate gets
selected to compete in the parties' name, he or she has proven they are power-friendly. Two
candidates, each vetted for obedience to power.
Although a pretty face or a way with words are desirable, incapacity and incompetence are no
barrier to qualifying, as the two white men groomed by their respective parties demonstrate.
Both have proved they will favour the establishment, both will pursue near-enough the
same policies , both are committed to the status quo, both have demonstrated their
indifference to the future of life on Earth. What separates the candidates is not real
substance, but presentation styles – the creation of the appearance of difference, of
choice.
Policing the debate
The subtle dynamics of how the Democratic nomination race is being rigged are interesting.
Especially revealing are the ways the Democratic leadership protects establishment power by
policing the terms of debate: what can be said, and what can be thought; who gets to speak and
whose voices are misrepresented or demonised. Manipulation of language is key.
As I pointed out in my previous post , the
establishment's power derives from its invisibility. Scrutiny is kryptonite to
power.
The only way we can interrogate power is through language, and the only way we can
communicate our conclusions to others is through words – as I am doing right now. And
therefore our strength – our ability to awaken ourselves from the trance of power –
must be subverted by the establishment, transformed into our Achilles' heel, a weakness.
The treatment of Bernie Sanders and his supporters by the Democratic establishment –
and those who eagerly repeat its talking points – neatly illustrates how this can be done
in manifold ways.
Remember this all started back in 2016, when Sanders committed the unforgivable sin of
challenging the Democratic leadership's right simply to anoint Hillary Clinton as the party's
presidential candidate. In those days, the fault line was obvious and neat: Bernie was a man,
Clinton a woman. She would be the first woman president. The only party members who might wish
to deny her that historic moment, and back Sanders instead, had to be misogynist men. They were
supposedly venting their anti-women grudge against Clinton, who in turn was presented to women
as a symbol of their oppression by men.
And so was born a meme: the "Bernie Bros". It rapidly became shorthand for suggesting
– contrary to all evidence
– that Sanders' candidacy appealed chiefly to angry, entitled white men. In fact, as
Sanders' 2020 run has amply demonstrated, support for him has been more diverse than for the
many other Democratic candidates who sought the nomination.
So important what @ewarren is saying to @maddow about the
dangerous, threatening, ugly faction among the Bernie supporters. Sanders either cannot or
will not control them. pic.twitter.com/LYDXlLJ7bi
How contrived the 2016 identity-fuelled contest was should have been clear, had anyone been
allowed to point that fact out. This wasn't really about the Democratic leadership respecting
Clinton's identity as a woman. It was about them paying lip service to her identity as a
woman, while actually promoting her because she was a reliable warmonger
and
Wall Street functionary . She was useful to power.
If the debate had really been driven by identity politics, Sanders had a winning card too:
he is Jewish. That meant he could be the United States' first Jewish president. In a fair
identity fight, it would have been a draw between the two. The decision about who should
represent the Democratic party would then have had to be decided based on policies, not
identity. But party leaders did not want Clinton's actual policies, or her political history,
being put under the microscope for very obvious reasons.
Weaponisation of identity
The weaponisation of identity politics is even more transparent in 2020. Sanders is still
Jewish, but his main opponent, Joe Biden, really is simply a privileged white man. Were the
Clinton format to be followed again by Democratic officials, Sanders would enjoy an identity
politics trump card. And yet Sanders is still being presented as just another white male
candidate , no different from Biden.
(We could take this argument even further and note that the other candidate who no one,
least of all the Democratic leadership, ever mentions as still in the race is Tulsi
Gabbard, a woman of colour. The Democratic party has worked hard to make her as
invisible as possible in the primaries because, of all the candidates, she is the most
vocal and articulate opponent of foreign wars. That has deprived her of the chance to raise
funds and win delegates.)
. @DanaPerino I'm not quite sure why
you're telling FOX viewers that Elizabeth Warren is the last female candidate in the Dem
primary. Is it because you believe a fake indigenous woman of color is "real" and the real
indigenous woman of color in this race is fake? pic.twitter.com/VKCxy2JzFe
Sanders' Jewish identity isn't celebrated because he isn't useful to the
power-establishment. What's far more important to them – and should be to us too –
are his policies, which might limit their power to wage war, exploit workers and trash the
planet.
But it is not just that Democratic Party leaders are ignoring Sanders' Jewish identity. They
are also again actively using identity politics against him, and in many different
ways.
The 'black' establishment?
Bernie Sanders' supporters have been complaining for some time – based on mounting
evidence – that the Democratic leadership is far from neutral between Sanders and Biden.
Because it has a vested interest in the outcome, and because it is the part of the
power-establishment, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is exercising its influence in
favour of Biden. And because power prefers darkness, the DNC is doing its best to exercise that
power behind the scenes, out of sight – at least, unseen by those who still rely on the
"mainstream" corporate media, which is also part of the power-establishment. As should be clear
to anyone watching, the nomination proceedings are being controlled to give Biden every
advantage and to obstruct Sanders.
But the Democratic leadership is not only dismissing out of hand these very justified
complaints from Bernie Sanders' supporters but also turning these complaints against them, as
further evidence of their – and his – illegitimacy. A new way of doing this emerged
in the immediate wake of Biden winning South Carolina on the back of strong support from older
black voters – Biden's first state win and a launchpad for his Super Tuesday bid a few
days later.
It was given perfect expression from Symone Sanders, who despite her surname is actually a
senior adviser to Biden's campaign. She is also black. This is what she wrote: "People who keep
referring to Black voters as 'the establishment' are tone deaf and have obviously learned
nothing."
People who keep referring to Black voters as "the establishment" are tone deaf and have
obviously learned nothing.
-- Symone D. Sanders (@SymoneDSanders) March 3,
2020
Her reference to generic "people" was understood precisely by both sides of the debate as
code for those "Bernie Bros". Now, it seems, Bernie Sanders' supporters are not simply
misogynists, they are potential recruits to the Ku Klux Klan.
The tweet went viral, even though in the fiercely contested back-and-forth below her tweet
no one could produce a single example of anyone actually saying anything like the sentiment
ascribed by Symone Sanders to "Bernie Bros". But then, tackling bigotry was not her real goal.
This wasn't meant to be a reflection on a real-world talking-point by Bernie supporters. It was
high-level gaslighting by a senior Democratic party official of the party's own voters.
Survival of the fittest smear
What Symone Sanders was really trying to do was conceal power – the fact that the DNC
is seeking to impose its chosen candidate on party members. As occurred during the confected
women-men, Clinton vs "Bernie Bros" confrontation, Symone Sanders was field-testing a similar
narrative management tool as part of the establishment's efforts to hone it for improved
effect. The establishment has learnt – through a kind of survival of the fittest smear
– that divide-and-rule identity politics is the perfect way to shield its influence as it
favours a status-quo candidate (Biden or Clinton) over a candidate seen as a threat to its
power (Sanders).
In her tweet, Symone Sanders showed exactly how the power elite seeks to obscure its toxic
role in our societies. She neatly conflated "the establishment" – of which she is a very
small, but well-paid component – with ordinary "black voters". Her message is this:
should you try to criticise the establishment (which has inordinate power to damage lives and
destroy the planet) we will demonise you, making it seem that you are really attacking black
people (who in the vast majority of cases – though Symone Sanders is a notable exception
– wield no power at all).
Symone Sanders has recruited her own blackness and South Carolina's "black voters" as a ring
of steel to protect the establishment. Cynically, she has turned poor black people, as well as
the tens of thousands of people (presumably black and white) who liked her tweet, into human
shields for the establishment.
It sounds a lot uglier put like that. But it has rapidly become a Biden talking-point, as we
can see here:
NEW: @JoeBiden responds to @berniesanders
saying the "establishment" is trying to defeat him.
"The establishment are all those hardworking, middle class people, those African Americans
they are the establishment!" @CBSNews pic.twitter.com/43Q2Nci5sS
The DNC's wider strategy is to confer on Biden exclusive rights to speak for black voters
(despite his
inglorious record on
civil rights issues) and, further, to strip Sanders and his senior black advisers of any
right to do so. When Sanders protests about this, or about racist behaviour from the Biden
camp, Biden's supporters come out in force and often abusively, though of course no one is
upbraiding them for their ugly, violent language. Here is the famous former tennis player
Martina Navratilova showing that maybe we should be talking about "Biden Bros":
Sanders is starting to really piss me off. Just shut this kind of crap down and debate the
issues. This is not it.
This kind of special pleading by the establishment for the establishment –
using those sections of it, such as Symone Sanders, that can tap into the identity politics
zeitgeist – is far more common than you might imagine. The approach is being
constantly refined, often using social media as the ultimate focus group. Symone Sanders'
successful conflation of the establishment with "black voters" follows earlier, clumsier
efforts by the establishment to protect its interests against Sanders that proved far less
effective.
Remember how last autumn the billionaire-owned corporate media tried to tell us that it was
unkind to
criticise billionaires – that they had feelings too and that speaking harshly about
them was "dehumanising". Again it was aimed at Sanders, who had just commented that in a
properly ordered world billionaires simply wouldn't exist. It was an obvious point: allowing a
handful of people to control almost all the planet's wealth was not only depriving the rest of
us of that wealth (and harming the planet) but it gave those few billionaires way too much
power. They could buy all the media, our channels of communication, and most of the politicians
to ringfence their financial interests, gradually eroding even the most minimal democratic
protections.
That campaign died a quick death because few of us are actually brainwashed enough to accept
the idea that a handful of billionaires share an identity that needs protecting – from
us! Most of us are still connected enough to the real world to understand that billionaires are
more than capable of looking out for their own interests, without our helping them by imposing
on ourselves a vow of silence.
But one cannot fault the power-establishment for being constantly inventive in the search
for new ways to stifle our criticisms of the way it unilaterally exercises its power. The
Democratic nomination race is testing such ingenuity to the limits. Here's a new rule against
"hateful conduct" on Twitter, where Biden's neurological deficit is being subjected to much
critical scrutiny through the sharing of dozens of
videos of embarrassing Biden "senior moments".
Twitter expanding its hateful conduct rules "to include language that dehumanizes on the
basis of age, disability or disease." https://t.co/KmWGaNAG9Z
Yes, disability and age are identities too. And so, on the pretext of protecting and
respecting those identities, social media can now be scrubbed of anything and anyone trying to
highlight the mental deficiencies of an old man who might soon be given the nuclear codes and
would be responsible for waging wars in the name of Americans. Twitter is full of comments
denouncing as "ableist" anyone who tries to highlight how the Democratic leadership is foisting
a cognitively challenged Biden on to the party.
Maybe the Dem insiders are all wrong, but it's true that they are saying it. Some are
saying it out loud, including Castro at the debate and Booker here: https://t.co/0lbi7RFRqG
None of this is to overlook the fact that another variation of identity politics has been
weaponised against Sanders: that of failing to be an "American" patriot. Again illustrating how
closely the Democratic and Republican leaderships' interests align, the question of who is a
patriot – and who is really working for the "Russians" – has been at the heart of
both parties' campaigns, though for different reasons.
Trump has been subjected to endless, evidence-free claims that he is a secret "Russian
agent" in a concerted effort to control his original isolationist foreign policy impulses that
might have stripped the establishment – and its military-industrial wing – of the
right to wage wars of aggression, and revive the Cold War, wherever it believes a profit can be
made under cover of "humanitarian intervention". Trump partly inoculated himself against these
criticisms, at least among supporters, with his "Make America Great Again" slogan, and partly
by learning – painfully for such an egotist – that his presidential role was to
rubber-stamp decisions made elsewhere about waging wars and projecting US power.
I'm just amazed by this tweet, which has been tweeted plenty. Did @_nalexander and all the people
liking this not know that Mueller laid out in the indictments of a number of Russians and in
his report their help on social media to Sanders and Trump. Help Sanders has acknowledged
https://t.co/vuc0lmvvKP
Bernie Sanders has faced similar smear
efforts by the establishment, including by the DNC's last failed presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton – in his case, painting him as a "Russian asset". ("Asset" is a way to
suggest collusion with the Kremlin based on even more flimsy evidence than is needed to accuse
someone of being an agent.) In fact, in a world where identity politics wasn't simply a tool to
be weaponised by the establishment, there would be real trepidation about engaging in this kind
of invective against a Jewish socialist.
One of the far-right's favourite antisemitic tropes – promoted ever since the
publication of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion more than 100 years ago – is that
Jewish "Bolsheviks" are involved in an
international conspiracy to subvert the countries they live in. We have reached the point
now that the corporate media are happy to recycle evidence-free claims,
cited by the Washington Post, from anonymous "US officials" and US intelligence agencies
reinventing a US version of the Protocols against Sanders. And these smears have elicited not a
word of criticism from the Democratic leadership nor from the usual antisemitism watchdogs that
are so ready to let rip over the slightest signs of what they claim to be antisemitism on the
left.
But the urgency of dealing with Sanders may be the reason normal conventions have been
discarded. Sanders isn't a loud-mouth egotist like Trump. A vote for Trump is a vote for the
establishment, if for one of its number who pretends to be against the establishment. Trump has
been largely tamed in time for a second term. By contrast, Sanders, like Corbyn in the UK, is
more dangerous because he may resist the efforts to domesticate him, and because if he is
allowed any significant measure of political success – such as becoming a candidate for
president – it may inspire others to follow in his footsteps. The system might start to
throw up more anomalies, more AOCs and more Ilhan Omars.
So Sanders is now being cast, like Trump, as a puppet of the Kremlin, not a true American.
And because he made the serious mistake of indulging the "Russiagate" smears when they were
used against Trump, Sanders now has little defence against their redeployment against him. And
given that, by the impoverished standards of US political culture, he is considered an extreme
leftist, it has been easy to conflate his democratic socialism with Communism, and then
conflate his supposed Communism with acting on behalf of the Kremlin (which, of course, ignores
the fact that Russia long ago abandoned Communism).
Sen. Bernie Sanders: "Let me tell this to Putin -- the American people, whether
Republicans, Democrats, independents are sick and tired of seeing Russia and other countries
interfering in our elections." pic.twitter.com/ejcP7YVFlt
There is a final use of weaponised identity politics that the Democratic establishment would
dearly love to use against Sanders, if they need to and can get away with it. It is the most
toxic brand – and therefore the most effective – of the identity-based smears, and
it has been extensively field-tested in the
UK against Jeremy Corbyn to great success. The DNC would like to denounce Sanders as an
antisemite.
In fact, only one thing has held them back till now: the fact that Sanders is Jewish. That
may not prove an insuperable obstacle, but it does make it much harder to make the accusation
look credible. The other identity-based smears had been a second-best, a make-do until a way
could be found to unleash the antisemitism smear.
The establishment has been
testing the waters with implied accusations of antisemitism against Sanders for a while,
but their chances were given a fillip recently when Sanders refused to participate in the
annual jamboree of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a prominent lobby group
whose primary mission is to ringfence Israel from criticism in the US. Both the Republican and
Democratic establishments turn out in force to the AIPAC conference, and in the past the event
has attracted keynote speeches from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
But Sanders has refused to attend for decades and maintained that stance this month, even
though he is a candidate for the Democratic nomination. In the last primaries debate, Sanders
justified his decision by rightly
calling Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu a "racist" and by describing AIPAC as
providing a platform "for leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights".
Trump's Vice-President, Mike Pence,
responded that Sanders supported "Israel's enemies" and, if elected, would be the "most
anti-Israel president in the history of this nation" – all coded suggestions that Sanders
is antisemitic.
But that's Mike Pence. More useful criticism came from billionaire Mike Bloomberg, who is
himself Jewish and was until last week posing as a Democrat to try to win the party's
nomination. Bloomberg accused Sanders of using dehumanising language against a bunch of
inclusive identities that, he improbably suggested, AIPAC represents. He
claimed :
"This is a gathering of 20,000 Israel supporters of every religious denomination,
ethnicity, faith, color, sexual identity and political party. Calling it a racist platform is
an attempt to discredit those voices, intimidate people from coming here, and weaken the
US-Israel relationship."
Where might this head? At the AIPAC conference last week we were given a foretaste. Ephraim
Mirvis, the chief rabbi of the UK and a friend to
Conservative government leader Boris Johnson, was warmly greeted by delegates, including
leading members of the Democratic establishment. He boasted that he and other Jewish leaders in
the UK had managed to damage Jeremy Corbyn's electoral chances by suggesting that he was an
antisemite over his support, like Sanders, for Palestinian rights.
His own treatment of Corbyn, he argued, offered a model for US Jewish organisations to
replicate against any leadership contender who might pose similar trouble for Israel, leaving
it for his audience to pick up the not-so-subtle hint about who needed to be subjected to
character assassination.
WATCH: "Today I issue a call to the Jews of America, please take a leaf out of our book
and please speak with one voice."
The Chief Rabbi speaking to the 18,000 delegates gathered at the @AIPAC General Session at their Policy
Conference in Washington DC pic.twitter.com/BOkan9RA2O
For anyone who isn't wilfully blind, the last few months have exposed the establishment
playbook: it will use identity politics to divide those who might otherwise find a united voice
and a common cause.
There is nothing wrong with celebrating one's identity, especially if it is under threat,
maligned or marginalised. But having an attachment to an identity is no excuse for allowing it
to be coopted by billionaires, by the powerful, by nuclear-armed states oppressing other
people, by political parties or by the corporate media, so that they can weaponise it to
prevent the weak, the poor, the marginalised from being represented.
It is time for us to wake up to the tricks, the deceptions, the manipulations of the strong
that exploit our weaknesses – and make us yet weaker still. It's time to stop being a
patsy for the establishment. Join the debate on
Facebook More articles by: Jonathan Cook
"... Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion. ..."
Now that the Michigan Democratic primary is over and Joe Biden has been
declared the
winner , it's time to read the handwriting on the political wall: Biden will be the
Democratic nominee for president, and Bernie Sanders will be the runner-up once again come the
party's convention in July. Sanders might influence the party's platform, but platforms are
never binding for the nominee. Sanders has lost, and so have his many progressive supporters,
myself included.
I am nothing if not a realist. The idea that Sanders might have become the Democratic
candidate was always a fantasy, not unlike my youthful dreams of one day becoming an NFL
quarterback. Even after Sanders' triumph in the Nevada caucuses, I never thought the party
establishment would ever allow a socialist -- even a mild social democratic one, such as
Sanders -- to head its ticket.
Funded by wealthy donors, run by Beltway insiders and aided and abetted by a corporate media
dedicated to promoting the notion that Sanders was "
unelectable ," the Democratic Party never welcomed Sanders as a legitimate contender. Not
in 2016 and not in 2020. In several instances, it even resorted to some good old-fashioned
red-baiting
to frighten voters; the party is, after all, a capitalist institution. Working and middle-class
families support the Democrats largely because they have no other place to go on Election Day
besides the completely corrupt and craven GOP.
Now we are left with Donald Trump and Biden to duke it out in the fall. Yes, it has come to
that.
In terms of campaign rhetoric and party policies, the general election campaign will be a
battle for America's past far more than it will be a contest for its future. The battle will be
fueled on both sides by narratives and visions that are illusory, regressive and, in important
respects, downright dangerous.
Of the two campaigns, Trump's will be decidedly more toxic. The "Make America Great Again"
slogan that propelled Trump to victory in 2016 and the "Keep America Great" slogan he will try
to sell this time around are neo-fascist in nature, designed to invoke an imaginary and false
state of mythical past national glory that ignores our deeply entrenched history of patriarchal
white supremacy and brutal class domination.
The fascist designation is not a label I apply to Trump cavalierly. I use it, as I have
before in this
column , because Trump meets many of the standard and widely respected definitions of the
term.
As the celebrated Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote in 1935 , fascism
"is a historic phase of capitalism the nakedest, most shameless, most oppressive and most
treacherous form of capitalism." Trumpism, along with its international analogs in Brazil,
India and Western Europe, neatly accords with Brecht's theory.
Trumpism similarly meets the definition of fascism offered by Robert Paxton in his classic
2004 study, "
The Anatomy of Fascism ":
Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation
with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy,
and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy
but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues
with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing
and external expansion.
Trump and Trumpism similarly embody the 14 common factors of fascism identified by the great
writer Umberto Eco in his 1995 essay, Ur Fascism :
A cult of traditionalism.
The rejection of modernism.
A cult of action for its own sake and a distrust of intellectualism.
The view that disagreement or opposition is treasonous.
A fear of difference. Fascism is racist by definition.
An appeal to a frustrated middle class that is suffering from an economic crisis of
humiliation and fear of the pressure exerted by lower social groups.
An obsession with the plots and machinations of the movement's identified enemies.
A requirement that the movement's enemies be simultaneously seen as omnipotent and weak,
conniving and cowardly.
A rejection of pacifism.
Contempt for weakness.
A cult of heroism.
Hypermasculinity and homophobia.
A selective populism, relying on chauvinist definitions of "the people" that the movement
claims to represent.
Heavy usage of "newspeak" and an impoverished discourse of elementary syntax and
resistance to complex and critical reasoning.
Joe Biden is not a fascist. He is, instead, a standard-bearer of neoliberalism. As with
fascism, there are different definitions of neoliberalism, prompting some exceptionally smug
mainstream commentators like New York Magazine's
Jonathan Chait to claim that the concept is little more than a left-wing insult. In truth,
however, the concept describes an all-too-real set of governing principles.
To grasp what neoliberalism means, it's necessary to understand that it does not refer to a
revival of the liberalism of the New Deal and New Society programs of the 1930s and 1960s. That
brand of liberalism advocated the active intervention of the federal government in the economy
to mitigate the harshest effects of private enterprise through such programs as Social
Security, the National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, Medicare, and the
Civil Rights Act of 1964. That brand of liberalism imposed high taxes on the wealthy and
significantly mitigated income inequality in America.
Neoliberalism
, by contrast, deemphasizes federal economic intervention in favor of initiatives calling for
deregulation, corporate tax cuts, private-public partnerships, and international trade
agreements that augment the free flow of capital while undermining the power and influence of
trade unions.
Until the arrival of Trump and his brand of neo-fascism, both major parties since Reagan had
embraced this ideology. And while neoliberals remain more benign on issues of race and gender
than Trump and Trumpism ever will be, neoliberalism offers little to challenge hierarchies
based on social class. Indeed, income inequality accelerated during the
Obama years and today rivals that of the Gilded Age .
As transformational a politician as Barack Obama was in terms of race, he too pursued a
predominantly neoliberal agenda. The Affordable Care Act, Obama's singular domestic legislative
achievement, is a perfect example of neoliberal private-public collaboration that left intact a
health industry dominated by for-profit drug manufacturers and rapacious insurance companies,
rather than setting the stage for Medicare for All, as championed by Sanders.
Biden never tires of reminding any audience willing to put up with his gaffes, verbal ticks
and miscues that he served as Obama's vice president. Those ties are likely to remain the
centerpiece of his campaign, as he promises a return to the civility of the Obama era and a
restoration of America's standing in the world.
History, however, only moves forward. As charming and comforting as Biden's imagery of the
past may be, it is, like Trump's darker outlook, a mirage. If Trump has taught us anything
worthwhile, it is that the past cannot be replicated, no matter how much we might wish
otherwise.
"... One almost feels sorry for Bernie Sanders, who, even at this late stage, still seems to believe that he can drag Joe Biden to the 'left' and secure something/anything? for all those millions of ordinary Americans who supported Bernie's dream of a more just and equal America. ..."
"... Poor Bernie and poor ordinary Americans. It ain't gonna work. Bernie knows that the Demorcratic party has chosen Biden, not him and his political dream is over, once again. ..."
"... With Joe having these " miraculous " wins in the primaries yet bringing nothing new to the table I can only conclude we are set for another 4 yrs of Trumpelstiltskin and his money grubbing ways. ..."
"... Tulsi is inspirational. I'm not talking 'politics' but regarding her willingness to speak truth to corruption. ..."
"... The self-evident externalities of 40 years of unfettered neoliberalism (war, lies, injustice, extreme wealth inequality, etc) now seem to be approaching some sort of explosive end-point. ..."
"... These problems are too entrenched for real politicians to sort out, so what we have instead is a form theatre, albeit a third-rate form of theatre with abysmal actors taking on roles that are far too difficult for them: Trump vs Biden would be the apotheosis this morass. ..."
"... As it turned out, the security state's narrative was easy to pull off because Sander is weak, lacks courage, and was never in it to win it. He never fought back against the DNC. ..."
"... He never called out the cheating in Iowa. There were thousands of volunteers that would be willing to protest on his behalf. Timid Bernie just let it go. ..."
"... Instead Bernie, kept saying "Biden is my good friend" or "Biden can beat Trump." WTF, if Biden can beat Trump then why are you running? Are you campaigning for Biden? ..."
"... The final nail was Tulsi's tweet asking for Biden and Bernie's support for her to right to participate in the next debate. Yang and Marianne Williamson tweeted yes of course, but Bernie was silent. On subsequent mainstream media news appearances Bernie totally ignored Tulsi's candidacy. That was it – Bernie is a lackey – completely intimidated by the DNC. ..."
"... "Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg is a top contender to head up the World Bank. Bloomberg endorsed Biden immediately after dropping out of the 2020 race. ..."
"... Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as Treasury secretary. Warren dropped out of the race last week after disappointing losses on Super Tuesday but hasn't yet made an endorsement. Axios reported that Warren's name had been floated as part of an effort to unite the fractured Democratic Party around Biden. Some of Biden's advisers have also suggested Warren as a vice-presidential candidate for that reason. ..."
"... Seems Bernie has reprised his role as sheep dog. Probably the reason the Orwellian DNC unpersoned Tulsi is that she probably refused to play. ..."
"... Hundreds of thousands of ballots in California and Texas were discarded. Warren purposely stayed in the race to screw Bernie in Minnesota and Massachusetts, while Klobuchar and Buttigeg dropped out to prop-up Biden. ..."
"... And as I mentioned, Bernie is his own worst enemy, or as I also speculated he was never in it to win it. ..."
"... Blackmail ? The Clinton campaign exercising leverage over Sanders during the election – Podesta/wikileaks emails. 'This isn't in keeping w the agreement. Since we clearly have some leverage, would be good to flag this for him'. https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/47397 ..."
"... Unfortunately. Trump may end up botching the corona crisis and lose, but whoever wins it's going to be four more years of everything getting worse. ..."
"... Some research on 'possible' fraudulent hidden computer counting from first super Tuesday. http://tdmsresearch.com/ ..."
The handful of American citizens who have by some miracle escaped the wave of death caused
by the coronavirus will be braving the toilet-paper maddened crowds to vote in the latest round
of Democratic primaries today.
There's several more rounds of voting before the convention in July, but this is the last
before the next debate on March 15th.
The process is kinda moot at this point.
The weight of the establishment has thrown itself – for some reason – behind Joe
Biden.
Since his "miraculous"
wins on Super Tuesday we've been treated to dozens of stories praising his "decency", happy
that "angry politics" lost, and calling for the party to "unite
behind" Biden . And that's just The Guardian .
Jonathan Freedland, in his special brand of smug establishment boot-licking, suggested that
Biden being a long-term establishment democrat is his strength in these times of crisis.
You have to wonder if that crisis wasn't awful convenient for Joe, in that instance.
None of the mainstream media have questioned the validity of results or the fairness of the
electoral process, although given the DNC's history you'd be forgiven for doing so.
After Biden's win, Trump immediately went on the offensive (so to speak), questioning
Biden's
mental acuity . This is likely just a taste of things to come.
Given this, you have to wonder what the point of the exercise is. Biden will likely be
mauled by Trump, so are the Democrats even trying to win? Is the plan for Biden to have "health
problems" before the convention, forcing the DNC to pick its own candidate? Or is the plan to
have him run, win and then get Ned Starked by his vice-president whoever he or (more likely)
she may be?
Whatever the plan turns out to be, progressives and leftists all over America will likely be
disappointed in Bernie. If last time is anything to go by, no matter how obviously he (and more
importantly his voters) get screwed over, Sanders will just let it happen.
It seems like Bernie is a serial offender here. Setting up hope only to fold faster than
Superman on laundry day when the pressure is on. You wonder if he's being used as a tool to
engage the youth vote, or just a puppet designed to funnel all real leftist thinkers into a
political cul-de-sac.
The other Great White Hope of American leftists – or should that be "Great Native
American hope"? – Elizabeth Warren, dropped out last week but is yet to endorse her
fellow "progressive", Bernie Sanders. This could mean she's spiteful, or it could mean she's
angling to be Biden's VP nominee. Either way, no real surprise and no real loss. Warren always
talked a better game than she played and she didn't talk all that well.
Oh, and the DNC changed their debate eligibility rules to exclude
Tulsi Gabbard . Something both the other candidates and the vast majority of the mainstream
media have been quiet about.
Questions arise
Are the democrats really rallying behind Joe Biden? why?! Are they
planning to throw the race? Is Joe Biden going senile? Who will each candidate pick as a
running mate? Will the DNC ever acknowledge Tulsi Gabbard exists?
NOBTS ,
If Bernie is real; ie. not sheep-dogging for Hillary again, he can prove it by dropping out
immediately and throwing his delegates to Tulsi so she can debate Joe Biden on Sunday; then
watch the fur fly. .last chance for the left.
Seriously, the only positive play left for Bernie, (if positive change is his intent )would
be to immediately drop out and throw a "Hail Tulsi Pass" downfield ahead of the Sunday
debate.
michaelk ,
One would imagine that Tulsi Gabbard would tick all the liberal/left boxes and virtues the
Guardian pretends to adore and aspire to. She seems almost too perfect in my eyes another
story perhaps? Anyway, one wonders what all those politically correct and so obvioulsy woke
feminist ladies at the Guardian have against Tulsi? The Guardian seems to have decided that
its future lies overseas, in America, which is very odd for a newspaper/platform based in the
UK? Consequently, they are increasingly obsessed with moving closer and closer to the
Democrat party in the US.
This is like the BBC that keeps talking to Americans about absolutely everything of
importance that happens in the world and seeking their insights and opinions to a truly
remarkably degree, considering how little they know and understand about the rest of the
world and how poor they are at foreign languages and historical knowledge. Christ they know
next to nothing about their own history, let alone the rest of the world! The idea that all
these Americans are authorities on the world is ridiculous.
Harry Stotle ,
The ghosting of Gabbard illustrates how the MSM act in concert, and how they look after their
own, i.e. backing those understand their role as puppets for corporate backers.
It also illustrates how the likes of the Guardian turn identity politics off and on like a
tap, but more importantly how even shibboleths like identity politics are still secondary to
an economic model that has placed us on the road to armegeddon.
Maxine ,
Well, Tulsi is FAR from "too perfect" .She voluntarily took part in the Bush/Cheny invasion
of Iraq .How could anybody with a working mind have believed the lies of these nortorious
criminals? .And what sort of judgement did this show? .Just as bad, she is a big fan of
India's monstrous Right-Wing leader, Modi .Nevertheless, the DNC's throwing her out of the
debate is another hideous sign of its corruption .Like her or not, she should have her
opinions heard by the public.
Maxine ,
Don't get me wrong, I find the Gaurdian as despicable as CNN, MSNBC, FOX, the NYT and the
rest of the American MSM .OffG is a god-send.
Admin2 ,
Thanks Maxine!
michaelk ,
One almost feels sorry for Bernie Sanders, who, even at this late stage, still seems to
believe that he can drag Joe Biden to the 'left' and secure something/anything? for all those
millions of ordinary Americans who supported Bernie's dream of a more just and equal America.
Poor Bernie and poor ordinary Americans. It ain't gonna work. Bernie knows that the
Demorcratic party has chosen Biden, not him and his political dream is over, once again.
Now it's all about stopping the 'monster' Trump first and foremost. The coming election
won't actually be about anything of real substance, nothing like Bernie's political ideas
about healthcare and education; but it'll be a crass referendum about Trump's personality.
Biden, of course, doesn't really have a personality anymore, that's going fast, along with
his mental capacity.
Trump will smash him to pieces and be re-elected again. Four more years,
at least.
Maxine ,
I would have voted for Bernie in 2016 if the DNC hadn't rigged the primary on behalf of
Hillary .But I was overwhelmingly disappointed that he in the end supported her .Sadly, I am
appalled that once again he announced he would support Biden if the latter won the primary
this time. How could he?. Hillary and Biden are diametrically opposed to every one of
Sander's professed principles!
Andy ,
With Joe having these " miraculous " wins in the primaries yet bringing nothing new to the
table I can only conclude we are set for another 4 yrs of Trumpelstiltskin and his money
grubbing ways.
As for Michelle Obama coming into the fight , I can only laugh and carry on
with my life. I fail to see what she has to offer, other than being Barry's wife. Not really
awe – inspiring stuff. Young Hilary must be turning in her coffin at the thought of
being pipped to the post, as the first female President by another ex presidents wife.
We
truly are living in bizarro times. The men behind the curtain must be laughing their
collective arses off at the results of this circus they have created.
Tulsi is inspirational.
I'm not talking 'politics' but regarding her willingness to speak truth to corruption.
harry stotle ,
America dispensed with the idea of democracy some time ago.
The self-evident externalities of 40 years of unfettered neoliberalism (war, lies,
injustice, extreme wealth inequality, etc) now seem to be approaching some sort of explosive
end-point.
There may be a full blown international conflict, rather than asymmetrical power used to
intimidate weaker states (led by the USA, and backed to the hilt by Britain, Israel, and
KSA).
These problems are too entrenched for real politicians to sort out, so what we have
instead is a form theatre, albeit a third-rate form of theatre with abysmal actors taking on
roles that are far too difficult for them: Trump vs Biden would be the apotheosis this
morass.
Pity more citizens in America fail to understand what has been done to them, or what this
corrupt regime has inflicted on rest of the world.
Britain is no better – to expose what is happening we need a functioning MSM but what
we have instead is the Guardian and BBC: platforms that are now infamous for churning out low
calibre, or fake news.
Is the plan for Biden to have "health problems" before the convention, forcing the DNC
to pick its own candidate?
That's my theory. I think they're going to suddenly 'discover' that Joltin' Joe has
'health problems' and then roll out their real candidate on the second ballot at the
convention this summer–probably Michelle Obama.
Will the DNC ever acknowledge Tulsi Gabbard exists?
I think our only hope now is that the Corona Virus kills all other politicians in the US,
leaving only Tulsi alive. Of course, the DNC would probably still find some way to deny her
the nomination somehow
michaelk ,
The DNC's election tactics were superb. Corrupt, rotten, foul and manipulative as well, but
they worked. The swathe of candidates at the start gave the impression of a democratic and
fair race, whilst deflecting people away from the stark choice of supporting Biden or Sanders
from the beginning.
Whilst Trump succeeded by first capturing the Republican party and then going on to win
the presidential election; Sanders chose not to follow that strategy, apparently believing,
though it's an extraordinary thing to believe, that the leadership of the party was going to
allow him to win the nomination 'fairly.'
Biden against Trump is going to be the worst, most grotesque, election contest, ever seen
in the United States. Two totally unworthy candidates battling it out over the rotting corpse
of a dying democracy. Probably the best result would be if most people just stayed at home on
election day and boycotted the entire ghastly event.
wardropper ,
Yes. People should just stay home. But of course there is a regular percentage of observers
who are incensed by the idea that people will realize how little effect their vote truly
has.
"It's treason not to vote", they rage, quite oblivious to the really treasonous system
which manipulates votes according to something quite different from the interests of
democracy.
wardropper ,
It would be interesting to see, (although it's not going to happen) how the media, faced with
an absolute zero voting turnout, would still manage to yap on about a "neck and neck race",
with the most corrupt party emerging the clear winner after all
Gary Weglarz ,
The Democratic Party candidate selection process continues to roll along providing all the
tension and suspense of an impending colonoscopy – sans anesthetic. It has been clear
since 25 (yes 25) Democratic Party challengers have already "dropped out" of the race –
that divide and conquer would be the order of the day. Spread the electorate out among a
ridiculous number of mainstream centrist candidates and then throw all that support to one
candidate – Joe Biden. Why would the party establishment choose Biden? Perhaps the
following recent quote from Joe might shed some light. In trying to reference the Declaration
of Independence Biden had the following to say to a crowd at a campaign rally:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, all men and women created by -- you know, you
know . . . the thing."
Since we all know "the thing" is said to "work in mysterious ways" – one can deduce
that the Democratic Party elites are perhaps depending upon "the thing" to work some sort of
a miracle for them. At any rate it is all rather "mysterious" indeed.
Since Tulsi Gabbard has had the temerity to not join the 25 brain-dead placeholders and to
"drop out" herself, and since she has further shown the very bad form of continuing to speak
to anyone who will listen about America's illegal amoral regime-change wars – she has
sadly had to be simply – "disappeared." Yes, I know, this term is usually associated
with the death-squad democracies my government supports endlessly and shamelessly in Latin
America, but if nothing else our American MSM have shown that you don't need death squads
when they are on the job. They are quite capable of completely and entirely "disappearing"
anyone sharing a message that has not been – "oligarchy approved." Trying to find
reference to Tulsi in MSM is like trying to get through a day without being brutally reminded
of Joe Biden's blinding dementia problem – pretty much impossible.
As the author suggests the Democratic Party establishment surely must have some plan other
than simply sabotaging Sanders and then throwing a demented Biden to the Orange One to act as
a pinata during the presidential debates. We American's do love "reality TV," but this I fear
would be about as crass and horrific a spectacle as watching someone drown puppies on live
television. Surely we must assume that the DNC and party oligarchy plan to use Biden as yet
another "place-holder" to be replaced between now and fall presidential debates. The name
"Hillary 'the rot' Clinton comes to mind – and suddenly one is reminded that there are
worse things in life than a colonoscopy.
Of course the actual credibility of all of this spectacle to date depends upon one
actually believing that both the polling numbers, and the voting processes, are honest and
ethical and accurate, which seems to me to be about as likely as "you know, you know . . .
the thing," performing some sort of a "miracle" on behalf of the Democratic Party so that it
can valiantly vanquish the Orange One – using of all things – a dementia
sufferer.
From my limited vantage point here in southern California it would appear that America is
very much like a runaway train speeding toward a very very thick brick wall while gaining
speed minute by minute. This train of course has no "driver" – save the inexorable laws
of history as they pertain to crumbling "empires."
With that in mind I think I'll go shopping again so I can pretend none of this is
happening – while joining with my neighbors in "hoarding" as much toilet paper as I
possibly can! Actually, truth be told, the local toilet paper supply is now long gone and
people are now hoarding paper towels – (I kid you not) – which of course portends
a lot of very very sore bottoms by the time this is all over.
Seamus Padraig ,
You can have a dogshit sandwich or a catshit sandwich, just so long as its kosher.
So true! +1000
Charlotte Russe ,
Unfortunately, for all of Bernie's enthusiastic supporter 2020 was a redux of 2016. Amnesia,
initially sets in caused by the initial excitement. Bernie's campaign overwhelms those
yearning for change. Sanders is cognizant of how young voters and the marginalized are
economically suffering. He knows exactly what to say to arouse an audience of thousands.
Devoted crowds eagerly rally around Bernie anticipating the upcoming primaries, believing
he'll win everyone of them. After all, how could anyone be against a message promoting social
justice.
And lo and behold, right out of the box the security state shenanigans begin. A "Shadow
app" surfaces in Iowa, followed by a narrow win in New Hampshire. And although Bernie won the
popular vote in the first two primaries he still comes out the loser to CIA Pete. However,
not to be deterred Bernie won the Nevada caucus in a landslide. That was the moment when
security state needed to make its move. It was now or never. These ghouls could not let
Bernie pick up any more momentum. If they did, it would be too late to stop
him–Milwaukee could turn into a bloodbath. It was time for the intelligence agencies to
take a stand.
Clyburn a sellout bourgeois conservative black was called upon to do his duty. You don't
get to be a "misleader" of the poor and the dejected if you won't convince them to smile
while jumping off a cliff.
Slick Clyburn, gathered all the other crooked black politicians and they united in force
behind brain dead Biden. When misleader Clyburn speaks his downtrodden constituency listens.
South Carolina was a wipeout–Biden overwhelmingly won. And that's all the security
state needed. Using the state-run mainstream media news propaganda machine in 72 hours
Biden's campaign was raised like Lazarus from the dead.
Drooling Joe, received a slew of slick endorsements from all the longtime party hacks. A
narrative was easily generated– Sanders was a loser and only Biden could beat Trump. At
the end of day, don't you dumbasses want to beat Trump. So let's unite behind alzheimer
Joe–he's our best chance.
As it turned out, the security state's narrative was easy to pull off because Sander is
weak, lacks courage, and was never in it to win it. He never fought back against the DNC.
He
never called out the cheating in Iowa. There were thousands of volunteers that would be
willing to protest on his behalf. Timid Bernie just let it go. There were other things
showing Bernie's lack of interest in winning. He stupidly embraced the Russiagate concocted
narrative and then was victimized by it himself. He refused to tear into Biden describing in
detail how every piece of reactionary legislation Joe passed was based on payoffs he'd
received for either his son or his brother. In South Carolina, Bernie never used the millions
donated to play video clips proving Biden is a warmongering racist.
Instead Bernie, kept saying "Biden is my good friend" or "Biden can beat Trump." WTF, if
Biden can beat Trump then why are you running? Are you campaigning for Biden?
The final nail was Tulsi's tweet asking for Biden and Bernie's support for her to right to
participate in the next debate. Yang and Marianne Williamson tweeted yes of course, but
Bernie was silent. On subsequent mainstream media news appearances Bernie totally ignored
Tulsi's candidacy. That was it – Bernie is a lackey – completely intimidated by the
DNC.
Naturally the DNC didn't want Tulsi near the debate stage–she's the bravest of the
lot. Tulsi would have proved Biden was a crook and a war criminal. Tulsi presence would be a
boom for bernie, but Bernie didn't want that since he was in cahoots with the DNC.
And in the end, that's what it was always all about NOTHING. Bernie is the Tammy and Jim
Baker of politics a prophet of false hope. He gathers up all the guiless and guillibe and
then tosses them into the lion's den.
In Biden's case it's easy to know why the slithering DC establishment gang embraced him
with open arms -- they all wanted to come back home
Here are some of the people Biden is considering for senior positions, per Axios:
"Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg is a top contender to head up the World Bank.
Bloomberg endorsed Biden immediately after dropping out of the 2020 race.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as Treasury secretary. Warren dropped out of the
race last week after disappointing losses on Super Tuesday but hasn't yet made an
endorsement. Axios reported that Warren's name had been floated as part of an effort to unite
the fractured Democratic Party around Biden. Some of Biden's advisers have also suggested
Warren as a vice-presidential candidate for that reason.
Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, as the US ambassador to the
United Nations or the US trade representative. Buttigieg also endorsed Biden shortly after
dropping out.
Some Biden advisers see Sen. Kamala Harris of California as a contender for attorney
general if she's not on the ticket.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Bank of America Vice Chairman Anne Finucane have both
been floated for positions at the Treasury Department.
The Biden campaign is also considering a slew of veterans from the Obama administration
for key positions. Among those being considered:
Former Secretary of State John Kerry may reprise his role or take on a Cabinet position
focused on combating climate change.
The former national security adviser Susan Rice may be nominated for a State Department
role.
Former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates is a contender for attorney general."
Every loathsome contemptible neoliberal military interventionist is waiting in the wings
to continue where Obama left off ..
Super Tuesday was so obviously rigged. The vote in California deviated from exit polling by
over 15% and don't get me started on that Shadow app used for the Iowa caucus. The only
difference wasn't as blatantly obvious as the last Primary.
Seems Bernie has reprised his role as sheep dog. Probably the reason the Orwellian DNC
unpersoned Tulsi is that she probably refused to play.
Charlotte Ruse ,
Hundreds of thousands of ballots in California and Texas were discarded. Warren purposely
stayed in the race to screw Bernie in Minnesota and Massachusetts, while Klobuchar and
Buttigeg dropped out to prop-up Biden.
In avid Bernie locations polling centers were closed. And when all else failed voting
machines are hacked. No one should underate the power of state-run mainstream media
propaganda they hammered Sanders and launded the creep Biden.
And as I mentioned, Bernie is his own worst enemy, or as I also speculated he was never in
it to win it.
The elections are more democratic in Afghanistan. When I previously commented on several
posts the Democratic Party Primaries need to be monitored by a UN Raconteur many found it
amusing.
Maxine ,
Why did Bernie become a candidate if he were not in it to win? .I can't figure that one out.
Eric McCoo ,
Blackmail ?
The Clinton campaign exercising leverage over Sanders during the election –
Podesta/wikileaks emails. 'This isn't in keeping w the agreement. Since we clearly have some leverage, would be good
to flag this for him'. https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/47397
RealPeter ,
There is a lot in what Charlotte says. Unfortunately. Trump may end up botching the corona
crisis and lose, but whoever wins it's going to be four more years of everything getting
worse.
Andy ,
Some research on 'possible' fraudulent hidden computer counting from first super Tuesday.
http://tdmsresearch.com/
Ken ,
The fix is in for the status quo, and it's quite likely another 4 years of the orange
asshole.
Everybody knows (listen to Leonard Cohen) Tulsi Gabbard does not exist, just like everybody
knows Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction, Assad, that Putin Nazi, spread some kind of Bad
Gas in Douma, repeatededly over several years since 2014, which the Intrepid White Helmets
made better–just watch their Hollywood, Oscar winning movie. Of course Joe Biden is
senile, else why would he challenge our carrot-topped Fearless leader, and everybody knows
that Putin-Nazi Boris and Natasha tried to rig the 2016 election but were thwarted by
Moose-Squirel, and other CIA assets.
"... The weight of the establishment has thrown itself – for some reason – behind Joe Biden. Since his "miraculous" wins on Super Tuesday we've been treated to dozens of stories praising his "decency", happy that "angry politics" lost, and calling for the party to "unite behind" Biden . And that's just The Guardian . ..."
"... Jonathan Freedland, in his special brand of smug establishment boot-licking, suggested that Biden being a long-term establishment democrat is his strength in these times of crisis. You have to wonder if that crisis wasn't awful convenient for Joe, in that instance. ..."
The toilet-paper maddened crowds will be braving coronavirus to vote in the latest round of
Democratic primaries today.
There's several more rounds of voting before the convention in July, but this is the last
before the next debate on March 15th.
The process is kinda moot at this point.
The weight of the establishment has thrown itself – for some reason – behind Joe
Biden. Since his "miraculous"
wins on Super Tuesday we've been treated to dozens of stories praising his "decency", happy
that "angry politics" lost, and calling for the party to "unite
behind" Biden . And that's just The Guardian .
Jonathan Freedland, in his special brand of smug establishment boot-licking, suggested that
Biden being a long-term establishment democrat is his strength in these times of crisis.
You have to wonder if that crisis wasn't awful convenient for Joe, in that instance.
... ... ...
Whatever the plan turns out to be, progressives and leftists all over America will likely be
disappointed in Bernie. If last time is anything to go by, no matter how obviously he (and more
importantly his voters) get screwed over, Sanders will just let it happen.
The other Great White Hope of American leftists – or should that be "Great Native
American hope"? – Elizabeth Warren, dropped out last week but is yet to endorse her
fellow "progressive", Bernie Sanders. This could mean she's spiteful, or it could mean she's
angling to be Biden's VP nominee. Either way, no real surprise and no real loss. Warren always
talked a better game than she played and she didn't talk all that well.
Oh, and the DNC changed their debate eligibility rules to exclude
Tulsi Gabbard . Something both the other candidates and the vast majority of the mainstream
media have been quiet about.
Questions arise Are the democrats really rallying behind Joe
Biden? why?! Are they planning to throw the race? Is Joe Biden going senile? Who will each
candidate pick as a running mate? Will the DNC ever acknowledge Tulsi Gabbard exists?
"... Last time around in 2016 you talked about 2016, you remember before the very first vote was cast in Iowa, Hillary Clinton had 500 superdelegates set aside. 500 superdelegates. I thought that that was totally outrageous and absurd and undemocratic. ..."
"... We fought very hard in the Democratic rules process to get rid of all superdelegates. That is my preference. I think it should be the decision of the people, not Washington insiders. We lost, but what we did get is not getting rid of all superdelegates at convention voting but on the first ballot there will be no superdelegates. ..."
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: If at the end of the day it turns out that Vice President Biden is
going to have more delegates than you do heading into the convention, will you drop out?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Of course I'm going to drop out. He
will win. We'll run through -- I suspect we will run through the process letting people have
a right to vote, but if Biden walks into the convention or at the end of the process has more
votes than me, he's the winner.
MADDOW: And that's true whether or not he has a majority or just a plurality?
SANDERS: Absolutely. That's what I've said. Here's the story, and there's some confusion
about this. Last time around in 2016 you talked about 2016, you remember before the very
first vote was cast in Iowa, Hillary Clinton had 500 superdelegates set aside. 500
superdelegates. I thought that that was totally outrageous and absurd and undemocratic.
We fought very hard in the Democratic rules process to get rid of all superdelegates. That
is my preference. I think it should be the decision of the people, not Washington insiders.
We lost, but what we did get is not getting rid of all superdelegates at convention voting
but on the first ballot there will be no superdelegates.
In other words, we go into the first ballot, it is representatives, delegates who are
represented by the people, and I think that that's right. And what I have said is I think it
would be a real, real disaster for the Democratic party if, you know, I'm running against you
and you have more votes than me and I say, well, wait a second, I don't want Rachel. I want
somebody else who didn't get as many votes as she did, let's count the superdelegates' vote
on the second ballot, you know what that would do to the Democratic electorate? People would
say the person who got the most votes didn't get selected.
MADDOW: Most delegates.
SANDERS: Most delegates, I'm sorry, most delegates.
I guess another mixed positive is that it shows you don't need Bernie Sanders to crash the
stock markets. The thing is quite unstable on its own thank you very much.
Didn't take long for Sanders to make
COVID-19 a POTUS campaign issue . "After former Vice President Joe Biden on Monday
morning declined to address or answer questions about the coronavirus during an event in
Grand Rapids, Michigan, Sen. Bernie Sanders urged the public to tune in to a COVID-19
roundtable discussion the senator is hosting Monday afternoon in Detroit alongside nurses,
physicians, and other medical professionals:
"'This crisis is another clear example of why we must guarantee healthcare as a right for
every single man, woman, and child in this country,' Sanders wrote. 'This crisis is another
example of why we need universal paid family leave in this country, so people who are sick
can stay home, recover, and prevent the virus from spreading. This crisis is another example
of why we must take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry.'
"'Health experts agree that the spread of the coronavirus will likely get worse before it
gets better,' Sanders added. 'Donald Trump must stop spreading lies and fear, and leave the
science to scientists and health professionals, not politicians. We must make certain that we
are prepared for a pandemic.'"
What a comparable example. Sanders is on top of the issue and acting on it while Biden is
doing the same as Trump by showing his ignorance and inability to act rapidly on a major
problem. A video of the discussion is available at the link.
"... The consolidation of the Democratic Party behind Biden is a damning exposure, not merely of the politically reactionary character of this organization, but of the contemptible falsification on which the Sanders campaign has been based: that it is possible to transform the Democratic Party, the oldest American capitalist party, into the spearhead of a "political revolution" that will bring about fundamental social change. ..."
"... It is evident that the Democratic Party leadership in Congress, as well as the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee, aims to run the 2020 campaign on the exact model of Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2016: portraying Trump as personally unqualified to be president and as a Russian stooge, while opposing any significant social reform and delivering constant reassurances to the ruling financial aristocracy that a restored Democratic administration will follow in the footsteps of Obama, showering trillions on Wall Street and doing the bidding of the military-intelligence apparatus. ..."
"... One could ask of the nine ex-candidates who have now endorsed Biden, why they were candidates in the first place? Why did they bother to run against the former vice president, clearly the preferred candidate of the party establishment? None of them voices any significant political differences with Biden. All of them hail the right-wing political record of the Obama-Biden administration, even though that administration produced the social and economic devastation that made possible the election of Donald Trump. ..."
"... African American Democratic Party leaders, including Representative James Clyburn in South Carolina and hundreds of others, represent one of the most right-wing and politically corrupt sections of the party. ..."
"... The thinking of this layer was summed up in a column Saturday in the Washington Post ..."
"... What the Washington Post ..."
"... the entire black Democratic Party establishment has lined up behind Biden -- including, most recently, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Senator Kamala Harris. ..."
"... Sanders seeks to counter this all-out Democratic Party campaign for Biden by seeking to woo sections of the trade union bureaucracy with appeals to economic nationalism. ..."
"... More than 13 million people, mainly workers and youth, voted for Sanders in 2016 in the Democratic primaries and caucuses. Millions more continue to support him this year, with the same result. Sanders will wrap up his campaign by embracing the right-wing nominee of the Democratic Party and telling his supporters that this is the only alternative to the election, and now re-election of Trump. ..."
The campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is making a last-ditch stand in the
Michigan primary Tuesday, amid mounting indications that the Democratic Party as a whole has
moved decisively into the camp of his main rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. Sanders
cancelled rallies in Mississippi, Missouri and Illinois -- all states where he trails Biden
in the polls -- in order to concentrate all his efforts in Michigan, where he won an upset
victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
On Sunday, Senator Kamala Harris endorsed Biden, the latest of nine former presidential
contenders to announce their support for their one-time rival, joining Pete Buttigieg, Amy
Klobuchar, Michael Bloomberg, Beto O'Rourke, John Delaney, Seth Moulton, Tim Ryan, and Deval
Patrick. Harris is to join Biden for a campaign rally in Detroit Monday.
The consolidation of the Democratic Party behind Biden is a damning exposure, not
merely of the politically reactionary character of this organization, but of the contemptible
falsification on which the Sanders campaign has been based: that it is possible to transform
the Democratic Party, the oldest American capitalist party, into the spearhead of a
"political revolution" that will bring about fundamental social change.
Former Vice President Biden is the personification of the decrepit and right-wing
character of the Democratic Party. In the past 10 days alone, Biden has declared himself a
candidate for the US Senate, rather than president, confused his wife and his sister as they
stood on either side of him, called himself an "Obiden Bama Democrat," and declared that 150
million Americans died in gun violence over the past decade. This is not just a matter of
Biden's declining mental state: it is the Democratic Party, not just its presidential
frontrunner, that is verging on political senility.
It is evident that the Democratic Party leadership in Congress, as well as the Biden
campaign and the Democratic National Committee, aims to run the 2020 campaign on the exact
model of Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2016: portraying Trump as personally unqualified to be
president and as a Russian stooge, while opposing any significant social reform and
delivering constant reassurances to the ruling financial aristocracy that a restored
Democratic administration will follow in the footsteps of Obama, showering trillions on Wall
Street and doing the bidding of the military-intelligence apparatus.
One could ask of the nine ex-candidates who have now endorsed Biden, why they were
candidates in the first place? Why did they bother to run against the former vice president,
clearly the preferred candidate of the party establishment? None of them voices any
significant political differences with Biden. All of them hail the right-wing political
record of the Obama-Biden administration, even though that administration produced the social
and economic devastation that made possible the election of Donald Trump.
Even more revolting, if that is possible, is the embrace of Biden by the black Democratic
politicians. The former senator from Delaware is identified with some of the most repugnant
episodes in the history of race relations in America: the abusive treatment of Anita Hill,
when she testified against the nomination of Clarence Thomas, before Biden's Judiciary
Committee; an alliance with segregationist James Eastland on school integration in the early
1970s, highlighted at a debate by Kamala Harris, eight months before she endorsed Biden; and
the passage of a series of "law-and-order" bills that disproportionately jailed hundreds of
thousands of African Americans, all of them pushed through the Senate by Biden.
How did a politician who boasted of his close relationships with Eastland and Strom
Thurmond become the beneficiary of a virtual racial bloc vote by African Americans in the
Southern states? Because African American Democratic Party leaders, including
Representative James Clyburn in South Carolina and hundreds of others, represent one of the
most right-wing and politically corrupt sections of the party.
The thinking of this layer was summed up in a column Saturday in the
Washington Post by Colbert King, a former State Department official and local
banker, a prominent member of the African American elite in the nation's capital, who wrote
in outrage, "America's black billionaires have no place in a Bernie Sanders
world."
King denounced the suggestion that black CEOs and billionaires are "greedy, corrupt
threats to America's working families or the cause of economic disparities and human misery."
Voicing the fears of his class, he continued, "I know there are those out there who buy the
notion that America consists of a small class of privileged, rapacious super-rich lording
over throngs of oppressed, capitalist-exploited workers. You can see it in poll numbers
showing the share of Americans who prefer socialism to capitalism inching upward."
What the Washington Post columnist reveals is what Bernie Sanders has done
his best to cover up: the Democratic Party is a party of the capitalist class. It can no more
be converted to socialism than the CIA can become an instrument of the struggle against
American imperialism.
True, Sanders can dredge up Jesse Jackson for a last-minute endorsement, proof that
demagogues engaged in diverting mass left-wing sentiment into the graveyard of the Democratic
Party recognize and embrace each other across the decades. But with that exception, the
entire black Democratic Party establishment has lined up behind Biden -- including, most
recently, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Senator Kamala Harris.
Harris's statement is worth quoting. "I have decided that I am with great enthusiasm going
to endorse Joe Biden for president of the United States," she said. "I believe in Joe. I
really believe in him, and I have known him for a long time." The senator was no doubt
responding to the incentives dangled in front of her by Biden after she left the race last
December, when he gushed, "She is solid. She can be president someday herself. She can be the
vice president. She can go on to be a Supreme Court justice. She can be an attorney
general."
Sanders seeks to counter this all-out Democratic Party campaign for Biden by seeking
to woo sections of the trade union bureaucracy with appeals to economic nationalism. New
Sanders television ads in Michigan feature a United Auto Workers member declaring that his
state "has been decimated by trade deals," while Sanders declares that Biden backed NAFTA,
drawing the conclusion, "With a record like that, we can't trust him to protect American jobs
or defeat Donald Trump." The Vermont senator will find that very few auto workers follow the
political lead of the corrupt gangsters who head the UAW.
More than 13 million people, mainly workers and youth, voted for Sanders in 2016 in
the Democratic primaries and caucuses. Millions more continue to support him this year, with
the same result. Sanders will wrap up his campaign by embracing the right-wing nominee of the
Democratic Party and telling his supporters that this is the only alternative to the
election, and now re-election of Trump.
Indeed, in appearances on several Sunday television interview programs, Sanders went out
of his way to repeat, as he said on Fox News, "Joe Biden is a friend of mine. Joe Biden is a
decent guy. What Joe has said is if I win the nomination, he'll be there for me, and I have
said if he wins the nomination, I'll be there for him "
Sanders is not a panacea. He is a sheep dog. But neoliberal oligarchs and the Deep State are
afraid of sheep dog too. They need puppets.
Bernie Sanders is actually trying to save the Democratic Party from irrelevance. But
irrelevance does not bother party bureaucracy and Clintons who still rule the party that much:
all they want is money and plush positions.
Notable quotes:
"... Only one thing matters to the oligarchs. It is not democracy. It is not truth. It is not the consent of the governed. It is not income inequality. It is not the surveillance state. It is not endless war. It is not jobs. It is not the climate. It is the primacy of corporate power -- which has extinguished our democracy and left most of the working class in misery -- and the continued increase and consolidation of their wealth. ..."
"... Sanders was a dutiful sheepdog, attempting to herd his disgruntled supporters into the embrace of the Clinton campaign. At his moment of apostasy, when he introduced a motion to nominate Clinton, his delegates had left hundreds of convention seats empty. ..."
"... Sanders refused to support the lawsuit brought against the Democratic National Committee for rigging the primaries against him. ..."
"... Sanders misread the Democratic Party leadership, swamp creatures of the corporate state. He misread the Democratic Party, which is a corporate mirage. Its base can, at best, select preapproved candidates and act as props at rallies and in choreographed party conventions. The Democratic Party voters have zero influence on party politics or party policies. Sanders' naivete, and perhaps his lack of political courage, drove away his most committed young supporters. These followers have not forgiven him for his betrayal. They chose not to turn out to vote in the numbers he needs in the primaries. They are right. He is wrong. We need to overthrow the system, not placate it. ..."
"... Trump and Biden are repugnant figures, doddering into old age with cognitive lapses and no moral cores. Is Trump more dangerous than Biden? Yes. Is Trump more inept and more dishonest? Yes. Is Trump more of a threat to the open society? Yes. Is Biden the solution? No. ..."
"... Biden represents the old neoliberal order . He personifies the betrayal by the Democratic Party of working men and women that sparked the deep hatred of the ruling elites across the political spectrum. He is a gift to a demagogue and con artist like Trump, who at least understands that these elites are detested. Biden cannot plausibly offer change. He can only offer more of the same. And most Americans do not want more of the same. The country's largest voting-age bloc, the 100 million-plus citizens who out of apathy or disgust do not vote, will once again stay home. This demoralization of the electorate is by design. It will, I expect, give Trump another term in office. ..."
There is only one choice in this election. The consolidation of oligarchic power under
Donald Trump or the consolidation of oligarchic power under Joe Biden. The oligarchs, with
Trump or Biden, will win again. We will lose. The oligarchs made it abundantly clear, should
Bernie Sanders miraculously become the Democratic Party nominee, they would join forces with
the Republicans to crush him. Trump would, if Sanders was the nominee, instantly be shorn by
the Democratic Party elites of his demons and his propensity for tyranny. Sanders would be
red-baited -- as he was viciously Friday in The New York Times' " As Bernie
Sanders Pushed for Closer Ties, Soviet Union Spotted Opportunity " -- and turned into a
figure of derision and ridicule.
The oligarchs preach the sermon of the least-worst to us when they attempt to ram a Hillary
Clinton or a Biden down our throats but ignore it for themselves. They prefer Biden over Trump,
but they can live with either.
Only one thing matters to the oligarchs. It is not democracy. It is not truth. It is not the
consent of the governed. It is not income inequality. It is not the surveillance state. It is
not endless war. It is not jobs. It is not the climate. It is the primacy of corporate power --
which has extinguished our democracy and left most of the working class in misery -- and the
continued increase and consolidation of their wealth. It is impossible working within the
system to shatter the hegemony of oligarchic power or institute meaningful reform. Change, real
change, will only come by sustained acts of civil disobedience and mass mobilization, as with
the yellow vests movement in France and the British-based Extinction Rebellion . The longer we are
fooled by the electoral burlesque, the more disempowered we will become.
I was on the streets with protesters in Philadelphia outside the appropriately named Wells
Fargo Center during the 2016 Democratic Convention when hundreds of
Sanders delegates walked out of the hall. "Show me what democracy looks like!" they
chanted, holding Bernie signs above their heads as they poured out of the exits. "This is what
democracy looks like!"
Sanders' greatest tactical mistake was not joining them. He bowed before the mighty altar of
the corporate state. He had desperately tried to stave off a revolt by his supporters and
delegates on the eve of the convention by sending out repeated messages in his name -- most of
them authored by members of the Clinton campaign -- to be respectful, not disrupt the
nominating process and support Clinton. Sanders was a dutiful sheepdog, attempting to herd his
disgruntled supporters into the embrace of the Clinton campaign. At his moment of apostasy,
when he introduced a motion to nominate Clinton, his delegates had left hundreds of convention
seats empty.
After the 2016 convention, Sanders held rallies -- the crowds pitifully small compared to
what he had drawn when he ran as an insurgent -- on Clinton's behalf. He returned to the Senate
to loyally line up behind Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, whose power comes from his
ability to funnel tens of millions of dollars in corporate and Wall Street money to anointed
Democratic candidates. Sanders refused to support the lawsuit brought against the Democratic
National Committee for rigging the primaries against him. He endorsed Democratic candidates who
espoused the neoliberal economic and political positions he claims to oppose. Sanders, who
calls himself an independent, caucused as a Democrat. The Democratic Party determined his
assignments in the Senate. Schumer offered to make Sanders the head of the Senate Budget
Committee if the Democrats won control of the Senate. Sanders became a party apparatchik.
Sanders apparently believed that if he was obsequious enough to the Democratic Party elite,
they would give him
a chance in 2020 , a chance they denied him in 2016. Politics, I suspect he would argue, is
about compromise and the practical. This is true. But playing politics in a system that is not
democratic is about being complicit in the charade. Sanders misread the Democratic Party
leadership, swamp creatures of the corporate state. He misread the Democratic Party, which is a
corporate mirage. Its base can, at best, select preapproved candidates and act as props at
rallies and in choreographed party conventions. The Democratic Party voters have zero influence
on party politics or party policies. Sanders' naivete, and perhaps his lack of political
courage, drove away his most committed young supporters. These followers have not forgiven him
for his betrayal. They chose not to turn out to vote in the numbers he needs in the primaries.
They are right. He is wrong. We need to overthrow the system, not placate it.
Sanders is wounded. The oligarchs will go in for the kill. They will subject him to the same
character assassination, aided by the courtiers in the corporate press, that was directed at
Henry Wallace in 1948 and George McGovern in 1972, the only two progressive presidential
candidates who managed to seriously threaten the ruling elites since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The feckless liberal class, easily frightened, is already abandoning Sanders, castigating his
supporters with their nauseating self-righteousness and championing Biden as a political
savior.
Trump and Biden are repugnant figures, doddering into old age with cognitive lapses and no
moral cores. Is Trump more dangerous than Biden? Yes. Is Trump more inept and more dishonest?
Yes. Is Trump more of a threat to the open society? Yes. Is Biden the solution? No.
Biden represents the
old neoliberal order . He personifies the betrayal by the Democratic Party of working men
and women that sparked the deep hatred of the ruling elites across the political spectrum. He
is a gift to a demagogue and con artist like Trump, who at least understands that these elites
are detested. Biden cannot plausibly offer change. He can only offer more of the same. And most
Americans do not want more of the same. The country's largest voting-age bloc, the 100
million-plus citizens who out of apathy or disgust do not vote, will once again stay home. This
demoralization of the electorate is by design. It will, I expect, give Trump another term in
office.
By voting
for Biden , you endorse the humiliation of courageous women such as Anita Hill who
confronted their abusers. You vote for the architects of the endless wars in the Middle East.
You vote for the apartheid state in Israel. You vote for wholesale surveillance of the public
by government intelligence agencies and the abolition of due process and habeas corpus. You
vote for austerity programs, including the destruction of welfare and cuts to Social
Security . You vote for NAFTA, free trade deals, de-industrialization, a decline in wages,
the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs and the offshoring of jobs to underpaid
workers who toil in sweatshops in China or Vietnam. You vote for the assault on public
education and the transfer of federal funds to for-profit and Christian charter schools. You
vote for the doubling of our prison population, the tripling and quadrupling of sentences and
huge expansion of crimes meriting the death penalty. You vote for militarized police who gun
down poor people of color with impunity. You vote against the Green New Deal and immigration
reform. You vote for limiting a woman's right to
abortion and reproductive rights. You vote for a segregated public-school system in which
the wealthy receive educational opportunities and poor people of color are denied a chance. You
vote for punitive levels of student debt and the inability to free yourself of debt obligations
through bankruptcy . You
vote for deregulating the banking industry and the abolition of Glass-Steagall. You vote for
the for-profit insurance and pharmaceutical corporations and against universal health care. You
vote for bloated defense budgets. You vote for the use of unlimited oligarchic and corporate
money to buy our elections. You vote for a politician who during his time in the Senate
abjectly served the interests of
MBNA , the largest independent credit card company headquartered in Delaware, which also
employed Biden's son Hunter.
There are no substantial political differences between the Democrats and Republicans. We
have only the illusion of participatory democracy. The Democrats and their liberal apologists
adopt tolerant positions on issues regarding race, religion, immigration, women's rights and
sexual identity and pretend this is politics. The right wing uses those on the margins of
society as scapegoats. The culture wars mask the reality. Both parties are full partners in the
reconfiguration of American society into a form of neofeudalism. It only depends on how you
want it dressed up.
"By fostering an illusion among the powerless classes" that it can make their interests a
priority, the Democratic Party "pacifies and thereby defines the style of an opposition party
in an inverted totalitarian system," political philosopher Sheldon Wolin writes.
The Democrats will once again offer up a least-worst alternative while, in fact, doing
little or nothing to thwart the march toward corporate totalitarianism. What the public wants
and deserves will again be ignored for what the corporate lobbyists demand. If we do not
respond soon to the social and economic catastrophe that has been visited on most of the
population, we will be unable to thwart the rise of corporate tyranny and a
Christian fascism.
We need to reintegrate those who have been pushed aside back into the society, to heal the
ruptured social bonds, to give workers dignity, empowerment and protection. We need a universal
health care system, especially as we barrel toward a global pandemic. We need programs that
provide employment with sustainable wages, job protection and pensions. We need quality public
education for all Americans. We need to rebuild our infrastructure and end the squandering of
our resources on war. We need to halt corporate pillage and regulate Wall Street and
corporations. We need to respond with radical and immediate measures to curb carbon emissions
and save ourselves from ecocide and extinction. We don't need a "Punch and Judy" show between
Trump and Biden. But that, along with corporate tyranny, is what we seem fated to get, unless
we take to the streets and tear the house down.
> Listen to Cornel West for a real understanding of what has happened and what are our options.
There are no options left for neoliberal Dems. This is a typical political Zugzwang. The only hope is Coronavirus (as an act
of God). Otherwise it looks like they already surrendered elections to Trump.
Biden is a dead end into which neoliberal Dems drove themselves.
See, for example
A possibility remains, therefore, that the Democrats will conduct a 'brokered convention'. Secondary candidates like Buttigieg
and Warren had lately put themselves in the anti-popular posture of endorsing such a proceeding (though there's been nothing
like it since the 1950s): at a brokered convention, a candidate with a solid plurality can be denied the nomination on the
first ballot and defeated later by a coalition.
If Biden now runs far ahead of Sanders, he may sew it up in advance.
On the other hand, his verbal gaffes (announcing himself a candidate for the Senate rather than the presidency; saying 'I
was a Democratic caucus') and his fabricated or false memories (a non-existent arrest in South Africa for demonstrating against
the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela) have exposed a cognitive fragility that some people fear could make him ridiculous by November.
A Biden-Trump contest in 2020 would resemble Clinton-Trump in at least one respect. It would be a case, yet again, of the
right wing of the Democratic Party making the conventional choice against the party's own insurgent energy.
The Democrats and their media outworks are treating Latinos, African Americans and whites as separate nations. Women are
a nation, too – parsed (where useful) as Latino, African American or white.
So the answer to Trump's divide and conquer comes in the form of these college-certified categories that self-divide and
surrender.
The only other weapon of note has been an attempted revival of the Cold War. On 23 February, the New York Times led with
two anti-Sanders hatchet jobs, targeting him as both a destroyer of the Democratic Party and a possible Russian agent
But the mainstream media and their captive party, the party and its captive media, show no sign of letting up the pressure.
A recent leak from a misinterpreted fragment of a report by the Director of National Intelligence became a two-day Red Scare
The truth is that the corporate-liberal media are comfortable with the Trump presidency. They have prospered wonderfully
from his entertainment value, even as they staked out a high ground in the anti-Trump 'resistance'. It will be hard to deny
the plausibility of the charge likely to issue soon from the Sanders campaign, namely that 'the fix is in'; and that, once
more, the people are being denied their proper voice – at first through an organised propaganda campaign that was fed into
debates as well as news coverage, and at last through public co-ordination by the party establishment to guide Democrats into
the one acceptable box.
"... Faced with Zionism at its most aggressive, most US presidents tend to mellow, discovering long-standing friendships among those who most infuriate them. But Sanders has talked of Palestinian suffering and dignity on numerous occasions – which neither Biden nor Warren have yet chosen to do on the campaign – and his contention that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) promotes "bigotry" aroused perhaps too much fury from the pro-Israeli lobby group ..."
"... Its boss, Howard Kohr, is well aware that neither Sanders nor Warren – nor, apparently, Biden, though we'll see about this -- had any interest in attending this year's AIPAC conference. His latest remarks, clearly directed at the man who could be America's first Jewish president, are worthy of serious examin ..."
"... Robert Fisk writes for the Independent , where this column originally appeared. ..."
And many American voters – save for pro-Israeli lobbyists, liberal Jewish groups and
disparate Muslim organisations – don't care a hill of beans about the fears of Israel and the Arabs. But both
Muslims and Jews in the region have been carefully studying what the three remaining Democrat
contenders have said about two-state solutions, Israeli colonies in the West Bank and the US
embassy, currently in Jerusalem courtesy of Donald Trump. It's time we did the same.
First of all, despair all ye who think the Democrats are going to reverse Trump's disastrous
transfer of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Those who believe that a Democrat
president will simply roll back on Trump's disastrous policies – not just over the
embassy but anywhere else in the Middle East – had better shake off their illusions.
History doesn't go backwards. None of the Democratic candidates would commit to reversing
Trump's embassy decision when asked; only Sanders spoke vaguely of returning it to Tel Aviv.
The rest chickened out by suggesting, rather outrageously, that the existence of the embassy in
Jerusalem would become part of future Israeli-Palestinian negotiations – something which
was never part of the original Oslo negotiations nor any UN resolution.
Elizabeth Warren announced in the South Carolina debate last month that the decision should
be left up to "Israel and Palestine" – presumably suggesting that the 'capital' of a
two-state solution was up to them, even though Bibi Netanyahu believes it's all wrapped up
– Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, full stop. And "Palestine", Warren should have been
aware, doesn't as a state actually exist.
"But it's not up to us to determine what the terms of a two-state solution are," quoth she.
" The best way to do that is to encourage the parties to get to the negotiating table
themselves." Repeatedly asked if she would move the embassy back to Tel Aviv, Warren equally
repeatedly said that "we should let the parties determine the capital." Later she rather eerily
referred to "capitals" – without explaining if she was thinking of a Palestinian
"capital" in the village of Abu Dis, the grim little solution that Madeleine Albright
half-heartedly supported two decades ago.
Sanders, of course, captured the imagination and fury of Arabs and Israelis (and Israel's
supposed friends in America) by his characterisation of Netanyahu as a "reactionary racist"
– a description he may now choose to soften. Faced with Zionism at its most
aggressive, most US presidents tend to mellow, discovering long-standing friendships among
those who most infuriate them. But Sanders has talked of Palestinian suffering and dignity on
numerous occasions – which neither Biden nor Warren have yet chosen to do on the campaign
– and his contention that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) promotes
"bigotry" aroused perhaps too much fury from the pro-Israeli lobby group .
Its boss, Howard Kohr, is well aware that neither Sanders nor Warren – nor,
apparently, Biden, though we'll see about this -- had any interest in attending this year's
AIPAC conference. His latest remarks, clearly directed at the man who could be America's first
Jewish president, are worthy of serious examin ation. "A growing and highly vocal and
energised part of the electorate fundamentally rejects the value of the US-Israeli alliance,"
he said. " The leaders of this movement say they support Israel's right to defend herself. But
every time Israel exercises that right, they condemn Israel."
Kohr wasn't referring here to BDS, the boycott, divest and sanctions movement which does
frighten Israeli leaders, but the increasingly worried men and women in America – young
Jewish liberals prominent among them – who are disgusted by the suffering faced by the
Palestinians in Gaza. Unafraid of Sanders' unwise use of the word "socialism" – which
used to be quite acceptable in Israel many years ago – they are searching, I suspect, for
a morality in international politics which the US regularly suspends when confronted by
Israel's colonial project in the West Bank.
"Israel cannot afford false friends," Kohr continued in a very clear assault on Sanders'
condemnation of the Israeli government and its now yet-again elected prime minister, an attack
he described as "demonising Israel". Last spring, Kohr spoke of the "intense hatred" of Israel
which, he contended, was moving from the margins to the centre of US politics. " Israel has
been able to count on its friendship with the United States," he now says.
But George W Bush and Obama "each understood that America's commitment to Israel's safety
must be consistent, it must be unequivocal [sic], and it must be dependable." In reality
– a quality often lost in any discussion of US-Israeli relations in Washington –
Obama was angered by Netanyahu's constant interference in US politics, his lone appeals to
Congress over the president's head and his absolute refusal to postpone or close down or
abandon the steady theft of Palestinian Arab land for Jewish colonies between Jerusalem and the
Jordan river. Kohr's reference to the necessity of America's "unequivocal" support is not quite
what he meant.
The correct word – had he dared to say it – would have been "uncritical". And
Sanders is not uncritical. In the strait-jacket, fearful debates which pass for serious
television discussion in the United States, condemnation of Israel and its grotesque occupation
of another people's land – if not splashed with accusations of antisemitism – is
regarded as off-limits, unacceptable, even immoral.
Sanders has broken this silly convention. And thus he must be dismissed as a "socialist'
(this is partly his fault, of course) and a "radical", a word which my elderly Dad would
probably have interpreted as a 'Bolshie'. Sanders is not a Bolshevik – though he
sometimes looks like one when he's on the stump – and his real threat to Israel is that
in the eyes of his supporters, he is honest, and seen to be honest. The fact that Sanders is
Jewish and represents the bravest of America's liberal Jewish community is all the more
frightening to Israel's right-wing supporters.
And so we come to Joe Biden, a man whom Netanyahu used to run rings around when Biden was
Obama's vice president. In 2010, the Netanyahu government blithely announced 1,600 new
settlement houses on occupied Palestinian land shortly after Biden's arrival on an official
visit to Israel. Huffily arriving 90 minutes late for dinner with Netanyahu, Biden condemned
the decision – and said no more. Four years later, addressing the Saban Forum, part of
the right-wing Brookings Institute, Biden spent much time condemning Iran, praising Obama's $17
billion financial support for Israel's military – which he calculated at $8.5 million a
day – and referring obliquely to the grave reservations which the Obama administration
had about Israel as "tactical disagreements", "tactical divides", "normal disagreements" and
"different perspectives".
Only at the very end of his 2014 peroration did Biden mildly condemn "expanding settlement
activity and construction and the demolition of homes of attackers [sic]" as
"counterproductive". He referred to "terrorist" attacks by Palestinians and "vigilante attacks"
by Jewish settlers. And that's pretty much what we can expect of a Biden presidency.
He might, conceivably, try to roll back Trump's destruction of the Iranian nuclear agreement
into which Obama put so much energy – but just as he will not commit himself to reversing
Trump's decision on the US embassy transfer to Jerusalem, he's likely to search for another
nuclear agreement to take the place of the Obama one – which, in his perverse and
hopeless way, is what Trump has been suggesting.
The trouble is that while former Democrat candidates are now ganging up to destroy Sanders'
chances of nomination – along with a significant portion of the US "liberal" press
– Trump, barring a virus-induced economic collapse, is unlikely to spend much time
worrying about a Biden candidacy.
Just as they prefer a "safe pair of hands" to protect the party, so the Democrat elite and
the "old" liberals fear the moral crusade upon which Sanders might embark – about health
and human rights just as much as the Middle East. Better to avoid conflict with Israel, too.
And that was Hilary Clinton's policy, wasn't it? And that's how Sanders went off the rails in
the last presidential election, finally asking his supporters to give their vote to Hillary, as
they shouted: "No! No! No!" Join the debate on
Facebook More articles by: Robert Fisk
Robert Fisk writes for the Independent , where this column originally
appeared.
Creating employment insecurity was the entire point of neoliberal reforms such as
outsourcing, de-skilling and contingent employment. Neoliberal theory had it that desperate
workers work both longer and harder. And they die younger.
We can view "Creepy Joe" and Trump as representatives of "neoliberal plague" The slogan
should be " No Pasaran "
( Dolores Ibárruri's famous battlecry appeal for the defense of the Second Spanish
Republic)
Notable quotes:
"... For those who aren't familiar with Albert Camus' The Plague , disparate lives are brought together during a plague that sweeps through an Algerian city. ..."
"... Through the virus, a new light is being shone on four decades of neoliberal reorganization of political economy. The combination of widespread economic marginalization and a lack of paid time off means that sick and highly contagious workers will have little economic choice but to spread the virus. And the insurance company pricing mechanism intended to dissuade people from overusing health care ('skin in the game') means that only very sick people will 'buy' health care they can't afford. ..."
"... If this last part reads like (Ayn) Randian social theory as interpreted by a budding sociopath in the basement of his dead parent's crumbling tract home, it is basic neoliberal ideology applied to circumstances that we can see playing out in real time. ..."
"... While the American response to the Coronavirus threat seems to be less than robust, there was a near instantaneous response from the Federal Reserve to a 10% decline in stock prices. ..."
"... If priorities seem misplaced, you haven't been paying attention. The statistics on suicides, divorces, drug addiction and self-destructive behavior that result from the loss of employment were understood and widely published by the early 1990s, at the peak of that era's round of mass layoffs. Creating employment insecurity was the entire point of neoliberal reforms such as outsourcing, de-skilling and contingent employment. Neoliberal theory had it that desperate workers work both longer and harder. And they die younger. ..."
"... But how likely is it that people will 'demand' too much healthcare? The starting position of Obamacare was that the American healthcare system provided half the benefit at twice the price of comparable systems. ..."
"... Milton Friedman, one of the founders of neoliberalism through the Mont Pelerin Society, produced a long career's worth of half-baked garbage economics. On the rare occasions when he wasn't helping Chilean fascists toss students out of airplanes in flight, he was pawning his infantile theories off on future Chamber of Commerce and ALEC predators. His positivism was already known to be a farce when he took it up. Here is a primer that explains why it is, and always will be, a farce. ..."
For those who aren't familiar with Albert Camus' The Plague ,
disparate lives are brought together during a plague that sweeps through an Algerian city.
Today, by way of the emergence of a lethal and highly communicable virus (Coronavirus), we --
the people of the West, have an opportunity to reconsider what we mean to one another. The
existential lesson is that through dread and angst we can choose to live, with the
responsibilities that the choice entails, or just fade away.
Through the virus, a new light is being shone on four decades of neoliberal
reorganization of political economy. The combination of widespread economic marginalization and
a lack of paid time off means that sick and highly contagious workers will have little economic
choice but to spread the virus. And the insurance company pricing mechanism intended to
dissuade people from overusing health care ('skin in the game') means that only very sick
people will 'buy' health care they can't afford.
Market provision of virus test kits, vaccines and basic sanitary aids will, in the absence
of government coercion, follow the monopolist's model of under-provision at prices that are
unaffordable for most people. The most fiscally responsible route, in the sense of assuring
that the rich don't pay taxes, is to let those who can't afford health care die. If this means
that tens of millions of people die unnecessarily, markets are a harsh taskmaster. (
3.4% mortality rate @
2X – 3X the contagion rate of the Spanish Flu @ 4 X 1918 population).
If this last part reads like (Ayn) Randian social theory as interpreted by a budding
sociopath in the basement of his dead parent's crumbling tract home, it is basic neoliberal
ideology applied to circumstances that we can see playing out in real time. According to
Ryan Grim of The Intercept, Bill Clinton eliminated the ' reasonable
pricing ' requirement for drugs made by companies that receive government funding. This has
bearing on both commercially developed Coronavirus test kits and vaccines.
Leaving aside technical difficulties that either will or won't be resolved, how would any
substantial portion of the 80% of the population that lives hand-to-mouth be effectively
quarantined when losing an income creates a cascade effect of evictions, foreclosures,
starvation, repossessions, shut-off utilities, etc.? The current system conceived and organized
to make desperate and near desperate workers labor with the minimum of pay and benefits is a
public health disaster by design.
While the American response to the Coronavirus threat seems to be less than robust,
there was a near instantaneous response from the Federal Reserve to a 10% decline in stock
prices. The same Federal Reserve that has been engineering a non-stop rise in stock prices
since Wall Street was bailed out in 2009 knows perfectly well how narrowly stock ownership is
concentrated amongst the rich -- it publishes the data. It quickly lowered the cost of
financial speculation as the cost of Coronavirus tests and a vaccine -- and the question of who
will bear them, remain indeterminate.
If priorities seem misplaced, you haven't been paying attention. The statistics on
suicides, divorces, drug addiction and self-destructive behavior that result from the loss of
employment were understood and widely published by the early 1990s, at the peak of that era's
round of mass layoffs. Creating employment insecurity was the entire point of neoliberal
reforms such as outsourcing, de-skilling and contingent employment. Neoliberal theory had it
that desperate workers work both longer and harder. And they die younger.
The brutality of the logic used by the Obama administration in constructing the ACA,
Obamacare, is worthy of exploration. The premise behind the 'skin in the game' idea is
neoliberalism 101, developed by a founder of neoliberalism, economist Milton Friedman, to
ration health care. The basic idea is that without a price attached to it, people will 'demand'
more health care than they need. That from a public health perspective, oversupplying health
care is better than undersupplying it, is ignored under the premise that public health concerns
are communistic. (Read Friedman).
But how likely is it that people will 'demand' too much healthcare? The starting
position of Obamacare was that the American healthcare system provided half the benefit at
twice the price of comparable systems. Through the 'market' pricing mechanism that
existed, the incentive was for people to avoid purchasing healthcare because it was / is wildly
overpriced. Not considered was that through geographical and specialist 'natural monopolies,'
health care providers had an incentive to undersupply health care by providing high-margin
services to the rich.
Furthermore, why would a healthcare system be considered from the perspective of
individual users? In contrast to the temporal sleight-of-hand where Obamacare 'customers' are
expected to anticipate their illnesses and buy insurance plans that cover them, the entire
premise of health insurance is that illnesses are unpredictable. Isn't the Coronavirus evidence
of this unpredictable nature? And through the nature of pandemics, it is known that some people
will get sick and other people won't. Not known is precisely who will get sick and who
won't.
While there are public health emergency provisions in Obamacare that may or may not be
invoked, why does it make sense in any case to require that people anticipate future illnesses?
Such a program isn't health care and it isn't even health insurance. It is gambling. Guess
right and you live. Guess wrong and you die. Why should we be guessing at all? Prior to
Obamacare, health insurance companies gamed the system with life and death decisions. In true
neoliberal fashion, Obamacare randomized the process as health insurers continue to game the
system.
As I understand it, the public health emergency provision in Obamacare might cover virus
testing and the cost of a vaccine if one is ever found. Great. What about care? How many
readers chose a plan that covers Coronavirus? How many days can you go without a paycheck if
you get sick or are quarantined? Who will take care of your children and for how long? How will
you pay your rent or mortgage? Who will deliver groceries to your house and how will you pay
for them? How will you make the car payment before they repossess it and how will you get to
work without it if you recover?
The rank idiocy -- and the political content, of the frame of individual 'consumers'
overusing health care quickly devolves to the fact that some large portion of the American
people can't afford to go to the doctor when they need to. Even if they can afford the direct
costs, they can't afford the indirect costs. When Obamacare was passed, the U.S. had the worst
health care outcomes among rich countries. Ten years later, the U.S. has the
worst healthcare outcomes among rich countries . And medical bankruptcies are virtually
unchanged since Obamacare was passed.
The reason for focusing on Obamacare is it is the system through which we encounter the
Coronavirus. In the narrow political sense of getting a health care bill passed, Obamacare may
or may not have been 'pragmatic.' In a public health care sense, it is a disaster decades in
the making. The problem wasn't / isn't Mr. Obama per se. It is the radical ideology behind it
that was posed as pragmatism. Mr. Obama's success was to get a bill passed -- a political
accomplishment. It wasn't to create a functioning healthcare system.
The otherworldly nature of neoliberal theory has led to a most brutal of social
philosophies. Mr. Obama later put his energy into lengthening drug company
patents to give drug companies an economic advantage provided by the government. Economist
Dean Baker has made a career out of hammering this general point home. Michael Bloomberg
benefited from government support for both technology and finance. His fortune of $16 billion
in 2009 followed stock prices higher to land him at $64.2 billion in 2020.
Donald Trump inherited a large fortune that likewise followed stock and Manhattan real
estate prices higher. Both he and Mr. Bloomberg could have put their early fortunes into
passive portfolios and received the returns that they claim to be the product of superior
intelligence and hard work. Analytically, if the variability of these fortunes tracks systemic,
rather than personal, factors, then systemic factors explain them. The same is true of most of
the great fortunes of the epoch of finance capitalism that began around 1978.
The point of merging these issues is that they represent flip sides of the neoliberal coin.
In a broad sense, neoliberalism is premised on economic Darwinism, the quasi-religious (it
isn't Darwin) idea that people land where they deserve to land in the social order. This same
idea, that systemic differences in economic outcomes are evidence of systemic causes, applies
here. However, differences in intelligence, initiative and talent don't map to systemic outcomes , meaning that
concentrated wealth isn't a reward for these.
The ignorant brutality of this system appears to be on its way to getting a reality check
through a tiny virus. Unless the Federal government figures this out really fast, most of the
bodies will be carried out of poor and working class neighborhoods like mine. Few here have
health insurance and most health care providers in the area don't take the insurance they do
have. More than a day away from work and many of my neighbors will no longer have jobs.
Evictions are a regular state of affairs in good times. There are no resources to facilitate a
larger-picture response.
Liberalism, of which neoliberalism is a cranky cousin, lives through a patina of pragmatism
until the nukes start flying or a virus hits. Getting healthcare 'consumers' to consider their
market choices follows a narrow logic up to the point where none of the choices are relevant to
a public health emergency. One I plus another I plus another I doesn't equal us. The
fundamental premise of neoliberalism, the Robinsonade I, has
always been a cynical dodge to let rich people keep their loot.
The mortality rate and contagion factor recently reported for Coronavirus (links at top)
place it above the modern benchmark of the Spanish Flu of 1918 in terms of potential lethality.
What should make people angry is how the reconfiguration of political economy intended to make
a few people really rich has put the rest of us at increased risk. These are real people's
lives and they matter.
Finally, for students of neoliberalism: there is no conflation of neoliberalism with
neoclassical economics here. Milton Friedman, one of the founders of neoliberalism through
the Mont Pelerin Society, produced a long career's worth of half-baked garbage economics. On
the rare occasions when he wasn't helping Chilean fascists toss students out of airplanes in
flight, he was pawning his infantile theories off on future Chamber of Commerce and ALEC
predators. His positivism was already known to be a farce when he took it up. Here is a primer that
explains why it is, and always will be, a farce.
Rob Urie is an artist and political economist. His book Zen Economics is
published by CounterPunch Books.
Former DNC chairman who gave Hillary Clinton debate questions in advance during the 2016
election, exclaimed on Fox News that Biden's victory was "the most impressive 72 hours
I've ever seen in U.S. politics," and told another analyst to "
go to hell " for suggesting that the Democratic establishment was once again working to
manipulate a nominee into frontrunner status.
The Democrats are in chaos and melting down on live TV.
Donna Brazile just told the @GOPChairwoman to "go to hell"
when asked about the chaos.
"... I tried to sorta warm people on other sites that while they were looking for Russians at the front door, the gop was coming in the bad door for some rather nasty election interference. ..."
"... Of course what we are seeing now is democrats cheating other democrats. But that reality will never be acknowledged because, hey, it never happened before. Just unintentional mistakes like in Iowa (farm folk cheating -- no way) or Brooklyn. ..."
What you describe is probably why Russiagate spread so easily to so many people. Nothing
happened in previous elections? Everything you describe never happened as you point out. The
American electoral system was and is pristine and virginal.
Until the Russians came and destroyed American democracy through social media themes,
memes, and retweets.
The American electoral system was never brutally corrupted by rigged votes, voter
suppression on the scale of hundreds of thousands, deliberately miscounted votes, voter
fraud, etc. Americans never did to each other anything as bad as what the Russians did to
Americans.
Of course, for me never worked as I worked in primaries of a democratic machine dominated
city. I tried to sorta warm people on other sites that while they were looking for
Russians at the front door, the gop was coming in the bad door for some rather nasty election
interference.
Of course what we are seeing now is democrats cheating other democrats. But that
reality will never be acknowledged because, hey, it never happened before. Just unintentional
mistakes like in Iowa (farm folk cheating -- no way) or Brooklyn.
Is there any other nation state that has 50 separate official elections, mostly run and paid
for by the public, just so a private club masquerading as a political party can select its
leader? To the rest of the world, this must look completely insane, but few people anywhere
even seem to notice how ridiculous it all looks.
However, we do need to raise questions about election anomalies. Journalists should be
focused on the DNC is cheating Bernie and, by extension, the American people. It must be
recorded. It should be investigated. The first 4 primary contests account for only 4% of all
allocated delegates, yet have a hugely disproportionate influence on the race. Of those 4 states,
only NV is roughly in synch with the national demographic profile.
The whole primary system needs a major overhaul. It takes too long and costs too much (e.g.,
all the wasted $$ Steyer and Tulsi spent in SC). It's an embarrassing wasteful spectacle which
only enriches the MSM and hired political consultant hacks. Most voters don't bother to tune in
until 10-12 months into the marathon campaign. I would blow it all up and start over from
scratch.
"They're fearful because Bernie Sanders, his political revolution, morally based, ethically
based, is a fundamental challenge to their interest and their status." -- Dr. Cornel West
No matter who comes away with the nomination, it has to be asked "was any of this process
legitimate?". We know from a plethora of examples that US elections are not fair. They border
on meaningless most of the time. The DNC's doubly so, having argued in court they have no duty
to be fair.
Any result, then, you could safely assume was contrived, for one reason or another.
If the Buttigieg-Klobuchar-Biden gambit works, we end up with Trump vs. Biden. And,
realistically, that means a second Trump term.
Biden is possibly senile and definitely creepy . Watching him shuffle and stutter
through a Presidential campaign would be almost cruel.
Politically, he has all of Hillary's weaknesses, being a big-time establishment type with a
pro-war record, without even the "I have a vagina" card to play.
He'll get massacred.
Is that the plan?
There's more than enough signs that Trump has abandoned all the policies that made him any
kind of threat to the political establishment. Four years on: no wars ended, no walls built, no
swamp drained. Just more of the same. He's an idiot who talked big and got co-opted. It
happens.
The Senate and other institutions might talk about Trump being a criminal or an idiot or a
"Nazi", but the reality is he's barely perceptibly different from any other POTUS this side of
JFK.
#TheResistance was a puppet show. A weak game played for toy money. When it really counts,
they're all in it together. Biden getting on the ticket would be a public admittance of that.
It would mean the DNC is effectively throwing the fight. Trump is a son of a bitch, but he's
their son of a bitch. And that's much better than even the idea of President
Bernie.
Does it really matter?
Empire of kaos will never move one inch to change the status quo.
The quaisi fascist state that most western /antlantacist nations have become it will make no
difference
Gianbattista Vico"Their will always be an elite class" Punto e basta.
Name me one politico that made any difference to we the sheeple in the modern era.
If someone were to mention FDR I will scream.
Aldo Moro got murdered by the deep state for only suggesting to make a pact with Berlinguer
the head of Il Partito Communista Italiano.
"... Clinton also lied to the country about "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in Iraq and voted for that obviously illegal war. This after 8 years of her husband's genocidal sanctions killed a minimum of 500,000 innocent Iraqi children . ..."
"... What Bernie Sanders suffered and endured in 2016 was outrageous. Yet, he persisted and to this day attempts to help common Americans as much as he can. He does what he believes to be the right thing. His integrity and his record of fighting for working Americans are not the points of contention in this race. ..."
"... Today, however, Senator Bernie Sanders is the only Democrat who beats Trump in poll after poll . The only one. This is no small matter. Trump needs to be beaten in the tangled Electoral College, where a simple numerical victory isn't enough. ..."
"... Bernie is the best choice, but it is interesting that you brought up the genocidal sanctions on Iraq. Bernie supported those sanctions. He also supported the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 which reaffirmed US support for the sanctions even after 500,000 children had been killed. ..."
"... Well, the BBC is bigging up Joe Biden right now, yet another of its ridiculous pieces of propaganda utterly devoid of its duty to serve its license payors, who are the British people, not the neoconservative banking elite. ..."
"... How interesting, it's Obama who gave the "cue" for Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Beto, Rice, and the entire slippery gang to circle the wagons in support of the most reactionary warmongering candidate running. The same Obama who released drones every Tuesday morning killing brown and blacks throughout the Middle East and Africa– the majority of slaughtered were innocent women and children. ..."
"... The desperation of the national security state is reflected by The DNC's Shenanigans. The security state would rather promote a crooked, warmongering, lying, racist who barely can put together two logical thoughts then accept a candidate who represents a hopeful future for the next generation. ..."
"... The DNC's message is very clear– they're a "private party" and the working-class are NOT invited. ..."
"... But this by far is the most frightening thought, Biden, does not have all his marbles–it's obvious–we can only guess it's some type of dementia. So if Biden, slides through deploying a multitude of underhanded machinations and becomes the nominee, Trump, will make mincemeat of him during the debates. ..."
"... I'm not in the Orange Baboon's Fan Club, but I find it sad and a little bit pathetic the way people still invest their hopes and put their faith in figures like Bernie, Tulsi or Jezza. Bernie got shafted in 2016 and just saluted smartly and fell into line behind Crooked Hillary. When she lost, he started singing from the approved hymn sheet. The evil Putin stole the election for Kremlin Agent Trump. He has been parroting the same nonsense for the past 4 years. ..."
"... Jeez people get a clue. How many times do you need to fall for the "this candidate is so much better and will solve everything" ruse? Remember Obama? The exact same bullshit was going around back then. ..."
"... We have hope😁 . We have change😁 . We have hope and change you can believe in😁 . Well, yeah, we all know what happened during Obombers 8 years. The entire thing is nothing but Kabuki theatre. For all those still believing the United States is a democracy. ..."
"... 'In the democratic system, the necessary illusions cannot be imposed by force. Rather, they must be instilled in the public mind by more subtle means. A totalitarian state can be satisfied with lesser degrees of allegiance to required truths. It is sufficient that people obey; what they think is a secondary concern. But in a democratic political order, there is always the danger that independent thought might be translated into political action, so it is important to eliminate the threat at its root. ..."
"... Debate cannot be stilled, and indeed, in a properly functioning system of propaganda, it should not be, because it has a system-reinforcing character if constrained within proper bounds. What is essential is to set the bounds firmly. Controversy may rage as long as it adheres to the presuppositions that define the consensus of elites, and it should furthermore be encouraged within these bounds, thus helping to establish these doctrines as the very condition of thinkable thought while reinforcing the belief that freedom reigns ..."
"... Every opportunity to push back Neo liberalism should be taken. ..."
"... Once again, Mark Twain sums up my feeling: "If voting made any difference, they wouldn't let us do it." ..."
"... Where's yours? That's impertinent. Our voting process was programmed, close to 100% by two guys, at one point not many years ago, with the same last name, the brothers Urosevich. The machine owners claim that, as it is their proprietary software, the public is excluded from the vote-counting. ..."
In 2016, Hillary Clinton deserved to lose, and she did. Her deception, her
cheating in
the primary elections , was well-documented, despicable, dishonest, untrustworthy. Her
money-laundering scheme
at DNC should have been prosecuted under campaign finance laws.
Her record of warmongering and gleefully gloating over death and destruction was also well established. On national TV she
bragged about the mutilation of Moammar Qaddafi: "We came, we saw, he died!"
Clinton also lied to the country about "Weapons of Mass Destruction"
in Iraq and voted for that obviously illegal war. This after 8 years of her husband's genocidal sanctions killed a minimum of
500,000 innocent Iraqi children .
This person was undeserving of anyone's support.
What Bernie Sanders suffered and endured in 2016 was outrageous. Yet, he persisted and to this day attempts to help common
Americans as much as he can. He does what he believes to be the right thing. His integrity and his record of fighting for working
Americans are not the points of contention in this race.
His opponents have instead opted for every nonsensical conspiracy theory and McCarthyite smear they can concoct, including the
most ridiculous of all: the
Putin theory , without a single shred of evidence to support it.
Today, however, Senator Bernie Sanders is the only Democrat who beats Trump in
poll after
poll . The
only one. This is no small matter. Trump needs to be beaten in the tangled Electoral College, where a simple numerical victory isn't
enough.
Bernie wins, and he has the best overall shot of changing the course of history, steering America away from plutocracy and fascism.
That crucial race is happening right now in the primaries . If Bernie Sanders doesn't secure 50% of all delegates, then DNC insiders
have already signaled that they will steal the nomination and give it to someone else -- who will lose to Trump. The real election
for the future of America is on Super Tuesday.
It's either Trump or Bernie. That's your choice. Your only choice.
Bernie is the best choice, but it is interesting that you brought up the genocidal sanctions on Iraq. Bernie supported those
sanctions. He also supported the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 which reaffirmed US support for the sanctions even after 500,000
children had been killed.
Bernie also voted for Clinton's 1999 bombing campaign on Kosovo.
All that said, yes, Bernie is the best option.
Rhys Jaggar ,
Well, the BBC is bigging up Joe Biden right now, yet another of its ridiculous pieces of propaganda utterly devoid of its duty
to serve its license payors, who are the British people, not the neoconservative banking elite.
When they spout bullshit that 20% of UK workers could miss work 'due to coronavirus', when we have had precisely 36 deaths
in a population of 65 million plus, you know that like climate change, they spout the 1% probability as the mainstream narrative
.
It just shows what folks are up against when media is so cravenly serving those who do not pay them.
Charlotte Russe ,
"If Bernie Sanders doesn't secure 50% of all delegates, then DNC insiders have already signaled that they will steal the
nomination and give it to someone else -- who will lose to Trump. The real election for the future of America is on Super Tuesday."
While Bernie spent more than three decades advocating for economic social justice Biden spent those same three decades
promoting social repression."
"The 1990s saw Biden take aim at civil liberties, authoring anti-terror bills that, among other things, "gutted the federal
writ of habeas corpus," as one legal scholar later reflected. It was this earlier legislation that led Biden to brag to anyone
listening that he was effectively the author of the Bush-era PATRIOT ACT, which, in his view, didn't go far enough. He inserted
a provision into the bill that allowed for the militarization of local law enforcement and again suggested deploying the military
within US borders."
How interesting, it's Obama who gave the "cue" for Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Beto, Rice, and the entire slippery gang to circle
the wagons in support of the most reactionary warmongering candidate running. The same Obama who released drones every Tuesday
morning killing brown and blacks throughout the Middle East and Africa– the majority of slaughtered were innocent women and children.
The desperation of the national security state is reflected by The DNC's Shenanigans. The security state would rather promote
a crooked, warmongering, lying, racist who barely can put together two logical thoughts then accept a candidate who represents
a hopeful future for the next generation.
The DNC's message is very clear– they're a "private party" and the working-class are NOT invited. In fact, they're
saying more than that–if uninvited workers and the marginalized dare to enter they'll be tossed out on their arse
In plain sight the mainstream media news is telling millions that NO one can stop the military/security/surveillance/corporate
state from their stranglehold over the corrupt political duopoly.
I say fight and don't give-up! Be prepared–organize a million people march and head to Milwaukee– the future of the next generation
is on the line.
But this by far is the most frightening thought, Biden, does not have all his marbles–it's obvious–we can only guess it's
some type of dementia. So if Biden, slides through deploying a multitude of underhanded machinations and becomes the nominee,
Trump, will make mincemeat of him during the debates.
But if Biden, makes it to the Oval Office he'll be "less" than a figurehead. Biden, will be as mentally acute as the early
bird diner in a Florida assisted living facility after a recent stroke. The national security state will seize control– handing
the "taxidermied Biden" a pen to idiotically sign off on their highly insidious agenda ..
Ken Kenn ,
Pretty straightforward for me ( I don't know about Bernie? ) but if the Super delegates and the DNC hierarchy decide to hand the
nomination over to Biden then Bernie should stand as an independent.
At least even in defeat a left marker would be placed on the US political table away from the Corporate owners and the shills
that hack for them in the media and elsewhere. At least ordinary US people would know that someone is on their side.
Corbyn in the UK was described as a ' Marxist' by the Tories and the unquestioning media. Despite all that ' Marxist ' Labour got 33% of the vote. People will vote for a ' socialist '
Charlotte Ruse ,
Unfortunately, Bernie won't abandon the Democratic Party. However, there's a ton of Bernie supporters who will vote Third Party
if Bernie doesn't get the nomination.
paul ,
I'm not in the Orange Baboon's Fan Club, but I find it sad and a little bit pathetic the way people still invest their hopes and
put their faith in figures like Bernie, Tulsi or Jezza. Bernie got shafted in 2016 and just saluted smartly and fell into line behind Crooked Hillary. When she lost, he started singing from the approved hymn sheet. The evil Putin stole the election for Kremlin Agent Trump.
He has been parroting the same nonsense for the past 4 years.
That's when he hasn't been shilling for regime change wars in Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and elsewhere against "communist
dictators."
Bernie will get shafted again shortly and fall into line behind Epstein's and Weinstein's best mate Bloomberg or Creepy Joe,
or Pocahontas, or whoever.
If by some miracle they can't quite rig it this time and Bernie gets the nomination, the DNC will just fail to support him,
and allow Trump to win. They would rather see Trump than Bernie in the White House.
Just like Starmer, Thornberry, Phillips and all the Blairite Backstabber Friends of Israel were more terrified of seeing Jezza
in Number Ten than any Tory.
Dr. Johnson said that getting remarried represented the triumph of hope over experience.
The same applies to people expecting any positive change from people like Bernie, Tulsi, or Jezza.
The system just doesn't allow it.
pete ,
Jeez people get a clue. How many times do you need to fall for the "this candidate is so much better and will solve everything"
ruse? Remember Obama? The exact same bullshit was going around back then.
We have hope😁 . We have change😁 . We have hope and change you can believe in😁 . Well, yeah, we all know what happened during
Obombers 8 years. The entire thing is nothing but Kabuki theatre. For all those still believing the United States is a democracy.
clickkid ,
"The real election for the future of America is on Super Tuesday."
Sorry Joe, but where have you been for the last 50 years" Elections are irrelevant. Events change the world – not elections. The only important aspect of an election is the turnout. If you vote in an election, then at some level you still believe in
the system.
Willem ,
Sometimes Chomsky can be useful
'In the democratic system, the necessary illusions cannot be imposed by force. Rather, they must be instilled in the public
mind by more subtle means. A totalitarian state can be satisfied with lesser degrees of allegiance to required truths. It is sufficient
that people obey; what they think is a secondary concern. But in a democratic political order, there is always the danger that
independent thought might be translated into political action, so it is important to eliminate the threat at its root.
Debate cannot be stilled, and indeed, in a properly functioning system of propaganda, it should not be, because it has a system-reinforcing
character if constrained within proper bounds. What is essential is to set the bounds firmly. Controversy may rage as long as
it adheres to the presuppositions that define the consensus of elites, and it should furthermore be encouraged within these bounds,
thus helping to establish these doctrines as the very condition of thinkable thought while reinforcing the belief that freedom
reigns.'
If true, the question is, what are we not allowed to say? Or is Chomsky wrong, and are we allowed to say anything we like since TPTB know that words cannot, ever, change political action
as for that you need power and brutal force, which we do not have and which, btw Chomsky advocates to its readers not to try to
use against the nation state?
So maybe Chomsky is not so useful after all, or only useful for the status quo.
Chomsky's latest book, sold in book stores and at airports, where, apparantly, opinions of dissident writers whose opinions
go beyond the bounds of the consensus of elites, are sold in large amounts to marginalize those opinions out of society, is called
'Optimism over despair', a title stolen from Gramsci who said: 'pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.'
But every time I follow Chomsky's reasoning, I end in dead end roads of which it is quite hard to find your way out. So perhaps
I should change that title into 'nihilism over despair'. If you follow Chomsky's reasoning
clickkid ,
Your Chomsky Quote:
"'In the democratic system, the necessary illusions cannot be imposed by force. .. " Tell that to the Yellow Vests.
ajbsm ,
Despite the deep state stranglehold .on the whole world there seems to be a 'wind' blowing (ref Lenin) of more and more people
turning backs on the secret service candidates – not just in America. Power, money and bullying will carry on succeeding eventually
the edifice is blown away – this will probably happen, it will be ugly and what emerges might not even be better(!) But the current
controllers seem to have a sell by date.
Ken Kenn ,
I'm not convinced of the theory that the more poor/whipped/ spat upon people become the more likely they are to revolt.
A revolution can only come about when the Bourgeoisie can no longer continue to govern in the old way. In other words it becomes more than a want – more of a necessity of change to the ordinary person.
We have to remember that in general ( it's a bit of a guess but just to illustrate a point ) that a small majority of people
in any western nation are reasonably content – to an extent. They are not going to rock the boat that Kennedy tried to make the tide rise for or that Thatcher and her mates copied with
home owner ship and the right to get into serious debt. This depends on whether you had/have a boat in the first place. If not you've always been drowning in the slowly rising tide.
Sanders as I've said before is not Castro. He has many faults but in a highly parameterised p Neo liberal economic loving political and media world he is the best hope. Not great stuff on offer but a significant move away from the 1% and the 3% who work for them ( including Presidents and Prime
Misister ) so even that slight shift is plus for the most powerful country on planet earth.
I have in the past worked alongside various religious groups as an atheist as long as they were on the right( or should that
be left?) side on an issue.
Now is not the time for the American left to play the Prolier than though card.
Every opportunity to push back Neo liberalism should be taken.
wardropper ,
I'm not convinced of the theory that the more poor/whipped/ spat upon people become the more likely they are to revolt.
But didn't the Storming of the Bastille happen for that very reason?
I think people are waiting for just one spark to ignite their simmering fury – just one more straw to break the patient camel's
back. Understandably, the "elite" (which used to mean exalted above the general level) are in some trepidation about this, but,
like all bullies their addiction to the rush of power goes all the way to the bitter end – the bitter end being the point at which
their target stands up and gives them a black eye. It's almost comical how the bully then becomes the wailing victim himself,
and we have all seen often enough the successfully-resisted dictatorial figure of authority resorting to the claim that he is
now being bullied himself. But this is a situation of his own making, and our sympathy for him is limited by our memory of that
fact.
Ken Kenn ,
Where's the simmering fury in the West.
U.S. turnout is pathetically low. Even in the UK the turnout in the most important election since the First World War was 67%. I see the result of the " simmering fury " giving rise to the right not the left. Just that one phrase or paragraph of provocative words will spark the revolution?
... ... ...
wardropper ,
My point, which I thought I made clearly enough, was that the fury is simmering , and waiting for a catalyst. I also think
an important reason for turnout being low is simply that people don't respond well to being treated like idiots by an utterly
corrupt establishment. They just don't want to participate in the farce.
Once again, Mark Twain sums up my feeling: "If voting made any difference, they wouldn't let us do it."
I'm not trying to be argumentative, and, like you, I am quite happy to back Sanders as by far the best of a pretty rotten bunch.
Perhaps China is indeed leading in many respects right now, but becoming Chinese doesn't seem like a real option for most of us
at the moment . . . Incidentally I have been to China and I found the people there as interesting as people anywhere else, although
I particularly enjoyed the many things which are completely different from our western cultural roots.
Rhisiart Gwilym ,
Speaking of the Clintons' death toll, didn't Sanders too back all USAmerica's mass-murdering, armed-robbery aggressions against
helpless small countries in recent times? And anyway, why are we wasting time discussing the minutiae of the shadow-boxing in
this ridiculous circus of a pretend-democratic 'election'? Watching a coffin warp would be a more useful occupation.
I go with Dmitry Orlov's reckoning of the matter: It doesn't matter who becomes president of the US, since the rule of the
deep state continues unbroken, enacting its own policies, which ignore the wishes of the common citizens, and only follow the
requirements of the mostly hyper-rich gics (gangsters-in-charge) in the controlling positions of this spavined, failing empire.
(My paraphrase of Dmitry.)
USPresidents do what their deep-state handlers want; or they get impeached, or assassinated like the Kennedy brothers. And
they all know this. Bill Hick's famous joke about men in a smoke-filled room showing the newly-'elected' POTUS that piece of film
of Kennedy driving by the grassy knoll in Dealy Plaza, Dallas, is almost literally true. All POTUSes understand that perfectly
well before they even take office.
Voting for the policies you prefer, in a genuinely democratic republic, and actually getting them realised, will only happen
for USAmericans when they've risen up and taken genuine popular control of their state-machine; at last!
Meanwhile, of what interest is this ridiculous charade to us in Britain (on another continent entirely; we never see this degree
of attention given to Russian politics, though it has a much greater bearing on our future)? Our business here is to get Britain
out of it's current shameful status, as one of the most grovelling of all the Anglozionist empire's provinces. We have a traitorous-comprador
class of our own to turn out of power. Waste no time on the continuous three-ring distraction-circus in the US – where we in Britain
don't even have a vote.
wardropper ,
The upvotes here would seem to show what thinking people appreciate most.
Seeing through the advertising bezazz, the cheerleaders and the ownership of the media is obviously a top priority, and I suspect
a large percentage of people who don't even know about the OffG would agree.
John Ervin ,
Where's yours? That's impertinent. Our voting process was programmed, close to 100% by two guys, at one point not many years ago,
with the same last name, the brothers Urosevich. The machine owners claim that, as it is their proprietary software, the public is excluded from the vote-counting. And that
much still holds true. Game. Set. Match. Any questions?
Antonym ,
What Bernie Sanders suffered and endured in 2016 was outrageous.
US deep state ate him for breakfast in 2016: they would love him to become string puppet POTUS in 2020. Trump is more difficult to control so they hate him.
John Ervin ,
Just one more Conspiracy Realist, eh! When will we ever learn?
"The deep state ate him for breakfast in 2016 ." That gives some sense of the ease with which they pull strings, nicely put.
One variation on the theme of your metaphor: "They savored him as one might consume a cocktail olive at an exclusive or entitled
soirée."
It is painfully clear by any real connection of dots that he is simply one of their stalking horses for other game. And that Homeland game (still) doesn't know whether a horse has four, or six, legs.
*****
"Puppet Masters, or master puppets?"
Antonym ,
It is painfully clear that US Deep state hates Trump simply by looking at the Russiagate they cooked him up.
Fair dinkum ,
The US voters have surrounded themselves with a sewer, now they have to swim in it.
An alternative view that has been circulating for several years suggests that it was not a
hack at all, that it was a deliberate whistleblower-style
leak of information carried out by an as yet unknown party, possibly Rich, that may have
been provided to WikiLeaks for possible political reasons, i.e. to express disgust with the DNC
manipulation of the nominating process to damage Bernie Sanders and favor Hillary Clinton.
There are, of course, still other equally non-mainstream explanations for how the bundle of
information got from point A to point B, including that the intrusion into the DNC server was
carried out by the CIA which then made it look like it had been the Russians as
perpetrators. And then there is the hybrid point of view, which is essentially that the
Russians or a surrogate did indeed intrude into the DNC computers but it was all part of normal
intelligence agency probing and did not lead to anything. Meanwhile and independently, someone
else who had access to the server was downloading the information, which in some fashion made
its way from there to WikiLeaks.
Both the hack vs. leak viewpoints have marshaled considerable technical analysis in the
media to bolster their arguments, but the analysis suffers from the decidedly strange fact that
the FBI never even examined the DNC servers that may have been involved. The hack school of
thought has stressed that Russia had both the ability and motive to interfere in the election
by exposing the stolen material while the leakers have recently asserted that the sheer volume of
material downloaded indicates that something like a higher speed thumb drive was used,
meaning that it had to be done by someone with actual physical direct access to the DNC system.
Someone like Seth Rich.
... ... ...
Given all of that back story, it would be odd to find Trump making an offer that focuses
only on one issue and does not actually refute the broader claims of Russian interference,
which are based on a number of pieces of admittedly often dubious evidence, not just the
Clinton and Podesta emails.
Which brings the tale back to Seth Rich. If Rich was indeed responsible for the theft of the
information and was possibly killed for his treachery, it most materially impacts on the
Democratic Party as it reminds everyone of what the Clintons and their allies are capable
of.
It will also serve as a warning of what might be coming at the Democratic National
Convention in Milwaukee in July as the party establishment uses fair means or foul to stop
Bernie Sanders. How this will all play out is anyone's guess, but many of those who pause to
observe the process will be thinking of Seth Rich.
I don't ascribe to the idea that the intel agencies kill American citizens without a great
deal of thought, but in Rich's case, they probably felt like they had no choice. Think about
it: The DNC had already rigged the primary against Bernie, the Podesta emails had already
been sent to Wikileaks, and if Rich's cover was blown, then he would publicly identify
himself as the culprit (which would undermine the Russiagate narrative) which would split the
Democratic party in two leaving Hillary with no chance to win the election.
I can imagine Hillary and her intel connections looking for an alternative to whacking
Rich but eventually realizing that there was no other way to deflect responsibility for the
emails while paving the way for an election victory.
If Seth Rich went public, then Hillary would certainly lose.
I imagine this is what they were thinking when they decided there was really only one
option.
"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." https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/12/cias-absence-conviction/
@plantman It's more than Hillary losing. It would have been easy to connect the dots of
the entire plot to get Trump. Furthermore, it would have linked Obama and his cohorts in ways
that the country might have exploded. This was the beginning of a Coup De'tat that would have
shown the American political process is a complete joke.
To understand why the DNC mobsters and the Deep State hate him, watch this great 2016
interview where Assange calmly explains the massive corruption that patriotic FBI agents
refer to as the "Clinton Crime Family." This gang is so powerful that it ordered federal
agents to spy on the Trump political campaign, and indicted and imprisoned some participants
in an attempt to pressure President Trump to step down. It seems Trump still fears this gang,
otherwise he would order his attorney general to drop this bogus charge against Assange, then
pardon him forever and invite him to speak at White House press conferences.
Well, here was my own take on the controversy a couple of years ago, and I really haven't
seen anything to change my mind:
Well, DC is still a pretty dangerous city, but how many middle-class whites were
randomly murdered there that year while innocently walking the streets? I wouldn't be
surprised if Seth Rich was just about the only one.
Julian Assange has strongly implied that Seth Rich was the source of the DNC emails that
cost Hillary Clinton the presidency. So if Seth Rich died in a totally random street
killing not long afterward, isn't that just the most astonishing coincidence in all of
American history?
Consider that the leaks effectively nullified the investment of the $2 billion or so
that her donors had provided, and foreclosed the flood of good jobs and appointments to her
camp-followers, not to mention the oceans of future graft. Seems to me that's a pretty good
motive for murder.
Here's my own plausible speculation from a couple of months ago:
Incidentally, I'd guess that DC is a very easy place to arrange a killing, given that
until the heavy gentrification of the last dozen years or so, it was one of America's
street-murder capitals. It seems perfectly plausible that some junior DNC staffer was at
dinner somewhere, endlessly cursing Seth Rich for having betrayed his party and
endangered Hillary's election, when one of his friends said he knew somebody who'd be
willing to "take care of the problem" for a thousand bucks
Let's say a couple of hundred thousand middle-class whites lived in DC around then, and
Seth Rich was about the only one that year who died in a random street-killing, occurring not
long after the leak.
Wouldn't that seem like a pretty unlikely coincidence?
"If Rich was indeed responsible for the theft of the information and was possibly killed for
his treachery ."
Heroism is the proper term for what Seth Rich did. He saw the real treachery, against
Bernie Sanders and the democratic faithful who expect at least a modicum of integrity from
their Party leaders (even if that expectation is utterly fanciful, wishful thinking), and he
decided to act. He paid for it with his life. A young, noble life.
In every picture I've seen of him, he looks like a nice guy, a guy who cared. And now he's
dead. And the assholes at the DNC simply gave him a small plaque over a bike rack, as I
understand it.
Seth Rich: American Hero. A Truth-Teller who paid the ultimate price.
Great reporting, Phil. Another home run.
(And thanks to Ron for chiming in. Couldn't agree more. As a Truth-Teller extraordinaire,
please watch your back, Bro. And Phil, too. You both know what these murderous scum are
capable of.)
Because the {real} killers of JFK, MLK and RFK were never detained and jailed/hanged, why
would one expect a lesser known, more ordinary individual's murder [Seth] to be solved?
Seymour Hersh, in a taped phone conversation, claimed to have access to an FBI report on the
murder. According to Hersh, the report indicated tha FBI Cyber Unit examined Rich's computer
and found he had contacted Wikileaks with the intention of selling the emails.
Another reason Assange may not want to reveal it, if Seth Rich was a source for Wikileaks,
could be that Seth Rich didn't act alone, and revealing Seth's involvement would compromise
the other(s).
Or it could simply be that Wikileaks has promised to never reveal a source, even after
that source's death, as a promise to future potential sources, who may never want their
identities revealed, to avoid the thought of embarrassment or repercussions to their
associates or families.
Incidentally, they only started really going after Assange after the Vault 7 leaks of the
CIA's active bag of software tricks. I think, for Assange's sake, they should instead have
held on to that, and made it the payload of a dead man's switch.
I'm not sure how credible the source is but Ellen Ratner, the sister of Assange's former
lawyer and a journalist, told Ed Butowsky that Assange told her that it was Seth Rich. She
asked Butowsky to contact Rich's parents. She confirms the Assange meeting in an interview,
link below. Butowsky does not seem to be a credible source but Ratner does. If it was Seth
Rich then I have no doubt that his brother knows the details and the family does not want to
lose another son.
"According to Assange's lawyers, Rohrabacher offered a pardon from President Trump if Assange
were to provide information that would attribute the theft or hack of the Democratic National
Committee emails to someone other than the Russians."
Not to quibble on semantics but Rohrabacher met with Assange to ask if he would be willing
to reveal the source of the emails then Rohrabacher would contact Trump and try to make deal
for Assange's freedom. Rohrabacher clarified that he never talked to Trump or that he was
authorized by Trump to make any offer.
The MSM has been using the "amnesty if you say it was not the Russians" narrative to hint
at a coverup by Russian agent Trump. Normal for the biased MSM.
Giraldi's link "Assange did not take the offer" has nothing to do with Rohrabacher's
contact. It's just a general piece on Assange acting as a journalist should act.
I'm of the opinion Ron Unz seems to share, that Rich was not a particularly "big hitter" in
the DNC hierarchy and that his murder was more likely the result of a very nasty inter-party
squabble. I seem to recall a LOT of very nasty talk between the Jewish neocons in the Bush
era and the decent, traditional "small-government" style Republicans who greatly resented the
neocons' hijacking of the GOP for their demonic zionist agenda.
Common sense would suggest that the zionist types who have (obviously) hijacked the DNC
are at least as nasty and ruthless as the neocons who destroyed any decency or fair-play
within the GOP. It's not exactly hard to believe that these Murder, Inc. types (also lefties
of their era) wouldn't hesitate to whack someone like Rich for merely uttering a criticism of
Israel, for example.
Hell, Meyer Lansky ordered the hit-job on Bugsy Seigel for forgetting to bring bagels to a
sit-down ! There was a great web-site by a mobster of that era, long since taken down, who
described the story in detail. I forget the names .. but I'll see if I can't find a copy of
some of the pieces posted at least a decade ago .
It's not exactly hard to imagine some very nasty words being exchanged between the Rahm
Emmanuel types and decent Chicago citizens, for example, who genuinely cared for their city
and weren't afraid of The Big Jew and his mobster cronies . to their detriment I'm sure.
We're talking about organized crime, here, folks. The zionists make the so-called (mostly
fictitious) Sicilian Mafia look like newborn puppies. They wouldn't hesitate to whack a guy
like Rich for taking their favorite space in the bicycle rack.
My only trouble with the Seth Rich thing is, it seems a bit extreme, they seem quite callous
in murdering foreigners but US citizens in the US who are their staffers? If they really were
prepared to go out and kill in this way, they're be a lot more suspicious deaths.
What makes the case most compelling is the very quick investigation by police that looks
like they were told by somebody concerned about how the whole thing looked to close up the
case nice and quickly. That and the fact that he was shot in the back, which doesn't make
sense for an attempted robbery turned murder.
However, it may also be that as in so many cities in the US, murder clearance rates for
street shootings (Little forensic evidence, can only go by witness accounts or through poor
alibis from usual suspects and their associates. In this case there is also no connection
between Rich and any possible shooter with no witnesses.) are just so very low that DC police
don't bother and Seth Rich's death just happened to be one such case that attracted some
scrutiny.
But then maybe for the reasons above a place like DC is perfect to just murder somebody on
the street and that's why they were so brazen about it.
Seth Rich's death just happened to be one such case that attracted some scrutiny.
Well, upthread someone posted a recording of a Seymour Hersh phone call that confirmed
Seth Rich was the fellow who leaked the DNC emails to Wikileaks, thereby possibly swinging
the presidential election to Trump and overcoming $2 billion of Democratic campaign
advertising.
Shortly afterwards, he probably became about the only middle-class white in DC who died in
a "random street killing" that year. If you doubt this, see if you can find any other such
cases that year.
I think it is *extraordinarily* unlikely that these two elements are unconnected and
merely happened together by chance.
However, we do need to raise questions about election anomalies. Journalists should be
focused on the DNC is cheating Bernie and, by extension, the American people. It must be
recorded. It should be investigated. The first 4 primary contests account for only 4% of all
allocated delegates, yet have a hugely disproportionate influence on the race. Of those 4 states,
only NV is roughly in synch with the national demographic profile.
The whole primary system needs a major overhaul. It takes too long and costs too much (e.g.,
all the wasted $$ Steyer and Tulsi spent in SC). It's an embarrassing wasteful spectacle which
only enriches the MSM and hired political consultant hacks. Most voters don't bother to tune in
until 10-12 months into the marathon campaign. I would blow it all up and start over from
scratch.
"... I would suggest amending this to: Official D policy: "no candidate who intends to govern in the interest of the entirety of the citizenry should seek the nomination of this Party" ..."
I would suggest amending this to: Official D policy: "no candidate who intends to govern
in the interest of the entirety of the citizenry should seek the nomination of this
Party"
It's easy: Nothing says more about the "party of the people" like $1,750 to $3,200
tickets.
Asked about the crowd's behavior in an interview following the
debate, Sanders said "to get a ticket to the debate, you had to be fairly wealthy."
The Bloomberg campaign denied that it stacked the
audience with paid supporters amid rampant social media speculation that the billionaire "
purchased " a portion of the
crowd to create the appearance of a strong performance following his poor showing in Las Vegas
last week.
Victory_Rossi , 2 minutes ago
Fairly wealthy? I refuse to believe that anyone would pay a couple of grand to go to a
******* debate.
Musum , 4 minutes ago
In America, $1750-$3200 per seat is democracy.
And oligarchs on Wall St. and industry is capitalism.
You don't have to go far to figure out why Sanders is popular. And voting doesn't
matter.
XXX , 15 minutes ago
If it was serious, there wouldn't be a "studio audience", ala Jerry Springer, just
reasoned arguments, courtesy and professionalism, all kept under tight control by an unbiased
moderator. But it's not serious. It's just political carnival time, clowns only.
XXX , 1
minute ago
Yes. True. It's a shitshow for sure.
XXX, 16
minutes ago
Disgusting hypocrisy. Most of the U.S. citizenry Rep&Dem don't even have that kind of
$ available for an emergency let alone some worthless, useless, meaningless debate for an
election that will never be happen regardless of whether 100% of the information is presented
that it did happen.
I suspect his open-borders advocacy and Russia-bashing too are lies; these are lines of
defence against internal forces. It makes sense for him to take those positions while he
seeks the nomination. If he gets it, he can betray those positions. A serious politician has
to demonstrate a large capacity for betrayal. At the end of the day, he is a hardened
politician like the rest.
"... By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is "and forgive them their debts": Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year ..."
"... Until Nevada, all the presidential candidates except for Bernie Sanders were playing for a brokered convention. The party's candidates seemed likely to be chosen by the Donor Class, the One Percent and its proxies, not the voting class (the 99 Percent). If, as Mayor Bloomberg has assumed, the DNC will sell the presidency to the highest bidder, this poses the great question: Can the myth that the Democrats represent the working/middle class survive? Or, will the Donor Class trump the voting class? ..."
"... This could be thought of as "election interference" – not from Russia but from the DNC on behalf of its Donor Class. That scenario would make the Democrats' slogan for 2020 "No Hope or Change." That is, no from today's economic trends that are sweeping wealth up to the One Percent. ..."
"... But in the wake of Sanders' landslide victory in Nevada, a brokered convention would mean the end of the Democrat Party pretense to represent the 99 Percent. The American voting system would be seen to be as oligarchic as that of Rome on the eve of the infighting that ended with Augustus becoming Emperor in 27 BC. ..."
"... Today's pro-One Percent media – CNN, MSNBC and The New York Times ..."
"... History of Rome ..."
"... History of Rome ..."
"... Some on Resistance Twitter claim that if Sanders is the nominee, Trump will win a 48 sweep. Possible, but very unlikely. But if it did happen, the MSM would once again dismiss his program as being completely unacceptable to the voting class, and Sanders would trudge back to Vermont never to be heard from again. ..."
"... So if his program requires a decade long follow through, what are the least bad outcomes? If the D's deprive him of the nomination at the convention, even though he has far and away more pledged delegates, the MSM cannot dismiss his program as it would in the two previous scenarios, and his program would live to fight another day. ..."
"... Trump may or may not win. But if he does, the best he can hope for is a skin-of-his-teeth victory. Seriously, he lost the popular vote by a ton to Hillary freaking Clinton. ..."
"... And stuff is beginning to crumble around him on the Right. The Dow drops. Oops Richie Rich gets uneasy. ..."
"... I was more than a little honked when Sanders appeared to roll over and support HRC in 2016 in spite of the obvious fraud perpetrated on him and his supporters, not to mention the subsequent treatment they received at the hands of the DNC and Tom Perez. ..."
"... I find myself wondering if it wouldn't be a good idea for Sanders and his supporters to make it absolutely clear their attempts to work within 'the system' are finished if they are robbed again; maybe even starting work immediately on establishing a party not controlled by Wall Street lickspittle or knuckle-dragging no-nothings? ..."
To hear the candidates debate, you would think that their fight was over who could best beat
Trump. But when Trump's billionaire twin Mike Bloomberg throws a quarter-billion dollars into
an ad campaign to bypass the candidates actually running for votes in Iowa, New Hampshire and
Nevada, it's obvious that what really is at issue is the future of the Democrat Party.
Bloomberg is banking on a brokered convention held by the Democratic National Committee (DNC)
in which money votes. (If "corporations are people," so is money in today's political
world.)
Until Nevada, all the presidential candidates except for Bernie Sanders were playing for
a brokered convention. The party's candidates seemed likely to be chosen by the Donor Class,
the One Percent and its proxies, not the voting class (the 99 Percent). If, as Mayor Bloomberg
has assumed, the DNC will sell the presidency to the highest bidder, this poses the great
question: Can the myth that the Democrats represent the working/middle class survive? Or, will
the Donor Class trump the voting class?
This could be thought of as "election interference" – not from Russia but from the
DNC on behalf of its Donor Class. That scenario would make the Democrats' slogan for 2020 "No
Hope or Change." That is, no from today's economic trends that are sweeping wealth up to the
One Percent.
All this sounds like Rome at the end of the Republic in the 1st century BC.
The way Rome's constitution was set up, candidates for the position of consul had to pay their
way through a series of offices. The process started by going deeply into debt to get elected
to the position of aedile, in charge of staging public games and entertainments. Rome's
neoliberal fiscal policy did not tax or spend, and there was little public administrative
bureaucracy, so all such spending had to be made out of the pockets of the oligarchy. That was
a way of keeping decisions about how to spend out of the hands of democratic politics. Julius
Caesar and others borrowed from the richest Bloomberg of their day, Crassus, to pay for staging
games that would demonstrate their public spirit to voters (and also demonstrate their
financial liability to their backers among Rome's One Percent). Keeping election financing
private enabled the leading oligarchs to select who would be able to run as viable candidates.
That was Rome's version of Citizens United.
But in the wake of Sanders' landslide victory in Nevada, a brokered convention
would mean the end of the Democrat Party pretense to represent the 99 Percent. The American
voting system would be seen to be as oligarchic as that of Rome on the eve of the infighting
that ended with Augustus becoming Emperor in 27 BC.
Today's pro-One Percent media – CNN, MSNBC and The New York Times
have been busy spreading their venom against Sanders. On Sunday, February 23, CNN ran a slot,
"Bloomberg needs to take down Sanders, immediately."[1]Given Sanders' heavy national lead, CNN
warned, the race suddenly is almost beyond the vote-fixers' ability to fiddle with the election
returns. That means that challengers to Sanders should focus their attack on him; they will
have a chance to deal with Bloomberg later (by which CNN means, when it is too late to stop
him).
The party's Clinton-Obama recipients of Donor Class largesse pretend to believe that Sanders
is not electable against Donald Trump. This tactic seeks to attack him at his strongest point.
Recent polls show that he is the only candidate who actually would defeat Trump – as they
showed that he would have done in 2016.
The DNC knew that, but preferred to lose to Trump than to win with Bernie. Will history
repeat itself? Or to put it another way, will this year's July convention become a replay of
Chicago in 1968?
A quandary, not a problem . Last year I was asked to write a scenario for what might happen
with a renewed DNC theft of the election's nomination process. To be technical, I realize, it's
not called theft when it's legal. In the aftermath of suits over the 2016 power grab, the
courts ruled that the Democrat Party is indeed controlled by the DNC members, not by the
voters. When it comes to party machinations and decision-making, voters are subsidiary to the
superdelegates in their proverbial smoke-filled room (now replaced by dollar-filled foundation
contracts).
I could not come up with a solution that does not involve dismantling and restructuring the
existing party system. We have passed beyond the point of having a solvable "problem" with the
Democratic National Committee (DNC). That is what a quandary is. A problem has a solution
– by definition. A quandary does not have a solution. There is no way out. The conflict
of interest between the Donor Class and the Voting Class has become too large to contain within
a single party. It must split.
A second-ballot super-delegate scenario would mean that we are once again in for a second
Trump term. That option was supported by five of the six presidential contenders on stage in
Nevada on Wednesday, February 20. When Chuck Todd asked whether Michael Bloomberg, Elizabeth
Warren, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar would support the candidate who received
the most votes in the primaries (now obviously Bernie Sanders), or throw the nomination to the
super-delegates held over from the Obama-Clinton neoliberals (75 of whom already are said to
have pledged their support to Bloomberg), each advocated "letting the process play out." That
was a euphemism for leaving the choice to the Tony-Blair style leadership that have made the
Democrats the servants' entrance to the Republican Party. Like the British Labour Party behind
Blair and Gordon Brown, its role is to block any left-wing alternative to the Republican
program on behalf of the One Percent.
This problem would not exist if the United States had a European-style parliamentary system
that would enable a third party to obtain space on the ballots in all 50 states. If this were
Europe, the new party of Bernie Sanders, AOC et al. would exceed 50 percent of the
votes, leaving the Wall Street democrats with about the same 8 percent share that similar
neoliberal democratic parties have in Europe ( e.g ., Germany's hapless neoliberalized
Social Democrats), that is, Klobocop territory as voters moved to the left. The "voting
Democrats," the 99 Percent, would win a majority leaving the Old Neoliberal Democrats in the
dust.
The DNC's role is to prevent any such challenge. The United States has an effective
political duopoly, as both parties have created such burdensome third-party access to the
ballot box in state after state that Bernie Sanders decided long ago that he had little
alternative but to run as a Democrat.
The problem is that the Democrat Party does not seem to be reformable. That means that
voters still may simply abandon it – but that will simply re-elect the Democrats' de
facto 2020 candidate, Donald Trump. The only hope would be to shrink the party into a shell,
enabling the old guard to go way so that the party could be rebuilt from the ground up.
But the two parties have created a legal duopoly reinforced with so many technical barriers
that a repeat of Ross Perot's third party (not to mention the old Socialist Party, or the Whigs
in 1854) would take more than one election cycle to put in place. For the time being, we may
expect another few months of dirty political tricks to rival those of 2016 as Obama appointee
Tom Perez is simply the most recent version of Florida fixer Debbie Schultz-Wasserman (who gave
a new meaning to the Wasserman Test).
So we are in for another four years of Donald Trump. But by 2024, how tightly will the U.S.
economy find itself tied in knots?
The Democrats' Vocabulary of Deception
How I would explain Bernie's program. Every economy is a mixed economy. But to hear Michael
Bloomberg and his fellow rivals to Bernie Sanders explain the coming presidential election, one
would think that an economy must be either capitalist or, as Bloomberg put it, Communist. There
is no middle ground, no recognition that capitalist economies have a government sector, which
typically is called the "socialist" sector – Social Security, Medicare, public schooling,
roads, anti-monopoly regulation, and public infrastructure as an alternative to privatized
monopolies extracting economic rent.
What Mr. Bloomberg means by insisting that it's either capitalism or communism is an absence
of government social spending and regulation. In practice this means oligarchic financial
control, because every economy is planned by some sector. The key is, who will do the planning?
If government refrains from taking the lead in shaping markets, then Wall Street takes over
– or the City in London, Frankfurt in Germany, and the Bourse in France.
Most of all, the aim of the One Percent is to distract attention from the fact that the
economy is polarizing – and is doing so at an accelerating rate. National income
statistics are rigged to show that "the economy" is expanding. The pretense is that everyone is
getting richer and living better, not more strapped. But the reality is that all the growth in
GDP has accrued to the wealthiest 5 Percent since the Obama Recession began in 2008. Obama
bailed out the banks instead of the 10 million victimized junk-mortgage holders. The 95
Percent's share of GDP has shrunk.
The GDP statistics do not show is that "capital gains" – the market price of stocks,
bonds and real estate owned mainly by the One to Five Percent – has soared, thanks to
Obama's $4.6 trillion Quantitative Easing pumped into the financial markets instead of into the
"real" economy in which wage-earners produce goods and services.
How does one "stay the course" in an economy that is polarizing? Staying the course means
continuing the existing trends that are concentrating more and more wealth in the hands of the
One Percent, that is, the Donor Class – while loading down the 99 Percent with more debt,
paid to the One Percent (euphemized as the economy's "savers"). All "saving" is at the top of
the pyramid. The 99 Percent can't afford to save much after paying their monthly "nut" to the
One Percent.
If this economic polarization is impoverishing most of the population while sucking wealth
and income and political power up to the One Percent, then to be a centrist is to be the
candidate of oligarchy. It means not challenging the economy's structure.
Language is being crafted to confuse voters into imagining that their interest is the same
as that of the Donor Class of rentiers , creditors and financialized corporate
businesses and rent-extracting monopolies. The aim is to divert attention from voters' their
own economic interest as wage-earners, debtors and consumers. It is to confuse voters not to
recognize that without structural reform, today's "business as usual" leaves the One Percent in
control.
So to call oneself a "centrist" is simply a euphemism for acting as a lobbyist for siphoning
up income and wealth to the One Percent. In an economy that is polarizing, the choice is either
to favor them instead of the 99 Percent.
That certainly is not the same thing as stability. Centrism sustains the polarizing dynamic
of financialization, private equity, and the Biden-sponsored bankruptcy "reform" written by his
backers of the credit-card companies and other financial entities incorporated in his state of
Delaware. He was the senator for the that state's Credit Card industry, much as former
Democratic VP candidate Joe Lieberman was the senator from Connecticut's Insurance
Industry.
A related centrist demand is that of Buttigieg's and Biden's aim to balance the federal
budget. This turns out to be a euphemism for cutting back Social Security, Medicare and relate
social spending ("socialism") to pay for America's increasing militarization, subsidies and tax
cuts for the One Percent. Sanders rightly calls this "socialism for the rich." The usual word
for this is oligarchy . That seems to be a missing word in today's mainstream
vocabulary.
The alternative to democracy is oligarchy. As Aristotle noted already in the 4 th
Confusion over the word "socialism" may be cleared up by recognizing that every economy
is mixed, and every economy is planned – by someone. If not the government in the public
interest, then by Wall Street and other financial centers in their interest. They
fought against an expanding government sector in every economy today, calling it socialism
– without acknowledging that the alternative, as Rosa Luxemburg put it, is
barbarism.
I think that Sanders is using the red-letter word "socialism" and calling himself a
"democratic socialist" to throw down the ideological gauntlet and plug himself into the long
and powerful tradition of socialist politics. Paul Krugman would like him to call himself a
social democrat. But the European parties of this name have discredited this label as being
centrist and neoliberal. Sanders wants to emphasize that a quantum leap, a phase change is in
order.
If he can be criticized for waving a needlessly red flag, it is his repeated statement
that his program is designed for the "working class." What he means are wage-earners and this
includes the middle class. Even those who make over $100,000 a year are still wage earners, and
typically are being squeezed by a predatory financial sector, a predatory medical insurance
sector, drug companies and other monopolies.
The danger in this terminology is that most workers like to think of themselves as
middle class, because that is what they would like to rise into. That is especially he case for
workers who own their own home (even if mortgage represents most of the value, so that most of
the home's rental value is paid to banks, not to themselves as part of the "landlord class"),
and have an education (even if most of their added income is paid out as student debt service),
and their own car to get to work (involving automobile debt).
The fact is that even $100,000 executives have difficulty living within the limits of
their paycheck, after paying their monthly nut of home mortgage or rent, medical care, student
loan debt, credit-card debt and automobile debt, not to mention 15% FICA paycheck withholding
and state and local tax withholding.
Of course, Sanders' terminology is much more readily accepted by wage-earners as the
voters whom Hillary called "Deplorables" and Obama called "the mob with pitchforks," from whom
he was protecting his Wall Street donors whom he invited to the White House in 2009. But I
think there is a much more appropriate term: the 99 Percent, made popular by Occupy Wall
Street. That is Bernie's natural constituency. It serves to throw down the gauntlet between
democracy and oligarchy, and between socialism and barbarism, by juxtaposing the 99 Percent to
the One Percent.
The Democratic presidential debate on February 25 will set the stage for Super
Tuesday's "beauty contest" to gauge what voters want. The degree of Sanders' win will help
determine whether the byzantine Democrat party apparatus that actually will be able to decide
on the Party's candidate. The expected strong Sanders win is will make the choice stark: either
to accept who the voters choose – namely, Bernie Sanders – or to pick a candidate
whom voters already have rejected, and is certain to lose to Donald Trump in
November.
If that occurs, the Democrat Party will evaporate as its old Clinton-Obama guard is no
longer able to protect its donor class on Wall Street and corporate America. Too many Sanders
voters would stay home or vote for the Greens. That would enable the Republicans to maintain
control of the Senate and perhaps even grab back the House of Representatives.
But it would be dangerous to assume that the DNC will be reasonable. Once again, Roman
history provides a "business as usual" scenario. The liberal German politician Theodor Mommsen
published his History of Rome in 1854-56, warning against letting an aristocracy block
reform by controlling the upper house of government (Rome's Senate, or Britain House of Lords).
The leading families who overthrew the last king in 509 BC created a Senate chronically prone
to being stifled by its leaders' "narrowness of mind and short-sightedness that are the proper
and inalienable privileges of all genuine patricianism."[2]
These qualities also are the distinguishing features of the DNC. Sanders had better win
big!
I wonder how much of the rot at the top of the Dem party is simple dementia. By
the age of 70, half of people have some level of dementia. Consider Joe Biden – is
anyone in the public sphere going to state the obvious – that he has dementia and as
such is unfit for office?
First, my priors. I voted for Sanders in 2016, will vote for him in 2020, and
expect him to be elected president. Further I believe that where we find ourselves today is
the result of at least 40 years of intentional bi-partisan policies. Both parties are
responsible.
If Sanders, upon being elected, were able to snap his fingers and call into
existence his entire program, it would immediately face a bi-partisan opposition that would
be funded by billions of dollars, which would be willing to take as long as necessary, even
decades, to roll it back.
Just electing Sanders is only the first step. There must be a committed,
determined follow through that must be willing to last decades as well for his program to
stick. And there will be defeats along the way.
Several observations. If Hillary had beaten Trump, Sanders would have trudged
back to Vermont and would never have been heard from again. The MSM would have dismissed his
program as being completely unacceptable to the voting class. But she didn't, so here we are,
which is fantastic.
Some on Resistance Twitter claim that if Sanders is the nominee, Trump will
win a 48 sweep. Possible, but very unlikely. But if it did happen, the MSM would once again
dismiss his program as being completely unacceptable to the voting class, and Sanders would
trudge back to Vermont never to be heard from again.
So if his program requires a decade long follow through, what are the least
bad outcomes? If the D's deprive him of the nomination at the convention, even though he has
far and away more pledged delegates, the MSM cannot dismiss his program as it would in the
two previous scenarios, and his program would live to fight another
day.
If he loses to Trump, but closely, which can mean a lot of different things,
his program would live to fight another day. Moreover, if the D's are seen to actively
collude with Trump, this less bad outcome would be even better.
I am an old geezer and don't expect to live long enough to see how all of this
plays out. But I am very optimistic about his program's long term prospects. There is only
one bad outcome, a Trump 48 state sweep, which I consider very unlikely. But most
importantly, the best outcome, his election, and the two least bad outcomes, the D's stealing
the nomination from him or his losing a close general election, all still will require a
decades long commitment to make his program permanent.
Where do people get this? Take a deep breath. Trump may or may not win. But if
he does, the best he can hope for is a skin-of-his-teeth victory. Seriously, he lost the
popular vote by a ton to Hillary freaking Clinton.
And stuff is beginning to crumble around him on the Right. The Dow drops. Oops
Richie Rich gets uneasy.
Hammered by a 5 star general. The Deplorables kids were raised to look up to
generals, not New Yawk dandys. How does this affect them? And it's still
February.
Just an FYI: The five-volume Mommsen "History of Rome" referenced in the text
is available in English on Project Gutenberg, free and legal to download. Probably everyone
here knows this, but just in case
How about Bernie call himself "Roosevelt Democrat" instead of "Democratic
Socialist". It would give all those in the senior demographic a better understanding of what
Sander's policies mean to them as opposed to the scary prospect of the "Socialist"
label.
The Democrats should have been slowly disarming the word "socialist" for at
least the last decade. In principle, it's not difficult – as Michael Hudson says
– "Every economy is a mixed economy" – and in a very real sense everyone's a
socialist (even if only unconsciously). I'm not saying that bit of rhetorical jujitsu would
magically turn conservative voters progressive but you'll never get to the point where you
can defend socialist programs on the merits if you always dodge that fight. It's just a shame
that Bernie Sanders has to do it all in a single election cycle and I don't think choosing a
different label now would help him much.
He could even compare himself to the earlier Roosevelt: Teddy
Roosevelt.
By 1900 the old bourbon Dem party was deeply split between its old, big
business and banking wing – the bourbons – and the rising progressive/populist
wing. It was GOP pres Roosevelt who first pushed through progressive programs like breaking
up railroad and commodity monopolies, investigating and regulating meat packing and
fraudulent patent medicines, etc. Imagine that.
I just finished Stoller's book Goliath and according to him, Teddy
wasn't quite as progressive as we are often led to believe. He wasn't so much opposed to
those with enormous wealth – he just wanted them to answer to him. He did do the things
you mentioned, but after sending the message to the oligarchs, he then became friendly with
them once he felt he'd brought them to heel. He developed quite the soft spot for JP Morgan,
according to Stoller.
TR wanted to be the Boss, the center of attention with everyone looking up to
him. As one of his relatives said, he wanted to be the baby at every christening and the
corpse at every funeral.
I have a sense that changing his party affiliation label at any point in time
since Sanders began running for president in 2016 would be a godsend to his enemies in both
hands of the Duopoly. They'd tar him loudly as a hypocrite without an ounce of integrity,
using personal politics to distract from the issues.
Meanwhile, we can expect to see the Socialist (and Communist, and
Russia-Russia-Russia) nonsense reiterated as long as Sanders has strong visibility. He's
extremely dangerous to both parties and their owners. I don't' believe the DNC will let him
take the convention, but if he does, I'll bet the Dems give him minimal support and hope he
fails–better the devil you know, etc.
It's time to put your money in reality futures by putting all that you can into
supporting Bernie, AOC, etc. and all your local candidates that support at least democratic
socialism and ourrevolution the DSA Justice Dems or other groups that have people but need
money. I was having a conversation with a friend who was complaining that he was getting too
many emails from Bernie asking for money after he had given the campaign a "modest amount".
My suggestion was in honor of his children and grandchildren he should instead GIVE 'TIL IT
FEELS GOOD. My spouse and I, I told him, gave the max to Bernie and now we don't give upset
when he asks for more. There will likely never be a moment like this in history and there may
not be much of a history if things go the wrong way now. He agreed.
Exactly right. I gave Bernie the max in 2019 and will keep giving throughout
2020. This campaign is about not just me, but all of us. It's now. We must fight for this
change as has always been the historical precedent.
I was more than a little honked when Sanders appeared to roll over and
support HRC in 2016 in spite of the obvious fraud perpetrated on him and his supporters, not
to mention the subsequent treatment they received at the hands of the DNC and Tom
Perez.
I am coming to understand that might have been necessary within the context of
one last desperate attempt to work with the Democratic party. But now I find myself
wondering if it wouldn't be a good idea for Sanders and his supporters to make it absolutely
clear their attempts to work within 'the system' are finished if they are robbed again; maybe
even starting work immediately on establishing a party not controlled by Wall Street
lickspittle or knuckle-dragging no-nothings?
Little as it has been the answer has a lot to do with my willingness to pour
more money into repetitively self-defeating behavior.
I am a somewhat old geezer, too, who caucused for Bernie in 2016 and 2020. This
article is very good and helps me understand why I feel the way I do. I was disappointed in
Obama, who didn't follow through on the things I cared about, and I was devastated when
Clinton was crowned the Democratic nominee well before the Convention, all the while holding
onto a smidgen of hope that somehow Bernie would pull through as the
nominee.
I was ecstatic when Bernie announced his candidacy for 2020. He is our only
hope, and now we have a second chance. But now I am spending half my time screaming at people
on tv and online who can't even hear me, and even if they could, they don't give a s–t
what I think. It's Clinton 2.0–same thing all over again, four years later. Just who do
these people (DNC, MSM, and others with a voice) think they are, to decide for the Democratic
voters which candidate will be the nominee, who won't be the nominee, without regard to what
the voters want? They are a bunch of pompous as–s who have some other motive that I am
not savvy enough to understand. Is it about money in their pockets or what?
It should be as simple as this–Bernie is leading in the polls, if they
are to be believed, and good people of all demographics want him to be our next President. He
is a serious contender for the nomination. Show the man some much-earned respect and put
people on MSM and publish articles by writers who help us understand what the anti-Bernie
panic is about and why we shouldn't panic. Help us to explain his plans if he hasn't
explained it thoroughly enough instead of calling him crazy. But to dismiss him as if he has
the plague is not furthering the truth, and it is a serious injustice to the voting public.
Naked Capitalism can't do it alone.
There is a lot of good analysis out there, mainly on Youtube. I particularly
like The Hill's Rising. A young progressive Democrat and a young progressive Republican (who
even knew there was such a thing!) 'splain a lot of the antipathy. Another good source is
Nomiki Konst, who is working on reforming the Dem party from within. Here she talks to RJ
Eskow about how the DNC is structured and how she hopes to provide tools for rank-and-file
Dems to wrest the levers of power from the establishment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ7wm6DCPV4
Private sector cannot operate without same. Harrold
The problem is that the population, including FDR in his time, have been duped
into believing that the private sector REQUIRES government privileges for private depository
institutions, aka "the banks."
So currently we have no truly private sector to speak of but businesses and
industry using the public's credit but for private gain.
Last night's Democracy Now was interesting. Amy seems to be less of a commie
hater than she recently was with her participation in the Russia-Russia-Russia smears against
Trump. She held court last night with Paul Krugman and Richard Wolff discussing just exactly
what "socialism" means. It was a great performance.
Krug seemed a little shellshocked about the whole discussion and he said we
shouldn't even use the term "socialism" at all because all the things Bernie wants are just
as capitalist – that capitalism encompasses socialism. But he stuttered when he
discussed "single-payer" which he claimed he supported – his single payer is like Pete
Buttigieg's single-payer-eventually. He tried to change the subject and Amy brought him
straight back.
Then Wolff, who was in excellent form, informed the table that "socialism" is a
moveable feast because it can be and has been many things for the advancement of societies,
etc. But the term always means the advancement of society. Then Krug dropped a real bomb
– he actually said (this is almost a quote) that recently he had been informed by
Powell that debt isn't really all that important.
Really, Krug said that. And he tried to exetend that thought to the argument
that anybody can provide social benefits – it doesn't require a self-proclaimed
"socialist".
Richard Wolff confronted that slide with pointing out that it hasn't happened
yet – and he left Krug with no excuses. It was quite the showdown. Nice Richard Wolff
is so firmly in Bernie's camp.
Krug looked evasive – and I kept wishing they had invited Steve Keen to
participate.
"... The key promise of neoliberalism, which came to power in the USA in 1980 with the election of Reagan (aka "the Quiet Coup")
was that "the rising tide lifts all boats." -- the redistribution of the wealth up somehow will lift the standard of living of lower
strata of the population too. This was a false promise from the very beginning (like everything about neoliberalism, which is based
on lies and fake economics in any case). So anger accumulated and now became the key factor in elections. This anger is directed against
the neoliberal establishment. ..."
"... The anger toward immigrants is, in fact, a displaced and projected anger against the elimination of meaningful and well-paid
jobs and replacing them with McJobs, the process that was the key factor in lowering the standard of living of the bottom 80% of the
population. ..."
"... The other part of this anger is directed toward the USA financial oligarchy (personified by such passionately hated figures
as Lloyd "we are doing God's" Blankfein, private equity sharks, and figures like Wexner/Epstein) and "political establishment" the key
figures of which many people would like to see hanging from street lamp posts (remember "Lock her up" movement in 2016). ..."
"... That's why the neoliberal establishment was forced to use to dirty tricks like Russiagate to patch the cracks in the neoliberal
façade. ..."
"... In Marxist terms, the USA entered the period called the "revolutionary situation" when the ruling neoliberal elite couldn't
govern "as usual" and "the deplorable" do not want to live "as usual". The situation when according to Hegel, "quantity turns into quality,"
or as Marx said "ideas become a material force when they grip the mind of the masses." ..."
I am old enough to remember when many very serious people ascribed the rise of Donald Trump to economic anxiety. The hypthesis
never fit the facts (his supporters had higher incomes on average than Clinton's) but it has become absurd. The level of self reported
economic anxiety is extraordinarily low
Yet now the Democratic party has an insurgent candidate candidate in the lead. I hasten to stress that I am not saying Sanders
supporters have much in common with Trump supporters (young vs old, strong hispanic support vs they hate Trump etc etc etc). But
both appeal to anger and advocate a radical break with business as usual. Both reject party establishments. Also Warren if a little
bit less so.
Trump's 2016 angry supporters still support him *and* they are still angry. He remains unpopular in spite of an economy performing
very well (and perceived to be performing very well).
Whatever is going on in 2020, it sure isn't economic anxiety.
Yet there is clearly anger and desire for radical change.
I don't pretend to understand it, but I think it probably has a lot to do with relative economic performance and increased
inequality. I can't understand why the reaction of so many Americans to this would be to hate immigrants and vote for Trump,
but, then I don't watch Fox News.
Trump's 2016 angry supporters still support him *and* they are still angry.
Many Trump "angry supporters" in 2016 used to belong to "anybody but Hillary" class (and they included a noticeable percentage
of Bernie supporters, who felt betrayed by DNC) .
They are lost for Trump as he now in many aspects represents the "new Hillary" and the slogan "anybody but Trump" is growing
in popularity. Even among Republicans: Trump definitely already lost a large part of anti-war Republicans and independents. As
well as. most probably, a part of working class as he did very little for them outside of effects of military Keynesianism.
I suspect he also lost a part of military voters, those who supported Tulsi. They will never vote for Trump.
He also lost a part of "technocratic" voters resentful of the rule of financial oligarchy (anti-swampers), as his incompetence
is now an undisputable fact.
He also lost Ron Paul's libertarians, who voted for him in 2016.
How "Coronavirus recession", if any, might affect 2020 elections is difficult to say, but in any case this is an unfavorable
for Trump event.
EMichael , February 25, 2020 10:39 am
"I can't understand why the reaction of so many Americans to this would be to hate immigrants and vote for Trump, but, then
I don't watch Fox News."
Coming to you since 1965. It's just that immigrants are now added to blacks. Trump took 50 years of the Southern Strategy,
took the dogwhistles completely out of the closet and wore his racism right on his chest. Helped that he had over 50 years of
experience as a racist, it came naturally to him.
And he attracted a new rw base, those who were not satisfied with dog whistles and/or did not hear them.
likbez , February 25, 2020 12:19 pm
I don't pretend to understand it, but I think it probably has a lot to do with relative economic performance and increased
inequality.
It is actually very easy to understand: the middle class fared very poorly since 1991. See
https://www.cnbc.com/id/44962589 . Now "the chickens come home
to roost," so to speak.
The key promise of neoliberalism, which came to power in the USA in 1980 with the election of Reagan (aka "the Quiet Coup")
was that "the rising tide lifts all boats." -- the redistribution of the wealth up somehow will lift the standard of living of
lower strata of the population too. This was a false promise from the very beginning (like everything about neoliberalism, which
is based on lies and fake economics in any case). So anger accumulated and now became the key factor in elections. This anger
is directed against the neoliberal establishment.
The anger toward immigrants is, in fact, a displaced and projected anger against the elimination of meaningful and well-paid
jobs and replacing them with McJobs, the process that was the key factor in lowering the standard of living of the bottom 80%
of the population.
The other part of this anger is directed toward the USA financial oligarchy (personified by such passionately hated figures
as Lloyd "we are doing God's" Blankfein, private equity sharks, and figures like Wexner/Epstein) and "political establishment"
the key figures of which many people would like to see hanging from street lamp posts (remember "Lock her up" movement in 2016).
Resentment against spending huge amounts of money for wars for sustaining and enlarging the global USA-centered neoliberal
empire is another factor. In this sense, impoverishment and shrinking of the middle class in the USA is similar to the same impoverishment
during the last days of the British colonial empire.
That's why the neoliberal establishment was forced to use to dirty tricks like Russiagate to patch the cracks in the neoliberal
façade.
In Marxist terms, the USA entered the period called the "revolutionary situation" when the ruling neoliberal elite couldn't
govern "as usual" and "the deplorable" do not want to live "as usual". The situation when according to Hegel, "quantity turns
into quality," or as Marx said "ideas become a material force when they grip the mind of the masses."
In 2016 that resulted in the election of Trump.
Add to this the fact that the neoliberal establishment (represented by both parties) now is clearly anti-social (the fact
that a private equity shark Romney was a presidential candidate and then was elected as senator tells a lot about the level of
degradation) and is unwilling to solve burning problems with medical insurance, minimal wage and other "the New Deal" elements
of social infrastructure.
Democratic Party platform now is to the right of Eisenhower republicans.
That dooms the party candidates like CIA-democrat Major Pete, or "the senator from the credit card companies" Biden,
and create an opening for political figures like Sanders (which are passionately hated by DNC)
Surprising lack on intelligence in intelligence community. But after Brennan and "ruptured"
Pompeo as CIA chiefs who would be surprised?" Or more correctly utter despise of ordinary
Americans: 'nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people' ~ H L
Mencken.
But seriously, if Putin does now have the power to decide US elections, he simply makes his
preferred choice one day before the election. There is no reason to open cards right now. You
could not make this up. What we have now is Government by Gossip and Innuendo with intelligence
crooks on the frontline of spreading the disinformation.
Notable quotes:
"... The PUTIN's aim is to sow distrust among the US population. The USA, a peaceful civilized society with apparently no internal conflicts maintains a similar peaceful empire for the benefit of all humanity. ..."
"... The impersonate evil of the PUTIN has of course every intention to destroy the present state of tranquility and therefore aims to destruct the undisputed peaceful leader of this empire by sowing internal conflict. ..."
"... The concept of democracy was invented by the Kremlin, to sow discord ..."
"... The concept of democracy was invented by the Kremlin, to sow discord ..."
Rather than impersonating Americans as they did in 2016, Russian operatives are working
to get Americans to repeat disinformation , the officials said. That strategy gets around
social media companies' rules that prohibit "inauthentic speech."
It is Bloomberg, working as a Russian operative, who pays the trolls that repeat
disinformation.
The temporary employees recruited by Bloomberg's camp are given the title "deputy field
organizer" and make $2,500 a month to promote his White House bid among their followers .
The employees can choose to use campaign-approved language in their posts.
Twitter said the practice violated its "Platform Manipulation and Spam Policy," which
was established in 2019 to respond to Russia's expansive troll network that was tapped in
2016 to meddle in the U.S. elections.
In that closed hearing for the House Intelligence Committee, lawmakers were also told
that Sanders had been informed about Russia's interference. The prospect of two rival
campaigns both receiving help from Moscow appears to reflect what intelligence
officials have previously described as Russia's broader interest in sowing division in
the United States and uncertainty about the validity of American elections.
Here are Bloomberg's behind the scene machinations which are sowing division and
uncertainty about the validity of American elections. This is exactly what Russia
wants.
Mike Bloomberg is privately lobbying Democratic Party officials and donors allied with
his moderate opponents to flip their allegiance to him -- and block Bernie Sanders --
in the event of a brokered national convention.
...
It's a presumptuous play for a candidate who hasn't yet won a delegate or even appeared
on a ballot. And it could also bring havoc to the convention , raising the prospect of
party insiders delivering the nomination to a billionaire over a progressive populist.
The PUTIN's aim is to sow distrust among the US population. The USA, a peaceful
civilized society with apparently no internal conflicts maintains a similar peaceful
empire for the benefit of all humanity.
The impersonate evil of the PUTIN has of course every intention to destroy the present
state of tranquility and therefore aims to destruct the undisputed peaceful leader of
this empire by sowing internal conflict.
This is why from Sanders to Warren to Gabbard to Bloomberg to Trump everyone is on the
PUTIN payroll or subconsciously exposed to some mind controlling rays he sends via
satellite to the USA.
The PUTIN is the invention by the Russian Federation after their successful evil
attempt to evade the good intentions of the EMPIRE to embrace Russia in its sphere of
peaceful tranquility.
"The prospect of two rival campaigns both receiving help from Moscow appears to
reflect what intelligence officials have previously described as Russia's broader interest
in sowing division in the United States and uncertainty about the validity of American
elections" WaPo, 2/21/20.
This level if clinical delusion is reminiscent of the Führer's last days in the
bunker.
I know, I know, it's a waste of time trying to ridicule the media when they're already
doing that to themselves. Satire is definitely dead when the Washington Post reports about
"two rival campaigns both receiving help from Moscow". WaPo's attempts to explain that the
purpose of this bizarre behavior is "sowing division" makes it look even more incredible.
/div> The concept of democracy was invented by the Kremlin, to sow
discord .
Bloomberg is revealed as having said in public that all the disposable income of the poor
should be taxed away so that they will not have funds with which to do mischief like buying
fast food or sugary drinks.
Bloomberg described Sanders as a Communist who cannot be elected. In this he was
correct.
Bloomberg was described by Warren as a cold-hearted and insulting man who openly scorns
women, gays and minorities.
Mayor Pete mocked Klobuchar for her inability to remember the name of the president of
Mexico. She asked if he was calling her "stupid."
These six dwarves will probably persist in their quest for the brass ring all the way to the
convention. In the mayhem there, the "winner" will probably have to choose one of the "losers"
to be his VP running mate.
At the end of this essay, you may find a song which reasonably applies to Donald Trump
directed to Democrats.
How does one say Adam Schiff without laughing? It's hard to continue typing while
contemplating the Burbank Buffoon. Yet AS is making obscene flatus-like noises about
impeachment 2.0. He and Nervous Nancy will conspire with chief strategist Gerald Nadler about
extending the charges of 1.0 to 2.0.
Second verse
Same as the first
Obstructing leaking by firing leakers. That's one of the pending charges. Leutnant Oberst
Vindman will be help up as the innocent victim of political retaliation. As I understand the
military code of conduct, it says that the underling, Herr Oberst Vindman, went outside the
chain of command and released classified information. In the military this is called
insubordination, perhaps gross insubordination in view of the classified nature of the
information.
Another charge to be filed on behalf of former Ambassador Yovanovich, is that her God-given
Female rights were brutally violated as retaliation of advising Ukrainian officials to
disregard Commander Cheeto.
There is no telling what additional non-crimes may be thrown at the feet at El Trumpo. All
too horrible to contemplate--like someone throwing feces-contaminated dope needles onto Nervous
Nancy's front lawn in Pacific Heights.
If this Shampeachment 2.0 (S2) occurs before November's election, Democrats will become as
rare as dodo birds. If such proponents of S2 persist after the general election, they better
have secure transportation to an extradition-free country.
If it gets bad enough, considering the Clinton Mafia's body count, would it be unreasonable
to expect some untimely heart attacks and suicides with red scarves? On Clintonites? Soros et
al.?
When the first shot and you don't kill the king, flee. But the DNC is going to attempt shot
number 2. Trump WILL NEVER ALLOW A SECOND IMPEACHMENT TO OCCUR, no matter how patently
worthless? Will the most powerful narcissist in the world allow the DNC / coup perpetrators to
escaping Trumpian retribution?
Those doubting the Wrath of Q be prepared to be disabused of the impression that Q is pure
fantasy. Fantasy--like GPS targeting a single small sniper drone to shoot someone from 3000
feet.
Sorry folks. I live in a swamp. I've stepped in shit with my eyes open. Many of you have
too. Some of the excrement was of my own making.
Think about the singularly most effective and complex plot the world has ever seen, called
9/11. Think of the thousands of lives purposefully snuffed in then name of power and money.
Call yourselves serfs--that's a euphemism. You--including me-- are nothing but ants. Goddam
little ants that only Janes respect. There are no ascetic Janes in the penthouses of the
elites.
But I digressed to the mysterious existence of morality in politics as a whole. Today's
topic is more confined to the Democratic nomination.
Statement of Bias: Go Tulsi. Bravo Andy. The rest of you to the elsewhere--yeah, BS too.
The Dems are determined to grasp Defeat from the jaws of Defeat. Quite a trick. Like trying
to borrow money from the Judge during a Bankruptcy trial.
I talked today with a freshman college student majoring in political science about her
thought about the Shampeachment. She hadn't been paying attention. Not that I blame her. Her
college freshman friend watched C-Span; wasn't impressed. We political aficionados know all
about this political debauchery. If AS and NN attempt S2, expect many defections from the
supporting vote.
Democrat respect has dwindled in the Independent sector. This is not to say the Repugnants
are thereby more popular. They aren't. Trump is. Trump need that NH clown to challenge him in
the Repugnant primary to prove exactly how powerful he is. Anybody notice who were in the
audience, sitting nearby during Trump's post acquittal speech. Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham.
The lamb and the lion laying together. They are both on the Trump Train. Even Richard Burr
voted Trump in the impeachment. Mittens feared both his cojones would be excised if he voted
against Trump on both counts. What a chickenheart.
But where are the Dems? Why, they are Here. Yes. Yes. And they are There. Yes. Yes. And they
are Near. Yes. Yes. But....they are Far. Whither thou goest?
I refrain from pointed comments about AOC in further comments. The Squad is the iceberg
floating away from the glacier which spawned it. Unsuitable to warm weather produced by
political combat, the Squad faction will woke themselves up to dubious futures.
Establishment versus Bernie:
Not a contest. Spineless Bernie pretzelizes during first heated combat (which the Dem Debate
Debacles were not). Won't take a second punch--the first during night 3 of the '16 DNC
convention. Fist-shy now. Open Borders? WTF? Are you so nuts? If one offered a person the
choice personal safety in their own homes and streets and free medical care for all--including
the criminal aliens that A New Path Forward proposes--what do you think 85% of the public would
choose?
Pandering.
The Left is also pushing strenuous avoidance of discussing issues in a platitude-depleted
fashion. Yeah, Bernie's giving the same speech, with suitable modification, over 40 years.
Consistency is a good thing, yeh? How about persistently beating your head with a hammer (while
you still can)? Sounds like something Sun Tzu might not recommend.
Now, speaking of Las Vegas and the Nevada Primary. The culinary workers union will not
endorse Bernie due to well-deserved or ill-deserved claims that M4A will abolish hard won union
health benefits. And don't worry, the Shadow will be there, although Buttjiggle has now
disavowed any further connection, along with David Plouffe.
Keeping the Bern off the campaign trail is going to infuriate the Woke Generation / Antifa.
When--not if--the DNC cheats Bernie out of the nomination, if such proves necessary* will
literally result in blood on the streets along with broken windows and flaming tires. Associate
with that lot, eh? Given the choice of going into a biker bar, where brawls are always on the
menu, or a discreet wine bar, which would one rather choose? Sorry, those are your only
choices.
Nancy Pelosi, impressed by Arnold Schwarzenegger's former physical prowess, tears up her
copy of the state of the union address. How decorous. How courteous. How polite. Seen around
the world. Nigel Farage must be laughing his butt off, thinking about the shallow anti-Brexit
campaigns against his were compared to our Coup. Nigel won. Trump . is. winning. Getting tired
of winning yet?
I could go on for pages more of Dem stupidity, but why bother? Stupidity surrounds us.
Betting odds: DNC 1,999,999 to Bernie 1.
Place your bets.
For all the good it will do and I am sincere about this, I will vote Tulsi in the Dem
primary.
Here is the song Dems need to heed. This is Donald Trump telling' y'all I'M NOT YOUR MAN
"... Of course, some may argue that one's class is based largely on her own experience and perspective, but this confuses psychological feelings with concrete social and economic realities. As C. Wright Mills pointed out in his classic study, "White Collar: The American Middle Classes," just because people "are not 'class conscious' at all times and in all places does not mean 'there are no classes' or that 'in America everybody is middle class.' " Although subjective feelings are no doubt important, to accept that everyone who identifies as middle class must be middle class is to disregard objective economic realities. ..."
"... The new middle class flourished until the capitalist class decided to revolt against the legacy of the New Deal toward the end of the 20th century. In the contemporary era, many who would have been middle-class in the postwar years have effectively been proletarianized once again, and economic inequality has returned pre-Great Depression heights. Proletarianization, Mills explained, "refers to shifts of middle-class occupations toward wage-workers in terms of: income, property, skill, prestige or power, irrespective of whether or not the people involved are aware of these changes. Or, the meaning may be in terms of changes in consciousness, outlook, or organized activity." ..."
In America, the term "middle class" has long been used to describe the
majority of wage and salary earners, from those receiving a median annual income of around
$50,000 to those who earn three or four times that amount. Whether Democrat or Republican,
politicians from across the political aisle claim to represent the middle class -- that
vast-yet-amorphous segment of the population where the managers and the managed all seem to fit
together.
The term has always been somewhat problematic when it comes to politics. As Joan C. Williams
observes in her 2017 book, "White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America," a
"central way we make class disappear is to describe virtually everyone as 'middle class.' " The
majority of Americans see themselves as middle class, including those in the top 10% earning
several times the average income. According to Williams, a close friend of hers who
"undoubtedly belonged to the top 1%" once referred to herself as middle class, a perspective
that the author describes as "class cluelessness."
This cluelessness was also evident in a New York Times article last summer
titled "What Middle Class Families Want Politicians to Know," which included interviews with a
number of purportedly middle class families with household incomes of up to $400,000 (only one
of the interviewees earned less than $100,000, with the average around $200,000).
The fact that people who earn a quarter-million dollars annually place themselves in the
same category as those earning $70,000 tells us just how politically useless the term "middle
class" has become in contemporary America. Even when we take into account geographic factors
and fluctuations in the cost of living, there is little rational justification for categorizing
a $60,000-a-year blue-collar worker with a lawyer or doctor earning in excess of $200,000.
Of course, some may argue that one's class is based largely on her own experience and
perspective, but this confuses psychological feelings with concrete social and economic
realities. As C. Wright Mills pointed out in his classic study, "White Collar: The American
Middle Classes," just because people "are not 'class conscious' at all times and in all places
does not mean 'there are no classes' or that 'in America everybody is middle class.' " Although
subjective feelings are no doubt important, to accept that everyone who identifies as middle
class must be middle class is to disregard objective economic realities.
One's class consciousness (or lack thereof) has important implications for one's political
attitudes, and in America class consciousness has always been somewhat lacking compared to
other countries. The United States has never had a true aristocratic class or feudal property
relations like those in Europe, and in the 19th century, the "middle class" essentially
stood for small capitalists and propertied farmers. Between the mid-19th century and mid-20th
century, the country was transformed, in Mills' analysis, from a "nation of small capitalists
into a nation of hired employees" -- a trend that sociologists call "proletarianization."
In the post-World War II era, thanks to the struggle of labor and the policies of the New
Deal, which aimed to reduce inequality and mediate class tensions, many in the working class
became comfortably middle class. In other words, the proletariat turned into a kind of "petty
bourgeois," adopting the same values and attitudes as their employers, while accepting the
status quo after a few adjustments. Ironically, this ended up undercutting more radical labor
movements while preserving the economic system, which eventually came back to bite working
people and their children.
The new middle class flourished until the capitalist class decided to revolt against the
legacy of the New Deal toward the end of the 20th century. In the contemporary era, many who
would have been middle-class in the postwar years have effectively been proletarianized once
again, and economic inequality has returned pre-Great Depression heights. Proletarianization,
Mills explained, "refers to shifts of middle-class occupations toward wage-workers in terms of:
income, property, skill, prestige or power, irrespective of whether or not the people involved
are aware of these changes. Or, the meaning may be in terms of changes in consciousness,
outlook, or organized activity."
The proletarianization of the middle class over the past 50 years has had an enormously
detrimental effect on communities across the country, but it has taken quite a while for many
working people in America to recognize their new situation in terms of consciousness and
outlook. The enduring popularity of the term "middle class" reflects this state of affairs.
In the Democratic primaries, only one candidate has deliberately chosen to use "working
class" over "middle class." Not surprisingly, that candidate is Sen. Bernie Sanders. "I am a
candidate of the working class," Sanders recently declared on Facebook. "I come from the
working class. That is my background, that's who I am. I fought for the working class as a
mayor, a Congressman and a Senator. And that is the kind of president that I will be." Sanders,
whose campaign is 100% grassroots-funded, wrote
in a column last week for the Des Moines Register, " our campaign is focused on making sure
the government stops representing billionaires and start representing us -- the working class
of this country."
Though it may seem like a somewhat trivial distinction, when we look at the rest of the
Democratic field, it's clear that Sanders has indeed distinguished himself from the other top
candidates. For example, Sanders' opponent Joe Biden frequently speaks of the middle class but
rarely the working class. "This country wasn't built by Wall Street bankers and CEOs and hedge
fund managers. It was built by the American middle class," Biden declares on his campaign
website, where he says that the middle class "isn't a number," but a "set of values." (In a way
this is correct, but not in the sense that Biden seems to think.)
On the more progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren's website, where she lists her numerous plans,
one searches in vain for any references to the working class, though there are plenty to the
middle class.
How much this actually matters is, of course, debatable, but the term "working class"
undoubtedly has far more implications and political significance than "middle class," which,
like many overused words in the political lexicon, has lost all meaning. By using "working
class" instead, Sanders appears to be trying to increase class consciousness in America, where
those in the ruling class have often demonstrated the highest level of class consciousness
(never failing to use their abundant resources to protect and advance their own interests).
The more young and working-class people come to recognize their own situation and place in
the 21st century American economy, the more they seem to embrace "socialist" policies that are
rejected by "middle class" sensibilities.
In the Democratic primaries, only one candidate has made raising levels of class
consciousness part of his campaign strategy, and in an election that could very well be
determined by working-class voters, this may be the strategy to defeat Trump.
Many independents will abandon Trump in 2020. Trump lost all anti-war independents faction,
for sure. His openly pro-isreal position will cost him some nationalists.
I think Sanders can knockout Trump by appointing Tulsi as the VP.
Sanders understands (as does Trump), that the 2020 battle is *not* for the 35-40% whose
minds are basically made up at each end. Trying to win those over in any numbers (especially
by shrieking invective at them) is a pathetic waste of time and effort.
The winning message must move the 20-30% of voters who either:
(a) voted Obama (hope, for something more than soothing patter) and then Trump (a giant
stubby middle finger to the establishment).
(b) voted Obama in 2008 but have stayed at home since (what's the point? they're all lying
scum)
Sanders simply doesn't bring socialism to America, because he doesn't have a New Deal
(i.e. SocDem) party. That kind of movement will take time (and the upcoming global
climatolo-economic crisis) to build up, under savage attack from the propertied unterests and
continuously subverted by credentialed PMC weasels and Idpol misleadership grifters.
This last is vitally important, but must also be approached prudently lest the entire
movement lose focus, overextend and fall prey to the next Trump .
IMHO, it must focus ruthlessly on delivering:
(a) single payer health care, to starve (if not incinerate) the bloated ticks gorging on
the US health/elder 'care' . cesspool, I can't bring myself to call it a 'system'. This above
all: without it, Americans simply can't compete in any world, walls and tariffs or not.
(b) *real* infrastructure, for the 80%. That's water and sewerage, cross-class public
housing, and busways and light rail to coax Americans out of their cars and suburbs. It's not
5G, vanity EVs and high speed Acelas. And sorry Keynesians, shovel ready is a side benefit,
not the primary purpose. There's a lot to do.
(c) an overhaul of American higher education (still rooted in 17th century divinity
schools). Teaching (and medicine) must again become honored occupations in the country;
administrators must give way to front line practitioners.
. Only then can Bernie move on to the more deeply embedded and multinational targets:
(a) big finance,
(b) extractive industries
(c) the MIC
These behemoths can really only be attacked during a time of crisis. Or they will simply
crush their opponents like insects, or buy them off.
In the case of the MIC, Berniecrats will likely need to be content with strong reassertion
of Federal oversight (more stick, less carrot), and disengagement from doing our 'allies'
dirty work (Trump is already on that road, with one huge Ixception .)
Total dismantlement sounds very nice, but consider: whatever's left of US industrial power
is concentrated in the MIC. America doesn't need to 'buy prosperity down at the armoury', but
like FDR, Bernie and (Tulsi) will also need to have the keels laid down against whatever
whirlwind we have reaped. Baring our breast and saying 'we deserve destruction for our sins'
is a fatuous open invitation to fascism. FDR knew better.
"... By Paul Adler, Professor of Management and Organization, Sociology and Environmental Studies, University of Southern California. Originally published at The Conversation ..."
Yves here. I wish Sanders would use even more pointed
messaging, like "socialism for the rich". But for those who complain about Sanders not going
after important targets, this slap back at Dimon, who criticized Sanders and socialism at
Davos, shows that the Vermont Senator is landing punches, but choosing his fights carefully.
And banks are much bigger welfare queens than the public realizes. They get all sorts of
subsidies, from underpriced deposit insurance to Federal guaranteed for most home mortgages to
the Fed operating and backstopping the essential Fedwire system. These subsidies are so great
that banks should not be considered to be private sector entities, yet we let them privatize
their profits and socialize their train wrecks.
As we wrote in 2010 :
More support comes from Andrew Haldane of the Bank of England, who in a March 2010 paper compared the banking
industry to the auto industry, in that they both produced pollutants: for cars, exhaust
fumes; for bank, systemic risk. While economists were claiming that the losses to the US
government on various rescues would be $100 billion (ahem, must have left out Freddie and
Fannie in that tally), it ignores the broader costs (unemployment, business failures, reduced
government services, particularly at the state and municipal level). His calculation of the
world wide costs:
.these losses are multiples of the static costs, lying anywhere between one and five
times annual GDP. Put in money terms, that is an output loss equivalent to between $60
trillion and $200 trillion for the world economy and between £1.8 trillion and
£7.4 trillion for the UK. As Nobel-prize winning physicist Richard Feynman observed,
to call these numbers "astronomical" would be to do astronomy a disservice: there are only
hundreds of billions of stars in the galaxy. "Economical" might be a better
description.
It is clear that banks would not have deep enough pockets to foot this bill. Assuming
that a crisis occurs every 20 years, the systemic levy needed to recoup these crisis costs
would be in excess of $1.5 trillion per year. The total market capitalisation of the
largest global banks is currently only around $1.2 trillion. Fully internalising the output
costs of financial crises would risk putting banks on the same trajectory as the dinosaurs,
with the levy playing the role of the meteorite.
Yves here. So a banking industry that creates global crises is negative value added from a
societal standpoint. It is purely extractive . Even though we have described its
activities as looting (as in paying themselves so much that they bankrupt the business), the
wider consequences are vastly worse than in textbook looting.
Back to the current post. As to JP Morgan's socialism versus the old USSR's planned economy,
one recent study which I cannot readily find due to the sorry state of Google offered an
important correction to conventional wisdom.
Recall that Soviet Russia initially did perform extremely well, freaking out the capitalist
world by industrializing in a generation. There was ample hand-wringing as to whether a less
disciplined free enterprise system could compete with a command and control economy. Economists
got a seat at the policy table out of the concern that capitalist economies needed expert
guidance to assure that they could produce both guns and butter.
The study concluded that central planning had worked well in Soviet Russia initially, until
the lower-level apparatchiks started gaming the system by feeding bad information so as to make
their performance look better (for instance, setting way too forgiving production targets, or
demanding more resources than they needed). The paper contended that the increasingly poor
information about what was actually happening on the ground considerably undermined the central
planning process. That is not to say there weren't also likely problems with motivation and
overly rigid bureaucracies. But the evolution of modern corporations, of devaluing and ignoring
worker input and treating them like machines that are scored against narrow metrics, looks as
demotivating as the stereotypical Soviet factory.
Finally, this post conflates socialism, which includes New Deal-ish European style social
democracy, with capitalist systems alongside strong social safety nets, which the public
ownership and provision of goods and services. It should be noted that public ownership has
regularly provided services like utilities very effectively.
By Paul Adler, Professor of Management and Organization, Sociology and Environmental
Studies, University of Southern California. Originally published at
The Conversation
With his Dimon ad, Sanders is referring specifically to the bailouts JPMorgan
and other banks took from the government during the 2008 financial crisis. But accepting
government bailouts and corporate welfare is not the only way I believe American companies
behave like closet socialists despite their professed love of free markets.
In reality, most big U.S.
companies operate internally in ways Karl Marx would applaud as remarkably close to
socialist-style central planning. Not only that, corporate America has arguably become a
laboratory of innovation in socialist governance, as I show in
my own research .
Closet Socialists
In public, CEOs like
Dimon attack socialist planning while defending free markets.
But inside JPMorgan and most other big corporations, market competition is subordinated to
planning. These big companies often contain dozens of business units and sometimes thousands.
Instead of letting these units compete among themselves, CEOs typically direct a strategic
planning process to ensure they cooperate to achieve the best outcomes for the corporation
as
a whole .
This is just how a socialist economy is intended to operate. The government would conduct
economy-wide planning and set goals for each industry and enterprise, aiming to achieve the
best outcome for society as a whole.
And just as companies rely internally on planned cooperation to meet goals and overcome
challenges, the U.S. economy could use this harmony to overcome the existential crisis of our
age – climate change. It's a challenge so massive and urgent that it will require
every part of the economy to work together with government in order to address it.
Overcoming Socialism's Past Problems
But, of course, socialism doesn't have a good track record.
One of the reasons socialist planning failed in the old Soviet Union, for example, was that
it was so top-down
that it lacked the kind of popular legitimacy that democracy grants a government. As a result,
bureaucrats overseeing the planning process could not get reliable information about the real
opportunities and challenges experienced by enterprises or citizens.
Moreover, enterprises had little incentive to strive to meet their assigned objectives,
especially when they had so little involvement in formulating them.
A second reason the USSR didn't survive was that its authoritarian system
failed to motivate either workers or entrepreneurs. As a result, even though the government
funded basic science generously, Soviet industry was a laggard in
innovation .
Ironically, corporations – those singular products of capitalism – are showing
how these and other problems of socialist planning can be surmounted.
Take the problem of democratic legitimacy. Some companies, such as
General Electric , Kaiser Permanente
and General Motors ,
have developed innovative ways to avoid the dysfunctions of autocratic planning by using
techniques that enable
lower-level personnel to participate actively in the strategy process.
Although profit pressures often force top managers to short-circuit the promised
participation, when successfully integrated it not only provides top management with more
reliable bottom-up
input for strategic planning but also makes all employees more reliable partners in carrying it out.
So here we have centralization – not in the more familiar, autocratic model, but
rather in a form I call "participative centralization." In a socialist system, this approach
could be adopted, adapted and scaled up to support economy-wide planning, ensuring that it was
both democratic and effective.
As for motivating innovation, America's big businesses face a challenge similar to that of
socialism. They need employees to be collectivist, so they willingly comply with policies and
procedures. But they need them to be simultaneously individualistic, to fuel divergent thinking
and creativity.
One common solution in much of corporate America, as in the old Soviet Union, is to
specialize those roles ,
with most people relegated to routine tasks while the privileged few work on innovation tasks.
That approach, however, overlooks the creative capacities of the vast majority and leads
to widespread employee disengagement and sub-par business performance.
Smarter businesses have found ways to overcome this dilemma by creating cultures and reward
systems that support a synthesis of individualism and collectivism that I call "interdependent
individualism." In my research, I have found this kind of motivation in settings as diverse as
Kaiser Permanent
physicians , assembly-line workers at Toyota's NUMMI
plant and software
developers at Computer Sciences Corp . These companies do this, in part, by rewarding both
individual contributions to the organization's goals as well as collaboration in achieving
them.
While socialists have often recoiled
against the idea individual performance-based rewards, these more sophisticated policies could
be scaled up to the entire economy to help meet socialism's innovation and motivation
challenge.
Big Problems Require Big Government
The idea of such a socialist transformation in the U.S. may seem remote today.
But this can change, particularly as more Americans, especially young ones,
embrace socialism . One reason they are doing so is because the current capitalist system
has so manifestly failed to deal with climate change.
Looking inside these companies suggests a better way forward – and hope for society's
ability to avert catastrophe.
Just to add, as a former bank and buy side lobbyist, the industry is not always opposed to
regulation. It's a barrier to entry.
This post is on the money. Banksters and their clients love corporate welfare and
socialism for the rich, especially when so much of, for example, UK QE "leaked" into asset
bubbles in emerging markets, commodities and real estate.
You are right to say that Sanders should use more pointed language. Like Nina Turner, he
should call out oligarchs. That term is used for Russians and Ukrainians, but never for the
likes of Zuckerberg, Musk, Dimon, Blankfein, Schmidt, Branson, Dyson, Arnault et al. The term
regime should also be used. If it's good enough to delegitimise certain governments, it's
good enough to describe the Trump and Johnson administrations. After all, William Hague in
talks with the US government called the British government the Brown regime.
Feynman and Haldane are mentioned above. It emerged this week that Dominic Cummings,
Johnson's main adviser, is an admirer of both, regarding them as free thinkers and
technicians of substance, and championed Haldane's candidacy to be Bank of England governor.
Johnson sided with Chancellor Sajid Javid.
Sanders should use more pointed language or may be not for the moment. May be after the
Super Tuesday. He is being careful and that is good IMO. He doesn't want to give excuses for
easy attacks. I would say, instead of "socialism for the rich", "socialism for the 1%" or the
0,1% even better. Sounds more neutral. A comment yesterday linked an article comparing
Sanders with Gandhi and others and I think it was well pointed. The quiet and careful
revolution!
Sanders understands (as does Trump), that the 2020 battle is *not* for the 35-40% whose
minds are basically made up at each end. Trying to win those over in any numbers (especially
by shrieking invective at them) is a pathetic waste of time and effort.
The winning message must move the 20-30% of voters who either:
(a) voted Obama (hope, for something more than soothing patter) and then Trump (a giant
stubby middle finger to the establishment).
(b) voted Obama in 2008 but have stayed at home since (what's the point? they're all lying
scum)
Sanders simply doesn't bring socialism to America, because he doesn't have a New Deal
(i.e. SocDem) party. That kind of movement will take time (and the upcoming global
climatolo-economic crisis) to build up, under savage attack from the propertied unterests and
continuously subverted by credentialed PMC weasels and Idpol misleadership grifters.
This last is vitally important, but must also be approached prudently lest the entire
movement lose focus, overextend and fall prey to the next Trump .
IMHO, it must focus ruthlessly on delivering:
(a) single payer health care, to starve (if not incinerate) the bloated ticks gorging on
the US health/elder 'care' . cesspool, I can't bring myself to call it a 'system'. This above
all: without it, Americans simply can't compete in any world, walls and tariffs or not.
(b) *real* infrastructure, for the 80%. That's water and sewerage, cross-class public
housing, and busways and light rail to coax Americans out of their cars and suburbs. It's not
5G, vanity EVs and high speed Acelas. And sorry Keynesians, shovel ready is a side benefit,
not the primary purpose. There's a lot to do.
(c) an overhaul of American higher education (still rooted in 17th century divinity
schools). Teaching (and medicine) must again become honored occupations in the country;
administrators must give way to front line practitioners.
. Only then can Bernie move on to the more deeply embedded and multinational targets:
(a) big finance,
(b) extractive industries
(c) the MIC
These behemoths can really only be attacked during a time of crisis. Or they will simply
crush their opponents like insects, or buy them off.
In the case of the MIC, Berniecrats will likely need to be content with strong reassertion
of Federal oversight (more stick, less carrot), and disengagement from doing our 'allies'
dirty work (Trump is already on that road, with one huge Ixception .)
Total dismantlement sounds very nice, but consider: whatever's left of US industrial power
is concentrated in the MIC. America doesn't need to 'buy prosperity down at the armoury', but
like FDR, Bernie and (Tulsi) will also need to have the keels laid down against whatever
whirlwind we have reaped. Baring our breast and saying 'we deserve destruction for our sins'
is a fatuous open invitation to fascism. FDR knew better.
Paul Adler's post here reminds me of John Kenneth Galbraith's New Industrial State, except
Professor Adler was referring to the financial (i.e. parasitical) sector of the economy. Am I
off the mark in thinking this?
You're right on. Galbraith showed that planning comes naturally from very large projects.
Soviets went to planning because they couldn't bet the entire national economy on some gut
feeling -- they needed to know what would happen. Ditto the gigantic industries in what JKG
called the Planning Sector in the west. Projects spending millions or billions of dollars
over many years couldn't be left to chance. Eliminating chance meant imposing control, which
the gigantic industries could try to do, helped by their access to gigantic capital, and
which the Soviets had done with State power.
IMHO the modern FIRE sector arose from the old Planning Sector. They eliminated the
uncertainties that complicated their planning; they cut their ties with physical processes
that brought those uncertainties; they dumped physical industries onto throwaway economies
overseas (that could be abandoned if they failed); they finally became pure businesses that
dealt only with nice, clean contracts. No muss, no fuss, no bother.
So planning is a tool of any organization, yet is required more the larger it becomes?
While planning may make sense for a company with a single product such as automobiles, does
it make sense for a conglomerate? I mean I think the purpose of a conglomerate is to contain
many diverse product sectors to reduce risk of the conglomerate as a whole to any one sector.
In that way each sector does its own planning, but the conglomerate as a whole does not,
apart from choosing which companies to buy and sell, which can be considered a different type
of planning? In that way are the goals of society planning are different from the goals of
conglomerate planning or that of smaller single product sector companies? Yet in spite of
these differences the techniques of planning are the same? Is that the main point of Alder's
article? Can someone explain please.
If you surf around a bit you can find links to Bernie's views and support of worker
co-ops. There is nothing on his website. In light the burgeoning Socialist smear tsunami, it
is probably not something he wants to emphasize right now. Imagine someone getting up at a
CNN Town Hall and asking him about his attitude towards worker cooperatives. (corporate heads
explode on golf-courses all over America)
Modern theses about leadership, expertise and management underline agile learning and self
leadership to everyone himself and within team and then within larger entities. While I'm
somewhat pessimistic about these corporate trends they still look like they would work much
better with worker co-ops than in traditional top down owned corporations. Basically they are
asking higher dedication from workers, but this only works really well if the profits are
shared with workers in somewhat equitable manner in my opinion.
Also it seems common nowadays that many coding/programming companies, especially the
highly productive ones seem to act more akin to co-ops than monolithically led traditional
companies. The programmers are often engaged more to the company by giving or selling them
shares, and if this happens in large scale the company ownership structure can skew more
towards worker owned 'co-op'-like entity than more hierarchical traditional company, where
owners and workers are usually clearly separated.
Be nice if one could have posted the Forbes 400 but, listed next to each entry, is the
amount of money that they receive from the Federal government both directly and
indirectly.
Yves here. So a banking industry that creates global crises is negative value added
from a societal standpoint. It is purely extractive. [bold in the original]
Which leads to this obvious question: Why should banks be privileged, explicitly or
implicitly, in any way then?
E.g. why should we have only a SINGLE payment system (besides grubby physical fiat, paper
bills and coins) that recklessly combines what should be inherently risk-free deposits with
the inherently at-risk deposits the banks themselves create? I.e. why should a government
privileged usury cartel hold the entire economy hostage?
If you mean "why" in the moral sense, which I believe you do, there is no answer.
If you mean why in the technical sense, examine this sentence:
>why should a government privileged usury cartel
It's not "government privileged", it owns the government. Anything the government is
allowed to do outside of making Jamie Dimon et al richer are considered the actual privileges
by this group, and can, will and have been retracted at will.
If the banks cognitively "own" the government, it's because almost everyone believes TINA
to government privileges for them.
This is disgracefully true of the big names of MMT, who should be working on HOW to
abolish those privileges, not ignore or, in the case of Warren Mosler at least, INCREASE*
them.
*e.g. unlimited, unsecured loans from the Central Bank to banks at ZERO percent.
That neither extreme, capitalism or socialism, works, and that what is best for human
society is some middle ground between the two is a very important message. So I'm very glad
for this post. I realize that a black and white way of perceiving the world is an easy one.
Yet as Alder points out, humans are both individuals and social beings. If people in this
world could get back to thinking more like Ancient Greece in its appreciation for the golden
mean, we would have a much better chance of surviving. Dispensing with all these useless
socialism vs capitalism discussions would be a great time saver. I realize most people
believe in some middle ground, yet making it explicit would simplify things quite a bit. As
for the rest of the article, I need to think about it more. The corporate socialism idea does
tie in with the link yesterday about limited liability.
>That neither extreme, capitalism or socialism, works,
Exactly! Because: There. Is. No. Economic. Equilibrium. Never was, never will be, anywhere
and everywhere. Heck for billions of years, before humans existed let alone learned to talk,
the world changed. Things developed, other things went extinct (although not in the
heart-wrenching way of the Anthropocene, I personally am happy never to have met a T. Rex in
truth), the way the world works even without us is continual change.
So adjust as necessary. Our healthcare system sucks, bring full bore socialism on it. Our
corporate overlords suck, bring full bore free markets (kill patents to start) on them.
You might want to re-think the "kill patents" idea. Our Founders liked them. I just had a
patent "killed" by an examiner who "killed" 42 of 43 patents he examined. It was for a device
which could be saving Corona/Flu victims Right Now. I am going to try to Donate the idea to
Society, but preventing people from profiting from valid Novel ideas is not the solution. I
realize Corporations abuse the Patent System, like every other thing they touch. But I am a
low level individual who is trying to "innovate" and reduce illness. My main motivation was
not monetary but it is always a factor.
I believe you have the wrong target on this issue.
My first rejection on a related patent was just received 2.5 years after initial filing. It
took this long because the Govt. takes money from USPTO (which runs a surplus) and sends it
to the General Fund. USA innovation friendly? Not the way I see it.
"But for those who complain about Sanders not going after important targets "
Consider the wisdom of Susan Webber:
"Wisdom of the CEO is comprimised work. These CEOs "know" that too much candor,
either individually or institutionally, is not a pro-survival strategy."
I think the comparison of banks to welfare queens is quite unfair.
To welfare queens, that is.
Assuming they exist outside of the sweaty PR fantasies of those of a certain political
stripe, presumably even a welfare queen is not living 100% off of the munificence of the
state, whereas the implied value of the "Too Big To Fail" guaranty subsidy was determined to
be very nearly in the same amount as the annual profits of the recipient banks. In other
words, they're complete wards of the state. Doesn't get much more socialistic than that.
Thank you, Yves for this post. Alder has very logical and accessible ideas.
"Interdependent Individualism" is a good way to begin. When he says "socialists recoil
against individual performance-based rewards" I can't help but think the rewards should be
gifted from the workers to the bosses. Because that would be very change-promoting. Top down
has a tendency to stagnate motivation – even offensively – like tossing them a
few crumbs to keep them quiet. imo. This also really does sound Japanese. I'm not sure I can
relate to the way they cooperate; from them there is not so much as a polite argument;
certainly no sarcastic barbs. Americans are the exact opposite – we cooperate
competitively in a sense. But Climate Change will dictate our direction regardless of
decorum. My own sense of our dilemma is that "free market" corporations make their profits by
extracting from labor and the exploitation of the environment, and by externalizing costs to
society. Big disconnect. Huge, in fact. This is why "capitalism" has failed to address
climate change. Anybody else notice that China has forbidden short selling as we speak? Just
like the Fed did in 2009 with QE, etc. That's probably because if the economy crashes
(regardless of how illogical it has become) it will take way too long to put back together.
And there's work to be done. I remember Randy Wray dryly responding to Jacobin's criticism
(of MMT) that the ideological socialists would rather see a bloody Marxist uprising than a
peaceful evolution. I do think Wray is right on ideological blinders on both sides. One
quibble I have with this very wise post is that it assumes (I think) that we cannot change
our ways fast enough to mobilize adequately to address climate change. I think we've been
doing it pretty aggressively since 2009. Literally a world war to control oil and maintain
financial supremacy; serious consideration of our options by the political class (turning to
MMT, etc.); slamming the breaks on trade and manufacturing; subsidizing essential industries.
I'm sure there are other things going on under the radar. So I wouldn't discount our ability
to mobilize – just our inability to admit it. Clearly we want to do things
selectively.
>the Vermont Senator is landing punches, but choosing his fights carefully.
Yes, as Objective Function laid out nicely (funny word for this mess, but whatever) above
– this isn't gonna be easy. If you hope to beat Mike Tyson in his prime, you don't
start by trading heavy blows. Defeat him with small but continuous cuts from multiple
directions.
" senior leaders of three of the largest and most elite U.S. banks were serial criminals
whose frauds are (we pray) without equal." -- William K. Black
Wallstreet on parade website does great job laying out JPM's crime spree. They (JPM) just
came off parole(?) in January on some Felony charges. Someone (Eliz. Warren?) might start a
movement to prohibit public pensions / State and local Govts. from conducting business with
any banks convicted of felonies or entering plea agreements more than, let's say, ten per
year.
A convicted felon can not get a job at a bank run by a 22 times loser- Jamie Dimon, a fellow
felon who should have some empathy.
Wallstreet on parade is one of few sites who discuss Citi's crimes, and the fact that the
Federal Reserve tried to cover up (and succeeded until about 2012) the secret 2.5 TRILLIION
in revolving loans provided to a bankrupt Citibank around 2009. This in addition to the
hundreds of billions we did know about.
I do tend to harp on this because the felon Robert Rubin cost me about 500K in expired Put
options on shittybank because of his blatant, felonious (per FCIC) lies right before the
implosion. His referral for prosecution by the Financial Crises Inquiry Commission
mysteriously withered away
1. What's going on right now with Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton is the beginning of
sticking the knife back into Bernie's back. These two played a major role in doing that in
2016, and now they're getting the band back together again. Okay, that's no mystery.
The real question is, What are Bernie supporters and those who (one way or another) support
the Democrats, going to do about it? When and if Warren and Clinton succeed in taking Bernie
down–and of course Biden and the Obamas are onboard for this, as well–will
Democrats (and Dem-supporting "leftists," etc.) be so blinded by TDS that they'll just
say,
"Oh well, we still have to vote for " Warren, Biden, etc.?
I think this runs parallel to what some have said about "letting the CIA help with the
impeachment"–it's truly delusional, reactionary stuff. Likewise, people getting in a huff
because "Bernie called her a liar on national television." No problem, apparently, that Warren
first called Bernie a liar. Even more, no problem that Warren's whole life and career is based
on a lie–a lie that, even now, she justifies with bullshit about how she "just loves her
family so much." Indeed, Hillary's intervention in the following days was very likely intended
to take attention away from Warren's attack on Sanders, as well as, of course, to once again
put HRC out there as the potential savior at the convention.
It seems to me that the lesson here is that, if Bernie doesn't get the nomination, no other
candidate (from among the frontrunners) is acceptable, especially because of the role they will
have played in taking down Bernie and his movement.
I have two basic reasons for hoping Sanders can get the nomination and that there could be a
Trump/Sanders election:
i. For Sanders to get the nomination there will have to be a very
strong, dedicated, and focused movement, which will essentially have to defeat the
powers-that-be in the Democratic Party and in whatever one wants to call the agglomeration of
power mechanisms that form the establishment and the State. Sanders will have to do what Trump
did with the Republican Party in 2016, except with Sanders and the power structures he will be
up against (and with which he is more compromised than Trump ever was), this will be much, much
harder. I really don't think it can happen -- and we're seeing major moves in this effort
toward eliminating Bernie just in the week that has passed since I started writing this.
However, this does mean that, if Bernie can build (much further) and lead the movement to
seriously address these power structures, and even beat them in some significant ways, then
something tremendous will have been accomplished -- "the harder they come, the harder they
fall," or at least I hope so. ii. Despite what you and many others say and (I feel) are a bit
too desperate to think, Sanders does have some things in common with Trump, at least
thematically -- and a lot of my arguments in my articles have to do with the importance of
these themes being out there, in a way that they never would have been with any other
Republican, Hillary Clinton or any of the other current frontrunners besides Sanders, and any
of the other media with the very important exceptions of Tucker Carlson, Steve Hilton, and
perhaps a couple others on Fox News (perhaps Laura Ingram) -- and this is not only something
that the anti-Trumpers absolutely hate, they hate it so much that they can't even think about
it.
That is, Trump and Sanders have in common that they 1) profess that they want to do things
that improve the lives of ordinary working people, and 2) profess that they want to draw back
militarism.
What I emphasize is that these terms would not even be on the table if it weren't for Trump
-- and yes, to some extent if it weren't for Bernie, but there is a way in which Bernie can
only be out there at all because Trump has put these things on the table.
A lot of blowback against my articles has been against my argument that getting these terms
and the discourse around them on the table is very important, a real breakthrough, and a
breakthrough that both clarifies the larger terms of things and disrupts the "smooth
functioning" (I take this from Marcuse) of the neoliberal-neoconservative compact around
economics and military intervention.
Okay, maybe I'm right about this importance, maybe I'm not -- that's an argument I've dealt
with extensively in my articles and that I'll try to deal with definitively in further writing
-- but certainly a very important part of not letting Sanders be taken down by the other
frontrunners (and HRC, and other nefarious forces, with Warren playing a special "feminist" and
Identity Politics role here -- a role that does nothing to help, and indeed does much to hurt,
ordinary working people of all colors, genders, etc.) will be to further sharpen the general
understanding of the importance of these themes.
Significantly, there is a third theme which has emerged since the unexpected election of
Donald Trump -- unexpected at least by the establishment and the nefarious powers (though they
were thinking of an "insurance policy"); on this theme, I don't know that Sanders can do much
-- working with the Democratic Party, he is too implicated in this issue, and he does not have
whatever "protection" Trump has here.
What I am referring to are those nefarious powers behind the establishment and the ruling
class, and that have taken on a life of their own -- I don't mind calling this the Deep State,
but one can just think about the "intelligence community" and especially the CIA.
Whatever -- the point is that Trump has had to call them out and expose them in ways that
they obviously do not like, and also his agenda of a world where the U.S. gets along
well-enough with China and Russia at least not to risk WWIII, or, perhaps more realistically,
not to tip the balance of things such that Russia goes completely over to a full alliance with
China, a "Eurasian Union," which both Putin and Xi have spoken about, is not to their
liking.
Whether Sanders would call out these nefarious factors if he were in a position to do so, I
don't know -- I don't have great confidence that he would -- but it is also the case that he is
not in a position to do so, these powers can easily dispose of Sanders in ways that they
haven't been able to, so far, with Trump.
If one does think these themes are important, especially the first two (with further
discussion reserved regarding the powers-behind-the-powers), then I wish that Trump-haters
would open their minds for a moment and think about what it apparently takes in our social
system to even begin to get these themes on the table.
In any case, regarding Sanders, the movement he is building will have to go even further
with the first two themes if Sanders is nominated, and at least go some distance in taking on
the third theme. This applies even more if Sanders were to be elected. (This is where you might
take a look at the 1988 mini-series, A Very British Coup -- except that how things go down in
the U.S. will not be so "British.") Here again, though, if Sanders is to build a movement that
can openly address these questions, this will be tremendous, a great thing.
So this is it in a nutshell: If Sanders were to be nominated, then there is the possibility,
which everyone ought to work to make a reality, that we could have an election based around the
questions, What can be done to improve the lives of ordinary working people?, and, What can be
done to curb militarism and end the endless interventions and wars?
Antonym ,
Bernie is a nice guy – too nice: no match for the shark pools from Fairfax county,
Lower Manhattan or the Clinton clan . The 2016 DNC candidate selection revelations proved
this.
The only untainted strong Democratic candidate is Tulsi Gabbard, but she has all
Establishments against her.
Fair dinkum ,
Since Reagan's Presidency, all US elections have been about rearranging the deck chairs on
the Titanic.
The ship may be sinking slowly, but the outcome will be the same.
I'd say it was long before Ronnie got elected to office. Remember it was Carter and Zyb who
got involved in the imperial quick sand of Afghanistan (mixing metaphors here) that is after
being run out of 'Nam by a bunch of angry natives who had gotten tired of America "being a
force for good" by reining "freedom and democracy" on them from the bomb bays of B 52s which
I think is going to a be similar situation to what will soon happen in Iraq if we dawdle too
long.
Elections have in reality become all pomp with no circumstance. Flip a coin and it always
comes up heads. It's a stacked deck that public are asked to play every two years thinking
the odds are in their favor when it never really is. Might as well head to Vegas following
the dusty trail of Hunter S Thompson.
Charlotte Russe ,
It's not all that complicated Obama laid the groundwork ensuring Bernie's defeat when he
interfered in deciding who would Chair the DNC. Tom Perez was Obama's pick. Bernie wanted
Keith Ellison. Perez guaranteed neoliberal centrist Dems would maintain control. Tom Perez
didn't disappoint– his nominations for the 2020 Democratic Convention standing
committees are a like a who's who of centrism. Most of the folks on this "A list" would fit
quite nicely in the Republican Party.
Bernie a FDR Democrat, is considered too radical by the wealthy who enjoy their Trumpian
tax cuts and phony baloney stock market profits. If Trump, was just a bit less crude and not
so overtly racist he'd be perfectly acceptable. Bernie, who thinks the working-poor are
entitled to a living wage, healthcare, a college education, and clean drinking water is
anathema to the affluent liberals who like everything just the way it is. They long for the
Obama days when two wars were quietly expanded to seven, when the Wall Street crooks got a
pass, and when health insurance lobbyists had their way with the federal government–the
CIA was absolutely ecstatic with Obama. Trump was a bit of a speed bump for the security
state, but nothing really threatening as he stuffed the pockets of the arms industry and the
surveillance state with billions of working-class tax dollars. The Orangeman is having a few
internecine battles with the intelligence agencies, but in the end they thoroughly had their
way with the buffoon.
Bernie on the other hand, is a bit more complex. He can't be as easily attacked. Of
course, the mainstream media news has all the usual Corbyn tricks in their bag, and Bernie
could fall to the wayside like Corbyn if he's incapable of unapologetically fighting back.
Bernie's working-class supporters want to see him give his attackers the one-two-punch and
knock them out before the DNC Convention.
If Bernie manages to win numerous primaries the threat won't come from Warren or Hillary
that's so 2016. The new insidious "Bernie enemy" is billionaire Bloomberg. Who is waiting in
the wings If Biden takes a deep dive, Daddy Warbucks will make a play to cause a brokered
convention. And that's when Perez and his Republican/Dems will takedown Bernie. Bernie's
followers MUST come out swinging and not capitulate like they did last time. They have to
force the issue, create a stir and threaten to abandon the Dems to start a Workers Third
Party. Young progressives have this one big shot at making a difference, and they can't allow
themselves to be sheepdogged into voting for another neoliberal who's
intent on maintaining the status quo. Remember, if you don't move forward you're actually
moving backward into planetary ecocide.
Here's one from Whitney implying that they needn't worry because plans are in the works to
install King Cyrus II as the permanent ruler with the help of his Zionist friends in the
Department of Hebrew Security:
Even so it looks like Trump has decided to get rid of us noninterventionist and antiwar
naysayers by fully bringing in the Dispensationalist Armageddon rapture embracing nut jobs
who stand with the Talmudic genocidal racists in Israel who believe that Jesus Christ is
boiling for an eternity in excrement and that his mother Mary was a whore:
we have witnessed in the UK the defamation of Corbyn the ' Left Disrupter ' as he wanted
to throw back the normal state of political play.
He and the well meaning Labour Party was headed off at the pass.
We have to remember that the Ruling Class have to have fall back positions and that Biden
is better than Bernie as is Warren and so on.
It appears to me that the DNC also has its fallback positions too and Bernie will be
chopped by the Super Delegates once again on the altar of ' electabilty ' ( read any form of
Socialism – American or British is not acceptatble to the PTB ) and that is how it may
end.
The battle at the moment in the UK Labour Party is which leader will back up and support
extra Parliamentary action in resistance to this very right wing Tory government?
In the US the thing is the same if Bernie doesn't get the nomination.
Personally I would think that he would be a plus ( despite his foreign policy views ) but
remember that Trump was a maverick Republican yet I'm not sure that Sanders would veer over
to that position.
If he did then the " action " part of the steep learning curve would have to kick in to
defend him and more to the point his genuinely progressive policies.
In the UK now Corbyn as the personification of ' Socialist ' threat is no longer
doorstepped by the British media.
Instead the installation of a Leftish Centrist by the media ( i.e. a person that is -no
threat to the existing order ) is a requirement.
This is all under the guise of a " Strong Opposition " to the right wing government.
Warren – not Biden seems to be that kind of favourite for the Ruling Class should
Trump fall.
We had Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair – you in the US will get Warren.
I wish Bernie and his backers weel but I don't see it happening.
Maybe Tulsi Gabbard in another 4 years?
She and AOC are very good But this is not their time.
Not yet.
Richard Le Sarc ,
When I think of how Corbyn refused to fight back against ENTIRELY mendacious and filthy
vilification as an 'antisemite', I think it might be possible that the MOSSAD told him that
if he resisted he might end up, dead in his bath, like John Smith.
bevin ,
Where the world weary gather to tell us how they have been let down.
Bill nails it here:
" i. For Sanders to get the nomination there will have to be a very strong, dedicated, and
focused movement, which will essentially have to defeat the powers-that-be in the Democratic
Party and in whatever one wants to call the agglomeration of power mechanisms that form the
establishment and the State. Sanders will have to do what Trump did with the Republican Party
in 2016, except with Sanders and the power structures he will be up against (and with which
he is more compromised than Trump ever was), this will be much, much harder ."
Anyone who believes that elections, as such, lead to great changes needs a keeper. And one
who can read the US Constitution aloud for preference.
But this is not to say that at a time like this-and there have been very few of them in US
history- when there is the possibility of a major candidate challenging some of the bases of
the ruling ideology-albeit by doing little more than running on a platform of refurbished
Progressivism- there is really no excuse for not insisting that the challenge be made and the
election played out.
Sanders is not just challenging the verities of neo-liberalism but, implicitly undermining
the political consensus that has supported the Warfare State since 1948.
The thing about Bernie is that he is authenticated by the enemies that he has enrolled
against him and the dramatic measures that they are taking against him. Among those enemies
are the Black Misleadership Class, and the various other faux progressives who are revealing
themselves to be last ditch defenders of the MIC, Israel- AIPAC is now 'all in' in Iowa and
New Hampshire- and the Insurance industry. It is an indication of the simplicity of Bernie's
political task that no section of Congress gives more support to the Healthcare scammers than
the representatives of the community most deprived by the current system. If he manages to
get through to the people and persuade them that he will fight for Free Healthcare for all
and other basic and long overdue social and economic reforms he can break the hold that the
political parties have over a system everyone understands is designed to make the rich-who
own both parties- richer and the great majority poorer. That has been the way that things
have been going in the USA for at least 45 years.
Here's the point you've missed here Bill and that Bernie had a mass appeal to the
Independents that is until he sold out to the "Democratic" establishment which out of the two
parties has to be the least democratic since it adopted the elitist and plutocratic Super
Delegate system that can ride roughshod over the actual democratic will of the voters.
Of course a cosmetic change has been made that these delegates aren't allowed to vote
until the Convention but as I said it is "cosmetic" since that was originally the way this
undemocratic system was set up in the "Democratic" party until Hillary Clinton used it as a
psychological weapon during that sham called a "primary" to convince the hoi polo that her
nomination or more accurately coronation was already a foregone conclusion.
There is also another factor that most voters are not aware of and that is the so called
"Democratic" party has come up with a dictatorial "by law" that can nullify the result of the
primary if the candidate isn't considered "democratic" enough by the Chairman of the DNC
which in Bernie's case is very possible since technically he is an Independent running as a
"Democrat". This is what Lee Camp the "Nuclear Option".
Personally I gave up on Bernie after he sold out and shilled for that warmongering harpy
Hillary who if elected would accept it as a mandate to launch WW III while ironically trying
to convince us all that the "noninterventionist", "antiwar" candidate was actually the
greater of the two evils.
Yeah right.
Anyway no longer have any faith in the two party system. As far as I'm concerned they can
both go to hell. I've already made my choice:
He probably needs to adjust his message more to appeal to those of us who tend to be more
Libertarian and is not exactly a Russell Means but with a little help from the American
Indian Movement and others can probably "triangulate" his appeal to cover a broader political
spectrum. Instead of what has been traditionally known as the "left".
Greg Bacon ,
After Obama, the golden liar and mass-murderer and now Tubby the Grifter, another liar and
mass-murderer, I have no desire to vote in 2020, unless Tulsi is on the ticket.
If Sanders is smart and survives another back-alley mugging by the DNC and the Wicked
Witch of the East, and gets the nod, he'll take on Tulsi–Mommy–as his VP.
If he does that, then Trump, Jared the Snake and Princess Bimbo will have to find another
racket in 2021.
Yeah Trumpenstein is a far cry from the Silver Tongued Devil O-Bomb-em. Even so both of them
sold us a bill of goods that neither of them delivered on.
But hey that's politics in America at least since Neoliberal prototype Wilson which is lie
your ass off until you get elected at least.
Willem ,
Much magical thinking here.
If we act now and support Sanders things will change for the better?
I surely hope so, but hope and change is soo 2008.
And if the Hildebeast enters the race, life on earth will end?
Don't think so.
Perhaps we should do this different this time. Get away from the identity politics, look
what is really needed, and demand for that, not caring about 'leadership'. You know, French
yellow vests style. Actually if you look a little bit outside of the MSM bubble, you see
demonstrations and people demanding better treatment from the government and corporations
everywhere.
The US 2020 elections, will be a nothing burger I predict. Like all elections are nothing
burgers and if they are not they will fake it, or call it 'populism' that needs to be stopped
(and will be stopped).
I would have voted Sanders though, if I could vote for Sanders, Similar as I would have
voted for Corbyn if I could have voted for Corbyn. Voting is a tic, a habit, an addiction
that is difficult to get rid of, but deadly in the end since we have nothing to vote for,
except to vote for more for them at the cost of everyone else, no matter what politicians
say
It's liberating to lose some of your illusions and silly reflexes, although a bit painful
in the beginning as is with all addictions. The story used to 'feel' so good.
lizabeth Warren wrote an
article
outlining in general terms how she would bring America's current foreign wars to an end. Perhaps the most significant part of the
article is her commitment to respect Congress' constitutional role in matters of war:
We will hold ourselves to this by recommitting to a simple idea: the constitutional requirement that Congress play a primary
role in deciding to engage militarily. The United States should not fight and cannot win wars without deep public support.
Successive administrations and Congresses have taken the easy way out by choosing military action without proper authorizations
or transparency with the American people. The failure to debate these military missions in public is one of the reasons
they have been allowed to continue without real prospect of success [bold mine-DL].
On my watch, that will end. I am committed to seeking congressional authorization if the use of force is required. Seeking
constrained authorizations with limited time frames will force the executive branch to be open with the American people and
Congress about our objectives, how the operation is progressing, how much it is costing, and whether it should continue.
Warren's commitment on this point is welcome, and it is what Americans should expect and demand from their presidential
candidates. It should be the bare minimum requirement for anyone seeking to be president, and any candidate who won't commit to
respecting the Constitution should never be allowed to have the powers of that office. The president is not permitted to launch
attacks and start wars alone, but Congress and the public have allowed several presidents to do just that without any consequences.
It is time to put a stop to illegal presidential wars, and it is also time to put a stop to open-ended authorizations of military
force. Warren's point about asking for "constrained authorizations with limited time frames" is important, and it is something that
we should insist on in any future debate over the use of force. The 2001 and 2002 AUMFs are still on the books and have been abused
and stretched beyond recognition to apply to groups that didn't exist when they were passed so that the U.S. can fight wars in
countries that don't threaten our security. Those need to be repealed as soon as possible to eliminate the opening that they have
provided the executive to make war at will.
Michael Brendan Dougherty is
unimpressed with Warren's rhetoric:
But what has Warren offered to do differently, or better? She's made no notable break with the class of experts who run our
failing foreign policy. Unlike Bernie Sanders, and like Trump or Obama, she hasn't hired a foreign-policy staff committed to a
different vision. And so her promise to turn war powers back to Congress should be considered as empty as Obama's promise to do
the same. Her promise to bring troops home would turn out to be as meaningless as a Trump tweet saying the same.
We shouldn't discount Warren's statements so easily. When a candidate makes specific commitments about ending U.S. wars during a
campaign, that is different from making vague statements about having a "humble" foreign policy. Bush ran on a conventional hawkish
foreign policy platform, and there were also no ongoing wars for him to campaign against, so we can't say that he ever ran as a
"dove." Obama campaigned against the Iraq war and ran on ending the U.S. military presence there, and before his first term was
finished almost all U.S. troops were out of Iraq. It is important to remember that he did not campaign against the war in
Afghanistan, and instead argued in support of it. His subsequent decision to commit many more troops there was a mistake, but it was
entirely consistent with what he campaigned on. In other words, he withdrew from the country he promised to withdraw from, and
escalated in the country where he said the U.S. should be fighting. Trump didn't actually campaign on ending any wars, but he did
talk about "bombing the hell" out of ISIS, and after he was elected he escalated the war on ISIS. His anti-Iranian obsession was out
in the open from the start if anyone cared to pay attention to it. In short, what candidates commit to doing during a campaign does
matter and it usually gives you a good idea of what a candidate will do once elected.
If Warren and some of the other Democratic candidates are committing to ending U.S. wars, we shouldn't assume that they won't
follow through on those commitments because previous presidents proved to be the hawks that they admitted to being all along.
Presidential candidates often tell us exactly what they mean to do, but we have to be paying attention to everything they say and
not just one catchphrase that they said a few times. If voters want a more peaceful foreign policy, they should vote for candidates
that actually campaign against ongoing wars instead of rewarding the ones that promise and then deliver escalation. But just voting
for the candidates that promise an end to wars is not enough if Americans want Congress to start doing its job by reining in the
executive. If we don't want presidents to run amok on war powers, there have to be political consequences for the ones that have
done that and there needs to be steady pressure on Congress to take back their role in matters of war. Voters should select
genuinely antiwar candidates, but then they also have to hold those candidates accountable once they're in office.
"... In any event, no matter who they nominate, they have no chance of winning in November. How could they, given the total stranglehold the Russians now have on American democracy? ..."
Resistance Non-Lethal Option No. 1 is winning the 2020 election, which isn't looking very promising. The Democratic Party is in
shambles. According to the polls, their current front-runner is a senile, hair-sniffing, finger-sucking freak
who never met a
credit card company or a healthcare lobbyist he didn't like , and who rivals even Donald Trump when it comes to incoherent babbling.
Yes, that's right, folks, it's "Smilin' Joe" Biden, vanquisher of the razor-wielding, swimming-pool-gangster
"Corn Pop " to the rescue!
As far as I've been able to gather, the plan is for Joe to out-"crazy" Trump (and thus win back the "bull goose loony" demographic)
by going completely off his medication and having a series of
scary-looking petit mal seizures on national
television.
Sanders, it seems, has gone totally "native." He's out there, in the heart of the American darkness, like a geriatric Colonel
Kurz, operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct.
According to the latest reconnaissance, he is building another "revolutionary" army of fanatical, doped-up, hacky-sacking "socialists"
that he will lead into the convention in July and deliver to Biden, or Elizabeth Warren, or whichever soulless corporate puppet the
party honchos eventually nominate, and then obsequiously stump for them for the next five months. (Or, who knows, maybe Michael Bloomberg
will put the Democrats out of their misery and just buy the party and nominate himself.)
The "Crush Bernie" movement is just getting started, but you can tell the Resistance isn't screwing around. Hillary Clinton just
officially launched her national "
Nobody
Likes Bernie " campaign at the star-studded
2020 Sundance Film Festival .
MSNBC anchor
Joy Reid brought on a professional "
body language expert " to phrenologize Sanders "live" on the air and, as I said, they're just getting started.
In any event, no matter who they nominate, they have no chance of winning in November. How could they, given the total stranglehold
the Russians now have on American democracy?
As Adam Schiff just reminded everyone , unless Donald Trump is removed from office, "
we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won ," because at any moment Putin could order Trump to pressure the Ukrainian
president into investigating Biden's son's corruption by refusing to fund the Ukrainian military's resistance to Putin's secret plot
to occupy the entire Ukraine and use it as a covert base from which to launch an all-out thermonuclear war against the United States
(which Putin already controls through his puppet, Trump, and his network of nefarious Facebook bots, which,
according to this expert on NPR , are
already brainwashing gullible Black people into voting for Bernie Sanders this time, or at least refusing to vote for Biden, like
they refused to vote for Hillary last time which, OK, I know, that sounds kind of racist, but we're talking NPR here, folks. These
people aren't racists. They're liberals!)
OK, I got a little lost there the point is, if the election goes ahead, and Trump doesn't have an embolism or something, odds
are, we're looking at four more years of Putin-Nazi occupation. Which brings us to
Non-Lethal Option No. 2
Resistance Non-Lethal Option No. 2 is, of course, the current impeachment circus. I don't even know where to start with this one.
After three and a half years of corporate-media-manufactured mass hysteria and Intelligence Community propaganda designed to convince
the American public that Donald Trump is a "Russian asset" (and possibly
Putin's homosexual lover
) and also literally the Resurrection of Hitler, the Democrats are trying to impeach the man for something that most Americans
either (a) believe is common practice among members of the political class, (b) don't entirely understand, or (c) do, but don't give
a shit about.
Seriously, it's like they held a contest to see if anyone could think of something that would out-anticlimax the Mueller report,
and this is what the winner came up with an over-acted, sanctimonious snooze-fest, the stakes of which could not possibly be lower.
Sure, the corporate media are doing their best to cover every twist and turn of the "drama" as if the fate of democracy were hanging
in the balance, but
everybody
knows it's a joke or, all right, almost
everybody .
The deep state clearly is running the show (with some people unexpected imput -- see Trump
;-)
Elections now serve mainly for the legitimizing of the deep state rule; election of a
particular individual can change little, although there is some space of change due to the power
of executive branch. If the individual stray too much form the elite "forign policy consensus" he
ether will be JFKed or Russiagated (with the Special Prosecutor as the fist act and impeachment
as the second act of the same Russiagate drama)
But a talented (or reckless) individual can speed up some process that are already under way.
For example, Trump managed to speed up the process of destruction of the USA-centered neoliberal
empire considerably. Especially by launching the trade war with China. He also managed to
discredit the USA foreign policy as no other president before him. Even Bush II.
>This is the most critical U.S. election in our lifetime
> Posted by: Circe | Jan 23 2020 17:46 utc | 36
Hmmm, I've been hearing the same siren song every four years for the past fifty. How is it
that people still think that a single individual, or even two, can change the direction of
murderous US policies that are widely supported throughout the bureaucracy?
Bureaucracies are reactionary and conservative by nature, so any new and more repressive
policy Trumpy wants is readily adapted, as shown by the continuing barbarity of ICE and the
growth of prisons and refugee concentration camps. Policies that go against the grain are
easily shrugged off and ignored using time-tested passive-aggressive tactics.
One of Trump's insurmountable problems is that he has no loyal organization behind him
whose members he can appoint throughout the massive Federal bureaucracy. Any Dummycrat whose
name is not "Biden" has the same problem. Without a real mass-movement political party to
pressure reluctant bureaucrats, no politician of any name or stripe will ever substantially
change the direction of US policy.
But the last thing Dummycrats want is a real mass movement, because they might not be able
to control it. Instead Uncle Sam will keep heading towards the cliff, which may be coming
into view...
The amount of TINA worshipers and status quo guerillas is starting to depress me.
HOW IS IT POSSIBLE to believe A politician will/can change anything and give your consent to
war criminals and traitors?
NO person(s) WILL EVER get to the top in imperial/vassal state politics without being on the
rentier class side, the cognitive dissonans in voting for known liars, war criminals and
traitors would kill me or fry my brain. TINA is a lie and "she" is a real bitch that deserves
to be thrown on the dump off history, YOUR vote is YOUR consent to murder, theft and
treason.
DONT be a rentier class enabler STOP voting and start making your local communities better
and independent instead.
The amount of TINA worshipers and status quo guerillas is starting to depress me. <-
Norway
Of course, There Is Another Way, for example, kvetching. We can boldly show that we are
upset, and pessimistic. One upset pessimists reach critical mass we will think about some
actions.
But being upset and pessimistic does fully justify inactivity. In particular, given the
nature of social interaction networks, with spokes and hubs, dominating the network requires
the control of relatively few nodes. The nature of democracy always allows for leverage
takeover, starting from dominating within small to the entire nation in few steps. As it was
nicely explained by Prof. Overton, there is a window of positions that the vast majority
regards as reasonable, non-radical etc. One reason that powers to be invest so much energy
vilifying dissenters, Russian assets of late, is to keep them outside the Overton window.
Having a candidate elected that the curators of Overton window hate definitely shakes the
situation with the potential of shifting the window. There were some positive symptoms after
Trump was elected, but negatives prevail. "Why not we just kill him" idea entered the window,
together with "we took their oil because we have guts and common sense".
From that point of view, visibility of Tulsi and election of Sanders will solve some
problems but most of all, it will make big changes in Overton window.
Is Warren Warren the Jussie Smollet of politics. I wonder if she claims Bernie attacked her
while wearing a red hat and screaming, "A woman can't win! This is MAGA country!"
Being one of Liz' constituents and familiar with her career and her base (consisting of
people like me,) I think she faces so little consequence for her "embellishments" at least in
part because "we" (her base) inhabit an environment in which, with ease, we adjust facts and
perceptions to conform to whatever our self-serving narrative of the moment may be.
We know that Liz will say anything she imagines will be to her advantage and it's okay
with "us" that she does. In a way, she's our ideal candidate and media darling because she
reflects and affirms our plastic values.
The question is who will listed to Obama after his "change we can believe in" betrayal. Also
is not he a war criminal? Obama election was probably the most slick false flag operation even
conducted by intelligence agencies. Somebody created for him complexly fake but still plausible
legend.
That Obama desire to interfere in 2020 election also shows gain that that he a regular
completely corrupt Clinton neoliberal. The worst king of neoliberals, wolfs in sheep's
clothing.
And the fact that CIA democrats dominates the Democratic Party actually is another reason
from "Demexit" from the Democratic party of workers and lower middle class. The sad fact that the
USA Corporate Dems recently became the second pro-war militarist party, and learned to love
intelligence agencies; two things unimaginable in 60th and 70th.
As we noted earlier, a bombshell admission from Politico today exploring Obama's
substantial behind the scenes influence as Democratic kingmaker : included in the lengthy
profile on the day-to-day of the former president's personal office in the West End of
Washington D.C. and his meeting with the field of Democratic candidates, is
the following gem :
"Obama said privately that if Bernie were running away with the nomination, Obama would
speak up to stop him."
And crucially, when asked about that prior statement reported in Politico, an Obama
spokesperson did not deny that he said it.
The frank admission underscores what many independent analysts, not to
mention prior damning WikiLeaks DNC disclosures , have pointed out for years: that the
establishment controlling the Democratic party has continuously sought to rig the system
against Bernie.
"Since losing 2016, Dem elites have waged a prolonged effort to stop Bernie. Bernie is the
obvious answer to the neoliberal Clinton-Obama legacy voters rejected..." journalist Aaron
Maté observed of the
Politico quote.
Here's the stunning and deeply revealing section in full, which began by outlining Obama's
'advice-giving' throughout meetings with Democrat contenders including Joe Biden, Elizabeth
Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker,
and others :
Publicly, he has been clear that he won't intervene in the primary for or against a
candidate , unless he believed there was some egregious attack. "I can't even imagine with
this field how bad it would have to be for him to say something," said a close adviser.
Instead, he sees his role as providing guardrails to keep the process from getting too ugly
and to unite the party when the nominee is clear.
There is one potential exception: Back when Sanders seemed like more of a threat than he
does now, Obama said privately that if Bernie were running away with the nomination, Obama
would speak up to stop him. (Asked about that, a spokesperson for Obama pointed out that
Obama recently said he would support and campaign for whoever the Democratic nominee is.)
And a further deeply revealing but more laughable quote comes later as follows: "Obama
designed his post-presidency in 2016, at a time when he believed Hillary Clinton would win and
Biden would be out of politics." So the reality is... far from the idea that the Dem elites
would back the actual nominee the party puts forward, clearly the die has already been cast
against Bernie just
like the last time around against Hillary in 2016.
Politico author Ryan Lizza later in the story quotes a "close family friend," who described
that Obama's "politics are not strong left of center."
"I mean it's left, but he's nowhere near where some of the candidates are currently sitting,
at least when he got himself elected," the source claimed.
This means in the mind of Obama and other top party influencers and kingmakers, Bernie and
other popular outliers like Tulsi Gabbard have already long been sidelined. Tulsi, it should
also be noted, is one of the couple of candidates who did not bother to stop by Obama's D.C.
office for a 'blessing' and advice.
DNC is a criminal organization and the fact that Debbie Wasserman
Schultz escaped justice is deeply regreatable.
Notable quotes:
"... The problem facing the Democratic National Committee today remains the same as in 2016: How to block even a moderately left-wing social democrat by picking a candidate guaranteed to lose to Trump, so as to continue the policies that serve banks, the financial markets and military spending for Cold War 2.0. ..."
"... Trump meanwhile has done most everything the Democratic Donor Class wants: He has cut taxes on the wealthy, cut social spending for the population at large, backed Quantitative Easing to inflate the stock and bond markets, and pursued Cold War 2.0. Best of all, his abrasive style has enabled Democrats to blame the Republicans for the giveaway to the rich, as if they would have followed a different policy. ..."
"... The effect has been to make America into a one-party state. Republicans act as the most blatant lobbyists for the Donor Class. But people can vote for a representative of the One Percent and the military-industrial complex in either the Republican or Democratic column. That is why most Americans owe allegiance to no party. ..."
"... I'm just curious about how much longer this log-jam situation can persist before real political realignment takes place. Bernie Sander is ultimately a relic not a representative of new political vigor running through the party, like Trump he would be largely be on his own without much congressional support from his own party. ..."
"... As the 2016 election and Brexit have illuminated, globalisation is a religion for the upper middle classes. ..."
"... They just refuse to understand that political solidarity, key to any such policies is permanently damaged by immigration. ..."
"... If you make people chose between their ethnicity being displaced and class conflict, they'll pick the preservation of their ethnicity and it's territory every time. I ..."
"... My prediction: The elites in the US won't give way, people will simply become demoralised and the Trump/Sanders moment will pass with significant damage done to the legitimacy of American democracy and media but with progressives unable to deal with immigration (Much like the right can't deal with global warming) they will fail to get much done. The general population has become too atomised and detached, beaten-down bystanders to their own politics and society to mount a popular political movement. Immigrants, recent descendants of immigrants and the upper middle classes will continue to instinctually understand globalisation is how they loot America and will not vote for 'extreme' candidates that threaten this. The upper middle class will continue to dominate the overton window and use it to inject utter economic lies to the public. ..."
I hope that the candidate who is clearly the voters' choice, Bernie Sanders, may end up as the party's nominee. If he is, I'm
sure he'll beat Donald Trump handily, as he would have done four years ago. But I fear that the DNC's Donor Class will push Joe Biden,
Kamala Harris or even Pete Buttigieg down the throats of voters. Just as when they backed Hillary the last time around, they hope
that their anointed neoliberal will be viewed as the lesser evil for a program little different from that of the Republicans.
So Thursday's reality TV run-off is about "who's the least evil?" An honest reality show's questions would focus on "What are
you against ?" That would attract a real audience, because people are much clearer about what they're against: the vested
interests, Wall Street, the drug companies and other monopolies, the banks, landlords, corporate raiders and private-equity asset
strippers. But none of this is to be permitted on the magic island of authorized candidates (not including Tulsi Gabbard, who was
purged from further debates for having dared to mention the unmentionable).
Donald Trump as the DNC's nominee
The problem facing the Democratic National Committee today remains the same as in 2016: How to block even a moderately left-wing
social democrat by picking a candidate guaranteed to lose to Trump, so as to continue the policies that serve banks, the financial
markets and military spending for Cold War 2.0.
DNC donors favor Joe Biden, long-time senator from the credit-card and corporate-shell state of Delaware, and opportunistic California
prosecutor Kamala Harris, with a hopey-changey grab bag alternative in smooth-talking small-town Rorschach blot candidate Pete Buttigieg.
These easy victims are presented as "electable" in full knowledge that they will fail against Trump.
Trump meanwhile has done most everything the Democratic Donor Class wants: He has cut taxes on the wealthy, cut social spending
for the population at large, backed Quantitative Easing to inflate the stock and bond markets, and pursued Cold War 2.0. Best of
all, his abrasive style has enabled Democrats to blame the Republicans for the giveaway to the rich, as if they would have followed
a different policy.
The Democratic Party's role is to protect Republicans from attack from the left, steadily following the Republican march rightward.
Claiming that this is at least in the direction of being "centrist," the Democrats present themselves as the lesser evil (which is
still evil, of course), simply as pragmatic in not letting hopes for "the perfect" (meaning moderate social democracy) block the
spirit of compromise with what is attainable, "getting things done" by cooperating across the aisle and winning Republican support.
That is what Joe Biden promises.
The effect has been to make America into a one-party state. Republicans act as the most blatant lobbyists for the Donor Class.
But people can vote for a representative of the One Percent and the military-industrial complex in either the Republican or Democratic
column. That is why most Americans owe allegiance to no party.
The Democratic National Committee worries that voters may disturb this alliance by nominating a left-wing reform candidate. The
DNC easily solved this problem in 2016: When Bernie Sanders intruded into its space, it the threw the election. It scheduled the
party's early defining primaries in Republican states whose voters leaned right, and packed the nominating convention with Donor
Class super-delegates.
After the dust settled, having given many party members political asthma, the DNC pretended that it was all an unfortunate political
error. But of course it was not a mistake at all. The DNC preferred to lose with Hillary than win with Bernie, whom springtime polls
showed would be the easy winner over Trump. Potential voters who didn't buy into the program either stayed home or voted green.
No votes will be cast for months, so I don't know how Mr. Hudson can say that Sanders is "clearly the voters choice." He would
be 79 on election day, well above the age when most men die, which is something that voters should seriously consider. Whoever
his VP is will probably be president before the end of Old Bernie's first term, so I hope he chooses his VP wisely.
In any case I laugh at how the media always reports that Biden, who has obviously lost more than a few brain cells, has such
a commanding lead over this field of second-raters. The voters, having much better things to do, haven't even started to pay attention
yet.
And, how could anyone seriously believe in these polls anyway? Only older people have land lines today. If calling people is
the methodology pollsters are using, then the results would be heavily skewed towards former VP Biden, whose name everyone knows.
I lost all faith in polls when the media was saying, with certainty, that Hillary was a lock to win against the insurgent Trump.
Tulsi Gabbard is the only candidate beside Trump with charisma today. With her cool demeanor, she is certainly the least unlikeable.
She would be Trump's most formidable opponent. But the democrats, like their counterparts, are owned by Wall Street and the Military
Industrial Complex. Sadly, most democrats still believe that the party is working in their best interests, while the republicans
are the party of the rich.
If you watch the debates tonight, which I will not be, you will notice that Tulsi Gabbard won't be on stage. That is by design.
She is a leper. At least the republicans allowed Trump to be onstage in 2016, which makes them more democratic than the democrats.
Plus they didn't have Super Delegates to prevent Trump from achieving the nomination he had rightfully won. Something to think
about since the DNC, not the voters, annointed Hillary last time.
If the YouTube Oligarchs still allow it, I plan on watching the post-debate analysis with characters like Richard Spencer and
Eric Striker. Those guys are most entertaining, and have insights that are not permitted to be uttered in the controlled, mind-numbing
farce of the mainstream media.
Elizabeth Warren seems a more likely nominee than Sanders.
Elizabeth Warren is phony as phuck(PAP). Just like forked tongued Obama she's really just a tool for the neo-liberal establishment,
which does make her more likely.
Here is another question. Can the DNC or RNC really change institutionally fast enough?
I'm just curious about how much longer this log-jam situation can persist before real political realignment takes place.
Bernie Sander is ultimately a relic not a representative of new political vigor running through the party, like Trump he would
be largely be on his own without much congressional support from his own party.
As the 2016 election and Brexit have illuminated, globalisation is a religion for the upper middle classes. Many of
them may be progressives but they refuse to understand the very non-progressive consequences of mass immigration (Or, one should
say over-immigration) or globalisation more generally. The increasing defection of such individuals to the Liberal Democrats in
Britain is a fascinating example. They just refuse to understand that political solidarity, key to any such policies is permanently
damaged by immigration.
It is interesting to see the see-saw effect of UKip and now the Brexit party in the UK (Well, in England). With them first
drawing working class voters from Labour without increasing Conservative performance, bringing about a massive conservative majority
and now threatening to siphon voters from the Tories with the opposite effect.
But UKip and later the Brexit party almost exist through the indispensable leadership of Nigel Farage and a very specific motivating
goal of leaving the EU. I can't see a third party rising to put pressure on the mainstream parties.
If you make people chose between their ethnicity being displaced and class conflict, they'll pick the preservation of their
ethnicity and it's territory every time. I f the centre left refuses to understand this (Something that wouldn't have been
hard for them to understand when they still drew candidates from the working classes) they will continue their slide into oblivion
as they have done across the Western world. (Excluding 2 party systems and Denmark where they do understand this)
My prediction: The elites in the US won't give way, people will simply become demoralised and the Trump/Sanders moment
will pass with significant damage done to the legitimacy of American democracy and media but with progressives unable to deal
with immigration (Much like the right can't deal with global warming) they will fail to get much done. The general population
has become too atomised and detached, beaten-down bystanders to their own politics and society to mount a popular political movement.
Immigrants, recent descendants of immigrants and the upper middle classes will continue to instinctually understand globalisation
is how they loot America and will not vote for 'extreme' candidates that threaten this. The upper middle class will continue to
dominate the overton window and use it to inject utter economic lies to the public.
The novel internet mass media outlets that allowed such unpoliced political discussion to reach mass audiences will be pacified
by whatever means and America will slide into an Italian style trans-generational malaise at a national level for some time.
Here is another question. Can the DNC or RNC really change institutionally fast enough?
Trump is trying to change the RNC away from Globalist elites and towards Christian Populist beliefs and Main Street America.
I am some what hopeful, as the U.S. is not alone in this trajectory. There is a global tail wind that should help the GOP change
quickly enough.
The true test will be the 2024 GOP nomination. A bold choice will have to break through to keep the RNC from backsliding into
the clutches of Globalist failure.
I think Sanders could have beat Trump in 2016. This time around it is not that clear because so many of his supporters in 2016
feel burnt.
Badly burnt. Or Bernt. He threw his support for Hillary, even if it was tepid, and then got a bad case of Russiagateitis which
his base on the left really hated. His left base never bought Russiagate for a minute. We knew it was an internal leak, probably
by Seth Rich, who provided all the information to Assange. He still seems to be a strong Israel supporter even if has stood up
to Netanyahu.
And while it may seem odd, many of his base on the left have grown weary of the global climate change agenda.
He has not advocated nuclear power and there is a growing movement for that on the left, especially by those who think renewables
will not generate the power we need.
But since Sanders does seem to attract the rural and suburban vote more than any other Democrat, Sanders has a chance to chip
away at Trumps' base and win the Electoral College. Another horrible loss to rural and suburban America by the Democrats will
cost them the EC again by a substantial margin, even if they manage to pull off another popular vote win.
the republican party is as globalist as you can find,and I'm sure you will be the first one to inform us when the global
elite including those in America throw in the towel,
Some elite Globalist NeverTrumpers, such as George Will and Bill Kristol, have thrown in the towel on the GOP. This allows
their "neocon" followers to return to their roots in the war mongering Democrat Party. So it *IS* happening.
The real questions are:
-- Can it happen fast enough?
-- Can it be sustained after Donald Trump term limits out?
I'm not bold enough to say it is inevitable. All I will say is, "There are reasons to be at least mildly hopeful."
Has everyone forgot the last time the DNC openly cheated Sanders he said nothing publicly, but then endorsed Clinton? Sanders
knows he is not allowed to become president, his role to prevent the formation of a third party, and to keep the Green Party small.
Otherwise he would jump to the Green Party right now and may beat the DNC and Trump.
Sanders treats progressives like Charlie Brown. Once again, inviting them to run a kick the football, only to pull it away
and watch them fall. He recently backed off his opposition to the open borders crazies, rarely mentions cuts to military spending
to fund things, and has even joined the stupid fake russiagate bandwagon.
Note that he dismisses the third party idea as unworkable, when he already knows the DNC is unworkable. Why not give the Green
party a chance? Cause he don't want to win knowing he'd be killed or impeached for some reason.
@Carlton Meyer The
Stalinist DNC openly cheated Tulsi Gabbard when they left her off the debate stage last night. When asked about it on 'The View'
recently, Sanders said nothing in her defense, or that she deserved to be on the stage. Nice way to stab her in the back for leaving
her DNC position to support you last time, Bernie. Socialist Sanders wants to be president, yet is afraid of the DNC. Nice!
Those polls were rigged against Tulsi, and everyone who is paying attention knows it. But, far from hurting her candidacy by
not making the DNC's arbitrary cut, her exclusion may wind up helping her. Kim Iverson, Michael Tracey, and comedian Jimmy Dore,
anti-war progressive YouTubers with large, loyal followings, have lambasted the out-of touch DNC for its actions. Tucker Carlson
on the anti-war right has also done so.
One hopes that the DNC's stupidity in censoring her message may wind up being the best thing ever for Tulsi's insurgent candidacy.
We shall see. OTOH, who can trust the polls to tell us the truth of where her popularity stands.
@RadicalCenter Do you
forget about Trump's declaration that he wants the largest amount of immigration ever, as long as they come in legally? There
are no good guys in our two sclerotic monopoly parties when it comes to immigration. Since both are terrible on that topic, at
least Tulsi seems to have the anti-war principles that Trump does not.
"... Besides preventing social movements from undertaking independent political activity to their left, the Democrats have been adept at killing social movements altogether. They have done – and continue to do – this in four key ways: ..."
"... i) inducing "progressive" movement activists (e.g. Medea Benjamin of Code Pink and the leaders of Moveon.org and United for Peace and Justice today) to focus scarce resources on electing and defending capitalist politicians who are certain to betray peaceful- and populist-sounding campaign promises upon the attainment of power; ..."
"... (ii) pressuring activists to "rein in their movements, thereby undercutting the potential for struggle from below;" ..."
"... (iii) using material and social (status) incentives to buy off social movement leaders; ..."
"... iv) feeding a pervasive sense of futility regarding activity against the dominant social and political order, with its business party duopoly. ..."
"... It is not broken. It is fixed. Against us. ..."
"... The militarization of US economy and society underscores your scenario. By being part of the war coalition, the Democratic party, as now constituted, doesn't have to win any presidential elections. The purpose of the Democratic party is to diffuse public dissent in an orderly fashion. This allows the war machine to grind on and the politicians are paid handsomely for their efforts. ..."
"... By joining the war coalition, the Democrats only have leverage over Republicans if the majority of citizens get "uppity" and start demanding social concessions. Democrats put down the revolt by subterfuge, which is less costly and allows the fiction of American Democracy and freedom to persist for a while longer. Republicans, while preferring more overt methods of repressing the working class, allow the fiction to continue because their support for authoritarian principles can stay hidden in the background. ..."
"... When this political theatre in the US finally reaches its end date, what lies behind the curtain will surely shock most of the population and I have little faith that the citizenry are prepared to deal with the consequences. A society of feckless consumers is little prepared to deal with hard core imperialists who's time has reached its end. ..."
"... This wrath of frustrated Imperialists will be turned upon the citizenry ..."
Mainstream Dems are performing their role very well. Most likely I am preaching to the choir. But anyways, here is a review
of Lance Selfa's book "Democrats: a critical history" by Paul Street :
Besides preventing social movements from undertaking independent political activity to their left, the Democrats have
been adept at killing social movements altogether. They have done – and continue to do – this in four key ways:
i) inducing "progressive" movement activists (e.g. Medea Benjamin of Code Pink and the leaders of Moveon.org and United
for Peace and Justice today) to focus scarce resources on electing and defending capitalist politicians who are certain to
betray peaceful- and populist-sounding campaign promises upon the attainment of power;
(ii) pressuring activists to "rein in their movements, thereby undercutting the potential for struggle from below;"
(iii) using material and social (status) incentives to buy off social movement leaders;
iv) feeding a pervasive sense of futility regarding activity against the dominant social and political order, with its
business party duopoly.
The militarization of US economy and society underscores your scenario. By being part of the war coalition, the Democratic
party, as now constituted, doesn't have to win any presidential elections. The purpose of the Democratic party is to diffuse public
dissent in an orderly fashion. This allows the war machine to grind on and the politicians are paid handsomely for their efforts.
By joining the war coalition, the Democrats only have leverage over Republicans if the majority of citizens get "uppity"
and start demanding social concessions. Democrats put down the revolt by subterfuge, which is less costly and allows the fiction
of American Democracy and freedom to persist for a while longer. Republicans, while preferring more overt methods of repressing
the working class, allow the fiction to continue because their support for authoritarian principles can stay hidden in the background.
I have little faith in my fellow citizens as the majority are too brainwashed to see the danger of this political theatre.
Most ignore politics, while those that do show an interest exercise that effort mainly by supporting whatever faction they belong.
Larger issues and connections between current events remain a mystery to them as a result.
Military defeat seems the only means to break this cycle. Democrats, being the fake peaceniks that they are, will be more than
happy to defer to their more authoritarian Republican counterparts when dealing with issues concerning war and peace. Look no
further than Tulsi Gabbard's treatment in the party. The question is really should the country continue down this Imperialist
path.
In one sense, economic recession will be the least of our problems in the future. When this political theatre in the US
finally reaches its end date, what lies behind the curtain will surely shock most of the population and I have little faith that
the citizenry are prepared to deal with the consequences. A society of feckless consumers is little prepared to deal with hard
core imperialists who's time has reached its end.
This wrath of frustrated Imperialists will be turned upon the citizenry.
Let's see if they can keep Bernie in the same cage they put Tulsi in. I can't imagine
they'll be helpful or even polite to him. I expect "debate" questions such as:
Senator Sanders, are you current in your communist party dues?
Bernie, when did you last speak to Vladimir Putin?
How often are you wrong about FDR?
Is your wife still laundering money for beach houses through small liberal arts colleges?
Do you know how to pay for anything, or do you regularly leave restaurants without paying
your bill?
Bonus question: explain why anyone should continue to pay attention to you when your views
are shared by everyone on stage?
Democratic party candidate Biden has huge, exploitable weakness in relation Ukraine (1). Given that Biden is the most beatable
name to come forward so far Trump and his administration will do nothing major to involve the U.S. with the internal affairs of
Ukraine.
Macron and Merkel may wish to do something, but given personal unpopularity in their countries it is unclear what they can
deliver.
For the next 12+ months nothing of any significance will happen. If the Dems are foolish enough to nominate Biden, it could
become an issue next year. Trump and Putin would have aligned interests in stopping the Biden family's exploitation of Ukrainian
resources.
So here it is, the announcement we've been waiting for all aboard for another cruise on the
new and improved U.S.S. Magic Socialist with your captain Bernie Sanders at the helm! If you're
not familiar with this extraordinary vessel, it's like the luxury liner in The Magic Christian , except
catering to credulous American socialists instead of the British filthy rich. Tickets start at
just $27 dollars so hurry, because they're going fast!
That's right, folks, Bernie is back, and this time it's not just a sadistic prank where he
gets you all fired up about his fake "revolution" for fifteen months, gets cheated out of the
nomination, then backs whichever corporate-bought candidate the Democratic Party orders you to
vote for.
No, this time the Bernster really means it! This time, when the DNC rigs the primaries to
hand the nomination to Harris, or Biden, or some billionaire android like Michael Bloomberg,
Bernie is not going to break your heart by refusing to run as an independent candidate,
unbeholden to the corporations and oligarchs that own both political parties, or otherwise make
you feel like a sucker for buying his "revolution" schtick. He's not going to fold like a fifty
dollar suit and start parroting whatever propaganda the corporate media will be prodigiously
spewing to convince you the Russians and Nazis are coming unless you vote for the empire's
pre-anointed puppet!
Bernie would never dream of doing that or at least he'd never dream of doing that twice.
Taming of financial oligarchy and restoration of the job market at the expense of outsourcing and offshoring is required in the
USA and gradually getting support. At least a return to key elements of the New Deal should be in the cards. But Clinton wing of Dems
is beong redemption. They are Wall Street puddles. all of the them.
Issues like Medicare for All, Free College, Restoring Glass Steagall, Ending Citizen's United/Campaign finance reform, federal jobs
guarantee, criminal justice reform, all poll extremely well among the american populace
If even such a neoliberal pro globalization, corporations controlled media source as Guardian views centrist neoliberal Democrats
like Booker unelectable, the situation in the next elections might be interesting.
Notable quotes:
"... Bhaskar Sunkara is a Guardian US columnist and the founding editor of Jacobin ..."
"... 2016 has shown that the Democratic party is beyond redemption. When it comes down to the choice of either win with a platform that may impact the wealth and power of their owners, or losing, they will always choose the latter, and continue as useful (and well paid) idiots in the charade presented as US democracy. ..."
In their rhetoric and policy advocacy, this trio has been steadily moving to the left to keep pace with a leftward-moving Democratic
party. Booker ,
Harris and Gillibrand know that voters demand action and are more supportive than ever of Medicare for All and universal childcare.
Gillibrand, long considered a moderate, has even gone as far as to endorse abolishing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice)
and, along with Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders' single-payer healthcare bill. Harris has also backed universal healthcare and free college
tuition for most Americans.
But outward appearances aren't everything. Booker, Harris and Gillibrand have been making a very different pitch of late -- on
Wall Street. According to
CNBC , all three potential candidates have been reaching out to financial executives lately, including Blackstone's Jonathan
Gray, Robert Wolf from 32 Advisors and the Centerbridge Partners founder Mark Gallogly.
Wall Street, after all, played an important role getting the senators where they are today. During his 2014 Senate run, in which
just 7% of his contributions came from small donors, Booker raised $2.2m from the securities and investment industry. Harris and
Gillibrand weren't far behind in 2018, and even the progressive Democrat Sherrod Brown has solicited donations from Gallogly and
other powerful executives.
When CNBC's story about
Gillibrand personally working the phones to woo Wall Street executives came out, her team responded defensively, noting her support
for financial regulation and promising that if she did run she would take "no corporate Pac money". But what's most telling isn't
that Gillibrand and others want Wall Street's money, it's that they want the blessings of financial CEOs. Even if she doesn't take
their contributions, she's signaling that she's just playing politics with populist rhetoric. That will allow capitalists to focus
their attention on candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who have shown a real willingness to abandon the traditional
coziness of the Democratic party with the finance, insurance and real estate industries.
Gillibrand and others are behaving perfectly rationally. The last presidential election cost $6.6bn -- advertising, staff and
conventions are expensive. But even more important than that, they know that while leftwing stances might help win Democratic primaries,
the path of least resistance in the general election is capitulation to the big forces of capital that run this country. Those elites
might allow some progressive tinkering on the margins, but nothing that challenges the inequities that keep them wealthy and their
victims weak.
Big business is likely to bet heavily on the Democratic party in 2020, maybe even more so than it did in 2016. In normal circumstances,
the Democratic party is the second-favorite party of capital; with an erratic Trump around, it is often the first.
The American ruling class has a nice hustle going with elections. We don't have a labor-backed social democratic party that could
create barriers to avoid capture by monied interests. It's telling that when asked about the former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper's
recent chats with Wall Street political financiers, a staff member told CNBC: "We meet with a wide range of donors with shared values
across sectors."
Plenty of Democratic leaders believe in the neoliberal growth model. Many have gotten personally wealthy off of it. Others think
there is no alternative to allying with finance and then trying to create progressive social policy on the margins. But with sentiments
like that, it doesn't take fake news to convince working-class Americans that
Democrats don't really have their interests at heart.
Of course, the Democratic party isn't a monolith. But the insurgency waged by newly elected representatives such as the democratic
socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ro Khanna and others is still in its infancy. At this stage, it isn't going to
scare capital away from the Democratic party, it's going to make Wall Street invest more heavily to maintain its stake in it.
Men like Mark Gallogly know who their real enemy is: more than anyone else, the establishment is wary of
Bernie Sanders . It seems likely that he will run
for president, but he's been dismissed as a 2020 frontrunner despite his high favorability rates, name recognition, small-donor fundraising
ability, appeal to independent voters, and his team's experience running a competitive national campaign. As 2019 goes on, that dismissal
will morph into all-out war.
Wall Street isn't afraid of corporate Democrats gaining power. It's afraid of the Democrats who will take them on -- and those,
unfortunately, are few and far between.
Bhaskar Sunkara is a Guardian US columnist and the founding editor of Jacobin
Just like universal health care, let's give up, it's too hard, we're not winners, we're not number one or problem solvers
and besides, someone at some time for some reason might get something that someone else might not get regardless if that someone
else needs it. Let's go with the Berners who seem to believe there will never be none so pure enough to become president.
The corporate state does not cast the votes. The public does.
Leaning farther to the left on issues like universal healthcare and foreign wars would be agreeing with the public. Not only
the progressive public, but the GENERAL public. The big money donors are the ONLY force against the Democrats resisting these
things.
2016 has shown that the Democratic party is beyond redemption. When it comes down to the choice of either win with a platform
that may impact the wealth and power of their owners, or losing, they will always choose the latter, and continue as useful (and
well paid) idiots in the charade presented as US democracy.
Bernie's challenge will "morph into all-out war". "Wall Street isn't afraid of corporate Democrats", blah, blah, blah. But we're
going to continue to play along? Why? Oh yeah, Bhaskar Sunkara will have us believe "There is no alternative". Remember TINA?
Give it up, man, just give it up.
One dollar, one vote.
If you want Change, keep it in your pocket.
We can't turn this sinking ship around unless we know what direction it's going. So far, that direction is just delivering money
to private islands.
Democrats have a lot of talk, but they still want to drive the nice cars and sell the same crapft that the Republicans are.
Taxing the rich only works when you worship the rich in the first place.
Election financing is the single root cause for our democracy's failure. Period.
I really don't care too much about the mouthing of progressive platitudes from any 2020 Dem Prez candidate. The only ones that
will be worth voting for are the ones that sign onto Sanders' (or similar) legislation that calls for a Constitutional amendment
that allows federal and state governments to limit campaign contributions.
And past committee votes to prevent amendment legislation from getting to a floor vote - as well as missed co-sponsorship opportunities
- should be interesting history for all the candidates to explain.
Campaign financing is what keeps scum entrenched (because primary challengers can't overcome the streams of bribes from those
wonderful people exercising their 'free speech' "rights" to keep their puppet in govt) and prevents any challenges to the corporate
establishment who serve the same rich masters.
Lol, Social Security, Medicare, unemployement protections, so many of the things you mentioned, and so much more, were from the
PROGRESSIVE New Deal, which managed to implement this slew of changes in 5 years! 5 years! You can't criticize "progressives"
in one sentence and then use their accomplishments to support your argument. Today, the New Deal would be considered too far left
by most so called "pragmatic liberals." I assume you are getting fully behind the proposed "Green New Deal" then, right?
Vintage59 pointed out lots of things people have changed. Here's an exhaustive list of the legislation passed by people
who didn't get elected but were more progressive than the people who did:
There is also a steadily growing list of Democrats who did worse in elections than a hypothetical Democratic candidate had
been projected to do.
The party can either continue being GOP-Lite or it can start winning elections. It can't do both.
Nobody is going to get elected on a far left platform. Not in the USA and not anywhere. That's just a fact. And everybody
is going to need $$$ in the campaign. Of course candidates are going to suck up to Wall street and business in general.
And we would have been a thousand percent better off with HRC in the white house than we are now with the Trumpostor.
We don't need a candidate with far-left platform, we need one that is left-leaning at all. HRC and her next generation of clones
are mild Republicans.
Those who want to push the Democrats to the left in order to win perhaps need to stop talking to each other and talk to
people who live outside of LA and NY. If you stay within your bubble it seems the whole world thinks like you.
How old will Sanders be in 2020?
The people (outside the coasts) lean to the left some big issues. Medicare for all. Foreign wars. etc.
A sane person might ask why in the hell the left-side party is leaning farther to the right than the general public.
Sanders is a dinosaur. If there is a reason for Wall Street to be wary of him then it is that the mentally challenged orange
guy may win another term if the Democrats run with Sanders.
Hopefully, Sanders will understand what many of his supporters do not want to see: At some time age becomes a problem. If
the Democrats decide to move to the left rather than pursuing a pragmatic centrist approach, Ocasio-Cortez might be an option.
If they opt for the centrist alternative, it might be Harris or Gillibrand. Or, in both cases, a surprise candidate. But Sanders'
time is over, just as Biden's Bloomberg's.
It's true, but Trump is such a clusterfuck that an 80yo president is still be a better situation. Many countries have had rulers
in their 80s at one time or another.
Trump is clearly showing early-stage dementia now. Compare footage of him 10+ years ago to anything within the last 6-12 months
and it's obvious. The stress levels of being the POTUS + blackmailed by Putin + investigations bearing down on him . . . it's
wearing him down fast.
Anti-trust would be a very good place to start with.
Universal healthcare is a lot harder than you seem to think. I'd love it, but getting there means putting so many people out
of work, it'll be a massive political challenge, even if corporations have no influence. Progressives might be better off focusing
on how to ensure the existing system works better and Medicaid can slowly expand to fill the universal roll in the future.
Where has offering candidates who actually have a chance to win gotten us? Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, the ADA, Title
9, Social Security, and more. None of these exist without constant changes. All took years to pass against heavy opposition. None
went far enough. All were improvements.
The list of wrongheaded things that were also passed is longer but thinking nothing changes because it takes time is faulty
logic.
Our capitalist predators are still alive and well. The finance, insurance, and real estate
organizations are the worst predators in the USA.
They will eat your babies if you let them.
Voters around the world revolt against leaders who won't improve their lives.
Newly-elected Utah senator Mitt Romney kicked off 2019 with an op-ed in the Washington Post
that savaged Donald Trump's character and leadership. Romney's attack and Trump's response
Wednesday morning on Twitter are the latest salvos in a longstanding personal feud between the
two men. It's even possible that Romney is planning to challenge Trump for the Republican
nomination in 2020. We'll see.
But for now, Romney's piece is fascinating on its own terms. It's well-worth reading. It's a
window into how the people in charge, in both parties, see our country.
Romney's main complaint in the piece is that Donald Trump is a mercurial and divisive
leader. That's true, of course. But beneath the personal slights, Romney has a policy critique
of Trump. He seems genuinely angry that Trump might pull American troops out of the Syrian
civil war. Romney doesn't explain how staying in Syria would benefit America. He doesn't appear
to consider that a relevant question. More policing in the Middle East is always better. We
know that. Virtually everyone in Washington agrees.
Corporate tax cuts are also popular in Washington, and Romney is strongly on board with
those, too. His piece throws a rare compliment to Trump for cutting the corporate rate a year
ago.
That's not surprising. Romney spent the bulk of his business career at a firm called Bain
Capital. Bain Capital all but invented what is now a familiar business strategy: Take over an
existing company for a short period of time, cut costs by firing employees, run up the debt,
extract the wealth, and move on, sometimes leaving retirees without their earned pensions.
Romney became fantastically rich doing this.
Meanwhile, a remarkable number of the companies are now bankrupt or extinct. This is the
private equity model. Our ruling class sees nothing wrong with it. It's how they run the
country.
Mitt Romney refers to unwavering support for a finance-based economy and an internationalist
foreign policy as the "mainstream Republican" view. And he's right about that. For generations,
Republicans have considered it their duty to make the world safe for banking, while
simultaneously prosecuting ever more foreign wars. Modern Democrats generally support those
goals enthusiastically.
There are signs, however, that most people do not support this, and not just in America. In
countries around the world -- France, Brazil, Sweden, the Philippines, Germany, and many others
-- voters are suddenly backing candidates and ideas that would have been unimaginable just a
decade ago. These are not isolated events. What you're watching is entire populations revolting
against leaders who refuse to improve their lives.
Something like this has been in happening in our country for three years. Donald Trump rode
a surge of popular discontent all the way to the White House. Does he understand the political
revolution that he harnessed? Can he reverse the economic and cultural trends that are
destroying America? Those are open questions.
But they're less relevant than we think. At some point, Donald Trump will be gone. The rest
of us will be gone, too. The country will remain. What kind of country will be it be then? How
do we want our grandchildren to live? These are the only questions that matter.
The answer used to be obvious. The overriding goal for America is more prosperity, meaning
cheaper consumer goods. But is that still true? Does anyone still believe that cheaper iPhones,
or more Amazon deliveries of plastic garbage from China are going to make us happy? They
haven't so far. A lot of Americans are drowning in stuff. And yet drug addiction and suicide
are depopulating large parts of the country. Anyone who thinks the health of a nation can be
summed up in GDP is an idiot.
The goal for America is both simpler and more elusive than mere prosperity. It's happiness.
There are a lot of ingredients in being happy: Dignity. Purpose. Self-control. Independence.
Above all, deep relationships with other people. Those are the things that you want for your
children. They're what our leaders should want for us, and would want if they cared.
But our leaders don't care. We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to
the people they rule. They're day traders. Substitute teachers. They're just passing through.
They have no skin in this game, and it shows. They can't solve our problems. They don't even
bother to understand our problems.
One of the biggest lies our leaders tell us that you can separate economics from everything
else that matters. Economics is a topic for public debate. Family and faith and culture,
meanwhile, those are personal matters. Both parties believe this.
Members of our educated upper-middle-classes are now the backbone of the Democratic Party
who usually describe themselves as fiscally responsible and socially moderate. In other words,
functionally libertarian. They don't care how you live, as long as the bills are paid and the
markets function. Somehow, they don't see a connection between people's personal lives and the
health of our economy, or for that matter, the country's ability to pay its bills. As far as
they're concerned, these are two totally separate categories.
Social conservatives, meanwhile, come to the debate from the opposite perspective, and yet
reach a strikingly similar conclusion. The real problem, you'll hear them say, is that the
American family is collapsing. Nothing can be fixed before we fix that. Yet, like the
libertarians they claim to oppose, many social conservatives also consider markets sacrosanct.
The idea that families are being crushed by market forces seems never to occur to them. They
refuse to consider it. Questioning markets feels like apostasy.
Both sides miss the obvious point: Culture and economics are inseparably intertwined.
Certain economic systems allow families to thrive. Thriving families make market economies
possible. You can't separate the two. It used to be possible to deny this. Not anymore. The
evidence is now overwhelming. How do we know? Consider the inner cities.
Thirty years ago, conservatives looked at Detroit or Newark and many other places and were
horrified by what they saw. Conventional families had all but disappeared in poor
neighborhoods. The majority of children were born out of wedlock. Single mothers were the rule.
Crime and drugs and disorder became universal.
What caused this nightmare? Liberals didn't even want to acknowledge the question. They were
benefiting from the disaster, in the form of reliable votes. Conservatives, though, had a ready
explanation for inner-city dysfunction and it made sense: big government. Decades of
badly-designed social programs had driven fathers from the home and created what conservatives
called a "culture of poverty" that trapped people in generational decline.
There was truth in this. But it wasn't the whole story. How do we know? Because virtually
the same thing has happened decades later to an entirely different population. In many ways,
rural America now looks a lot like Detroit.
This is striking because rural Americans wouldn't seem to have much in common with anyone
from the inner city. These groups have different cultures, different traditions and political
beliefs. Usually they have different skin colors. Rural people are white conservatives,
mostly.
Yet, the pathologies of modern rural America are familiar to anyone who visited downtown
Baltimore in the 1980s: Stunning out of wedlock birthrates. High male unemployment. A
terrifying drug epidemic. Two different worlds. Similar outcomes. How did this happen? You'd
think our ruling class would be interested in knowing the answer. But mostly they're not. They
don't have to be interested. It's easier to import foreign labor to take the place of
native-born Americans who are slipping behind.
But Republicans now represent rural voters. They ought to be interested. Here's a big part
of the answer: male wages declined. Manufacturing, a male-dominated industry, all but
disappeared over the course of a generation. All that remained in many places were the schools
and the hospitals, both traditional employers of women. In many places, women suddenly made
more than men.
Now, before you applaud this as a victory for feminism, consider the effects. Study after
study has shown that when men make less than women, women generally don't want to marry them.
Maybe they should want to marry them, but they don't. Over big populations, this causes a drop
in marriage, a spike in out-of-wedlock births, and all the familiar disasters that inevitably
follow -- more drug and alcohol abuse, higher incarceration rates, fewer families formed in the
next generation.
This isn't speculation. This is not propaganda from the evangelicals. It's social science.
We know it's true. Rich people know it best of all. That's why they get married before they
have kids. That model works. But increasingly, marriage is a luxury only the affluent in
America can afford.
And yet, and here's the bewildering and infuriating part, those very same affluent married
people, the ones making virtually all the decisions in our society, are doing pretty much
nothing to help the people below them get and stay married. Rich people are happy to fight
malaria in Congo. But working to raise men's wages in Dayton or Detroit? That's crazy.
This is negligence on a massive scale. Both parties ignore the crisis in marriage. Our
mindless cultural leaders act like it's still 1961, and the biggest problem American families
face is that sexism is preventing millions of housewives from becoming investment bankers or
Facebook executives.
For our ruling class, more investment banking is always the answer. They teach us it's more
virtuous to devote your life to some soulless corporation than it is to raise your own
kids.
Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook wrote an entire book about this. Sandberg explained that our
first duty is to shareholders, above our own children. No surprise there. Sandberg herself is
one of America's biggest shareholders. Propaganda like this has made her rich.
We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule.
They're day traders. Substitute teachers. They're just passing through. They have no skin in
this game, and it shows.
What's remarkable is how the rest of us responded to it. We didn't question why Sandberg was
saying this. We didn't laugh in her face at the pure absurdity of it. Our corporate media
celebrated Sandberg as the leader of a liberation movement. Her book became a bestseller: "Lean
In." As if putting a corporation first is empowerment. It is not. It is bondage. Republicans
should say so.
They should also speak out against the ugliest parts of our financial system. Not all
commerce is good. Why is it defensible to loan people money they can't possibly repay? Or
charge them interest that impoverishes them? Payday loan outlets in poor neighborhoods collect
400 percent annual interest.
We're OK with that? We shouldn't be. Libertarians tell us that's how markets work --
consenting adults making voluntary decisions about how to live their lives. OK. But it's also
disgusting. If you care about America, you ought to oppose the exploitation of Americans,
whether it's happening in the inner city or on Wall Street.
And by the way, if you really loved your fellow Americans, as our leaders should, if it
would break your heart to see them high all the time. Which they are. A huge number of our
kids, especially our boys, are smoking weed constantly. You may not realize that, because new
technology has made it odorless. But it's everywhere.
And that's not an accident. Once our leaders understood they could get rich from marijuana,
marijuana became ubiquitous. In many places, tax-hungry politicians have legalized or
decriminalized it. Former Speaker of the House John Boehner now lobbies for the marijuana
industry. His fellow Republicans seem fine with that. "Oh, but it's better for you than
alcohol," they tell us.
Maybe. Who cares? Talk about missing the point. Try having dinner with a 19-year-old who's
been smoking weed. The life is gone. Passive, flat, trapped in their own heads. Do you want
that for your kids? Of course not. Then why are our leaders pushing it on us? You know the
reason. Because they don't care about us.
When you care about people, you do your best to treat them fairly. Our leaders don't even
try. They hand out jobs and contracts and scholarships and slots at prestigious universities
based purely on how we look. There's nothing less fair than that, though our tax code comes
close.
Under our current system, an American who works for a salary pays about twice the tax rate
as someone who's living off inherited money and doesn't work at all. We tax capital at half of
what we tax labor. It's a sweet deal if you work in finance, as many of our rich people do.
In 2010, for example, Mitt Romney made about $22 million dollars in investment income. He
paid an effective federal tax rate of 14 percent. For normal upper-middle-class wage earners,
the federal tax rate is nearly 40 percent. No wonder Mitt Romney supports the status quo. But
for everyone else, it's infuriating.
Our leaders rarely mention any of this. They tell us our multi-tiered tax code is based on
the principles of the free market. Please. It's based on laws that the Congress passed, laws
that companies lobbied for in order to increase their economic advantage. It worked well for
those people. They did increase their economic advantage. But for everyone else, it came at a
big cost. Unfairness is profoundly divisive. When you favor one child over another, your kids
don't hate you. They hate each other.
That happens in countries, too. It's happening in ours, probably by design. Divided
countries are easier to rule. And nothing divides us like the perception that some people are
getting special treatment. In our country, some people definitely are getting special
treatment. Republicans should oppose that with everything they have.
What kind of country do you want to live in? A fair country. A decent country. A cohesive
country. A country whose leaders don't accelerate the forces of change purely for their own
profit and amusement. A country you might recognize when you're old.
A country that listens to young people who don't live in Brooklyn. A country where you can
make a solid living outside of the big cities. A country where Lewiston, Maine seems almost as
important as the west side of Los Angeles. A country where environmentalism means getting
outside and picking up the trash. A clean, orderly, stable country that respects itself. And
above all, a country where normal people with an average education who grew up in no place
special can get married, and have happy kids, and repeat unto the generations. A country that
actually cares about families, the building block of everything.
What will it take a get a country like that? Leaders who want it. For now, those leaders will
have to be Republicans. There's no option at this point.
But first, Republican leaders will have to acknowledge that market capitalism is not a
religion. Market capitalism is a tool, like a staple gun or a toaster. You'd have to be a fool
to worship it. Our system was created by human beings for the benefit of human beings. We do
not exist to serve markets. Just the opposite. Any economic system that weakens and destroys
families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society.
Internalizing all this will not be easy for Republican leaders. They'll have to unlearn
decades of bumper sticker-talking points and corporate propaganda. They'll likely lose donors
in the process. They'll be criticized. Libertarians are sure to call any deviation from market
fundamentalism a form of socialism.
That's a lie. Socialism is a disaster. It doesn't work. It's what we should be working
desperately to avoid. But socialism is exactly what we're going to get, and very soon unless a
group of responsible people in our political system reforms the American economy in a way that
protects normal people.
If you want to put America first, you've got to put its families first.
Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on January 2,
2019.
"... America's "ruling class," Carlson says, are the "mercenaries" behind the failures of the middle class -- including sinking marriage rates -- and "the ugliest parts of our financial system." He went on: "Any economic system that weakens and destroys families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society." ..."
"... He concluded with a demand for "a fair country. A decent country. A cohesive country. A country whose leaders don't accelerate the forces of change purely for their own profit and amusement." ..."
"... The monologue and its sweeping anti-elitism drove a wedge between conservative writers. The American Conservative's Rod Dreher wrote of Carlson's monologue, "A man or woman who can talk like that with conviction could become president. Voting for a conservative candidate like that would be the first affirmative vote I've ever cast for president. ..."
"... The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are Growing Broke ..."
"... Carlson wanted to be clear: He's just asking questions. "I'm not an economic adviser or a politician. I'm not a think tank fellow. I'm just a talk show host," he said, telling me that all he wants is to ask "the basic questions you would ask about any policy." But he wants to ask those questions about what he calls the "religious faith" of market capitalism, one he believes elites -- "mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule" -- have put ahead of "normal people." ..."
"... "What does [free market capitalism] get us?" he said in our call. "What kind of country do you want to live in? If you put these policies into effect, what will you have in 10 years?" ..."
"... Carlson is hardly the first right-leaning figure to make a pitch for populism, even tangentially, in the third year of Donald Trump, whose populist-lite presidential candidacy and presidency Carlson told me he views as "the smoke alarm ... telling you the building is on fire, and unless you figure out how to put the flames out, it will consume it." ..."
"... Trump borrowed some of that approach for his 2016 campaign but in office has governed as a fairly orthodox economic conservative, thus demonstrating the demand for populism on the right without really providing the supply and creating conditions for further ferment. ..."
"... Ocasio-Cortez wants a 70-80% income tax on the rich. I agree! Start with the Koch Bros. -- and also make it WEALTH tax. ..."
"... "I'm just saying as a matter of fact," he told me, "a country where a shrinking percentage of the population is taking home an ever-expanding proportion of the money is not a recipe for a stable society. It's not." ..."
"... Carlson told me he wanted to be clear: He is not a populist. But he believes some version of populism is necessary to prevent a full-scale political revolt or the onset of socialism. Using Theodore Roosevelt as an example of a president who recognized that labor needs economic power, he told me, "Unless you want something really extreme to happen, you need to take this seriously and figure out how to protect average people from these remarkably powerful forces that have been unleashed." ..."
"... But Carlson's brand of populism, and the populist sentiments sweeping the American right, aren't just focused on the current state of income inequality in America. Carlson tackled a bigger idea: that market capitalism and the "elites" whom he argues are its major drivers aren't working. The free market isn't working for families, or individuals, or kids. In his monologue, Carlson railed against libertarian economics and even payday loans, saying, "If you care about America, you ought to oppose the exploitation of Americans, whether it's happening in the inner city or on Wall Street" -- sounding very much like Sanders or Warren on the left. ..."
"... Capitalism/liberalism destroys the extended family by requiring people to move apart for work and destroying any sense of unchosen obligations one might have towards one's kin. ..."
"... Hillbilly Elegy ..."
"... Carlson told me that beyond changing our tax code, he has no major policies in mind. "I'm not even making the case for an economic system in particular," he told me. "All I'm saying is don't act like the way things are is somehow ordained by God or a function or raw nature." ..."
"All I'm saying is don't act like the way things are is somehow ordained by God."
Last Wednesday, the conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson started a fire on the right after airing a prolonged
monologue on his show that was, in essence, an indictment of American capitalism.
America's "ruling class," Carlson says, are the "mercenaries" behind the failures of the middle class -- including sinking
marriage rates -- and "the ugliest parts of our financial system." He went on: "Any economic system that weakens and destroys families
is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society."
He concluded with a demand for "a fair country. A decent country. A cohesive country. A country whose leaders don't accelerate
the forces of change purely for their own profit and amusement."
The monologue was stunning in itself, an incredible moment in which a Fox News host stated that for generations, "Republicans
have considered it their duty to make the world safe for banking, while simultaneously prosecuting ever more foreign wars." More
broadly, though, Carlson's position and the ensuing controversy reveals an ongoing and nearly unsolvable tension in conservative
politics about the meaning of populism, a political ideology that Trump campaigned on but Carlson argues he may not truly understand.
Moreover, in Carlson's words: "At some point, Donald Trump will be gone. The rest of us will be gone too. The country will remain.
What kind of country will be it be then?"
The monologue and its sweeping anti-elitism drove a wedge between conservative writers. The American Conservative's Rod Dreher
wrote of Carlson's monologue,
"A man or woman who can talk like that with conviction could become president. Voting for a conservative candidate like that would
be the first affirmative vote I've ever cast for president." Other conservative commentators scoffed. Ben Shapiro wrote in
National Review that Carlson's monologue sounded far more like Sens. Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren than, say, Ronald Reagan.
I spoke with Carlson by phone this week to discuss his monologue and its economic -- and cultural -- meaning. He agreed that his
monologue was reminiscent of Warren, referencing her 2003
bookThe Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are Growing Broke . "There were parts of the book that I disagree
with, of course," he told me. "But there are parts of it that are really important and true. And nobody wanted to have that conversation."
Carlson wanted to be clear: He's just asking questions. "I'm not an economic adviser or a politician. I'm not a think tank
fellow. I'm just a talk show host," he said, telling me that all he wants is to ask "the basic questions you would ask about any
policy." But he wants to ask those questions about what he calls the "religious faith" of market capitalism, one he believes elites
-- "mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule" -- have put ahead of "normal people."
But whether or not he likes it, Carlson is an important voice in conservative politics. His show is among the
most-watched television programs in America. And his raising questions about market capitalism and the free market matters.
"What does [free market capitalism] get us?" he said in our call. "What kind of country do you want to live in? If you put
these policies into effect, what will you have in 10 years?"
Populism on the right is gaining, again
Carlson is hardly the first right-leaning figure to make a pitch for populism, even tangentially, in the third year of Donald
Trump, whose populist-lite
presidential candidacy and presidency Carlson told me he views as "the smoke alarm ... telling you the building is on fire, and unless
you figure out how to put the flames out, it will consume it."
Populism is a rhetorical approach that separates "the people" from elites. In the
words of Cas
Mudde, a professor at the University of Georgia, it divides the country into "two homogenous and antagonistic groups: the pure people
on the one end and the corrupt elite on the other." Populist rhetoric has a long history in American politics, serving as the focal
point of numerous presidential campaigns and powering William Jennings Bryan to the Democratic nomination for president in 1896.
Trump borrowed some of that approach for his 2016 campaign but in office has governed as a fairly orthodox economic conservative,
thus demonstrating the demand for populism on the right without really providing the supply and creating conditions for further ferment.
When right-leaning pundit Ann Coulter
spoke with Breitbart Radio about Trump's Tuesday evening Oval Office address to the nation regarding border wall funding, she
said she wanted to hear him say something like, "You know, you say a lot of wild things on the campaign trail. I'm speaking to big
rallies. But I want to talk to America about a serious problem that is affecting the least among us, the working-class blue-collar
workers":
Coulter urged Trump to bring up overdose deaths from heroin in order to speak to the "working class" and to blame the fact
that working-class wages have stalled, if not fallen, in the last 20 years on immigration. She encouraged Trump to declare, "This
is a national emergency for the people who don't have lobbyists in Washington."
Ocasio-Cortez wants a 70-80% income tax on the rich. I agree! Start with the Koch Bros. -- and also make it WEALTH tax.
These sentiments have even pitted popular Fox News hosts against each other.
Sean Hannity warned his audience that New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's economic policies would mean that "the rich people
won't be buying boats that they like recreationally, they're not going to be taking expensive vacations anymore." But Carlson agreed
when I said his monologue was somewhat reminiscent of Ocasio-Cortez's
past comments on the economy , and how even a strong economy was still leaving working-class Americans behind.
"I'm just saying as a matter of fact," he told me, "a country where a shrinking percentage of the population is taking home
an ever-expanding proportion of the money is not a recipe for a stable society. It's not."
Carlson told me he wanted to be clear: He is not a populist. But he believes some version of populism is necessary to prevent
a full-scale political revolt or the onset of socialism. Using Theodore Roosevelt as an example of a president who recognized that
labor needs economic power, he told me, "Unless you want something really extreme to happen, you need to take this seriously and
figure out how to protect average people from these remarkably powerful forces that have been unleashed."
"I think populism is potentially really disruptive. What I'm saying is that populism is a symptom of something being wrong," he
told me. "Again, populism is a smoke alarm; do not ignore it."
But Carlson's brand of populism, and the populist sentiments sweeping the American right, aren't just focused on the current
state of income inequality in America. Carlson tackled a bigger idea: that market capitalism and the "elites" whom he argues are
its major drivers aren't working. The free market isn't working for families, or individuals, or kids. In his monologue, Carlson
railed against libertarian economics and even payday loans, saying, "If you care about America, you ought to oppose the exploitation
of Americans, whether it's happening in the inner city or on Wall Street" -- sounding very much like Sanders or Warren on the left.
Carlson's argument that "market capitalism is not a religion" is of course old hat on the left, but it's also been bubbling on
the right for years now. When National Review writer Kevin Williamson
wrote
a 2016 op-ed about how rural whites "failed themselves," he faced a massive backlash in the Trumpier quarters of the right. And
these sentiments are becoming increasingly potent at a time when Americans can see both a booming stock market and perhaps their
own family members struggling to get by.
Capitalism/liberalism destroys the extended family by requiring people to move apart for work and destroying any sense
of unchosen obligations one might have towards one's kin.
At the Federalist, writer Kirk Jing
wrote of Carlson's
monologue, and a
response
to it by National Review columnist David French:
Our society is less French's America, the idea, and more Frantz Fanon's "Wretched of the Earth" (involving a very different
French). The lowest are stripped of even social dignity and deemed
unworthy of life . In Real America, wages are stagnant, life expectancy is crashing, people are fleeing the workforce, families
are crumbling, and trust in the institutions on top are at all-time lows. To French, holding any leaders of those institutions
responsible for their errors is "victimhood populism" ... The Right must do better if it seeks to govern a real America that exists
outside of its fantasies.
J.D. Vance, author of
Hillbilly Elegy
, wrote that the [neoliberal] economy's victories -- and praise for those wins from conservatives -- were largely meaningless
to white working-class Americans living in Ohio and Kentucky: "Yes, they live in a country with a higher GDP than a generation ago,
and they're undoubtedly able to buy cheaper consumer goods, but to paraphrase Reagan: Are they better off than they were 20 years
ago? Many would say, unequivocally, 'no.'"
Carlson's populism holds, in his view, bipartisan possibilities. In a follow-up email, I asked him why his monologue was aimed
at Republicans when many Democrats had long espoused the same criticisms of free market economics. "Fair question," he responded.
"I hope it's not just Republicans. But any response to the country's systemic problems will have to give priority to the concerns
of American citizens over the concerns of everyone else, just as you'd protect your own kids before the neighbor's kids."
Who is "they"?
And that's the point where Carlson and a host of others on the right who have begun to challenge the conservative movement's orthodoxy
on free markets -- people ranging from occasionally mendacious bomb-throwers like Coulter to writers like
Michael Brendan Dougherty -- separate
themselves from many of those making those exact same arguments on the left.
When Carlson talks about the "normal people" he wants to save from nefarious elites, he is talking, usually, about a specific
group of "normal people" -- white working-class Americans who are the "real" victims of capitalism, or marijuana legalization, or
immigration policies.
In this telling, white working-class Americans who once relied on a manufacturing economy that doesn't look the way it did in
1955 are the unwilling pawns of elites. It's not their fault that, in Carlson's view, marriage is inaccessible to them, or that marijuana
legalization means more teens are smoking weed (
this probably isn't true ). Someone,
or something, did this to them. In Carlson's view, it's the responsibility of politicians: Our economic situation, and the plight
of the white working class, is "the product of a series of conscious decisions that the Congress made."
The criticism of Carlson's monologue has largely focused on how he deviates from the free market capitalism that conservatives
believe is the solution to poverty, not the creator of poverty. To orthodox conservatives, poverty is the result of poor decision
making or a
lack of virtue that can't be solved by government programs or an anti-elite political platform -- and they say Carlson's argument
that elites are in some way responsible for dwindling marriage rates
doesn't make sense .
But in French's response to Carlson, he goes deeper, writing that to embrace Carlson's brand of populism is to support "victimhood
populism," one that makes white working-class Americans into the victims of an undefined "they:
Carlson is advancing a form of victim-politics populism that takes a series of tectonic cultural changes -- civil rights, women's
rights, a technological revolution as significant as the industrial revolution, the mass-scale loss of religious faith, the sexual
revolution, etc. -- and turns the negative or challenging aspects of those changes into an angry tale of what they are
doing to you .
And that was my biggest question about Carlson's monologue, and the flurry of responses to it, and support for it: When other
groups (say, black Americans) have pointed to systemic inequities within the economic system that have resulted in poverty and family
dysfunction, the response from many on the right has been, shall we say,
less than
enthusiastic .
Really, it comes down to when black people have problems, it's personal responsibility, but when white people have the same
problems, the system is messed up. Funny how that works!!
Yet white working-class poverty receives, from Carlson and others, far more sympathy. And conservatives are far more likely to
identify with a criticism of "elites" when they believe those elites are responsible for the
expansion of trans
rights or creeping secularism
than the wealthy and powerful people who are investing in
private prisons or an expansion
of the
militarization of police . Carlson's network, Fox News, and Carlson himself have frequently blasted leftist critics of market
capitalism and efforts to
fight
inequality .
I asked Carlson about this, as his show is frequently centered on the turmoils caused by "
demographic change
." He said that for decades, "conservatives just wrote [black economic struggles] off as a culture of poverty," a line he
includes in his monologue .
He added that regarding black poverty, "it's pretty easy when you've got 12 percent of the population going through something
to feel like, 'Well, there must be ... there's something wrong with that culture.' Which is actually a tricky thing to say because
it's in part true, but what you're missing, what I missed, what I think a lot of people missed, was that the economic system you're
living under affects your culture."
Carlson said that growing up in Washington, DC, and spending time in rural Maine, he didn't realize until recently that the same
poverty and decay he observed in the Washington of the 1980s was also taking place in rural (and majority-white) Maine. "I was thinking,
'Wait a second ... maybe when the jobs go away the culture changes,'" he told me, "And the reason I didn't think of it before was
because I was so blinded by this libertarian economic propaganda that I couldn't get past my own assumptions about economics." (For
the record, libertarians have
critiqued Carlson's
monologue as well.)
Carlson told me that beyond changing our tax code, he has no major policies in mind. "I'm not even making the case for an
economic system in particular," he told me. "All I'm saying is don't act like the way things are is somehow ordained by God or a
function or raw nature."
And clearly, our market economy isn't driven by God or nature, as the stock market soars and unemployment dips and yet even those
on the right are noticing lengthy periods of wage stagnation and dying little towns across the country. But what to do about those
dying little towns, and which dying towns we care about and which we don't, and, most importantly, whose fault it is that those towns
are dying in the first place -- those are all questions Carlson leaves to the viewer to answer.
"... Excessive financialization is the Achilles' heel of neoliberalism. It inevitably distorts everything, blows the asset bubble, which then pops. With each pop, the level of political support of neoliberalism shrinks. Hillary defeat would have been impossible without 2008 events. ..."
Barkley insists on a left-right split for his analysis of political parties and their attachment to vague policy tendencies
and that insistence makes a mess of the central issue: why the rise of right-wing populism in a "successful" economy?
Naomi Klein's book is about how and why centrist neoliberals got control of policy. The rise of right-wing populism is often
supposed (see Mark Blyth) to be about the dissatisfaction bred by the long-term shortcomings of or blowback from neoliberal policy.
Barkley Rosser treats neoliberal policy as implicitly successful and, therefore, the reaction from the populist right appears
mysterious, something to investigate. His thesis regarding neoliberal success in Poland is predicated on policy being less severe,
less "shocky".
In his left-right division of Polish politics, the centrist neoliberals -- in the 21st century, Civic Platform -- seem to disappear
into the background even though I think they are still the second largest Party in Parliament, though some seem to think they
will sink in elections this year.
Electoral participation is another factor that receives little attention in this analysis. Politics is shaped in part by the
people who do NOT show up. And, in Poland that has sometimes been a lot of people, indeed.
Finally, there's the matter of the neoliberal straitjacket -- the flip-side of the shock in the one-two punch of "there's no
alternative". What the policy options for a Party representing the interests of the angry and dissatisfied? If you make policy
impossible for a party of the left, of course that breeds parties of the right. duh.
Likbez,
Bruce,
Blowback from the neoliberal policy is coming. I would consider the current situation in the USA as the starting point of this
"slow-motion collapse of the neoliberal garbage truck against the wall." Neoliberalism like Bolshevism in 1945 has no future,
only the past. That does not mean that it will not limp forward in zombie (and pretty bloodthirsty ) stage for another 50 years.
But it is doomed, notwithstanding recently staged revenge in countries like Ukraine, Argentina, and Brazil.
Excessive financialization is the Achilles' heel of neoliberalism. It inevitably distorts everything, blows the asset bubble,
which then pops. With each pop, the level of political support of neoliberalism shrinks. Hillary defeat would have been impossible
without 2008 events.
At least half of Americans now hate soft neoliberals of Democratic Party (Clinton wing of Bought by Wall Street technocrats),
as well as hard neoliberal of Republican Party, which created the " crisis of confidence" toward governing neoliberal elite in
countries like the USA, GB, and France. And that probably why the intelligence agencies became the prominent political players
and staged the color revolution against Trump (aka Russiagate ) in the USA.
The situation with the support of neoliberalism now is very different than in 1994 when Bill Clinton came to power. Of course,
as Otto von Bismarck once quipped "God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America." and another
turn of the technological spiral might well save the USA. But the danger of never-ending secular stagnation is substantial and
growing. This fact was admitted even by such dyed- in-the-wool neoliberals as Summers.
This illusion that advances in statistics gave neoliberal access to such fine-grained and timely economic data, that now it
is possible to regulate economy indirectly, by strictly monetary means is pure religious hubris. Milton Friedman would now be
laughed out the room if he tried to repeat his monetarist junk science now. Actually he himself discarded his monetarist illusions
before he died.
We probably need to the return of strong direct investments in the economy by the state and nationalization of some assets,
if we want to survive and compete with China. Australian politicians are already openly discussing this, we still are lagging
because of "walking dead" neoliberals in Congress like Pelosi, Schumer, and company.
But we have another huge problem, which Australia and other countries (other than GB) do not have: neoliberalism in the USA
is the state religion which completely displaced Christianity (and is hostile to Christianity), so it might be that the lemming
will go off the cliff. I hope not.
The only thing that still keeps neoliberalism from being thrown out to the garbage bin of history is that it is unclear what
would the alternative. And that means that like in 1920th far-right nationalism and fascism have a fighting chance against decadent
neoliberal oligarchy.
Previously financial oligarchy was in many minds associated with Jewish bankers. Now people are more educated and probably
can hang from the lampposts Anglo-Saxon and bankers of other nationalities as well ;-)
I think that in some countries neoliberal oligarchs might soon feel very uncomfortable, much like Soros in Hungary.
As far as I understood the level of animosity and suppressed anger toward financial oligarchy and their stooges including some
professors in economics departments of the major universities might soon be approaching the level which existed in the Weimar
Republic. And as Lenin noted, " the ideas could become a material force if they got mass support." This is true about anger as
well.
Craig Murray is right that "As the Establishment feels its grip slipping, as people wake up to the appalling economic exploitation by the few that underlies
the very foundations of modern western society, expect the methods used by the security services to become even dirtier."
Collapse of neoliberal ideology and rise of tentions in neoliberal sociarties resulted in unprecedented increase of covert and false
flag operations by British intelligence services, especially against Russia, which had been chosen as a convenient scapegoat.
With Steele dossier and Skripal affair as two most well known.
New Lady Macbeth (Theresa May) Russophobia is so extreme that her cabinet derailed the election of a Russian to head
Interpol.
Looks like neoliberalism cannot be defeated by and faction of the existing elite. Only when shepp oil end mant people will
have a chance. The US , GB and EU are part of the wider hegemonic neoliberal system. In fact rejection of neoliberal
globalization probably will lead to "national neoliberals" regime which would be a flavor of neo-fascism, no more no less.
Notable quotes:
"... The British state can maintain its spies' cover stories for centuries. ..."
"... I learnt how highly improbable left wing firebrand Simon Bracey-Lane just happened to be on holiday in the United States with available cash to fund himself, when he stumbled into the Bernie Sanders campaign. ..."
"... It is, to say the least, very interesting indeed that just a year later the left wing, "Corbyn and Sanders supporting" Bracey-Lane is hosting a very right wing event, "Cold War Then and Now", for the shadowy neo-con Institute for Statecraft, at which an entirely unbalanced panel of British military, NATO and Ukrainian nationalists extolled the virtues of re-arming against Russia. ..."
"... the MOD-sponsored Institute for Statecraft has been given millions of pounds of taxpayers' money by the FCO to spread covert disinformation and propaganda, particularly against Russia and the anti-war movement. Activities include twitter and facebook trolling and secretly paying journalists in "clusters of influence" around Europe. Anonymous helpfully leaked the Institute's internal documents. Some of the Integrity Initiative's thus exposed alleged covert agents, like David Aaronovitch, have denied any involvement despite their appearance in the documents, and others like Dan Kaszeta the US "novichok expert", have cheerfully admitted it. ..."
"... By sleuthing the company records of this "Scottish charity", and a couple of phone calls, I discovered that the actual location of the Institute for Statecraft is the basement of 2 Temple Place, London. This is not just any basement – it is the basement of the former London mansion of William Waldorf Astor, an astonishing building . It is, in short, possibly the most expensive basement in London. ..."
"... Which is interesting because the accounts of the Institute for Statecraft claim it has no permanent staff and show nothing for rent, utilities or office expenses. In fact, I understand the rent is paid by the Ministry of Defence. ..."
"... I have a great deal more to tell you about Mr Edney and his organisation next week, and the extraordinary covert disinformation war the British government wages online, attacking British citizens using British taxpayers' money. Please note in the interim I am not even a smidgeon suicidal, and going to be very, very careful crossing the road and am not intending any walks in the hills. ..."
"... I am not alleging Mr Bracey-Lane is an intelligence service operative who previously infiltrated the Labour Party and the Sanders campaign. He may just be a young man of unusually heterodox and vacillating political opinions. He may be an undercover reporter for the Canary infiltrating the Institute for Statecraft. All these things are possible, and I have no firm information. ..."
"... one of the activities the Integrity Initiative sponsors happens to be the use of online trolls to ridicule the idea that the British security services ever carry out any kind of infiltration, false flag or agent provocateur operations, despite the fact that we even have repeated court judgements against undercover infiltration officers getting female activists pregnant. The Integrity Initiative offers us a glimpse into the very dirty world of surveillance and official disinformation. If we actually had a free media, it would be the biggest story of the day ..."
"... As the Establishment feels its grip slipping, as people wake up to the appalling economic exploitation by the few that underlies the very foundations of modern western society, expect the methods used by the security services to become even dirtier. ..."
"... You can bank on continued ramping up of Russophobia to supply "the enemy". ..."
The British state can maintain its spies' cover stories for centuries. Look up Eldred Pottinger, who for 180 years appears
in scores of British history books – right up to and including William Dalrymple's Return of the King – as a British officer who
chanced to be passing Herat on holiday when it came under siege from a partly Russian-officered Persian army, and helped to organise
the defences. In researching
Sikunder Burnes, I discovered and published from the British Library incontrovertible and detailed documentary evidence that
Pottinger's entire journey was under the direct instructions of, and reporting to, British spymaster Alexander Burnes. The first
historian to publish the untrue "holiday" cover story, Sir John Kaye, knew both Burnes and Pottinger and undoubtedly knew he was
publishing lying propaganda. Every other British historian of the First Afghan War (except me and latterly
Farrukh Husain) has just followed Kaye's official propaganda.
Some things don't change. I was irresistibly reminded of Eldred Pottinger just passing Herat on holiday, when I learnt how
highly improbable left wing firebrand Simon Bracey-Lane
just happened to be on holiday in the
United States with available cash to fund himself, when he stumbled into the Bernie Sanders campaign.
Recent university graduate Simon Bracey-Lane took it even further. Originally from Wimbledon in London, he was inspired to
rejoin the Labour party in September when Corbyn was elected leader. But by that point, he was already in the US on holiday. So
he joined the Sanders campaign, and never left.
"I had two weeks left and some money left, so I thought, Fuck it, I'll make some calls for Bernie Sanders," he explains. "I just
sort of knew Des Moines was the place, so I just turned up at their HQ, started making phone calls, and then became a fully fledged
field organiser."
It is, to say the least, very interesting indeed that just a year later the left wing, "Corbyn and Sanders supporting" Bracey-Lane
is hosting a very right wing event, "Cold War Then and Now", for the shadowy neo-con Institute for Statecraft, at which an entirely
unbalanced panel of British
military, NATO and Ukrainian nationalists extolled the virtues of re-arming against Russia.
Nor would it seem likely that Bracey-Lane would be involved with the Integrity Initiative. Even the mainstream media has been
forced to give a few paragraphs to the outrageous Integrity Initiative, under which the MOD-sponsored Institute for Statecraft
has been given millions of pounds of taxpayers' money by the FCO to spread covert disinformation and propaganda, particularly against
Russia and the anti-war movement. Activities include twitter and facebook trolling and secretly paying journalists in "clusters of
influence" around Europe. Anonymous helpfully leaked the Institute's internal documents. Some of the Integrity Initiative's thus
exposed alleged covert agents, like David Aaronovitch, have denied any involvement despite their appearance in the documents, and
others like Dan Kaszeta the US "novichok expert", have cheerfully admitted it.
The mainstream media have
tracked down
the HQ of the "Institute for Statecraft" to a derelict mill near Auchtermuchty. It is owned by one of the company directors, Daniel
Lafayeedney, formerly of D Squadron 23rd SAS Regiment and later of Military Intelligence (and incidentally born the rather more prosaic
Daniel Edney).
By sleuthing the company records of this "Scottish charity", and a couple of phone calls, I discovered that the actual location
of the Institute for Statecraft is the basement of 2 Temple Place, London. This is not just any basement – it is the basement of
the former London mansion of William Waldorf Astor, an astonishing building.
It is, in short, possibly the most expensive basement in London.
Which is interesting because the accounts of the Institute for Statecraft claim it has no permanent staff and show nothing
for rent, utilities or office expenses. In fact, I understand the rent is paid by the Ministry of Defence.
Having been told where the Institute for Statecraft skulk, I tipped off journalist Kit Klarenberg of Sputnik Radio to go and physically
check it out. Kit did so and was
aggressively
ejected by that well-known Corbyn and Sanders supporter, Simon Bracey-Lane. It does seem somewhat strange that our left wing
hero is deeply embedded in an organisation that
launches troll attacks on Jeremy Corbyn.
I have a great deal more to tell you about Mr Edney and his organisation next week, and the extraordinary covert disinformation
war the British government wages online, attacking British citizens using British taxpayers' money. Please note in the interim I
am not even a smidgeon suicidal, and going to be very, very careful crossing the road and am not intending any walks in the hills.
I am not alleging Mr Bracey-Lane is an intelligence service operative who previously infiltrated the Labour Party and the
Sanders campaign. He may just be a young man of unusually heterodox and vacillating political opinions. He may be an undercover reporter
for the Canary infiltrating the Institute for Statecraft. All these things are possible, and I have no firm information.
But one of the activities the Integrity Initiative sponsors happens to be the use of online trolls to ridicule the idea that the
British security services ever carry out any kind of infiltration, false flag or agent provocateur operations, despite the fact that
we even have repeated court judgements against undercover infiltration officers getting female activists pregnant. The Integrity
Initiative offers us a glimpse into the very dirty world of surveillance and official disinformation. If we actually had a free media,
it would be the biggest story of the day.
As the Establishment feels its grip slipping, as people wake up to the appalling economic exploitation by the few that underlies
the very foundations of modern western society, expect the methods used by the security services to become even dirtier.
You can
bank on continued ramping up of Russophobia to supply "the enemy".
As both Scottish Independence and Jeremy Corbyn are viewed as
real threats by the British Establishment, you can anticipate every possible kind of dirty trick in the next couple of years, with
increasing frequency and audacity
After Democratic party was co-opted by neoliberals there is no way back. And since Obama the trend of Democratic Party is
toward strengthening the wing of CIA-democratic notthe wing of the party friendly to workers. Bought by Wall Street leadership is
uncable of intruting any change that undermine thier current neoliberal platform. that's why they criminally derailed Sanders.
Notable quotes:
"... When you think about the issue of how exactly a clean-energy jobs program would address the elephant in the room of private accumulation and how such a program, under capitalism, would be able to pay living wages to the people put to work under it, it exposes how non threatening these Green New Deals actually are to capitalism. ..."
"... To quote Trotsky, "These people are capable of and ready for anything!" ..."
"... "Any serious measures to stop global warming, let alone assure a job and livable wage to everyone, would require a massive redistribution of wealth and the reallocation of trillions currently spent on US imperialism's neo-colonial wars abroad." ..."
"... "It includes various left-sounding rhetoric, but is entirely directed to and dependent upon the Democratic Party." ..."
"... "And again and again, in the name of "practicality," the most unrealistic and impractical policy is promoted -- supporting a party that represents the class that is oppressing and exploiting you! The result is precisely the disastrous situation working people and youth face today -- falling wages, no job security, growing repression and the mounting threat of world war." - New York Times tries to shame "disillusioned young voters" into supporting the Democrats ..."
"... It is an illusion that technical innovation within the capitalist system will magically fundamentally resolve the material problems produced by capitalism. But the inconvenient facts are entirely ignored by the corporate shills in the DSA and the whole lot of establishment politicians, who prefer to indulge their addiction to wealth and power with delusions of grandeur, technological utopianism, and other figments that serve the needs of their class. ..."
"... First it was Obama with his phoney "hope and change" that lured young voters to the Dumbicrats and now it's Ocacia Cortez promising a "green deal" in order to herd them back into the Democratic party--a total fraud of course--totally obvious! ..."
"... from Greenwald: The Democratic Party's deceitful game https://www.salon.com/2010/... ..."
they literally ripped this out of the 2016 Green Party platform. Jill Stein spoke repeatedly
about the same exact kind of Green New Deal, a full-employment, transition-to-100%-renewables
program that would supposedly solve all the world's problems.
When you think about the issue of how exactly a clean-energy jobs program would address
the elephant in the room of private accumulation and how such a program, under capitalism,
would be able to pay living wages to the people put to work under it, it exposes how non
threatening these Green New Deals actually are to capitalism.
In 2016, when the Greens made
this their central economic policy proposal, the Democrats responded by calling that platform
irresponsible and dangerous ("even if it's a good idea, you can't actually vote for a
non-two-party candidate!"). Why would they suddenly find a green new deal appealing now
except for its true purpose: left cover for the very system destroying the planet.
To quote
Trotsky, "These people are capable of and ready for anything!"
"Any serious measures to stop global warming, let alone assure a job and livable wage to
everyone, would require a massive redistribution of wealth and the reallocation of trillions
currently spent on US imperialism's neo-colonial wars abroad."
Their political position not only lacks seriousness, unserious is their political
position.
"It includes various left-sounding rhetoric, but is entirely directed to and dependent
upon the Democratic Party."
For subjective-idealists, what you want to believe, think and feel is just so much more
convincing than objective reality. Especially when it covers over single-minded class
interests at play.
"And again and again, in the name of "practicality," the most unrealistic and impractical
policy is promoted -- supporting a party that represents the class that is oppressing and
exploiting you! The result is precisely the disastrous situation working people and youth
face today -- falling wages, no job security, growing repression and the mounting threat of
world war." - New York Times tries to shame "disillusioned young voters" into supporting
the Democrats
It is an illusion that technical innovation within the capitalist system will magically
fundamentally resolve the material problems produced by capitalism. But the inconvenient
facts are entirely ignored by the corporate shills in the DSA and the whole lot of
establishment politicians, who prefer to indulge their addiction to wealth and power with
delusions of grandeur, technological utopianism, and other figments that serve the needs of
their class.
First it was Obama with his phoney "hope and change" that lured young voters to the
Dumbicrats and now it's Ocacia Cortez promising a "green deal" in order to herd them back
into the Democratic party--a total fraud of course--totally obvious!
Only an International Socialist program led by Workers can truly lead a "green revolution" by
expropriating the billionaire oil barons of their capital and redirecting that wealth into
the socialist reconstruction of the entire economy.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's "Green New Deal" is a nice laugh. Really, it sure is funny hearing
these lies given any credence at all. This showmanship belongs in a fantasy book, not in real
life. The Democratic Party as a force for good social change Now that's a laugh!
Lies, empty promises, meaningless tautologies and morality plays, qualified and conditional
declarations to be backpedalled pending appropriate political expediencies, devoid any
practical content that is what AOC, card carrying member of DSA, and in fact young energetic
political apparatchik of calcified political body of Dems establishment, duty engulfs. And
working for socialist revolution is no one of them.
What kind of socialist would reject socialist revolution, class struggle and class
emancipation and choose, as a suppose socialist path, accommodation with oligarchic ruling
elite via political, not revolutionary process that would have necessarily overthrown ruling
elite.
What socialist would acquiesce to legalized exploitation of people for profit, legalized
greed and inequality and would negotiate away fundamental principle of egalitarianism and
working people self rule?
Only National Socialist would; and that is exactly what AOC campaign turned out to be all
about.
National Socialism with imperial flavor is her affiliation and what her praises for
Pelosi, wife of a billionaire and dead warmonger McCain proved.
Now she is peddling magical thinking about global change and plunge herself into falacy of
entrepreneurship, Market solution to the very problem that the market solutions were designed
to create and aggravate namely horrific inequality that is robbing people from their own
opportunities to mitigate devastating effects of global change.
The insidiousness of phony socialists expresses itself in the fact that they lie that any
social problem can be fixed by current of future technical means, namely via so called
technological revolution instead by socialist revolution they deem unnecessary or
detrimental.
The technical means for achieving socialism has existed since the late 19th century, with the
telegraph, the coal-powered factory, and modern fertilizer. The improvements since then have
only made socialism even more streamlined and efficient, if such technologies could only be
liberated from capital! The idea that "we need a new technological revolution just to achieve
socialism" reflects the indoctrination in capitalism by many "socialist" theorists because it
is only in capitalism where "technological growth" is essential simply to maintain the
system. It is only in capitalism (especially America, the most advanced capitalist nation,
and thus, the one where capitalism is actually closest towards total crisis) where the dogma
of a technological savior is most entrenched because America cannot offer any other kind of
palliative to the more literate and productive sections of its population. Religion will not
convince most and any attempt at a sociological or economic understanding would inevitably
prove the truth of socialism.
The Democrats are politically responsible for the rise of Trump.
Notable quotes:
"... As Obama said following Trump's election, the Democrats and Republicans are "on the same team" and their differences amount to an "intramural scrimmage." They are on the team of, and owned lock stock and barrel by, the American corporate-financial oligarchy, personified by Trump. ..."
"... The Democrats are, moreover, politically responsible for the rise of Trump. The Obama administration paved the way for Trump by implementing the pro-corporate (Wall Street bailout), pro-war (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, drone killings) and anti-democratic (mass surveillance, persecution of Snowden, Assange, Manning) policies that Trump is continuing and intensifying. And by breaking all his election promises and carrying out austerity policies against the working class, Obama enabled the billionaire gangster Trump to make an appeal to sections of workers devastated by deindustrialization, presenting himself as the anti-establishment spokesman for the "forgotten man." ..."
"... This was compounded by the right-wing Clinton candidacy, which exuded contempt for the working class and appealed for support to the military and CIA and wealthy middle-class layers obsessed with identity politics. Sanders' endorsement of Clinton gave Trump an open field to exploit discontent among impoverished social layers. ..."
Pelosi's deputy in the House, Steny Hoyer, sums up the right-wing policies of the Democrats,
declaring: "His [Trump's] objectives are objectives that we share. If he really means that,
then there is an opening for us to work together."
So much for the moral imperative of voting for the Democrats to stop Trump! As Obama said
following Trump's election, the Democrats and Republicans are "on the same team" and their
differences amount to an "intramural scrimmage." They are on the team of, and owned lock stock
and barrel by, the American corporate-financial oligarchy, personified by Trump.
The Democrats are, moreover, politically responsible for the rise of Trump. The Obama
administration paved the way for Trump by implementing the pro-corporate (Wall Street bailout),
pro-war (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, drone killings) and anti-democratic (mass
surveillance, persecution of Snowden, Assange, Manning) policies that Trump is continuing and
intensifying. And by breaking all his election promises and carrying out austerity policies
against the working class, Obama enabled the billionaire gangster Trump to make an appeal to
sections of workers devastated by deindustrialization, presenting himself as the
anti-establishment spokesman for the "forgotten man."
This was compounded by the right-wing Clinton candidacy, which exuded contempt for the
working class and appealed for support to the military and CIA and wealthy middle-class layers
obsessed with identity politics. Sanders' endorsement of Clinton gave Trump an open field to
exploit discontent among impoverished social layers.
The same process is taking place internationally. While strikes and other expressions of
working class opposition are growing and broad masses are moving to the left, the right-wing
policies of supposedly "left" establishment parties are enabling far-right and neo-fascist
forces to gain influence and power in countries ranging from Germany, Italy, Hungary and Poland
to Brazil.
As for Gay's injunction to vote "pragmatically," this is a crude promotion of the bankrupt
politics that are brought forward in every election to keep workers tied to the capitalist
two-party system. "You have only two choices. That is the reality, whether you like it or not."
And again and again, in the name of "practicality," the most unrealistic and impractical policy
is promoted -- supporting a party that represents the class that is oppressing and exploiting
you! The result is precisely the disastrous situation working people and youth face today --
falling wages, no job security, growing repression and the mounting threat of world war.
The Democratic Party long ago earned the designation "graveyard of social protest
movements," and for good reason. From the Populist movement of the late 19th century, to the
semi-insurrectional industrial union movement of the 1930s, to the civil rights movement of the
1950s and 1960s, to the mass anti-war protest movements of the 1960s and the eruption of
international protests against the Iraq War in the early 2000s -- every movement against the
depredations of American capitalism has been aborted and strangled by being channeled behind
the Democratic Party.
"... There is only the Deep Purple Mil.Gov UniParty. The Titanic is dead in the water, lights out, bow down hard. The Rich, the Corporate Profiteers and the Military-Political Establishment have pulled away in their fur and jewel-encrusted life boats. It's one minute after midnight on the Doomsday Clock, the hands have fallen off the Debt Clock, the skies are burning and seas are rising (they say), and we are in WW3 in 8 nations. Or is it 9? ..."
"... So the Democrat faction of the Corporate One-Party took back control of the House from the Republican faction. (It's one hard-right party, of course; only liars and those ignorant of history call the Dems "centrist". By any objective or historical standard they're a right-wing party.) ..."
"... I made no prediction on what would happen in this election, but I've long predicted that if/when the Democrats win control of either house they'll do nothing with that control. Jack squat. Status quo all the way, embellished with more retarded Russia-Derangement stuff and similar nonsense. ..."
"... If there really were a difference between these corporate factions, here's the chance for the House to obstruct all Senate-passed legislation. ..."
"... They claim there's a difference between the two parties? ..."
"... But I predict this House won't lift a finger vs. the Senate, and that it'll strive to work with the Senate on legislation, and that it'll fully concur with the Senate on war budgets, police state measures, anything and everything demanded by Wall Street, Big Ag, the fossil fuel extractors, and of course the corporate welfare state in general. ..."
"... Nothing I've talked about here is anything but what is possible, what is always implicitly or explicitly promised by Dembots, and what it would seem is the minimum necessary given what Dembots claim is the scope of the crisis and what is at stake. ..."
It's not even decent theatre. Drama is much lacking, character development zilch. The outcome that dems take congress,& rethugs
improve in senate is exactly as was predicted months ago.
The dems reveal once again exactly how mendacious and uncaring of
the population they are. Nothing matters other than screwing more cash outta anyone who wants anything done so that the DC trough
stays full with the usual crew of 4th & 5th generation wannabe dem pols guzzling hard at the corporate funded 'dem aligned' think
tanks which generate much hot air yet never deliver. Hardly suprising given that actually doing something to show they give a
sh1t about the citizenry would annoy the donor who would give em all the boot, making all these no-hopers have to take up a gig
actually practising law.
These are people whose presence at the best law schools in the country prevented many who wanted to be y'know lawyers from
entering Harvard, Cornell etc law school. "one doesn't go to law school to become a lawyer It too hard to even pull down a mil
a year as a brief, nah, I studied the law to learn how to make laws that actually do the opposite of what they seem to. That is
where the real dough is."
Those who think that is being too hard on the dem slugs, should remember that the rethugs they have been indoctrinated to detest
act pretty much as printed on the side of the can. They advertise a service of licking rich arseholes and that is exactly what
they do. As venal and sociopathic as they are, at least they don't pretend to be something else; so while there is no way one
could vote for anyone spouting republican nonsense at least they don't hide their greed & corruption under a veneer of pseudo-humanist
nonsense. Dems cry for the plight of the poverty stricken then they slash welfare.
Or dems sob about the hard row african americans must hoe, then go off to the house of reps to pass laws to keep impoverished
african americans slotted up in an over crowded prison for the rest of his/her life.
Not only deceitful and vicious, 100% pointless since any Joe/Jo that votes on the basis of wanting to see more blackfellas
incarcerated is always gonna tick the rethug box anyhow.
Yeah- yeah we know all this so what?
This is what - the dems broke their arses getting tens of millions of young first time voters out to "exercise their democratic
prerogative" for the first time. Dems did this knowing full well that there would be no effective opposition to rethug demands
for more domestic oppression, that in fact it is practically guaranteed that should the trump and the rethug senate require it,
in order to ensure something particularly nasty gets passed, that sufficient dem congress people will 'cross the floor' to make
certain the bill does get up.
Of course the dems in question will allude to 'folks back home demanding' that the dem slug does vote with the nasties, but
that is the excuse, the reality is far too many dem pols are as bigoted greedy and elitist as the worst rethugs.
Anyway the upshot of persuading so many kids to get out and vote, so the kids do but the dems are content to just do more of
the same, will be another entire generation lost to elections forever.
If the DNC had been less greedy and more strategic they would have kept their powder dry and hung off press-ganging the kids
until getting such a turnout could have resulted in genuine change, prez 2020' or whenever, would be actual success for pols and
voters.
But they didn't and wouldn't ever, since for a dem pol, hundreds of thousands of fellow citizens living on the street isn't
nearly as problematic for them, as the dem wannabe pol paying off the mortgage on his/her DC townhouse by 2020, something that
would have been impossible if they hadn't taken congress as all the 'patrons' would have jerked back their cash figuring there
is no gain giving dosh to losers who couldn't win a bar raffle.
As for that Sharice Davids - a total miss she needed to be either a midget or missing an arm or leg to qualify as the classic
ID dem pol. Being a native american lezzo just doesn't tick enough boxes. I predict a not in the least illustrious career since
she cannot even qualify as the punchline in a circa 1980's joke.
As you said, nothing will get out of the House, Pelosi can't lead. They can easily swing 3 Democrats, then Mike Pence puts
the hammer down. If anything manages to crawl through, it won't even be brought to a vote in the Republican Senate. Trump can
still us his bully pulpit to circle the White wagons, fly in even more than his current 1,125,000 H-visa aliens, and No Taxes
for the Rich is now engraved in stone for the Pharoahs.
The imminent $1,500B Omnibus Deficit Bill Three will be lauded as a 'bipartisan solution' by both houses, and 2020 looks to
be a $27,000B illegal, onerous, odious National Debt open Civil War.
There is only the Deep Purple Mil.Gov UniParty. The Titanic is dead in the water, lights out, bow down hard. The Rich,
the Corporate Profiteers and the Military-Political Establishment have pulled away in their fur and jewel-encrusted life boats.
It's one minute after midnight on the Doomsday Clock, the hands have fallen off the Debt Clock, the skies are burning and seas
are rising (they say), and we are in WW3 in 8 nations. Or is it 9?
Smart money is moving toward the exits. This shyte is gonna blow. Let's move to Australia, before it becomes part of Xi's PRC
String of Girls.
Reading most of the comments explaining how the D's won/lost,,, the R's won/lost,,, Trump and company won/lost,,, but couldn't
find one post about how America is losing due to the two suffocating party's and a greedy, disunited, selfish, electorate that
wants it all free.
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' ,,,,,,,
Alex Fraser.
So the Democrat faction of the Corporate One-Party took back control of the House from the Republican faction. (It's one hard-right
party, of course; only liars and those ignorant of history call the Dems "centrist". By any objective or historical standard they're
a right-wing party.)
It's no big surprise. Last two years it's been the normally self-assured Republicans who, because of their ambivalence about Trump,
have uncharacteristically taken on the usual Democrat role of existential confusion and doubt. Meanwhile the Democrats, in a berserk
batsh$t-insane way, have been more motivated and focused.
So what are these Democrats going to do with this control now that they have it?
I made no prediction on what would happen in this election, but I've long predicted that if/when the Democrats win control of
either house they'll do nothing with that control. Jack squat. Status quo all the way, embellished with more retarded Russia-Derangement
stuff and similar nonsense.
If there really were a difference between these corporate factions, here's the chance for the House to obstruct all Senate-passed
legislation. And as for things which are technically only in the power of the Senate such as confirming appointments, here's the
chance for the House to put public moral pressure on Democrats in the Senate. And there's plenty of back-door ways an activist
House can influence Senate business. Only morbid pedantry, so typical of liberal Dembots, babbles about what the technical powers
of this or that body are. The real world doesn't work that way. To the extent I pay attention at all to Senate affairs it'll be
to see what the House is doing about it.
They claim there's a difference between the two parties? And they claim Trump is an incipient fascist dictator? In that case there's
a lot at stake, and extreme action is called for. Let's see what kind of action we get from their "different" party in control
of the House.
But I predict this House won't lift a finger vs. the Senate, and that it'll strive to work with the Senate on legislation, and
that it'll fully concur with the Senate on war budgets, police state measures, anything and everything demanded by Wall Street,
Big Ag, the fossil fuel extractors, and of course the corporate welfare state in general.
Nor will any of these new-fangled fake "socialist" types take any action to change things one iota. Within the House Democrats,
they could take action, form any and every kind of coalition, to obstruct the corporate-Pelosi leadership faction. They will not
do so. This "new" progressive bloc will be just as fake as the old one.
Nothing I've talked about here is anything but what is possible, what is always implicitly or explicitly promised by Dembots,
and what it would seem is the minimum necessary given what Dembots claim is the scope of the crisis and what is at stake.
Of course, we are all supposed to vote Democratic to halt the tide of Trump fascism. But
should the Democrats take control of the House of Representatives, hate speech and violence as
a tool for intimidation and control will increase, with much of it directed, as we saw with the
pipe bombs intended to decapitate the Democratic Party leadership, toward prominent Democratic
politicians and critics of Donald Trump. Should the white man's party of the president retain
control of the House and the Senate, violence will still be the favored instrument of political
control as the last of democratic protections are stripped from us. Either way we are in for
it.
Trump is a clownish and embarrassing tool of the kleptocrats. His faux populism is a sham.
Only the rich like his tax cuts, his refusal to raise the minimum wage and his effort to
destroy Obamacare. All he has left is hate. And he will use it. Which is not to say that, if
only to throw up some obstacle to Trump, you shouldn't vote for the Democratic scum, tools of
the war industry and the pharmaceutical and insurance industry, Wall Street and the fossil fuel
industry, as opposed to the Republican scum. But Democratic control of the House will do very
little to halt our descent into corporate tyranny, especially with another economic crisis
brewing on Wall Street. The rot inside the American political system is deep and terminal.
The Democrats, who refuse to address the social inequality they helped orchestrate and that
has given rise to Trump, are the party of racial and ethnic inclusivity, identity politics,
Wall Street and the military. Their core battle cry is: We are not Trump! This is
ultimately a losing formula. It was adopted by Hillary Clinton, who is apparently weighing
another run for the presidency after we thought we had thrust a stake through her political
heart. It is the agenda of the well-heeled East Coast and West Coast elites who want to instill
corporate fascism with a friendly face.
Bertram
Gross (1912-1997) in "Friendly Fascism: The New Face of American Power" warned us that
fascism always has two looks. One is paternal, benevolent, entertaining and kind. The other is
embodied in the executioner's sadistic leer. Janus-like, fascism seeks to present itself to a
captive public as a force for good and moral renewal. It promises protection against enemies
real and invented. But denounce its ideology, challenge its power, demand freedom from
fascism's iron grip, and you are mercilessly crushed. Gross knew that if the United States'
form of fascism, expressed through corporate tyranny, was able to effectively mask its true
intentions behind its "friendly" face we would be stripped of power, shorn of our most
cherished rights and impoverished. He has been proved correct.
"Looking at the present, I see a more probable future: a new despotism creeping slowly
across America," Gross wrote. "Faceless oligarchs sit at command posts of a
corporate-government complex that has been slowly evolving over many decades. In efforts to
enlarge their own powers and privileges, they are willing to have others suffer the intended or
unintended consequences of their institutional or personal greed. For Americans, these
consequences include chronic inflation, recurring recession, open and hidden unemployment, the
poisoning of air, water, soil and bodies, and more important, the subversion of our
constitution. More broadly, consequences include widespread intervention in international
politics through economic manipulation, covert action, or military invasion."
No totalitarian state has mastered propaganda better than the corporate state. Our press has
replaced journalism with trivia, feel-good stories, jingoism and celebrity gossip. The banal
and the absurd, delivered by cheery corporate courtiers, saturate the airwaves. Our emotions
are skillfully manipulated around manufactured personalities and manufactured events. We are,
at the same time, offered elaborate diversionary spectacles including sporting events, reality
television and absurdist political campaigns. Trump is a master of this form of entertainment.
Our emotional and intellectual energy is swallowed up by the modern equivalent of the Roman
arena. Choreographed political vaudeville, which costs corporations billions of dollars, is
called free elections. Cliché-ridden slogans, which assure us that the freedoms we
cherish remain sacrosanct, dominate our national discourse as these freedoms are stripped from
us by judicial and legislative fiat. It is a vast con game.
You cannot use the word "liberty" when your government, as ours does, watches you 24 hours a
day and stores all of your personal information in government computers in perpetuity. You
cannot use the word "liberty" when you are the most photographed and monitored population in
human history. You cannot use the word "liberty" when it is impossible to vote against the
interests of Goldman Sachs or General Dynamics. You cannot use the word "liberty" when the
state empowers militarized police to use indiscriminate lethal force against unarmed citizens
in the streets of American cities. You cannot use the word "liberty" when 2.3 million citizens,
mostly poor people of color, are held in the largest prison system on earth. This is the
relationship between a master and a slave. The choice is between whom we want to clamp on our
chains -- a jailer who mouths politically correct bromides or a racist, Christian fascist.
Either way we are shackled.
Gross understood that unchecked corporate power would inevitably lead to corporate fascism.
It is the natural consequence of the ruling ideology of neoliberalism that consolidates power
and wealth into the hands of a tiny group of oligarchs. The political philosopher Sheldon
Wolin , refining Gross' thesis, would later characterize this corporate tyranny or friendly
fascism as "inverted totalitarianism." It was, as Gross and Wolin pointed out, characterized by
anonymity. It purported to pay fealty to electoral politics, the Constitution and the
iconography and symbols of American patriotism but internally had seized all of the levers of
power to render the citizen impotent. Gross warned that we were being shackled incrementally.
Most would not notice until they were in total bondage. He wrote that "a friendly fascist power
structure in the United States, Canada, Western Europe, or today's Japan would be far more
sophisticated than the 'caesarism' of fascist Germany, Italy, and Japan. It would need no
charismatic dictator nor even a titular head it would require no one-party rule, no mass
fascist party, no glorification of the State, no dissolution of legislatures, no denial of
reason. Rather, it would come slowly as an outgrowth of present trends in the
Establishment."
Gross foresaw that technological advances in the hands of corporations would be used to trap
the public in what he called "cultural ghettoization" so that "almost every individual would
get a personalized sequence of information injections at any time of the day -- or night." This
is what, of course, television, our electronic devices and the internet have done. He warned
that we would be mesmerized by the entertaining shadows on the wall of the Platonic cave as we
were enslaved.
Gross knew that the most destructive force against the body politic would be the war
profiteers and the militarists. He saw how they would siphon off the resources of the state to
wage endless war, a sum that now accounts for half of all discretionary spending. And he
grasped that warfare is the natural extension of corporatism. He wrote:
Under the militarism of German, Italian, and Japanese fascism violence was openly
glorified. It was applied regionally -- by the Germans in Europe and England, the Italians in
the Mediterranean, the Japanese in Asia. In battle, it was administered by professional
militarists who, despite many conflicts with politicians, were guided by old-fashioned
standards of duty, honor, country, and willingness to risk their own lives.
The emerging militarism of friendly fascism is somewhat different. It is global in scope.
It involves weapons of doomsday proportions, something that Hitler could dream of but never
achieve. It is based on an integration between industry, science, and the military that the
old-fashioned fascists could never even barely approximate. It points toward equally close
integration among military, paramilitary, and civilian elements. Many of the civilian leaders
-- such as Zbigniew Brzezinski or Paul Nitze -- tend to be much more bloodthirsty than any
top brass. In turn, the new-style military professionals tend to become corporate-style
entrepreneurs who tend to operate -- as Major Richard A. Gabriel and Lieutenant Colonel Paul
L. Savage have disclosed -- in accordance with the ethics of the marketplace. The old
buzzwords of duty, honor, and patriotism are mainly used to justify officer subservience to
the interests of transnational corporations and the continuing presentation of threats to
some corporate investments as threats to the interest of the American people as a whole.
Above all, in sharp contrast with classic fascism's glorification of violence, the friendly
fascist orientation is to sanitize, even hide, the greater violence of modern warfare behind
such "value-free" terms as "nuclear exchange," "counterforce" and "flexible response," behind
the huge geographical distances between the senders and receivers of destruction through
missiles or even on the "automated battlefield," and the even greater psychological distances
between the First World elites and the ordinary people who might be consigned to quick or
slow death.
We no longer live in a functioning democracy. Self-styled liberals and progressives, as they
do in every election cycle, are urging us to vote for the Democrats, although the Democratic
Party in Europe would be classified as a right-wing party, and tell us to begin to build
progressive movements the day after the election. Only no one ever builds these movements. The
Democratic Party knows there is no price to pay for selling us out and its abject service to
corporations. It knows the left and liberals become supplicants in every election cycle. And
this is why the Democratic Party drifts further and further to the right and we become more and
more irrelevant. If you stand for something, you have to be willing to fight for it. But there
is no fight in us.
The elites, Republican and Democrat, belong to the same club. We are not in it. Take a look
at the flight roster of the billionaire
Jeffrey Epstein , who was accused of prostituting dozens of underage girls and ended up
spending 13 months in prison on a single count. He flew political insiders from both parties
and the business world to his secluded Caribbean island, known as "Orgy Island," on his jet,
which the press nicknamed "the Lolita Express." Some of the names on his flight
roster, which usually included unidentified women, were Bill Clinton, who took dozens of trips,
Alan
Dershowitz , former Treasury Secretary and former Harvard President Larry Summers, the
Candide -like
Steven Pinker ,
whose fairy dust ensures we are getting better and better, and Britain's Prince Andrew. Epstein
was also a friend of Trump, whom he visited at Mar-a-Lago.
We live on the precipice, the eve of the deluge. Past civilizations have crumbled in the
same way, although as Hegel understood, the only thing we learn from history is "that people
and governments never have learned anything from history." We will not arrest the decline if
the Democrats regain control of the House. At best we will briefly slow it. The corporate
engines of pillage, oppression, ecocide and endless war are untouchable. Corporate power will
do its dirty work regardless of which face -- the friendly fascist face of the Democrats or the
demented visage of the Trump Republicans -- is pushed out front. If you want real change,
change that means something, then mobilize, mobilize, mobilize, not for one of the two
political parties but to rise up and destroy the corporate structures that ensure our doom.
"... The Democratic Party split into a four-headed monster comprised of Wall Street patrons seeking favors, war hawks and their corporate allies looking for new global rumbles, the permanent bureaucracy looking to always expand itself, and the various ethnic and sexual minorities whose needs and grievances are serviced by that bureaucracy. It's the last group that has become the party's most public face while the party's other activities – many of them sinister -- remain at least partially concealed. ..."
"... the Republicans are being forced to engage on some real issues, such as the need for a coherent and effective immigration policy and the need to redefine formal trade relations. (Other issues like the insane system of medical racketeering and the deadly racket of the college loan industry just skate along on thin ice. And then, of course, there's the national debt and all its grotesque outgrowths.) ..."
"... Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has become the party of bad ideas and bad faith, starting with the position that "diversity and inclusion" means shutting down free speech, an unforgivable transgression against common sense and common decency. It's a party that lies even more systematically than Mr. Trump, and does so knowingly (as when Google execs say they "Do no Evil"). Its dirty secret is that it relishes coercion, it likes pushing people around, telling them what to think and how to act. Its idea of "social justice" is a campus kangaroo court, where due process of law is suspended. And it is deeply corrupt, with good old-fashioned grift, new-fashioned gross political misconduct in federal law enforcement, and utter intellectual depravity in higher education. ..."
"... I hope that the party is shoved into an existential crisis and is forced to confront its astounding dishonesty. I hope that the process prompts them to purge their leadership across the board. ..."
Back in the last century, when this was a different country, the Democrats were the "smart"
party and the Republicans were the "stupid" party.
How did that work?
Well, back then the Democrats represented a broad middle class, with a base of factory
workers, many of them unionized, and the party had to be smart, especially in the courts, to
overcome the natural advantages of the owner class.
In contrast, the Republicans looked like a claque of country club drunks who staggered
home at night to sleep on their moneybags. Bad optics, as we say nowadays.
The Democrats also occupied the moral high ground as the champion of the little guy. If not
for the Dems, factory workers would be laboring twelve hours a day and children would still be
maimed in the machinery. Once the relationship between business and labor was settled in the
1950s, the party moved on to a new crusade on even loftier moral high ground: civil rights,
aiming to correct arrant and long-lived injustices against downtrodden black Americans. That
was a natural move, considering America's self-proclaimed post-war status as the world's Beacon
of Liberty. It had to be done and a political consensus that included Republicans got it done.
Consensus was still possible.
The Dems built their fortress on that high ground and fifty years later they find themselves
prisoners in it. The factory jobs all vamoosed overseas. The middle class has been pounded into
penury and addiction.
The Democratic Party split into a four-headed monster comprised of Wall Street patrons
seeking favors, war hawks and their corporate allies looking for new global rumbles, the
permanent bureaucracy looking to always expand itself, and the various ethnic and sexual
minorities whose needs and grievances are serviced by that bureaucracy. It's the last group
that has become the party's most public face while the party's other activities – many of
them sinister -- remain at least partially concealed.
The Republican Party has, at least, sobered up some after getting blindsided by Trump and
Trumpism. Like a drunk out of rehab, it's attempting to get a life. Two years in, the party
marvels at Mr. Trump's audacity, despite his obvious lack of savoir faire. And despite a
longstanding lack of political will to face the country's problems,the Republicans are being
forced to engage on some real issues, such as the need for a coherent and effective immigration
policy and the need to redefine formal trade relations. (Other issues like the insane system of
medical racketeering and the deadly racket of the college loan industry just skate along on
thin ice. And then, of course, there's the national debt and all its grotesque outgrowths.)
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has become the party of bad ideas and bad faith, starting
with the position that "diversity and inclusion" means shutting down free speech, an
unforgivable transgression against common sense and common decency. It's a party that lies even
more systematically than Mr. Trump, and does so knowingly (as when Google execs say they "Do no
Evil"). Its dirty secret is that it relishes coercion, it likes pushing people around, telling
them what to think and how to act. Its idea of "social justice" is a campus kangaroo court,
where due process of law is suspended. And it is deeply corrupt, with good old-fashioned grift,
new-fashioned gross political misconduct in federal law enforcement, and utter intellectual
depravity in higher education.
I hope that Democrats lose as many congressional and senate seats as possible.I hope that
the party is shoved into an existential crisis and is forced to confront its astounding
dishonesty. I hope that the process prompts them to purge their leadership across the board. If
there is anything to salvage in this organization, I hope it discovers aims and principles that
are unrecognizable from its current agenda of perpetual hysteria. But if the party actually
blows up and disappears, as the Whigs did a hundred and fifty years ago, I will be content. Out
of the terrible turbulence, maybe something better will be born.
Or, there's the possibility that the dregs of a defeated Democratic Party will just go
batshit crazy and use the last of its mojo to incite actual sedition. Of course, there's also a
distinct possibility that the Dems will take over congress, in which case they'll ramp up an
even more horrific three-ring-circus of political hysteria and persecution that will make the
Spanish Inquisition look like a backyard barbeque. That will happen as the US enters the most
punishing financial train wreck in our history, an interesting recipe for epic political
upheaval.
Changing the rules, talks of changing the constitution, and the status of the SC because
Dems can't find a positive message, or a positive candidate, or persuade the candidate to
recognize and reach out to voters the Democratic party abandoned, reeks of defeatism and
worse.
Exactly.
Clinton neoliberals (aka soft neoliberals) still control the Democratic Party but no longer
can attract working-class voters. That's why they try "identity wedge" strategy trying to
compensate their loss with the rag tag minority groups.
Their imperial jingoism only makes the situation worse. Large swaths of the USA population,
including lower middle class are tired of foreign wars and sliding standard of living. They see
exorbitant military expenses as one of the causes of their troubles.
That's why Hillary got a middle finger from several social groups which previously supported
Democrats. And that's why midterm might be interesting to watch as there is no political party
that represents working class and lower middle class in the USA.
"Lesser evil" mantra stops working when people are really angry at the ruling neoliberal
elite.
control of the Senate, a relentlessly undemocratic institution
likbez 10.08.18 at 6:24 am (no link)
I think the US society is entering a deep, sustained political crisis and it is unclear what
can bring us back from it other then the collapse, USSR-style. The USA slide into corporate
socialism (which might be viewed as a flavor of neofascism) can't be disputed.
Looks like all democracies are unstable and prone to self-destruction. In modern America,
the elite do not care about lower 80% of the population, and is over-engaged in cynical
identity politics, race and gender-mongering. Anything to win votes.
MSM is still cheering on military misadventures that kill thousands of Americans,
impoverish millions, and cost trillions. Congress looks even worse. Republican House leader
Paul Ryan looks like 100% pure bought-and-paid-for tool of multinational corporations
The scary thing for me is that the USA national problems are somewhat similar to the ones
that the USSR experienced before the collapse. At least the level of degeneration of
political elite of both parties (which in reality is a single party) is.
The only positive things is that there is viable alternative to neoliberalism on the
horizon. But that does not mean that we can't experience 1930th on a new level again. Now
several European countries such as Poland and Ukraine are already ruled by far right
nationalist parties. Brazil is probably the next. So this or military rule in the USA is not
out of question.
Some other factors are also in play: one is that a country with 320 million population
can't be governed by the same methods as a country of 76 million (1900). End of cheap oil is
near and probably will occur within the next 50 years or so. Which means the end of
neoliberalism as we know it.
Tucker states that the USA's neoliberal elite acquired control of a massive chunk of the
country's wealth. And then successfully insulated themselves from the hoi polloi. They send
their children to the Ivy League universities, live in enclosed compounds with security
guards, travel in helicopters, etc. Kind of like French aristocracy on a new level ("Let them
eat cakes"). "There's nothing more infuriating to a ruling class than contrary opinions.
They're inconvenient and annoying. They're evidence of an ungrateful population Above all,
they constitute a threat to your authority." (insert sarcasm)
Donald Trump was in many ways an unappealing figure. He never hid that. Voters knew it.
They just concluded that the options were worse -- and not just Hillary Clinton and the
Democratic Party, but the Bush family and their donors and the entire Republican
leadership, along with the hedge fund managers and media luminaries and corporate
executives and Hollywood tastemakers and think tank geniuses and everyone else who created
the world as it was in the fall of 2016: the people in charge. Trump might be vulgar and
ignorant, but he wasn't responsible for the many disasters America's leaders created .
There was also the possibility that Trump might listen. At times he seemed interested in
what voters thought. The people in charge demonstrably weren't. Virtually none of their
core beliefs had majority support from the population they governed .Beginning on election
night, they explained away their loss with theories as pat and implausible as a summer
action movie: Trump won because fake news tricked simple minded voters. Trump won because
Russian agents "hacked" the election. Trump won because mouth-breathers in the provinces
were mesmerized by his gold jet and shiny cuff links.
From a reader review:
The New Elite speaks: "The Middle Class are losers and they have made bad choices, they
haven't worked as hard as the New Elite have, they haven't gone to SAT Prep or LSAT prep so
they lose, we win. We are the Elite and we know better than you because we got high SAT
scores.
Do we have experience? Uh .well no, few of us have been in the military, pulled KP, shot
an M-16 . because we are better than that. Like they say only the losers go in the
military. We in the New Elite have little empirical knowledge but we can recognize patterns
very quickly."
Just look at Haley behavior in the UN and Trump trade wars and many things became more
clear. the bet is on destruction of existing international institutions in order to save the
USA elite. A the same time Trump trade wars threaten the neoliberal order so this might well
be a path to the USA self-destruction.
On Capital hill rancor, a lack of civility and derisive descriptions are everywhere.
Respect has gone out the window. Left and right wings of a single neoliberal party (much like
CPSU was in the USSR) behave like drunk schoolchildren. Level of pettiness is simply
amazing.
The fundamental rule of democratic electoral politics is this: tribes don't win elections,
coalitions do. Trump's appeal is strongly tribal, and he has spent two years consolidating
his appeal to that tribe rather than reaching out. But he won in 2016 (or 'won') not on the
strength of that tribal appeal, but because of a coalition between core Trumpists and more
respectable conservatives and evangelicals, including a lot of people who find Trump himself
vulgar and repellent, but who are prepared to hold their noses. The cause
célèbre (or cause de l'infâme) that Kavanaugh's appointment became
ended-up uniting these two groups; the Trumpists on the one hand ('so the Libs are saying we
can't even enjoy a beer now, are they?') and the old-school religious Conservatives,
for whom abortion is a matter of conscience.
Given the weird topographies of US democratic process, the Democrats need to build a
bigger counter-coalition than the coalition they are opposing. Metropolitan liberals are in
the bag, so that means reconnecting with the working class, and galvanising the black and
youth votes, which have a poor record of converting social media anger into actual ballot-box
votes. But it also means reaching out to moderate religious conservatives, and the Dems don't
seem to me to have a strategy for this last approach at all. Which is odd, because it would
surely, at least in some ways, be easier than persuading young people to vote at the levels
old people vote. At the moment abortion (the elephant in the Kavanaugh-confirmation room) is
handled by the Left as a simple matter of structural misogyny, the desire to oppress and
control female bodies. I see why it is treated that way; there are good reasons for that
critique. But it's electorally dumb. Come at it another way instead, accept that many
religious people oppose abortion because they see it as killing children; then lead the
campaign on the fact that the GOP is literally putting thousands upon thousands of
children in concentration camps . Shout about that fact. Determine how many kids
literally die each year because their parents can't access free healthcare and put that stat
front and centre. Confront enough voters with the false consciousness of only caring about
abortion and not these other monstrosities and some will reconsider their position.
And one more thing that I have never understood about the Dems (speaking as an outsider),
given how large a political force Christianity is in your country: make more of Jimmy Carter.
He's a man of extraordinary conscience as well as a man of faith; the contrast with how he
has lived his post-Presidential life and the present occupier of the White House could
hardly, from a Christian perspective, be greater. If the Dems can make a love-thy-neighbour
social justice Christianity part of their brand, leaving Mammon to the GOP, then they'd be in
power for a generation.
The Kavanaugh confirmation process has been a missed opportunity for the United States to
face up to many urgent issues on which the bi-partisans in Washington, DC are united and
wrong.
Kavanaugh's career as
a Republican legal operative and judge supporting the power of corporations, the security
state and abusive foreign policy should have been put on trial. The hearings could have
provided an opportunity to confront the security state, use of torture, mass spying and the
domination of money in politics and oligarchy as he has had an important role in each of
these.
Kavanaugh's behavior as a teenager who likely drank too much and was inappropriately
aggressive and abusive with women, perhaps even attempting rape, must also be confronted. In an
era where patriarchy and mistreatment of women are being challenged, Kavanaugh is the wrong
nominee for this important time. However, sexual assault should not be a distraction that keeps
the public's focus off other issues raised by his career as a conservative political
activist.
The Security State, Mass Spying and Torture
A central issue of our era is the US security state -- mass spying on emails, Internet
activity, texts and phone calls. Judge Kavanough
enabled invasive spying on everyone in the United States . He described mass surveillance
as "entirely consistent" with the US Constitution. This manipulation of the law turns the
Constitution upside down a it clearly requires probable cause and a search warrant for the
government to conduct searches.
Kavanaugh
explained in a decision, "national security . . . outweighs the impact on privacy
occasioned by this [NSA] program." This low regard for protecting individual privacy should
have been enough for a majority of the Senate to say this nominee is inappropriate for the
court.
Kavanaugh ruled multiple times that police have the
power to search people, emphasizing "reasonableness" as the standard for searching people.
He ruled broadly for the police in searches conducted on the street without a warrant and for
broader use of drug testing of federal employees. Kavanaugh applauded Justice Rehnquist's views
on the Fourth Amendment, which favored police searches by defining probable cause in a flexible
way and creating a broad exception for when the government has "special needs" to search
without a warrant or probable cause. In this era of police abuse through stop and frisk, jump
out squads and searches when driving (or walking or running) while black, Kavanaugh is the
wrong nominee and should be disqualified.
Kavanaugh also played a role in the Bush torture policy. Torture is against US
and international law , certainly facilitating torture should be disqualifying not only as
a justice but
should result in disbarment as a lawyer . Kavanaugh was appointed by President Trump, who
once vowed he would "bring back waterboarding and a hell of a lot worse than
waterboarding." Minimizing torture is demonstrated in his rulings, e.g. not protecting
prisoners at risk of torture and not allowing people to sue the government on allegations of
torture.
Torture is a landmine in the Senate, so
Kavanaugh misled the Senate likely committing perjury on torture . In his 2006
confirmation, he said he was "not involved" in "questions about the rules governing detention
of combatants." Tens of thousands of documents have been kept secret by the White House about
Kavanaugh from the Bush era. Even so, during these confirmation hearings documents related to
the nomination of a lawyer involved in the torture program showed
Kavanaugh's role in torture policies leading Senator Dick Durbin to write : "It is clear
now that not only did Judge Kavanaugh mislead me when it came to his involvement in the Bush
Administration's detention and interrogation policies, but also regarding his role in the
controversial Haynes nomination."
Durbin spoke more broadly about perjury writing: "This is a theme that we see emerge with
Judge Kavanaugh time and time again – he says one thing under oath, and then the
documents tell a different story. It is no wonder the White House and Senate Republicans are
rushing through this nomination and hiding much of Judge Kavanaugh's record -- the questions
about this nominee's credibility are growing every day." The long list of
perjury allegations should be investigated and if proven should result in him not being
confirmed.
This should have been enough to stop the process until documents were released to reveal
Kavanaugh's role as Associate White House Counsel under George Bush from 2001 to 2003 and
as his White House Staff Secretary from 2003 to 2006. Unfortunately, Democrats have been
complicit in allowing torture as well, e.g. the Obama administration never prosecuted anyone
accused of torture and advanced the careers of people involved in torture.
Shouldn't the risk of having a torture facilitator on the Supreme Court be enough to stop
this nomination?
Corporate Power vs Protecting People and the Planet
In this era of corporate power, Kavanaugh sides with the corporations. Ralph Nader
describes him as a corporation masquerading as a judge . He narrowly limited the powers of
federal agencies to curtail corporate power and to protect the interests of the people and
planet.
This is evident in cases where Kavanaugh has favored
reducing restrictions on polluting corporations. He dissented in cases where the majority ruled
in favor of environmental protection but has never dissented where the majority ruled against
protecting the environment. He ruled against agencies seeking to protect clean air and water.
If Kavanaugh is on the court, it will be much harder to hold corporations responsible for the
damage they have done to the climate, the environment or health.
Kavanaugh takes the side of businesses over their workers with a consistent history of
anti-union and anti-labor rulings. A few examples of many, he ruledin favor of the Trump Organizatio
n throwing out the results of a union election,
sided with the management of Sheldon Adelson's Venetian Casino Resort upholding the
casino's First Amendment
right to summon police against workers engaged in a peaceful demonstration -- for which
they had a permit, affirmed the Department of Defense's discretion to negate
the collective bargaining rights of employees, and overturned an NLRB ruling that allowed
Verizon workers to display pro-union signs on company property despite having given up the
right to picket in their collective bargaining agreement. In this time of labor unrest and
mistreatment of workers, Kavanaugh will be a detriment to workers rights.
Kavanough
opposed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruling in favor of net neutrality,
which forbids telecom companies from discrimination on the Internet. He argued net neutrality
violated the First Amendment rights of Internet Service Providers (ISP) and was beyond the
power granted to the FCC. He put the rights of big corporations ahead of the people having a
free and open Internet. The idea that an ISP has a right to control what it allows on the
Internet could give corporations great control over what people see on the Internet. It is a
very dangerous line of reasoning in this era of corporations curtailing news that challenges
the mainstream narrative.
Kavanaugh will be friendly to powerful business and the interests of the wealthy on the
Supreme Court, and will tend to stand in the way of efforts by administrative agencies to
regulate them and by people seeking greater rights.
On the third day of his confirmation hearings, Judge Brett Kavanaugh seemed to refer to the
use of contraception as "abortion-inducing drugs ." It was a discussion of a case where
Kavanaugh dissented from the majority involving the Priests for Life's challenge to the
Affordable Care Act (ACA). Kavanaugh opposed the requirement that all health plans cover birth
control, claiming that IUDs and emergency contraception were an infringement of their free
exercise of religion.
Kavanaugh clerked for Judge Kosinski who he describes as a mentor. Kosinski was forced to
resign after being accused of harassing at least 12 women in the sanctity of his judicial
chambers. Kavanaugh swears he never saw any signs that the judge was sexually harassing
women, but the Democrats did not ask a single question about it.
Multiple accusers
have come forward to allege Kavanaugh's involvement in sexual assault and abuse. While Dr.
Christine Blasey Ford is viewed as credible – she was the only witness allowed to testify
– it is not clear these allegations will be thoroughly reviewed. After being approved by
the committee, the Republican leadership and President Trump agreed on a limited FBI
investigation. It is unclear
whether the FBI will be allowed to follow all the evidence and question all the witnesses.
As we write this newsletter, the outcome has yet to unfold but Jeffrey St.
Clair at Countpunch points out, "the FBI investigation will be overseen by director
Christopher Wray, who was two years behind Brett-boy at both Yale and Yale Law. After
graduation, they entered the same rightwing political orbit and both took jobs in the Bush
Administration. How do you think it's going to turn out?"
Why don't Democrats, as Ralph Nader
suggests , hold their own hearing and question all the witnesses? If there is corroborating
evidence for the accusers, Kavanaugh should not be approved.
During his confirmation process, in response to the accusations of assault, he claimed they
were "a calculated and orchestrated political hit" and "revenge on behalf of the Clinton's." He
demonstrated partisan anger and displayed a lack of judicial temperament, making him unfit to
serve on the Supreme Court.
Kavanaugh exposes the true partisan nature of the highest court, which is not a neutral
arbiter but another battleground for partisan politics. The lack of debate on issues of spying,
torture and more shows both parties support a court that protects the security state and
corporate interests over people and planet. Accusations of sexual assault must be confronted,
but there are many reasons Kavanaugh should not be on the court. The confirmation process
undermines the court's legitimacy and highlights bi-partisan corruption.
"... Why didn't Sanders complain about DNC-Hillary collusion (he knew about it well before she captured the nomination - MSM didn't publicize it until after she had won). ..."
"... Why didn't Sanders make a big deal of Hillary's winning 6 of 6 coin tosses during the Iowa primaries. Character was an issue from the start of the race. Trump would later lambast "crooked Hillary". ..."
There were only two populists in the race: Trump and Sanders. One on Hillary's left (sheep-dogging voters to Hillary)
and one on Hillary's right (Trump).
Why did any of the other 18 republicans turn populist? Why didn't they wait so long to complain about the coverage being
provided to Trump?
Why were Republicans so adamantly against Trump after he won the nomination? Many said that they prefered Hillary - whom they
had claimed to hate so much only months before? Answer: Trump had to be an outsider. That's what makes the populist so compelling.
He has to be seen as taking on the establishment.
After such a contentious race, why did Trump quickly say that there would be no prosecution of Hillary? He has proven to be
petty and vain yet he was so quick to forgive the Clintons?
Why did Trump wait so long to fire Comey? It's almost like it was timed for Comey to hand the baton to a special prosecutor.
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
Here's a few more questions (of many many other questions)
Why didn't Sanders complain about DNC-Hillary collusion (he knew about it well before she captured the nomination -
MSM didn't publicize it until after she had won).
Why didn't Sanders make a big deal of the well-documented time that Hillary changed her vote for a big donor? Hillary loudly
proclaimed that she NEVER changed her vote for money before and DURING the crucial New York debate.
Why didn't Sanders release his 2014 tax returns? He called his tax returns "boring" yet, despite Hillary having released
10 years of tax returns, Sanders only released his 2015 returns. When his 2015 returns were delayed, reporters
asked for the 2014 returns but Sanders refused to provide them.
Why didn't Sanders make a big deal of Hillary's winning 6 of 6 coin tosses during the Iowa primaries. Character was
an issue from the start of the race. Trump would later lambast "crooked Hillary".
Good questions. Asking them sequentially leads even a dumbass like me to conclude Sanders is a fraud.
Unfortunately, most Sanders supporters probably don't remember the issues long enough to reevaluate them collectively. Each
issue appears to them during "the news cycle" as some one-off foible -- considered as misdemeanors and then forgotten before
the next one occurs and thus never assembled mentally as evidence for a larger felony case.
"... In a mature society, it would not matter if someone was black, white, gay, Jewish, young, old, whatever but what policies they bring to the party. This article, going out of its way to label Nixon as LGBT and Sanders as Jewish, really only means that they are letting the other side set the rules and that is never a winning position. Unfortunately we do not live in a mature society. ..."
"... Not until people are done with identity politics will it be really possible to bring a new order into focus. Support Kamala Harris, for example, because she is not white and a woman? Not unless she has policies that the bulk of Americans want and is not just the old party in a new guise. I suspect that this use of the term 'progressive' is just a term to describe what the majority of Americans want out of their governments. People like Clinton, Pelosi, Waters and Albright can not and will not do this so time for them to be pushed aside. I think that the US Presidential election of 2020 will be very telling of how things play out as the results of the 2018 mid-terms are absorbed. ..."
"... I think identity politics has always served as a diversion for elites to play within the neoliberal bandwidth of decreasing public spending. Fake austerity and an unwillingness to use conjured money for public QE are necessary for pursuing neoliberal privatization of public enterprises. Therefore Bernie and his MMT infrastructure are anathema to corporate democrats and their Wall St. benefactors. ..."
"... Moral Monday represents what I deem as people over profit. I would rather be a spoiler than enable corporate sociopaths to.expand mass incarceration, end welfare as we know it, consider the killing of a half-million Iraqi children an acceptable cost, or oversee the first inverted debt jubilee in 2008 to forgive the liabilities of fraudsters by pauperizing debtors. ..."
"... Once you abandon class-based politics, and all parties accept the neoliberal consensus, you still have the problem of attracting support. You can only do that by turning to the politics of identity, as practised in Africa or the Balkans, where you seek to corral entire groups to vote for you, based on ethnicity, skin colour etc. ..."
"... Modern parties of the "Left" have taken over the methods, if not the ideology, of the old Communist parties, which is to say they present themselves as natural leaders, whom the membership should follow and vote for. ..."
"... Readers should examine the recent book Asymmetric Politics. The key point is that the Democratic Party is as described by David in some fair part an identity-based party, so it is supported by, e.g., many African-Americans. The Republican Party, unusual in the Western World, is not an identity based party; it is an idea-based party. It may not be very good at putting its ideas into effect, but it is an idea-based party that anyone can support. ..."
"... The Republicans are an "ideas-based" party? Well, I guess if you consider the interest-motivated "product" of Overclass-funded think tanks to be "idea-based," then OK. Me, I've haven't seen the Republicans as anything other than a class and (white) race-based party since I was a youth half a century ago. ..."
"... As for the cynicism of how the Democrats use identity politics: granted. Nevertheless, African-Americans have some tangible and valid reasons for voting for them, awful as they are. ..."
"... George Phillies didn't say the Republicans had "good" ideas. He just noted that the Republicans have "ideas". A "bad" idea is still an "idea". ..."
"... So Pelosi's final bequest to the public is a corrupt successor? What a world! ..."
"... Pelosi's been quoted a number of times saying, "we lead with our values". You certainly do, Mrs. Speaker! Thanks for making it clear! ..."
"... Come on, folks. By now you should have learned that what politicians say doesn't mean a damn thing -- it's what they do. The establishment is only interested in perpetuating the establishment. ..."
"... As far as I've seen, they trot out identity politics only when it suits their aims and it has nothing to do with what the voters actually want. ..."
"... Identity politics are to Democrats what religious politics are to Republicans: A pious high ground they use whenever they want to denounce anyone opposed to them as corrupt and immoral, but immediately gets shelved the moment it interferes with the money and power. ..."
"... To me, it's a dishonest policy erasure tactic for favoring establishment candidates. If you're against Hillary Clinton, it's must be ..."
"... Of course the most important identity is that of the worker, the person who must sell their labor power in the marketplace to survive. But you will rarely hear the Democrats discuss that identity. You might hear about "working families" and the "middle class" but it really means nothing. The Republicans use the same language and they are just as mendacious. ..."
"... Working families: Groups of people related genetically or by choice, all of whom, regardless of age, have to work to ensure they have food, clothing, and shelter. ..."
"... I can think of a couple of identity-words to offer to see if anyone identifies with them. Ex-middle class. Nouveau poor. ..."
"... Western Democrats focus too much on a minority which has barely any impact on the economy at the expense of the majority which actually dictates the general economic trend and therefore also creates the byproduct welfare/life quality of all the meme minorities to whom it trickles down. That's the issue here. The difference between normal people and minorities is that normal people know they don't matter in the larger picture, while minorities think they matter while at the same time asking to be treated as part of the normal people even though their very mentality is a paradox towards being normal. ..."
"... The West is simply too bankrupt on things that matter in the bigger picture and too involved in things that don't, a complete lack of prioritization. ..."
Eric Holder, former attorney general of the USA under President Obama, has publicly
announced that he is considering a run for the White House in 2020. (Thanks to that
WikiLeaked email awhile back, we know that Citigroup directed a newly elected President Obama
to appoint him to the position of A.G.)
I fervently pray that Eric Holder, of Covington & Burling, declares himself a
candidate!
Only then will the opportunity again present itself to expose Eric Holder -- and Covington
& Burling -- in their involvement with the creation and operation of MERS (Mortgage
Electronic Reporting System) and its connection to the global economic meltdown (2007 --
2009), the greatest illegal wealth transfer and insurance swindle in human history!
How we would welcome such transparency of evil, how BlackRock profited from that economic
meltdown, then oversaw the disbursement of those TARP bailout funds.
Exposure of the network of BlackRock and Vanguard and State Street and Fidelity; exposure
of their major investors. Further exposure of the Blackstone Group and Carlyle Group and
other such PE/LBO giants!
How the InterContinental Exchange (ICE) was involved in nefarious commodity price rigging,
etc., manipulated derivatives dealing and how today they oversee LIBOR rates!
The further exposure of the influence and perfidy of the Group of Thirty (www.group30.org)
and the Bretton Woods Committee (www.brettonwoods.org) -- oh how we'd love to see such
exposure!
Holder for President? Oh boy Mr. Peabody! That's great!
If a critical difference-making margin of non-voting Black non-voters in Milwaukee were
willing to non-vote between Clinton and Trump even at the price of letting Trump take
Wisconsin, that could mean that the Race Card is wearing thin. Who exactly would Mr. Holder
be able to fool in Milwaukee? He would do well in Hyde Park though . . . getting the Guilty
White Privilege Expiation vote. Will that be enough? Will the Madison vote be enough to make
up for the Milwaukee non-vote?
You know who would be a perfect pair? Holder and Harris. Or Holder and Booker. Or some
such. Seriously, if the DemParty nominates Holder, I will vote for Trump all over again. And
at the Senate or Representative level, I would vote for an old legacy New Deal Democrat if
there is one. But if they run a Clintonite, some protest Third Party looks very attractive by
comparison.
In a mature society, it would not matter if someone was black, white, gay, Jewish,
young, old, whatever but what policies they bring to the party. This article, going out of
its way to label Nixon as LGBT and Sanders as Jewish, really only means that they are letting
the other side set the rules and that is never a winning position. Unfortunately we do not
live in a mature society.
If push came to shove you would have to describe both the Republican and Democrat parties
as bastions of neoliberalism and both parties play games with identity politics as it
fractures those who would oppose them and encourages internecine warfare. Like a kaleidoscope
shifting focus, the 2008 crash has started off a shift in how politics is done and the
success of Trump in the US, Brexit in the UK as well as other leaders is this shift in its
first efforts of readjusting.
Not until people are done with identity politics will it be really possible to bring a new
order into focus. Support Kamala Harris, for example, because she is not white and a woman?
Not unless she has policies that the bulk of Americans want and is not just the old party in
a new guise. I suspect that this use of the term 'progressive' is just a term to describe
what the majority of Americans want out of their governments. People like Clinton, Pelosi,
Waters and Albright can not and will not do this so time for them to be pushed aside. I think
that the US Presidential election of 2020 will be very telling of how things play out as the
results of the 2018 mid-terms are absorbed.
I think identity politics has always served as a diversion for elites to play within the
neoliberal bandwidth of decreasing public spending. Fake austerity and an unwillingness to
use conjured money for public QE are necessary for pursuing neoliberal privatization of
public enterprises. Therefore Bernie and his MMT infrastructure are anathema to corporate
democrats and their Wall St. benefactors.
Moral Monday represents what I deem as people over profit. I would rather be a spoiler
than enable corporate sociopaths to.expand mass incarceration, end welfare as we know it,
consider the killing of a half-million Iraqi children an acceptable cost, or oversee the
first inverted debt jubilee in 2008 to forgive the liabilities of fraudsters by pauperizing
debtors.
The obvious answer is "very" and this applies pretty much to every major allegedly leftist
party in the western world.
The fact is that if you want to form a political party and take power, or even make good
careers, you have to find supporters and get them to vote for you. Historically, after the
growth of modern political parties, they differentiated themselves by reference to social and
economic groups. In most countries there was a traditionalist party, often rural, with links
to church and aristocracy and the socially conservative, a middle-class professional/small
business party and a mass working class party often under middle-class leadership. Depending
on the country, this could, in practice, be more than three or less than three distinct
parties.
Once you abandon class-based politics, and all parties accept the neoliberal
consensus, you still have the problem of attracting support. You can only do that by turning
to the politics of identity, as practised in Africa or the Balkans, where you seek to corral
entire groups to vote for you, based on ethnicity, skin colour etc. The problem is that
whilst the old political distinctions were objective, the new ones are much more subjective,
overlapping and sometimes in conflict with each other. After all, you are objectively
employed or unemployed, a shareholder or landowner or not, an employee or an employer, you
have debt or savings, you earn enough to live on or you don't. It's therefore easier to
construct political parties on that basis than on the basis of ascriptive, overlapping and
conflicting subjective identities.
Modern parties of the "Left" have taken over the methods, if not the ideology, of the
old Communist parties, which is to say they present themselves as natural leaders, whom the
membership should follow and vote for. This worked well enough when the markers were
economic, much less well when they are identity based. Trying to herd together middle-class
professional socially-liberal voters, and immigrants from a socially conservative background
afraid of losing their jobs backfired disastrously for the Socialist party in the 2017
elections in France, and effectively destroyed the party. People don't like being instructed
who it is their duty to vote for.
The other very clarifying moment of that election was the complete absence, up and down
the western world, of voices supporting Marine Le Pen for President. Not a single voice was
raised in her support, although her victory would have been epoch-making in terms of French
politics, and certainly not Albright's.
That tells you everything you need to know, really.
Readers should examine the recent book Asymmetric Politics. The key point is that the
Democratic Party is as described by David in some fair part an identity-based party, so it is
supported by, e.g., many African-Americans. The Republican Party, unusual in the Western
World, is not an identity based party; it is an idea-based party. It may not be very good at
putting its ideas into effect, but it is an idea-based party that anyone can support.
Note that many Democrats are totally terrified by the idea that the Republican Party would
become an identity-based party, namely the white people's party, because if the white vote
supported the Republicans nationally the way it already does in the south the Democrats
would, in the immortal words of Donald Trump, be schlonged.
Indeed, that support is now
advancing up through the Appalachians into central Pennsylvania and the Southern Tier of New
York. West Virginia was once heavily Democratic.
And while some Democrats propose that
America is becoming a majority-minority country, others have worked out that, e.g., persons
of Hispanic or Chinese ancestry may over several generations follow the Irish and the
Italians and the Hungarians and the Jews, none of whom were originally viewed* as being
white, by being reclassified in the popular mind as being part of the white majority.
*Some readers will recall that quaint phrase "the colored races of Europe". At the time, a
century and then a fair amount ago, it was meant literally. Anglo-Saxons were a race.
Irishmen were a distinct race.
The Republicans are an "ideas-based" party? Well, I guess if you consider the interest-motivated "product" of Overclass-funded think
tanks to be "idea-based," then OK. Me, I've haven't seen the Republicans as anything other than a class and (white)
race-based party since I was a youth half a century ago.
That Republicans will distract, misdirect and dissemble to mask their class and race-based
identity doesn't change the reality of it.
As for the cynicism of how the Democrats use identity politics: granted. Nevertheless,
African-Americans have some tangible and valid reasons for voting for them, awful as they
are.
Dyson neatly derailed the whole thing with his 'mean white man' line. Could have just been
Fry vs Goldberg too, Peterson talked past the others yhe whole time.
Whole thing deserves a do-over.
I'm really worried about a repeat of 2016 with a heavy dose of voter purges and
reregistrations. Ocasio-Cortez will need a strong GOTV ground game to pull off the upset.
Cuomo may be part of a political dynasty, but I recall that when Mario Cuomo was sending
out feelers about running for president, there was plenty of "Who's the furriner?" I can't
find the quote, but some Southern politician opined that there weren't many Marios and fewer
Cuomos in the South. (And when Geraldine Ferraro was on the ticket with Mondale, journalists
and columnists "miraculously" discovered that her husband was a mafioso.) So there's white
and there's white.
Not that I'd vote for Cuomo. And I certainly agree with Glenn Greenwald. But ethnic
politics cut all different ways.
Come on, folks. By now you should have learned that what politicians say doesn't mean a
damn thing -- it's what they do. The establishment is only interested in perpetuating the
establishment.
Here in Pennsylvania, Republican senator Pat Toomey has stayed in office only because the
Dem establishment here has refused to back Joe Sestak, a terrific but rebellious candidate,
for years. Last time around, it endorsed a woman over Sestak and another fantastic male
candidate–but she was as crappy as they come. As far as I've seen, they trot out
identity politics only when it suits their aims and it has nothing to do with what the voters
actually want.
If Sestak and his supporters started a little Third Party just for Pennsylvania, how many
votes would he get? If he and his supporters called it the Revenge Against Betrayal Party,
how many votes would he get?
Identity politics are to Democrats what religious politics are to Republicans: A pious
high ground they use whenever they want to denounce anyone opposed to them as corrupt and
immoral, but immediately gets shelved the moment it interferes with the money and power.
To me, it's a dishonest policy erasure tactic for favoring establishment candidates. If
you're against Hillary Clinton, it's must be because she's a woman, not because
she's, say, a neoliberal, corporatist warmonger -- it deliberately supplants legitimate
policy differences with identity. Not only is it breathtakingly dopey as a psychological
theory -- because it's pretty obvious that someone could oppose a person based on
those policy differences -- it's also obnoxiously presumptuous: "I'm going to substitute my
statements as to motivation for yours." None of that matters, of course, as long as the work
of erasing policy from the discourse is done.
And while it surely matters who is in congress and who sits in the oval office, possibly
we should all become more focused and engaged with system change rather than just individuals
running for office. (although damn am I impressed with Alexandria's keen appreciation of
democracy), To that end I offer ideas from the brain of Gar Alperovitz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1-Ss5h9F9k
Thank you, Lee. About a quarter of the way through Gar's talk and may need to take a
little rest to let my soul catch up. For me, in my community which is being hard hit by
gentrification and rents are, for many long-time residents, becoming unaffordable, this might
be the exactly the right ideas at the right time. Tomorrow I will be going to the last
meeting of our neighbourhood food co-op as it dissolves, after 10 years, and I can't decide
whether I am more angry or sad. It was well-intentioned, but just couldn't make it work.
Perhaps a bad plan, or maybe no systematic plan at all. Anyway. I never really expected to
see my $1000 again when I bought that bond 10 years ago.
Meantime, I will listen to Gar finish his talk, and pro'ly get his book from the
library.
So here is Gar talking about the Evergreen Co-ops of Cleveland: "That is a
community-building, wealth-democratizing, decentralized, combination of community and worker
ownership, supported by quasi-public procurement, through a planning system using
quasi-public moneys. That is a planning system. {It} begins with a vision of community which
starts by democratizing as far as you can from the ground up, building capacity at the
national level or the regional level, to purchase and thereby stabilize the system in a form
of economic planning. Now think about those things. Those are ideas in a fragmentary
developmental process as the pain of the system grows and there are no other solutions. "
It is strong stuff, but reading it seems dense and dull, but Gar makes it all make sense
on first hearing. So, in anyone interested in community economic action, do check it out.
Of course the most important identity is that of the worker, the person who must sell
their labor power in the marketplace to survive. But you will rarely hear the Democrats
discuss that identity. You might hear about "working families" and the "middle class" but it
really means nothing. The Republicans use the same language and they are just as
mendacious.
I wouldn't mind the slogans and euphemisms if there was some substance behind them. I get
that Americans generally like to think of themselves as "middle class" whether they are
making minimum wage or millions of dollars but at least put some substance behind your
rhetoric.
Both parties are using identity politics to win elections while avoiding the economic
issues that every poll indicates Americans care about the most. The result is an increasingly
disillusioned and depressed population that hates the entire political system. Almost half of
the eligible electorate stays home during election years. Non-voters tend to be poorer while
the political junkies who are increasingly shrill, angry and unreasonable tend to be
wealthier. These are the people who form the base for identity politics because they have the
luxury to worry about such nonsense.
Working families: Groups of people related genetically or by choice, all of whom,
regardless of age, have to work to ensure they have food, clothing, and shelter.
"It's about the children " Madeline Albright, when asked about 500,000+ dead Iraqi children caused by the sanctions
she promoted said "We think the price was worth it " When will this nauseating hag slink off the public stage?
https://fair.org/extra/we-think-the-price-is-worth-it/
An average person with their limited lifespan can barely manage a quota of about a dozen
people to truly care about and about 70 to be acquainted with. Chances of any of those
belonging to some of those special category people are low to the point of it being
irrelevant and worthless to get acquainted with the categories themselves and their
cultures/language, unless they live in a few congregation capitals on this planet like San
Francisco, capitals which can be numbered on both my hands.
Unless the average person decides for themselves to care, trying to convince them to care
about special identity is tantamount to attempting to rob them of their precious lifespan,
over what? Superficial identities. There are religions which worship the supernatural. Now
there's a religion which worships the superficial called Identity Politics or Social Justice
Evangelism as i like to call it (as usual it has about as much to do with social justice as
Christianity had to do with world peace, and all to do with identity masturbation), arisen
jointly as a result of inflated and growing narcissism and unwarranted sense of
self-importance personality disorders influenced by spending too much time on social media
such as Facebook and Twitter.
Bah. Western Democrats focus too much on a minority which has barely any impact on the
economy at the expense of the majority which actually dictates the general economic trend and
therefore also creates the byproduct welfare/life quality of all the meme minorities to whom
it trickles down. That's the issue here. The difference between normal people and minorities
is that normal people know they don't matter in the larger picture, while minorities think
they matter while at the same time asking to be treated as part of the normal people even
though their very mentality is a paradox towards being normal.
The West is simply too
bankrupt on things that matter in the bigger picture and too involved in things that don't, a
complete lack of prioritization.
"... the Obama administration intelligence agencies worked with Clinton to block " Siberian candidate " Trump. ..."
"... The template was provided by ex-MI6 Director Richard Dearlove , Halper's friend and business partner. Sitting in winged chairs in London's venerable Garrick Club, according to The Washington Post , Dearlove told fellow MI6 veteran Christopher Steele, author of the famous "golden showers" opposition research dossier, that Trump "reminded him of a predicament he had faced years earlier, when he was chief of station for British intelligence in Washington and alerted US authorities to British information that a vice presidential hopeful had once been in communication with the Kremlin." ..."
"... Apparently, one word from the Brits was enough to make the candidate in question step down. When that didn't work with Trump, Dearlove and his colleagues ratcheted up the pressure to make him see the light. A major scandal was thus born – or, rather, a very questionable scandal. Besides Dearlove, Steele, and Halper, a bon-vivant known as "The Walrus" for his impressive girth , other participants include: Robert Hannigan, former director Government Communications Headquarters, GCHQ, UK equivalent of the NSA. Alexander Downer, top Australian diplomat. Andrew Wood, ex-British ambassador to Moscow. Joseph Mifsud, Maltese academic. James Clapper, ex-US Director of National Intelligence. John Brennan, former CIA Director (and now NBC News analyst). ..."
"... Dearlove and Halper are now partners in a private venture calling itself "The Cambridge Security Initiative." Both are connected to another London-based intelligence firm known as Hakluyt & Co. Halper is also connected via two books he wrote with Hakluyt representative Jonathan Clarke and Dearlove has a close personal friendship with Hakluyt founder Mike Reynolds, yet another MI6 vet. Alexander Downer served a half-dozen years on Hakluyt's international advisory board, while Andrew Wood is linked to Steele via Orbis Business Intelligence, the private research firm that Steele helped found, and which produced the anti-Trump dossier, and where Wood now serves as an unpaid advisor . ..."
"... Everyone, in short, seems to know everyone else. But another thing that stands out about this group is its incompetence. Dearlove and Halper appear to be old-school paranoids for whom every Russian is a Boris Badenov or a Natasha Fatale . In February 2014, Halper notified US intelligence that Mike Flynn, Trump's future national security adviser, had grown overly chummy with an Anglo-Russian scholar named Svetlana Lokhova whom Halper suspected of being a spy – suspicions that Lokhova convincingly argues are absurd. ..."
"... As head of Britain's foreign Secret Intelligence Service, as MI6 is formally known, Dearlove played a major role in drumming up support for the 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq even while confessing at a secret Downing Street meeting that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the [regime-change] policy." When the search for weapons of mass destruction turned up dry, Clapper, as then head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, argued that the Iraqi military must have smuggled them into neighboring Syria, a charge with absolutely no basis in fact but which helped pave the way for US regime-change efforts in that country too. ..."
"... Brennan was meanwhile a high-level CIA official when the agency was fabricating evidence against Saddam Hussein and covering up Saudi Arabia's role in 9/11. Wood not only continues to defend the Iraqi invasion, but dismisses fears of a rising fascist tide in the Ukraine as nothing more than "a crude political insult" hurled by Vladimir Putin for his own political benefit. Such views now seem distressingly misguided in view of the alt-right torchlight parades and spiraling anti-Semitism that are now a regular feature of life in the Ukraine. ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... describes Mifsud as "an enthusiastic promoter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia" and "a regular at meetings of the Valdai Discussion Club, an annual conference held in Sochi, Russia, that Mr. Putin attends," which tried to suggest that he is a Kremlin agent of some sort. ..."
"... But WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange later tweeted photos of Mifsud with British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and a high-ranking British intelligence official named Claire Smith at a training session for Italian security agents in Rome. Since it's unlikely that British intelligence would rely on a Russian agent in such circumstances, Mifsud's intelligence ties are more likely with the UK. ..."
"... Stefan Halper then infiltrated the Trump campaign on behalf of the FBI as an informant in early July, weeks before the FBI launched its investigation. Halper had 36 years earlier infiltrated the Carter re-election campaign in 1980 using CIA agents to turn information over to the Reagan campaign. Now Halper began to court both Page and Papadopoulous, independently of each other. ..."
"... The rightwing Federalist website speculates that Halper was working with Steele to flesh out a Sept. 14 memo claiming that "Russians do have further 'kompromat' on CLINTON (e-mails) and [are] considering disseminating it." Clovis believes that Halper was trying "to create an audit trail back to those [Clinton] emails from someone in the campaign so they could develop a stronger case for probable cause to continue to issue warrants and to further an investigation." Reports that Halper apparently sought a permanent post in the new administration suggest that the effort was meant to continue after inauguration. ..."
"... Notwithstanding Clovis's nutty rightwing politics , his description of what Halper may have been up to makes sense as does his observation that Halper was trying " to build something that did not exist ." Despite countless hyper-ventilating headlines about mysterious Trump Tower meetings and the like, the sad truth is that Russiagate after all these months is shaping up as even more of a "nothing-burger" than Obama administration veteran Van Jones said it was back in mid-2017. Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has indicted Papadopoulos and others on procedural grounds, he has indicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for corruption, and he has charged a St. Petersburg company known as the Internet Research Agency with violating US election laws. ..."
"... As The Washington Post noted in an oddly, cool-headed Dec. 2 article , 2, 700 suspected Russian-linked accounts generated just 202,000 tweets in a six-year period ending in August 2017, a drop in a bucket compared to the one billion election-related tweets sent out during the fourteen months leading up to Election Day. ..."
"... Opposition research is intended to mix truths and fiction, to dig up plausible dirt to throw at your opponent, not to produce an intelligence assessment at taxpayer's expense to "protect" the country. And Steele was paid for it by the Democrats, not his government. ..."
"... Although Kramer denies it, The New Yorker ..."
"... But how could Trump think otherwise? As Consortium News founding editor Robert Parry observed a few days later, the maneuver "resembles a tactic out of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's playbook on government-style blackmail: I have some very derogatory information about you that I'd sure hate to see end up in the press." ..."
"... It sounds more like CIA paranoia raised to the nth degree. But that's what the intelligence agencies are for, i.e. to spread fear and propaganda in order to stampede the public into supporting their imperial agenda. In this case, their efforts are so effective that they've gotten lost in a fog of their own making. If the corporate press fails to point this out, it's because reporters are too befogged themselves to notice. ..."
"... "Russiagate" continues to attract mounting blowback at Clinton, Obama and the Dems. Might well be they who end up charged with lawbreaking, though I'd be surprised if anyone in authority is ever really punished. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-02/fbi-spying-trump-started-london-earlier-thought-new-texts-implicate-obama-white ..."
"... I've always thought that the great animus between Obama and Trump stemmed from Trump's persistent birtherist attacks on Obama followed by Obama's public ridicule of Trump at the White House Correspondants' Dinner. Without the latter, Trump probably would not have been motivated to run for the presidency. Without the former, Obama would probably not have gotten into the gutter to defeat and embarrass Trump at all costs. Clinton and Obama probably never recruit British spooks to sabotage and provide a pretense for spying on the campaigns of Jeb, Ted or Little Marco. Since these were all warmongers like Hillary and Obama, the issues would have been different, Russia would not have been a factor, and Putin would have had no alleged "puppet." ..."
"... The irony is that Clinton and Obama wanted Trump as her opponent. They cultivated his candidacy via liberal media bias throughout the primaries. (MSNBC and Rachel Maddow were always cutting away to another full length Trump victory speech and rally, including lots of jibber jabber with the faithful supporters.) Why? Because they thought he was the easiest to beat. The polls actually had Hillary losing against the other GOP candidates. The Dems beat themselves with their own choice of candidate and all the intrigue, false narratives and other questionable practices they employed in both the primaries and the general. That's what really happened. ..."
"... I agree that Hillary wanted Trump as an opponent, thought she could easily win. I've underestimated idiot opponents before, always to my detriment. Why is it that they are always the most formidable? The "insiders" are so used to voters rolling over, taking it on the chin. They gave away their jobs, replaced them with the service industry, killed their sons and daughters in wars abroad, and still the American people cast their ballots in their favor. This time was different. The insiders just did not see the sea change, not like Trump did. ..."
"... Long-time CIA asset named as FBI's spy on Trump campaign By Bill Van Auken https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/05/21/poli-m21.html ..."
"... What the MSM really needed was a bait which they could use to lure more dollars just like a horse race where the track owners needed a fast underdog horse to clean up. I believe the term is to be "hustled". The con men of the media hustlers decided they needed a way to cause all of the candidates to squirm uneasily and to then react to the news that Donald Trump was "in the lead". ..."
"... Those clever media folks. What a gift the Supreme Court handed them. But there was one little (or big) problem. The problem was the result of the scam put Trump in the White House. Something that no conservative republican would ever sign onto. Trump had spent years as a democrat, hobnobbed with the Clinton's and was an avowed agnostic who favored the liberal ideology for the most part. ..."
"... The new guy in the White House with his crazy ideas of making friends with Vladimir Putin horrified a national arms industry funded with hundreds of billions of our tax dollars every year propped up by all the neocons with their paranoid beliefs and plans to make America the hegemon of the World. Our foreign allies who use the USA to fight their perceived enemies and entice our government to sell them weapons and who urge us to orchestrate the overthrow of governments were all alarmed by the "not a real republican" peace-nick occupying the White House. ..."
"... It is probable that the casino and hotel owner in the White House posed an very threatening alternate strategy of forming economic ties with former enemies which scared the hell out of the arms industry which built its economy on scaring all of us and justifying its existence based on foreign enemies. ..."
"... So the MSM and the MIC created a new cold war with their friends at the New York Times and the Washington Post which published endless stories about the new Russian threat we faced. It had nothing to do with the 0.02% Twitter and Facebook "influence" that Russia actually had in the election. It was billed as the crime of the century. The real crime was that they committed the crime of the century that they mightily profited from by putting Trump in the White House in the first place with a plan to grab all the election cash they could grab. ..."
As the role of a well-connected group of British and U.S. intelligence agents begins to
emerge, new suspicions are growing about what hand they may have had in weaving the Russia-gate
story, as Daniel Lazare explains.
Special to Consortium News
With the news that a Cambridge academic-cum-spy
named Stefan Halper infiltrated the Trump campaign, the role of the intelligence agencies in
shaping the great Russiagate saga is at last coming into focus.
It's looking more and more massive. The intelligence agencies initiated reports that Donald
Trump was colluding with Russia, they nurtured them and helped them grow, and then they spread
the word to the press and key government officials. Reportedly, they even tried to use these
reports to force Trump to step down prior to his inauguration. Although the corporate press
accuses Trump of conspiring with Russia to stop Hillary Clinton, the reverse now seems to be
the case: the Obama administration intelligence agencies worked with Clinton to block "
Siberian
candidate " Trump.
The template was provided by ex-MI6 Director Richard Dearlove , Halper's friend and business
partner. Sitting in winged chairs in London's venerable Garrick Club, according to The
Washington Post , Dearlove
told fellow MI6 veteran Christopher Steele, author of the famous "golden showers"
opposition research dossier, that Trump "reminded him of a predicament he had faced years
earlier, when he was chief of station for British intelligence in Washington and alerted US
authorities to British information that a vice presidential hopeful had once been in
communication with the Kremlin."
Apparently, one word from the Brits was enough to make the candidate in question step down.
When that didn't work with Trump, Dearlove and his colleagues ratcheted up the pressure to make
him see the light. A major scandal was thus born – or, rather, a very questionable
scandal. Besides Dearlove, Steele, and Halper, a bon-vivant known as "The Walrus" for
his impressive girth , other participants include: Robert Hannigan, former director
Government Communications Headquarters, GCHQ, UK equivalent of the NSA. Alexander Downer, top
Australian diplomat. Andrew Wood, ex-British ambassador to Moscow. Joseph Mifsud, Maltese
academic. James Clapper, ex-US Director of National Intelligence. John Brennan, former CIA
Director (and now NBC News analyst).
In-Bred
A few things stand out about this august group. One is its in-bred quality. After helping to
run an annual confab known as the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, Dearlove and Halper are now
partners in a private venture calling itself "The Cambridge Security Initiative." Both are
connected to another London-based intelligence firm known as Hakluyt & Co. Halper is also
connected via two books he wrote with Hakluyt representative Jonathan Clarke
and Dearlove has a close personal friendship with Hakluyt founder Mike Reynolds, yet another
MI6 vet. Alexander Downer
served a half-dozen years on Hakluyt's international advisory board, while Andrew Wood is
linked to Steele via Orbis Business Intelligence, the private research firm that Steele helped
found, and which produced the anti-Trump dossier, and where Wood now serves as an
unpaid
advisor .
Everyone, in short, seems to know everyone else. But another thing that stands out about
this group is its incompetence. Dearlove and Halper appear to be old-school paranoids for whom
every Russian is a Boris
Badenov or a Natasha Fatale . In February 2014, Halper notified US intelligence that Mike
Flynn, Trump's future national security adviser, had grown overly chummy with an Anglo-Russian
scholar named Svetlana Lokhova whom Halper suspected of being a spy – suspicions that
Lokhova convincingly
argues are absurd.
Halper: Infiltrated Trump campaign
In December 2016, Halper and Dearlove both resigned from the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar
because they suspected that a company footing some of the costs was tied up with Russian
intelligence – suspicions that Christopher Andrew, former chairman of the Cambridge
history department and the seminar's founder, regards as " absurd " as well.
As head of Britain's foreign Secret Intelligence Service, as MI6 is formally known,
Dearlove played a major role in drumming up support for the 2003 Anglo-American invasion of
Iraq even while confessing at a secret Downing Street meeting that "the intelligence and facts
were being fixed around the [regime-change] policy." When the search for weapons of mass
destruction turned up dry, Clapper, as then head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency,
argued that the Iraqi
military must have smuggled them into neighboring Syria, a charge with absolutely no basis in
fact but which helped pave the way for US regime-change efforts in that country too.
Brennan was meanwhile a high-level CIA official when the agency was fabricating evidence
against Saddam Hussein and covering up Saudi Arabia's role in 9/11. Wood not only continues to defend
the Iraqi invasion, but dismisses
fears of a rising fascist tide in the Ukraine as nothing more than "a crude political insult"
hurled by Vladimir Putin for his own political benefit. Such views now seem distressingly
misguided in view of the alt-right torchlight parades and
spiraling anti-Semitism that are now a regular feature of life in the Ukraine.
The result is a diplo-espionage gang that is very bad at the facts but very good at public
manipulation – and which therefore decided to use its skill set out to create a public
furor over alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
It Started Late 2015
The effort began in late 2015 when GCHQ, along with intelligence agencies in Poland,
Estonia, and Germany, began monitoring
what they said were " suspicious 'interactions' between figures connected to Trump and
known or suspected Russian agents."
Since Trump was surging ahead in the polls and scaring the pants off the foreign-policy
establishment by calling for a rapprochement with Moscow, the agencies figured that Russia was
somehow behind it. The pace accelerated in March 2016 when a 30-year-old policy consultant
named George Papadopoulos joined the Trump campaign as a foreign-policy adviser. Traveling in
Italy a week later, he ran into Mifsud, the London-based Maltese academic, who reportedly set
about cultivating him after learning of his position with Trump. Mifsud claimed
to have "substantial connections with Russian government officials," according to prosecutors.
Over breakfast at a London hotel, he told Papadopoulos that he had just returned from Moscow
where he had learned that the Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands
of emails."
This was the remark that supposedly triggered an FBI investigation. The New York
Timesdescribes
Mifsud as "an enthusiastic promoter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia" and "a regular at
meetings of the Valdai Discussion Club, an annual conference held in Sochi, Russia, that Mr.
Putin attends," which tried to suggest that he is a Kremlin agent of some sort.
But WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange later
tweeted photos of Mifsud with British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and a high-ranking
British intelligence official named Claire Smith at a training session for Italian security
agents in Rome. Since it's unlikely that British intelligence would rely on a Russian agent in
such circumstances, Mifsud's intelligence ties are more likely with the UK.
After Papadopoulos caused a minor political ruckus by
telling a reporter that Prime Minister David Cameron should apologize for criticizing
Trump's anti-Muslim pronouncements, a friend in the Israeli embassy put him in touch with a
friend in the Australian embassy, who introduced him to Downer, her boss. Over drinks, Downer
advised him to be more diplomatic. After Papadopoulos then passed along Misfud's tip about
Clinton's emails, Downer informed his government, which, in late July, informed the FBI.
Was Papadopoulos Set Up?
Suspicions are unavoidable but evidence is lacking. Other pieces were meanwhile clicking
into place. In late May or early June 2016, Fusion GPS, a private Washington intelligence firm
employed by the Democratic National Committee, hired Steele to look into the Russian angle.
On June 20, he turned in the first of eighteen memos that would eventually comprise
the
Steele dossier , in this instance a three-page document asserting that Putin "has been
cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years" and that Russian intelligence
possessed "kompromat" in the form of a video of prostitutes performing a "golden showers" show
for his benefit at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton. A week or two later, Steele
briefed the FBI on his findings. Around the same time, Robert Hannigan flew to Washington
to brief CIA Director John Brennan about additional material that had come GCHQ's way, material
so sensitive that it could only be handled at "director level."
One player was filling Papadopoulos's head with tales of Russian dirty tricks, another was
telling the FBI, while a third was collecting more information and passing it on to the bureau
as well.
Page: Took Russia's side.
On July 7, 2016 Carter Page delivered a lecture on
U.S.-Russian relations in Moscow in which he complained that " Washington and other western
capitals have impeded potential progress through their often hypocritical focus on ideas such
as democratization, inequality, corruption, and regime change." Washington hawks expressed "
unease " that someone representing the presumptive Republican nominee would take Russia's
side in a growing neo-Cold War.
Stefan Halper then
infiltrated the Trump campaign on behalf of the FBI as an informant in early July, weeks
before the FBI launched its investigation. Halper had 36 years earlier infiltrated the Carter
re-election campaign in 1980 using CIA agents to turn information over to the Reagan campaign.
Now Halper began to court both Page and Papadopoulous, independently of each other.
On July 11, Page showed up at a Cambridge symposium at which Halper and Dearlove both spoke.
In early September, Halper sent Papadopoulos an email offering $3,000 and a paid trip to London
to write a research paper on a disputed gas field in the eastern Mediterranean, his specialty.
"George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?" Halper asked when he got there,
but Papadopoulos said he knew nothing. Halper also sought out Sam Clovis, Trump's national
campaign co-chairman, with whom he chatted about China for an hour or so over coffee in
Washington.
The rightwing Federalist website
speculates that Halper was working with Steele to flesh out a Sept. 14 memo claiming that
"Russians do have further 'kompromat' on CLINTON (e-mails) and [are] considering disseminating
it." Clovis believes
that Halper was trying "to create an audit trail back to those [Clinton] emails from someone in
the campaign so they could develop a stronger case for probable cause to continue to issue
warrants and to further an investigation." Reports that Halper apparently sought
a permanent post in the new administration suggest that the effort was meant to continue
after inauguration.
Notwithstanding Clovis's nutty
rightwing politics , his description of what Halper may have been up to makes sense as does
his observation that Halper was trying " to build something that did not exist ." Despite
countless hyper-ventilating headlines about mysterious Trump Tower meetings and the like, the
sad truth is that Russiagate after all these months is shaping up as even more of a
"nothing-burger" than Obama administration veteran Van Jones said
it was back in mid-2017. Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has indicted Papadopoulos and others
on procedural grounds, he has indicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for
corruption, and he has charged a St. Petersburg company known as the Internet Research Agency
with violating US election laws.
But the corruption charges have nothing to do with Russian collusion and nothing in the
indictment against IRA indicates that either the Kremlin or the Trump campaign were involved.
Indeed, the activities that got IRA in trouble in the first place are so unimpressive –
just $46,000 worth of Facebook
ads that it purchased prior to election day, some pro-Trump, some anti, and some with
no particular slant
at all – that Mueller probably wouldn't even have bothered if he hadn't been under
intense pressure to come up with anything at all.
The same goes for the army of bots that Russia supposedly deployed on Twitter. As The
Washington Post noted in an oddly, cool-headed Dec. 2
article , 2, 700 suspected Russian-linked accounts generated just 202,000 tweets in a
six-year period ending in August 2017, a drop in a bucket compared to the one
billion election-related tweets sent out during the fourteen months leading up to Election
Day.
The Steele dossier is also underwhelming. It declares on one page that the Kremlin sought to
cultivate Trump by throwing "various lucrative real estate development business deals" his way
but says on another that Trump's efforts to drum up business were unavailing and that he thus
"had to settle for the use of extensive sexual services there from local prostitutes rather
than business success."
Why would Trump turn down business offers when he couldn't generate any on his own? The idea
that Putin would spot a U.S. reality-TV star somewhere around 2011 and conclude that he was
destined for the Oval Office five years later is ludicrous. The fact that the Democratic
National Committee funded the dossier via its law firm Perkins Coie renders it less credible
still, as does the fact that the world has heard nothing more about the alleged video despite
the ongoing deterioration in US-Russian relations. What's the point of making a blackmail tape
if you don't use it?
Steele: Paid for political research, not intelligence.
Even Steele is backing off. In a legal paper filed in response to a libel suit last May, he
said the document "did not represent (and did not purport to represent) verified facts, but
were raw intelligence which had identified a range of allegations that warranted investigation
given their potential national security implications." The fact is that the "dossier" was
opposition research, not an intelligence report. It was neither vetted by Steele nor anyone in
an intelligence agency. Opposition research is intended to mix truths and fiction, to dig
up plausible dirt to throw at your opponent, not to produce an intelligence assessment at
taxpayer's expense to "protect" the country. And Steele was paid for it by the Democrats, not
his government.
Using it Anyway
Nonetheless, the spooks have made the most of such pseudo-evidence. Dearlove and Wood both
advised Steele to take his "findings" to the FBI, while, after the election, Wood pulled
Sen. John McCain aside at a security conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to let him know that
the Russians might be blackmailing the president-elect. McCain dispatched long-time aide David
J. Kramer to the UK to discuss the dossier with Steele directly.
Although Kramer denies it, The New Yorker found a former national-security
official who
says he spoke with him at the time and that Kramer's goal was to have McCain confront Trump
with the dossier in the hope that he would resign on the spot. When that didn't happen, Clapper
and Brennan arranged for FBI Director James Comey to confront Trump instead. Comey later
testified that he didn't want Trump to think he was creating "a J. Edgar Hoover-type
situation – I didn't want him thinking I was briefing him on this to sort of hang it over
him in some way."
But how could Trump think otherwise? As Consortium News founding editor Robert Parry
observed a few
days later, the maneuver "resembles a tactic out of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's playbook on
government-style blackmail: I have some very derogatory information about you that I'd sure
hate to see end up in the press."
Since then, the Democrats have touted the dossier at every opportunity, TheNew
Yorker
continues to defend it , while Times columnist Michelle Goldberg cites it as well,
saying it's a
"rather obvious possibility that Trump is being blackmailed." CNN, for its part, suggested not
long ago that the dossier may actually be Russian
disinformation designed to throw everyone off base, Republicans and Democrats alike.
It sounds more like CIA paranoia raised to the nth degree. But that's what the
intelligence agencies are for, i.e. to spread fear and propaganda in order to stampede the
public into supporting their imperial agenda. In this case, their efforts are so effective that
they've gotten lost in a fog of their own making. If the corporate press fails to point this
out, it's because reporters are too befogged themselves to notice.
Daniel Lazare is the author of The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing
Democracy (Harcourt Brace, 1996) and other books about American politics. He has written for a
wide variety of publications from The Nation to Le Monde Diplomatique , and his articles about
the Middle East, terrorism, Eastern Europe, and other topics appear regularly on such websites
as Jacobin and The American Conservative.
Mueller is trying to omit the normal burden of legal liability, "wilful intent" in his
charges against the St Petersburg, social media operation. In a horrifically complex area
such as tax, campaign contributions or lobbying, a foreign entity can be found guilty of
breaking a law that they cannot reasonably have been expected to have knowledge of.
But the omission or inclusion of "wilful intent" is applied on a selective basis depending on
the advantage to the deep state.
From a practical standpoint, omission of "wilful intent" makes it easier for Mueller to get a
guilty verdict (in adsentia assuming this is legally valid in America). Once the "guilt" of
the St Petersburg staff is established, any communication between an American and them
becomes "collusion".
I've always thought that the great animus between Obama and Trump stemmed from Trump's
persistent birtherist attacks on Obama followed by Obama's public ridicule of Trump at the
White House Correspondants' Dinner. Without the latter, Trump probably would not have been
motivated to run for the presidency. Without the former, Obama would probably not have gotten
into the gutter to defeat and embarrass Trump at all costs. Clinton and Obama probably never
recruit British spooks to sabotage and provide a pretense for spying on the campaigns of Jeb,
Ted or Little Marco. Since these were all warmongers like Hillary and Obama, the issues would
have been different, Russia would not have been a factor, and Putin would have had no alleged
"puppet."
The irony is that Clinton and Obama wanted Trump as her opponent. They cultivated his
candidacy via liberal media bias throughout the primaries. (MSNBC and Rachel Maddow were
always cutting away to another full length Trump victory speech and rally, including lots of
jibber jabber with the faithful supporters.) Why? Because they thought he was the easiest to
beat. The polls actually had Hillary losing against the other GOP candidates. The Dems beat
themselves with their own choice of candidate and all the intrigue, false narratives and
other questionable practices they employed in both the primaries and the general. That's what
really happened.
backwardsevolution , June 3, 2018 at 2:50 pm
Realist – good post. I think what you say is true. Trump got too caught up in the
birther crap, and Obama retaliated. But I think that Trump had been thinking about the
presidency long before Obama came along. He sees the country differently than Obama and
Clinton do. Trump would never have built up China to the point where all American technology
has been given away for free, with millions of jobs lost and a huge trade deficit, and he
would have probably left Russia alone, not ransacked it.
I saw Obama as a somewhat reluctant globalist and Hillary as an eager globalist. They are
both insiders. Trump is not. He's interested in what is best for the U.S., whereas the
Clinton's and the Bush's were interested in what their corporate masters wanted. The
multinationals have been selling the U.S. out, Trump is trying to put a stop to this, and it
is going to be a fight to the death. Trump is playing hardball with China (who ARE U.S.
multinationals), and it is working. Beginning July 1, 2018, China has agreed to reduce its
tariffs:
"Import tariffs for apparel, footwear and headgear, kitchen supplies and fitness products
will be more than halved to an average of 7.1 percent from 15.9 percent, with those on
washing machines and refrigerators slashed to just 8 percent, from 20.5 percent.
Tariffs will also be cut on processed foods such as aquaculture and fishing products and
mineral water, from 15.2 percent to 6.9 percent.
Cosmetics, such as skin and hair products, and some medical and health products, will also
benefit from a tariff cut to 2.9 percent from 8.4 percent.
In particular, tariffs on drugs ranging from penicillin, cephalosporin to insulin will be
slashed to zero from 6 percent before.
In the meantime, temporary tariff rates on 210 imported products from most favored nations
will be scrapped as they are no longer favorable compared with new rates."
Trade with China has been all one way. At least Trump is leveling the playing field. He at
least is trying to bring back jobs, something the "insiders" could care less about.
I agree that Hillary wanted Trump as an opponent, thought she could easily win. I've
underestimated idiot opponents before, always to my detriment. Why is it that they are always
the most formidable? The "insiders" are so used to voters rolling over, taking it on the
chin. They gave away their jobs, replaced them with the service industry, killed their sons
and daughters in wars abroad, and still the American people cast their ballots in their
favor. This time was different. The insiders just did not see the sea change, not like Trump
did.
Abe , June 2, 2018 at 2:20 am
"Pentagon documents indicate that the Department of Defense's shadowy intelligence arm,
the Office of Net Assessment, paid Halper $282,000 in 2016 and $129,000 in 2017. According to
reports, Halper sought to secure Papadopoulos's collaboration by offering him $3,000 and an
all-expenses-paid trip to London, ostensibly to produce a research paper on energy issues in
the eastern Mediterranean.
"The choice of Halper for this spying operation has ominous implications. His deep ties to
the US intelligence apparatus date back decades. His father-in-law was Ray Cline, who headed
the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence at the height of the Cold War. Halper served as an aide
to Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Alexander Haig in the Nixon and Ford administrations.
"In 1980, as the director of policy coordination for Ronald Reagan's presidential
campaign, Halper oversaw an operation in which CIA officials gave the campaign confidential
information on the Carter administration and its foreign policy. This intelligence was in
turn utilized to further back-channel negotiations between Reagan's campaign manager and
subsequent CIA director William Casey and representatives of Iran to delay the release of the
American embassy hostages until after the election, in order to prevent Carter from scoring a
foreign policy victory on the eve of the November vote.
"Halper subsequently held posts as deputy assistant secretary of state for
political-military affairs and senior adviser to the Pentagon and Justice Department. More
recently, Halper has collaborated with Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, the British
intelligence service, in directing the Cambridge Security Initiative (CSi), a security think
tank that lists the US and UK governments as its principal clients.
"Before the 2016 election, Halper had expressed his view – shared by predominant
layers within the intelligence agencies – that Clinton's election would prove 'less
disruptive' than Trump's.
"The revelations of the role played by Halper point to an intervention in the 2016
elections by the US intelligence agencies that far eclipsed anything one could even imagine
the Kremlin attempting."
Sorry for not commenting on other posts as of yet. But I think I have a different
perspective. Russia Gate is not about Hillary Clinton or Putin but it is about Donald Trump.
Specifically an effort to get rid of him by the intelligence agencies and the MSM. The fact
is the MSM created Trump and were chiefly responsible for his election. Trump is their
brainchild starlet used to fleece all the republican campaigns like a huckster fleeces an
audience. It all ties to key Supreme Court rulings eliminating campaign finance regulations
which ushered in the age of dark money.
When billionaires can donate unlimited amounts of money anonymously to the candidate of
their choosing what ends up is a field of fourteen wannabes in a primary race each backed by
their own investor(s). The only way these candidates can win is to convince us to vote. The
only way they can do that is to spend on advertising.
What the MSM dreamed of in a purely capitalistic way was a way to drain the wallets of
every single one of the republican Super PACs. The mission was fraught with potential
checkmates. Foe example, there could be an early leader who snatched up the needed delegates
for the nomination early on which would have stopped the flow of advertising cash flowing to
the MSM. Such possibilities worried the MSM and caused great angst since this might just be
the biggest haul they ever took in during a primary season. How would they prevent a
premature end of the money river. Like financial vampire bats, ticks and leeches they needed
a way to keep the money flowing from the veins of the republican Super PACs until they were
sucked dry.
What the MSM really needed was a bait which they could use to lure more dollars just like
a horse race where the track owners needed a fast underdog horse to clean up. I believe the
term is to be "hustled". The con men of the media hustlers decided they needed a way to cause
all of the candidates to squirm uneasily and to then react to the news that Donald Trump was
"in the lead".
It was a pure stroke of genius and it worked so well that Carl Rove is looking for a job
and Donald Trump is sitting in the White House.
Those clever media folks. What a gift the Supreme Court handed them. But there was one
little (or big) problem. The problem was the result of the scam put Trump in the White House.
Something that no conservative republican would ever sign onto. Trump had spent years as a
democrat, hobnobbed with the Clinton's and was an avowed agnostic who favored the liberal
ideology for the most part.
What to do? Trump was now the Commander in Chief and was spouting nonsense that the
establishment recoiled at such as Trumps plans to form economic ties with Russia rather than
continue to wage a cold war spanning 65 years which the MIC used year after year to spook us
all and guarantee their billions annual increase in funding. Trump directly attacked defense
projects and called for de-funding major initiatives like F35 etc.
The new guy in the White House with his crazy ideas of making friends with Vladimir Putin
horrified a national arms industry funded with hundreds of billions of our tax dollars every
year propped up by all the neocons with their paranoid beliefs and plans to make America the
hegemon of the World. Our foreign allies who use the USA to fight their perceived enemies and
entice our government to sell them weapons and who urge us to orchestrate the overthrow of
governments were all alarmed by the "not a real republican" peace-nick occupying the White
House.
What to do? There was clearly a need to eliminate this bad guy since his avowed policies
were in direct opposition to the game plan that had successfully compromised the former
administration. They felt powerless to dissuade the Administration to continue the course and
form strategies to eliminate Iran, Syria, North Korea, Libya, Ukraine and other vulnerable
targets swaying toward China and Russia. They faced a new threat with the Trump
Administration which seemed hell bent to discontinue the wars in these regions robbing them
of many dollars.
It is probable that the casino and hotel owner in the White House posed an very
threatening alternate strategy of forming economic ties with former enemies which scared the
hell out of the arms industry which built its economy on scaring all of us and justifying its
existence based on foreign enemies.
So the MSM and the MIC created a new cold war with their friends at the New York Times and
the Washington Post which published endless stories about the new Russian threat we faced. It
had nothing to do with the 0.02% Twitter and Facebook "influence" that Russia actually had in
the election. It was billed as the crime of the century. The real crime was that they
committed the crime of the century that they mightily profited from by putting Trump in the
White House in the first place with a plan to grab all the election cash they could grab.
In the interim, they also forgot on purpose to tell anyone about the election campaign
finance fraud that they were the chief beneficiaries of. They also of course forgot to tell
anyone what the fight was about for the Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. Twenty seven
million dollars in dark money was donated by dark money donors enabled by the Supreme Court's
decisions to eliminate campaign finance regulations which enabled these donors to buy out
Congress and elect and confirm a Supreme Court Justice who would uphold the laws which
eliminate all the election rules and campaign finance regulations dating back to the Tillman
Act of 1907 which was an attempt to eliminate corporate contributions in political campaigns
with associated meager fines as penalties. The law was weak then and has now been
eliminated.
In an era of dark money in politics protected by revisionist judges laying at the top of
our federal judicial branch posing as strict constructionists while being funded by the
corporatocracy that viciously fights over control of the highest court by a panicked
republican party that seeks to tie up their domination in our Congress by any means including
the abdication of the Constitutional authority granted to the citizens of the nation we now
face a new internal enemy.
That enemy is not some foreign nation but our own government which conspires to represent
the wealthy and the powerful and which exalts them and which enacts laws to defend their
control of our nation. Here is a quote:
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they
create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral
code that glorifies it.
Frederic Bastiat – (1801-1850) in Economic Sophisms
Realist , June 1, 2018 at 4:32 am
Different journalist covering much the same ground:
"Russiagate" is strictly a contrivance of the Deep State, American & British Spookery,
and the corporate media propagandists. It clearly needs to be genuinely investigated (unlike
the mockery being orchestrated by Herr Mueller from the Ministry of Truth), re-christened
"Intellgate" (after the real perpetrators of crime), pursued until all the guilty traitors
(including Mueller) who really tried to steal our democratic election are tried, convicted
and incarcerated (including probably hundreds complicit from the media) and given its own
lengthy chapter in all the history books about "The Election They Tried to Steal and Blame on
Russia: How America Nearly Lost its Constitution." If not done, America will lose its
constitution, or rather the incipient process will become totally irreversible.
Vivian O'Blivion , June 1, 2018 at 6:25 am
Your timing of events is confused.
The deep state didn't try and steal the election because they were overly complacent that
their woman would win. Remember, they didn't try to use the dodgy, Steele dossier before the
election.
What the deep state has done is reactively try to overcome the election outcome by launching
an investigation into Trump. The egregious element of the investigation is giving it the
title "investigation into collusion" when they in all probability knew that collusion was
unlikely to have taken place. To achieve their aim (removing Trump) they included the line
"and matters arising" in the brief to give them an open ended remit which allowed them to
investigate Trump's business dealings of a Russian / Ukrainian nature (which may venture
uncomfortably close to Semion Mogilevich).
If as you state (and I concur) there was no Russian collusion, then barring fabrication of
evidence by Mueller (and there is little evidence of that to date) you have nothing to worry
about on the collusion front. Remember, to date, Mueller has stuck (almost exclusively) to
meat and potatoes charges like tax evasion and money laundering. If however the investigation
leads to credible evidence that Trump broke substantive laws in the past for financial gain,
then it is not reasonable to cry foul.
Seer , June 1, 2018 at 7:02 am
The Deep State assisted the DNC in knocking out Sanders. THAT was ground zero. Everything
since then has been to cover this up and to discredit Trump (using him as the distraction).
Consider that the Deep State never bothered to investigate the DNC servers/data; reason being
is that they'd (Deep State) be implicated.
Skip Scott , June 1, 2018 at 7:29 am
Very true Seer. That is the real genesis of RussiaGate. It was a diversion tactic to keep
people from looking at the DNC's behavior during the primaries. They are the reason Trump is
president, not the evil Ruskies.
Vivian O'Blivion , June 1, 2018 at 8:13 am
We all seem agreed that the Russia collusion is an exercise in distraction. I can't say I
know enough to comment with authority on whether the DNC would require assistance from the
deep state to trash Bernie. From an outsider perspective it looked more like an application
of massively disproportionate spending and standard, back room dirty tricks.
There is a saying; don't attribute to conspiracy that which can be explained by incompetence.
In this case, try replacing incompetence with MONEY.
dikcheney , June 2, 2018 at 5:09 pm
Totally agree with you Skip and the Mueller performance is there to keep up the
intimidation and distraction by regularly finding turds to throw at Trump. Mueller doesnt
need to find anything, he just needs to create vague intimations of 'guilty Trump' and
suspicious associates so that no one will look at the DNC or the Clinton corruption or the
smashing of the Sanders campaign.
Their actual agenda is to smother analysis and clear thinking. Thankfully there is the
forensicator piecing the jigsaw as well as consortium news.
robjira , June 1, 2018 at 11:55 am
Spot on, Seer.
michael , June 1, 2018 at 4:49 pm
Those servers probably had a lot more pay-to-play secrets from the Clinton Foundation and
ring-kissing from foreign big donors than what was released by Wikileaks, which mostly was
just screwing over Bernie, which the judge ruled was Hillary's prerogative. Some email chains
were probably construed as National Security and were discreetly not leaked.
The 30,000 emails Hillary had bit bleached from her private servers are likely in the hands
of Russians and every other major country, all biding their time for leverage. This was the
carrot the British (who undoubtedly have copies as well) dangled over idiot Popodopolous.
Uncle Bob , June 1, 2018 at 10:33 pm
Seth Rich
anon , June 1, 2018 at 7:42 am
Realist is likely referring to events before the election which involved people with
secret agency connections, such as the opposition research (Steele dossier and Skripal
affair).
Realist , June 1, 2018 at 9:32 am
Realist responded but is being "moderated" as per usual.
Realist , June 1, 2018 at 9:31 am
Hillary herself was a prime force in cooking up the smear against Trump for being "Putin's
puppet." This even before the Democratic convention. Then she used it big time during the
debates. It wasn't something merely reactive after she lost. Certainly she and her
collaborators inside the deep state and the intelligence agencies never imagined that she
would lose and have to distract from what she and her people did by projecting the blame onto
Trump. That part was reactive. The rest of the conspiracy was totally proactive on her part
and that of the DNC, even during the primaries.
Don't forget, the intel agencies led by Clapper, Brennan and Comey were all working for
Obama at the time and were totally acquiescent in spying on the Trump campaign and
"unmasking" the identities and actions of his would-be administration, including individuals
like General Flynn. The cooked up Steele dossier was paid for by money from the Clinton
campaign and used as a pretext for the intel agencies to spy on the Trump campaign. There is
no issue on timing. The establishment was fully behind Clinton by hook or crook from the
moment Trump had the delegates to win the GOP nomination. (OBTW, I am not a Trump supporter
or even a Republican, so I KNOW that I "have nothing to worry about on the collusion front."
I'm a registered Dem, though not a Hillary supporter.)
Moreover, if you think that Mueller (and the other intel chiefs) have been on the
impartial up-and-up, why did the FBI never seize and examine the DNC servers? Why simply
accept the interpretation of events given by the private cybersecurity firm (Crowdstrike)
that the Clinton campaign hired to very likely mastermind a cover-up? That is exceptional
(nay, unheard of!) "professional courtesy." Why has Mueller to this day not deposed Julian
Assange or former British Ambassador Craig Murray, both of whom admit to knowing precisely
who provided the leaked (not hacked) Podesta and DNC emails to Wikileaks? Why has Mueller not
pursued the potential role of the late Seth Rich in the leaking of said emails? Why has
Mueller not pursued the robust theory, based on actual evidence, proposed by VIPS, and
supported by computer experts like Bill Binney and John McAfee, that the emails were not, as
the Dems and the intel agencies would have you believe on NO EVIDENCE, hacked (by the
"Russians" or anyone else) but were downloaded to a flash drive directly from the DNC
servers? Why has Mueller not deposed Binney or Ray McGovern who claim to have evidence to
bear on this and have discussed it freely in the media (to the miniscule extent that the
corporate media will give them an audience)? Is Mueller after the truth, or is this a
kangaroo court he is running? Is the media really independent and impartial or are they part
of a cover-up, perpetrating numerous sins of both commission and omission in their highly
flawed reportage?
I don't see clarity in what has been thus far been propounded by Mueller or any of Trump's
other accusers, but I don't think I am the one who is confused here, Vivian. If you want to
meet a thoroughly confused individual on what transpired leading up to this moment in
American political history, just go read Hillary's book. Absolutely everyone under the sun
shares in the blame but her for the fact that she does not presently reside in the White
House.
Vivian O'Blivion , June 1, 2018 at 1:48 pm
You have presented your case with a great deal more detail and clarity than the original
post that prompted my reply. You are also a great deal more knowledgeable than I on the
details. I think we are 98% in agreement and I wouldn't like to say who's correct on the
remaining 2%.
For clarity, I didn't follow the debates and wouldn't do so now if they were repeated. Much
heat very little light.
The "pretext" that the intel agencies claim launched their actions against Trump was not the
Steele dossier, at least that is what the intel agencies say. Either way your assertion that
it was the dossier that set things off is just that, an assertion. I think this is a minor
point.
On the DNC servers and the FBI we are 100% singing from the same hymn book and it all sticks.
Mueller's apparent disinterest in the question of hack or USB drive does rather taint his
investigation and thanks for pointing this out, I hadn't thought of that angle. I still think
Mueller will stick to tax and money laundering and stay well clear of "collusion", so yes he
may be running a kangaroo court investigation but the charges will be real world.
The MSM as a whole are a sick joke which is why we collectively find ourselves at CN, Craig
Murray's blog, etc. I wouldn't like to attribute "collaboration" to any individual in the
media. It was the reference to hundreds of journalists being sent to jail in your original
post that set me off in the first place. When considering the "culpability" of any individual
journalist you can have any position on a spectrum from; fully cognisant collaborator with a
deep state conspiracy, to; a bit dim and running with the "sexy" story 'cause it's the
biggest thing ever, the bosses can't get enough of it and the overtime is great. If American
journalists are anything like their UK counterparts, 99% will fall into the latter
category.
Don't have any issue with your final point. Hillary on stage and on camera was phoney as
rocking horse s**te and everyone outside her extremely highly remunerated team could see
it.
Sorry for any inconvenience, but your second post makes your points a hell of a lot clearer
than the original.
Realist , June 1, 2018 at 4:26 pm
My purpose for the first post in this thread was to direct readers to the article in Unz
by Mike Whitney, not to compress a full-blown amateur expose' by myself into a three-sentence
paragraph. You would have found much more in the way of facts, analysis and opinion in his
article to which my terse comments did not even serve as an abstract.
Quoting his last paragraph may give you the flavor of this piece, which is definitely not
a one-off by him or other actual journalists who have delved into the issues:
"Let's see if I got this right: Brennan gets his buddies in the UK to feed fake
information on Russia to members of the Trump campaign, after which the FBI uses the
suspicious communications about Russia as a pretext to unmask, wiretap, issue FISA warrants,
and infiltrate the campaign, after which the incriminating evidence that was collected in the
process of entrapping Trump campaign assistants is compiled in a legal case that is used to
remove Trump from office. Is that how it's supposed to work?
It certainly looks like it. But don't expect to read about it in the Times."
backwardsevolution , June 1, 2018 at 4:49 pm
Vivian – 90% of all major media is owned by six corporations. There most definitely
was and IS collusion between some of them to bring down the outsider, Trump.
As far as individual journalists go, yeah, they're trying to pay their mortgage, I get it,
and they're going to spin what their boss bloody well tells them to spin. But there is
evidence coming out that "some" journalists did accept money from either Fusion GPS, Perkins
Coie (sp) or Christopher Steele to leak information, which they did.
Bill Clinton passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that enabled these six media
conglomerates to dominate the news. Of course they're political. They need to be split up,
like yesterday, into a thousand pieces (ditto for the banks). They have purposely and with
intent been feeding lies to the American people. Yes, some SHOULD go to jail.
As Peter Strzok of the FBI said re Trump colluding with Russia, "There was never any
there, there." The collusion has come from the intelligence agencies, in cahoots with Hillary
Clinton, perhaps even as high as Obama, to prevent Trump being elected. When that failed,
they set out to get him impeached on whatever they could find. Of course Mueller is going to
stick with tax and money laundering because he already KNOWS there was never any collusion
with Russia.
This is the Swamp versus the People.
backwardsevolution , June 1, 2018 at 1:52 pm
Realist – another excellent post. "Is Mueller after the truth, or is this a kangaroo
court he is running?" As you rightly point out, Mueller IS being very selective in what he
examines and doesn't examine. He's not after the whole truth, just a particular kind of
truth, one that gets him a very specific result – to take down or severely cripple the
President.
Evidence continues to trickle out. Former and active members of the FBI are now even
begging to testify as they are disgusted with what is being purposely omitted from this
so-called "impartial" investigation. This whole affair is "kangaroo" all the way.
I'm not so much a fan of Trump as I am a fan of the truth. I don't like to see him –
anyone – being railroaded. That bothers me more than anything. But he's right about
what he calls "the Swamp". If these people are not uncovered and brought to justice, then the
country is truly lost.
Realist , June 1, 2018 at 4:38 pm
Precisely. Destroy the man on false pretenses and you destroy our entire system, whether
you like him and his questionable policies or not.
Some people would say it's already gone, but we do what we can to get it back or hold onto
to what's left of it. Besides, all the transparent lies and skullduggery in the service of
politics rather than principles are just making our entire system look as corrupt as
hell.
michael , June 1, 2018 at 5:00 pm
When Mueller arrested slimy Manafort for crimes committed in the Ukraine and gave a pass
to the Podesta Brothers who worked closely with Manafort, it was clear that Russiagate was a
partisan operation.
backwardsevolution , June 1, 2018 at 6:17 pm
Michael – good point!
KiwiAntz , June 1, 2018 at 1:00 am
Its becoming abundantly clear now, that the whole Russiagate charade was had nothibg to do
with Russia & is about a elaborate smokescreen & shellgame coverup designed to divert
attention away from, firstly the Democratic Party's woeful defeat & its lousy Candidate
choice in the corrupt Hillary Clinton? & also the DNC's sabotaging of Bernie Saunders
campaign run! But the most henious & treacherous parts was Obama's, weaponising the
intelligence agencies to spy (Halper) on the imaginary Mancharian Candidate Trump & to
set him up as a Russia stooge? Obama & Hillary Clinton are complicent in this disgraceful
& illegal activity to get dirt on Trump withe goal of ensuring Clinton's election win?
This is bigger than Watergate & more scandalous? But despite the cheating & stacking
of the card deck, she still lost out to the Donald? And this isn't just illegal its
treasonous & willful actions deserving of a lengthy jail incarceration? HRC & her
crooked Clinton foundation's funding of the fraudulent & discredited "Steele Dosier" was
also used to implement Trump & Russia in a made up, pile of fictitious gargage that was
pure offal? Obama & HRC along with their FBI & CIA spys need to be rounded up,
convicted & thrown in jail? Perhaps if Trump could just shut his damn mouuth for once
& get off twitter long enough to be able too get some Justice Dept officials looking into
this, without being distracted by this Russiagate shellgame fakery, then perhaps the real
criminal's like Halpert, Obama,HRC & these corrupt spooks & spies can be rounded up
& held to account for this treasonous behaviour?
Sean Ahern , May 31, 2018 at 7:25 pm
Attention should be paid also to the role of so called progressive media outlets such as
Mother Jones which served as an outlets for the disinformation campaign described in Lazare's
article.
Here from David Corn's Mother Jones 2016 article:
"And a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian
counterintelligence tells Mother Jones that in recent months he provided the bureau with
memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian
government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump -- and that the FBI requested more
information from him."
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/veteran-spy-gave-fbi-info-alleging-russian-operation-cultivate-donald-trump/
Not only was Corn and Mother Jones selected by the spooks as an outlet, but these so
called progressives lauded their 'expose' as a great investigative coup on their part and it
paved the way for Corn's elevation on MSNBC for a while as a 'pundit.'
Paul G. , May 31, 2018 at 8:46 pm
In that vein did the spooks influence Rachel Maddow or is her $30,000. a day salary
adequate to totally compromise her microscopic journalistic integrity.
dikcheney , June 3, 2018 at 6:57 am
Passing around references to Mother Jones is like passing round used toilet paper for
another try. MJ is BS it is entirely controlled fake press.
Abby , May 31, 2018 at 6:23 pm
Stefan Halper was being paid by the Clinton's foundation during the time he was spying on
the Trump campaign. This is further evidence that Hillary Clinton's hands are all over
getting Russia Gate started. Then there's the role that Obama's justice department played in
setting up the spying on people who were working with the Trump campaign. This is worse than
Watergate, IMO.
Rumors are that a few ex FBI agents are going to testify to congress in Comey's role in
covering up Hillary's crimes when she used her private email server to send classified
information to people who did not have clearance to read it. Sydney Bluementhol was working
for Hillary's foundation and sending her classified information that he stole from the
NSA.
Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills were concerned about Obama knowing that Hillary wasn't using
her government email account after he told the press that he only found out about it at the
same time they did. He had been sending and receiving emails from her Clintonone email
address during her whole tenure as SOS.
Obama was also aware of her using her foundation for pay to play which she was told by
both congress and Obama to keep far away from her duties. Why did she use her private email
server? So that Chelsea could know where Hillary was doing business so she could send Bill
there to give his speeches to the same organizations, foreign governments and people who had
just donated to their foundation.
Has any previous Secretary of State in history used their position to enrich their spouses
or their foundations? I think not.
The secrets of how the FBI covered for Hillary are coming out. Whether she is charged for
her crimes is a different matter.
F. G. Sanford , May 31, 2018 at 7:48 pm
If Hillary paid a political operative using Clinton Foundation funds – those are tax
exempt charitable contributions – she would be guilty of tax fraud, charity fraud and
campaign finance violations. Hillary may be evil, but she's not stupid. The U.S.Government
paid Halper, which might be "waste, fraud and abuse", but it doesn't implicate Hillary at
all. Not that she's innocent, mind you
Rob , June 1, 2018 at 2:14 am
I need some references to take any of your multitude of claims seriously. With all due
respect, this sound like something taken from info wars and stylized in smartened up a little
bit.
the idea that Stefan Halper was some sort a of mastermind spy behind the so called
"Russiagate" fiasco
seems very implausible considering what he seems to have spent doing for the past 40
years
going back to the Iran hostage crisis of 1979-1980 and his efforts then.
i think he must have had a fairly peripheral role as to whatever or not was going on
behind the scenes from 2016 election campaign, and the campaign to first stop Trump getting
elected, and secondly, when that failed, to bring down his Presidency.
of course, the moment his name was revealed in recent days, would have shocked or
surprised those of in the general
public, but not certainly amongst those in Government aka FBI/CIA/Military-industrial
circles.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 4:36 pm
chris m – Halper is probably one of those people who hide behind their professor (or
other legitimate) jobs, but are there at the ready to serve the Deep State. "I understand.
You want me to set up some dupes in order to make it look like there was or could be actual
Russian meddling. Gotcha." All you've got to do is make it "look like" something nefarious
was going on. This facilitates a "reason" to have a phony investigation, and of course they
make it as open-ended an investigation as possible, hoping to get the target on something,
anything.
Well, they've no doubt looked long and hard for almost two years now, but zip. However, in
their zeal to get rid of their opponent, who they did not think would win the election, they
left themselves open, left a trail of crimes. Whoops!
This is the Swamp that Trump talked about during the election. He's probably not squeaky
clean either, but he pales in comparison to what these guys have done. They have tried to
take down a duly-elected President.
F. G. Sanford , May 31, 2018 at 5:09 pm
His role may have been peripheral, but I seem to recall that the Office of Net Assessments
paid him roughly a million bucks to play it. That office, run from the Pentagon, is about as
deep into the world of "black ops" spookdom as you can get. Hardly "peripheral", I'd say.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:13 pm
F. G. Sanford – yes, a million bucks implies something more than just a peripheral
involvement, more like something essential to the plot, like the actual setting up of the
plot. Risk of exposure costs money.
ranney , May 31, 2018 at 6:17 pm
Chris, I think the Halper inclusion in this complex tale is simply an example of how these
things work in the ultra paranoid style of spy agencies. As Lazare explains, every one knew
every one else – at least at the start of this, and it just kind of built from there,
and Halper may have been the spark – but the spark landed on a highly combustible pile
of paranoia that caught on fire right away. This is how our and the UK agencies function.
There is an interesting companion piece to this story today at Common Dreams by Robert Kohler
titled The American Way of War. It describes basically the same sort of mind set and action
as this story. I'd link it for you if I knew how, but I'm not very adept at the computer.
(Maybe another reader knows how?)
We (that is the American people who are paying the salaries of these brain blocked, stiff
necked idiots) need to start getting vocal and visible about the destructive path our
politicians, banks and generals have rigidly put us on. Does any average working stiff still
believe that all this hate, death and destruction is to "protect" us?
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:07 pm
ranney – when you are on the page that you want to link to, take your cursor (the
little arrow on your screen) to the top of the page to the address bar (for instance, the
address for this article is:
"https://consortiumnews.com/2018/05/31/spooks-spooking ")
Once your cursor is over the address bar, right click on your mouse. A little menu will
come up. Then position your cursor down to the word "copy" and then left click on your mouse.
This will copy the link.
Then proceed back to the blog (like Consortium) where you want to provide the link in your
post. You might say, "Here is the link for the article I just described above." Then at this
point you would right click on your mouse again, position your cursor over the word "paste",
and then left click on your mouse. Voila, your link magically appears.
If you don't have a mouse and are using a laptop pad, then someone else will have to help
you. That's above my pay grade. Good luck, ranney.
irina , May 31, 2018 at 8:13 pm
If you are using a Mac, either laptop w/touch screen or with a mouse, the copy/paste
function
works similarly. Use either the mouse (no need to 'right click, left click') or the touch
screen
to highlight the address bar once you have the cursor flashing away on the left side of
it.
You may need to scroll right to highlight the whole address. Then go up to Edit (there's
also
a keyboard command you can use, but I don't) in your tool bar at the top of your screen.
Click on 'copy'. Now your address is in memory. Then do the same as described above to
get back to where you want to paste it. Put your cursor where you want it to be 'pasted'.
Go back to 'edit' and click 'paste'. Voila !
This is a very handy function and can be used to copy text, web addresses, whatever you
want.
Explore it a little bit. (Students definitely overuse the 'paste and match style' option,
which allows
a person to 'paste' text into for example an essay and 'match the style' so it looks
seamless, although
unless carefully edited it usually doesn't read seamlessly !)
Remember that whatever is in 'copy' will remain there until you 'copy' something else. (Or
your
computer crashes . . . )
ranney , June 1, 2018 at 3:39 pm
Irina and Backwards Evolution – Thanks guys for the computer advice! I'll try it,
but I think I need someone at my shoulder the first time I try it.
backwardsevolution , June 1, 2018 at 8:53 pm
ranney – you're welcome! Snag one of your kids or a friend, and then do it together.
Sometimes I see people posting things like: "Testing. I'm trying to provide a link, bear with
me." Throw caution to the wind, ranney. I don't worry about embarrassing myself anymore. I do
it every day and the world still goes on.
I heard a good bit of advice once, something I remind my kids: when you're young, you
think everybody is watching you and so you're afraid to step out of line. When you're
middle-aged, you think everybody is watching you, but you don't care. When you're older, you
realize nobody is really watching you because they're more concerned about themselves.
Good luck, ranney.
irina , June 2, 2018 at 10:00 pm
I find it helpful to write down the steps (on an old fashioned piece of paper, with old
fashioned ink)
when learning to use a new computer tool, because while I think I'll remember, it doesn't
usually
'stick' until after using it for quite a while. And yes, definitely recruit a member of the
younger set
or someone familiar with computers. My daughter showed me many years ago how to 'cut &
paste'
and to her credit she was very gracious about it. Remember that you need a place to 'paste'
what-
ever you copied -- either a comment board like this, or a document you are working on, or
(this is
handy) an email where you want to send someone a link to something. Lots of other
possibilities too!
mike , June 1, 2018 at 7:43 pm
No one is presenting Halper as a mastermind spy. He was a tool of the deep state nothing
more.
It seems a mistake to frame the "Russiagate" nonsense as a "Democrat vs Republican"
affair, except at the most surface level of understanding in terms of our political
realities. If one considers that the Bush family has been effectively the Republican Party's
face of the CIA/deep state nexus for decades, as the Clinton/Obama's have been the Democratic
Party's face for decades now, what comes into focus is Trump as a sort of unknown, unexpected
wild card not appropriately tethered to the control structure. Simply noting that the U.S.
and Russia need not be enemies is alone enough to require an operation to get Trump into
line.
This hardly means this is some sort of "partisan" issue as the involvement of McCain and
others demonstrates.
One of the true "you can't make this stuff up" ironies of the Bush/Clinton CIA/deep state
nexus history is worth remembering if one still maintains any illusions about how the CIA
vets potential presidents since they killed JFK. During Iran/Contra we had Bush, the former
CIA director now vice president, running a drugs for arms operation out the White House
through Ollie North, WHILE then unknown Arkansas governor Bill Clinton was busy squashing
Arkansas State Police investigations into said narcotics trafficking. Clinton obviously
proved his bona fides to the CIA/deep state with such service and was appropriately rewarded
as an asset who could function as a reliable president. Here in one operation we had two
future presidents in Bush and Clinton both engaged in THE SAME CIA drug running operation.
You truly can't make this stuff up.
Russiagate seems to be in the end all about keeping deep state policy moving in the "right
direction" and "hating Russia" is the only entree on the menu at this time for the whole
cadre of CIA/deep state, MIC, neocons, Zionists, and all their minions in the MSM. The Obama
White House would have gladly supported Vlad the Impaler as the Republican candidate that
beat Hillary if Vlad were to have the appropriate foaming at the mouth "hate-Russia" vibe
going on.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:18 pm
Gary – great post.
irina , May 31, 2018 at 8:18 pm
Roger that. I would really like to see an inquiry re-opened into the
teenage boys who died 'on the train tracks' in Arkansas during the
early years of the Clinton-Bush trafficking. Many questions are still
unanswered. Speculation is that they saw something they weren't
supposed to see.
Mark Thomason , May 31, 2018 at 1:12 pm
This all grows out of the failure to clean up the mess revealed by the Iraq fiasco.
Instead, those who did that remained, got away with it, and are doing more of the same.
Babyl-on , May 31, 2018 at 12:46 pm
So, here is my question – Who, ultimately does the
permanent/bureaucratic/deep/Imperial* state finally answer to? Who's interests are they
serving? How do they know what those interests are?
It could be, and increasingly it looks as if, the answer is – no one in particular
– but the Saud family, the Zionist cabal of billionaires, the German industrialist
dynasties, the Japanese oligarchy and never forget the arms dealers, all of them once part of
the Empire now fighting for themselves so we end up with the high level apparatchiks not
knowing what to do or who to follow so they lie outright to Congress and go on TV and babble
more lies for money.
It's a great contradiction that the greatest armed force ever assembled with cutting edge
robotics and AI yet at the same time so weak and pathetic it can not exercise hegemony over
the Middle East as it seems to desire more than anything. Being defeated by forces with less
than 20% of the US spend.
Abby , May 31, 2018 at 6:36 pm
You're right. They answer to no one because they are not just working in this country, but
they think that the whole world is theirs.
To these people there are no borders. They meet at places like the G20, Davos and wherever
the Bilderberg group decides to meet every year. No leader of any country gets to be one
unless they are acceptable to the Deep State. The council of foreign relations is one of the
groups that run the world. How we take them down is a good question.
Abe , May 31, 2018 at 12:43 pm
Following the pattern of mainstream media, Daniel Lazare assiduously avoids mentioning
Israel and pro-Israel Lobby interference in the 2016 presidential election, and the
Israel-gate reality underlying all the Russia-gate fictions.
For example, George Papadopoulos is directly connected to the pro-Israel Lobby, right wing
Israeli political interests, and Israeli government efforts to control regional energy
resources.
Lazare mentions that Papadapoulos had "a friend in the Israeli embassy".
But Lazare conspicuously neglects to mention numerous Israeli and pro-Israel Lobby players
interested in "filling Papadopoulos's head" with "tales of Russian dirty tricks".
Papadopoulos' LinkedIn page lists his association with the right wing Hudson Institute.
The Washington, D.C.-based think tank part of pro-Israel Lobby web of militaristic security
policy institutes that promote Israel-centric U.S. foreign policy.
The Hudson Institute confirmed that Papadopoulos was an intern who left the pro-Israel
neoconservative think tank in 2014.
In 2014, Papadopoulos authored op-ed pieces in Israeli publications.
In an op-ed published in Arutz Sheva, media organ of the right wing Religionist Zionist
movement embraced by the Israeli "settler" movement, Papadopoulos argued that the U.S. should
focus on its "stalwart allies" Israel, Greece, and Cyprus to "contain the newly emergent
Russian fleet".
In another op-ed published in Ha'aretz, Papadopoulos contended that Israel should exploit
its natural gas resources in partnership with Cyprus and Greece rather than Turkey.
In November 2015, Papadapalous participated in a conference in Tel Aviv, discussing the
export of natural gas from Israel with a panel of current and past Israeli government
officials including Ron Adam, a representative of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
and Eran Lerman, a former Israeli Deputy National Security Adviser.
Among Israel's numerous violations of United Nations Resolution 242 was its annexation of
the Syrian Golan Heights in 1981. Recent Israeli threatened military threats against Lebanon
and Syria have a lot to do with control of natural gas resources, both offshore from Gaza and
on land in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights region.
Israeli plans to develop energy resources and expand territorial holdings in the Syrian
Golan are threatened by the Russian military presence in Syria. Russian diplomatic efforts,
and the Russian military intervention that began in September 2015 after an official request
by the Syrian government, have interfered with the Israeli-Saudi-U.S. Axis "dirty war" in
Syria.
Israeli activities and Israel-gate realities are predictably ignored by the mainstream
media, which continues to salivate at every moldy scrap of Russia-gate fiction.
Lazare need no be so circumspect, unless he has somehow been spooked.
"Among Israel's numerous violations of United Nations Resolution 242 was its annexation of
the Syrian Golan Heights in 1981. Recent Israeli threatened military threats against Lebanon
and Syria have a lot to do with control of natural gas resources, both offshore from Gaza and
on land in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights region."
And water. Rating energy and water, what's at the top for Israel. Israel would probably
say both but Israel shielded by the US will take what it wants. That is already true with the
Palestinians.. The last figure I heard is that the Palestinians are allocated one fifth per
capita what is allocated to Israel's
mike k , May 31, 2018 at 11:59 am
A large swamp is actually an ancient and highly organized ecosystem. Only humans could
create a lawless madness like Washington DC.
irina , May 31, 2018 at 8:24 pm
Yes that is a good description of a swamp. BUT, if it loses what sustains it --
water, in the case of a 'real' swamp and money in the case of this swamp --
it changes character very quickly and becomes first a bog, then a meadow.
I am definitely ready for more meadowland ! But the only way to create it
is to voluntarily redirect federal taxes into escrow accounts which stipulate
that the funds are to be used for (fill in the blank) Public Services at the
Local and Regional levels. Much more efficient than filtering them through
the federal bureaucracy !
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 10:21 pm
But how would one avoid prosecution for nonpayment of taxes?
That seems a very quiet way to be rendered ineffective as a resister.
irina , June 1, 2018 at 2:30 am
The thing is, you don't 'nonpay' them. The way it used to work, through the
Con$cience and Military Tax Campaign Escrow Account, was that you filed
your taxes as usual. (This does require having less withholding than you owe).
BUT instead of paying what is due to the IRS, you send it to the Escrow Account.
You attach a letter to your tax return, explaining where the money is and why it
is there. That is, you want it to be spent on _________________(fill in the blank)
worthy public social service. Then you send your return to the IRS.
When I used to do this, I stated that I wanted my tax dollars to be spent to develop
public health clinics at neighborhood schools. Said clinics would be staffed by nurse
practitioners, would be open 24-7 and nurses would be equipped with vans to make
House Calls. Security would be provided.
So you're not 'nonpaying' your taxes, you are (attempting) to redirect them.
Eventually,
after several rounds of letters back and forth, the IRS would seize the monies from the
escrow account, which would only release them to the IRS upon being told to by the
tax re-director. Unfortunately, not enough people participated to make it a going
concern.
But the potential is still there, and the template has been made and used. It's very
scale-
able, from local to international. And it would not take that many 're-directors' to shift
the
focus of tax liability from the collector to the payor. Because ultimately we are liable
for
how our funds are used !
Bill , June 2, 2018 at 3:19 pm
this was done a lot during the Vietnam conflict, especially by Quakers. the first thing,
if you are a wage earner, is to re-file a W2 with maximum withholdings-that has two effects:
1) it means you owe all your taxes in April. 2) it means the feds are deprived of the hidden
tax in which they use or invest your withholding throughout the year before it's actually
due(and un-owed taxes if you over over-withhold). Pretty sure that if a large number of
people deprive the government of that hidden tax by under-withholding, they will begin to
take notice.
Abe , May 31, 2018 at 11:54 am
Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is an intelligence agency of the government
and armed forces of the United Kingdom.
In 2013, GCHQ received considerable media attention when the former National Security
Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the agency was in the process of collecting
all online and telephone data in the UK. Snowden's revelations began a spate of ongoing
disclosures of global surveillance and manipulation.
For example, NSA files from the Snowden archive published by Glenn Greenwald reveal
details about GCHQ's Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) unit, which uses "dirty
trick" tactics to covertly manipulate and control online communities.
In 2017, officials from the UK and Israel made an unprecedented confirmation of the close
relationship between the GCHQ and Israeli intelligence services.
Robert Hannigan, outgoing Director-General of the GCHQ, revealed for the first time that
his organization has a "strong partnership with our Israeli counterparts in signals
intelligence." He claimed the relationship "is protecting people from terrorism not only in
the UK and Israel but in many other countries."
Mark Regev, Israeli ambassador to the UK, commented on the close relationship between
British and Israeli intelligence agencies. During remarks at a Conservative Friends of Israel
reception, Regev opined: "I have no doubt the cooperation between our two democracies is
saving British lives."
Hannigan added that GCHQ was "building on an excellent cyber relationship with a range of
Israeli bodies and the remarkable cyber industry in Be'er Sheva."
The IDF's most important signal intelligence–gathering installation is the Urim
SIGINT Base, a part of Unit 8200, located in the Negev desert approximately 30 km from Be'er
Sheva.
Snowden revealed how Unit 8200 receives raw, unfiltered data of U.S. citizens, as part of
a secret agreement with the U.S. National Security Agency.
After his departure from GCHQ, Hannigan joined BlueteamGlobal, a cybersecurity services
firm, later re-named BlueVoyant.
BlueVoyant's board of directors includes Nadav Zafrir, former Commander of the Israel
Defense Forces' Unit 8200. The senior leadership team at BlueVoyant includes Ron Feler,
formerly Deputy Commander of the IDF's Unit 8200, and Gad Goldstein, who served as a division
head in the Israel Security Agency, Shin Bet, in the rank equivalent to Major General.
In addition to their purported cybersecurity activities, Israeli. American, and British
private companies have enormous access and potential to promote government and military
deception operations.
mike k , May 31, 2018 at 12:23 pm
Thanks Abe. Sounds like a manual for slave owners and con men. What a tangled wed the rich
bastards weave. The simple truth is their sworn enemy.
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 10:19 pm
Interesting that a foreign power would be given all US communications data, which implies
that the US has seized it all without a warrant and revealed it all in violation of the
Constitution. If extensive, this use of information power amounts to information warfare
against the US by its own secret agencies in collusion with a foreign power, an act of
treason.
Seer , June 1, 2018 at 7:18 am
This has been going on for a LONG time, it's nothing new. I seem to recall 60 Minutes
covering it way back in the 70s(?). UK was allowed to do the snooping in the US (and, likely,
vice versa) and then providing info to the US. This way the US govt could claim that it
didn't spy/snoop on its citizens. Without a doubt Israel has been extensively intercepting
communications in the US..
Secrecy kills.
Sam F , June 1, 2018 at 8:23 am
Yes, but the act of allowing unregulated foreign agencies unwarranted access to US
telecoms is federal crime, and it is treason when it goes so far as to allow them full
access, and even direct US bulk traffic to their spy agencies. If this is so, these people
should be prosecuted for treason.
F. G. Sanford , May 31, 2018 at 11:36 am
To listen to the media coverage of these events, it is tempting to believe that two
entirely different planets are being discussed. Fox comes out and says Mueller was "owned" by
Trump. Then, CNN comes out and says Trump was "owned" by Clapper. Clapper claims the evidence
is "staggering", while video clips of his testimony reveal irrefutable perjury. Some of
President Trump's policies are understandably abhorrent to Democrats, while Clinton's email
server and charity frauds are indisputably violations of Federal statutes. Democrats are
attempting to claim that a "spy" in the Trump campaign was perfectly reasonable to protect
"national security", but evidence seems to indicate that the spy was placed BEFORE there was
a legitimate national security concern. Some analysts note that, while Mueller's team appears
to be Democratic partisan hacks, their native "skill set" is actually expertise in money
laundering investigations. They claim that although Mr. Trump may not be compromised by the
Russian government, he is involved with nefarious Russian organized crime figures. It
follows, according to them, that given time, Mueller will reveal these illicit connections,
and prosecution will become inevitable.
Let's assume, for argument, that both sides are right. That means that our entire
government is irretrievably corrupt. Republicans claim that it could " go all the way to
Obama". Democrats, of course, play the "moral high ground" card, insinuating that the current
administration is so base and immoral that somehow, the "ends justify the means". No matter
how you slice it, the Clinton campaign has a lot more liability on its hands. The problem is,
if prosecutions begin, people will "talk" to save their own skins. The puppet masters can't
really afford that.
"All the way to Obama", you say? I think it could go higher than that. Personally, I think
it could go all the way to Dick Cheney, and the 'powers that be' are in no mood to let that
happen.
Vivian O'Blivion , May 31, 2018 at 12:19 pm
The issue as I see it is that from the start everyone was calling the Mueller probe an
investigation into collusion and not really grasping the catch all nature of his brief.
It's the "any matters arising " that is the real kicker. So any dodgy dealing / possible
criminal activity in the past is fair game. And this is exactly what in happening with
Manafort.
Morally you can apply the Nucky Johnson defence and state that everyone knew Trump was a
crook when they voted for him, but legally this has no value.
There is an unpleasant whiff of deep state interference with the will of the people
(electoral college). Perhaps if most bodies hadn't written Trump's chances off in such an off
hand manner, proper due diligence of his background would have uncovered any liabilities
before the election.
If there is actionable dirt, can't say I am overly sympathetic to Trump. Big prizes sometimes
come with big risks.
David G , May 31, 2018 at 5:14 pm
My own feeling from the start has been that Mueller was never going to track down any
"collusion" or "meddling" (at least not to any significant degree) because the whole,
sprawling Russia-gate narrative – to the extent one can be discerned – is
obviously phony.
But at the same time, there's no way the completely lawless, unethical Trump, along with
his scummy associates, would be able to escape that kind of scrutiny without criminal conduct
being exposed.
So far, on both scores, that still seems to me to be a likely outcome, and for my part I'm
fine with it.
Vivian O'Blivion , June 1, 2018 at 5:29 am
My thoughts exactly. Collusion was never a viable proposition because the Russians aren't
that stupid. Regardless of any personal opinion regarding the intelligence and mental
stability of Donald Snr., the people he surrounds himself with are weapons grade stupid. I
don't see the Russians touching the Trump campaign with a proverbial barge pole.
Bill , June 2, 2018 at 3:26 pm
it just happens that Trump appears to have been involved (wittingly or not), with the
laundering a whole lot of Russian money and so many of his friends seem to be connected with
wealthy Russian oligarchs as well plus they are so stupid, they keep appearing to (and
probably are) obstructing justice. The Cohen thing doesn't get much attention here, but it's
significant that they have all this stuff on a guy who is clearly Trump's bagman.
Steve Naidamast , May 31, 2018 at 3:15 pm
There is also quite an indication that the entire Mueller investigation is a complete
smoke screen to be used as cannon fodder in the mainstream media.
On the one hand, Mueller and his hacks have found nothing of import to link Trump to
anything close to collusion with members of the Russian government. And I am by no means a
Trump supporter by any stretch of the imagination, except as a foil to Clinton. However, even
my minimalist expectations for Trump have not worked out either.
In addition. the Mueller investigation has been spending what appears to be a majority of
its time on ancillary matters that were not within the supposed scope and mandate of this
investigation. Further, a number of indictments have come down against people involved with
such ancillary matters.
The result is that if Mueller is going beyond the scope of his investigatory mandate, this
may come in as a technicality that will allow indicted persons to escape prosecution on
appeal.
Such a mandate, I would think, is the same thing as a police warrant, which can find only
admissible evidence covered by the warrant. Anything else found to be criminally liable must
be found to be as a result of a completely different investigation that has nothing to do
with the original warrant.
In other words, it appears that the Mueller investigation was allowed to commence under a
Republican controlled Congress for the very reason that its intent is simply to go in circles
long enough for Republicans to get their agendas through, which does not appear to be working
all too well as a result of their high levels of internecine party conflicts.
This entire affair is coming to show just how dysfunctional, corrupt, and incompetent the
entirety of the US federal government has become. And to the chagrin of all sincere
activists, no amount of organized protesting and political action will ever rid the country
of this grotesque political quagmire that now engulfs the entirety of our political
infrastructure.
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 8:48 pm
Very true that the US federal government is now "dysfunctional, corrupt, and
incompetent."
What are your thoughts on forms of action to rid us this political quagmire?
(other than ineffective "organized protesting and political action")
Have you considered new forms of public debate and public information?
Seer , June 1, 2018 at 7:34 am
All of this is blackmail to hold Trump's feet to the fire of the Israel firsters (such
actions pull in all the dark swampy things). By creating the Russia blackmail story they've
effectively redirected away from themselves. The moment Trump balks the Deep State will reel
in some more, airing innuendos to overwhelm Trump. Better believe that Trump has been fully
"briefed" on all of this. John Bolton was able to push out a former OPCW head with threats
(knew where his, the OPCW head's children were). And now John Bolton is sitting right next to
Trump (whispering in his ear that he knows ways in which to oust Trump).
What actual "ideas" were in Trump's head going in to all of this (POTUS run) is hard to
say. But, anything that can be considered a threat to the Deep State has been effectively
nullified now.
Vivian O'Blivion , June 1, 2018 at 8:22 am
Possible, but Manafort already tried to get his charges thrown out as being the outcome of
investigations beyond the remit He failed.
Brendan , May 31, 2018 at 10:26 am
There's no doubt at all that Joseph Mifsud was closely connected with western
intelligence, and with MI6 in particular. His contacts with Russia are insignificant compared
with his long career working amongst the elite of western officials.
Lee Smith of RealClearInvestigations lists some of the places where Mifsud worked, including
two universities:
"he taught at Link Campus University in Rome, ( ) whose lecturers and professors include
senior Western diplomats and intelligence officials from a number of NATO countries,
especially Italy and the United Kingdom.
Mifsud also taught at the University of Stirling in Scotland, and the London Academy of
Diplomacy, which trained diplomats and government officials, some of them sponsored by the
UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the British Council, or by their own governments."
Two former colleagues of Mifsud's, Roh and Pastor, recently interviewed him for a book
they have written. Those authors could very well be biased, but one of them makes a valid
point, similar to one that Daniel Lazare makes above:
"Given the affiliations of Link's faculty and staff, as well as Mifsud's pedigree, Roh thinks
it's impossible that the man he hired as a business development consultant is a Russian
agent."
Politically, Mifsud identifies with the Clintons more than anyone else, and claims to
belong to the Clinton Foundation, which has often been accused of being just a way of
funneling money into Hillary Clinton's campaign.
As Lee Smith says, if Mifsud really is a Russian spy, "Western intelligence services are
looking at one of the largest and most embarrassing breaches in a generation. But none of the
governments or intelligence agencies potentially compromised is acting like there's anything
wrong."
From all that we know about Joseph Mifsud, it's safe to say that he was never a Russian
spy. If not, then what was he doing when he was allegedly feeding stories to George
Papadopoulos about Russians having 'dirt' on Clinton?
I read somewhere that Mifsud had disappeared. Was that true? If so, is he back, or still
missing?
Chet Roman , May 31, 2018 at 6:21 pm
Here are some excerpts that will answer your question from an article by Lee Smith at
Realclearinvestigations, "The Maltese Phantom of Russiagate".
A new book by former colleagues of Mifsud's – Stephan Roh, a 50-year-old
Swiss-German lawyer, and Thierry Pastor, a 35-year-old French political analyst –
reports that he is alive and well. Their account includes a recent interview with him.
Their self-published book, "The Faking of Russia-gate: The Papadopoulos Case, an
Investigative Analysis," includes a recent interview with Mifsud in which he denies saying
anything about Clinton emails to Papadopoulos. Mifsud, they write, stated "vehemently that he
never told anything like this to George Papadopoulos." Mifsud asked rhetorically: "From where
should I have this [information]?"
Mifsud's account seems to be supported by Alexander Downer, the Australian diplomat who
alerted authorities about Papadopoulos. As reported in the Daily Caller, Downer said
Papadopoulos never mentioned emails; he spoke, instead, about the Russians possessing
material that could be damaging to Clinton. This new detail raises the possibility that
Mifsud, Papadopoulos' alleged source for the information, never said anything about
Clinton-related emails either.
In interviews with RealClearInvestigations, Roh and Pastor said Mifsud is anything but a
Russian spy. Rather, he is more likely a Western intelligence asset.
According to the two authors, it was a former Italian intelligence official, Vincenzo
Scotti, a colleague of Mifsud's and onetime interior minister, who told the professor to go
into hiding. "I don't know who was hiding him," said Roh, "but I'm sure it was organized by
someone. And I am sure it will be difficult to get to the bottom of it."
Toby McCrossin , June 1, 2018 at 1:54 am
" The Papadopoulos Case, an Investigative Analysis," includes a recent interview with
Mifsud in which he denies saying anything about Clinton emails to Papadopoulos. Mifsud, they
write, stated "vehemently that he never told anything like this to George Papadopoulos.""
Thank you for providing that explosive piece of information. If true, and I suspect it is,
that's one more nail in the Russiagate narrative. Who, then, is making the claim that Misfud
mentioned emails? The only source for the statement I can find is "court documents".
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 9:20 am
The election scams serve only to distract from the Israel-gate scandal and the oligarchy
destruction of our former democracy. Mr. Lazare neglects to tell us about that. All of
Hillary's top ten campaign bribers were zionists, and Trump let Goldman-Sachs take over the
economy. KSA and big business also bribed heavily.
We must restrict funding of elections and mass media to limited individual donations, for
democracy is lost.
We must eliminate zionist fascism from our political parties, federal government, and
foreign policy. Obviously that has nothing to do with any ethnic or religious preference.
Otherwise the United States is lost, and our lives have no historical meaning beyond
slavery to oligarchy.
Joe Tedesky , May 31, 2018 at 9:51 am
You are right Sam. Israel does work the fence under the guise of the Breaking News.
Joe
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 8:18 pm
My response was that Israel massacres at the fence, ignored by the zionist US mass
media.
mike k , May 31, 2018 at 11:48 am
The extreme wealth and privileges of oligarchy depend on the poverty and slavery of
others. Inequality of income is the root cause of most of our ills. Try to imagine what a
world of economic equals would be like. No striving for more and more wealth at the expense
of others. No wars. What would there be to fight over – everyone would be content with
what they already had.
If you automatically think such a world would be impossible, try to state why. You might
discover that the only obstacle to such a world is the greedy bastards who are sitting on top
of everybody, and will do anything to maintain their advantages.
mike k , May 31, 2018 at 11:52 am
How do the oligarchs ensure your slavery? With the little green tickets they have hoarded
that the rest of us need just to eat and have a roof over our heads. The people sleeping in
the streets tell us the penalty for not being good slaves.
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 12:50 pm
Very true, Mike. Those who say that equality or fairness of income implies breaking the
productivity incentive system are wrong. No matter how much or how little wage incentive we
offer for making an effort in work, we need not have great disparities of income. Those who
can work should have work, and we should all make an effort to do well in our work, but none
of us need the fanciest cars or grand monuments to live in, just to do our best.
Getting rid of oligarchy, and getting money out of mass media and elections, would be the
greatest achievement of our times.
Joe Tedesky , May 31, 2018 at 5:30 pm
An old socialist friend of my dad's generation who claimed to have read the biography of
Andrew Carnegie had told me over a few beers that Carnegie said, "that at a time when he was
paying his workers $5 a week he 'could' have been paying them $50 a day, but then he could
not figure out what kind of life they would lead with all that money". Think about it mike,
if his workers would have had that kind of money it would not be long before Carnegie's
workers became his competition and opened up next door to him the worst case scenario would
be his former workers would sell their steel at a cheaper price, kind of, well no exactly
like what Rockefeller did with oil, or as Carnegie did with steel innovation. How's that
saying go, keep them down on the farm . well. Remember Carnegie was a low level stooge for
the railroads at one time, and rose to the top .mike. Great point to make mike, because there
could be more to go around. Joe
Steve Naidamast , May 31, 2018 at 3:16 pm
"We must restrict funding of elections and mass media to limited individual donations, for
democracy is lost.
We must eliminate zionist fascism from our political parties, federal government, and
foreign policy. Obviously that has nothing to do with any ethnic or religious
preference."
Good luck with that!!!
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 8:19 pm
Well, you are welcome to make suggestions on how to save the republic.
john wilson , May 31, 2018 at 9:10 am
The depths of the deep state has no limits, but as a UK citizen, I fail to see why the
American "spooks" need any help from we Brits when it comes state criminal activity. Sure, we
are masters at underhand dirty tricks, but the US has a basket full of tricks that 'Trump'
(lol) anything we've got. It was the Russians wot done mantra has been going on for many
decades and is ever good for another turn around the political mulberry tree of corruption
and underhand dealings. Whether the Democrats or the Republicans win its all the same to the
deep state as they are in control whoever is in the White House. Trump was an outsider and
there for election colour and the "ho ho ho" look what a great democracy we are, anyone can
be president. He is in fact the very essence of the 'wild card' and when he actually won
there was total confusion, panic, disbelief and probably terror in the caves and dungeons of
the deep state.
Realist , May 31, 2018 at 9:33 am
I'm sure the result was so unexpected that the shadowy fixers, the IT mavens who could
have "adjusted" the numbers, were totally caught off guard and unable to do "cleanly." Not
that they didn't try to re-jigger the results in the four state recounts that were ordered,
but it was simply too late to effectively cheat at that point, as there were already massive
overvotes detected in key urban precincts. Such a thing will never happen again, I am
sure.
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 9:36 am
It appears that UK has long had a supply of anti-Russia fearmongers, presumably backed by
its anti-socialist oligarchy as in the US. Perhaps the US oligarchy is the dumbest salesman,
who believes that all customers are even dumber, so that UK can sell Russophobia here thirty
years after the USSR.
Bob Van Noy , May 31, 2018 at 8:49 am
"But how could Trump think otherwise? As Consortium News founding editor Robert Parry
observed a few days later, the maneuver "resembles a tactic out of FBI Director J. Edgar
Hoover's playbook on government-style blackmail: I have some very derogatory information
about you that I'd sure hate to see end up in the press."
Perfect.
Recently, while trying to justify my arguement that a new investigation into the RFK Killing
was necessary, I was asked why I thought that, and my response was "Modus operandi," exactly
what Robert Parry learned by experience, and that is the fundamental similarity to all of the
institutionalized crime that takes place by the IC. Once one realizes the literary approach
to disinformation that was fundamental to Alan Dulles, James Jesus Angleton, even Ian
Fleming, one can easily see the Themes being applied. I suppose that the very feature of
believability offered by propaganda, once recognized, becomes its undoing. That could be our
current reality; the old Lines simply are beginning to appear to be ridiculous
Thank you Daniel Lazar.
Sam F , June 1, 2018 at 8:39 am
The recognition of themes of propaganda as literary themes and modus operandi is helping
to discredit propaganda. The similarities of the CW false-flag operations (Iraq, Syria, and
UK), and the fake assassinations (Skripal and Babchenko) by the anti-Russia crowd help reveal
and persuade on the falsehood of the Iraq WMD, Syria CW, and MH-17 propaganda ops. Just as
the similarities of the JFK/MLK/RFK assassinations persuade us that commonalities exist long
before we see evidence.
Bob Van Noy , June 1, 2018 at 1:11 pm
Many thanks Sam F for recognizing that. As we begin to achieve a resolution of the 60's
Kllings, we can begin to see the general and specific themes utilized to direct the programs
of Assassination. The other aspect is that real investigation Never followed; and that took
Real Power.
In a truly insightful book by author Sally Denton entitled "The Profiteers" she puts
together a very cogent theory that it isn't the Mafia, it's the Syndicate, which means (for
me at least) real, criminal power with somewhat divergent interests ok with one another, to
the extent that they can maintain their Own Turf. I think that's a profound insight
Too, in a similar vain, the Grand Deceptions of American Foreign Policy, "scenarios" are
simply and only that, not a Real possible solution. Always resulting in failure
Sam F , June 1, 2018 at 9:23 pm
Yes, it is difficult to determine the structure of a subculture of gangsterism in power,
which can have many specialized factions in loose cooperation, agreeing on some general
policy points, like benefits for the rich, hatred of socialism, institutionalized bribery of
politicians and judges, militarized policing, destruction of welfare and social security,
deregulation of everything, essentially the neocon/neolib line of the DemReps. The party line
of oligarchy in any form.
Indeed the foreign policy of such gangsters is designed to "fail" because destruction of
cultures, waste, and fragmentation most efficiently exploits the bribery structure available,
and serves the anti-socialist oligarchy. Failure of the declared foreign policy is success,
because that is only propaganda to cover the corruption.
You know, not only Gay Trowdy but even Dracula Napolitano think people like Lazare ,
McGovern, etc. are overblown on this issue.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 1:47 pm
SocraticGadfly – Trey Gowdy hasn't even seen the documents yet, so he's hardly in a
position to say anything. The House Intelligence Committee, under Chairman Nunes, are being
stymied by the FBI and the Department of Justice who are refusing to hand over documents.
Refusing! Refusing to disclose documents to the very people who, by law, have oversight.
Nunes is threatening to hit them with Contempt of Congress.
Let's see the documents. Then Trey Gowdy can open his mouth.
What I take from this head spinning article is the paragraph about Carter Page.
"On July 7, 2016 Carter Page delivered a lecture on U.S.-Russian relations in Moscow in
which he complained that "Washington and other western capitals have impeded potential
progress through their often hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality,
corruption, and regime change." Washington hawks expressed "unease" that someone representing
the presumptive Republican nominee would take Russia's side in a growing neo-Cold War
Mr. Page hit the nail on the head. There is no greater sin to entrenched power than to
spell out what is going on with Russia. It helps us understand why terms like dupe and
naïve were stuck on Carter Page's back.. Truth to power is not always good for your
health.
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 10:07 am
The tyrant accuses of disloyalty, all who question the reality of his foreign
monsters.
And so do his monster-fighting agencies, whose budgets depend upon the fiction.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:25 am
Daniel Lazare – good report. "It sounds more like CIA paranoia raised to the nth
degree." This wasn't a case of paranoia. This was a blatant attempt to bring down a rival
opponent and, failing that, the President of the United States. This was intentional and
required collusion between top officials of the government. They fabricated the phony Steele
dossier (paid for by the Clinton campaign), exonerated Hillary Clinton, and then went to town
on bringing down Trump.
"Was George Popodopolous set up?" Of course he was. Set up a patsy in order to give you
reason to carry out a phony investigation.
"If the corporate press fails to point this out, it's because reporters are too befogged
themselves to notice." They're not befogged; they're following orders (the major television
and newspaper outfits). Without their 24/7 spin and lies, Russiagate would never have been
kept alive.
These guys got the biggest surprise of their life when Hillary Clinton lost the election.
None of this would have come out had she won. During the campaign, as Trump gained in the
polls, she was heard to say, "If they ever find out what we've done, we'll all hang."
I hope they see jail time for what they've done.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:38 am
Apparently what has come out so far is just the tip of the iceberg. Some are saying this
could lead all the way up to Obama. I hope not, but they have certainly done all they can to
ruin the Trump Presidency.
JohnM , May 31, 2018 at 9:58 am
I'm adjusting my tinfoil hat right now. I'm wondering if Skripal had something to do with
the Steel dossier. The iceberg may be even bigger than thought.
Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 10:18 am
It is known that Skripal's close friend living nearby was an employee of Steele's firm
Orbis.
Chet Roman , May 31, 2018 at 2:58 pm
Exactly, his name is Pablo Miller and he is the MI6 agent who initially recruited Sergei
Skripal. Miller worked for Orbis, Steele's company and listed that in his resume on LinkedIn
but later deleted it. But once it's on the internet it can always be found and it was and it
was published.
robjira , May 31, 2018 at 2:13 pm
John, both Moon Of Alabama and OffGuardian have had excellent coverage of the Skripal
affair. Informed opinions wonder if Sergei Skripal was one of Steele's "Russian sources," and
that he may have been poisoned for the purpose of either a) bolstering the whole "Russia =
evil" narrative, or b) a warning not to ask for more than what he may have conceivably
received for any contribution he may or may not have made to the "dossiere."
mike k , May 31, 2018 at 7:20 am
Interesting details in this article, but we have known this whole Russiagate affair was a
scam from the get go. It all started the day after Trump's unexpected electoral win over
Hillary. The chagrined dems came together and concocted their sore loser alibi – the
Russians did it. They scooped up a lot of pre-election dirt, rolled it into a ball and
directed it at Trump. It is a testament to the media's determination to stick with their
story, that in spite of not a single scrap of real evidence after over a year of digging by a
huge team of democratic hit men and women, this ridiculous story still has supporters.
David G , May 31, 2018 at 10:31 am
"It all started the day after Trump's unexpected electoral win over Hillary."
Not so.
Daniel Lazare's first link in the above piece is to Paul Krugman's July 22, 2016 NY Times
op-ed, "Donald Trump, the Siberian Candidate". (Note how that headline doesn't even bother to
employ a question mark.)
I appreciate that that Krugman column gets pride of place here since I distinctly remember
reading it in my copy of the Times that day, months before the election, and my immediate
reaction to it: nonplussed that such a risible thesis was being aired so prominently, along
with a deep realization that this was only the first shot in what would be a co-ordinated
media disinformation campaign, à la Saddam's WMDs.
Chet Roman , May 31, 2018 at 3:37 pm
Actually, I think the intelligence agencies' (CIA/FBI/DNI) plan started shortly after
Trump gave the names of Page and Papadopoulos to the Washington Post (CIA annex) in a meeting
on March 21, 2016 outlining his foreign policy team.
Carter Page (Naval Academy distinguished graduate and Naval intelligence officer) in 2013
worked as an "under-cover employee" of the FBI in a case that convicted Evgeny Buryakov and
it was reported that he was still an UCE in March of 2016. The FBI never charged or even
hinted that Page was anything but innocent and patriotic. However, in October 2016 the FBI
told the FISA Court that he was a spy to support spying on him. Remember the FISA Court
allows spying on him AND the persons he is in contact, which means almost everyone on the
Trump transition team/administration.
Here is an excerpt from an article by WSJ's Kimberley Strassel:
In "late spring" of 2016, then-FBI Director James Comey briefed White House "National
Security Council Principals" that the FBI had counterintelligence concerns about the Trump
campaign. Carter Page was announced as a campaign adviser on March 21, and Paul Manafort
joined the campaign March 29. The briefing likely referenced both men, since both had
previously been on the radar of law enforcement. But here's what matters: With this briefing,
Mr. Comey officially notified senior political operators on Team Obama that the bureau had
eyes on Donald Trump and Russia. Imagine what might be done in these partisan times with such
explosive information.
And what do you know? Sometime in April, the law firm Perkins Coie (on behalf the Clinton
campaign) hired Fusion GPS, and Fusion turned its attention to Trump-Russia connections.
David G , May 31, 2018 at 4:56 pm
Most interesting, Chet Roman. Thanks.
My understanding is that Trump more or less pulled Page's name out of a hat to show the
WashPost that he had a "foreign policy team", and thus that his campaign wasn't just a hollow
sham, but that at that point he really had had no significant contact at all with Page
– maybe hadn't even met him. It was just a name from his new political world that
sprang to "mind" (or the Trumpian equivalent).
Of course, the Trump campaign *was* just a sham, by conventional Beltway standards: a
ramshackle road show with no actual "foreign policy team", or any other policy team.
So maybe that random piece of B.S. from Trump has caused him a heap of trouble. This is
part of why – no matter how bogus "Russia-gate" is – I just can't bring myself to
feel sorry for old Cheeto Dust.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 6:56 am
Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal had some good advice:
"Mr. Trump has an even quicker way to bring the hostility to an end.
He can – and should – declassify everything possible, letting Congress and the
public see the truth.
That would put an end to the daily spin and conspiracy theories. It would puncture
Democratic arguments that the administration is seeking to gain this information only for
itself, to "undermine" an investigation.
And it would end the Justice Department's campaign of secrecy, which has done such harm to
its reputation with the public and with Congress."
What do you bet he does?
RickD , May 31, 2018 at 6:44 am
I have serious doubts about the article's veracity. There seems to be a thread running
through it indicating an attempt to whitewash any Russian efforts to get Trump elected. To
dismiss all the evidence of such efforts, and , despite this author's words, there is enough
such evidence, seems more than a bit partisan.
What evidence? I've seen none so far. A lot of claims that there is such evidence but no
one seems to ever say what it is.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:06 am
RickD – thanks for the good laugh before bedtime. I'm with Mr. Merrell and I
actually want to see some evidence. Maybe it was Professor Halper in the kitchen with the
paring knife.
Realist , May 31, 2018 at 9:21 am
Unfortunately, what this guy says is what most Americans still seem to believe. When I ask
people what is the actual hard evidence for "Russiagate" (because I don't know of any that
has been corroborated), I get a response that there have been massive examples of Russian
hacks, Russian posts, tweets and internet adverts–all meant to sabotage Hillary's
candidacy, and very effective, mind you. Putin has been an evil genius worthy of a comic book
villain (to date myself, a regular Lex Luthor). Sez who, ask I? Sez the trustworthy American
media that would never lie to the public, sez they. You know, professional paragons of virtue
like Rachel Maddow and her merry band.
Nobody seems aware of the recent findings about Halpern, none seem to have a realistic
handle on the miniscule scope of the Russian "offenses" against American democracy. Rachel,
the NY Times and WaPo have seen to that with their sins of both commission and omission. Even
the Republican party is doing a half-hearted job of defending its own power base with
rigorous and openly disseminated fact checking. It's like even many of the committee chairs
with long seniority are reluctant to buck the conventional narrative peddled by the media.
Many have chosen to retire rather than fight the media and the Deep State. What's a better
interpretation of events? Or is one to believe that the silent voices, curious retirements
and political heat generated by the Dems, the prosecutors and the media are all independent
variables with no connections? These old pols recognise a good demonizing when they see it,
especially when directed at them.
Personally, I think that not only the GOPers should be fighting like the devil to expose
the truth (which should benefit them in this circumstance) but so should the media and all
the watchdog agencies (ngo's) out there because our democracy WAS hijacked, but it was NOT by
the Russians. Worse than that, it was done by internal domestic enemies of the people who
must be outed and punished to save the constitution and the republic, if it is not too late.
All the misinformation by influential insiders and the purported purveyors of truth
accompanied by the deliberate silence by those who should be chirping like birds suggests it
may well be far too late.
backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:53 pm
Realist – a most excellent post! Some poll result I read about the other day
mentioned that well over half of the American public do NOT believe what they are being told
by the media. That was good to hear. But you are right, there are still way too many who
never question anything. If I ever get in trouble, I wouldn't want those types on my jury.
They'd be wide awake during the prosecution's case and fast asleep during my defense.
This is the Swamp at work on both sides of the aisle. Most of the Republicans are hanging
Trump out to dry. They've probably got too much dirt they want to keep hidden themselves, so
retirement looks like a good idea. Get out of Dodge while the going is good, before the real
fighting begins! The Democrats are battling for all they're worth, and I've got to hand it to
them – they're dirty little fighters.
Yes, democracy has been hijacked. Hard to say how long this has been going on –
maybe forever. If there is anything good about Trump's presidency, it's that the Deep State
is being laid out and delivered up on a silver platter for all to see.
There has never been a better chance to take back the country than this. If this
opportunity passes, it will never come again. They will make sure of it.
The greatest thing that Trump could do for the country would be to declassify all
documents. Jeff Sessions is either part of the Deep State or he's been scared off. He's not
going to act. Rosenstein is up to his eyeballs in this mess and he's not going to act. In
fact, he's preventing Nunes from getting documents. It is up to Trump to act. I just hope
he's not being surrounded by a bunch of bad apple lawyers who are giving him bad advice. He
needs to go above the Department of Justice and declassify ALL documents. If he did that, a
lot of these people would probably die of a heart attack within a minute.
mike k , May 31, 2018 at 7:11 am
You sure came out of the woodwork quickly to express your "serious doubts" RickD.
Skip Scott , May 31, 2018 at 8:07 am
Please provide "such evidence". I've yet to see any. The entire prosecution of RussiaGate
has been one big Gish Gallop.
strgr-tgther , May 31, 2018 at 9:39 pm
RickD – Thank you for pointing that out! You were the only one!!! It is a very
strange article leaving Putin and the Russians evidence out and also not a single word about
Stromy Daniels witch is also very strange. I know Hillary would never have approved of any of
this and they don't say that either.
John , June 1, 2018 at 2:26 am
What does Stormy Daniels have to do with RussiaGate?
You know that someone who committed the ultimate war crime by lying us into war to destroy
Libya and re-institute slavery there, and who laughed after watching video of a man that
Nelson Mandela called "The Greatest Living Champion of Human Rights on the Planet" be
sodomized to death with a knife, is somehow too "moral" to do such a thing? Really?
It amazes me how utterly cultish those who support the Red Queen have shown themselves to
be – without apparently realizing that they are obviously on par with the followers of
Jim Jones!
strgr-tgther , June 1, 2018 at 12:17 pm
That is like saying what does income tax have to do with Al Capone. Who went to Alctraz
because he did not pay income tax not for being a gangster. So we know Trump has sexual
relations with Stormy Daniels, then afterward PAID her not to talk about it. So he paid Story
Daniels for sex! That is Prostitution! Same thing. And that is inpeachable, using womens
bodies as objects. If we don't prosecute Trump here then from now on all a John needs to say
to the police is that he was not paying for sex but paying to keep quiet about it. And
Cogress can get Trump for prostitution and disgracing the office of President. Without Russia
investigations we would never have found out about this important fact, so that is what it
has to do with Russia Gate.
"... That did not prevent the "handpicked" authors of that poor excuse for intelligence analysis from expressing "high confidence" that Russian intelligence "relayed material it acquired from the Democratic National Committee to WikiLeaks." Handpicked analysts, of course, say what they are handpicked to say. ..."
"... The June 12, 14, & 15 timing was hardly coincidence. Rather, it was the start of a pre-emptive move to associate Russia with anything WikiLeaks might have been about to publish and to "show" that it came from a Russian hack. ..."
"... "No one has challenged the authenticity of the original documents of Vault 7, which disclosed a vast array of cyber warfare tools developed, probably with help from NSA, by CIA's Engineering Development Group. That Group was part of the sprawling CIA Directorate of Digital Innovation – a growth industry established by John Brennan in 2015. [ (VIPS warned President Obama of some of the dangers of that basic CIA reorganization at the time.] ..."
"... "Scarcely imaginable digital tools – that can take control of your car and make it race over 100 mph, for example, or can enable remote spying through a TV – were described and duly reported in the New York Times and other media throughout March. But the Vault 7, part 3 release on March 31 that exposed the "Marble Framework" program apparently was judged too delicate to qualify as 'news fit to print' and was kept out of the Times at the time, and has never been mentioned since . ..."
"... "More important, the CIA reportedly used Marble during 2016. In her Washington Post report , Nakashima left that out, but did include another significant point made by WikiLeaks; namely, that the obfuscation tool could be used to conduct a 'forensic attribution double game' or false-flag operation because it included test samples in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi." ..."
"... The CIA's reaction to the WikiLeaks disclosure of the Marble Framework tool was neuralgic. Then Director Mike Pompeo lashed out two weeks later, calling Assange and his associates "demons," and insisting; "It's time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is, a non-state hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia."Our July 24 Memorandum continued: "Mr. President, we do not know if CIA's Marble Framework, or tools like it, played some kind of role in the campaign to blame Russia for hacking the DNC. Nor do we know how candid the denizens of CIA's Digital Innovation Directorate have been with you and with Director Pompeo. These are areas that might profit from early White House review. [ President Trump then directed Pompeo to invite Binney, one of the authors of the July 24, 2017 VIPS Memorandum to the President, to discuss all this. Binney and Pompeo spent an hour together at CIA Headquarters on October 24, 2017, during which Binney briefed Pompeo with his customary straightforwardness. ] ..."
"... Another false flag operation? Suddenly false flag operations have become the weapon of choice. Interestingly enough, they are nefariously (always) committed by the US or US allies. MH17 was a false flag with an SU-25 Ukraine jet responsible for downing the passenger jet (to blame Russia). All of the chemical attacks in Syria were false flag operations with the supply of sarin/chlorine made in Turkey or directly given to the "rebels" by the CIA or US allies. The White Helmets were of course in on all of the details. Assad was just simply not capable of doing that to "his" people. Forget that the sarin had the chemical signature of the Assad regime sarin supply. Next it was the snipers who used a false flag operation during the Maidan revolution to shoot protesters and police to oust Yanukovych. Only the neo-Nazis could be capable of shooting the Maidan protesters so they could take power. And then Seth Rich was murdered so he couldn't reveal he was the "real" source of the leak. This was hinted by Assange when he offered a reward to find the killers. ..."
"... The author tosses out that the DNC hack was (potentially) a false flag operation by the CIA obviously to undermine Trump while victimizing Russia. ..."
"... I don't seen any cause to say that any false-flag theory you don't like is merely "tossed out" propaganda. One cannot tell in your comment where you think the accounts are credible and where not. No evidence that the Syria CW attacks "had the chemical signature of the Assad regime sarin supply." ..."
"... There can be no doubt that counterintelligence tools would be pursued by our intelligence agencies as a means to create narratives and false evidence based on the production of false flags which support desired geopolitical outcomes. There would be a need to create false flags using technology to support the geopolitical agenda which would be hard or impossible to trace using the forensic tools used by cyber sleuths. ..."
"... Russia-gate is American Exceptionalism writ large which takes on a more sinister aspect as groups like BLM and others are "linked" to alleged "Russian funding"on one and and Soros funding on another ..."
"... (FWIW, this is a new neoliberal phenomenon when the ultra-rich "liberals" can quietly fund marches on Washington and "grassroots" networking making those neophyte movements too easy targets with questionable robust foundation (color revolutions are possible when anyone is able to foot the cost of 1,000 or 2000 "free" signs or t-shirts -- impecccably designed and printed. ..."
"... Excellent post. Thanks also for reminding me I need to revisit the Vault 7 information as source material. These are incredibly important leaks that help connect the dots of criminal State intelligence activities designed to have remained forever hidden. ..."
"... Actually, both Brennan and Hayden testified to Congress that only 3 agencies signed off on their claim. They also said that they'd "hand picked" a special team to run their "investigation," and no other people were involved. So, people known to be perjurers cherry picked "evidence" to make a claim. Let's invade Iraq again. ..."
"... Mueller is not interested in the truth. He can't handle the truth. His purpose is not to divulge the truth. He has no use for truthtellers including the critical possessors of the truth whom you mentioned. This aversion to the truth is the biggest clue that Mueller's activities are a complete sham. ..."
"... Thanks, Ray, for revealing that the CIA's Digital Innovation Directorate is the likely cause of the Russiagate scams. ..."
"... Your disclaimer is hilarious: "We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any resemblance between what we say and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental." ..."
"... For whatever reason, Ray McGovern chose not to mention the murder of Seth Rich, which pretty clearly points to the real source of the leak being him, as hinted by Assange offering a reward for anyone uncovering his killer. The whole thing stinks of a democratic conspiracy. ..."
"... Ray, from what I have seen in following his writing for years, meticulously only deals in knowns. The Seth Rich issue is not a known, it is speculation still. Yes, it probably is involved, but unless Craig Murray states that Seth Rich was the one who handed him the USB drive, it is not a known. ..."
"... There is a possibility that Seth Rich was not the one who leaked the information, but that the DNC bigwigs THOUGHT he was, in which case, by neither confirming nor denying that Seth Rich was the leaker, it may be that letting the DNC continue to think it was him is being done in protection of the actual leaker. Seth Rich could also have been killed for unrelated reasons, perhaps Imran Awan thought he was on to his doings. ..."
"... Don't forget this Twitter post by Wikileaks on October 30, 2016: Podesta: "I'm definitely for making an example of a suspected leaker whether or not we have any real basis for it." https://www.wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/36082#efmAGSAH- ..."
"... Mueller has nothing and he well knows it. He was willingly roped into this whole pathetic charade and he's left grasping for anything remotely tied to Trump campaign officials and Russians. Even the most tenuous connections and weak relationships are splashed across the mass media in breathless headlines. Meanwhile, NONE of the supposed skulduggery unearthed by Mueller has anything to do with the Kremlin "hacking" the election to favor Trump. Which was the entire raison d'etre behind Rosenstein and Mueller's crusade on behalf of the deplorable DNC and Washington militarist-imperialists. Sure be interesting to see how Mueller and his crew ultimately extricate themselves from this giant fraudulent edifice of deceit. Will they even be able to save the most rudimentary amount of face? ..."
"... If they had had any evidence to inculpate Russia, we would have all seen it by now. They know that by stating that there is an investigation going on: they can blame Russia. The Democratic National Committee is integrated by a pack of liars. ..."
"... My question is simple, when will we concentrate on reading Hillary's many emails? After all wasn't this the reason for the Russian interference mania? Until we do, take apart Hillary's correspondence with her lackeys, nothing will transpire of any worth. I should not be the one saying this, in as much as Bernie Sanders should be the one screaming it for justice from the highest roof tops, but he isn't. So what's up with that? Who all is involved in this scandalous coverup? What do the masters of corruption have on everybody? ..."
If you are wondering why so little is heard these days of accusations that Russia hacked
into the U.S. election in 2016, it could be because those charges could not withstand
close scrutiny . It
could also be because special counsel Robert Mueller appears to have never bothered to
investigate what was once the central alleged crime in Russia-gate as no one associated with
WikiLeaks has ever been questioned by his team.
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity -- including two "alumni" who were former
National Security Agency technical directors -- have long since concluded that Julian Assange
did not acquire what he called the "emails related to Hillary Clinton" via a "hack" by the
Russians or anyone else. They found, rather, that he got them from someone with physical access
to Democratic National Committee computers who copied the material onto an external storage
device -- probably a thumb drive. In December 2016 VIPS explained
this in some detail in an open Memorandum to President Barack Obama.
On January 18, 2017 President Obama admitted
that the "conclusions" of U.S. intelligence regarding how the alleged Russian hacking got to
WikiLeaks were "inconclusive." Even the vapid FBI/CIA/NSA "Intelligence Community Assessment of
Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections" of January 6, 2017, which tried to
blame Russian President Vladimir Putin for election interference, contained
no direct evidence of Russian involvement. That did not prevent the "handpicked" authors of
that poor excuse for intelligence analysis from expressing "high confidence" that Russian
intelligence "relayed material it acquired from the Democratic National Committee to
WikiLeaks." Handpicked analysts, of course, say what they are handpicked to say.
Never mind. The FBI/CIA/NSA "assessment" became bible truth for partisans like Rep. Adam Schiff
(D-CA), ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, who was among the first off the
blocks to blame Russia for interfering to help Trump. It simply could not have been that
Hillary Clinton was quite capable of snatching defeat out of victory all by herself. No, it had
to have been the Russians.
Five days into the Trump presidency, I had a chance to
challenge Schiff personally on the gaping disconnect between the Russians and WikiLeaks.
Schiff still "can't share the evidence" with me or with anyone else, because it does not
exist.
WikiLeaks
It was on June 12, 2016, just six weeks before the Democratic National Convention, that
Assange announced the pending publication of "emails related to Hillary Clinton," throwing the
Clinton campaign into panic mode, since the emails would document strong bias in favor of
Clinton and successful attempts to sabotage the campaign of Bernie Sanders. When the emails
were published on July 22, just three days before the convention began, the campaign decided to
create what I call a Magnificent Diversion, drawing attention away from the substance of the
emails by blaming Russia for their release.
Clinton's PR chief Jennifer Palmieri later admitted that she golf-carted around to various
media outlets at the convention with instructions "to get the press to focus on something even
we found difficult to process: the prospect that Russia had not only hacked and stolen emails
from the DNC, but that it had done so to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton." The
diversion worked like a charm. Mainstream media kept shouting "The Russians did it," and gave
little, if any, play to the DNC skullduggery revealed in the emails themselves. And like Brer'
Fox, Bernie didn't say nothin'.
Meanwhile, highly sophisticated technical experts, were hard at work fabricating "forensic
facts" to "prove" the Russians did it. Here's how it played out:
June 12, 2016: Assange announces that WikiLeaks is about to publish "emails related to
Hillary Clinton."
June 14, 2016: DNC contractor CrowdStrike, (with a dubious professional record and multiple
conflicts of interest) announces that malware has been found on the DNC server and claims there
is evidence it was injected by Russians.
June 15, 2016: "Guccifer 2.0" affirms the DNC statement; claims responsibility for the
"hack;" claims to be a WikiLeaks source; and posts a document that the forensics show was
synthetically tainted with "Russian fingerprints."
The June 12, 14, & 15 timing was hardly coincidence. Rather, it was the start of a
pre-emptive move to associate Russia with anything WikiLeaks might have been about to publish
and to "show" that it came from a Russian hack.
Enter Independent Investigators
A year ago independent cyber-investigators completed the kind of forensic work that, for
reasons best known to then-FBI Director James Comey, neither he nor the "handpicked analysts"
who wrote the Jan. 6, 2017 assessment bothered to do. The independent investigators found
verifiable evidence from metadata found in the record of an alleged Russian hack of July 5,
2016 showing that the "hack" that day of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 was not a hack, by Russia or
anyone else.
Rather it originated with a copy (onto an external storage device – a thumb drive, for
example) by an insider -- the same process used by the DNC insider/leaker before June 12, 2016
for an altogether different purpose. (Once the metadata was found and the "fluid dynamics"
principle of physics applied, this was not difficult to
disprove the validity of the claim that Russia was responsible.)
One of these independent investigators publishing under the name of The Forensicator on May
31
published new evidence that
the Guccifer 2.0 persona uploaded a document from the West Coast of the United States, and not
from Russia.
In our July 24, 2017 Memorandum to President Donald Trump we stated ,
"We do not know who or what the murky Guccifer 2.0 is. You may wish to ask the FBI."
Our July 24 Memorandum continued: "Mr. President, the disclosure described below may be
related. Even if it is not, it is something we think you should be made aware of in this
general connection. On March 7, 2017, WikiLeaks began to publish a trove of original CIA
documents that WikiLeaks labeled 'Vault 7.' WikiLeaks said it got the trove from a current or
former CIA contractor and described it as comparable in scale and significance to the
information Edward Snowden gave to reporters in 2013.
"No one has challenged the authenticity of the original documents of Vault 7, which
disclosed a vast array of cyber warfare tools developed, probably with help from NSA, by CIA's
Engineering Development Group. That Group was part of the sprawling CIA Directorate of Digital
Innovation – a growth industry established by John Brennan in 2015. [ (VIPS warned
President Obama of some of the dangers of that basic CIA reorganization at the time.]
Marbled
"Scarcely imaginable digital tools – that can take control of your car and make it
race over 100 mph, for example, or can enable remote spying through a TV – were described
and duly reported in the New York Times and other media throughout March. But the Vault 7, part
3 release on March 31 that exposed the "Marble Framework" program apparently was judged too
delicate to qualify as 'news fit to print' and was kept out of the Times at the time, and has
never been mentioned since .
"The Washington Post's Ellen Nakashima, it seems, 'did not get the memo' in time. Her March
31
article bore the catching (and accurate) headline: 'WikiLeaks' latest release of CIA
cyber-tools could blow the cover on agency hacking operations.'
"The WikiLeaks release indicated that Marble was designed for flexible and easy-to-use
'obfuscation,' and that Marble source code includes a "de-obfuscator" to reverse CIA text
obfuscation.
"More important, the CIA reportedly used Marble during 2016. In her Washington Post
report , Nakashima left that out, but did include another significant point made by
WikiLeaks; namely, that the obfuscation tool could be used to conduct a 'forensic attribution
double game' or false-flag operation because it included test samples in Chinese, Russian,
Korean, Arabic and Farsi."
A few weeks later William Binney, a former NSA technical, and I commented on
Vault 7 Marble, and were able to get a shortened op-ed version
published in The Baltimore Sun
The CIA's reaction to the WikiLeaks disclosure of the Marble Framework tool was
neuralgic. Then Director Mike Pompeo lashed out two weeks later, calling Assange and his
associates "demons," and insisting; "It's time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is, a
non-state hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia."Our July 24
Memorandum continued: "Mr. President, we do not know if CIA's Marble Framework, or tools like
it, played some kind of role in the campaign to blame Russia for hacking the DNC. Nor do we
know how candid the denizens of CIA's Digital Innovation Directorate have been with you and
with Director Pompeo. These are areas that might profit from early White House review. [
President Trump then directed Pompeo to invite Binney, one of the authors of the July 24, 2017
VIPS Memorandum to the President, to discuss all this. Binney and Pompeo spent an hour together
at CIA Headquarters on October 24, 2017, during which Binney briefed Pompeo with his customary
straightforwardness. ]
We also do not know if you have discussed cyber issues in any detail with President Putin.
In his interview with NBC's Megyn Kelly he seemed quite willing – perhaps even eager
– to address issues related to the kind of cyber tools revealed in the Vault 7
disclosures, if only to indicate he has been briefed on them. Putin pointed out that today's
technology enables hacking to be 'masked and camouflaged to an extent that no one can
understand the origin' [of the hack] And, vice versa, it is possible to set up any entity or
any individual that everyone will think that they are the exact source of that attack.
"'Hackers may be anywhere,' he said. 'There may be hackers, by the way, in the United States
who very craftily and professionally passed the buck to Russia. Can't you imagine such a
scenario? I can.'
New attention has been drawn to these issues after I discussed them in a widely published
16-minute
interview last Friday.
In view of the highly politicized environment surrounding these issues, I believe I must
append here the same notice that VIPS felt compelled to add to our key Memorandum of July 24,
2017:
"Full Disclosure: Over recent decades the ethos of our intelligence profession has eroded in
the public mind to the point that agenda-free analysis is deemed well nigh impossible. Thus, we
add this disclaimer, which applies to everything we in VIPS say and do: We have no political
agenda; our sole purpose is to spread truth around and, when necessary, hold to account our
former intelligence colleagues.
"We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any resemblance between what we say
and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental." The fact we find it
is necessary to include that reminder speaks volumes about these highly politicized times.
Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Savior in inner-city Washington. He was an Army infantry/intelligence officer before serving as
a CIA analyst for 27 years. His duties included preparing, and briefing one-on-one, the
President's Daily Brief.
ThomasGilroy , June 9, 2018 at 9:44 am
"More important, the CIA reportedly used Marble during 2016. In her Washington Post
report, Nakashima left that out, but did include another significant point made by
WikiLeaks; namely, that the obfuscation tool could be used to conduct a 'forensic
attribution double game' or false-flag operation because it included test samples in
Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi."
Another false flag operation? Suddenly false flag operations have become the weapon of
choice. Interestingly enough, they are nefariously (always) committed by the US or US allies.
MH17 was a false flag with an SU-25 Ukraine jet responsible for downing the passenger jet (to
blame Russia). All of the chemical attacks in Syria were false flag operations with the
supply of sarin/chlorine made in Turkey or directly given to the "rebels" by the CIA or US
allies. The White Helmets were of course in on all of the details. Assad was just simply not
capable of doing that to "his" people. Forget that the sarin had the chemical signature of
the Assad regime sarin supply. Next it was the snipers who used a false flag operation during
the Maidan revolution to shoot protesters and police to oust Yanukovych. Only the neo-Nazis
could be capable of shooting the Maidan protesters so they could take power. And then Seth
Rich was murdered so he couldn't reveal he was the "real" source of the leak. This was hinted
by Assange when he offered a reward to find the killers.
The author tosses out that the DNC hack was (potentially) a false flag operation by the
CIA obviously to undermine Trump while victimizing Russia. It must be the Gulf of Tonkin all
over again. While Crowdstrike might have a "dubious professional record and multiple
conflicts of interest", their results were also confirmed by several other cyber-security
firms (Wikipedia):
cybersecurity experts and firms, including CrowdStrike, Fidelis Cybersecurity, Mandiant,
SecureWorks, ThreatConnect, and the editor for Ars Technica, have rejected the claims of
"Guccifer 2.0" and have determined, on the basis of substantial evidence, that the
cyberattacks were committed by two Russian state-sponsored groups (Cozy Bear and Fancy
Bear).
Then there was Papadopoulas who coincidentally was given the information that Russia had
"dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails. Obviously, they were illegally
obtained (unless this was another CIA false flag operation). This was before the release of
the emails by WikiLeaks. This was followed by the Trump Tower meeting with Russians with
connections to the Russian government and the release of the emails by WikiLeaks shortly
thereafter. Additionally, Russia had the motive to defeat HRC and elect Trump. Yesterday,
Trump pushed for the reinstatement of Russia at the G-7 summit. What a shock! All known
evidence and motive points the finger directly at Russia.
Calling everything a false flag operation is really the easy way out, but ultimately, it
lets the responsible culprits off of the hook.
anon , June 9, 2018 at 11:28 am
I don't seen any cause to say that any false-flag theory you don't like is merely "tossed
out" propaganda.
One cannot tell in your comment where you think the accounts are credible and where not.
No evidence that the Syria CW attacks "had the chemical signature of the Assad regime sarin
supply."
CitizenOne , June 8, 2018 at 11:40 pm
There can be no doubt that counterintelligence tools would be pursued by our intelligence
agencies as a means to create narratives and false evidence based on the production of false
flags which support desired geopolitical outcomes. There would be a need to create false
flags using technology to support the geopolitical agenda which would be hard or impossible
to trace using the forensic tools used by cyber sleuths.
In pre computer technology days there were also many false flags which were set up to
create real world scenarios which suited the geopolitical agenda. Even today, there are many
examples of tactical false flag operations either organized and orchestrated or utilized by
the intelligence agencies to create the narrative which supports geopolitical objectives.
Examples:
The US loaded munitions in broad daylight visible to German spies onto the passenger ship
Lusitania despite German warnings that they would torpedo any vessels suspected of carrying
munitions. The Lusitania then proceeded to loiter unaccompanied by escorts in an area off the
Ireland coast treading over the same waters until it was spotted by a German U-Boat and was
torpedoed. This was not exactly a false flag since the German U-Boat pulled the trigger but
it was required to gain public support for the entrance of the US into WWI. It worked.
There is evidence that the US was deliberately caught "off guard" in the Pearl Harbor
Attack. Numerous coded communication intercepts were made but somehow the advanced warning
radar on the island of Hawaii was mysteriously turned off in the hours before and during the
Japanese attack which guaranteed that the attack would be successful and also guaranteed that
our population would instantly sign on to the war against Japan. It worked.
There is evidence that the US deliberately ignored the intelligence reports that UBL was
planning to conduct an attack on the US using planes as bombs. The terrorists who carried out
the attacks on the twin towers were "allowed" to conduct them. The result was the war in Iraq
which was sold based on a pack of lies about WMDs and which we used to go to war with
Iraq.
The Tonkin Gulf incident which historians doubt actually happened or believe if it did was
greatly exaggerated by intelligence and military sources was used to justify the war in
Vietnam.
The Spanish American War was ginned up by William Randolph Hearst and his yellow
journalism empire to justify attacking Cuba, Panama and the Philippines. The facts revealed
by forensic analysis of the exploded USS Maine have shown that the cataclysm was caused by a
boiler explosion not an enemy mine. At the time this was also widely believed to not be
caused by a Spanish mine in the harbor but the news sold the story of Spanish treachery and
war was waged.
In each case of physical false flags created on purpose, or allowed to happen or just made
up by fictions based on useful information that could be manipulated and distorted the US was
led to war. Some of these wars were just wars and others were wars of choice but in every
case a false flag was needed to bring the nation into a state where we believed we were under
attack and under the circumstances flocked to war. I will not be the judge of history or
justice here since each of these events had both negative and positive consequences for our
nation. What I will state is that it is obvious that the willingness to allow or create or
just capitalize on the events which have led to war are an essential ingredient. Without a
publicly perceived and publicly supported cause for war there can be no widespread support
for war. I can also say our leaders have always known this.
Enter the age of technology and the computer age with the electronic contraptions which
enable global communication and commerce.
Is it such a stretch to imagine that the governments desire to shape world events based on
military actions would result in a plan to use these modern technologies to once again create
in our minds a cyber scenario in which we are once again as a result of the "cyber" false
flag prepared for us to go to war? Would it be too much of a stretch to imagine that the
government would use the new electronic frontier just as it used the old physical world
events to justify military action?
Again, I will not go on to condemn any action by our military but will focus on how did we
get there and how did we arrive at a place where a majority favored war.
Whether created by physical or cyberspace methods we can conclude that such false flags
will happen for better or worse in any medium available.
susan sunflower , June 8, 2018 at 7:52 pm
I'd like "evidence" and I'd also like "context" since apparently international electoral
"highjinks" and monkey-wrenching and rat-f*cking have a long tradition and history (before
anyone draws a weapon, kills a candidate or sicc's death squads on the citizenry.
The DNC e-mail publication "theft" I suspect represents very small small potatoes for so
many reasons As Dixon at Black Agenda Report put it . Russia-gate is American Exceptionalism
writ large which takes on a more sinister aspect as groups like BLM and others are "linked"
to alleged "Russian funding"on one and and Soros funding on another
(FWIW, this is a new neoliberal phenomenon when the ultra-rich "liberals" can quietly fund
marches on Washington and "grassroots" networking making those neophyte movements too easy
targets with questionable robust foundation (color revolutions are possible when anyone is
able to foot the cost of 1,000 or 2000 "free" signs or t-shirts -- impecccably designed and
printed.
Excellent post. Thanks also for reminding me I need to revisit the Vault 7 information as
source material. These are incredibly important leaks that help connect the dots of criminal
State intelligence activities designed to have remained forever hidden.
Skip Scott , June 8, 2018 at 1:07 pm
I can't think of any single piece of evidence that our MSM is under the very strict
control of our so-called intelligence agencies than how fast and completely the Vault 7
releases got flushed down the memory hole. "Nothing to see here folks, move along."
I don't think anyone can predict whether or not Sanders would have won as a 3rd party
candidate. He ran a remarkable campaign, but when he caved to the Clinton machine he lost a
lot of supporters, including me. If he had stood up at the convention and talked of the DNC
skullduggery exposed by Wikileaks, and said "either I run as a democrat, or I run as a Green,
but I'm running", he would have at least gotten 15 pct to make the TV debates, and who knows
what could have happened after that. 40 pct of registered voters didn't vote. That alone
tells you it is possible he might have won.
Instead he expected us to follow him like he was the f'ing Pied Piper to elect another
Wall St. loving warmonger. That's why he gets no "pass" from me. He (and the Queen of Chaos)
gave us Trump. BTW, Obama doesn't get a "pass" either.
willow , June 8, 2018 at 9:24 pm
It's all about the money. A big motive for the DNC to conjure up Russia-gate was to keep
donors from abandoning any future
Good Ship Hillary or other Blue Dog Democrat campaigns: "Our brand/platform wasn't flawed. It
was the Rooskies."
Vivian O'Blivion , June 8, 2018 at 8:22 am
An earlier time line.
March 14th. Popadopoulos has first encounter with Mifsud.
April 26th. Mifsud tells Popadopoulos that Russians have "dirt" on Clinton, including "thousands of e-mails".
May 4th. Trump last man standing in Republican primary.
May 10th. Popadopoulos gets drunk with London based Australian diplomat and talks about "dirt" but not specifically
e-mails.
June 9th. Don. Jr meets in Trump tower with Russians promising "dirt" but not specifically in form of e-mails.
It all comes down to who Mifsud is, who he is working for and why he has been "off grid" to journalists (but not presumably
Intelligence services) for > 6 months.
Specific points.
On March 14th Popadopoulos knew he was transferring from team Carson to team Trump but this was not announced to the
(presumably underwhelmed) world 'till March 21st. Whoever put Mifsud onto Popadopoulos was very quick on their feet.
The Australian diplomat broke chain of command by reporting the drunken conversation to the State Department as opposed to his
domestic Intelligence service. If Mifsud was a western asset, Australian Intelligence would likely be aware of his status.
If Mifsud was a Russian asset why would demonstrably genuine Russians be trying to dish up the dirt on Clinton in June?
There are missing pieces to this jigsaw puzzle but it's starting to look like a deep state operation to dirty Trump in the
unlikely event that he went on to win.
Realist , June 8, 2018 at 4:28 pm
Ms. Clinton was personally trying to tar Trump with allusions to "Russia" and being
"Putin's puppet" long before he won the presidency, in fact, quite conspicuously during the
two conventions and most pointedly during the debates. She was willing to use that ruse long
before her defeat at the ballot box. It was the straw that she clung to and was willing to
use as a pretext for overturning the election after the unthinkable happened. But, you are
right, smearing Trump through association with Russia was part of her long game going back to
the early primaries, especially since her forces (both in politics and in the media) were
trying mightily to get him the nomination under the assumption that he would be the easiest
(more like the only) Republican candidate that she could defeat come November.
Wcb , June 8, 2018 at 5:25 pm
Steven Halper?
Rob Roy , June 8, 2018 at 1:33 am
I might add to this informative article that the reason why Julian Assange has been
ostracized and isolated from any public appearance, denied a cell phone, internet and
visitors is that he tells the truth, and TPTB don't want him to say yet again that the emails
were leaked from the DNC. I've heard him say it several times. H. Clinton was so shocked and
angry that she didn't become president as she so confidently expected that her, almost
knee-jerk, reaction was to find a reason that was outside of herself on which to blame her
defeat. It's always surprised me that no one talks about what was in those emails which
covered her plans for Iran and Russia (disgusting).
Trump is a sociopath, but the Russians had nothing to do with him becoming elected. I was
please to read here that he or perhaps just Pompeo? met with Binney. That's a good thing,
though Pompeo, too, is unstable and war hungry to follow Israel into bombing yet another
innocent sovereign country. Thank, Mr. McGovern for another excellent coverage of this
story.
MLS , June 7, 2018 at 9:59 pm
"no one associated with WikiLeaks has ever been questioned by his team"
Do tell, Ray: How do you know what the GOP Congress appointed Special Prosecutor's investigation –
with its unlimited budget, wide mandate, and notable paucity of leaks – has and has not
done?
strgr-tgther , June 8, 2018 at 12:14 am
MLS: Thank you! No one stands up for what is right any more. We have 17 Intelligency
agencies that say are election was stolen. And just last week the Republicans Paul Ryan,
Mitch McConnel and Trey Gowdy (who I detest) said the FBI and CIA and NSA were just doing
there jobs the way ALL AMERICANS woudl want them to. And even Adam Schiff, do you think he
will tell any reporter what evidence he does have? #1 It is probably classified and #2 he is
probably saving it for the inpeachment. We did not find out about the Nixon missing 18
minutes until the end anyways. All of these articles sound like the writer just copied Sean
Hannity and wrote everything down he said, and yesterday he told all suspects in the Mueller
investigation to Smash and Bleach there mobile devices, witch is OBSTRUCTION of justice and
witness TAMPERING. A great American there!
Rob Roy , June 8, 2018 at 1:48 am
strgr-tgther:
Sean Hannity??? Ha, ha, ha.
As Mr. McGoven wrote .."any resemblance between what we say and what presidents,
politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental."
John , June 8, 2018 at 5:48 am
Sorry I had to come back and point out the ultimate irony of ANYONE who supports the
Butcher of Libya complaining about having an election stolen from them (after the blatant
rigging of the primary that caused her to take the nomination away from the ONE PERSON who
was polling ahead of Trump beyond the margin of error of the polls.)
It is people like you who gave us Trump. The Pied Piper Candidate promoted by the DNC
machine (as the emails that were LEAKED, not "hacked", as the metadata proves conclusively,
show.)
incontinent reader , June 8, 2018 at 7:14 am
What is this baloney? Seventeen Intelligence agencies DID NOT conclude what you are
alleging, And in fact, Brennan and his cabal avoided using a National intelligence Estimate,
which would have shot down his cherry-picked 'assessment' before it got off the ground
– and it would have been published for all to read.
The NSA has everything on everybody, yet has never released anything remotely indicating
Russian collusion. Do you think the NSA Director, who, as you may recall, did not give a
strong endorsement to the Brennan-Comey assessment, would have held back from the Congress
such information, if it had existed, when he was questioned? Furthermore, former technical
directors of the NSA, Binney, Wiebe and Loomis- the very best of the best- have proven
through forensics that the Wikileaks disclosures were not obtained by hacking the DNC
computers, but by a leak, most likely to a thumb drive on the East Coast of the U.S. How many
times does it have to be laid out for you before you are willing and able to absorb the
facts?
As for Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, (and Trey Gowdy, who was quite skilled on the
Benghazi and the Clinton private email server investigations- investigations during which
Schiff ran interference for Clinton- but has seemed unwilling to digest the Strozk, Page,
McCabe, et al emails and demand a Bureau housecleaning), who cares what they think or say,
what matters is the evidence.
I suggest you familiarize yourself with the facts- and start by rereading Ray's articles,
and the piece by Joe diGenova posted on Ray's website.
Realist , June 8, 2018 at 4:12 pm
The guy's got Schiff for brains. Everyone who cares about the truth has known since before
Mueller started his charade that the "17 intelligence agency" claim was entirely a ruse,
bald-faced confected propaganda to anger the public to support the coup attempted by Ms.
Clinton and her zombie followers. People are NOT going to support the Democratic party now or
in the future when its tactics include subverting our public institutions, including the
electoral process under the constitution–whether you like the results or not! If the
Democratic party is to be saved, those honest people still in it should endeavor to drain the
septic tank that has become their party before we can all drain the swamp that is the federal
government and its ex-officio manipulators (otherwise known as the "deep state") in
Washington.
Farmer Pete , June 8, 2018 at 7:30 am
"We have 17 Intelligency agencies that say are election was stolen."
You opened up with a talking point that is factually incorrect. The team of hand-picked
spooks that slapped the "high confidence" report together came from 3 agencies. I know, 17
sounds like a lot and very convincing to us peasants. Regardless, it's important to practice
a few ounces of skepticism when it comes to institutions with a long rap sheet of crime and
deception. Taking their word for it as a substitute for actual observable evidence is naive
to say the least. The rest of your hollow argument is filled with "probably(s)". If I were
you, I'd turn off my TV and stop looking for scapegoats for an epically horrible presidential
campaign and candidate.
strgr-tgther , June 8, 2018 at 12:50 pm
/horrible presidential campaign and candidate/ Say you. But we all went to sleep
comfortable the night before the election where 97% of all poles said Clinton was going to be
are next President. And that did not happen! So Robert Mueller is going to find out EXACTLY
why. Stay tuned!!!
irina , June 8, 2018 at 3:40 pm
Not 'all'. I knew she was toast after reading that she had cancelled her election night
fireworks
celebration, early on the morning of Election Day. She must have known it also, too.
And she was toast in my mind after seeing the ridiculous scene of her virtual image
'breaking the glass ceiling' during the Democratic Convention. So expensively stupid.
Realist , June 8, 2018 at 3:50 pm
Mueller is simply orchestrating a dramatic charade to distract you from the obvious reason
why she lost: Trump garnered more electoral votes, even after the popular votes were counted
and recounted. Any evidence of ballot box stuffing in the key states pointed to the
Democrats, so they gave that up. She and her supporters like you have never stopped trying to
hoodwink the public either before or after the election. Too many voters were on to you,
that's why she lost.
Realist , June 8, 2018 at 3:57 pm
Indeed, stop the nonsense which can't be changed short of a coup d'etat, and start
focusing on opposing the bad policy which this administration has been pursuing. I don't see
the Dems doing that even in their incipient campaigns leading up to the November elections.
Fact is, they are not inclined to change the policies, which are the same ones that got them
"shellacked" at the ballot box in 2016. (I think Obama must own lots of stock in the shellack
trade.)
Curious , June 8, 2018 at 6:27 pm
Ignorance of th facts keep showing up in your posts for some unknown reason. Sentence two:
"we have 17 intelligency (sic) agencies that say ". this statement was debunked a long time
ago.
Have you learned nothing yet regarding the hand-picked people out of three agencies after all
this time? Given that set of lies it makes your post impossible to read.
I would suggest a review of what really happened before you perpetuate more myths and this
will benefit all.
Also, a good reading of the Snowden Docs and vault 7 should scare you out of your shell since
our "intelligeny" community can pretend to be Chinese, Russian, Iranian just for starters,
and the blame game can start after hours instead of the needed weeks and/or months to
determine the veracity of a hack and/or leak.
It's past trying to win you over with the actual 'time lines' and truths. Mr McGovern has
re-emphasized in this article the very things you should be reading.
Start with Mr Binney and his technical evaluation of the forensics in the DNC docs and build
out from there This is just a suggestion.
What never ceases to amaze me in your posts is the 'issue' that many of the docs were
bought and paid for by the Clinton team, and yet amnesia has taken over those aspects as
well. Shouldn't you start with the Clintons paying for this dirt before it was ever
attributed to Trump?
Daniel , June 8, 2018 at 6:38 pm
Actually, both Brennan and Hayden testified to Congress that only 3 agencies signed off on
their claim. They also said that they'd "hand picked" a special team to run their
"investigation," and no other people were involved. So, people known to be perjurers cherry
picked "evidence" to make a claim. Let's invade Iraq again.
More than 1/2 of their report was about RT, and even though that was all easily viewable
public record, they got huge claims wrong. Basically, the best they had was that RT covered
Occupy Wall Street and the NO DAPL and BLM protests, and horror of horrors, aired third party
debates! In a democracy! How dare they?
Why didn't FBI subpoena DNC's servers so they could run their own forensics on them? Why
did they just accept the claims of a private company founded by an Atlantic Council board
member? Did you know that CrowdStrike had to backpedal on the exact same claim they made
about the DNC server when Ukraine showed they were completely wrong regarding Ukie
artillery?
Joe Lauria , June 8, 2018 at 2:12 am
Until he went incommunicado Assange stated on several occasions that he was never
questioned by Muellers team. Craig Murray has said the same. And Kim Dotcom has written to
Mueller offering evidence about the source and he says they have never replied to him.
Realist , June 8, 2018 at 3:40 pm
Mueller is not interested in the truth. He can't handle the truth. His purpose is not to
divulge the truth. He has no use for truthtellers including the critical possessors of the
truth whom you mentioned. This aversion to the truth is the biggest clue that Mueller's
activities are a complete sham.
MLS wrote, "How do you know what the GOP Congress appointed Special Prosecutor's
investigation – with its unlimited budget, wide mandate, and notable paucity of leaks
– has and has not done?"
Robert Mueller is NOT a Special Prosecutor appointed by the Congress. He is a special
counsel appointed by the Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, and is part of the
Department of Justice.
I know no one who dislikes Trumps wants to hear it. But all Mueller's authority and power
to act is derived from Donald J. Trump's executive authority because he won the 2016
presidential election. Mueller is down the chain of command in the Executive Department.
That's why this is all nonsense. What we basically have is Trump investigating himself.
The framers of the Constitution never intended this. They intended Congress to investigate
the Executive and that's why they gave Congress the power to remove him or her via
impeachment.
As long as we continue with this folly of expecting the Justice Department to somehow
investigate and prosecute a president we end up with two terrible possibilities. Either a
corrupt president will exercise his legitimate authority to end the investigation like Nixon
did -or- we have a Deep State beyond the reach of the elected president that can effectively
investigate and prosecute a corrupt president, but also then has other powers with no
democratic control.
The solution to this dilemma? An empowered Congress elected by the People operating as the
Constitution intended.
As to the rest of your post? It is an example of the "will to believe." Me? I'll not act
as if there is evidence of Russian interference until I'm shown evidence, not act as if it
must be true, because I want to believe that, until it's fully proven that it didn't
happen.
F. G. Sanford , June 7, 2018 at 8:22 pm
There must be some Trump-Russia ties.
Or so claim those CIA spies-
McCabe wants a deal, or else he won't squeal,
He'll dissemble when he testifies!
No one knows what's on Huma's computer.
There's no jury and no prosecutor.
Poor Adam Schiff hopes McCabe takes the fifth,
Special council might someday recruit her!
Assange is still embassy bound.
Mueller's case hasn't quite come unwound.
Wayne Madsen implies that there might be some ties,
To Israelis they haven't yet found!
Halper and Mifsud are players.
John Brennan used cutouts in layers.
If the scheme falls apart and the bureau is smart,
They'll go after them all as betrayers!
They needed historical fiction.
A dossier with salacious depiction!
Some urinous whores could get down on all fours,
They'd accomplish some bed sheet emiction!
Pablo Miller and Skripal were cited.
Sidney Blumenthal might have been slighted.
Christopher Steele offered Sidney a deal,
But the dossier's not copyrighted!
That story about Novichok,
Smells a lot like a very large crock.
But they can't be deposed or the story disclosed,
The Skripals have toxic brain block!
Papadopolis shot off his yap.
He told Downer, that affable chap-
There was dirt to report on the Clinton cohort,
Mifsud hooked him with that honey trap!
She was blond and a bombshell to boot.
Papadopolis thought she was cute.
She worked for Mifsud, a mysterious dude,
Now poor Paps is in grave disrepute!
But the trick was to tie it to Russians.
The Clinton team had some discussions.
Their big email scandal was easy to handle,
They'd blame Vlad for the bad repercussions!
There must have been Russian collusion.
That explained all the vote count confusion.
Guccifer Two made the Trump team come through,
If he won, it was just an illusion!
Lisa Page and Pete Strzok were disgusted
They schemed and they plotted and lusted.
If bald-headed Clapper appealed to Jake Tapper,
Brennan's Tweets might get Donald Trump busted!
There had to be cyber subversion.
It would serve as the perfect perversion.
They would claim it was missed if it didn't exist,
It's a logically perfect diversion!
F.G., you've done it again, and I might add, topped even yourself! Thanks.
KiwiAntz , June 7, 2018 at 7:30 pm
What a joke, America, the most dishonest Country on Earth, has meddled, murdered &
committed coups to overturn other Govts & interfered & continues to do so in just
about every Country on Earth by using Trade sanctions, arming Terrorists & illegal
invasions, has the barefaced cheek to puff out its chest & hypocritcally blame Russia for
something that it does on a daily basis?? And the point with Mueller's investigation is not
to find any Russian collusion evidence, who needs evidence when you can just make it up? The
point is provide the US with a list of unfounded lies & excuses, FIRSTLY to slander &
demonise RUSSIA for something they clearly didn't do! SECONDLY, was to provide a excuse for
the Democrats dismal election loss result to the DONALD & his Trump Party which just
happens to contain some Republicans? THIRDLY, to conduct a soft Coup by trying to get Trump
impeached on "TRUMPED UP CHARGES OF RUSSIAN COLLUSION"? And FOURTLY to divert attention away
from scrutiny & cover up Obama & Hillary Clinton's illegal, money grubbing activities
& her treasonous behaviour with her private email server?? After two years of Russiagate
nonsense with NOTHING to show for it, I think it's about time America owes Russia a public
apology & compensation for its blatant lying & slander of a innocent Country for a
crime they never committed?
Sam F , June 7, 2018 at 7:11 pm
Thanks, Ray, for revealing that the CIA's Digital Innovation Directorate is the likely
cause of the Russiagate scams.
I am sure that they manipulate the digital voting machines directly and indirectly. True
elections are now impossible.
Your disclaimer is hilarious: "We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any
resemblance between what we say and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is purely
coincidental."
Antiwar7 , June 7, 2018 at 6:23 pm
Expecting the evil people running the show to respond to reason is futile, of course. All
of these reports are really addressed to the peanut gallery, where true power lies, if only
they could realize it.
Thanks, Ray and VIPS, for keeping up the good fight.
mike k , June 7, 2018 at 5:55 pm
For whatever reason, Ray McGovern chose not to mention the murder of Seth Rich, which
pretty clearly points to the real source of the leak being him, as hinted by Assange offering
a reward for anyone uncovering his killer. The whole thing stinks of a democratic
conspiracy.
And BTW people have become shy about using the word conspiracy, for fear it will
automatically brand one as a hoaxer. On the contrary, conspiracies are extremely common, the
higher one climbs in the power hierarchy. Like monopolies, conspiracies are central to the
way the oligarchs do business.
John , June 8, 2018 at 5:42 am
Ray, from what I have seen in following his writing for years, meticulously only deals in
knowns. The Seth Rich issue is not a known, it is speculation still. Yes, it probably is
involved, but unless Craig Murray states that Seth Rich was the one who handed him the USB
drive, it is not a known.
There is a possibility that Seth Rich was not the one who leaked the information, but that
the DNC bigwigs THOUGHT he was, in which case, by neither confirming nor denying that Seth
Rich was the leaker, it may be that letting the DNC continue to think it was him is being
done in protection of the actual leaker. Seth Rich could also have been killed for unrelated
reasons, perhaps Imran Awan thought he was on to his doings.
" whether or not"?!! Wow. That's an imperialistic statement.
Drew Hunkins , June 7, 2018 at 5:50 pm
Mueller has nothing and he well knows it. He was willingly roped into this whole pathetic
charade and he's left grasping for anything remotely tied to Trump campaign officials and
Russians. Even the most tenuous connections and weak relationships are splashed across the
mass media in breathless headlines. Meanwhile, NONE of the supposed skulduggery unearthed by
Mueller has anything to do with the Kremlin "hacking" the election to favor Trump. Which was
the entire raison d'etre behind Rosenstein and Mueller's crusade on behalf of the deplorable
DNC and Washington militarist-imperialists. Sure be interesting to see how Mueller and his
crew ultimately extricate themselves from this giant fraudulent edifice of deceit. Will they
even be able to save the most rudimentary amount of face?
So sickening to see the manner in which many DNC sycophants obsequiously genuflect to
their godlike Mueller. A damn prosecutor who was arguably in bed with the Winter Hill
Gang!
jose , June 7, 2018 at 5:13 pm
If they had had any evidence to inculpate Russia, we would have all seen it by now. They
know that by stating that there is an investigation going on: they can blame Russia. The
Democratic National Committee is integrated by a pack of liars.
Jeff , June 7, 2018 at 4:35 pm
Thanx, Ray. The sad news is that everybody now believes that Russia tried to "meddle" in
our election and, since it's a belief, neither facts nor reality will dislodge it. Your
disclaimer should also probably carry the warning – never believe a word a government
official says especially if they are in the CIA, NSA, or FBI unless they provide proof. If
they tell you that it's classified, that they can't divulge it, or anything of that sort, you
know they are lying.
john wilson , June 7, 2018 at 4:09 pm
I suspect the real reason no evidence has been produced is because there isn't any. I know
this is stating the obvious, but if you think about it, as long as the non extent evidence is
supposedly being "investigated" the story remains alive. They know they aren't going to find
anything even remotely plausible that would stand up to any kind of scrutiny, but as long as
they are looking, it has the appearance that there might be something.
Joe Tedesky , June 7, 2018 at 4:08 pm
I first want to thank Ray and the VIPS for their continuing to follow through on this
Russia-Gate story. And it is a story.
My question is simple, when will we concentrate on reading Hillary's many emails? After
all wasn't this the reason for the Russian interference mania? Until we do, take apart
Hillary's correspondence with her lackeys, nothing will transpire of any worth. I should not
be the one saying this, in as much as Bernie Sanders should be the one screaming it for
justice from the highest roof tops, but he isn't. So what's up with that? Who all is involved
in this scandalous coverup? What do the masters of corruption have on everybody?
Now we have Sean Hannity making a strong case against the Clinton's and the FBI's careful
handling of their crimes. What seems out of place, since this should be big news, is that CNN
nor MSNBC seems to be covering this story in the same way Hannity is. I mean isn't this news,
meant to be reported as news? Why avoid reporting on Hillary in such a manner? This must be
that 'fake news' they all talk about boy am I smart.
In the end I have decided to be merely an observer, because there are no good guys or gals
in our nation's capital worth believing. In the end even Hannity's version of what took place
leads back to a guilty Russia. So, the way I see it, the swamp is being drained only to make
more room for more, and new swamp creatures to emerge. Talk about spinning our wheels. When
will good people arrive to finally once and for all drain this freaking swamp, once and for
all?
Realist , June 7, 2018 at 5:25 pm
Ha, ha! Don't you enjoy the magic show being put on by the insiders desperately trying to
hang onto their power even after being voted out of office? Their attempt to distract your
attention from reality whilst feeding you their false illusions is worthy of Penn &
Teller, or David Copperfield (the magician). Who ya gonna believe? Them or your lying
eyes?
Joe Tedesky , June 7, 2018 at 10:00 pm
Realist, You can bet they will investigate everything but what needs investigated, as our
Politico class devolves into survivalist in fighting, the mechanism of war goes
uninterrupted. Joe
F. G. Sanford , June 7, 2018 at 5:34 pm
Joe, speaking of draining the swamp, check out my comment under Ray's June 1 article about
Freddy Fleitz!
Sam F , June 7, 2018 at 6:59 pm
That is just what I was reminded of; here is an antiseptic but less emphatic last
line:
"Swamp draining progresses apace.
It's being accomplished with grace:
They're taking great pains to clean out the drains,"
New swamp creatures will need all that space!
Unfettered Fire , June 8, 2018 at 11:00 am
We must realize that to them, "the Swamp" refers to those in office who still abide by New
Deal policy. Despite the thoroughly discredited neoliberal economic policy, the radical right
are driving the world in the libertarian direction of privatization, austerity, private bank
control of money creation, dismantling the nation-state, contempt for the Constitution,
etc.
The dramatic rise fo the number of CIA-democrats as candidates from Democratic Party is not assedental. As regular clintonites
are discredited those guys can still appeal to patriotism to get elected.
Notable quotes:
"... Bernie continuously forcing Hillary to appear apologetic about her campaign funding from big financial interests. She tries hard to persuade the public that she will not serve specific interests. Her anxiety can be identified in many cases and it was very clear at the moment when she accused Bernie of attacking her, concerning this funding. Hillary was forced to respond with a deeply irrational argument: anyone who takes money from big interests doesn't mean that he/she will vote for policies in favor of these interests! ..."
"... Bernie drives the discussion towards fundamental ideological issues. He forced Hillary to defend her "progressiveness". She was forced to speak even about economic interests by names. A few years ago, this would be nearly a taboo in any debate between any primaries. ..."
"... After the disastrous defeat by Trump in 2016 election, the corporate Democrats realized that the progressive movement, supported mostly by the American youth, would not retreat and vanish. On the contrary, Bernie Sanders' popularity still goes up and there is a wave of progressive candidates who appear to be a real threat to the DNC establishment and the Clintonian empire. ..."
"... It seems that the empire has upgraded its dirty tactics beyond Hillary's false relocation to the Left. Seeing the big threat from the real progressives, the empire seeks to "plant" its own agents, masked as progressives, inside the electoral process, to disorientate voters and steal the popular vote. ..."
"... This is a Master's class in blatant historical revisionism and outright dishonesty. Beals was not a soldier unwillingly drafted into service, but an intelligence officer who voluntarily accepted an influential and critically important post for the Bush Administration in its ever-expanding crime against humanity in Iraq. ..."
During the 2016 Democratic party primaries we wrote that
what Bernie achieved, is to bring back the real political discussion in America, at least concerning the Democratic camp. Bernie
smartly "drags" his primary rival, Hillary Clinton, into the heart of the politics. Up until a few years ago, you could not observe
too much difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, who were just following the pro-establishment "politics as usual",
probably with a few, occasional exceptions. The "politics as usual" so far, was "you can't touch the Wall Street", for example.
Bernie continuously forcing Hillary to appear apologetic about her campaign funding from big financial interests. She tries hard
to persuade the public that she will not serve specific interests. Her anxiety can be identified in many cases and it was very clear
at the moment when she accused Bernie of attacking her, concerning this funding. Hillary was forced to respond with a deeply irrational
argument: anyone who takes money from big interests doesn't mean that he/she will vote for policies in favor of these interests!
Bernie drives the discussion towards fundamental ideological issues. He forced Hillary to defend her "progressiveness". She was
forced to speak even about economic interests by names. A few years ago, this would be nearly a taboo in any debate between any primaries.
After the disastrous defeat by Trump in 2016 election, the corporate Democrats realized that the progressive movement, supported
mostly by the American youth, would not retreat and vanish. On the contrary, Bernie Sanders' popularity still goes up and there is
a wave of progressive candidates who appear to be a real threat to the DNC establishment and the Clintonian empire.
It seems that the empire has upgraded its dirty tactics beyond Hillary's false relocation to the Left. Seeing the big threat from
the real progressives, the empire seeks to "plant" its own agents, masked as progressives, inside the electoral process, to disorientate
voters and steal the popular vote.
Eric Draitser gives us valuable information for such a type of candidate. Key points:
One candidate currently generating some buzz in the race is Jeff Beals, a self-identified "Bernie democrat" whose campaign website
homepage describes him as a " local teacher and former U.S. diplomat endorsed by the national organization of former Bernie Sanders
staffers, the Justice Democrats. " And indeed, Beals centers his progressive bona fides to brand himself as one of the inheritors
of the progressive torch lit by Sanders in 2016. A smart political move, to be sure. But is it true?
Beals describes himself as a "former U.S. diplomat," touting his expertise on international issues born of his experience overseas.
In an email interview with CounterPunch, Beals describes his campaign as a " movement for diplomacy and peace in foreign affairs
and an end to militarism my experience as a U.S. diplomat is what drives it and gives this movement such force. " OK, sounds
good, a very progressive sounding answer. But what did Beals actually do during his time overseas?
By his own admission, Beals' overseas career began as an intelligence officer with the CIA. His fluency in Arabic and knowledge
of the region made him an obvious choice to be an intelligence spook during the latter stages of the Clinton Administration.
Beals shrewdly attempts to portray himself as an opponent of neocon imperialism in Iraq. In his interview with CounterPunch, Beals
argued that " The State Department was sidelined as the Bush administration and a neoconservative cabal plunged America into the
tragic Iraq War. As a U.S. diplomat fluent in Arabic and posted in Jerusalem at the time, I was called over a year into the war to
help our country find a way out. "
This is a Master's class in blatant historical revisionism and outright dishonesty. Beals was not a soldier unwillingly drafted
into service, but an intelligence officer who voluntarily accepted an influential and critically important post for the Bush Administration
in its ever-expanding crime against humanity in Iraq.
Moreover, no one who knows anything about the Iraq War could possibly swallow the tripe that CIA/State Department officials in
Iraq were " looking to help our country find a way out " a year into the war. A year into the war, the bloodletting was only
just beginning, and Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, and the other corporate vultures had yet to fully exploit the country and make billions
off it. So, unfortunately for Beals, the historical memory of the anti-war Left is not that short.
It is self-evident that Beals has a laundry list of things in his past that he must answer for. For those of us, especially Millennials,
who cut our activist teeth demonstrating and organizing against the Iraq War, Beals' distortions about his role in Iraq go down like
hemlock tea. But it is the associations Beals maintains today that really should give any progressive serious pause.
When asked by CounterPunch whether he has any connections to either Bernie Sanders and his surrogates or Hillary Clinton and hers,
Beals responded by stating: " I am endorsed by Justice Democrats, a group of former Bernie Sanders staffers who are pledged to
electing progressives nationwide. I am also endorsed for the Greene County chapter of the New York Progressive Action Network, formerly
the Bernie Sanders network. My first hire was a former Sanders field coordinator who worked here in NY-19. "
However, conveniently missing from that response is the fact that Beals' campaign has been, and continues to be, directly managed
in nearly every respect by Bennett Ratcliff, a longtime friend and ally of Hillary Clinton. Ratcliff is not mentioned in any publicly
available documents as a campaign manager, though the most recent FEC filings show that as of April 1, 2018, Ratcliff was still on
the payroll of the Beals campaign. And in the video of Beals' campaign kickoff rally, Ratcliff introduces Beals, while only being
described as a member of the Onteora School Board in Ulster County . This is sort of like referring to Donald Trump as an avid
golfer.
Beals has studiously, and rather intelligently, avoided mentioning Ratcliff, or the presence of Clinton's inner circle on his
campaign. However, according to internal campaign documents and emails obtained by CounterPunch, Ratcliff manages nearly every aspect
of the campaign, acting as a sort of éminence grise behind the artifice of a progressive campaign fronted by a highly educated and
photogenic political novice.
By his own admission, Ratcliff's role on the campaign is strategy, message, and management. Sounds like a rather textbook description
of a campaign manager. Indeed, Ratcliff has been intimately involved in "guiding" Beals on nearly every important campaign decision,
especially those involving fundraising .
And it is in the realm of fundraising that Ratcliff really shines, but not in the way one would traditionally think. Rather than
focusing on large donations and powerful interests, Ratcliff is using the Beals campaign as a laboratory for his strategy of winning
elections without raising millions of dollars.
In fact, leaked campaign documents show that Ratcliff has explicitly instructed Beals and his staffers not to spend money on
food, decorations, and other standard campaign expenses in hopes of presenting the illusion of a grassroots, people-powered campaign
with no connections to big time donors or financial elites .
It seems that Ratcliff is the wizard behind the curtain, leveraging his decades of contact building and close ties to the Democratic
Party establishment while at the same time manufacturing an astroturfed progressive campaign using a front man in Beals .
One of Ratcliff's most infamous, and indefensible, acts of fealty to the Clinton machine came in 2009 when he and longtime Clinton
attorney and lobbyist, Lanny Davis, stumped around Washington to garner support for the illegal right-wing coup in Honduras, which
ousted the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya in favor of the right-wing oligarchs who control the country today. Although
the UN, and even U.S. diplomats on the ground in Honduras, openly stated that the coup was illegal, Clinton was adamant to actively
keep Zelaya out.
Essentially then, Ratcliff is a chief architect of the right-wing government in Honduras – the same government assassinating feminist
and indigenous activists like Berta Cáceres, Margarita Murillo, and others, and forcibly displacing and ethnically cleansing Afro-indigenous
communities to make way for Carribbean resorts and golf courses.
And this Washington insider lobbyist and apologist for war criminals and crimes against humanity is the guy who's on a crusade
to reform campaign finance and fix Washington? This is the guy masquerading as a progressive? This is the guy working to elect an
"anti-war progressive"?
In a twisted way it makes sense. Ratcliff has the blood of tens of thousands of Hondurans (among others) on his hands, while Beals
is a creature of Langley, a CIA boy whose exceptional work in the service of Bush and Clinton administration war criminals is touted
as some kind of merit badge on his resume.
What also becomes clear after establishing the Ratcliff-Beals connection is the fact that Ratcliff's purported concern with
campaign financing and "taking back the Republic" is really just a pretext for attempting to provide a "proof of concept," as it
were, that neoliberal Democrats shouldn't fear and subvert the progressive wing of the party, but rather that they should co-opt
it with a phony grassroots facade all while maintaining links to U.S. intelligence, Wall Street, and the power brokers of the Democratic
Party .
An interesting new term is used in this discussion: "CIA democrats". Probably originated in Patrick Martin March 7, 2018
article at WSWS The CIA Democrats Part one - World Socialist Web
Site but I would not draw an equivalence between military and intelligence agencies.
"f the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as widely predicted, candidates drawn from
the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as half of the new Democratic members of Congress."
Notable quotes:
"... @leveymg ..."
"... @CS in AZ ..."
"... @CS in AZ ..."
"... @CS in AZ ..."
"... "I was truly fired up about Bernie Sanders at that time. I've come a very long ways since then." ..."
The left has never been welcome in the Republican party; and since the neoliberal Clinton machine showed up, they have not
been welcome in the Democratic party either. As Clinton debauched the historical, FDR/JFK/LBJ meaning of the word "liberal",
the left started calling itself "progressives". The left had long been the grassroots of the Democratic party; and after being
left in the lurch by John Kerry (no lawsuits against Ohio fraud), lied to by Barack Obama, and browbeaten by the increasingly
neocon Clintonite DNC, they enthusiastically coalesced around Bernie Sanders.
If our political system were honest, Bernie Sanders would have been the Democratic nominee; and Hillary Clinton and Debbie
W-S (of Aman Brothers infamy) would be on trial for violating national security and corrupting the DNC. But, our political
system isn't honest. Our political system, including the Democratic party, is completely bought and
paid for. And, unfortunately, Bernie Sanders - despite being a victim of that corruption - continues to refuse to make that point.
He refused to join the lawsuit (complete with dead process server and suspicious phone call from DWS's office) against the DNC.
All in the name of working within a party he does not even belong to.
After the 2016 election, the DNC, continuing its corrupt ways, blatantly favored Tom Perez over the "progressive" Keith Ellison,
smearing Ellison as a Moslem lover. Bernie's reaction to this continuing manipulation was muted. On foreign policy, Bernie continues
to be either AWOL or pro-MIC (F-35 plant in VT)/pro-Israel. These are not progressive positiions. AFAIAC, Bernie is half a leftist.
He is left on economics and social policy; but he is rightwing on the MIC, foreign policy, and Israel. There is very little democracy
left in this country, and I am not going to waste my time supporting Bernie, who has shown himself to be a sheepdog. That's my
take on the 2018 version of Bernie. I will always treasure the early 2016 version of Bernie, the only political candidate in my
life that I gave serious money to.
Neither will I waste my time pretending that honest, inside-the-system efforts can take the Democratic party back from the
plutocrats who own it, lock, stock, and checkbook. You might think there is a chance to work inside the system. You might think
the DNC is vulnerable because it learned nothing from the 2016 debacle; but you would be wrong. After the Hillary debacle, they
have learned how to manufacture more credible fake progressives.
------
For it seems that progressive candidates aren't the only ones who learned the lesson of Bernie Sanders in 2016; the neoliberal
Clintonites have too. So, while left-wing campaigns crop up in every corner of the country, so too do astroturf faux-progressive
campaigns. And it is for us on the left to parse through it all and separate the authentic from the frauds.
One candidate currently generating some buzz in the race is Jeff Beals, a self-identified "Bernie democrat"
whose campaign website homepage describes him as a "local teacher and former U.S. diplomat endorsed by the national organization
of former Bernie Sanders staffers, the Justice Democrats." And indeed, Beals centers his progressive bona fides to brand himself
as one of the inheritors of the progressive torch lit by Sanders in 2016. A smart political move, to be sure. But is it true?
By his own admission, Beals' overseas career began as an intelligence officer with the CIA. His fluency
in Arabic and knowledge of the region made him an obvious choice to be an intelligence spook during the latter stages of the
Clinton Administration.
Beals was not a soldier unwillingly drafted into service, but an intelligence officer who voluntarily accepted an
influential and critically important post for the Bush Administration in its ever-expanding crime against humanity
in Iraq.
Moreover, no one who knows anything about the Iraq War could possibly swallow the tripe that CIA/State Department officials
in Iraq were "looking to help our country find a way out" a year into the war. A year into the war, the bloodletting was only
just beginning, and Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, and the other corporate vultures had yet to fully exploit the country and make
billions off it. So, unfortunately for Beals, the historical memory of the anti-war Left is not that short.
The takeaway here is that many of these self-declared "Bernie Democrats" are, in reality, the "CIA Democrats" that we have
been warned about. And Bernie has not called them out. Another thing he has not called out is the fact that the
party leadership is still blatantly sabotaging even modestly "progressive" candidates in the primaries.
In the latest striking example of how the Democratic Party resorts to cronyism (and perhaps corruption) to ensure that its
favored candidates beat back progressive challengers in local races, a candidate for Colorado's 6th Congressional District
has leaked a recording of a conversation with Minority Leader Steny Hoyer to The Intercept which published it overnight. In
it, Hoyer can be heard essentially lecturing the candidate about why he should step aside and let the Democratic Party
bosses - who of course have a better idea about which candidate will prevail over a popular Republican in the general
election - continue pulling the strings.
The candidate, Levi Tillemann, is hardly a party outsider. Tillemann had grandparents on both sides of his family who were
elected Democratic representatives, and his family is essentially Democratic Party royalty.
Still, the party's campaign arm - the notorious Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (better known as the DCCC, or
D-trip) - refused to provide Tillemann with access to party campaign data or any of the other resources he requested.
Here is yet another thing that Bernie has not called out: The DNC, which is reportedly badly behind in fundraising, is nevertheless
willing to spend obscene amounts of money in primaries just to keep progressives out of races - even Red district races that are
guaranteed losses for Democrats.
Dan Feehan has successfully bought the Democratic nomination for Minnesota's first congressional district (MN-CD1). Dan,
having lived outside the state since the age of 14, has allegedly misled the public on his FEC form, claiming residence at
his cousin's address. Here is Dan's FEC filing form. One can see that it his cousin who lives at this address...
Mr. Feehan has no chance to win in November. While nobody likes a candidate from Washington D.C., people
hate Washington money even more. To be fair to Dan he hasn't taken super PAC money, somehow. But he
has raised 565,000 dollars, an outrageous sum for a congressional race. 94% of this money has come from outside the district,
and 79% from outside the state. Where does this money come from? Well, according to the campaign, from people around
the country who want to keep Minnesota blue. If this was the case, why not wait to give money until Minnesota voted
for a candidate in the primary and then donate? And who on earth has this much money to pour into an obscure race outside of
their state?
Dan Feehan is of the same breed that most post-Trump Democrats are. Clean cut, military experience,
stern, anti-gun, anti-crazy Orange monsters, anti-negativity, and anti-discrimination of rich people who fall under a marginalized
group. What are they for? No one knows. If pushed they want "good" education, health care, jobs, environment,
etc. But they want Big money too for various reasons, but the ones cited are: because that is the only way to win,
because rich people are smart and poor people are dumb, and because money is speech. So they cannot and will not make
any concrete commitments. Hence energy becomes "all inclusive", as if balancing clean and dirty energy was a college admissions
department diversity issue, rather than a question of life or death for the entire planet. Healthcare becomes not a right,
but a requirement with a giant handout to insurance companies. Near full employment (with the near being very important, when
we consider leverage) comes with part-time, short-term, and low paying work.
The Clintonite Democrats and their spawn are postmodern progressives. In their world, there is no way to test if one is progressive.
Within the world of the Democratic party, there is no relativity. It is merely a universe that exists only to clash with (but
mostly submit to) the parallel Republican universe. Whoever proves to be the victor should be united behind without a thought
given to their place within the political spectrum of Democrat voters. They believe, if I were to paraphrase René Descartes:
"I Democrat, therefore I progressive."
Tell me again why I must be a loyal Democrat, why I must support candidates who are corporate/MIC shills, why I must submit
to the constant harassment and sabotage of progressive efforts. Tell me again how Bernie is fighting the party leadership. (That
is, explain away all the non-activity related to the items posted above.)
I'm with Chris Hedges. Formal democracy is dead in the US; all we have left are actions in the streets (and those are being
slowly made illegal). The only people in this country who deserve my support are: 1) the striking teachers, many of them non-unionized,
2) the oil pipeline protestors, who are being crushed by police state tactics, 3) the fighters for $15 minimum wage, again non-unionized.
The Democratic Party used to stand for unions. It doesn't any more. It doesn't stand for anything except getting more money from
the 1% to sell out the 99% with fake progressive CIA candidates. Oh, and it stands for pussy hats.
Anyone who tells me to get in line behind Bernie is either a naive pollyana or a disingenuous purity troll.
leveymg on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 9:44am
We have all been here before. 1948.
That was the year that the clawback of the Democratic Party and the purge of the Left was formalized. It really dates to the engineered
hijacking of the nomination of Henry Wallace at the 1944 Democratic Convention. History does repeat itself for those who didn't
learn or weren't adequately taught it.
however tragic it is. Instead of a true leftwinger, we got Harry Truman, a naive wardheeler from corrupt Kansas City. He was
led by the nose to create the CIA.
I do take your point; but the question is, can anything be done? If democracy has become meaningless kabuki, and the neocon
warmongers are in charge no matter whom we "elect", what is there to do besides build that bomb shelter?
That is why I say that only genuine issues will galvanize the public; and even then, they can run a hybrid war against the
left. They have created this ludicrous Identity Politics boogeyman that energizes the right and makes the postmodern progressives
look stupid. No matter what tactic I think of, TPTB have already covered that base. The problem is that the left has absolutely
no base in the U.S. today.
How will the pseudo-progressives be able to justify being both "progressive" and pro-war?
Talk about cognitive dissonance. But wait. Democraps of any stripe, don't cogitate, hence no dissonance.
zoebear on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 10:12am
Appreciate you posting this essay This
is only one of the many troubling signs which convince me he is being controlled by my enemy.
The takeaway here is that many of these self-declared "Bernie Democrats" are, in reality, the "CIA Democrats" that we have
been warned about. And Bernie has not called them out.
CS in AZ on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 11:12am
Thanks for the essay, arendt I came
to this site in the great purge at daily kos, and I was truly fired up about Bernie Sanders at that time. I've come a very long
ways since then. Thanks to the people here.
And to kos, who now rather infamously said "if you think Hillary Clinton can't beat Donald Trump, you're a fucking moron. Seriously,
you're dumb as rocks." And he said if you're not going to cheerlead for democrats, "go the fuck away. This is not your place."
True words!!
So this site was here and Bernie supporters flocked here. Including me. But over this time I have seen the mistakes I made.
Such a lot of wasted time and energy.
Still searching for answers myself, but I know what doesn't work, and how important for the status quo to keep the illusion
of democracy alive. But more and more people are not buying it anymore. I suspect that a few more crumbs will be forthcoming on
some issues. That's the very best way to keep the show going. And the show must go on.
Pulling back the curtain is really the first and most important weapon we have. Thank you for doing that.
zoebear on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 11:45am zoebear on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 11:45am
Countered with Russia, Russia, Russia. God he was such a prick.
I came to this site in the great purge at daily kos, and I was truly fired up about Bernie Sanders at that time. I've come
a very long ways since then. Thanks to the people here.
And to kos, who now rather infamously said "if you think Hillary Clinton can't beat Donald Trump, you're a fucking moron.
Seriously, you're dumb as rocks." And he said if you're not going to cheerlead for democrats, "go the fuck away. This is not
your place." True words!!
So this site was here and Bernie supporters flocked here. Including me. But over this time I have seen the mistakes I made.
Such a lot of wasted time and energy.
Still searching for answers myself, but I know what doesn't work, and how important for the status quo to keep the illusion
of democracy alive. But more and more people are not buying it anymore. I suspect that a few more crumbs will be forthcoming
on some issues. That's the very best way to keep the show going. And the show must go on.
Pulling back the curtain is really the first and most important weapon we have. Thank you for doing that.
That's how I feel about it. I've been suckered one time too many. The 2016 election was a complete farce. Bernie was sabotaged.
The DNC and Hillary broke their own rules to do it. But Bernie, with a perfect opportunity and lots of support, just walked away
from the fight that he had promised his people.
Sheep dog.
TPTB want the political "fight" to be between slightly different flavors of neoliberal looting/neocon warmongering. They want
unions, teachers, environmentalists, and minorities to, in the words of a UK asshole, "shut up and go away".
The CIA literally paid $600M to the Washington Post, whose purchase price was only $300M. Bezos made 200% of his money back
in a month. The media is completely corporatized; and they are coming for the internet with censorship. Where is Bernie on this?
Haven't heard a word.
Sheep dog.
As TPTB simply buy what is left of the Democratic party, they will enforce this kabuki politics. Any deviation will be labeled
Putin-loving, Assad-loving, China-loving, etc.
You can't have a democracy when free speech is instantly labeled fake news or enemy propaganda.
"I was truly fired up about Bernie Sanders at that time. I've come a very long ways since then."
This is how I see the way some people feel about him. This same thing happened after I voted for Obama. I thought that he would
do what "I heard him say that he would", but he let me down by not even bothering to try doing anything.
What soured me on Bernie was his saying that Her won the election fair and square after everything we saw happen. Even after
learning how the primary was rigged against him. And now he has jumped on the Russian interference propaganda train when he knows
that Russia had no hand with Trump beating Her out the presidency.
Bottom line is that I no longer believe that Bernie is being up front with me. I know that others feel differently, but remember
how people changed their minds on Obama and never accepted Herheinous! People should be free here to say how they feel.
Isn't making it "easier" for them to cheat when they are already doing that. What participating in their corruption does do
is keep the illusion of democracy alive for their benefit. Easier? They're already achieving their end game. Controlling us, electing
their candidates, and collecting our taxes.
Frankly we've been participating in their potemkin village passing as democracy for decades with no effect.
First, a boycott is not "ignoring" voting. It's an organized protest against fake elections. It's actually not that uncommon
for people in other countries to call for election boycotts in protest when a significant portion of people feel the election
is staged or rigged with a predetermined outcome, or where all of the candidates are chosen by the elite so none represent the
will of the people.
In that type of situation, boycotting the election -- and obviously that means saying why, and making a protest out of it --
is really the only recourse people have. It may not be effective at stopping the fake election, but it lets the world know the
vote was fake.
If you line up to go obediently cast your vote anyway, then you are the one who is empowering the enemy, by giving the illusion
of legitimacy to the fake vote.
Now about this big worry about what "they" will say... first, look at what they already say about third party voters.
In the media and political world, third party voters are a joke, useful idiots, who can be simultaneously written off as "fringe"
wackos who can and should be ignored, and also childish spoilers who can be scapegoated and blamed for eternity for election loses.
Witness Ralph Nader and Jill Stein. Of course people should still vote third party if there's someone that truly represents them,
and if they believe the election process is genuine. Because you don't let your voting choices be dictated by what the powers
that be say about it!
For those of us who believe the election process is a sham and a scam, voting is playing into their hands, giving legitimacy
to their show. That is what makes it easier for them to keep the status quo firmly in place, and is literally helping them do
it.
As has been pointed out, if an organized protest/boycott that called the elections fake were to take root and grow, they would
not be able to say we don't care. That's a big if, obviously, but it's better than playing your assigned role in The Voting Show.
Because that show is what everyone points to as proof that the American people want this fucked up warmongering government we
keep voting back into power every two years.
Enough is enough. One of Bernie's slogans, which I still agree with.
"... The media campaign alleging Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections has been based entirely on handouts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, transmitted by reporters who are either unwitting stooges or conscious agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This has been accompanied by the recruitment of a cadre of top CIA and military officials to serve as highly paid "experts" and "analysts" for the television networks ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... The CIA operation in 2018 is unlike its overseas activities in one major respect: it is not covert. On the contrary, the military-intelligence operatives running in the Democratic primaries boast of their careers as spies and special ops warriors. Those with combat experience invariably feature photographs of themselves in desert fatigues or other uniforms on their websites. And they are welcomed and given preferred positions, with Democratic Party officials frequently clearing the field for their candidacies. ..."
"... the Democratic Party has opened its doors to a "friendly takeover" by the intelligence agencies. ..."
"... The incredible power of the military-intelligence agencies over the entire government is an expression of the breakdown of American democracy. The central cause of this breakdown is the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite, whose interests the state apparatus and its "bodies of armed men" serve. Confronted by an angry and hostile working class, the ruling class is resorting to ever more overt forms of authoritarian rule. ..."
"... But it is impossible to carry out this fight through the "axis of evil" that connects the Democratic Party, the bulk of the corporate media, and the CIA. The influx of military-intelligence candidates puts paid to the longstanding myth, peddled by the trade unions and pseudo-left groups, that the Democrats represent a "lesser evil." On the contrary, working people must confront the fact that within the framework of the corporate-controlled two-party system, they face two equally reactionary evils. ..."
In a three-part series published last week,
the World Socialist Web Site documented an unprecedented influx of intelligence and military operatives into the Democratic
Party. More than 50 such military-intelligence candidates are seeking the Democratic nomination in the 102 districts identified by
the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as its targets for 2018. These include both vacant seats and those with Republican
incumbents considered vulnerable in the event of a significant swing to the Democrats.
... ... ...
The media campaign alleging Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections has been based entirely on handouts from the CIA,
NSA and FBI, transmitted by reporters who are either unwitting stooges or conscious agents of the military-intelligence apparatus.
This has been accompanied by the recruitment of a cadre of top CIA and military officials to serve as highly paid "experts" and "analysts"
for the television networks .
In centering its opposition to Trump on the bogus allegations of Russian interference, while essentially ignoring Trump's attacks
on immigrants and democratic rights, his alignment with ultra-right and white supremacist groups, his attacks on social programs
like Medicaid and food stamps, and his militarism and threats of nuclear war, the Democratic Party has embraced the agenda of the
military-intelligence apparatus and sought to become its main political voice.
This process was well under way in the administration of Barack Obama, which endorsed and expanded the various operations of the
intelligence agencies abroad and within the United States. Obama's endorsed successor, Hillary Clinton, ran openly as the chosen
candidate of the Pentagon and CIA, touting her toughness as a future commander-in-chief and pledging to escalate the confrontation
with Russia, both in Syria and Ukraine.
The CIA has spearheaded the anti-Russia campaign against Trump in large part because of resentment over the disruption of its
operations in Syria, and it has successfully used the campaign to force a shift in the policy of the Trump administration on that
score. A chorus of media backers -- Nicholas Kristof and Roger Cohen of the New York Times , the entire editorial board
of the Washington Post , most of the television networks -- are part of the campaign to pollute public opinion and whip
up support on alleged "human rights" grounds for an expansion of the US war in Syria.
The 2018 election campaign marks a new stage: for the first time, military-intelligence operatives are moving in large numbers
to take over a political party and seize a major role in Congress. The dozens of CIA and military veterans running in the Democratic
Party primaries are "former" agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This "retired" status is, however, purely nominal. Joining
the CIA or the Army Rangers or the Navy SEALs is like joining the Mafia: no one ever actually leaves; they just move on to new assignments.
The CIA operation in 2018 is unlike its overseas activities in one major respect: it is not covert. On the contrary, the military-intelligence
operatives running in the Democratic primaries boast of their careers as spies and special ops warriors. Those with combat experience
invariably feature photographs of themselves in desert fatigues or other uniforms on their websites. And they are welcomed and given
preferred positions, with Democratic Party officials frequently clearing the field for their candidacies.
The working class is confronted with an extraordinary political situation. On the one hand, the Republican Trump administration
has more military generals in top posts than any other previous government. On the other hand, the Democratic Party has opened
its doors to a "friendly takeover" by the intelligence agencies.
The incredible power of the military-intelligence agencies over the entire government is an expression of the breakdown of
American democracy. The central cause of this breakdown is the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite, whose
interests the state apparatus and its "bodies of armed men" serve. Confronted by an angry and hostile working class, the ruling class
is resorting to ever more overt forms of authoritarian rule.
Millions of working people want to fight the Trump administration and its ultra-right policies. But it is impossible to carry
out this fight through the "axis of evil" that connects the Democratic Party, the bulk of the corporate media, and the CIA. The influx
of military-intelligence candidates puts paid to the longstanding myth, peddled by the trade unions and pseudo-left groups, that
the Democrats represent a "lesser evil." On the contrary, working people must confront the fact that within the framework of the
corporate-controlled two-party system, they face two equally reactionary evils.
Now the color revolution against Trump just does not make any sense. We got to the point
where Trump=Hillary. Muller should embrace and kiss Trump and go home... Nobody care if Trump is impeached anymore.
Donald Trump's far-right loyal fans must be really pissed off right now after permanently
switching himself to pro-war mode with that evil,
warmongering triplet in charge and the second bombing against Syria. Even worse,
this time he has done it together with Theresa May and the neoliberal globalist Emmanuel
Macron.
We can tell that by watching the mind-blowing reactions of one of his most fanatic alt-right
media supporters: Alex Jones. Jones nearly cried(!) in front of the camera, feeling betrayed
from his 'anti-establishment', 'anti-interventionist' idol and declared that he won't support
Trump anymore. Well, what did you expect, Alex? expect, Alex?
A
year before the 2016 US national elections, the blog already warned that Trump is a pure
product of the neoliberal barbarism , stating that the rhetoric of extreme cynicism
used by Trump goes back to the Thatcherian cynicism and the division of people between
"capable" and "useless".
Right after the elections, we supported that the US
establishment gave a brilliant performance by putting its reserve, Donald Trump, in
power, against the only candidate that the same establishment identified as a real threat:
Bernie Sanders. Right after the elections, we supported that the US
establishment gave a brilliant performance by putting its reserve, Donald Trump, in
power, against the only candidate that the same establishment identified as a real threat:
Bernie Sanders.
The only hope that has been left, was to resist against starting a war with Russia, as the US
deep state (and Hillary of course) wanted. Well, it was proven to be only a hope too. Last
year, Trump bombed Syria under the same pretext resembling the lies that led us to the Iraq war
disaster. Despite the fact that the US Tomahawk missile attack had zero value in operational
level (the United States allegedly warned Russia and Syria, while the targeted airport was
operating normally just hours after the attack), Trump sent a clear message to the US deep
state that he is prepared to meet all its demands - and especially the escalation of
confrontation with Russia. Indeed, a year later, Trump already built a pro-war team that
includes the most bloodthirsty, hawkish triplet.
And then, Donnie ordered a second airstrike against Syria, together with his neo-colonial
friends.
It seems that neither this strike was a serious attempt against the Syrian army and its allies.
Yet, Donnie probably won't dare to escalate tension in the Syrian battlefield before the next
US national elections. That's because many of his supporters are already pissed off with him
and therefore, he wants to go with good chances for a second term.
Although we really hope that we are are wrong this time, we guess that, surrounded by all these
warmongering hawks, Donnie, in a potential second term, will be pushed to open another war
front in Syria and probably in Iran, defying the Russians and the consequent danger for a
WWIII.
Poor Alex et al: we told you about Trump from the beginning. You didn't listen ...
Trump became really deranged. For a world leader to behave in such a way is unexcusable. Now
even Trump supporters think that he should be removed
But the goal of the USA in Syria is establishing Saudi-friendly Sunni theocracy remains unchanged, since Obama unleashed this
war using Libyan weapons and Islamic mercenaries/volunteers They want to compensate with Syria the fact that Iraq now went to Iran
sphere of influence instead being a countervailing force during Saddam rein.
Notable quotes:
"... This latest Trump-Tweet about "Russia to be ready for new, smart missiles raining down on Syria" is also a negotiating ploy and to save face. Stock markets, even in this volatile times, have hardly budged, and the gold price is where it has been for the past year. ..."
It is long passed the time when any thinking person took Trump-Tweets seriously. Trump,
himself doesn't take them seriously and considers them as 'negotiating tactics'. Remember the
tweets: "Fire & Fury the World has Never Seen Before", "Little Rocket Man" and "Bigger
Nuclear Button", which then ushered in the prospect of a meeting between Trump and Kim Jong
Un?
This latest Trump-Tweet about "Russia to be ready for new, smart missiles raining down
on Syria" is also a negotiating ploy and to save face. Stock markets, even in this volatile
times, have hardly budged, and the gold price is where it has been for the past
year.
There will probably be a well-restricted cruise missile attack on some Syrian-Iranian base
with Russia pre-warned. The long-promised meeting between Trump and Putin will emerge in the
news to discuss the future of Syria. Trump's desire to pull out of Syria will then come about
naturally and as the result of consultations with Putin.
"... Running against what she (wrongly) perceived (along with most election prognosticators) as a doomed and feckless opponent and as the clear preferred candidate of Wall Street and the intimately related U.S foreign policy elite , including many leading Neoconservatives put off by Trump's isolationist and anti-interventionist rhetoric, the "lying neoliberal warmonger" Hillary Clinton arrogantly figured that she could garner enough votes to win without having to ruffle any ruling-class feathers. ..."
"... Smart Wall Street and K Street Democratic Party bankrollers have long understood that Democratic candidates have to cloak their dollar-drenched corporatism in the deceptive campaign discourse of progressive- and even populist-sounding policy promise to win elections. ..."
"... Trump trailed well behind Clinton in contributions from defense and aerospace – a lack of support extraordinary for a Republican presidential hopeful late in the race. ..."
"... one fateful consequence of trying to appeal to so many conservative business interests was strategic silence about most important matters of public policy. Given the candidate's steady lead in the polls, there seemed to be no point to rocking the boat with any more policy pronouncements than necessary ..."
"... Misgivings of major contributors who worried that the Clinton campaign message lacked real attractions for ordinary Americans were rebuffed. The campaign sought to capitalize on the angst within business by vigorously courting the doubtful and undecideds there, not in the electorate ..."
"... Of course, Bill and Hillary helped trail-blaze that plutocratic "New Democrat" turn in Arkansas during the late 1970s and 1980s. The rest, as they say, was history – an ugly corporate-neoliberal, imperial, and racist history that I and others have written about at great length. ..."
"... My Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency ..."
"... Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton ..."
"... The Condemnation of Little B: New Age Racism in America ..."
"... Still, Trump's success was no less tied to big money than was Hillary's failure. Candidate Trump ran strangely outside the longstanding neoliberal Washington Consensus, as an economic nationalist and isolationist. His raucous rallies were laced with dripping denunciations of Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, and globalization, mockery of George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, rejection of the New Cold War with Russia, and pledges of allegiance to the "forgotten" American "working-class." He was no normal Republican One Percent candidate. ..."
"... Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache ..."
"... "In a frontal assault on the American establishment, the Republican standard bearer proclaimed 'America First.' Mocking the Bush administration's appeal to 'weapons of mass destruction' as a pretext for invading Iraq, he broke dramatically with two generations of GOP orthodoxy and spoke out in favor of more cooperation with Russia . He even criticized the 'carried interest' tax break beloved by high finance" (emphasis added). ..."
"... "What happened in the final weeks of the campaign was extraordinary. Firstly, a giant wave of dark money poured into Trump's own campaign – one that towered over anything in 2016 or even Mitt Romney's munificently financed 2012 effort – to say nothing of any Russian Facebook experiments [Then] another gigantic wave of money flowed in from alarmed business interests, including the Kochs and their allies Officially the money was for Senate races, but late-stage campaigning for down-ballot offices often spills over on to candidates for the party at large." ..."
"... "In a harbinger of things to come, additional money came from firms and industries that appear to have been attracted by Trump's talk of tariffs, including steel and companies making machinery of various types [a] vast wave of new money flowed into the campaign from some of America's biggest businesses and most famous investors. Sheldon Adelson and many others in the casino industry delivered in grand style for its old colleague. Adelson now delivered more than $11 million in his own name, while his wife and other employees of his Las Vegas Sands casino gave another $20 million. ..."
"... Peter Theil contributed more than a million dollars, while large sums also rolled in from other parts of Silicon Valley, including almost two million dollars from executives at Microsoft and just over two million from executives at Cisco Systems. ..."
"... Among those were Nelson Peltz and Carl Icahn (who had both contributed to Trump before, but now made much bigger new contributions). In the end, along with oil, chemicals, mining and a handful of other industries, large private equity firms would become one of the few segments of American business – and the only part of Wall Street – where support for Trump was truly heavy the sudden influx of money from private equity and hedge funds clearly began with the Convention but turned into a torrent " ..."
"... The critical late wave came after Trump moved to rescue his flagging campaign by handing its direction over to the clever, class-attuned, far-right white- and economic- nationalist "populist" and Breitbart executive Steve Bannon, who advocated what proved to be a winning, Koch brothers-approved "populist" strategy: appeal to economically and culturally frustrated working- and middle-class whites in key battleground states, where the bloodless neoliberal and professional class centrism and snooty metropolitan multiculturalism of the Obama presidency and Clinton campaign was certain to depress the Democratic "base" vote ..."
"... Neither turnout nor the partisan division of the vote at any level looks all that different from other recent elections 2016's alterations in voting behavior are so minute that the pattern is only barely differentiated from 2012." ..."
"... An interesting part of FJC's study (no quick or easy read) takes a close look at the pro-Trump and anti-Hillary Internet activism that the Democrats and their many corporate media allies are so insistently eager to blame on Russia and for Hillary's defeat. FJC find that Russian Internet interventions were of tiny significance compared to those of homegrown U.S. corporate and right-wing cyber forces: ..."
"... By 2016, the Republican right had developed internet outreach and political advertising into a fine art and on a massive scale quite on its own. ..."
"... Breitbart and other organizations were in fact going global, opening offices abroad and establishing contacts with like-minded groups elsewhere. Whatever the Russians were up to, they could hardly hope to add much value to the vast Made in America bombardment already underway. Nobody sows chaos like Breitbart or the Drudge Report ." ..."
"... no support from Big Business ..."
"... Sanders pushed Hillary the Goldman candidate to the wall, calling out the Democrats' capture by Wall Street, forcing her to rely on a rigged party, convention, and primary system to defeat him. The small-donor "socialist" Sanders challenge represented something Ferguson and his colleagues describe as "without precedent in American politics not just since the New Deal, but across virtually the whole of American history a major presidential candidate waging a strong, highly competitive campaign whose support from big business is essentially zero ." ..."
"... American Oligarchy ..."
"... teleSur English ..."
"... we had no great electoral democracy to subvert in 2016 ..."
"... Only candidates and positions that can be financed can be presented to voters. As a result, in countries like the US and, increasingly, Western Europe, political parties are first of all bank accounts . With certain qualifications, one must pay to play. Understanding any given election, therefore, requires a financial X-ray of the power blocs that dominate the major parties, with both inter- and intra- industrial analysis of their constituent elements." ..."
"... Elections alone are no guarantee of democracy, as U.S. policymakers and pundits know very well when they rip on rigged elections (often fixed with the assistance of U.S. government and private-sector agents and firms) in countries they don't like ..."
"... Majority opinion is regularly trumped by a deadly complex of forces in the U.S. ..."
"... Trump is a bit of an anomaly – a sign of an elections and party system in crisis and an empire in decline. He wasn't pre-approved or vetted by the usual U.S. " deep state " corporate, financial, and imperial gatekeepers. The ruling-class had been trying to figure out what the Hell to do with him ever since he shocked even himself (though not Steve Bannon) by pre-empting the coronation of the "Queen of Chaos." ..."
"... His lethally racist, sexist, nativist, nuclear-weapons-brandishing, and (last but not at all least) eco-cidal rise to the nominal CEO position atop the U.S.-imperial oligarchy is no less a reflection of the dominant role of big U.S. capitalist money and homegrown plutocracy in U.S. politics than a more classically establishment Hillary ascendancy would have been. It's got little to do with Russia, Russia, Russia – the great diversion that fills U.S. political airwaves and newsprint as the world careens ever closer to oligarchy-imposed geocide and to a thermonuclear conflagration that the RussiaGate gambit is recklessly encouraging. ..."
On the Friday after the Chicago Cubs won the World Series and prior to the Tuesday on which
the vicious racist and sexist Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, Bernie
Sanders spoke to a surprisingly small crowd in Iowa City on behalf of Hillary Clinton. As I
learned months later, Sanders told one of his Iowa City friends that day that Mrs. Clinton was
in trouble. The reason, Sanders reported, was that Hillary wasn't discussing issues or
advancing real solutions. "She doesn't have any policy positions," Sanders said.
The first time I heard this, I found it hard to believe. How, I wondered, could anyone run
seriously for the presidency without putting issues and policy front and center? Wouldn't any
serious campaign want a strong set of issue and policy positions to attract voters and fall
back on in case and times of adversity?
Sanders wasn't lying. As the esteemed political scientist and money-politics expert Thomas
Ferguson and his colleagues Paul Jorgensen and Jie Chen note in an important study released by
the Institute for New Economic Thinking two months ago, the Clinton campaign "emphasized
candidate and personal issues and avoided policy discussions to a degree without precedent in
any previous election for which measurements exist .it stressed candidate qualifications [and]
deliberately deemphasized issues in favor of concentrating on what the campaign regarded as
[Donald] Trump's obvious personal weaknesses as a candidate."
Strange as it might have seemed, the reality television star and presidential pre-apprentice
Donald Trump had a lot more to say about policy than the former First Lady, U.S. Senator, and
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a wonkish Yale Law graduate.
"Courting the Undecideds in Business, not in the Electorate"
What was that about? My first suspicion was that Hillary's policy silence was about the
money. It must have reflected her success in building a Wall Street-filled campaign funding
war-chest so daunting that she saw little reason to raise capitalist election investor concerns
by giving voice to the standard fake-progressive "hope" and "change" campaign and policy
rhetoric Democratic presidential contenders typically deploy against their One Percent
Republican opponents. Running against what she (wrongly) perceived (along with most election
prognosticators) as a doomed and feckless opponent and as the clear preferred candidate of
Wall
Street and the intimately related U.S foreign policy elite , including many leading
Neoconservatives put off by Trump's isolationist and anti-interventionist rhetoric, the
"lying
neoliberal warmonger" Hillary Clinton arrogantly figured that she could garner enough votes
to win without having to ruffle any ruling-class feathers. She would cruise into the White
House with no hurt plutocrat feelings simply by playing up the ill-prepared awfulness of her
Republican opponent.
If Ferguson, Jorgensen, and Chen (hereafter "JFC") are right, I was on to something but not
the whole money and politics story. Smart Wall Street and K Street Democratic Party bankrollers
have long understood that Democratic candidates have to cloak their dollar-drenched corporatism
in the deceptive campaign discourse of progressive- and even populist-sounding policy promise
to win elections. Sophisticated funders get it that the Democratic candidates' need to
manipulate the electorate with phony pledges of democratic transformation. The big
money backers know it's "just politics" on the part of candidates who can be trusted to
serve elite interests (like Bill
Clinton 1993-2001 and Barack
Obama 2009-2017 ) after they gain office.
What stopped Hillary from playing the usual game – the "manipulation of populism by
elitism" that Christopher
Hitchens once called "the essence of American politics" – in 2016, a year when the
electorate was in a particularly angry and populist mood? FJC's study is titled "
Industrial Structure and Party Competition in an Age of Hunger Games : Donald Trump and the
2016 Presidential Election." It performs heroic empirical work with difficult campaign finance
data to show that Hillary's campaign funding success went beyond her party's usual corporate
and financial backers to include normally Republican-affiliated capitalist sectors less
disposed than their more liberal counterparts to abide the standard progressive-sounding policy
rhetoric of Democratic Party candidates. FJC hypothesize that (along with the determination
that Trump was too weak to be taken all that seriously) Hillary's desire get and keep on board
normally Republican election investors led her to keep quiet on issues and policy concerns that
mattered to everyday people. As FJC note:
"Trump trailed well behind Clinton in contributions from defense and aerospace – a
lack of support extraordinary for a Republican presidential hopeful late in the race. For
Clinton's campaign the temptation was irresistible: Over time it slipped into a variant of
the strategy [Democrat] Lyndon Johnson pursued in 1964 in the face of another [Republican]
candidate [Barry Goldwater] who seemed too far out of the mainstream to win: Go for a grand
coalition with most of big business . one fateful consequence of trying to appeal to so
many conservative business interests was strategic silence about most important matters of
public policy. Given the candidate's steady lead in the polls, there seemed to be no point to
rocking the boat with any more policy pronouncements than necessary . Misgivings of
major contributors who worried that the Clinton campaign message lacked real attractions for
ordinary Americans were rebuffed. The campaign sought to capitalize on the angst within
business by vigorously courting the doubtful and undecideds there, not in the electorate
" (emphasis added). Hillary
Happened
FJC may well be right that a wish not to antagonize off right-wing campaign funders is what
led Hillary to muzzle herself on important policy matters, but who really knows? An alternative
theory I would not rule out is that Mrs. Clinton's own deep inner conservatism was sufficient
to spark her to gladly dispense with the usual progressive-sounding campaign boilerplate. Since
FJC bring up the Johnson-Goldwater election, it is perhaps worth mentioning that 18-year old
Hillary was a "Goldwater Girl" who worked for the arch-reactionary Republican presidential
candidate in 1964. Asked about that episode on National
Public Radio (NPR) in 1996 , then First Lady Hillary said "That's right. And I feel like my
political beliefs are rooted in the conservatism that I was raised with. I don't recognize this
new brand of Republicanism that is afoot now, which I consider to be very reactionary, not
conservative in many respects. I am very proud that I was a Goldwater girl."
It was a revealing reflection. The right-wing Democrat Hillary acknowledged that her
ideological world view was still rooted in the conservatism of her family of origin. Her
problem with the reactionary Republicanism afoot in the U.S. during the middle 1990s was that
it was "not conservative in many respects." Her problem with the far-right Republican
Congressional leaders Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay was that they were betraying true
conservatism – "the conservatism [Hillary] was raised with." This was worse even than the
language of the Democratic Leadership Conference (DLC) – the right-wing Eisenhower
Republican (at leftmost) tendency that worked to push the Democratic Party further to the Big
Business-friendly right and away from its working-class and progressive base.
What happened? Horrid corporate Hillary happened. And she's still happening. The "lying
neoliberal warmonger" recently went to India to double down on her
"progressive neoliberal" contempt for the "basket of deplorables" (more on that phrase
below) that considers poor stupid and backwards middle America to be by
saying this : "If you look at the map of the United States, there's all that red in the
middle where Trump won. I win the coasts. But what the map doesn't show you is that I won the
places that represent two-thirds of America's gross domestic product (GDP). So I won the places
that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward" (emphasis added).
That was Hillary Goldman Sachs-Council on Foreign Relations-Clinton saying "go to Hell" to
working- and middle-class people in Iowa, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri,
Indiana, and West Virginia. It was a raised middle and oligarchic finger from a super-wealthy
arch-global-corporatist to all the supposedly pessimistic, slow-witted, and retrograde losers
stuck between those glorious enclaves (led by Wall Street, Yale, and Harvard on the East coast
and Silicon Valley and Hollywood on the West coast) of human progress and variety (and GDP!) on
the imperial shorelines. Senate Minority Leader Dick
Durbin had to go on television to say that Hillary was "wrong" to write off most of the
nation as a festering cesspool of pathetic, ass-backwards, lottery-playing, and opioid-addicted
white-trash has-beens. It's hard for the Inauthentic Opposition Party (as the late Sheldon Wolin reasonably called
the Democrats ) to pose as an authentic opposition party when its' last big-money
presidential candidate goes off-fake-progressive script with an openly elitist rant like
that.
Historic Mistakes
Whatever the source of her strange policy silence in the 2016 campaign, that hush was "a
miscalculation of historic proportion" (FJC). It was a critical mistake given what Ferguson and
his colleagues call the "Hunger Games" misery and insecurity imposed on tens of millions of
ordinary working- and middle-class middle-Americans by decades of neoliberal capitalist
austerity , deeply exacerbated by the Wall Street-instigated Great Recession and the weak
Obama recovery. The electorate was in a populist, anti-establishment mood – hardly a
state of mind favorable to a wooden, richly globalist, Goldman-gilded candidate, a long-time
Washington-Wall Street establishment ("swamp") creature like Hillary Clinton.
In the end, FJC note, the billionaire Trump's ironic, fake-populist "outreach to blue collar
workers" would help him win "more than half of all voters with a high school education or less
(including 61% of white women with no college), almost two thirds of those who believed life
for the next generation of Americans would be worse than now, and seventy-seven percent of
voters who reported their personal financial situation had worsened since four years ago."
Trump's popularity with "heartland" rural and working-class whites even provoked Hillary
into a major campaign mistake: getting caught on video telling elite Manhattan election
investors that half of Trump's supporters were a "basket
of deplorables." There was a hauntingly strong parallel between Wall Street Hillary's
"deplorables" blooper and the super-rich Republican candidate Mitt Romney's
infamous 2012 gaffe : telling his own affluent backers saying that 47% of the population
were a bunch of lazy welfare cheats. This time, though, it was the Democrat – with a
campaign finance profile closer to Romney's than Obama's in 2012 – and not the Republican
making the ugly plutocratic and establishment faux pas .
"A Frontal Assault on the American Establishment"
Still, Trump's success was no less tied to big money than was Hillary's failure. Candidate
Trump ran strangely outside the longstanding neoliberal Washington Consensus, as an economic
nationalist and isolationist. His raucous rallies were laced with dripping denunciations of
Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, and globalization, mockery of George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq,
rejection of the New Cold War with Russia, and pledges of allegiance to the "forgotten"
American "working-class." He was no normal Republican One Percent candidate. As FJC
explain:
"In 2016 the Republicans nominated yet another super-rich candidate – indeed,
someone on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans. Like legions of conservative
Republicans before him, he trash-talked Hispanics, immigrants, and women virtually non-stop,
though with a verve uniquely his own. He laced his campaign with barely coded racial appeals
and in the final days, ran an ad widely denounced as subtly anti-Semitic. But in striking
contrast to every other Republican presidential nominee since 1936, he attacked
globalization, free trade, international financiers, Wall Street, and even Goldman Sachs. '
Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it
has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache . When
subsidized foreign steel is dumped into our markets, threatening our factories, the
politicians do nothing. For years, they watched on the sidelines as our jobs vanished and our
communities were plunged into depression-level unemployment.'"
"In a frontal assault on the American establishment, the Republican standard bearer
proclaimed 'America First.' Mocking the Bush administration's appeal to 'weapons of mass
destruction' as a pretext for invading Iraq, he broke dramatically with two generations of GOP
orthodoxy and spoke out in favor of more cooperation with Russia . He even criticized
the 'carried interest' tax break beloved by high finance" (emphasis added).
Big Dark Money and Trump: His Own and Others'
This cost Trump much of the corporate and Wall Street financial support that Republican
presidential candidates usually get. The thing was, however, that much of Trump's "populist"
rhetoric was popular with a big part of the Republican electorate, thanks to the "Hunger Games"
insecurity of the transparently bipartisan New Gilded Age. And Trump's personal fortune
permitted him to tap that popular anger while leaping insultingly over the heads of his less
wealthy if corporate and Wall Street-backed competitors ("low energy" Jeb Bush and "little
Marco" Rubio most notably) in the crowded Republican primary race.
A Republican candidate
dependent on the usual elite bankrollers would never have been able to get away with Trump's
crowd-pleasing (and CNN and FOX News rating-boosting) antics. Thanks to his own wealth, the
faux-populist anti-establishment Trump was ironically inoculated against pre-emption in the
Republican primaries by the American campaign finance "wealth
primary," which renders electorally unviable candidates who lack vast financial resources
or access to them.
Things were different after Trump won the Republican nomination, however. He could no longer
go it alone after the primaries. During the Republican National Convention and "then again in
the late summer of 2016," FJC show, Trump's "solo campaign had to be rescued by major
industries plainly hoping for tariff relief, waves of other billionaires from the far, far
right of the already far right Republican Party, and the most disruption-exalting corners of
Wall Street." By FJC's account:
"What happened in the final weeks of the campaign was extraordinary. Firstly, a giant wave
of dark money poured into Trump's own campaign – one that towered over anything in 2016
or even Mitt Romney's munificently financed 2012 effort – to say nothing of any Russian
Facebook experiments [Then] another gigantic wave of money flowed in from alarmed business
interests, including the Kochs and their allies Officially the money was for Senate races,
but late-stage campaigning for down-ballot offices often spills over on to candidates for the
party at large."
"The run up to the Convention brought in substantial new money, including, for the first
time, significant contributions from big business. Mining, especially coal mining; Big Pharma
(which was certainly worried by tough talk from the Democrats, including Hillary Clinton,
about regulating drug prices); tobacco, chemical companies, and oil (including substantial
sums from executives at Chevron, Exxon, and many medium sized firms); and telecommunications
(notably AT&T, which had a major merge merger pending) all weighed in. Money from
executives at the big banks also began streaming in, including Bank of America, J. P. Morgan
Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. Parts of Silicon Valley also started coming in from
the cold."
"In a harbinger of things to come, additional money came from firms and industries that
appear to have been attracted by Trump's talk of tariffs, including steel and companies
making machinery of various types [a] vast wave of new money flowed into the campaign from
some of America's biggest businesses and most famous investors. Sheldon Adelson and many
others in the casino industry delivered in grand style for its old colleague. Adelson now
delivered more than $11 million in his own name, while his wife and other employees of his
Las Vegas Sands casino gave another $20 million.
Peter Theil contributed more than a million
dollars, while large sums also rolled in from other parts of Silicon Valley, including almost
two million dollars from executives at Microsoft and just over two million from executives at
Cisco Systems. A wave of new money swept in from large private equity firms, the part of Wall
Street which had long championed hostile takeovers as a way of disciplining what they mocked
as bloated and inefficient 'big business.' Virtual pariahs to main-line firms in the Business
Roundtable and the rest of Wall Street, some of these figures had actually gotten their start
working with Drexel Burnham Lambert and that firm's dominant partner, Michael Milkin.
Among
those were Nelson Peltz and Carl Icahn (who had both contributed to Trump before, but now
made much bigger new contributions). In the end, along with oil, chemicals, mining and a
handful of other industries, large private equity firms would become one of the few segments
of American business – and the only part of Wall Street – where support for Trump
was truly heavy the sudden influx of money from private equity and hedge funds clearly began
with the Convention but turned into a torrent "
The critical late wave came after Trump moved to rescue his flagging campaign by handing its
direction over to the clever, class-attuned, far-right white- and economic- nationalist
"populist" and Breitbart executive Steve Bannon, who advocated what proved to be a winning,
Koch brothers-approved "populist" strategy: appeal to economically and culturally frustrated
working- and middle-class whites in key battleground states, where the bloodless neoliberal and
professional class centrism and snooty metropolitan multiculturalism of the Obama presidency
and Clinton campaign was certain to depress the
Democratic "base" vote. Along with the racist voter suppression carried out by Republican
state governments (JFC rightly chide Russia-obsessed political reporters and commentators for
absurdly ignoring this important factor) and (JFC intriguingly suggest) major anti-union
offensives conducted by employers in some battleground states, this major late-season influx of
big right-wing political money tilted the election Trump's way.
The Myth of Potent Russian Cyber-Subversion
As FJC show, there is little empirical evidence to support the Clinton and corporate
Democrats' self-interested and diversionary efforts to explain Mrs. Clinton's epic fail and
Trump's jaw-dropping upset victory as the result of (i) Russian interference, (ii), then FBI
Director James Comey's October Surprise revelation that his agency was not done investigating
Hillary's emails, and/or (iii) some imagined big wave of white working-class racism, nativism,
and sexism brought to the surface by the noxious Orange Hulk. The impacts of both (i) and (ii)
were infinitesimal in comparison to the role that big campaign money played both in silencing
Hillary and funding Trump.
The blame-the-deplorable-racist-white-working-class narrative is
belied by basic underlying continuities in white working class voting patterns. As FJC note: "
Neither turnout nor the partisan division of the vote at any level looks all that different
from other recent elections 2016's alterations in voting behavior are so minute that the
pattern is only barely differentiated from 2012." It was about the money – the big
establishment money that the Clinton campaign took (as FJC at least plausibly argue) to
recommend policy silence and the different, right-wing big money that approved Trump's
comparative right-populist policy boisterousness.
An interesting part of FJC's study (no quick or easy read) takes a close look at the
pro-Trump and anti-Hillary Internet activism that the Democrats and their many corporate media
allies are so insistently eager to blame on Russia and for Hillary's defeat. FJC find that
Russian Internet interventions were of tiny significance compared to those of homegrown U.S.
corporate and right-wing cyber forces:
"The real masters of these black arts are American or Anglo-American firms. These compete
directly with Silicon Valley and leading advertising firms for programmers and personnel.
They rely almost entirely on data purchased from Google, Facebook, or other suppliers,
not Russia . American regulators do next to nothing to protect the privacy of voters
and citizens, and, as we have shown in several studies, leading telecom firms are major
political actors and giant political contributors. As a result, data on the habits and
preferences of individual internet users are commercially available in astounding detail and
quantities for relatively modest prices – even details of individual credit card
purchases. The American giants for sure harbor abundant data on the constellation of bots,
I.P. addresses, and messages that streamed to the electorate "
" stories hyping 'the sophistication of an influence campaign slickly crafted to mimic and
infiltrate U.S. political discourse while also seeking to heighten tensions between groups
already wary of one another by the Russians miss the mark.' By 2016, the Republican right had
developed internet outreach and political advertising into a fine art and on a massive scale
quite on its own. Large numbers of conservative websites, including many that that tolerated
or actively encouraged white supremacy and contempt for immigrants, African-Americans,
Hispanics, Jews, or the aspirations of women had been hard at work for years stoking up
'tensions between groups already wary of one another.' Breitbart and other organizations were
in fact going global, opening offices abroad and establishing contacts with like-minded
groups elsewhere. Whatever the Russians were up to, they could hardly hope to add much value
to the vast Made in America bombardment already underway. Nobody sows chaos like Breitbart or
the Drudge Report ."
" the evidence revealed thus far does not support strong claims about the likely success
of Russian efforts, though of course the public outrage at outside meddling is easy to
understand. The speculative character of many accounts even in the mainstream media is
obvious. Several, such as widely circulated declaration by the Department of Homeland
Security that 21 state election systems had been hacked during the election, have collapsed
within days of being put forward when state electoral officials strongly disputed them,
though some mainstream press accounts continue to repeat them. Other tales about Macedonian
troll factories churning out stories at the instigation of the Kremlin, are clearly
exaggerated."
The Sanders Tease: "He Couldn't Have Done a Thing"
Perhaps the most remarkable finding in FJC's study is that Sanders came tantalizingly close
to winning the Democratic presidential nomination against the corporately super-funded Clinton
campaign with no support from Big Business . Running explicitly against the "Hunger
Games" economy and the corporate-financial plutocracy that created it, Sanders pushed Hillary
the Goldman candidate to the wall, calling out the Democrats' capture by Wall Street, forcing
her to rely on a rigged party, convention, and primary system to defeat him. The small-donor
"socialist" Sanders challenge represented something Ferguson and his colleagues describe as
"without precedent in American politics not just since the New Deal, but across virtually the
whole of American history a major presidential candidate waging a strong, highly
competitive campaign whose support from big business is essentially zero ."
Sanders pulled this off, FJC might have added, by running in (imagine) accord with
majority-progressive left-of-center U.S. public opinion. But for the Clintons' corrupt advance-
control of the Democratic National Committee and convention delegates, Ferguson et al might
further have noted, Sanders might well have been the Democratic presidential nominee, curiously
enough in the arch-state-capitalist and oligarchic United States
Could Sanders have defeated the billionaire and right-wing billionaire-backed Trump in the
general election? There's no way to know, of course. Sanders consistently out-performed Hillary
Clinton in one-on-one match -up polls vis a vis Donald Trump during the primary season, but
much of the big money (and, perhaps much of the corporate media) that backed Hillary would have
gone over to Trump had the supposedly
"radical" Sanders been the Democratic nominee.
Even if Sanders has been elected president, moreover, Noam Chomsky is certainly correct in
his recent judgement that Sanders would have been able to achieve very little in the White
House. As Chomsky told Lynn Parramore two weeks ago, in
an interview conducted for the Institute for New Economic Thinking, the same think-tank
that published FJC's remarkable study:
"His campaign [was] a break with over a century of American political history. No
corporate support, no financial wealth, he was unknown, no media support. The media simply
either ignored or denigrated him. And he came pretty close -- he probably could have won the
nomination, maybe the election. But suppose he'd been elected? He couldn't have done a thing.
Nobody in Congress, no governors, no legislatures, none of the big economic powers, which
have an enormous effect on policy. All opposed to him. In order for him to do anything, he
would have to have a substantial, functioning party apparatus, which would have to grow from
the grass roots. It would have to be locally organized, it would have to operate at local
levels, state levels, Congress, the bureaucracy -- you have to build the whole system from
the bottom."
As Chomsky might have added, Sanders oligarchy-imposed "failures" would have been great
fodder for the disparagement and smearing of "socialism" and progressive, majority-backed
policy change. "See? We tried all that and it was a disaster!"
I would note further that the Sanders phenomenon's policy promise was plagued by its
standard bearer's persistent loyalty to the giant and absurdly expensive U.S.-imperial Pentagon
System, which each year eats up hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars required to implement
the progressive, majority-supported policy agenda that Bernie F-35 Sanders ran
on.
"A Very Destructive Ideology"
The Sanders challenge was equally afflicted by its candidate-centered electoralism. This
diverted energy away from the real and more urgent politics of building people's movements
– grassroots power to shake the society to its foundations and change policy from the
bottom up (Dr. Martin Luther King's preferred strategy at the end of his life just barely short
of 50 years ago, on April 4 th , 1968) – and into the narrow, rigidly
time-staggered grooves of a party and spectacle-elections crafted by and for the wealthy Few
and the American
Oligarchy 's "permanent political class" (historian Ron Formisano). As Chomsky explained on the eve of the 2004
elections:
"Americans may be encouraged to vote, but not to participate more meaningfully in the
political arena. Essentially the election is a method of marginalizing the population. A huge
propaganda campaign is mounted to get people to focus on these personalized quadrennial
extravaganzas and to think, 'That's politics.' But it isn't. It's only a small part of
politics The urgency is for popular progressive groups to grow and become strong enough so
that centers of power can't ignore them. Forces for change that have come up from the grass
roots and shaken the society to its core include the labor movement, the civil rights
movement, the peace movement, the women's movement and others, cultivated by steady,
dedicated work at all levels, every day, not just once every four years sensible [electoral]
choices have to be made. But they are secondary to serious political action."
"The only thing that's going to ever bring about any meaningful change," Chomsky told Abby Martin on teleSur
English in the fall of 2015, "is ongoing, dedicated, popular movements that don't pay
attention to the election cycle." Under the American religion of voting,
Chomsky told Dan Falcone and Saul Isaacson in the spring of 2016, "Citizenship means every
four years you put a mark somewhere and you go home and let other guys run the world. It's a
very destructive ideology basically, a way of making people passive, submissive objects [we]
ought to teach kids that elections take place but that's not politics."
For all his talk of standing atop a great "movement" for "revolution," Sanders was and
remains all about this stunted and crippling definition of citizenship and politics as making
some marks on ballots and then returning to our domiciles while rich people and their
agents (not just any "other guys") "run [ruin?-P.S.] the world [into the ground-P.S.]."
It will take much more in the way of Dr. King's politics of "who' sitting in the streets,"
not "who's sitting in the White House" (to use Howard Zinn's
excellent dichotomy ), to get us an elections and party system worthy of passionate citizen
engagement. We don't have such a system in the U.S. today, which is why the number of eligible
voters who passively boycotted the 2016 presidential election is larger than both the number
who voted for big money Hillary and the number who voted for big money Trump.
(If U.S. progressives really want to consider undertaking the epic lift involved in passing
a U.S. Constitutional Amendment, they might want to focus on this instead of calling for a
repeal of the Second Amendment. I'd recommend starting with a positive Democracy Amendment that
fundamentally overhauls the nation's political and elections set-up in accord with elementary
principles and practices of popular sovereignty. Clauses would include but not be limited to
full public financing of elections and the introduction of proportional representation for
legislative races – not to mention the abolition of the Electoral College, Senate
apportionment on the basis of total state population, and the outlawing of gerrymandering.)
Ecocide Trumped by Russia
Meanwhile, back in real history, we have the remarkable continuation of a bizarre
right-wing, pre-fascist presidency not in normal ruling-class hands, subject to the weird whims
and tweets of a malignant narcissist who doesn't read memorandums or intelligence briefings.
Wild policy zig-zags and record-setting White House personnel turnover are par for the course
under the dodgy reign of the orange-tinted beast's latest brain spasms. Orange Caligula spends
his mornings getting his information from FOX News and his evenings complaining to and seeking
advice from a small club of right-wing American oligarchs.
Trump poses grave environmental and nuclear risks to human survival. A consistent Trump
belief is that climate change is not a problem and that it's perfectly fine – "great" and
"amazing," in fact – for the White House to do everything it can to escalate the
Greenhouse Gassing-to-Death of Life on Earth. The nuclear threat is rising now that he has
appointed a frothing right-wing uber-warmonger – a longtime advocate of bombing Iran and
North Korea who led the charge for the arch-criminal U.S. invasion of Iraq – as his top
"National Security" adviser and as he been convinced to expel dozens of Russian diplomats.
Thanks, liberal and other Democratic Party RussiaGaters!
The Clinton-Obama neoliberal Democrats have spent more than a year running with the
preposterous narrative that Trump is a Kremlin puppet who owes his presence in the White House
to Russia's subversion of our democratic elections. The climate crisis holds little
for the Trump and Russia-obsessed corporate media. The fact that the world stands at the eve of
the ecological self-destruction, with the Trump White House in the lead, elicits barely a
whisper in the reigning commercial news media. Unlike Stormy Daniels, for example, that little
story – the biggest issue of our or any time – is not good for television ratings
and newspaper sales.
Sanders, by the way, is curiously invisible in the dominant commercial media, despite his
quiet survey status as the nation's "most popular politician." That is precisely what you would
expect in a corporate and financial oligarchy buttressed by a powerful corporate, so-called
"mainstream" media oligopoly.
Political Parties as "Bank Accounts"
One of the many problems with the obsessive Blame-Russia narrative that a fair portion of
the dominant U.S. media is running with is that we had no great electoral democracy to
subvert in 2016 . Saying that Russia has "undermined [U.S.-] American democracy" is like
me – middle-aged, five-foot nine, and unblessed with jumping ability – saying that
the Brooklyn Nets' Russian-born center Timofy Mozgof subverted my career as a starting player
in the National Basketball Association. In state-capitalist societies marked by the toxic and
interrelated combination of weak popular organization, expensive politics, and highly
concentrated wealth – all highly evident in the New Gilded Age United States –
electoral contests and outcomes boil down above all and in the end to big investor class cash.
As Thomas Ferguson and his colleagues explain:
"Where investment and organization by average citizens is weak, however, power passes by
default to major investor groups, which can far more easily bear the costs of contending for
control of the state. In most modern market-dominated societies (those celebrated recently as
enjoying the 'end of History'), levels of effective popular organization are generally low,
while the costs of political action, in terms of both information and transactional
obstacles, are high. The result is that conflicts within the business community normally
dominate contests within and between political parties – the exact opposite of what
many earlier social theorists expected, who imagined 'business' and 'labor' confronting each
other in separate parties Only candidates and positions that can be financed can be presented
to voters. As a result, in countries like the US and, increasingly, Western Europe, political parties are first of all bank accounts . With certain qualifications, one
must pay to play. Understanding any given election, therefore, requires a financial X-ray of
the power blocs that dominate the major parties, with both inter- and intra- industrial
analysis of their constituent elements."
Here Ferguson might have said "corporate-dominated" instead of "market-dominated" for the
modern managerial corporations emerged as the "visible hand" master of the "free market" more
than a century ago.
We get to vote? Big deal.
People get to vote in Rwanda, Russia, the Congo and countless
other autocratic states as well. Elections alone are no guarantee of democracy, as U.S.
policymakers and pundits know very well when they rip on rigged elections (often fixed with the
assistance of U.S. government and private-sector agents and firms) in countries they don't
like, which includes any country that dares to "question the basic principle that the United
States effectively owns the world by right and is by definition a force for good" ( Chomsky,
2016 ).
Majority opinion is regularly trumped by a deadly complex of forces in the U.S. The
list of interrelated and mutually reinforcing culprits behind this oligarchic defeat of popular
sentiment in the U.S. is extensive. It includes but is not limited to: the campaign finance,
candidate-selection, lobbying, and policy agenda-setting power of wealthy individuals,
corporations, and interest groups; the special primary election influence of full-time party
activists; the disproportionately affluent, white, and older composition of the active (voting)
electorate; the manipulation of voter turnout; the widespread dissemination of false,
confusing, distracting, and misleading information; absurdly and explicitly unrepresentative
political institutions like the Electoral College, the unelected Supreme Court, the
over-representation of the predominantly white rural population in the U.S. Senate; one-party
rule in the House of "Representatives"; the fragmentation of authority in government; and
corporate ownership of the reigning media, which frames current events in accord with the
wishes and world view of the nation's real owners.
Yes, we get to vote. Super. Big deal. Mammon reigns nonetheless in the United States, where,
as the leading liberal
political scientists Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens find , "government policy reflects the
wishes of those with money, not the wishes of the millions of ordinary citizens who turn out
every two years to choose among the preapproved, money-vetted candidates for federal office."
Trump is a bit of an anomaly – a sign of an elections and party system in crisis and an
empire in decline. He wasn't pre-approved or vetted by the usual U.S. "
deep state " corporate, financial, and imperial gatekeepers. The ruling-class had been
trying to figure out what the Hell to do with him ever since he shocked even himself
(though not Steve Bannon) by pre-empting the coronation of the "Queen of Chaos."
He is a
homegrown capitalist oligarch nonetheless, a real estate mogul of vast and parasitic wealth who
is no more likely to fulfill his populist-sounding campaign pledges than any previous POTUS of
the neoliberal era.
His lethally racist, sexist, nativist, nuclear-weapons-brandishing, and
(last but not at all least) eco-cidal rise to the nominal CEO position atop the U.S.-imperial
oligarchy is no less a reflection of the dominant role of big U.S. capitalist money and
homegrown plutocracy in U.S. politics than a more classically establishment Hillary ascendancy
would have been. It's got little to do with Russia, Russia, Russia – the great diversion
that fills U.S. political airwaves and newsprint as the world careens ever closer to
oligarchy-imposed geocide and to a thermonuclear conflagration that the RussiaGate gambit is
recklessly encouraging.
"... If on November 6 the Democratic Party makes the net gain of 24 seats needed to win control of the House of Representatives, former CIA agents, military commanders, and State Department officials will provide the margin of victory and hold the balance of power in Congress. ..."
"... Since its establishment in 1947 -- under the administration of Democratic President Harry Truman -- the CIA has been legally barred from carrying out within the United States the activities which were its mission overseas: spying, infiltration, political provocation, assassination. These prohibitions were given official lip service but ignored in practice. ..."
"... The Church Committee in particular featured the exposure of CIA assassination plots against foreign leaders like Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, General Rene Schneider in Chile, and many others. More horrors were uncovered: MK-Ultra, in which the CIA secretly subjected unwitting victims to experimentation with drugs like LSD; ..."
"... Operation Mockingbird, in which the CIA recruited journalists to plant stories and smear opponents; Operation Chaos, an effort to spy on the antiwar movement and sow disruption; Operation Shamrock, under which the telecommunications companies shared traffic with the NSA for more than a quarter century. ..."
"... The Church and Pike committee exposures, despite their limitations, had a devastating political effect. The CIA and its allied intelligence organizations in the Pentagon and NSA became political lepers, reviled as the enemies of democratic rights. The CIA in particular was widely viewed as "Murder Incorporated." ..."
"... The last 15 years have seen a massive expansion of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, backed by an avalanche of media propaganda, with endless television programs and movies glorifying American spies and assassins ..."
"... The media campaign alleging Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections has been based entirely on handouts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, transmitted by reporters who are either unwitting stooges or conscious agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This has been accompanied by the recruitment of a cadre of top CIA and military officials to serve as highly paid "experts" and "analysts" for the television networks . ..."
"... This process was well under way in the administration of Barack Obama, which endorsed and expanded the various operations of the intelligence agencies abroad and within the United States. Obama's endorsed successor, Hillary Clinton, ran openly as the chosen candidate of the Pentagon and CIA, touting her toughness as a future commander-in-chief and pledging to escalate the confrontation with Russia, both in Syria and Ukraine. ..."
"... The CIA has spearheaded the anti-Russia campaign against Trump in large part because of resentment over the disruption of its operations in Syria, and it has successfully used the campaign to force a shift in the policy of the Trump administration on that score. ..."
"... The 2018 election campaign marks a new stage: for the first time, military-intelligence operatives are moving in large numbers to take over a political party and seize a major role in Congress. The dozens of CIA and military veterans running in the Democratic Party primaries are "former" agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This "retired" status is, however, purely nominal. Joining the CIA or the Army Rangers or the Navy SEALs is like joining the Mafia: no one ever actually leaves; they just move on to new assignments. ..."
In a three-part series published last week, the
World Socialist Web Site documented an unprecedented influx of intelligence and
military operatives into the Democratic Party. More than 50 such military-intelligence
candidates are seeking the Democratic nomination in the 102 districts identified by the
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as its targets for 2018. These include both vacant
seats and those with Republican incumbents considered vulnerable in the event of a significant
swing to the Democrats.
If on November 6 the Democratic Party makes the net gain of 24 seats needed to win control
of the House of Representatives, former CIA agents, military commanders, and State Department
officials will provide the margin of victory and hold the balance of power in Congress. The
presence of so many representatives of the military-intelligence apparatus in the legislature
is a situation without precedent in the history of the United States.
Since its establishment in 1947 -- under the administration of Democratic President Harry
Truman -- the CIA has been legally barred from carrying out within the United States the
activities which were its mission overseas: spying, infiltration, political provocation,
assassination. These prohibitions were given official lip service but ignored in practice.
In the wake of the Watergate crisis and the forced resignation of President Richard Nixon,
reporter Seymour Hersh published the first devastating exposure of the CIA domestic spying, in
an investigative report for the New York Times on December 22, 1974. This report
triggered the establishment of the Rockefeller Commission, a White House effort at damage
control, and Senate and House select committees, named after their chairmen, Senator Frank
Church and Representative Otis Pike, which conducted hearings and made serious attempts to
investigate and expose the crimes of the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency.
The Church Committee in particular featured the exposure of CIA assassination plots against
foreign leaders like Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, General Rene Schneider in
Chile, and many others. More horrors were uncovered: MK-Ultra, in which the CIA secretly
subjected unwitting victims to experimentation with drugs like LSD;
Operation Mockingbird, in
which the CIA recruited journalists to plant stories and smear opponents; Operation Chaos, an
effort to spy on the antiwar movement and sow disruption; Operation Shamrock, under which the
telecommunications companies shared traffic with the NSA for more than a quarter century.
The Church and Pike committee exposures, despite their limitations, had a devastating
political effect. The CIA and its allied intelligence organizations in the Pentagon and NSA
became political lepers, reviled as the enemies of democratic rights. The CIA in particular was
widely viewed as "Murder Incorporated."
In that period, it would have been unthinkable either for dozens of "former"
military-intelligence operatives to participate openly in electoral politics, or for them to be
welcomed and even recruited by the two corporate-controlled parties. The Democrats and
Republicans sought to distance themselves, at least for public relations purposes, from the spy
apparatus, while the CIA publicly declared that it would no longer recruit or pay American
journalists to publish material originating in Langley, Virginia. Even in the 1980s, the
Iran-Contra scandal involved the exposure of the illegal operations of the Reagan
administration's CIA director, William Casey.
How times have changed. One of the main functions of the "war on terror," launched in the
wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, has been to
rehabilitate the US spy apparatus and give it a public relations makeover as the supposed
protector of the American people against terrorism.
This meant disregarding the well-known connections between Osama bin Laden and other Al
Qaeda leaders and the CIA, which recruited them for the anti-Soviet guerrilla war in
Afghanistan, waged from 1979 to 1989, as well as the still unexplained role of the US
intelligence agencies in facilitating the 9/11 attacks themselves.
The last 15 years have seen a massive expansion of the CIA and other intelligence agencies,
backed by an avalanche of media propaganda, with endless television programs and movies
glorifying American spies and assassins ( 24 , Homeland , Zero Dark
Thirty , etc.)
The American media has been directly recruited to this effort. Judith Miller of the New
York Times , with her reports on "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, is only the most
notorious of the stable of "plugged-in" intelligence-connected journalists at the
Times , the Washington Post , and the major television networks. More
recently, the Times has installed as its editorial page editor James Bennet, brother
of a Democratic senator and son of the former administrator of the Agency for International
Development, which has been accused of working as a front for the operations of the Central
Intelligence Agency.
The media campaign alleging Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections has been based
entirely on handouts from the CIA, NSA and FBI, transmitted by reporters who are either
unwitting stooges or conscious agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This has been
accompanied by the recruitment of a cadre of top CIA and military officials to serve as highly
paid "experts" and "analysts" for the television networks .
In centering its opposition to Trump on the bogus allegations of Russian interference, while
essentially ignoring Trump's attacks on immigrants and democratic rights, his alignment with
ultra-right and white supremacist groups, his attacks on social programs like Medicaid and food
stamps, and his militarism and threats of nuclear war, the Democratic Party has embraced the
agenda of the military-intelligence apparatus and sought to become its main political
voice.
This process was well under way in the administration of Barack Obama, which endorsed and
expanded the various operations of the intelligence agencies abroad and within the United
States. Obama's endorsed successor, Hillary Clinton, ran openly as the chosen candidate of the
Pentagon and CIA, touting her toughness as a future commander-in-chief and pledging to escalate
the confrontation with Russia, both in Syria and Ukraine.
The CIA has spearheaded the anti-Russia campaign against Trump in large part because of
resentment over the disruption of its operations in Syria, and it has successfully used the
campaign to force a shift in the policy of the Trump administration on that score. A chorus of
media backers -- Nicholas Kristof and Roger Cohen of the New York Times , the entire
editorial board of the Washington Post , most of the television networks -- are part
of the campaign to pollute public opinion and whip up support on alleged "human rights" grounds
for an expansion of the US war in Syria.
The 2018 election campaign marks a new stage: for the first time, military-intelligence
operatives are moving in large numbers to take over a political party and seize a major role in
Congress. The dozens of CIA and military veterans running in the Democratic Party primaries are
"former" agents of the military-intelligence apparatus. This "retired" status is, however,
purely nominal. Joining the CIA or the Army Rangers or the Navy SEALs is like joining the
Mafia: no one ever actually leaves; they just move on to new assignments.
The CIA operation in 2018 is unlike its overseas activities in one major respect: it is not
covert. On the contrary, the military-intelligence operatives running in the Democratic
primaries boast of their careers as spies and special ops warriors. Those with combat
experience invariably feature photographs of themselves in desert fatigues or other uniforms on
their websites. And they are welcomed and given preferred positions, with Democratic Party
officials frequently clearing the field for their candidacies.
The working class is confronted with an extraordinary political situation. On the one hand,
the Republican Trump administration has more military generals in top posts than any other
previous government. On the other hand, the Democratic Party has opened its doors to a
"friendly takeover" by the intelligence agencies.
The incredible power of the military-intelligence agencies over the entire government is an
expression of the breakdown of American democracy. The central cause of this breakdown is the
extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite, whose interests the state
apparatus and its "bodies of armed men" serve. Confronted by an angry and hostile working
class, the ruling class is resorting to ever more overt forms of authoritarian rule.
Millions of working people want to fight the Trump administration and its ultra-right
policies. But it is impossible to carry out this fight through the "axis of evil" that connects
the Democratic Party, the bulk of the corporate media, and the CIA. The influx of
military-intelligence candidates puts paid to the longstanding myth, peddled by the trade
unions and pseudo-left groups, that the Democrats represent a "lesser evil." On the contrary,
working people must confront the fact that within the framework of the corporate-controlled
two-party system, they face two equally reactionary evils.
Very weak analysis The authors completely missed the point. Susceptibility to rumors (now
called "fake new" which more correctly should be called "improvised news") and high level of
distrust to "official MSM" (of which popularity of alternative news site is only tip of the
iceberg) is a sign of the crisis and tearing down of the the social fabric that hold the so
social groups together. This first of all demonstrated with the de-legitimization of the
neoliberal elite.
As such attempt to patch this discord and unite the US society of fake premises of Russiagate
and anti-Russian hysteria look very problematic. The effect might be quite opposite as the story
with Steele dossier, which really undermined credibility of Justice Department and destroyed the
credibility o FBI can teach us.
In this case claims that "The claim that, for example, Mrs. Clinton's victory might aid Satan
" are just s a sign of rejection of neoliberalism by voters. Nothing more nothing less.
Notable quotes:
"... It has infected the American political system, weakening the body politic and leaving it vulnerable to manipulation. Russian misinformation seems to have exacerbated the symptoms, but laced throughout the indictment are reminders that the underlying disease, arguably far more damaging, is all American-made. ..."
"... A recent study found that the people most likely to consume fake news were already hyperpartisan and close followers of politics, and that false stories were only a small fraction of their media consumption. ..."
That these efforts might have actually made a difference, or at least were intended to,
highlights a force that was already destabilizing American democracy far more than any
Russian-made fake news post: partisan polarization.
"Partisanship can even alter memory, implicit evaluation, and even perceptual judgment," the
political scientists Jay J. Van Bavel and Andrea Pereira wrote in a recent paper . "The human attraction to fake and
untrustworthy news" -- a danger cited by political scientists far more frequently than
orchestrated meddling -- "poses a serious problem for healthy democratic functioning."
It has infected the American political system, weakening the body politic and leaving it
vulnerable to manipulation. Russian misinformation seems to have exacerbated the symptoms, but
laced throughout the indictment are reminders that the underlying disease, arguably far more
damaging, is all American-made.
... ... ...
A recent study found
that the people most likely to consume fake news were already hyperpartisan and close followers
of politics, and that false stories were only a small fraction of their media
consumption.
Americans, it said, sought out stories that reflected their already-formed partisan view of
reality. This suggests that these Russians efforts are indicators -- not drivers -- of how
widely Americans had polarized.
That distinction matters for how the indictment is read: Though Americans have seen it as
highlighting a foreign threat, it also illustrates the perhaps graver threats from
within.
An Especially Toxic Form of Partisanship
... ... ...
"Compromise is the core of democracy," she said. "It's the only way we can govern." But, she
said, "when you make people feel threatened, nobody compromises with evil."
The claim that, for example, Mrs. Clinton's victory might aid Satan is in many ways just a
faint echo of the partisan anger and fear already dominating American politics.
Those emotions undermine a key norm that all sides are served by honoring democratic
processes; instead, they justify, or even seem to mandate, extreme steps against the other
side.
In taking this approach, the Russians were merely riding a trend that has been building for
decades.
Since the 1980s , surveys have found that Republicans and Democrats' feelings toward the
opposing party have been growing more and more negative. Voters are animated more by distrust
of the other side than support for their own.
This highlights a problem that Lilliana Mason, a University of Maryland political scientist,
said had left American democracy dangerously vulnerable. But it's a problem driven primarily by
American politicians and media outlets, which have far louder megaphones than any Russian-made
Facebook posts.
"Compromise is the core of democracy," she said. "It's the only way we can govern." But, she
said, "when you make people feel threatened, nobody compromises with evil."
The claim that, for example, Mrs. Clinton's victory might aid Satan is in many ways just a
faint echo of the partisan anger and fear already dominating American politics.
Those emotions undermine a key norm that all sides are served by honoring democratic
processes; instead, they justify, or even seem to mandate, extreme steps against the other
side.
"... The pro-Hillary warmongering media, the ones that pushed for war in Iraq and elsewhere, through big lies and false evidence, are the vanguard of this ugly machine that supports the most terrible Trump administration bills, yet, this machine can't stop accusing him for 'colluding' with Russia that 'interfered' in the 2016 US election. Of course, no evidence presented for such an accusation and no one really can explain what that 'interference' means. ..."
"... They're accusing the President of the United States of being a Russian agent, this has never happened in American history. However much you may loathe Trump, this is a whole new realm of defamation. For a number of years, there's been a steady degradation of American political culture and discourse, generally. There was a time when I hoped or thought that it would be the Democratic Party that would push against that degradation ..."
"... Now, however, though I'm kind of only nominally, a Democrat, it's the Democratic Party that's degrading our political culture and our discourse. So, this is MSNBC, which purports to be not only the network of the Democratic Party, but the network of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, is now actually because this guy was a semi-anchor was asking the question to an American senator, " Do you think that Representative Nunes, because he wants the memo released, has been compromised by the Kremlin? " ..."
"... And by the way, if people will say, " Well, it's a weak capitulation of McCarthyism, " I say no, it's much more than that because McCarthy was obsessed with Communist. That was a much narrower concept than being obsessed with anybody who might be under Russian influence of any kind. The so-called affinity for Russia. Well, I have a profound affinity for Russian culture and for Russian history. I study it all the time. This is something new. And so, when you accuse a Republican or any Congressman of being a Kremlin agent, this has become a commonplace. We are degraded. ..."
"... We are building up our military presence there, so the Russians are counter-building up, though within their territory. That means the chances of hot war are now much greater than they were before. ..."
"... Every time Trump has tried with Putin to reach a cooperative arrangement, for example, on fighting terrorism in Syria, which is a necessary purpose, literally, the New York Times and the others call him treasonous. Whereas, in the old days, the old Cold War, we had a robust discussion. There is none here. We have no alert system that's warning the American people and its representatives how dangerous this is. And as we mentioned before, it's not only Nunes, it's a lot of people who are being called Kremlin agents because they want to digress from the basic narrative. ..."
"... Meanwhile, people in Moscow who formed their political establishment, who surround Putin and the Kremlin, I mean, the big brains who are formed policy tankers, and who have always tended to be kind of pro-American, and very moderate, have simply come to the conclusion that war is coming. ..."
"... The Democrats couldn't had downgrade their party further. This disgusting spectacle would make FDR totally ashamed of what this party has become. Not only they are voting for every pro-plutocracy GOP bill under Trump administration, but they have become champions in bringing back a much worse and unpredictable Cold War that is dangerously escalating tension with Russia. ..."
How Russiagate fiasco destroys Kremlin moderates, accelerating danger for a hot war with Russiaglobinfo freexchange
Corporate Democrats can't stop pushing for war through the Russiagate fiasco.
The party has been completely taken over by the neocon/neoliberal establishment and has nothing to do with the Left. The pro-Hillary
warmongering media, the ones that pushed for war in Iraq and elsewhere, through big lies and false evidence, are the vanguard of
this ugly machine that supports the most terrible Trump administration bills, yet, this machine can't stop accusing him for 'colluding'
with Russia that 'interfered' in the 2016 US election. Of course, no evidence presented for such an accusation and no one really
can explain what that 'interference' means.
But things are probably much worse, because this completely absurd persistence on Russiagate fiasco that feeds an evident anti-Russian
hysteria, destroys all the influence of the Kremlin moderates who struggle to keep open channels between Russia and the United States.
Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies, history, and politics at NY University and Princeton University, explained
to Aaron Maté and the RealNews
the terrible consequences:
They're accusing the President of the United States of being a Russian agent, this has never happened in American history. However
much you may loathe Trump, this is a whole new realm of defamation. For a number of years, there's been a steady degradation of American
political culture and discourse, generally. There was a time when I hoped or thought that it would be the Democratic Party that would
push against that degradation.
Now, however, though I'm kind of only nominally, a Democrat, it's the Democratic Party that's degrading our political culture
and our discourse. So, this is MSNBC, which purports to be not only the network of the Democratic Party, but the network of the progressive
wing of the Democratic Party, is now actually because this guy was a semi-anchor was asking the question to an American senator,
" Do you think that Representative Nunes, because he wants the memo released, has been compromised by the Kremlin? "
I think all of us need to focus on what's happened in this country when in the very mainstream, at the highest, most influential
levels of the political establishment, this kind of discourse is no longer considered an exception. It is the norm. We hear it daily
from MSNBC and CNN, from the New York Times and the Washington Post, that people who doubt the narrative of what's loosely called
Russiagate are somehow acting on behalf of or under the spell of the Kremlin, that we aren't Americans any longer. And by the way,
if people will say, " Well, it's a weak capitulation of McCarthyism, " I say no, it's much more than that because McCarthy
was obsessed with Communist. That was a much narrower concept than being obsessed with anybody who might be under Russian influence
of any kind. The so-called affinity for Russia. Well, I have a profound affinity for Russian culture and for Russian history. I study
it all the time. This is something new. And so, when you accuse a Republican or any Congressman of being a Kremlin agent, this has
become a commonplace. We are degraded.
The new Cold War is unfolding not far away from Russia, like the last in Berlin, but on Russia's borders in the Baltic and in
Ukraine. We are building up our military presence there, so the Russians are counter-building up, though within their territory.
That means the chances of hot war are now much greater than they were before. Meanwhile, not only do we not have a discussion of
these real dangers in the United States but anyone who wants to incite a discussion, including the President of the United States,
is called treasonous. Every time Trump has tried with Putin to reach a cooperative arrangement, for example, on fighting terrorism
in Syria, which is a necessary purpose, literally, the New York Times and the others call him treasonous. Whereas, in the old days,
the old Cold War, we had a robust discussion. There is none here. We have no alert system that's warning the American people and
its representatives how dangerous this is. And as we mentioned before, it's not only Nunes, it's a lot of people who are being called
Kremlin agents because they want to digress from the basic narrative.
Meanwhile, people in Moscow who formed their political establishment, who surround Putin and the Kremlin, I mean, the big brains
who are formed policy tankers, and who have always tended to be kind of pro-American, and very moderate, have simply come to the
conclusion that war is coming. They can't think of a single thing to tell the Kremlin to offset hawkish views in the Kremlin. Every
day, there's something new. And these were the people in Moscow who are daytime peacekeeping interlockers. They have been
destroyed by Russiagate. Their influence as Russia is zilch. And the McCarthyites in Russia, they have various terms, now
called the pro-American lobby in Russia 'fifth columnists'. This is the damage that's been done. There's never been anything like
this in my lifetime.
The Democrats couldn't had downgrade their party further. This disgusting spectacle would make FDR totally ashamed of what this party
has become. Not only they are voting for every pro-plutocracy GOP bill under Trump administration, but they have become champions
in bringing back a much worse and unpredictable Cold War that is dangerously escalating tension with Russia.
And, unfortunately,
even the most progressives of the Democrats are adopting the Russiagate bogus, like Bernie Sanders, because they know that if they
don't obey to the narratives, the DNC establishment will crush them politically in no time.
"... The DP is a neoliberal party which has been able to distinguish itself from Republicans by campaigning like progressives, but governing as neoliberals. ..."
"... Trump ran his campaign as a populist who would "drain the swamp." He opposed trade deals, and corporations relocating their factories outside the US. The Clinton campaign ran mostly negative personal attacks at Trump's failed marriages, his university, business bankruptcies, abuse of women, and his Russian connection. ..."
"... The DP has a real problem, how can they continue to be a neoliberal party, and cooperate with the RP, while pretending to support progressive causes when more and more people realize the charade and are demanding real progressive change? ..."
Victor Sciamarelli says: February 10, 2018 at 2:35 pm
An interesting article especially the conclusion under "Top Priorities" where it states, "It
is here that Russiagate performs a critical function for Trump's political foes. Far beyond
Israelgate, Russiagate allows them [democrats] to oppose Trump while obscuring key areas where
they either share his priorities or have no viable alternative."
This is important and I largely agree, but the observation could have gone further. The
DP is a neoliberal party which has been able to distinguish itself from Republicans by
campaigning like progressives, but governing as neoliberals.
Trump ran his campaign as a populist who would "drain the swamp." He opposed trade
deals, and corporations relocating their factories outside the US. The Clinton campaign ran
mostly negative personal attacks at Trump's failed marriages, his university, business
bankruptcies, abuse of women, and his Russian connection. Jill Stein was attacked and
brought before the Senate Intelligence Committee because the dossier claimed, falsely, that she
accepted payment from Russia to attend a RT event in Moscow. And we all know what happened to
the Sanders' campaign.
None of this would matter because Clinton was expected to win. Trump is a hypocrite and a
fake populist but the populist message resonated with voters. Bernie Sanders, the real deal
populist, remains the most popular politician in America and he is the most popular democratic
politician among Republican voters.
The recent FISA reauthorization bill passed with 65 House Democrats who joined Trump and the
Republicans. In 2002 the DP controlled the Senate, but 29 Dems joined Republicans to pass the
Iraq War Resolution along with 82 House Dems. And was the Republican regime change in Iraq
better than the Democratic regime change in Libya? And recall that Hugo Chavez, who was
democratically elected, governed constitutionally, and complied with international law, and if
he ever crossed a line it was trivial compared to the lines Bush crossed, was labeled a
dictator and attacked much like Putin is today.
The DP has a real problem, how can they continue to be a neoliberal party, and cooperate
with the RP, while pretending to support progressive causes when more and more people realize
the charade and are demanding real progressive change?
Maintaining a neoliberal course on behalf of elite interests is more important than winning
elections. Thus, while Trump is investigated, the DP and supportive media are preparing to
demonize progressives and any alternative voices as nothing more than Russian puppets.
It you need to read a singe article analyzing current anti-Russian hysteria in the USA this in the one you should read. This is
an excellent article Simply great !!! And as of December 2017 it represents the perfect summary of Russiagate, Hillary defeat and, Neo-McCarthyism
campaign launched as a method of hiding the crisis of neoliberalism revealed by Presidential elections. It also suggest that growing
jingoism of both Parties (return to Madeleine Albright's 'indispensable nation' bulling. Both Trump and Albright assume that the
United States should be able to do as it pleases in the international arena) and loss of the confidence and paranoia of the US
neoliberal elite.
It contain many important observation which in my view perfectly catch the complexity of the current Us political landscape.
Bravo to Jackson Lears !!!
Notable quotes:
"... Neoliberals celebrate market utility as the sole criterion of worth; interventionists exalt military adventure abroad as a means of fighting evil in order to secure global progress ..."
"... Sanders is a social democrat and Trump a demagogic mountebank, but their campaigns underscored a widespread repudiation of the Washington consensus. For about a week after the election, pundits discussed the possibility of a more capacious Democratic strategy. It appeared that the party might learn something from Clinton's defeat. Then everything changed. ..."
"... A story that had circulated during the campaign without much effect resurfaced: it involved the charge that Russian operatives had hacked into the servers of the Democratic National Committee, revealing embarrassing emails that damaged Clinton's chances. With stunning speed, a new centrist-liberal orthodoxy came into being, enveloping the major media and the bipartisan Washington establishment. This secular religion has attracted hordes of converts in the first year of the Trump presidency. In its capacity to exclude dissent, it is like no other formation of mass opinion in my adult life, though it recalls a few dim childhood memories of anti-communist hysteria during the early 1950s. ..."
"... The centrepiece of the faith, based on the hacking charge, is the belief that Vladimir Putin orchestrated an attack on American democracy by ordering his minions to interfere in the election on behalf of Trump. The story became gospel with breathtaking suddenness and completeness. Doubters are perceived as heretics and as apologists for Trump and Putin, the evil twins and co-conspirators behind this attack on American democracy. ..."
"... Like any orthodoxy worth its salt, the religion of the Russian hack depends not on evidence but on ex cathedra pronouncements on the part of authoritative institutions and their overlords. Its scriptural foundation is a confused and largely fact-free 'assessment' produced last January by a small number of 'hand-picked' analysts – as James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, described them – from the CIA, the FBI and the NSA. ..."
"... It is not the first time the intelligence agencies have played this role. When I hear the Intelligence Community Assessment cited as a reliable source, I always recall the part played by the New York Times in legitimating CIA reports of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's putative weapons of mass destruction, not to mention the long history of disinformation (a.k.a. 'fake news') as a tactic for advancing one administration or another's political agenda. Once again, the established press is legitimating pronouncements made by the Church Fathers of the national security state. Clapper is among the most vigorous of these. He perjured himself before Congress in 2013, when he denied that the NSA had 'wittingly' spied on Americans – a lie for which he has never been held to account. ..."
"... In May 2017, he told NBC's Chuck Todd that the Russians were highly likely to have colluded with Trump's campaign because they are 'almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favour, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique'. The current orthodoxy exempts the Church Fathers from standards imposed on ordinary people, and condemns Russians – above all Putin – as uniquely, 'almost genetically' diabolical. ..."
"... It's hard for me to understand how the Democratic Party, which once felt scepticism towards the intelligence agencies, can now embrace the CIA and the FBI as sources of incontrovertible truth. One possible explanation is that Trump's election has created a permanent emergency in the liberal imagination, based on the belief that the threat he poses is unique and unprecedented. It's true that Trump's menace is viscerally real. But the menace posed by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney was equally real. ..."
"... Trump is committed to continuing his predecessors' lavish funding of the already bloated Defence Department, and his Fortress America is a blustering, undisciplined version of Madeleine Albright's 'indispensable nation'. Both Trump and Albright assume that the United States should be able to do as it pleases in the international arena: Trump because it's the greatest country in the world, Albright because it's an exceptional force for global good. ..."
"... Besides Trump's supposed uniqueness, there are two other assumptions behind the furore in Washington: the first is that the Russian hack unquestionably occurred, and the second is that the Russians are our implacable enemies. ..."
"... So far, after months of 'bombshells' that turn out to be duds, there is still no actual evidence for the claim that the Kremlin ordered interference in the American election. Meanwhile serious doubts have surfaced about the technical basis for the hacking claims. Independent observers have argued it is more likely that the emails were leaked from inside, not hacked from outside. On this front, the most persuasive case was made by a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, former employees of the US intelligence agencies who distinguished themselves in 2003 by debunking Colin Powell's claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, hours after Powell had presented his pseudo-evidence at the UN. ..."
"... The crucial issue here and elsewhere is the exclusion from public discussion of any critical perspectives on the orthodox narrative, even the perspectives of people with professional credentials and a solid track record. ..."
"... Sceptical voices, such as those of the VIPS, have been drowned out by a din of disinformation. Flagrantly false stories, like the Washington Post report that the Russians had hacked into the Vermont electrical grid, are published, then retracted 24 hours later. Sometimes – like the stories about Russian interference in the French and German elections – they are not retracted even after they have been discredited. These stories have been thoroughly debunked by French and German intelligence services but continue to hover, poisoning the atmosphere, confusing debate. ..."
"... The consequence is a spreading confusion that envelops everything. Epistemological nihilism looms, but some people and institutions have more power than others to define what constitutes an agreed-on reality. ..."
"... More genuine insurgencies are in the making, which confront corporate power and connect domestic with foreign policy, but they face an uphill battle against the entrenched money and power of the Democratic leadership – the likes of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, the Clintons and the DNC. Russiagate offers Democratic elites a way to promote party unity against Trump-Putin, while the DNC purges Sanders's supporters. ..."
"... Fusion GPS eventually produced the trash, a lurid account written by the former British MI6 intelligence agent Christopher Steele, based on hearsay purchased from anonymous Russian sources. Amid prostitutes and golden showers, a story emerged: the Russian government had been blackmailing and bribing Donald Trump for years, on the assumption that he would become president some day and serve the Kremlin's interests. In this fantastic tale, Putin becomes a preternaturally prescient schemer. Like other accusations of collusion, this one has become vaguer over time, adding to the murky atmosphere without ever providing any evidence. ..."
"... Yet the FBI apparently took the Steele dossier seriously enough to include a summary of it in a secret appendix to the Intelligence Community Assessment. Two weeks before the inauguration, James Comey, the director of the FBI, described the dossier to Trump. After Comey's briefing was leaked to the press, the website Buzzfeed published the dossier in full, producing hilarity and hysteria in the Washington establishment. ..."
"... The Steele dossier inhabits a shadowy realm where ideology and intelligence, disinformation and revelation overlap. It is the antechamber to the wider system of epistemological nihilism created by various rival factions in the intelligence community: the 'tree of smoke' that, for the novelist Denis Johnson, symbolised CIA operations in Vietnam. ..."
"... Yet the Democratic Party has now embarked on a full-scale rehabilitation of the intelligence community – or at least the part of it that supports the notion of Russian hacking. (We can be sure there is disagreement behind the scenes.) And it is not only the Democratic establishment that is embracing the deep state. Some of the party's base, believing Trump and Putin to be joined at the hip, has taken to ranting about 'treason' like a reconstituted John Birch Society. ..."
"... The Democratic Party has now developed a new outlook on the world, a more ambitious partnership between liberal humanitarian interventionists and neoconservative militarists than existed under the cautious Obama. This may be the most disastrous consequence for the Democratic Party of the new anti-Russian orthodoxy: the loss of the opportunity to formulate a more humane and coherent foreign policy. The obsession with Putin has erased any possibility of complexity from the Democratic world picture, creating a void quickly filled by the monochrome fantasies of Hillary Clinton and her exceptionalist allies. ..."
"... For people like Max Boot and Robert Kagan, war is a desirable state of affairs, especially when viewed from the comfort of their keyboards, and the rest of the world – apart from a few bad guys – is filled with populations who want to build societies just like ours: pluralistic, democratic and open for business. This view is difficult to challenge when it cloaks itself in humanitarian sentiment. There is horrific suffering in the world; the US has abundant resources to help relieve it; the moral imperative is clear. There are endless forms of international engagement that do not involve military intervention. But it is the path taken by US policy often enough that one may suspect humanitarian rhetoric is nothing more than window-dressing for a more mundane geopolitics – one that defines the national interest as global and virtually limitless. ..."
"... The prospect of impeaching Trump and removing him from office by convicting him of collusion with Russia has created an atmosphere of almost giddy anticipation among leading Democrats, allowing them to forget that the rest of the Republican Party is composed of many politicians far more skilful in Washington's ways than their president will ever be. ..."
"... They are posing an overdue challenge to the long con of neoliberalism, and the technocratic arrogance that led to Clinton's defeat in Rust Belt states. Recognising that the current leadership will not bring about significant change, they are seeking funding from outside the DNC. ..."
"... Democrat leaders have persuaded themselves (and much of their base) that all the republic needs is a restoration of the status quo ante Trump. They remain oblivious to popular impatience with familiar formulas. ..."
"... Democratic insurgents are also developing a populist critique of the imperial hubris that has sponsored multiple failed crusades, extorted disproportionate sacrifice from the working class and provoked support for Trump, who presented himself (however misleadingly) as an opponent of open-ended interventionism. On foreign policy, the insurgents face an even more entrenched opposition than on domestic policy: a bipartisan consensus aflame with outrage at the threat to democracy supposedly posed by Russian hacking. Still, they may have found a tactical way forward, by focusing on the unequal burden borne by the poor and working class in the promotion and maintenance of American empire. ..."
"... This approach animates Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis, a 33-page document whose authors include Norman Solomon, founder of the web-based insurgent lobby RootsAction.org. 'The Democratic Party's claims of fighting for "working families" have been undermined by its refusal to directly challenge corporate power, enabling Trump to masquerade as a champion of the people,' Autopsy announces. ..."
"... Clinton's record of uncritical commitment to military intervention allowed Trump to have it both ways, playing to jingoist resentment while posing as an opponent of protracted and pointless war. ..."
"... If the insurgent movements within the Democratic Party begin to formulate an intelligent foreign policy critique, a re-examination may finally occur. And the world may come into sharper focus as a place where American power, like American virtue, is limited. For this Democrat, that is an outcome devoutly to be wished. It's a long shot, but there is something happening out there. ..."
American politics have rarely presented a more disheartening spectacle. The repellent and dangerous antics of Donald Trump are
troubling enough, but so is the Democratic Party leadership's failure to take in the significance of the 2016 election campaign.
Bernie Sanders's challenge to Hillary Clinton, combined with Trump's triumph, revealed the breadth of popular anger at politics as
usual – the blend of neoliberal domestic policy and interventionist foreign policy that constitutes consensus in Washington.
Neoliberals celebrate market utility as the sole criterion of worth; interventionists exalt military adventure abroad as a means
of fighting evil in order to secure global progress . Both agendas have proved calamitous for most Americans. Many registered
their disaffection in 2016. Sanders is a social democrat and Trump a demagogic mountebank, but their campaigns underscored a
widespread repudiation of the Washington consensus. For about a week after the election, pundits discussed the possibility of a more
capacious Democratic strategy. It appeared that the party might learn something from Clinton's defeat. Then everything changed.
Nationalism really represent a growing threat to neoliberalism. It is clear the the rise of
nationalism was caused by the triumph of neoliberalism all over the globe. As neoliberal
ideology collapsed in 2008, thing became really interesting now. Looks like
1920th-1940th will be replayed on a new level with the USA neoliberal empire under stress from
new challengers instead of British empire.
Rumor about the death of neoliberalism are slightly exaggerated ;-). This social system still
has a lot of staying power. you need some external shock like the need of cheap oil (defined as
sustainable price of oil over $100 per barrel) to shake it again. Of some financial crisis similar
to the crisis of 2008. Currently there is still
no alternative social order that can replace it. Collapse of the USSR discredited both socialism even
of different flavors then was practiced in the USSR. National socialism would be a step back from
neoliberalism.
Notable quotes:
"... The retreat of [neo]liberalism is very visible in Asia. All Southeast Asian states have turned their backs on liberal democracy, especially Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar in the last decade. This NYT article notes that liberalism has essentially died in Japan, and that all political contests are now between what the west would consider conservatives: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/opinion/liberalism-japan-election.html ..."
"... What is today called "Liberalism" and "Conservatism" both are simply corrupted labels applied to the same top-down corporate-fascistic elite rule that I think Mr. Buchanan once referred to as "two wings of the same bird of prey." ..."
"... Nobody at the top cares about 'diversity.' They care about the easy profits that come from ever cheaper labor. 'Diversity' is not suicide but rather murder: instigated by a small number of very powerful people who have decided that the long-term health of their nations and civilization is less important than short-term profits and power. ..."
"... Hillary and Obama are to the right of the President that Buchanan served in his White House. Richard Nixon was to the Left of both Hillary and Obama. I can't even imagine Hillary accepting and signing into law a 'Clean Water Act' or enacting Price Controls to fight inflation. No way. Heck would freeze over before Hillary would do something so against her Banker Backers. ..."
"... It's sure that financial (neo)liberalism was in a growth phase prior to year 2000 (under Greenspan, the "Maestro") with a general belief that the economy could be "fine tuned" with risk eliminated using sophisticated financial instruments, monetary policy etc. ..."
"... If [neo] Liberalism is a package, then two heavy financial blows that shook the whole foundation were the collapse of the dot.com bubble (2000) and the mortgage bubble (2008). ..."
"... And, other (self-serving) neoliberal stories are now seen as false. For example, that the US is an "advanced post-industrial service economy", that out-sourcing would "free up Americans for higher skilled/higher wage employment" or that "the US would always gain from tariff free trade". ..."
"... The basic divide is surely Nationalism (America First) vs. Globalism (Neo-Liberalism), as shown by the last US Presidential election. ..."
"... Neoliberalism, of which the Clintons are acolytes, supports Free Trade and Open Borders. Although it claims to support World Government, in actual fact it supports corporatism. This is explicit in the TPPA Trump vetoed. Under the corporate state, the state controls the corporations, as Don Benito did in Italy. Under corporatism, the corporations tell the state what to do, as has been the case in America since at least the Clinton Presidency. ..."
"... But I recall that Pat B also said neoconservatism was on its way out a few years after Iraq war II and yet it's stronger than ever and its adherents are firmly ensconced in the joint chiefs of staff, the pentagon, Congress and the White House. It's also spawned a close cousin in liberal interventionism. ..."
Asked to name the defining attributes of the America we wish to become, many liberals would answer
that we must realize our manifest destiny since 1776, by becoming more equal, more diverse and more
democratic -- and the model for mankind's future.
Equality, diversity, democracy -- this is the holy trinity of the post-Christian secular state
at whose altars Liberal Man worships.
But the congregation worshiping these gods is shrinking. And even Europe seems to be rejecting
what America has on offer.
In a retreat from diversity, Catalonia just voted to separate from Spain. The Basque and Galician
peoples of Spain are following the Catalan secession crisis with great interest.
The right-wing People's Party and far-right Freedom Party just swept 60 percent of Austria's vote,
delivering the nation to 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz, whose anti-immigrant platform was plagiarized
from the Freedom Party. Summarized it is: Austria for the Austrians!
Lombardy, whose capital is Milan, and Veneto will vote Sunday for greater autonomy from Rome.
South Tyrol (Alto Adige), severed from Austria and ceded to Italy at Versailles, written off by
Hitler to appease Mussolini after his Anschluss, is astir anew with secessionism. Even the Sicilians
are talking of separation.
By Sunday, the Czech Republic may have a new leader, billionaire Andrej Babis. Writes The Washington
Post, Babis "makes a sport of attacking the European Union and says NATO's mission is outdated."
Platform Promise: Keep the Muslim masses out of the motherland.
To ethnonationalists, their countrymen are not equal to all others, but superior in rights. Many
may nod at Thomas Jefferson's line that "All men are created equal," but they no more practice that
in their own nations than did Jefferson in his
... ... ...
European peoples and parties are today using democratic means to achieve "illiberal" ends. And
it is hard to see what halts the drift away from liberal democracy toward the restrictive right.
For in virtually every nation, there is a major party in opposition, or a party in power, that holds
deeply nationalist views.
European elites may denounce these new parties as "illiberal" or fascist, but it is becoming apparent
that it may be liberalism itself that belongs to yesterday. For more and more Europeans see the invasion
of the continent along the routes whence the invaders came centuries ago, not as a manageable problem
but an existential crisis.
To many Europeans, it portends an irreversible alteration in the character of the countries their
grandchildren will inherit, and possibly an end to their civilization. And they are not going to
be deterred from voting their fears by being called names that long ago lost their toxicity from
overuse.
And as Europeans decline to celebrate the racial, ethnic, creedal and cultural diversity extolled
by American elites, they also seem to reject the idea that foreigners should be treated equally in
nations created for their own kind.
Europeans seem to admire more, and model their nations more, along the lines of the less diverse
America of the Eisenhower era, than on the polyglot America of 2017.
And Europe seems to be moving toward immigration polices more like the McCarran-Walter Act of
1950 than the open borders bill that Sen. Edward Kennedy shepherded through the Senate in 1965.
Kennedy promised that the racial and ethnic composition of the America of the 1960s would not
be overturned, and he questioned the morality and motives of any who implied that it would.
Liberalism is the naivete of 18th century elites, no different than today. Modernity as you
know it is unsustainable, mostly because equality isn't real, identity has value for most humans,
pluralism is by definition fractious, and deep down most people wish to follow a wise strongman
leader who represents their interests first and not a vague set of universalist values.
Blind devotion to liberal democracy is another one of those times when white people take an
abstract concept to weird extremes. It is short-sighted and autistically narrow minded. Just because
you have an oppressive king doesn't mean everyone should be equals. Just because there was slavery/genocide
doesn't mean diversity is good.
The retreat of [neo]liberalism is very visible in Asia. All Southeast Asian states have turned their
backs on liberal democracy, especially Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar in the last decade.
This NYT article notes that liberalism has essentially died in Japan, and that all political contests
are now between what the west would consider conservatives:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/opinion/liberalism-japan-election.html
Good riddance. The idea that egalitarianism is more advanced than hierarchy has always been
false, and flies against the long arc of history. Time for nationalists around the world to smash
liberal democracy and build a new modernity based on actual humanism, with respect to hierarchies
and the primacy of majorities instead of guilt and pathological compassion dressed up as political
ideology.
"Liberalism" is not dying. "Liberalism" is dead, and has been since at least 1970.
What is today called "Liberalism" and "Conservatism" both are simply corrupted labels applied
to the same top-down corporate-fascistic elite rule that I think Mr. Buchanan once referred to
as "two wings of the same bird of prey."
Nobody at the top cares about 'diversity.' They care about the easy profits that come from
ever cheaper labor. 'Diversity' is not suicide but rather murder: instigated by a small number
of very powerful people who have decided that the long-term health of their nations and civilization
is less important than short-term profits and power.
Its been dead for nearly 20 years now. Liberalism has long been the Monty Python parrot nailed
to its perch. At this point, the term is mainly kept alive in right-wing attacks by people who
lack the imagination to change their habitual targets for so long.
To my eye, the last 'liberal' politician died in a susupicious plane crash in 2000 as the Bush
Republicans were taking the White House by their famous 5-4 vote/coup and also needed to claim
control of the Senate. So, the last authentic 'liberal' Senator, Paul Wellstone of MN was killed
in a suspicious plane crash that was never properly explained.
Hillary and Obama are to the right of the President that Buchanan served in his White House.
Richard Nixon was to the Left of both Hillary and Obama. I can't even imagine Hillary accepting
and signing into law a 'Clean Water Act' or enacting Price Controls to fight inflation. No way.
Heck would freeze over before Hillary would do something so against her Banker Backers.
And, at the root, that is the key. The 'Liberals' that the right now rails against are strongly
backed and supported by the Wall Street Banks and other corporate leaders. The 'Liberals' have
pushed for a government Of the Bankers, By the Bankers and For the Bankers. The 'Liberals' now
are in favor of Endless Unconstitutional War around the world.
Which can only mean that the term 'Liberal' has been so completely morphed away from its original
meanings to be completely worthless.
The last true Liberal in American politics was Paul Wellstone. And even by the time he died
for his sins, he was calling himself a "progressive" because after the Clintons and the Gores
had so distorted the term Liberal it was meaningless. Or it had come to mean a society ruled by
bankers, a society at constant war and throwing money constantly at a gigantic war machine, a
society of censorship where the government needed to control all music lyrics, the same corrupt
government where money could by anything from a night in the Lincoln Bedroom to a Presidential
Pardon or any other government favor.
Thus, 'Liberals' were a dead movement even by 2000, when the people who actually believed in
the American People over the profits of bankers were calling themselves Progressives in disgust
at the misuse of the term Liberal. And now, Obama and Hillary have trashed and distorted even
the term Progressive into bombing the world 365 days a year and still constantly throwing money
at the military machine and the problems it invents.
So, Liberalism is so long dead that if you exumed the grave you'd only find dust. And Pat must
be getting senile and just throwing back out the same lines he once wrote as a speechwriter for
the last Great Lefty President Richard Nixon.
Another question is whether this is wishful thinking from Pat or some kind of reality.
I think that he's right, that Liberalism is a dying faith, and it's interesting to check the
decline.
It's sure that financial (neo)liberalism was in a growth phase prior to year 2000 (under
Greenspan, the "Maestro") with a general belief that the economy could be "fine tuned" with risk
eliminated using sophisticated financial instruments, monetary policy etc.
If [neo] Liberalism is a package, then two heavy financial blows that shook the whole foundation
were the collapse of the dot.com bubble (2000) and the mortgage bubble (2008).
And, other (self-serving) neoliberal stories are now seen as false. For example, that the
US is an "advanced post-industrial service economy", that out-sourcing would "free up Americans
for higher skilled/higher wage employment" or that "the US would always gain from tariff free
trade".
In fact, the borderless global "world is flat" dogma is now seen as enabling a rootless hyper-rich
global elite to draw on a sea of globalized serf labour with little or no identity, while their
media and SWJ activists operate a scorched earth defense against any sign of opposition.
The basic divide is surely Nationalism (America First) vs. Globalism (Neo-Liberalism),
as shown by the last US Presidential election.
A useful analogy might be Viktor Orbán. He started out as a leader of a liberal party, Fidesz,
but then over time started moving to the right. It is often speculated that he started it for
cynical reasons, like seeing how the right was divided and that there was essentially a vacuum
there for a strong conservative party, but there's little doubt he totally internalized it. There's
also little doubt (and at the time he and a lot of his fellow party leaders talked about it a
lot) that as he (they) started a family and having children, they started to realize how conservatism
kinda made more sense than liberalism.
With Kurz, there's the possibility for this path. However, he'd need to start a family soon
for that to happen. At that age Orbán was already married with children
Neoliberalism, of which the Clintons are acolytes, supports Free Trade and Open Borders.
Although it claims to support World Government, in actual fact it supports corporatism. This is
explicit in the TPPA Trump vetoed. Under the corporate state, the state controls the corporations,
as Don Benito did in Italy. Under corporatism, the corporations tell the state what to do, as
has been the case in America since at least the Clinton Presidency.
Richard Nixon was a capitalist, not a corporatist. He was a supporter of proper competition
laws, unlike any President since Clinton. Socially, he was interventionist, though this may have
been to lessen criticism of his Vietnam policies. Anyway, his bussing and desegregation policies
were a long-term failure.
Price Control was quickly dropped, as it was in other Western countries. Long term Price Control,
as in present day Venezuela, is economically disastrous.
Let's hope liberalism is a dying faith and that is passes from the Western world. If not it will
destroy the West, so if it doesn't die a natural death then we must euthanize it. For the evidence
is in and it has begat feminism, anti-white racism, demographic winter, mass third world immigration
and everything else that ails the West and has made it the sick and dying man of the world.
But I recall that Pat B also said neoconservatism was on its way out a few years after
Iraq war II and yet it's stronger than ever and its adherents are firmly ensconced in the joint
chiefs of staff, the pentagon, Congress and the White House. It's also spawned a close cousin
in liberal interventionism.
What Pat refers to as "liberalism" is now left wing totalitarianism and anti-white hatred and
it's fanatically trying to remain relevant by lashing out and blacklisting, deplatforming, demonetizing,
and physically assaulting all of its enemies on the right who are gaining strength much to their
chagrin. They resort to these methods because they can't win an honest debate and in a true free
marketplace of ideas they lose.
"... Gessen also worried that the Russia obsession was a deadly diversion from issues that ought to matter more to those claiming to oppose Trump in the name of democracy and the common good ..."
"... Frustrated Democrats hoping to elevate their election fortunes have a resounding message for party leaders: Stop talking so much about Russia. Rank-and-file Democrats say the Russia-Trump narrative is simply a non-issue with district voters, who are much more worried about bread-and-butter economic concerns like jobs, wages and the cost of education and healthcare. ..."
Gessen felt
that the Russiagate gambit would flop, given a lack of smoking-gun evidence and sufficient
public interest, particularly among Republicans.
Gessen also worried that the Russia obsession was a deadly diversion from issues that
ought to matter more to those claiming to oppose Trump in the name of democracy and the common
good : racism, voter suppression (which may well have
elected Trump , by the way), health care, plutocracy, police- and prison-state-ism,
immigrant rights, economic exploitation and inequality, sexism and environmental ruination --
you know, stuff like that.
Some of the politically engaged populace noticed the problem early on. According to the
Washington political journal The Hill , last
summer ,
Frustrated Democrats hoping to elevate their election fortunes have a resounding
message for party leaders: Stop talking so much about Russia. Rank-and-file Democrats say the
Russia-Trump narrative is simply a non-issue with district voters, who are much more worried
about bread-and-butter economic concerns like jobs, wages and the cost of education and
healthcare.
Here we are now, half a year later, careening into a dystopian holiday season. With his
epically low approval rating of 32 percent
, the orange-tinted bad grandpa in the Oval Office has won a viciously regressive tax bill that
is widely rejected by the populace. The bill was passed by a Republican-controlled Congress
whose current
approval rating stands at 13 percent. It is a major legislative victory for the
Republicans, a party whose approval rating fell to an all-time
low of 29 percent at the end of September -- a party that tried to send a child molester to
the U.S. Senate.
"... If there were secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence such as might give rise to genuine concern that the national security of the United States might be compromised – for example because they were intended to swing the US election from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump – then the FBI would have a legitimate reason to investigate those contacts even if no actual crimes were committed during them. ..."
"... The point is however is that eighteen months after the start of the Russiagate investigation no evidence either of criminal acts or of secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence which might have placed the national security of the United States in jeopardy has come to light. ..."
"... There is no evidence of a criminal conspiracy by anyone in the Trump campaign involving the Russians. or the hacking of John Podesta's and the DNC's computers in order to steal emails from those computers and to have them published by Wikileaks; ..."
"... There is also no evidence of any secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence during the election which might have placed the national security of the United States in jeopardy. ..."
"... If no evidence either of a criminal conspiracy or of inappropriate secret contacts by the Trump campaign and the Russians has been found after eighteen months of intense investigation by the biggest and mightiest national security and intelligence community on the planet, then any reasonable person would conclude that that must be because no such evidence exists. ..."
"... Some months I expressed doubts that Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would countenance fishing expeditions . It turns out I was wrong. On any objective assessment it is exactly such fishing expeditions that the Mueller investigation is now engaging in. ..."
"... Deutsche Bank is a German bank not a Russian bank. To insinuate that the Russians control Deutsche Bank – one of the world's leading international banks – because Deutsche Bank has had some previous financial dealings with various Russian banks and businesses is quite simply preposterous. I doubt that there is a single important bank in Germany or Austria of which that could not also be said. ..."
"... Which again begs the question why? Why are Mueller and the Justice Department resorting to these increasingly desperate actions in order to prove something which it ought to be obvious by now cannot be proved? ..."
"... My colleague Alex Christoforou has recently pointed out that the recent indictment of Michael Flynn seems to have been partly intended to shield Mueller from dismissal and to keep his Russiagate investigation alive. Some time ago I made exactly the same point about the indictments against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates and about the indictment against George Papadopoulos. ..."
"... Those indictments were issued directly after the Wall Street Journal published an editorial saying that Mueller should resign. ..."
"... It is the Wall Street Journal editorial which in fact provides the answer to Mueller's and Rosenstein's otherwise strange behaviour and to the way that Mueller has conducted the investigation up to now. The Wall Street Journal's editorial says that Mueller's past as the FBI's Director means that he is too close to the FBI to take an objective view of its actions. ..."
"... It is universally agreed that the FBI's then Director – Mueller's friend James Comey – broke protocols by the way he announced that Hillary Clinton had been cleared. ..."
"... By failing to bring charges against Hillary Clinton the FBI ensured that she would win the Democratic Party's nomination, and that she not Bernie Sanders would face off against Donald Trump in the election in the autumn. That is important because though the eventual – completely unexpected – election outcome was that Donald Trump won the election, which Hillary Clinton lost, every opinion poll which I have seen suggests that if the election had been between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump then Bernie Sanders would have won by a landslide. ..."
"... They played Sessions like a violin. Sessions recluses himself for a bullcrap Kisnyak speech, where he did not even meet him. Rosenstein then recommends Trump fire Comey -- who wanted to be fired so they would appoint a special prosecutor -- which Rosenstein does -- Mueller, to the acclamation of ALL of Con and the Senate-including Republicans. ..."
"... Trump was pissed because they removed his only defender from Mueller -- the head of the DOJ. He knew it was a setup, so went ballistic when he found out about Sessions recusing. ..."
"... Strzok was obviously at a VERY senior pay grade. It would be very surprising if HR had any jobs at Strzok's pay grade. ..."
"... once this special prosecutor is done, congress needs to rewrite the special prosecutor law to narrow their mandate to just the item allowed to be investigated - no fishing expeditions - enough of this stupidity - and maybe put a renewal clause in there so that it has to be renewed every 12 months... ..."
"... This is, and always has been a sideshow for the "true believers" in the Democrap party and all Hitlary supporters to accuse Trump of EXACTLY what Hitlary did ..."
Almost eighteen months after Obama's Justice Department and the FBI launched the Russiagate investigation, and seven months after
Special Counsel Robert Mueller took the investigation over, the sum total of what it has achieved is as follows
(1) an indictment of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates which concerns entirely their prior financial dealings, and which makes no
reference to the Russiagate collusion allegations;
(2) an indictment for lying to the FBI of George Papadopoulos, the junior volunteer staffer of the Trump campaign, who during
the 2016 Presidential election had certain contacts with members of a Moscow based Russian NGO, which he sought to pass off –
falsely and unsuccessfully – as more important than they really were, and which also does not touch on the Russiagate collusion
allegations; and
(3) an indictment for lying to the FBI of Michael Flynn arising from his perfectly legitimate and entirely legal contacts with
the Russian ambassador after the 2016 Presidential election, which also does not touch on the Russiagate collusion allegations,
and which looks as if it was brought about by an
act of entrapment
.
Of actual evidence to substantiate the claims of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the election Mueller has
so far come up with nothing.
Here I wish to say something briefly about the nature of "collusion".
There is no criminal offence of "collusion" known to US law, which has led some to make the point that Mueller is investigating
a crime which does not exist.
There is some force to this point, but it is one which must be heavily qualified:
(1) Though there is no crime of "collusion" in US law, there most certainly is the crime of conspiracy to perform a criminal act.
Should it ever be established that members of the Trump campaign arranged with the Russians for the Russians to hack the DNC's
and John Podesta's computers and to steal the emails from those computers so that they could be published by Wikileaks, then since
hacking and theft are serious criminal acts a criminal conspiracy would be established, and it would be the entirely proper to do
to bring criminal charges against those who were involved in it.
This is the central allegation which lies behind the whole Russiagate case, and is the crime which Mueller is supposed to be investigating.
(2) The FBI is not merely a police and law enforcement agency. It is also the US's counter-espionage agency.
If there were secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence such as might give rise to genuine concern that
the national security of the United States might be compromised – for example because they were intended to swing the US election
from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump – then the FBI would have a legitimate reason to investigate those contacts even if no actual
crimes were committed during them.
Since impeachment is a purely political process and not a legal process, should it ever be established that there were such secret
contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence which might have placed the national security of the United States in
jeopardy, then I have no doubt that Congress would say that there were grounds for impeachment even if no criminal offences had been
committed during them.
The point is however is that eighteen months after the start of the Russiagate investigation no evidence either of criminal acts
or of secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence which might have placed the national security of the United
States in jeopardy has come to light.
Specifically:
(1) There is no evidence of a criminal conspiracy by anyone in the Trump campaign involving the Russians. or the hacking of
John Podesta's and the DNC's computers in order to steal emails from those computers and to have them published by Wikileaks;
and
(2) There is also no evidence of any secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence during the election
which might have placed the national security of the United States in jeopardy.
Such contacts as did take place between the Trump campaign and the Russians were limited and innocuous and had no effect on the
outcome of the election. Specifically there is no evidence of any concerted action between the Trump campaign and the Russians to
swing the election from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump.
As I have previously discussed, the meeting between Donald Trump Junior and the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya is
not such evidence .
If no evidence either of a criminal conspiracy or of inappropriate secret contacts by the Trump campaign and the Russians has
been found after eighteen months of intense investigation by the biggest and mightiest national security and intelligence community
on the planet, then any reasonable person would conclude that that must be because no such evidence exists.
Why then is the investigation still continuing?
Some months I expressed doubts that Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would
countenance fishing expeditions. It turns out I was wrong. On any objective assessment it is exactly such fishing expeditions that the Mueller investigation is
now engaging in.
How else to explain the strange decision to subpoena Deutsche Bank for information about loans granted by Deutsche Bank to Donald
Trump and his businesses?
Deutsche Bank is a German bank not a Russian bank. To insinuate that the Russians control Deutsche Bank – one of the world's leading
international banks – because Deutsche Bank has had some previous financial dealings with various Russian banks and businesses is
quite simply preposterous. I doubt that there is a single important bank in Germany or Austria of which that could not also be said.
Yet in the desperation to find some connection between Donald Trump and Russia it is to these absurdities that Mueller is reduced
to.
Which again begs the question why? Why are Mueller and the Justice Department resorting to these increasingly desperate actions
in order to prove something which it ought to be obvious by now cannot be proved?
My colleague Alex Christoforou has recently pointed out that the recent indictment of Michael Flynn seems to have been
partly intended to shield Mueller from dismissal and to keep his Russiagate investigation alive. Some time ago I made exactly the same point about
the indictments against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates and about the indictment against George Papadopoulos.
Those indictments were issued directly after the Wall Street Journal published an
editorial saying that Mueller
should resign.
The indictment against Manafort and Gates looks sloppy and rushed. Perhaps I am wrong but there has to be at least a suspicion
that the indictments were issued in a hurry to still criticism of Mueller of the kind that was now appearing in the Wall Street Journal.
Presumably the reason the indictment against Flynn was delayed was because his lawyers had just signaled Flynn's interest in
a plea bargain, and it took a few more weeks of negotiating to work that out.
It is the Wall Street Journal editorial which in fact provides the answer to Mueller's and Rosenstein's otherwise strange behaviour
and to the way that Mueller has conducted the investigation up to now. The Wall Street Journal's editorial says that Mueller's past as the FBI's Director means that he is too close to the FBI to take
an objective view of its actions.
In fact the Wall Street Journal was more right than it perhaps realised. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the FBI's
actions are open to very serious criticism to say the least, and that Mueller is simply not the person who can be trusted to take
an objective view of those actions.
Over the course of the 2016 election the FBI cleared Hillary Clinton over her illegal use of a private server to route classified
emails whilst she was Secretary of State though it is universally agreed that she broke the law by doing so.
The FBI does not seem to have even considered investigating Hillary Clinton for possible obstruction of justice after it also
became known that she had actually destroyed thousands of her emails which passed through her private server, though that was an
obvious thing to do.
It is universally agreed that the FBI's then Director – Mueller's friend James Comey – broke protocols by the way he announced
that Hillary Clinton had been cleared.
By failing to bring charges against Hillary Clinton the FBI ensured that she would win the Democratic Party's nomination, and
that she not Bernie Sanders would face off against Donald Trump in the election in the autumn. That is important because though the eventual – completely unexpected – election outcome was that Donald Trump won the election,
which Hillary Clinton lost, every opinion poll which I have seen suggests that if the election had been between Bernie Sanders and
Donald Trump then Bernie Sanders would have won by a landslide.
In other words it was because of the FBI's actions in the first half of 2016 that Bernie Sanders is not now the President of the
United States.
In addition instead of independently investigating the DNC's claims that the Russians had hacked the DNC's and John Podesta's
computers, the FBI simply accepted the opinion of an expert – Crowdstrike – paid for by the DNC, which it is now known was partly
funded and was entirely controlled by the Hillary Clinton campaign, that hacks of those computers had actually taken place and that
the Russians were the perpetrators.
As a result Hillary Clinton was able to say during the election that the reason emails which had passed through those computers
and which showed her and her campaign in a bad light were being published by Wikileaks was because the Russians had stolen the emails
by hacking the computers in order to help Donald Trump.
It is now known that the FBI also met with Christopher Steele, the compiler of the Trump Dossier, who is now known to have been
in the pay of the DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign. The first meeting apparently took place in early July 2016, shortly before
the Russiagate investigation was launched.
Whilst there is some confusion about whether the FBI actually paid Steele for his information, it is now known that Steele was
in contact with the FBI throughout the election and continued to be so after, and that the FBI gave credence to his work.
Recently it has also come to light that Steele was also directly in touch with Obama's Justice Department, a fact which was only
disclosed recently.
The best
account of this has been provided by Byron York writing for The Washington Examiner
The department's Bruce Ohr, a career official, served as associate deputy attorney general at the time of the campaign. That
placed him just below the deputy attorney general, Sally Yates, who ran the day-to-day operations of the department. In 2016,
Ohr's office was just steps away from Yates, who was later fired for defying President Trump's initial travel ban executive order
and still later became a prominent anti-Trump voice upon leaving the Justice Department.
Unbeknownst to investigators until recently, Ohr knew Steele and had repeated contacts with Steele when Steele was working
on the dossier. Ohr also met after the election with Glenn Simpson, head of Fusion GPS, the opposition research company that was
paid by the Clinton campaign to compile the dossier.
Word that Ohr met with Steele and Simpson, first reported by Fox News' James Rosen and Jake Gibson, was news to some current
officials in the Justice Department. Shortly after learning it, they demoted Ohr, taking away his associate deputy attorney general
title and moving him full time to another position running the department's organized crime drug enforcement task forces.
It is also now known that over the course of the election the FBI – on the basis of information in the Trump Dossier – obtained
at least one warrant from the FISA court which made it possible for it to undertake surveillance during and after the election of
persons belonging to involved the campaign team of Hillary Clinton's opponent Donald Trump.
In response to subpoenas issued at the instigation of the Congressman Devin Nunes the FBI has recently admitted that
the Trump Dossier cannot be verified
.
However the FBI and the Justice Department have so far failed to provide in response to these subpoenas information about the
precise role of the Trump Dossier in triggering the Russiagate investigation.
The FBI's and the Justice Department's failure to provide this information recently provoked an angry exchange between FBI Director
Christopher Wray and Congressman Jim Jordan during a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee.
During that hearing Jordan said to Wray the following
Let's remember a couple of things about the dossier. The Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, which we now
know were one and the same, paid the law firm who paid Fusion GPS who paid Christopher Steele who then paid Russians to put together
a report that we call a dossier full of all kinds of fake news, National Enquirer garbage and it's been reported that this dossier
was all dressed up by the FBI, taken to the FISA court and presented as a legitimate intelligence document -- that it became the
basis for a warrant to spy on Americans.
In response Wray refused to say officially whether or not the Trump Dossier played any role in the FBI obtaining the FISA warrants.
This was so even though officials of the FBI – including former FBI Director James Comey – have slipped out in earlier Congressional
testimony that it did.
This is also despite the fact that this information is not classified and ought already to have been provided by the Justice Department
and the FBI in response to Congressman Nunes's subpoenas.
There is now talk of FBI Director Christopher Wray and of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein being held in contempt of Congress
because of the failure of the Justice Department and the FBI to comply with Congressman Nunes's subpoenas.
During the exchanges between Wray and Jordan at the hearing in the House Judiciary Committee Jordan also had this to say
Here's what I think -- I think Peter Strozk (sic) Mr. Super Agent at the FBI, I think he's the guy who took the application
to the FISA court and if that happened, if this happened , if you have the FBI working with a campaign, the Democrats' campaign,
taking opposition research, dressing it all up and turning it into an intelligence document so they can take it to the FISA court
so they can spy on the other campaign, if that happened, that is as wrong as it gets
Peter Strzok is the senior FBI official who is now known to have had a leading role in both the FBI's investigation of Hillary
Clinton's misuse of her private server and in the Russiagate investigation.
Strzok is now also known to have been the person who changed the wording in Comey's statement clearing Hillary Clinton for her
misuse of her private email server to say that Hillary Clinton had been "extremely careless'" as opposed to "grossly negligent".
Strzok – who was the FBI's deputy director for counter-intelligence – is now also known to have been the person who signed the
document which launched the Russiagate investigation in July 2016.
Fox News has
reported that Strzok was also the person who supervised the FBI's questioning of Michael Flynn. It is not clear whether this
covers the FBI's interview with Flynn on 24th January 2017 during which Flynn lied to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian
ambassador. However it is likely that it does.
If so then this is potentially important given that it was Flynn's lying to the FBI during this interview which made up the case
against him and to which he has now pleaded guilty. It is potentially even more important given the strong indications that Flynn's
interview with the FBI on 24th January 2017 was
a set-up intended
to entrap him by tricking him into lying to the FBI.
As the FBI's deputy director of counter-intelligence it is also highly likely that it was Strozk who was the official within the
FBI who supervised the FBI's contacts with Christopher Steele, and who would have been the official within the FBI who was provided
by Steele with the Trump Dossier and who would have made the first assessment of the Trump Dossier.
Recently it has been disclosed that Special Counsel Mueller sacked Strzok from the Russiagate investigation supposedly after it
was discovered that Strzok had been sending anti-Trump and pro-Hillary Clinton messages to Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer with whom he
was having an affair.
These messages were sent by Strzok to his lover during the election, but apparently only came to light in July this year, when
Mueller supposedly sacked Strzok because of them.
It seems that since then Strzok has been working in the FBI's human resources department, an astonishing demotion for the FBI's
former deputy director for counter-intelligence who was apparently previously considered the FBI's top expert on Russia.
Some people have questioned whether the sending of the messages could possibly be the true reason why Strzok was sacked. My colleague
Alex Christoforou has
reported on some
of the bafflement that this extraordinary sacking and demotion has caused.
Business Insider reports the anguished comments of former FBI officials incredulous that Strzok could have been sacked for such
a trivial reason. Here is what Business Insider
reports
one ex FBI official Mark Rossini as having said
It would be literally impossible for one human being to have the power to change or manipulate evidence or intelligence according
to their own political preferences. FBI agents, like anyone else, are human beings. We are allowed to have our political beliefs.
If anything, the overwhelming majority of agents are conservative Republicans.
This is obviously right. Though the ex-FBI officials questioned by Business Insider are clearly supporters of Strzok and critics
of Donald Trump,
the same point has been made from the other side of the political divide by Congressman Jim Jordan
If you get kicked off the Mueller team for being anti-Trump, there wouldn't be anybody left on the Mueller team. There has
to be more
Adding to the mystery about Strzok's sacking is why the FBI took five months to confirm it.
Mueller apparently sacked Strzok from the Russiagate investigation in July and it was apparently then that Strzok was simultaneously
sacked from his previous post of deputy director for counter-espionage and transferred to human resources. The FBI has however only
disclosed his sacking now, five months later and only in response to demands for information from Congressional investigators.
There is in fact an obvious explanation for Strzok's sacking and the strange circumstances surrounding it, and I am sure that
it is the one which Congressman Jordan had in mind during his angry exchanges with FBI Director Christopher Wray.
I suspect that Congressman Jordan believes that the true reason why Strzok was sacked is that Strzok's credibility had become
so tied to the Trump Dossier that when its credibility collapsed over the course of the summer when the FBI finally realised that
it could not be verified his credibility collapsed with it.
If so then I am sure that Congressman Jordan is right.
We now know from a variety of sources but first and foremost from the
testimony to Congress of Carter Page
that the Trump Dossier provided the frame narrative for the Russiagate investigation until just a few months ago.
We also know that the Trump Dossier was included in an appendix to the January ODNI report about supposed Russian meddling in
the 2016 election which was shown by the US intelligence chiefs to President elect Trump during their stormy meeting with him on
8th January 2017.
The fact that the Trump Dossier was included in an appendix to the January ODNI report shows that at the start of this year the
top officials of the FBI and of the US intelligence community – Comey, Clapper, Brennan and the rest – believed in its truth.
The June 2017 article in the Washington Post (discussed by me
here ) also all but confirms that it was
the Trump Dossier that provided the information which the CIA sent to President Obama in August 2016 which supposedly 'proved' that
the Russians were interfering in the election.
As the BBC has pointed out , it was also the
Trump Dossier which Congressman Adam Schiff – the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Community, who appears to be very close
to some of the FBI investigators involved in the Russiagate case – as well as the FBI's Russiagate investigators were using as the
narrative frame when questioning witnesses about their supposed role in Russiagate.
These facts make it highly likely that it was indeed the Trump Dossier which provided the information which the FBI used to obtain
all the surveillance warrants the FBI obtained from the FISA court during the 2016 election and afterwards.
Strzok's position as the FBI's deputy director for counter-intelligence makes it highly likely that he was the key official within
the FBI who decided that the Trump Dossier should be given credence, whilst his known actions during the Hillary Clinton private
server investigation and during the Russiagate investigation make it highly likely that it was he who was the official within the
FBI who sought and obtained the FISA warrants.
Given Strzok's central role in the Russiagate investigation going back all the way to its start in July 2016, there also has to
be a possibility that it was Strzok who was behind many of the leaks coming from the investigation which so destabilised the Trump
administration at the start of the year.
This once again points to the true scandal of the 2016 election.
On the strength of a fake Dossier paid for by the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign the Justice Department, the FBI and the
US intelligence community carried out surveillance during the election of US citizens who were members of the campaign team of Hillary
Clinton's opponent Donald Trump.
Given the hugely embarrassing implications of this for the FBI, it is completely understandable why Strzok, if he was the person
who was ultimately responsible for this debacle – as he very likely was – and if he was responsible for some of the leaks – as he
very likely also was – was sacked and exiled to human resources when it was finally concluded that the Trump Dossier upon which all
the FBI's actions were based could not be verified.
It would also explain why the FBI sought to keep Strzok's sacking secret, so that it was only disclosed five months after it happened
and then only in response to questions from Congressional investigators, with a cover story about inappropriate anti-Trump messages
being spread about in order to explain it.
This surely is also the reason why in defiance both of evidence and logic the Russiagate investigation continues.
Given the debacle the Justice Department, the FBI and the US intelligence community are facing, it is completely understandable
why they should want to keep the Russiagate investigation alive in order to draw attention away from their own activities.
Put in this way it is Robert Mueller's investigation which is the cover-up, and the surveillance which is the wrongdoing that
the cover up is trying to excuse or conceal, which is what
I said nine months ago in March .
When the suggestion of appointing a second Special Counsel was first floated last month the suggestion was that the focus of the
second Special Counsel's investigation would be the Uranium One affair.
That always struck me as misconceived not because there may not be things to investigate in the Uranium One case but because the
focus of any new investigation should be what happened during the 2016 election, not what happened during the Uranium one case.
Congressman Jordan has now correctly identified the surveillance of US citizens by the US national security bureaucracy during
the election as the primary focus of the proposed investigation to be conducted by the second Special Counsel.
In truth there should be no second Special Counsel. Since there is no Russiagate collusion to investigate the Russiagate investigation
– ie. the investigation headed by Mueller – should be wound up.
There should be only one Special Counsel tasked with looking into what is the real scandal of the 2016 election: the surveillance
of US citizens carried out during the election by the US national security bureaucracy on the basis of the Trump Dossier.
I remain intensely skeptical that this will happen. However the fact that some members of Congress such as Congressman Nunes (recently
cleared of charges that he acted inappropriately by disclosing details of the surveillance back in March) and Congressman Jordan
are starting to demand it is a hopeful sign.
Top Clinton Aides Face No Charges After Making False Statements To FBI
Neither of the Clinton associates, Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, faced legal consequences for their misleading statements,
which they made in interviews last year with former FBI section chief Peter Strzok.
These are acts to overthrow the legitimate government of the USA and therefore constitute treason. Treason is still punishable
by death. It is time for some public hangings. Trump should declare martial law. Put Patraeus and Flint in charge and drain the
swamp like he promised...
Absolutely. This is not political, about justice or corruption or election coercion, this is about keeping the fires lit under
Trump, no matter how lame or lying, in the hopes that something, anything, will arise that could be used to unseat Trump. Something
that by itself would be controversial but ultimately a nothing-burger, but piled upon the months and years of lies used to build
a false consensus of corruption, criminality and impropriety of Trump. Their goal has always been to undermine Trump by convincing
the world that Trump is evil and unfit using nothing but lies, that without Trump's endless twitter counters would have buried
him by now. While they know that can't convince a significant majority that these lies are true, what they can do is convince
the majority that everyone else thinks it true, thereby in theory enabling them to unseat Trump with minimal resistance, assuming
many will simply stand down in the face of a PERCEIVED overwhelming majority.
This is about constructing a false premise that they can use minimal FACTS to confirm. They are trying and testing every day
this notion with continuing probes and jabs in hopes that something....anything, sticks.
Mueller is a lot of things, but he is a politician, and skilled at that, as he has survived years in Washington.
So why choose KNOWN partisans for your investigation? He may not have known about Strzok, but he surely knew about Weitsmann's
ties to HRC, about Rhee being Rhodes personal attorney,..so why put them on, knowing that the investigations credibility would
be damaged? No way most of this would not come out, just due to the constant leaks from the FBI/DOJ.
What is the real goal, other than taking Trump down and covering up FBI/DOJ/Obama Admin malfeasance? These goons are all highly
experienced swamp dwellers, so I think there is something that is being missed here..
" The fact that the Trump Dossier was included in an appendix to the January ODNI report shows that at the start of this year
the top officials of the FBI and of the US intelligence community – Comey, Clapper, Brennan and the rest – believed in its truth.
"
Oh, bull crap. None of them believed a word of it, and at least some of them were in on the dossier's creation.
They just wanted to put over their impeach/resist/remove scam on us deplorables so they could hang on to power and maintain
secrecy over all their years of criminal activity.
The FBI is a fraud on the sheeple. Indoctrinated sheeple believe FBI testimony. The M.O. of the FBI is entrapment of victims
and entrapped witnesses against victims using their Form 302 interrogations. The FBI uses forensic evidence from which gullible
juries trust the FBI financed reports. Power corrupts. The power to be believed because of indoctrination corrupts absolutely.
Keep your powder dry. Hold your fire until you see the whites of their eyes.
All this crap comes down to ONE THING: Sessions ... why he refuses to fire a mega-conflicted and corrupt POS Mueller...
Investigative reporter Sarah Carter hinted (last Friday?) that something big would be happening "probably within the next forty-eight
hours". She related this specifically to a comment that Sessions had been virtually invisible.
I will make a prediction:
THE COMING WEEK WILL BE A TUMULTUOUS WEEK FOR THOSE OBSESSED BY THE "RUSSIA COLLUSION CONSPIRACY" .
First, Sessions will announce significant findings and actions which will directly attack the Trump-Russia-Collusion narrative.
And then, the Democrats/Media/Hillary Campaign will launch a hystierical, viscious, demented political counter attack in a
final onslaught to take down Trump.
They played Sessions like a violin. Sessions recluses himself for a bullcrap Kisnyak speech, where he did not even meet him.
Rosenstein then recommends Trump fire Comey -- who wanted to be fired so they would appoint a special prosecutor -- which Rosenstein
does -- Mueller, to the acclamation of ALL of Con and the Senate-including Republicans.
When Trump tries to get out of the trap by leaking he is thinking about firing Sessions, Lispin Lindsey goes on television
to say that will not be allowed too happen. If he fires Sessions, Congress would not approve ANY of Trump's picks for DOJ-leaving
Rosenstein in charge anyway.
Trump was pissed because they removed his only defender from Mueller -- the head of the DOJ. He knew
it was a setup, so went ballistic when he found out about Sessions recusing.
There is good reason for optimism: Trumpus Maximus is on the case.
I remain intensely skeptical that this will happen. However the fact that some members of Congress such as Congressman Nunes
(recently cleared of charges that he acted inappropriately by disclosing details of the surveillance back in March) and Congressman
Jordan are starting to demand it is a hopeful sign.
The design has been exposed. It is now fairly clear WHAT the conspirators did.
We now enter the neutralization and mop-up phase.
And, very likely, people who know things will be EAGER to talk:
FBI agents, like anyone else, are human beings. We are allowed to have our political beliefs. If anything, the overwhelming
majority of agents are conservative Republicans.
Bloomberg fed a fake leak that Mueller had subpoenaed records from Deutsche Bank. Democrats (Schiff) on the House Intelligence Committee fed fake information about Don Jr. that was leaked to CNN. Leading to
an embarrassing retraction. ABC's Brian Ross fed a fake leak about the Flynn indictment. Leading to an embarrassing retraction.
Maybe the operation that Sessions set up some time ago to catch leakers is bearing fruit after all. And Mueller should realize
that the ice is breaking up all around him.
once this special prosecutor is done, congress needs to rewrite the special prosecutor law to narrow their mandate to just
the item allowed to be investigated - no fishing expeditions - enough of this stupidity - and maybe put a renewal clause in there
so that it has to be renewed every 12 months...
This is, and always has been a sideshow for the "true believers" in the Democrap party and all Hitlary supporters to accuse
Trump of EXACTLY what Hitlary did, in the classic method of diversion. Sideshow magicians have been doing it for millenia--"Look
over there" while the real work is done elsewhere. The true believers don't want to believe that Hitlary and the Democrap party
are complicit in the selling of Uranium One to the Ruskies for $145 million. No, no, that was something completely different and
Hitlary is not guilty of selling out the interests of the US for money. Nope, Trump colluded with the Russians to win the election.
Yep, that's it.
Mueller is now the official head of a shit show that's coming apart at the seams. He was too stupid to even bring on ANY non-Hitlary
supporting leftists which could have given him a smidgen of equibility, instead he stacked the deck with sycophant libtard leftists
who by their very nature take away ANY concept of impartiality, and any jury on the planet would see through the connivance like
glass. My guess is he's far too stupid to stop, and I happily await the carnage of his actions as they decimate the Democrap party.
And I feel like the Democrats get so distracted. They have been talking about sexual
harassment and stuff instead of the TAX BILL. It is so damn easy to get them to take their
eyes off the ball! and get played again and again. . . and TRAGIC given the consequences . .
.
It's the perfect "distraction". Allows them to engage in virtue-signaling and "fighting
for average Americans". It's all phony, they always "lose" in the end getting exactly what
they wanted in the first place, while not actually having to cast a vote for it.
It's all related, less safety net and more inequality means more desperation to take a
job, *ANY* job, means more women putting up with sexual harassment (and workplace bullying
and horrible and illegal workplace conditions etc.) as the price of a paycheck.
Horrible Toomey's re-election was a parallel to the Clinton/Trump fiasco. The Democrats
put up a corporate shill, Katie McGinty that no-one trusted.
"Former lobbyist Katie McGinty has spent three decades in politics getting rich off the
companies she regulated and subsidized. Now this master of the revolving-door wants
Pennsylvania voters to give her another perch in government: U.S. Senator." Washington
Examiner.
She was a Clintonite through and through, that everyone, much like $Hillary, could see
through.
To paraphrase the Beatles, you say you want a revolution but you don't really mean it. You
want more of the same because it makes you feel good to keep voting for your Senator or your
Congressman. The others are corrupt and evil, but your guys are good. If only the others were
like your guys. News flash: they are all your guys.
America is doomed. And so much the better. Despite all America has done for the world, it
has also been a brutal despot. America created consumerism, super-sizing and the Kardashians.
These are all unforgivable sins. America is probably the most persistently violent country in
the world both domestically and internationally. No other country has invaded or occupied so
much of the world, unless you count the known world in which case Macedonia wins.
This tax plan is what Americans want because they are pretty ignorant and stupid. They are
incapable of understanding basic math so they can't work out the details. They believe that
any tax cut is inherently good and all government is bad so that is also all that matters.
They honestly think they or their kids will one day be rich so they don't want to hurt rich
people. They also believe that millionaires got their money honestly and through hard work
because that is what they learned from their parents.
Just send a blank check to Goldman Sachs. Keep a bit to buy a gun which you can use to
either shoot up a McDonalds or blow your own brains out.
And some people still ask me why I left and don't want to come back. LOL
Macedonia of today is not the same are that conquered the world. They stole the name from
Greeks.
That being said, the US is ripe for a change. Every policy the current rulers enact seems
to make things better. However, I suspect a revolution would kill majority of the population
since it would disrupt the all important supply chains, so it does not seem viable.
However, a military takeover could be viable. If they are willing to wipe out the most
predatory portions of the ruling class, they could fix the healthcare system, install a
high-employment policy and take out the banks and even the military contractors. Which could
make them very popular.
Yeah, right. Have you seen our generals? They're just more of the same leeches we
have everywhere else in the 0.01%. Have you seen any of the other military dictatorships
around the world, like actually existing ones? They're all brilliantly corrupt and total
failures when it comes to running any sort of economy. Not to mention the total loss of civil
rights. Americans have this idiotic love of their military thanks to decades of effective
propaganda and think the rule of pampered generals would somehow be better than the right to
vote. Bleh.
This is a military dictatorship. The fourth and sixth amendments have been de facto
repealed. Trump cared about one thing and one thing only, namely to repeal the estate tax. He
is the ultimate con man and this was his biggest con. It is truly amazing how he accomplished
this. He has saved his family a billion $$$. He will now turn over governing to the generals
and Goldman Sachs. He may even retire. Truly amazing. One has to admire the sheer perversity
of it all. When will the American electorate get tired of being conned? The fact is they have
nothing but admiration for Trump. We live in a criminal culture, winner take all. America
loves its winners.
There is an old 2003 David Brooks column in which he mentions that
"The Democrats couldn't even persuade people to oppose the repeal of the estate tax, which
is explicitly for the mega-upper class. Al Gore, who ran a populist campaign, couldn't even
win the votes of white males who didn't go to college, whose incomes have stagnated over the
past decades and who were the explicit targets of his campaign. Why don't more Americans want
to distribute more wealth down to people like themselves?"
Then Brooks goes on to explain
"The most telling polling result from the 2000 election was from a Time magazine survey
that asked people if they are in the top 1 percent of earners. Nineteen percent of Americans
say they are in the richest 1 percent and a further 20 percent expect to be someday. So right
away you have 39 percent of Americans who thought that when Mr. Gore savaged a plan that
favored the top 1 percent, he was taking a direct shot at them."
The Republicans have conditioned people to believe government services (except for
defense/military) are run poorly and need to be "run like a business" for a profit.
The problem is that not all government services CAN be profitable (homeless care, mental
health care for the poor, EPA enforcement, OSHA enforcement). And when attempts are made to
privatize some government operations such as incarceration, the result is that the private
company tries to maximize profits by pushing for laws to incarcerate ever more people.
The history of the USA as viewed by outsiders, maybe 50 years hence, will be that of a
resource consuming nation that spent a vast fortune on military hardware and military
adventures when it had little to fear due to geography, a nation that touted an independent
press that was anything but, a nation that created a large media/entertainment industry which
helped to keep citizens in line, a nation that fostered an overly large (by 2 or 3 times per
Paul Whooley) parasitical financial industry that did not perform its prime capital
allocation task competently as it veered from bubble to bubble and a nation that managed to
spend great sums on medical care without covering all citizens.
But the USA does have a lot of guns and a lot of frustrated people.
Maybe Kevlar vests will be the fashion of the future?
The provision to do away with the estate tax, if not immediately, in the current versions
(House and Senate) is great news for the 1%, and bad for the rest of us.
And if more people are not against that (thanks for quoting the NYTImes article), it's the
failure of the rest of the media for not focusing more on it, but wasting time and energy on
fashion, sports, entertainment, etc.
he provision to do away with the estate tax . . . is great news for the 1%
I think it's even a little more extreme than that. The data is a few years old, but it is
only the top 0.6% who are affected by estate taxes in the United States. See the data at
these web sites:
The military adventures were largely in support of what Smedley Butler so accurately
called the Great "Racket" of Monroe Doctrine colonialism and rapacious extractive
"capitalism" aka "looting."
It took longer and costed the rich a bit more to buy up all the bits of government, but
the way they've done will likely be more compendious and lasting. Barring some "intervening
event(s)".
While Republicans show their true colors, im out there seeing a resurgence of civil
society. And im starting to reach Hard core Tea Party types. Jobs, Manufacturing, Actual
Policy.
"... Now, despite what the Russian propagandists will tell you, this recent outbreak of fascistic behavior has nothing whatsoever to do with these people's frustration with neoliberalism or the supranational Corporatocracy that has been expanding its global empire with total impunity for twenty-five years. And it definitely has nothing at all to do with supranational political unions, or the supersession of national sovereignty by corporate-concocted "free trade" agreements, or the relentless privatization of everything, or the fear that a lot of people have that their cultures are being gradually erased and replaced with a globalized, corporate-friendly, multicultural, market-based culture, which is merely a simulation of culture, and which contains no actual cultural values (because exchange value is its only operative value), but which sells the empty signifiers of their eviscerated cultural values back to them so they can wear their "identities" like designer brands as they hunch together in silence at Starbucks posting pictures of themselves on Facebook. ..."
"... No, this discontent with the political establishment, corporate elites, and the mainstream media has nothing to do with any of that. It's not like global Capitalism, following the collapse of the U.S.S.R. (its last external ideological adversary), has been restructuring the entire planet in accordance with its geopolitical interests, or doing away with national sovereignty, and other nationalistic concepts that no longer serve a useful purpose in a world where a single ideological system (one backed by the most fearsome military in history) reigns completely unopposed. If that were the case, well, it might behoove us to question whether this outbreak of Nazism, racism, and other forms of "hate," was somehow connected to that historical development and maybe even try to articulate some sort of leftist analysis of that. ..."
"... a world where a single ideology rules the planet unopposed from without ..."
"... Brexit is about Britons who want their country back, a movement indeed getting stronger and stronger in EU member states, but ignored by the ruling 'elites'. ..."
"... A lot of these so called "revolutions" are fomented by the elite only to be subverted and perverted by them in the end. They've had a lot of practice co-opting revolutions and independence movements. ..."
"... "Independence" is now so fashionable (as was Communism among the "elite" back in the '30s), that they are even teaching and fostering independence to kids in kindergarten here in the US. That strikes me as most amusing. Imagine "learning" independence in state run brainwashing factories. ..."
Well all right, let's review what happened, or at least the official version of what
happened. Not Hillary Clinton's version of what happened, which Jeffrey St. Clair so
incisively skewered , but the Corporatocracy's version of what happened, which overlaps
with but is even more ridiculous than Clinton's ridiculous version. To do that, we need to
harken back to the peaceful Summer of 2016, (a/k/a the
"Summer of Fear" ), when the United States of America was still a shiny city upon a hill
whose beacon light guided freedom-loving people, the Nazis were still just a bunch of ass
clowns meeting in each other's mother's garages, and Russia was, well Russia was Russia.
Back then, as I'm sure you'll recall, Western democracy, was still primarily being menaced
by the lone
wolf terrorists, for absolutely no conceivable reason, apart from the terrorists' fanatical
desire to brutally murder all non-believers. The global Russo-Nazi Axis had not yet reared its
ugly head. President Obama, who, during his tenure, had single-handedly restored America to the
peaceful, prosperous, progressive paradise it had been before George W. Bush screwed it up, was
on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon slow
jamming home the TPP . The Wall Street banks had risen from the ashes of the 2008 financial
crisis, and were buying back all the foreclosed homes of the people they had fleeced with
subprime mortgages. American workers were enjoying the freedom and flexibility of the new gig
economy. Electioneering in the United States was underway, but it was early days. It was
already clear that Donald Trump was literally
the Second Coming of Hitler , but no one was terribly worried about him yet. The Republican
Party was in a shambles. Neither Trump nor any of the other contenders had any chance of
winning in November. Nor did Sanders, who had been defeated, fair and square, in the Democratic
primaries, mostly because of
his racist statements and crazy, quasi-Communist ideas. Basically, everything was hunky
dory. Yes, it was going to be terribly sad to have to bid farewell to Obama, who had bailed out
all those bankrupt Americans the Wall Street banks had taken to the cleaners, ended all of Bush
and Cheney's wars, closed down Guantanamo, and just generally served as a multicultural messiah
figure to affluent consumers throughout the free world, but Hope-and-Change was going to
continue. The talking heads were all in agreement Hillary Clinton was going to be President,
and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
Little did we know at the time that an epidemic of Russo-Nazism had been festering just
beneath the surface of freedom-loving Western societies like some neo-fascist sebaceous cyst.
Apparently, millions of theretofore more or less normal citizens throughout the West had been
infected with a virulent strain of Russo-Nazi-engineered virus, because they simultaneously
began exhibiting the hallmark symptoms of what we now know as White Supremacist Behavioral
Disorder, or Fascist Oppositional Disorder (the folks who update the DSM are still arguing over
the official name). It started with the Brexit referendum, spread to America with the election
of Trump, and there have been a rash of outbreaks in Europe, like
the one we're currently experiencing in Germany . These fascistic symptoms have mostly
manifest as people refusing to vote as instructed, and expressing oppressive views on the
Internet, but there have also been more serious crimes, including several assaults and murders
perpetrated by white supremacists (which, of course, never happened when Obama was President,
because the Nazis hadn't been "emboldened" yet).
Now, despite what the Russian propagandists will tell you, this recent outbreak of
fascistic behavior has nothing whatsoever to do with these people's frustration with
neoliberalism or the supranational Corporatocracy that has been expanding its global empire
with total impunity for twenty-five years. And it definitely has nothing at all to do with
supranational political unions, or the supersession of national sovereignty by
corporate-concocted "free trade" agreements, or the relentless privatization of everything, or
the fear that a lot of people have that their cultures are being gradually erased and replaced
with a globalized, corporate-friendly, multicultural, market-based culture, which is merely a
simulation of culture, and which contains no actual cultural values (because exchange value is
its only operative value), but which sells the empty signifiers of their eviscerated cultural
values back to them so they can wear their "identities" like designer brands as they hunch
together in silence at Starbucks posting pictures of themselves on Facebook.
No, this discontent with the political establishment, corporate elites, and the
mainstream media has nothing to do with any of that. It's not like global Capitalism, following
the collapse of the U.S.S.R. (its last external ideological adversary), has been restructuring
the entire planet in accordance with its geopolitical interests, or doing away with national
sovereignty, and other nationalistic concepts that no longer serve a useful purpose in a world
where a single ideological system (one backed by the most fearsome military in history) reigns
completely unopposed. If that were the case, well, it might behoove us to question whether this
outbreak of Nazism, racism, and other forms of "hate," was somehow connected to that historical
development and maybe even try to articulate some sort of leftist analysis of that.
This hypothetical leftist analysis might want to focus on how Capitalism is fundamentally
opposed to Despotism, and is essentially a value-decoding machine which renders everything and
everyone it touches essentially valueless interchangeable commodities whose worth is determined
by market forces, rather than by societies and cultures, or religions, or other despotic
systems (wherein values are established and enforced arbitrarily, by the despot, the church, or
the ruling party, or by a group of people who share an affinity and decide they want to live a
certain way). This is where it would get sort of tricky, because it (i.e., this hypothetical
analysis) would have to delve into the history of Capitalism, and how it evolved out of
medieval Despotism, and how it has been decoding despotic values for something like five
hundred years. This historical delving (which would probably be too long for people to read on
their phones) would demonstrate how Capitalism has been an essentially progressive force in
terms of getting us out of Despotism (which, for most folks, wasn't very much fun) by fomenting
bourgeois revolutions and imposing some semblance of democracy on societies. It would follow
Capitalism's inexorable advance all the way up to the Twentieth Century, in which its final
external ideological adversary, fake Communism, suddenly imploded, delivering us to the world
we now live in a world where a single ideology rules the planet unopposed from without
, and where any opposition to that global ideology can only be internal, or insurgent, in
nature (e.g, terrorism, extremism, and so on). Being a hypothetical leftist analysis,
it would, at this point, need to stress that, despite the fact that Capitalism helped deliver
us from Despotism, and improved the state of society generally (compared to most societies that
preceded it), we nonetheless would like to transcend it, or evolve out of it toward some type
of society where people, and everything else, including the biosphere we live in, are not
interchangeable, valueless commodities exchanged by members of a global corporatocracy who have
no essential values, or beliefs, or principles, other than the worship of money. After having
covered all that, we might want to offer more a nuanced view of the current neo-nationalist
reaction to the Corporatocracy's ongoing efforts to restructure and privatize the rest of the
planet. Not that we would support this reaction, or in any way refrain from calling
neo-nationalism what it is (i.e., reactionary, despotic, and doomed), but this nuanced view
we'd hypothetically offer, by analyzing the larger sociopolitical and historical forces at
play, might help us to see the way forward more clearly, and who knows, maybe eventually
propose some kind of credible leftist alternative to the "global neoliberalism vs.
neo-nationalism" double bind we appear to be hopelessly stuck in at the moment.
Luckily, we don't have to do that (i.e., articulate such a leftist analysis of any such
larger historical forces). Because there is no corporatocracy not really. That's just a fake
word the Russians made up and are spreading around on the Internet to distract us while the
Nazis take over. No, the logical explanation for Trump, Brexit, and anything else that
threatens the expansion of global Capitalism, and the freedom, democracy, and prosperity it
offers, is that millions of people across the world, all at once, for no apparent reason, woke
up one day full-blown fascists and started looking around for repulsive demagogues to swear
fanatical allegiance to. Yes, that makes a lot more sense than all that complicated stuff about
history and hegemonic ideological systems, which is probably just Russian propaganda anyway, in
which case there is absolutely no reason to read any boring year-old pieces, like this one in TheEuropeanFinancialReview , or this report by
Corporate Watch , from way back in the year 2000, about the rise of global corporate
power.
So, apologies for wasting your time with all that pseudo-Marxian gobbledygook. Let's just
pretend this never happened, and get back to more important matters, like statistically proving
that Donald Trump got elected President because of racism, misogyny, transphobia, xenophobia,
or some other type of behavioral disorder, and pulling down Confederate statues, or kneeling
during the National Anthem, or whatever happens to be trending this week. Oh, yeah, and
debating punching Nazis, or people wearing MAGA hats. We definitely need to sort all that out
before we can move ahead with helping the Corporatocracy remove Trump from office, or at least
ensure he remains surrounded by their loyal generals, CEOs, and Goldman Sachs guys until the
next election. Whatever we do, let's not get distracted by that stuff I just distracted you
with. I know, it's tempting, but, given what's at stake, we need to maintain our laser focus on
issues related to identity politics, or else well, you know, the Nazis win.
C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in
Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing
(USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is
published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org .
Yesterday evening on RT a USA lady, as usual forgot the name, spoke about the USA. In a
matter of fact tone she said things like 'they (Deep State) have got him (Trump) in the
box'.
They, Deep State again, are now wondering if they will continue to try to control the
world, or if they should stop the attempt, and retreat into the USA.
Also as matter of fact she said 'the CIA has always been the instrument of Deep State, from
Kenndy to Nine Eleven'.
Another statement was 'no president ever was in control'.
How USA citizens continue to believe they live in a democracy, I cannot understand.
Yesterday the intentions of the new Dutch government were made public, alas most Dutch
also dot not see that the Netherlands since 2005 no longer is a democracy, just a province of
Brussels.
Brexit is about Britons who want their country back, a movement indeed getting
stronger and stronger in EU member states, but ignored by the ruling 'elites'.
No doubt many do want their country back, but what concerns me is that all of a sudden we
have the concept of "independence" plastered all over the place. Such concepts don't get
promoted unless the ruling elites see ways to turn those sentiments to their favor.
A lot of these so called "revolutions" are fomented by the elite only to be subverted
and perverted by them in the end. They've had a lot of practice co-opting revolutions and
independence movements. (And everything else.)
"Independence" is now so fashionable (as was Communism among the "elite" back in the '30s),
that they are even teaching and fostering independence to kids in kindergarten here in the
US. That strikes me as most amusing. Imagine "learning" independence in state run
brainwashing factories.
"Now, despite what the Russian propagandists will tell you, this recent outbreak of
fascistic behavior has nothing whatsoever to do with these people's frustration with
neoliberalism or the supranational Corporatocracy that has been expanding its global empire
with total impunity for twenty-five years. And it definitely has nothing at all to do with
supranational political unions, or the supersession of national sovereignty by
corporate-concocted "free trade" agreements, or the relentless privatization of everything,
or the fear that a lot of people have that their cultures are being gradually erased and
replaced with a globalized, corporate-friendly, multicultural, market-based culture, which
is merely a simulation of culture, and which contains no actual cultural values (because
exchange value is its only operative value), but which sells the empty signifiers of their
eviscerated cultural values back to them so they can wear their "identities" like designer
brands as they hunch together in silence at Starbucks posting pictures of themselves on
Facebook."
Very impressed with this article, never really paid attention to CJ's articles but that is
now changing!
Chris Hedges, who is doubtless a courageous journalist and an intelligent commentator, suggests
that if we are to discuss the anti-Russia campaign realistically, as baseless in fact, and as
contrived for an effect and to further/protect some particular interests, we can hardly avoid the
question: Who or what interest is served by the anti-Russia campaign?
An interesting observation "The Democratic Party doesn't actually function as a political
party. It's about perpetual mass mobilization and a hyperventilating public relations arm, all paid
for by corporate donors. The base of the party has no real say in the leadership or the policies of
the party, as Bernie Sanders and his followers found out."
The other relevant observation is that there is no American left. It was destroyed as a
political movement. The USA is a right wing country.
Notable quotes:
"... This obsession with Russia is a tactic used by the ruling elite, and in particular the Democratic Party, to avoid facing a very unpleasant reality: that their unpopularity is the outcome of their policies of deindustrialization and the assault against working men and women and poor people of color. ..."
"... It is the result of the slashing of basic government services, including, of course, welfare, that Clinton gutted; deregulation, a decaying infrastructure, including public schools, and the de facto tax boycott by corporations. It is the result of the transformation of the country into an oligarchy. The nativist revolt on the right, and the aborted insurgency within the Democratic Party, makes sense when you see what they have done to the country. ..."
"... The Democratic Party, in particular, is driving this whole Russia witch-hunt. It cannot face its complicity in the destruction of our civil liberties -- and remember, Barack Obama's assault on civil liberties was worse than those carried out by George W. Bush -- and the destruction of our economy and our democratic institutions. ..."
"... Politicians like the Clintons, Pelosi and Schumer are creations of Wall Street. That is why they are so virulent about pushing back against the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. ..."
"... The Democratic Party doesn't actually function as a political party. It's about perpetual mass mobilization and a hyperventilating public relations arm, all paid for by corporate donors. The base of the party has no real say in the leadership or the policies of the party, as Bernie Sanders and his followers found out. They are props in the sterile political theater. ..."
"... These party elites, consumed by greed, myopia and a deep cynicism, have a death grip on the political process. They're not going to let it go, even if it all implodes. ..."
"... The whole exercise was farcical. The White House would leak some bogus story to Judy Miller or Michael Gordon, and then go on the talk shows to say, 'as the Times reported .' It gave these lies the veneer of independence and reputable journalism. This was a massive institutional failing, and one the paper has never faced. ..."
"... The media's anti-Russia narrative has been embraced by large portions of what presents itself as the "left." ..."
"... Well, don't get me started on the American left. First of all, there is no American left -- not a left that has any kind of seriousness, that understands political or revolutionary theories, that's steeped in economic study, that understands how systems of power work, especially corporate and imperial power. The left is caught up in the same kind of cults of personality that plague the rest of society. It focuses on Trump, as if Trump is the central problem. Trump is a product, a symptom of a failed system and dysfunctional democracy, not the disease. ..."
"... For good measure, they purged the liberal class -- look at what they did to Henry Wallace -- so that Cold War "liberals" equated capitalism with democracy, and imperialism with freedom and liberty. I lived in Switzerland and France. There are still residues of a militant left in Europe, which gives Europeans something to build upon. But here we almost have to begin from scratch. ..."
"... The corporate elites we have to overthrow already hold power. And unless we build a broad, popular resistance movement, which takes a lot of patient organizing among working men and women, we are going to be steadily ground down. ..."
"... The corporate state has made it very hard to make a living if you hold fast to this radical critique. You will never get tenure. You probably won't get academic appointments. You won't win prizes. You won't get grants. ..."
"... The elite schools, and I have taught as a visiting professor at a few of them, such as Princeton and Columbia, replicate the structure and goals of corporations. If you want to even get through a doctoral committee, much less a tenure committee, you must play it really, really safe. You must not challenge the corporate-friendly stance that permeates the institution and is imposed through corporate donations and the dictates of wealthy alumni. Half of the members of most of these trustee boards should be in prison! ..."
"... Speculation in the 17th century in Britain was a crime. Speculators were hanged. And today they run the economy and the country. They have used the capturing of wealth to destroy the intellectual, cultural and artistic life in the country and snuff out our democracy. There is a word for these people: traitors. ..."
But the whole idea that the Russians swung the election to Trump is absurd. It's really premised
on the unproven claim that Russia gave the Podesta emails to WikiLeaks, and the release of these
emails turned tens, or hundreds of thousands, of Clinton supporters towards Trump. This doesn't make
any sense. Either that, or, according to the director of national intelligence, RT America, where
I have a show, got everyone to vote for the Green Party.
This obsession with Russia is a tactic used by the ruling elite, and in particular the Democratic
Party, to avoid facing a very unpleasant reality: that their unpopularity is the outcome of their
policies of deindustrialization and the assault against working men and women and poor people of
color. It is the result of disastrous trade agreements like NAFTA that abolished good-paying union
jobs and shipped them to places like Mexico, where workers without benefits are paid $3.00 an hour.
It is the result of the explosion of a system of mass incarceration, begun by Bill Clinton with the
1994 omnibus crime bill, and the tripling and quadrupling of prison sentences. It is the result of
the slashing of basic government services, including, of course, welfare, that Clinton gutted; deregulation,
a decaying infrastructure, including public schools, and the de facto tax boycott by corporations.
It is the result of the transformation of the country into an oligarchy. The nativist revolt on the
right, and the aborted insurgency within the Democratic Party, makes sense when you see what they
have done to the country.
Police forces have been turned into quasi-military entities that terrorize marginal communities,
where people have been stripped of all of their rights and can be shot with impunity; in fact over
three are killed a day. The state shoots and locks up poor people of color as a form of social control.
They are quite willing to employ the same form of social control on any other segment of the population
that becomes restive.
The Democratic Party, in particular, is driving this whole Russia witch-hunt. It cannot face
its complicity in the destruction of our civil liberties -- and remember, Barack Obama's assault
on civil liberties was worse than those carried out by George W. Bush -- and the destruction of our
economy and our democratic institutions.
Politicians like the Clintons, Pelosi and Schumer are creations of Wall Street. That is why
they are so virulent about pushing back against the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. Without
Wall Street money, they would not hold political power. The Democratic Party doesn't actually function
as a political party. It's about perpetual mass mobilization and a hyperventilating public relations
arm, all paid for by corporate donors. The base of the party has no real say in the leadership or
the policies of the party, as Bernie Sanders and his followers found out. They are props in the sterile
political theater.
These party elites, consumed by greed, myopia and a deep cynicism, have a death grip on the political
process. They're not going to let it go, even if it all implodes.
... ... ...
DN: Let's come back to this question of the Russian hacking news story. You raised the ability
to generate a story, which has absolutely no factual foundation, nothing but assertions by various
intelligence agencies, presented as an assessment that is beyond question. What is your evaluation
of this?
CH: The commercial broadcast networks, and that includes CNN and MSNBC, are not in the business
of journalism. They hardly do any. Their celebrity correspondents are courtiers to the elite. They
speculate about and amplify court gossip, which is all the accusations about Russia, and they repeat
what they are told to repeat. They sacrifice journalism and truth for ratings and profit. These cable
news shows are one of many revenue streams in a corporate structure. They compete against other revenue
streams. The head of CNN, Jeff Zucker, who helped create the fictional persona of Donald Trump on
"Celebrity Apprentice," has turned politics on CNN into a 24-hour reality show. All nuance, ambiguity,
meaning and depth, along with verifiable fact, are sacrificed for salacious entertainment. Lying,
racism, bigotry and conspiracy theories are given platforms and considered newsworthy, often espoused
by people whose sole quality is that they are unhinged. It is news as burlesque.
I was on the investigative team at the New York Times during the lead-up to the Iraq
War. I was based in Paris and covered Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. Lewis Scooter Libby,
Dick Cheney, Richard Perle and maybe somebody in an intelligence agency, would confirm whatever story
the administration was attempting to pitch. Journalistic rules at the Times say you can't
go with a one-source story. But if you have three or four supposedly independent sources confirming
the same narrative, then you can go with it, which is how they did it. The paper did not break any
rules taught at Columbia journalism school, but everything they wrote was a lie.
The whole exercise was farcical. The White House would leak some bogus story to Judy Miller or
Michael Gordon, and then go on the talk shows to say, 'as the Times reported .' It gave these lies
the veneer of independence and reputable journalism. This was a massive institutional failing, and
one the paper has never faced.
DN: The CIA pitches the story, and then the Times gets the verification from those who
pitch it to them.
CH: It's not always pitched. And not much of this came from the CIA The CIA wasn't buying the
"weapons of mass destruction" hysteria.
DN: It goes the other way too?
CH: Sure. Because if you're trying to have access to a senior official, you'll constantly be putting
in requests, and those officials will decide when they want to see you. And when they want to see
you, it's usually because they have something to sell you.
DN: The media's anti-Russia narrative has been embraced by large portions of what presents itself
as the "left."
CH: Well, don't get me started on the American left. First of all, there is no American left --
not a left that has any kind of seriousness, that understands political or revolutionary theories,
that's steeped in economic study, that understands how systems of power work, especially corporate
and imperial power. The left is caught up in the same kind of cults of personality that plague the
rest of society. It focuses on Trump, as if Trump is the central problem. Trump is a product, a symptom
of a failed system and dysfunctional democracy, not the disease.
If you attempt to debate most of those on the supposedly left, they reduce discussion to this
cartoonish vision of politics.
The serious left in this country was decimated. It started with the suppression of radical movements
under Woodrow Wilson, then the "Red Scares" in the 1920s, when they virtually destroyed our labor
movement and our radical press, and then all of the purges in the 1950s. For good measure, they purged
the liberal class -- look at what they did to Henry Wallace -- so that Cold War "liberals" equated
capitalism with democracy, and imperialism with freedom and liberty. I lived in Switzerland and France.
There are still residues of a militant left in Europe, which gives Europeans something to build upon.
But here we almost have to begin from scratch.
I've battled continuously with Antifa and the Black Bloc. I think they're kind of poster children
for what I would consider phenomenal political immaturity. Resistance is not a form of personal catharsis.
We are not fighting the rise of fascism in the 1930s. The corporate elites we have to overthrow already
hold power. And unless we build a broad, popular resistance movement, which takes a lot of patient
organizing among working men and women, we are going to be steadily ground down.
So Trump's not the problem. But just that sentence alone is going to kill most discussions with
people who consider themselves part of the left.
The corporate state has made it very hard to make a living if you hold fast to this radical critique.
You will never get tenure. You probably won't get academic appointments. You won't win prizes. You
won't get grants. The New York Times , if they review your book, will turn it over to a
dutiful mandarin like George Packer to trash it -- as he did with my last book. The elite schools,
and I have taught as a visiting professor at a few of them, such as Princeton and Columbia, replicate
the structure and goals of corporations. If you want to even get through a doctoral committee, much
less a tenure committee, you must play it really, really safe. You must not challenge the corporate-friendly
stance that permeates the institution and is imposed through corporate donations and the dictates
of wealthy alumni. Half of the members of most of these trustee boards should be in prison!
Speculation in the 17th century in Britain was a crime. Speculators were hanged. And today they
run the economy and the country. They have used the capturing of wealth to destroy the intellectual,
cultural and artistic life in the country and snuff out our democracy. There is a word for these
people: traitors.
US Congress allowed to drag itself into this propaganda swamp by politized Intelligence community, which became a major political
player, that can dictate Congress what to do and what not to do. Now it is not that easy to get out of this "intelligence swamp"
Notable quotes:
"... The 2017 ICA on Russia was conceived in an atmosphere of despair and denial, birthed by Democrats and Republicans alike who were stunned by Trump's surprise electoral victory in November 2016. To say that this issue was a political event would be a gross understatement; the 2017 Russian ICA will go down in history as one of the most politicized intelligence documents ever, regardless of the degree of accuracy eventually afforded its contents. The very fact that the document is given the sobriquet "Intelligence Community" is itself a political act, designed to impart a degree of scrutiny and community consensus that simply did not exist when it came to the production of that document, or the classified reports that it was derived from. ..."
"... This was a report prepared by handpicked analysts ..."
"... iven the firestorm of political intrigue and controversy initiated by the publication of this document, the notion of a "general consensus" regarding the level of trust imparted to it by the Senate Select Intelligence Committee does not engender confidence. ..."
"... It was this document that spawned the issue of "collusion." While Sens. Burr and Warner can state that "collusion" is still an open issue, the fact of the matter is that, in this regard, Trump and his campaign advisors have already been found guilty in the court of public opinion, especially among those members of the public and the media who were vehemently opposed to his candidacy and ultimate victory. ..."
"... One need only review the comments of the various Democratic members of the Senate Select Committee, their counterparts serving on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as the various experts and pundits in the media, to underscore the degree to which prejudice has "worked its evil" when it comes to the issue of collusion and the Trump campaign in this regard. ..."
"... purchase of advertisements on various social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, by the Russians or their proxies. With regard to these advertisements, Senator Burr painted a dire picture. "It seems," he declared, "that the overall theme of the Russian involvement in the US elections was to create chaos at every level." ..."
"... No one wants to be told that they have been victims of a con; this is especially true when dealing with the sacred trust imparted to the American citizenry by the Constitution of the United States regarding the free and fair election of those who will represent us in higher office. American politics, for better or worse, is about the personal connection a given candidate has with the voter, a gut feeling that this person shares common values and beliefs. ..."
"... the percentage of Americans that participate in national elections is low. Those that do tend to be people who care enough about one or more issues to actually get out and vote. To categorize these dedicated citizens as brain-dead dupes who are susceptible to social media-based click advertisements is an insult to American democracy. ..."
"... There is a world of difference between Russian intelligence services allegedly hacking politically sensitive emails and selectively releasing them for the sole purpose of undermining a given Presidential candidate's electoral prospects, and mimicking social media-based advertisements addressing issues that are already at play in an election. The Russians didn't invent the ongoing debate in the United States over gun control (i.e., the "Second Amendment" issue), race relations (the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri) or immigration ("The Wall"). ..."
"... These were, and remain, core issues that are at the heart of the American domestic political discourse, regardless of where one stands. You either know the issues, or you don't; it is an insult to the American voter to suggest that they are so malleable that $100,000 of targeted social media-based advertisements can swing their vote, even if 10 million of them viewed it. ..."
The 'briefing' is just another exercise in preferred narrative boosting.
The co-chairmen of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence held a press briefing Thursday on the status of their ongoing investigation
into Russian meddling in the American electoral process. Content-wise, the press briefing and the question and answer session were
an exercise in information futility -- they provided little substance and nothing new. The investigation was still ongoing, the senators
explained, and there was still work to be done.
Nine months into the Committee's work, the best Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.), could offer was that there
was "general consensus" among committee members and their staff that they trust the findings of the Intelligence Community Assessment
(ICA) of January 2017, which gave high confidence to the charge that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election. The issue
of possible collusion between Russia and members of the campaign of Donald Trump, however, "is still open."
Frankly speaking, this isn't good enough.
The 2017 ICA on Russia was conceived in an atmosphere of despair and denial, birthed by Democrats and Republicans alike who
were stunned by Trump's surprise electoral victory in November 2016. To say that this issue was a political event would be a gross
understatement; the 2017 Russian ICA will go down in history as one of the most politicized intelligence documents ever, regardless
of the degree of accuracy eventually afforded its contents. The very fact that the document is given the sobriquet "Intelligence
Community" is itself a political act, designed to impart a degree of scrutiny and community consensus that simply did not exist when
it came to the production of that document, or the classified reports that it was derived from.
This was a report prepared by handpicked analysts from three of the Intelligence Community's sixteen agencies (the
CIA, NSA, and FBI) who operated outside of the National Intelligence Council (the venue for the production of Intelligence Community
products such as the Russian ICA), and void of the direction and supervision of a dedicated National Intelligence Officer. Overcoming
this deficient family tree represents a high hurdle, even before the issue of the credibility of the sources and methods used to
underpin the ICA's findings are discussed. Given the firestorm of political intrigue and controversy initiated by the publication
of this document, the notion of a "general consensus" regarding the level of trust imparted to it by the Senate Select Intelligence
Committee does not engender confidence.
It was this document that spawned the issue of "collusion." While Sens. Burr and Warner can state that "collusion" is still
an open issue, the fact of the matter is that, in this regard, Trump and his campaign advisors have already been found guilty in
the court of public opinion, especially among those members of the public and the media who were vehemently opposed to his candidacy
and ultimate victory. Insofar as the committee's investigation serves as a legitimate search for truth, it does so as a post-conviction
appeal. However, as the distinguished Supreme Court Justice Joseph McKenna noted in his opinion in Berger v. United States
(1921):
The remedy by appeal is inadequate. It comes after the trial, and, if prejudice exist, it has worked its evil and a judgment
of it in a reviewing tribunal is precarious. It goes there fortified by presumptions, and nothing can be more elusive of estimate
or decision than a disposition of a mind in which there is a personal ingredient.
One need only review the comments of the various Democratic members of the Senate Select Committee, their counterparts serving
on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as the various experts and pundits in the media, to underscore the
degree to which prejudice has "worked its evil" when it comes to the issue of collusion and the Trump campaign in this regard.
The two senators proceeded to touch on a new angle recently introduced into their investigation, that of the purchase of advertisements
on various social media platforms, including
Facebook and Twitter, by the
Russians or their proxies. With regard to these advertisements, Senator Burr painted a dire picture. "It seems," he declared, "that
the overall theme of the Russian involvement in the US elections was to create chaos at every level."
No one wants to be told that they have been victims of a con; this is especially true when dealing with the sacred trust imparted
to the American citizenry by the Constitution of the United States regarding the free and fair election of those who will represent
us in higher office. American politics, for better or worse, is about the personal connection a given candidate has with the voter,
a gut feeling that this person shares common values and beliefs.
Nevertheless, the percentage of Americans that participate in national elections is low. Those that do tend to be people who
care enough about one or more issues to actually get out and vote. To categorize these dedicated citizens as brain-dead dupes who
are susceptible to social media-based click advertisements is an insult to American democracy.
There is a world of difference between Russian intelligence services allegedly hacking politically sensitive emails and selectively
releasing them for the sole purpose of undermining a given Presidential candidate's electoral prospects, and mimicking social media-based
advertisements addressing issues that are already at play in an election. The Russians didn't invent the ongoing debate in the United
States over gun control (i.e., the "Second Amendment" issue), race relations (the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri)
or immigration ("The Wall").
These were, and remain, core issues that are at the heart of the American domestic political discourse, regardless of where
one stands. You either know the issues, or you don't; it is an insult to the American voter to suggest that they are so malleable
that $100,000 of targeted social media-based advertisements can swing their vote, even if 10 million of them viewed it.
The take away from the press briefing given by Senator's Burr and Warner was two-fold: One, the Russians meddled, and two, we
don't know if Trump colluded with the Russians. The fact that America is nine months into this investigation with little more to
show now than what could have been said at the start is, in and of itself, an American political tragedy. The Trump administration
has been hobbled by the inertia of this and other investigations derived from the question of Russian meddling. That this process
may yet vindicate President Trump isn't justification for the process itself; in such a case the delay will have hurt more than the
truth. As William Penn, the founder of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, so eloquently noted:
Delays have been more injurious than direct Injustice. They too often starve those they dare not deny. The very Winner is made
a Loser, because he pays twice for his own; like those who purchase Estates Mortgaged before to the full value.
Our law says that to delay Justice is Injustice. Not to have a Right, and not to come of it, differs little. Refuse or Dispatch
is the Duty of a Good Officer.
Senators Burr and Warner, together with their fellow members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and their respective
staffs, would do well to heed those words.
Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control
treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of "Deal
of the Century: How Iran Blocked the West's Road to War" (Clarity Press, 2017).
This is particular dirty campaign to implicate Trump and delegitimize his victory is a part of
color revolution against Trump.
The other noble purpose is to find a scapegoat for the
current problems, especially in Democratic Party, and to preserve Clinton neoliberals rule over
the party for a few more futile years.
Notable quotes:
"... Congress is investigating 3,000 suspicious ads which were run on Facebook. These were claimed to have been bought by "Russia" to influence the U.S. presidential election in favor of Trump. ..."
"... The mini-ads were bought to promote click-bait pages and sites. These pages and sites were created and then promoted to sell further advertisement. The media though, has still not understood the issue. ..."
"... A few thousand users will come and look at a page. Some will 'like' the puppy pictures or the rant against LGBT and further spread the page. Some will click the promoted Google ads. Money then flows into the pockets of the page creator. One can automatize, rinse and repeat this scheme forever. Each such page is a small effort for a small revenue. But the scheme is highly scale-able and parts of it can be automatized. ..."
"... This is, in essence, the same business model traditional media publishers use. One creates "news" and controversies to attract readers. The attention of the readers is then sold to advertisers. The business is no longer a limited to a few rich oligarchic. One no longer needs reporters or a printing press to join in. Anyone can now take part in it. ..."
"... We learned after the election that some youths in Macedonia created whole "news"-websites filled with highly attractive but fake partisan stories. They were not interested in the veracity or political direction of their content. Their only interest was to attract viewers. They made thousands of dollars by selling advertisements on their sites: ..."
"... The teen said his monthly revenue was in the four figures, a considerable sum in a country where the average monthly pay is 360 euros ($383). As he navigated his site's statistics, he dropped nuggets of journalism advice. ..."
"... After the mystery of "Russian" $3 ads for "adorable puppies" pages on Facebook has been solved, Congress and the New York Times will have to move on. There next subject is probably the "Russian influence campaign" on Youtube. ..."
"... Russian Car Crash Compilations have for years attracted millions of viewers. The "Russians" want to increase road rage on U.S. highways. This again will - according to expert Clinton Watts - "amplify divisive political issues across the political spectrum". ..."
"... "Russian interference" in Western faux democracies is just more Fake News that distracts from the real issues. And all those real issues come down to this: the need to reign in the oligarchs. This is very easy to do via progressive taxation (with no loopholes). ..."
"... The two words that the establishment fears most: Progressive Taxation . ..."
"... Great article. I especially like the tactful way that modern clickbait farming is obliquely tied to the MSM business model. Facebook and Google have a lot to answer for. ..."
"... Russia gate, since it is unnecessarily mentally exhausting and intellectually futile, it is namely pure provocation and as such it should be ignored and not proliferated even in its criticism making a fakes news a real news by sole fact of mentioning it on the respectable independent sites. ..."
"... The whole digital media and ad business that have built the Google and Facebook media juggernauts is all a giant scam. Smart advertisers like P&G are recognizing it for what it is and will slowly pullback. It is only a matter of time before others catch on and these companies will bleed ad revenues. ..."
Congress is investigating 3,000 suspicious ads which were run on Facebook. These were
claimed to have been bought by "Russia" to influence the U.S. presidential election in favor of
Trump.
It now turns out that these Facebook ads had nothing to do with the election. The mini-ads
were bought to promote click-bait pages and sites. These pages and sites were created and then
promoted to sell further advertisement. The media though, has still not understood the
issue.
Providing new evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Facebook disclosed on
Wednesday that it had identified more than $100,000 worth of divisive ads on hot-button
issues purchased by a shadowy Russian company linked to the Kremlin.
...
The disclosure adds to the evidence of the broad scope of the Russian influence campaign,
which American intelligence agencies concluded was designed to damage Hillary Clinton and
boost Donald J. Trump during the election.
Like any Congress investigation the current one concerned with Facebook ads is leaking like
a sieve. What oozes out makes little sense.
If "Russia" aimed to make Congress and U.S. media a laughing stock it surely achieved
that.
Today the NYT says that the ads
were posted "in disguise" by "the Russians" to promote variously themed Facebook pages:
There was "Defend the 2nd," a Facebook page for gun-rights supporters, festooned with
firearms and tough rhetoric. There was a rainbow-hued page for gay rights activists, "LGBT
United." There was even a Facebook group for animal lovers with memes of adorable puppies
that spread across the site with the help of paid ads
No one has explained how these pages are supposed to be connected to a Russian "influence"
campaign. It is unexplained how these are supposed to connected to the 2016 election. That is
simply asserted because Facebook said, for unknown reasons, that these ads may have come from
some Russian agency. How Facebook has determined that is not known.
With each detail that leaks from the "Russian ads" investigation the propaganda framework of
"election manipulation" falls further apart:
Late Monday, Facebook said in a post that about 10 million people had seen the ads in
question. About 44 percent of the ads were seen before the 2016 election and the rest after,
the company said
The original story propagandized that "Russia" intended to influence the election in favor
of Trump. But why then was the majority of the ads in questions run later after November 9? And
how would an animal-lovers page with adorable puppy pictures help to achieve Trumps election
victory?
Roughly 25% of the ads were never shown to anyone. That's because advertising auctions are
designed so that ads reach people based on relevance, and certain ads may not reach anyone as
a result.
...
For 50% of the ads, less than $3 was spent; for 99% of the ads, less than $1,000 was spent.
Of the 3,000 ads Facebook originally claimed were "Russian" only 2,200 were ever viewed.
Most of the advertisements were mini-ads which, for the price of a coffee, promoted private
pages related to hobbies and a wide spectrum of controversial issues. The majority of the ads
ran after the election.
All that "adds to the evidence of the broad scope of the Russian influence campaign ...
designed to damage Hillary Clinton and boost Donald J. Trump during the election"?
No.
But the NYT still finds "experts" who believe in the "Russian influence" nonsense and find
the most stupid reasons to justify their claims:
Clinton Watts, a former F.B.I. agent now at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in
Philadelphia, said Russia had been entrepreneurial in trying to develop diverse channels of
influence. Some, like the dogs page, may have been created without a specific goal and held
in reserve for future use.
Puppy pictures for "future use"? Nonsense. Lunacy! The pages described and the ads leading to them are typical click-bait, not a political
influence op.
The for-profit scheme runs as follows: One builds pages with "hot" stuff that attracts lots of viewers. One creates ad-space on
these pages and fills it with Google ads. One promotes the spiked pages by buying $3 Facebook
mini-ads for them.
A few thousand users will come and look at a page. Some will 'like' the puppy pictures or
the rant against LGBT and further spread the page. Some will click the promoted Google ads.
Money then flows into the pockets of the page creator. One can automatize, rinse and repeat this scheme forever. Each such page is a small effort
for a small revenue. But the scheme is highly scale-able and parts of it can be
automatized.
This is, in essence, the same business model traditional media publishers use. One creates
"news" and controversies to attract readers. The attention of the readers is then sold to
advertisers. The business is no longer a limited to a few rich oligarchic. One no longer needs
reporters or a printing press to join in. Anyone can now take part in it.
We learned after
the election that some youths in Macedonia created whole "news"-websites filled with highly
attractive but fake partisan stories. They were not interested in the veracity or political
direction of their content. Their only interest was to attract viewers. They made thousands of
dollars by selling advertisements on their sites:
The teen said his monthly revenue was in the four figures, a considerable sum in a country
where the average monthly pay is 360 euros ($383). As he navigated his site's statistics, he
dropped nuggets of journalism advice.
"You have to write what people want to see, not what you want to show," he said, scrolling
through The Political Insider's stories as a large banner read "ARREST HILLARY NOW."
The 3,000 Facebook ads Congress is investigating are part of a similar scheme. The mini-ads
promoted pages with hot button issues and click-bait puppy pictures. These pages were
themselves created to generate ad-clicks and revenue. As Facebook claims that "Russia" is
behind them, we will likely find some Russian teens who simply repeated the scheme their
Macedonian friends were running on.
With its "Russian influence" scare campaign the NYT follows the same business model. It is
producing fake news which attracts viewers and readers who's attention is then sold to
advertisers. Facebook is also profiting from this. Its current piecemeal release of vague
information keeps its name in the news.
After the mystery of "Russian" $3 ads for "adorable puppies" pages on Facebook has been
solved, Congress and the New York Times will have to move on. There next subject is probably
the "Russian influence campaign" on Youtube.
Russian Car Crash
Compilations have for years attracted millions of viewers. The "Russians" want to increase
road rage on U.S. highways. This again will - according to expert Clinton Watts - "amplify
divisive political issues across the political spectrum".
The car crash compilations, like the puppy pages, are another sign that Russia is waging war
against the people of the United States!
You don't believe that? You should. Trust your experienced politician!
This gets more chilling daily : now we learn Russia targeted Americans on Facebook by
"demographics, geography, gender & interests," across websites & devices, reached
millions, kept going after Nov. An attack on all Americans, not just HRC campaign washingtonpost.com/business/econo
It indeed gets more chilling. It's fall. It also generates ad revenue.
Posted by b on October 3, 2017 at 02:09 PM |
Permalink
"Russian interference" in Western faux democracies is just more Fake News that distracts from
the real issues. And all those real issues come down to this: the need to reign in the
oligarchs.
This is very easy to do via progressive taxation (with no loopholes).
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
The two words that the establishment fears most: Progressive Taxation .
You're presenting a very good concept/meme to understand: Fake news is click bait for
gain.
The same can be said for any sensationalism or shocking event - like the Kurdish
referendum, like the Catalonia referendum, like the Vegas shooting - or like confrontational
or dogmatic comments in threads about those events.
Everywhere we turn someone is trying to game us for some kind of gain. What matters is to
step back from the front lines where our sense is accosted and offended, to step back from
the automatic reflex, and to remember that someone triggered that reflex, deliberately, for
their gain, not ours.
We have to reside in reason and equanimity, because the moment we indulge in our righteous
anger or our strong convictions, the odds are extremely good that someone is playing us.
It's a wicked world, but in fact we live in an age when we can see its meta
characteristics like never before.
Jesus Christ, every friggin day we hear about Russians and then the next the lies falls
apart, STILL the stupid dumb liberal media keep coming up with new conspiracies spread them
as fact, and then try justify them even when they get debunked!
These people are indeed lunatic.
What we see is the biggest psyop., propaganda disinformation campaig ever in the western
media, far more powerful than "nuclear Iraq" of 2003.
Still, and this should be a warning, majority of people in EU/US believe this
nonsense.
I lol'd. But seriously the next step is a false flag implicating Russia. They're getting
nowhere assassinating Russian diplomats and shooting down Russian aircraft, both military and
civilian. Even overthrowing governments who are Russia-friendly hasn't seem to provoke a
response.
But I consider the domestic Russia buzz to be performance art, and I imagine it's become
even grating to some of its participants. How could it not be, unless everyone is heavily
medicated(a lot certainly are)? Anyway it's by design that the western media and the
political classes they serve need a script, they're incapable of discussing actual issues.
Independence has been made quaint.
The line between politics and product marketing has gone.
But no matter if "the Russians" influenced the US election or not - after all that is what
most countries do to each other - the FBI is correct that to be able to target audiences
according to demographics and individual traits is a powerful tool.
The newspapers had a clear agenda. An editorial in The New York Times, headlined In the
Terror by Radio, was used to censure the relatively new medium of radio, which was becoming
a serious competitor in providing news and advertising. "Radio is new but it has adult
responsibilities. It has not mastered itself or the material it uses," said the editorial
leader comment on November 1 1938. In an excellent piece in Slate magazine in 2013,
Jefferson Pooley (associate professor of media and communication at Muhlenberg College) and
Michael J Socolow (associate professor of communication and journalism at the University of
Maine) looked at the continuing popularity of the myth of mass panic and they took to task
NPR's Radiolab programme about the incident and the Radiolab assertion that "The United
States experienced a kind of mass hysteria that we've never seen before." Pooley and
Socolow wrote: "How did the story of panicked listeners begin? Blame America's newspapers.
... AND IT'S NOT A GOOD IDEA TO COPY ORSON WELLES . . . In February 1949, Leonardo Paez and
Eduardo Alcaraz produced a Spanish-language version of Welles's 1938 script for Radio Quito
in Ecuador. The broadcast set off panic. Quito police and fire brigades rushed out of town
to fight the supposed alien invasion force. After it was revealed that the broadcast was
fiction, the panic transformed into a riot. The riot resulted in at least seven deaths,
including those of Paez's girlfriend and nephew. The offices Radio Quito, and El Comercio,
a local newspaper that had participated in the hoax by publishing false reports of
unidentified flying objects in the days preceding the broadcast, were both burned to the
ground.
Jackrabbit 2
No - the two words the Capital system fears the most are SURPLUS VALUE , the control of the
'profit principle' for social not private ends .
Jesus Christ, every friggin day we hear about Russians and then the next the lies falls
apart, STILL the stupid dumb liberal media keep coming up with new conspiracies spread them
as fact, and then try justify them even when they get debunked!
These people are indeed lunatic.
somebody | Oct 3, 2017 3:11:44 PM | 9 The American panic was a myth, the Equadorian panic in 1949 not so much. I listened to this
Radiolab podcast about same ... the details of how they pulled it off in a one-radio station
country pre-internet are interesting and valuable (they widely advertised a very popular music
program which was then "interrupted" by the hoax to ensure near-universal audience (including
the police and other authorities). Very very fews were "in on the joke" and it wasn't a
joke.
whole page on WooW:
http://www.radiolab.org/story/91622-war-of-the-worlds/
Great article.
I especially like the tactful way that modern clickbait farming is obliquely tied to the MSM
business model.
Facebook and Google have a lot to answer for.
"Lankford shocked the world this week by revealing that "Russian Internet trolls" were
stoking the NFL kneeling debate. ... Conservative outlets like Breitbart and Newsmax and
Fox played up the "Russians stoked the kneeling controversy" angle because it was in their
interest to suggest that domestic support for kneeling protests is less than what it
appears....
The Post reported that Lankford's office had cited one of "Boston Antifa's"
tweets. But the example offered read suspiciously like a young net-savvy American goofing
on antifa stereotypes "More gender inclusivity with NFL fans and gluten free options at
stadiums We're liking the new NFL #NewNFL #TakeAKnee #TakeTheKnee." ...
The group was most
likely a pair of yahoos from Oregon named Alexis Esteb and Brandon Krebs. "
Pity Rolling Stone got caught up in that fake college rape allegation, they have actually
done some solid reporting. Every MSM outlet has had multiple fake stories, so should RS be
shunned for life for one bad story?
It is time that sane part of independent media understood that there is no more need to
rationally respond to psychotic delusions of Deep State puppets in Russia gate, since it is
unnecessarily mentally exhausting and intellectually futile, it is namely pure provocation
and as such it should be ignored and not proliferated even in its criticism making a fakes
news a real news by sole fact of mentioning it on the respectable independent sites.
There are only two effective responses to provocation namely silence or violence, anything
else plays the book of provocateurs.
Now they're seriously undermining their claims of intentionality ... as well as their wildly
inflated claims effect on outcome or even effective "undermining" ... again, compared to
Citizens United and the long-count of 2000 ... negligible....
And still insisting that Hillary Clinton is Russia's Darth Vader against whom unlimited
resources are marshalled because she must be stopped ... even though she damn near won... and
the reasons she lost seems unrelated to such vagaries as the DNC e-mails or facebook
campaigns (unless you believe she had a god-given right to each and every vote)
Why do you think this is important enough to make the effort to write another blog entry B?
Everyone who wants to know that this is all fantasy knows by now.
'Congress is investigating 3,000 suspicious ads which were run on Facebook. These were
claimed to have been bought by "Russia" to influence the U.S. presidential election in favor
of Trump.
This is the same US congress that regularly marches off to Israel to receive orders
This isn't about the "truth" (or lies) wrt Russian involvement, it's about the
increasingly rapid failure of the Government/Establishment's narrative ...
Increasingly they can't even keep their accusations "alive" for more than a few days ...
and some of their accusations (like the one here, that some "Russian" sites were created and
not used, but to be held for use at some future date) become fairly ridiculous ... and the
"remedy" to "Russians" creating clickbait sites for some future nefarious use, I think can
only be banning all Russians from creating sites ... or maybe using facebook altogether ...
all with no evidence of evil-doers actually doing evil...
It's rather like Jared Kushner's now THIRD previously undisclosed private e-mail account
... fool me once versus how disorganized/dumb/arrogant/crooked is this guy?
Sorry to be off topic but yesterday the Saker of the Vineyard published a couple of articles
about Catalonia. The first was a diatribe, a nasty hatchet job on the Catalan people which
included the following referring to the Catalan people:
"The Problems they have because with their corruption, inefficiency, mismanagement,
inability and sometimes the simplest stupidity, are always the fault of others (read
Spaniards here) which gives them "carte blanche" to keep going on with it."
"... They (the independistas) are NATIONAL SOCIALIST (aka NAZI) in their Ideology"
Then Saker published an article by Peter Koenig that was reasonable and what we have come
to expect. Then he forbade all comments on either of the two articles. My comment was banned,
which simply said in my opinion from working for fourteen years in Spain that the Catalans
were extremely efficient in comparison with their Madrid counterparts.
I must admit that I became a fan of watching those Russian car crashes that were captured by
the cams many russian drivers keep on their dash boards. Some of these were very funny. I was
not aware that made me a victim of Putin propaganda. In any case, they are not that
interesting anymore once they were commercialized. That was about 10 years ago.
The whole digital media and ad business that have built the Google and Facebook media
juggernauts is all a giant scam. Smart advertisers like P&G are recognizing it for what
it is and will slowly pullback. It is only a matter of time before others catch on and these
companies will bleed ad revenues.
OT - more from comedy central - daily USA press briefing from today...
"QUESTION: On Iran, would you and the State Department say, as Secretary Mattis said
today, that staying in the JCPOA would be in the U.S. national interest?
MS NAUERT: Yeah.
QUESTION: Is this a position you share?
MS NAUERT: So I'm certainly familiar with what Secretary Mattis said on Capitol Hill
today. Secretary Mattis, of course, one of many people who is providing expertise and counsel
to the President on the issue of Iran and the JCPOA. The President is getting lots of
information on that. We have about 12 days or so, I think, to make our determination for the
next JCPOA guideline.
The administration looks at JCPOA as – the fault in the JCPOA as not looking at the
totality of Iran's bad behavior. Secretary Tillerson talked about that at length at the UN
General Assembly. So did the President as well. We know that Iran is responsible for terror
attacks. We know that Iran arms the Houthi rebels in Yemen, which leads to a more miserable
failed state, awful situation in Yemen, for example. We know what they're doing in Syria.
Where you find the Iranian Government, you can often find terrible things happening in the
world. This administration is very clear about highlighting that and will look at Iran in
sort of its totality of all of its bad behaviors, not just the nuclear deal.
I don't want to get ahead of the discussions that are ongoing with this – within the
administration, as it pertains to Iran. The President has said he's made he's decision, and
so I don't want to speak on behalf of the President, and he'll just have to make that
determination when he's ready to do so."
max Book is just anothe "Yascha about Russia" type, that Masha Gessen represents so vividly.
The problem with him is that time of neocon prominance is solidly in the past and now unpleasant
question about the cost from the US people of their reckless foreign policies get into some
newspapers and managines. They cost the USA tremedous anount of money (as in trillions) and those
money consititute a large portion of the national debt. Critiques so far were very weak and
partially suppressed voices, but defeat of neocon warmonger Hillary signify some break with
the past.
Notable quotes:
"... National Interest ..."
"... Carlson's record suggests that he has been in the camp skeptical of U.S. foreign-policy intervention for some time now and, indeed, that it predates Donald Trump's rise to power. (Carlson has commented publicly that he was humiliated by his own public support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.) According to Carlson, "This is not about Trump. This is not about Trump. It's the one thing in American life that has nothing to do with Trump. My views on this are totally unrelated to my views on Donald Trump. This has been going since September 11, 2001. And it's a debate that we've never really had. And we need to have it." He adds, "I don't think the public has ever been for the ideas that undergird our policies." ..."
"... National Interest ..."
"... But the fight also seems to have a personal edge. Carlson says, "Max Boot is not impressive. . . . Max is a totally mediocre person." Carlson added that he felt guilty about not having, in his assessment, a superior guest to Boot on the show to defend hawkishness. "I wish I had had someone clear-thinking and smart on to represent their views. And there are a lot of them. I would love to have that debate," Carlson told me, periodically emphasizing that he is raring to go on this subject. ..."
"... New York Observer ..."
"... National Interest ..."
"... Weekly Standard ..."
"... Weekly Standard ..."
"... Though he eschews labels, Carlson sounds like a foreign-policy realist on steroids: "You can debate what's in [the United States'] interest. That's a subjective category. But what you can't debate is that ought to be the basic question, the first, second and third question. Does it represent our interest? . . . I don't think that enters into the calculations of a lot of the people who make these decisions." Carlson's interests extend beyond foreign policy, and he says "there's a massive realignment going on ideologically that everybody is missing. It's dramatic. And everyone is missing it. . . . Nobody is paying attention to it, " ..."
This week's primetime knife fights with Max Boot and Ralph Peters are emblematic of the
battle for the soul of the American Right.
To be sure, Carlson rejects the term
"neoconservatism,"
and implicitly, its corollary on the Democratic side, liberal internationalism. In 2016, "the reigning
Republican foreign-policy view, you can call it neoconservatism, or interventionism, or whatever you
want to call it" was rejected, he explained in a wide-ranging interview with the National Interest
Friday.
"But I don't like the term 'neoconservatism,'" he says, "because I don't even know what it means.
I think it describes the people rather than their ideas, which is what I'm interested in. And to
be perfectly honest . . . I have a lot of friends who have been described as neocons, people I really
love, sincerely. And they are offended by it. So I don't use it," Carlson said.
But Carlson's recent segments on foreign policy conducted with Lt. Col.
Ralph Peters and the prominent neoconservative journalist and author
Max Boot were acrimonious even by Carlsonian standards. In a discussion on Syria, Russia and
Iran, a visibly upset Boot accused Carlson of being "immoral" and taking foreign-policy positions
to curry favor with the White House, keep up his
ratings , and by proxy, benefit financially. Boot says that Carlson "basically parrots whatever
the pro-Trump line is that Fox viewers want to see. If Trump came out strongly against Putin tomorrow,
I imagine Tucker would echo this as faithfully as the pro-Russia arguments he echoes today." But
is this assessment fair?
Carlson's record suggests that he has been in the camp skeptical of U.S. foreign-policy intervention
for some time now and, indeed, that it predates Donald Trump's rise to power. (Carlson has commented
publicly that he was humiliated by his own public support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.) According
to Carlson, "This is not about Trump. This is not about Trump. It's the one thing in American life
that has nothing to do with Trump. My views on this are totally unrelated to my views on Donald Trump.
This has been going since September 11, 2001. And it's a debate that we've never really had. And
we need to have it." He adds, "I don't think the public has ever been for the ideas that undergird
our policies."
Even if Carlson doesn't want to use the label neocon to describe some of those ideas, Boot is
not so bashful. In 2005, Boot wrote an essay called
"Neocons May Get
the Last Laugh." Carlson "has become a Trump acolyte in pursuit of ratings," says Boot, also
interviewed by the National Interest . "I bet if it were President Clinton accused of colluding
with the Russians, Tucker would be outraged and calling for impeachment if not execution. But since
it's Trump, then it's all a big joke to him," Boot says. Carlson vociferously dissents from such
assessments: "This is what dumb people do. They can't assess the merits of an argument. . . . I'm
not talking about Syria, and Russia, and Iran because of ratings. That's absurd. I can't imagine
those were anywhere near the most highly-rated segments that night. That's not why I wanted to do
it."
But Carlson insists, "I have been saying the same thing for fifteen years. Now I have a T.V. show
that people watch, so my views are better known. But it shouldn't be a surprise. I supported Trump
to the extent he articulated beliefs that I agree with. . . . And I don't support Trump to the extent
that his actions deviate from those beliefs," Carlson said. Boot on Fox said that Carlson is "too
smart" for this kind of argument. But Carlson has bucked the Trump line, notably on Trump's April
7 strikes in Syria. "When the Trump administration threw a bunch of cruise missiles into Syria for
no obvious reason, on the basis of a pretext that I
question . . . I questioned [the decision] immediately. On T.V. I was on the air when that happened.
I think, maybe seven minutes into my show. . . . I thought this was reckless."
But the fight also seems to have a personal edge. Carlson says, "Max Boot is not impressive. .
. . Max is a totally mediocre person." Carlson added that he felt guilty about not having, in his
assessment, a superior guest to Boot on the show to defend hawkishness. "I wish I had had someone
clear-thinking and smart on to represent their views. And there are a lot of them. I would love to
have that debate," Carlson told me, periodically emphasizing that he is raring to go on this subject.
Boot objects to what he sees as a cavalier attitude on the part of Carlson and others toward allegations
of Russian interference in the 2016 election, and also toward the deaths of citizens of other countries.
"You are laughing about the fact that Russia is interfering in our election process. That to me is
immoral," Boot told Carlson on his show. "This is the level of dumbness and McCarthyism in Washington
right now," says Carlson. "I think it has the virtue of making Max Boot feel like a good person.
Like he's on God's team, or something like that. But how does that serve the interest of the country?
It doesn't." Carlson says that Donald Trump, Jr.'s emails aren't nearly as important as who is going
to lead Syria, which he says Boot and others have no plan for successfully occupying. Boot, by contrast,
sees the U.S. administration as dangerously flirting with working with Russia, Iran and Syrian president
Bashar al-Assad. "For whatever reason, Trump is pro-Putin, no one knows why, and he's taken a good
chunk of the GOP along with him," Boot says.
On Fox last Wednesday, Boot reminded Carlson that he originally supported the 2003 Iraq decision.
"You supported the invasion of Iraq," Boot said, before repeating, "You supported the invasion of
Iraq." Carlson conceded that, but it seems the invasion was a bona fide turning point. It's most
important to parse whether Carlson has a long record of anti-interventionism, or if he's merely
sniffing the throne of the president (who, dubiously, may have opposed the 2003 invasion). "I
think it's a total nightmare and disaster, and I'm ashamed that I went against my own instincts in
supporting it," Carlson told the New York Observer in early 2004. "It's something I'll never
do again. Never. I got convinced by a friend of mine who's smarter than I am, and I shouldn't have
done that. . . . I'm enraged by it, actually." Carlson told the National Interest that he's
felt this way since seeing Iraq for himself in December 2003.
The evidence points heavily toward a sincere conversion on Carlson's part, or preexisting conviction
that was briefly overcome by the beat of the war drums. Carlson did work for the Weekly Standard
, perhaps the most prominent neoconservative magazine, in the 1990s and early 2000s. Carlson today
speaks respectfully of William Kristol, its founding editor, but has concluded that he is all wet.
On foreign policy, the people Carlson speaks most warmly about are genuine hard left-wingers: Glenn
Greenwald, a vociferous critic of both economic neoliberalism and neoconservatism; the anti-establishment
journalist Michael Tracey; Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation ; and her husband,
Stephen Cohen, the Russia expert and critic of U.S. foreign policy.
"The only people in American public life who are raising these questions are on the traditional
left: not lifestyle liberals, not the Williamsburg (Brooklyn) group, not liberals in D.C., not Nancy
Pelosi." He calls the expertise of establishment sources on matters like Syria "more shallow than
I even imagined." On his MSNBC show, which was canceled for poor ratings, he cavorted with noninterventionist
stalwarts such as
Ron Paul , the 2008 and 2012 antiwar GOP candidate, and Patrick J. Buchanan. "No one is smarter
than Pat Buchanan," he said
last year of the man whose ideas many say laid the groundwork for Trump's political success.
Carlson has risen to the pinnacle of cable news, succeeding Bill O'Reilly. It wasn't always clear
an antiwar take would vault someone to such prominence. Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio or Mitt Romney could
be president (Boot has advised the latter two). But here he is, and it's likely no coincidence that
Carlson got a show after Trump's election, starting at the 7 p.m. slot, before swiftly moving to
the 9 p.m. slot to replace Trump antagonist Megyn Kelly, and just as quickly replacing O'Reilly at
the top slot, 8 p.m. Boot, on the other hand, declared in 2016 that the Republican Party was
dead , before it went on to hold Congress and most state houses, and of course take the presidency.
He's still at the Council on Foreign Relations and writes for the New York Times (this seems
to clearly annoy Carlson: "It tells you everything about the low standards of the American foreign-policy
establishment").
Boot wrote in 2003 in the Weekly Standard that the fall of Saddam Hussein's government
"may turn out to be one of those hinge moments in history" comparable to "events like the storming
of the Bastille or the fall of the Berlin Wall, after which everything is different." He continued,
"If the occupation goes well (admittedly a big if ), it may mark the moment when the powerful
antibiotic known as democracy was introduced into the diseased environment of the Middle East, and
began to transform the region for the better."
Though he eschews labels, Carlson sounds like a foreign-policy realist on steroids: "You can debate
what's in [the United States'] interest. That's a subjective category. But what you can't debate
is that ought to be the basic question, the first, second and third question. Does it represent our
interest? . . . I don't think that enters into the calculations of a lot of the people who make these
decisions." Carlson's interests extend beyond foreign policy, and he says "there's a massive realignment
going on ideologically that everybody is missing. It's dramatic. And everyone is missing it. . .
. Nobody is paying attention to it, "
Carlson seems intent on pressing the issue. The previous night, in his debate with Peters, the
retired lieutenant colonel said that Carlson sounded like Charles Lindbergh, who opposed U.S. intervention
against Nazi Germany before 1941. "This particular strain of Republican foreign policy has almost
no constituency. Nobody agrees with it. I mean there's not actually a large group of people outside
of New York, Washington or L.A. who think any of this is a good idea," Carlson says. "All I am is
an asker of obvious questions. And that's enough to reveal these people have no idea what they're
talking about. None."
Curt Mills is a foreign-affairs reporter at the National Interest . Follow him on Twitter:
@CurtMills .
"... "Have you ever met or talked to any Russian official or relative of any Russian banker, or any Russian or even read Gogol, now or in the past?" ..."
"... Progressives joined the FBI/CIA's 'Russian Bear' conspiracy: " Russia intervened and decided the Presidential election" – no matter that millions of workers and rural Americans had voted against Hillary Clinton, Wall Street's candidate and no matter that no evidence of direct interference was ever presented. Progressives could not accept that 'their constituents', the masses, had rejected Madame Clinton and preferred 'the Donald'. They attacked a shifty-eyed caricature of the repeatedly elected Russian President Putin as a subterfuge for attacking the disobedient 'white trash' electorate of 'Deploralandia'. ..."
"... Progressive demagogues embraced the coifed and manicured former 'Director Comey' of the FBI, and the Mr. Potato-headed Capo of the CIA and their forty thugs in making accusations without finger or footprints. ..."
"... Then Progressives turned increasingly Orwellian: Ignoring Obama's actual expulsion of over 2 million immigrant workers, they condemned Trump for promising to eventually expel 5 million more! ..."
"... Progressives, under Obama, supported seven brutal illegal wars and pressed for more, but complained when Trump continued the same wars and proposed adding a few new ones. At the same time, progressives out-militarized Trump by accusing him of being 'weak' on Russia, Iran, North Korea and China. They chided him for his lack support for Israel's suppression of the Palestinians. They lauded Trump's embrace of the Saudi war against Yemen as a stepping-stone for an assault against Iran, even as millions of destitute Yemenis were exposed to cholera. The Progressives had finally embraced a biological weapon of mass destruction, when US-supplied missiles destroyed the water systems of Yemen! ..."
"... Thank you for putting your finger on the main problem right there in the first paragraph. There were exceptions of course. I supported Dennis Kucinich in the Democratic Primary that gave us the first black etc. But I never voted for Obama. Throughout the Cheney Admin I pleaded with progressives to bolt the party. ..."
"... This is an excellent summary of the evolution of "progressives" into modern militarist fascists who tolerate identity politics diversity. There is little to add to Mr. Petras' commentary. ..."
"... Barak Obama is America's biggest con man who accomplished nothing "progressive" during eight years at the top, and didn't even try. (Obamacare is an insurance industry idea supported by most Republicans, which is why it recently survived.) Anyone who still likes Obama should read about his actions since he left office. Obama quickly signed a $65 million "book deal", which can only be a kickback since there is no way the publisher can sell enough books about his meaningless presidency to justify that sum. Obama doesn't get royalties based on sales, but gets the money up front for a book he has yet to write, and will have someone do that for him. (Book deals and speaking fees are legal forms of bribery in the USA.) ..."
"... Then Obama embarked on 100 days of ultra expensive foreign vacations with taxpayers covering the Secret Service protection costs. He didn't appear at charity fundraisers, didn't campaign for Democrats, and didn't help build homes for the poor like Jimmy Carter. He returns from vacation this week and his first speech will be at a Wall Street firm that will pay him $400,000, then he travels to Europe for more paid speeches. ..."
"... They chose power over principles. Nobel War Prize winner Obomber was a particularly egregious chameleon, hiding his sociopathy through two elections before unleashing his racist warmongering in full flower throughout his second term. ..."
"... Like a huge collective 'Monica Lewinsky' robot, the Progressives in the Democratic Party bent over and swallowed Clinton's vicious 1999 savaging of the venerable Glass Steagall Act ..."
Over the past quarter century progressive writers, activists and academics have followed a trajectory
from left to right – with each presidential campaign seeming to move them further to the right. Beginning
in the 1990's progressives mobilized millions in opposition to wars, voicing demands for the transformation
of the US's corporate for-profit medical system into a national 'Medicare For All' public
program. They condemned the notorious Wall Street swindlers and denounced police state legislation
and violence. But in the end, they always voted for Democratic Party Presidential candidates who
pursued the exact opposite agenda.
Over time this political contrast between program and practice led to the transformation of the
Progressives. And what we see today are US progressives embracing and promoting the politics of the
far right.
To understand this transformation we will begin by identifying who and what the progressives are
and describe their historical role. We will then proceed to identify their trajectory over the recent
decades.
We will outline the contours of recent Presidential campaigns where Progressives were deeply
involved.
We will focus on the dynamics of political regression: From resistance to submission, from
retreat to surrender.
We will conclude by discussing the end result: The Progressives' large-scale, long-term embrace
of far-right ideology and practice.
Progressives by Name and Posture
Progressives purport to embrace 'progress', the growth of the economy, the enrichment of society
and freedom from arbitrary government. Central to the Progressive agenda was the end of elite corruption
and good governance, based on democratic procedures.
Progressives prided themselves as appealing to 'reason, diplomacy and conciliation', not brute
force and wars. They upheld the sovereignty of other nations and eschewed militarism and armed intervention.
Progressives proposed a vision of their fellow citizens pursuing incremental evolution toward
the 'good society', free from the foreign entanglements, which had entrapped the people in unjust
wars.
Progressives in Historical Perspective
In the early part of the 20th century, progressives favored political equality while opposing
extra-parliamentary social transformations. They supported gender equality and environmental preservation
while failing to give prominence to the struggles of workers and African Americans.
They denounced militarism 'in general' but supported a series of 'wars to end all wars'
. Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson embodied the dual policies of promoting peace at home
and bloody imperial wars overseas. By the middle of the 20th century, different strands emerged
under the progressive umbrella. Progressives split between traditional good government advocates
and modernists who backed socio-economic reforms, civil liberties and rights.
Progressives supported legislation to regulate monopolies, encouraged collective bargaining and
defended the Bill of Rights.
Progressives opposed wars and militarism in theory until their government went to war.
Lacking an effective third political party, progressives came to see themselves as the 'left
wing' of the Democratic Party, allies of labor and civil rights movements and defenders of civil
liberties.
Progressives joined civil rights leaders in marches, but mostly relied on legal and
electoral means to advance African American rights.
Progressives played a pivotal role in fighting McCarthyism, though ultimately it was the Secretary
of the Army and the military high command that brought Senator McCarthy to his knees.
Progressives provided legal defense when the social movements disrupted the House UnAmerican Activities
Committee.
They popularized the legislative arguments that eventually outlawed segregation, but it was courageous
Afro-American leaders heading mass movements that won the struggle for integration and civil rights.
In many ways the Progressives complemented the mass struggles, but their limits were defined by
the constraints of their membership in the Democratic Party.
The alliance between Progressives and social movements peaked in the late sixties to mid-1970's
when the Progressives followed the lead of dynamic and advancing social movements and community organizers
especially in opposition to the wars in Indochina and the military draft.
The Retreat of the Progressives
By the late 1970's the Progressives had cut their anchor to the social movements, as the anti-war,
civil rights and labor movements lost their impetus (and direction).
The numbers of progressives within the left wing of the Democratic Party increased through recruitment
from earlier social movements. Paradoxically, while their 'numbers' were up, their caliber had declined,
as they sought to 'fit in' with the pro-business, pro-war agenda of their President's party.
Without the pressure of the 'populist street' the 'Progressives-turned-Democrats' adapted
to the corporate culture in the Party. The Progressives signed off on a fatal compromise: The corporate
elite secured the electoral party while the Progressives were allowed to write enlightened manifestos
about the candidates and their programs . . . which were quickly dismissed once the Democrats took
office. Yet the ability to influence the 'electoral rhetoric' was seen by the Progressives as a sufficient
justification for remaining inside the Democratic Party.
Moreover the Progressives argued that by strengthening their presence in the Democratic Party,
(their self-proclaimed 'boring from within' strategy), they would capture the party membership,
neutralize the pro-corporation, militarist elements that nominated the president and peacefully transform
the party into a 'vehicle for progressive changes'.
Upon their successful 'deep penetration' the Progressives, now cut off from the increasingly disorganized
mass social movements, coopted and bought out many prominent black, labor and civil liberty activists
and leaders, while collaborating with what they dubbed the more malleable 'centrist' Democrats.
These mythical creatures were really pro-corporate Democrats who condescended to occasionally converse
with the Progressives while working for the Wall Street and Pentagon elite.
The Retreat of the Progressives: The Clinton Decade
Progressives adapted the 'crab strategy': Moving side-ways and then backwards but never forward.
Progressives mounted candidates in the Presidential primaries, which were predictably defeated
by the corporate Party apparatus, and then submitted immediately to the outcome. The election of
President 'Bill' Clinton launched a period of unrestrained financial plunder, major wars of aggression
in Europe (Yugoslavia) and the Middle East (Iraq), a military intervention in Somalia and secured
Israel's victory over any remnant of a secular Palestinian leadership as well as its destruction
of Lebanon!
Like a huge collective 'Monica Lewinsky' robot, the Progressives in the Democratic Party bent
over and swallowed Clinton's vicious 1999 savaging of the venerable Glass Steagall Act, thereby opening
the floodgates for massive speculation on Wall Street through the previously regulated banking sector.
When President Clinton gutted welfare programs, forcing single mothers to take minimum-wage jobs
without provision for safe childcare, millions of poor white and minority women were forced to abandon
their children to dangerous makeshift arrangements in order to retain any residual public support
and access to minimal health care. Progressives looked the other way.
Progressives followed Clinton's deep throated thrust toward the far right, as he outsourced manufacturing
jobs to Mexico (NAFTA) and re-appointed Federal Reserve's free market, Ayn Rand-fanatic, Alan Greenspan.
Progressives repeatedly kneeled before President Clinton marking their submission to the Democrats'
'hard right' policies.
The election of Republican President G. W. Bush (2001-2009) permitted Progressive's to temporarily
trot out and burnish their anti-war, anti-Wall Street credentials. Out in the street, they protested
Bush's savage invasion of Iraq (but not the destruction of Afghanistan). They protested the media
reports of torture in Abu Ghraib under Bush, but not the massive bombing and starvation of millions
of Iraqis that had occurred under Clinton. Progressives protested the expulsion of immigrants from
Mexico and Central America, but were silent over the brutal uprooting of refugees resulting from
US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the systematic destruction of their nations' infrastructure.
Progressives embraced Israel's bombing, jailing and torture of Palestinians by voting unanimously
in favor of increasing the annual $3 billion dollar military handouts to the brutal Jewish State.
They supported Israel's bombing and slaughter in Lebanon.
Progressives were in retreat, but retained a muffled voice and inconsequential vote in favor of
peace, justice and civil liberties. They kept a certain distance from the worst of the police state
decrees by the Republican Administration.
Progressives and Obama: From Retreat to Surrender
While Progressives maintained their tepid commitment to civil liberties, and their highly 'leveraged'
hopes for peace in the Middle East, they jumped uncritically into the highly choreographed Democratic
Party campaign for Barack Obama, 'Wall Street's First Black President'.
Progressives had given up their quest to 'realign' the Democratic Party 'from within':
they turned from serious tourism to permanent residency. Progressives provided the foot soldiers
for the election and re-election of the warmongering 'Peace Candidate' Obama. After the election,
Progressives rushed to join the lower echelons of his Administration. Black and white politicos joined
hands in their heroic struggle to erase the last vestiges of the Progressives' historical legacy.
Obama increased the number of Bush-era imperial wars to attacking seven weak nations under American's
'First Black' President's bombardment, while the Progressives ensured that the streets were quiet
and empty.
When Obama provided trillions of dollars of public money to rescue Wall Street and the bankers,
while sacrificing two million poor and middle class mortgage holders, the Progressives only criticized
the bankers who received the bailout, but not Obama's Presidential decision to protect and reward
the mega-swindlers.
Under the Obama regime social inequalities within the United States grew at an unprecedented rate.
The Police State Patriot Act was massively extended to give President Obama the power to order the
assassination of US citizens abroad without judicial process. The Progressives did not resign when
Obama's 'kill orders' extended to the 'mistaken' murder of his target's children and other family
member, as well as unidentified bystanders. The icon carriers still paraded their banner of the
'first black American President' when tens of thousands of black Libyans and immigrant workers
were slaughtered in his regime-change war against President Gadhafi.
Obama surpassed the record of all previous Republican office holders in terms of the massive numbers
of immigrant workers arrested and expelled – 2 million. Progressives applauded the Latino protestors
while supporting the policies of their 'first black President'.
Progressive accepted that multiple wars, Wall Street bailouts and the extended police state were
now the price they would pay to remain part of the "Democratic coalition' (sic).
The deeper the Progressives swilled at the Democratic Party trough, the more they embraced the
Obama's free market agenda and the more they ignored the increasing impoverishment, exploitation
and medical industry-led opioid addiction of American workers that was shortening their lives. Under
Obama, the Progressives totally abandoned the historic American working class, accepting their degradation
into what Madam Hillary Clinton curtly dismissed as the 'deplorables'.
With the Obama Presidency, the Progressive retreat turned into a rout, surrendering with one flaccid
caveat: the Democratic Party 'Socialist' Bernie Sanders, who had voted 90% of the time with the Corporate
Party, had revived a bastardized military-welfare state agenda.
Sander's Progressive demagogy shouted and rasped on the campaign trail, beguiling the young electorate.
The 'Bernie' eventually 'sheep-dogged' his supporters into the pro-war Democratic Party corral.
Sanders revived an illusion of the pre-1990 progressive agenda, promising resistance while demanding
voter submission to Wall Street warlord Hillary Clinton. After Sanders' round up of the motley progressive
herd, he staked them tightly to the far-right Wall Street war mongering Hillary Clinton. The Progressives
not only embraced Madame Secretary Clinton's nuclear option and virulent anti-working class agenda,
they embellished it by focusing on Republican billionaire Trump's demagogic, nationalist, working
class rhetoric which was designed to agitate 'the deplorables'. They even turned on the working
class voters, dismissing them as 'irredeemable' racists and illiterates or 'white trash' when
they turned to support Trump in massive numbers in the 'fly-over' states of the central US.
Progressives, allied with the police state, the mass media and the war machine worked to defeat
and impeach Trump. Progressives surrendered completely to the Democratic Party and started to advocate
its far right agenda. Hysterical McCarthyism against anyone who questioned the Democrats' promotion
of war with Russia, mass media lies and manipulation of street protest against Republican elected
officials became the centerpieces of the Progressive agenda. The working class and farmers had disappeared
from their bastardized 'identity-centered' ideology.
Guilt by association spread throughout Progressive politics. Progressives embraced J. Edgar Hoover's
FBI tactics: "Have you ever met or talked to any Russian official or relative of any Russian
banker, or any Russian or even read Gogol, now or in the past?" For progressives, 'Russia-gate'
defined the real focus of contemporary political struggle in this huge, complex, nuclear-armed superpower.
Progressives joined the FBI/CIA's 'Russian Bear' conspiracy: "Russia intervened and decided
the Presidential election" – no matter that millions of workers and rural Americans had voted
against Hillary Clinton, Wall Street's candidate and no matter that no evidence of direct interference
was ever presented. Progressives could not accept that 'their constituents', the masses, had rejected
Madame Clinton and preferred 'the Donald'. They attacked a shifty-eyed caricature of the repeatedly
elected Russian President Putin as a subterfuge for attacking the disobedient 'white trash' electorate
of 'Deploralandia'.
Progressive demagogues embraced the coifed and manicured former 'Director Comey' of the FBI,
and the Mr. Potato-headed Capo of the CIA and their forty thugs in making accusations without finger
or footprints.
The Progressives' far right - turn earned them hours and space on the mass media as long
as they breathlessly savaged and insulted President Trump and his family members. When they managed
to provoke him into a blind rage . . . they added the newly invented charge of 'psychologically
unfit to lead' – presenting cheap psychobabble as grounds for impeachment. Finally! American
Progressives were on their way to achieving their first and only political transformation: a Presidential
coup d'état on behalf of the Far Right!
Progressives loudly condemned Trump's overtures for peace with Russia, denouncing it as appeasement
and betrayal!
In return, President Trump began to 'out-militarize' the Progressives by escalating US involvement
in the Middle East and South China Sea. They swooned with joy when Trump ordered a missile strike
against the Syrian government as Damascus engaged in a life and death struggle against mercenary
terrorists. They dubbed the petulant release of Patriot missiles 'Presidential'.
Then Progressives turned increasingly Orwellian: Ignoring Obama's actual expulsion of over
2 million immigrant workers, they condemned Trump for promising to eventually expel 5 million
more!
Progressives, under Obama, supported seven brutal illegal wars and pressed for more, but complained
when Trump continued the same wars and proposed adding a few new ones. At the same time, progressives
out-militarized Trump by accusing him of being 'weak' on Russia, Iran, North Korea and China. They
chided him for his lack support for Israel's suppression of the Palestinians. They lauded Trump's
embrace of the Saudi war against Yemen as a stepping-stone for an assault against Iran, even as millions
of destitute Yemenis were exposed to cholera. The Progressives had finally embraced a biological
weapon of mass destruction, when US-supplied missiles destroyed the water systems of Yemen!
Conclusion
Progressives turned full circle from supporting welfare to embracing Wall Street; from preaching
peaceful co-existence to demanding a dozen wars; from recognizing the humanity and rights of undocumented
immigrants to their expulsion under their 'First Black' President; from thoughtful mass media critics
to servile media megaphones; from defenders of civil liberties to boosters for the police state;
from staunch opponents of J. Edgar Hoover and his 'dirty tricks' to camp followers for the 'intelligence
community' in its deep state campaign to overturn a national election.
Progressives moved from fighting and resisting the Right to submitting and retreating; from retreating
to surrendering and finally embracing the far right.
Doing all that and more within the Democratic Party, Progressives retain and deepen their ties
with the mass media, the security apparatus and the military machine, while occasionally digging
up some Bernie Sanders-type demagogue to arouse an army of voters away from effective resistance
to mindless collaboration.
But in the end, they always voted for Democratic Party Presidential candidates who pursued
the exact opposite agenda.
Thank you for putting your finger on the main problem right there in the first paragraph.
There were exceptions of course. I supported Dennis Kucinich in the Democratic Primary that gave
us the first black etc. But I never voted for Obama. Throughout the Cheney Admin I pleaded with
progressives to bolt the party.
This piece accurately traces the path from Progressive to Maoist. It's a pity the Republican
Party is also a piece of shit. I think it was Sara Palin who said "We have two parties. Pick one."
This should be our collective epitaph.
This is an excellent summary of the evolution of "progressives" into modern militarist
fascists who tolerate identity politics diversity. There is little to add to Mr. Petras' commentary.
"Progressives loudly condemned Trump's overtures for peace with Russia, denouncing it as
appeasement and betrayal!"
Perhaps the spirit of Senator Joseph McCarthy is joyously gloating as progressives (and democrats)
take their place as his heirs and successors and the 21st century incarnation of the House UnAmerican
Activities Committee.
The great Jimmy Dore is a big thorn for the Democrats. From my blog:
Apr 29, 2017 – Obama is Scum!
Barak Obama is America's biggest con man who accomplished nothing "progressive" during
eight years at the top, and didn't even try. (Obamacare is an insurance industry idea supported
by most Republicans, which is why it recently survived.) Anyone who still likes Obama should read
about his actions since he left office. Obama quickly signed a $65 million "book deal", which
can only be a kickback since there is no way the publisher can sell enough books about his meaningless
presidency to justify that sum. Obama doesn't get royalties based on sales, but gets the money
up front for a book he has yet to write, and will have someone do that for him. (Book deals and
speaking fees are legal forms of bribery in the USA.)
Then Obama embarked on 100 days of ultra expensive foreign vacations with taxpayers covering
the Secret Service protection costs. He didn't appear at charity fundraisers, didn't campaign
for Democrats, and didn't help build homes for the poor like Jimmy Carter. He returns from vacation
this week and his first speech will be at a Wall Street firm that will pay him $400,000, then
he travels to Europe for more paid speeches.
Obama gets over $200,000 a year in retirement, just got a $65 million deal, so doesn't need
more money. Why would a multi-millionaire ex-president fly around the globe collecting huge speaking
fees from world corporations just after his political party was devastated in elections because
Americans think the Democratic party represents Wall Street? The great Jimmy Dore expressed his
outrage at Obama and the corrupt Democratic party in this great video.
Left in the good old days meant socialist, socialist meant that governments had the duty of
redistributing income from rich to poor. Alas in Europe, after 'socialists' became pro EU and
pro globalisation, they in fact became neoliberal. Both in France and the Netherlands 'socialist'
parties virtually disappeared.
So what nowadays is left, does anyone know ?
Then the word 'progressive'. The word suggests improvement, but what is improvement, improvement
for whom ? There are those who see the possibility for euthanasia as an improvement, there are
thos who see euthanasia as a great sin.
Discussions about left and progressive are meaningless without properly defining the concepts.
They chose power over principles. Nobel War Prize winner Obomber was a particularly egregious
chameleon, hiding his sociopathy through two elections before unleashing his racist warmongering
in full flower throughout his second term. But, hey, the brother now has five mansions, collects
half a mill per speech to the Chosen People on Wall Street, and parties for months at a time at
exclusive resorts for billionaires only.
Obviously, he's got the world by the tail and you don't. Hope he comes to the same end as Gaddaffi
and Ceaușescu. Maybe the survivors of nuclear Armageddon can hold a double necktie party with
Killary as the second honored guest that day.
Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson embodied the dual policies of promoting peace at home
and bloody imperial wars overseas.
You left out the other Roosevelt.
Like a huge collective 'Monica Lewinsky' robot, the Progressives in the Democratic Party
bent over and swallowed Clinton's vicious 1999 savaging of the venerable Glass Steagall Act
Hilarious!
Ignoring Obama's actual expulsion of over 2 million immigrant workers, they condemned Trump
for promising to eventually expel 5 million more!
so it's not just conservative conspiracy theory stuff as some might argue.
Still, the overall point of this essay isn't affected all that much. Open borders is still
a "right wing" (in the sense this author uses the term) policy–pro-Wall Street, pro-Big Business.
So Obama was still doing the bidding of the donor class in their quest for cheap labor.
I've seen pro-immigration types try to use the Obama-deportation thing to argue that we don't
need more hardcore policies. After all, even the progressive Democrat Obama was on the ball when
it came to policing our borders, right?! Who needed Trump?
@Carlton Meyer If Jimmy keeps up these attacks on Wall Street, the Banksters, and rent-seekers
he is going to get run out of the Progressive movement for dog-whistling virulent Anti-Semitism.
Look at how the media screams at Trump every time he mentions Wall Street and the banks.
Mr. Petra has penned an excellent and very astute piece. Allow me a little satire on our progressive
friends, entitled "The path to hell is paved with good intentions".
The early socialist/progressive travellers were well-intentioned but naïve in their understanding
of human nature and fanatical about their agenda. To move the human herd forward, they had no
compulsions about resorting to harsher and harsher prodding and whipping. They felt entitled to
employ these means because, so they were convinced, man has to be pushed to move forward and they,
the "progressives", were the best qualified to lead the herd. Scoundrels, psychopaths, moral defectives,
and sundry other rascals then joined in the whipping game, some out of the sheer joy of wielding
the whip, others to better line their pockets.
So the "progressive" journey degenerates into a forced march. The march becomes the progress,
becoming both the means and the end at the same time. Look at the so-called "progressive" today
and you will see the fanatic and the whip-wielder, steadfast about the correctness of his beliefs.
Tell him/her/it that you are a man or a woman and he retorts "No, you are free to choose, you
are genderless". What if you decline such freedom? "Well, then you are a bigot, we will thrash
you out of your bigotry", replies the progressive. "May I, dear Sir/Madam/Whatever, keep my hard-earned
money in my pocket for my and my family's use" you ask. "No, you first have to pay for our peace-making
wars, then pay for the upkeep of refugees, besides which you owe a lot of back taxes that are
necessary to run this wonderful Big Government of ours that is leading you towards greener and
greener pastures", shouts back the progressive.
Fed up, disgusted, and a little scared, you desperately seek a way out of this progress. "No
way", scream the march leaders. "We will be forever in your ears, sometimes whispering, sometimes
screaming; we will take over your brain to improve your mind; we will saturate you with images
on the box 24/7 and employ all sorts of imagery to make you progress. And if it all fails, we
will simply pack you and others like you in a basket of deplorables and forget about you at election
time."
Knowing who is "progressive" and know who is "far-right" is like knowing who is "fascist" and
who is not. For obvious historical reasons, the Russian like to throw the "fascist" slogan against
anyone who is a non-Russian nationalist. However, I accept the eminent historian Carroll Quigley's
definition of fascism as the incorporation of society and the state onto single entity on a permanent
war footing. The state controls everything in a radically authoritarian social structure. As Quigley
states, the Soviet Union was the most complete embodiment of fascism in WWII. In WWII Germany,
on the other hand, industry retained its independence and in WWII Italy fascism was no more than
an empty slogan.
Same for "progressives". Everyone wants to be "progressive", right? Who wants to be "anti-progressive"?
However, at the end of the day, "progressive" through verbal slights of hand has been nothing
more than a euphemism for "socialist" or, in the extreme, "communist" the verbal slight-of-hand
because we don't tend to use the latter terms in American political discourse.
"Progressives" morphing into a new "far-right" in America is no more mysterious than the Soviet
Union morphing from Leninism to Stalinism or, the Jewish (Trotskyite) globalists fleeing Stalinist
nationalism and then morphing into, first, "Scoop" Jackson Democrats and then into Bushite Republicans.
As you might notice, the real issue is the authoritarian vs. the non-authoritarian state. In
this context, an authoritarian government and social order (as in communism and neoconservatism)
are practical pre-requisites necessity to force humanity to transition to their New World Order.
Again, the defining characteristic of fascism is the unitary state enforced via an authoritarian
political and social structure. Ideological rigor is enforced via the police powers of the state
along with judicial activism and political correctness. Ring a bell?
In the ongoing contest between Trump and the remnants of the American "progressive" movement,
who are the populists and who the authoritarians? Who are the democrats and who are the fascists?
I would say that who lands where in this dichotomy is obvious.
@Alfa158 Is Jimmy Dore really a "Progressive?" (and what does that mean, anyway?) Isn't Jimmy's
show hosted by the Young Turks Network, which is unabashedly Libertarian?
Anyway, what's so great about "the Progressive movement?" Seems to me, they're just pathetic
sheepdogs for the war-crazed Dems. Jimmy should be supporting the #UNRIG movement ("Beyond Trump
& Sanders") for ALL Americans:
On 1 May 2017 Cynthia McKinney, Ellen Brown, and Robert Steele launched
Petras, for some reason, low balls the number of people ejected from assets when the mafia
came to seize real estate in the name of the ruling class and their expensive wars, morality,
the Constitution or whatever shit they could make up to fuck huge numbers of people over. Undoubtedly
just like 9/11, the whole thing was planned in advance. Political whores are clearly useless when
the system is at such extremes.
Banks like Capital One specialize in getting a signature and "giving" a car loan to someone
they know won't be able to pay, but is simply being used, shaken down and repossessed for corporate
gain. " No one held a gun to their head! " Get ready, the police state will in fact put a gun
to your head.
Depending on the time period in question, which might be the case here, more than 20 million
people were put out of homes and/or bankrupted with more to come. Clearly a bipartisan effort
featuring widespread criminal conduct across the country – an attack on the population to sustain
militarism.
If I may add:
"and you also have to dearly pay for you being white male heterosexual for oppressing all colored,
all the women and all the sexually different through the history".
"And if it all fails, we will simply pack you and others like you in a basket of deplorables
and forget about you at election time. If we see that you still don't get with the program we
will reeducate you. Should you resist that in any way we'll incarcerate you. And, no, normal legal
procedure does not work with racists/bigots/haters/whatever we don't like".
"Progressives loudly condemned Trump's overtures for peace with Russia, denouncing it as appeasement
and betrayal!"
Perhaps the spirit of Senator Joseph McCarthy is joyously gloating as progressives (and democrats)
take their place as his heirs and successors and the 21st century incarnation of the House UnAmerican
Activities Committee.
take their place as his heirs and successors and the 21st century incarnation of the House
UnAmerican Activities Committee
which itself was a progressive invention. There was no "right wing" anywhere in sight when
it was estsblished in 1938.
I find it remarkable that Saudi Arabia, which borders
Iraq and is controlled by a multi-billion dollar family,
is demanding that U.S. combat troops have 'boots on the ground' against
ISIS. Where are the Saudi troops? With the third largest
military budget in the world and an army far larger than ISIS, the Saudi government must accept its full responsibility for stability
in their own region of the world. Ultimately, this is a profound struggle for the soul of
Islam, and the anti-ISIS Muslim nations must lead
that fight. While the United States and other western nations should be supportive, the Muslim nations must lead.
What we have seen is that while the average
person is working longer hours for lower wages, we have seen a huge increase in
income and
wealth inequality, which is now reaching obscene levels. This is a rigged
economy,
which works for the rich and the powerful, and is not working for ordinary Americans … You know, this country just does not belong
to a handful of billionaires.
No single financial
institution should have holdings so extensive that its failure could send the
world economy into another
financial crisis ... If an
institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.
"We have a president right now who doesn't consider himself a socialist but people call him a socialist as an insult. Are you
concerned at all about framing yourself as this?" ...
"Not if we have the opportunity to describe what democratic socialism means. ... You have countries like Denmark, Sweden, Norway
... which have had social democratic governments. ... In those countries, healthcare is a right for all people. ... Tuition is free.
... In those countries, governments are working for the middle class, rather than the billionaire class."
Are we happy that 99% of all new income is going to the top 1%? Are we happy that one family in this country owns more than the
bottom 130 million people?
Warren Buffett, one of the richest guys in
the world, openly admits that his effective tax rate is lower than his secretary's. It's time to tell the billionaire class that
if they want to enjoy the benefits of America, they have to accept their responsibilities, and they have to start paying their fair
share of taxes.
In the last thirty years, there has been a massive redistribution of wealth. Unfortunately, it's gone in the wrong direction.
... All that money that has gone from the middle class to the top 1%, I think it should start coming back to the people who need
it the most.
There are millions and millions of people who are tired of establishment politics, who are tired of corporate greed, who want
a candidate that will help lead a mass movement in this country. ... What people are saying is, "Enough is enough. The billionaire
class cannot have it all."
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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